Kenyan insurtech Turaco snags Series A; Nigeria’s Kippa, Estate Intel too get funding
Kenyan insurtech Turaco has raised $10 million in a Series A equity round led by Cathay Africinvest Innovation Fund and existing investor Novastar Ventures. The round also included participation from Enza Capital, Global Partnerships, Zephyr Acorn, Operator Stack, Asi Ventures Limited and Push Ventures.
Three-year-old Turaco is a distributor, broker and customer interface between the underwriter and the end consumer and has a B2B and B2B2C business model. It has operations in Nigeria, Kenya and Uganda.
Turaco CEO and co-founder, Ted Pantone, said, “90% of our customers have never had insurance before, but the surprising thing is that people really want to buy insurance! They just don’t have easy access to products that really work for them. This investment enables us to scale our business to serve millions of insurance customers across our current markets and beyond.”
Yassine Oussaifi, Partner at AfricInvest and co-head of Cathay Africinvest Innovation Fund, said, “As the insurance penetration in Sub-Saharan Africa remains below 3%, one of the lowest rates globally, we believe Turaco has developed the tools and know-how to fill this gap and reach low-income earners with products adapted to their needs, thus being a critical part of the push to help shield the most disadvantaged from unforeseen financial burdens and shocks.”
Olúwatóyìn Emmanuel-Olubake, Investment Director at Novastar Ventures, added, “Turaco has grown over 300% since Novastar’s initial investment in 2020.”
Kippa
Nigerian financial management and payments platform for small businesses, Kippa, has raised $8.4 million in a new financing round from Goodwater Capital, TEN13 VC, Rocketship VC, Saison Capital (the venture arm of Credit Saison), Crestone VC, VentureSouq, Horizon Partners and Vibe Capital.
Launched in June 2021 by Kennedy Ekezie-Joseph, Duke Ekezie and Jephthah Uche, the startup had raised $3.2 million in a pre-Seed fundraise from Target Global and other investors.
Estate Intel
Nigerian proptech startup Estate Intel, one of sixty startups from across Africa selected for the second cohort of Google for Startups Black Founders Fund (BFF) for Africa, securing up to $100,000 in equity-free funding and support to enable up, has disclosed it raised a $500,000 pre-Seed funding round last year.
Founded by Dolapo Omidire, the firm had started as a blog six years ago. It said that it had raised the pre-Seed round from MetaProp to expand its data footprint to countries like Kenya, Zambia, Ivory Coast, Morocco and Ghana.
