Indonesian insurtech player Qoala raises $13.5m Series A
Qoala, an insurance technology start-up in Indonesia, has raised $13.5 million in a Series A round led by Centauri Fund, a vehicle jointly run by KB Investment and MDI Ventures.
Other new investors included Sequoia Capital India, Flourish Ventures, Mirae Asset Venture Investment and Mirae Asset Sekuritas. Existing investors MassMutual Ventures Southeast Asia, MDI Ventures, Surge, SeedPlus and Bank Central Asia’s Central Capital Ventura also took part.
Founded in 2018, Qoala offers users an online channel to purchase insurance products, usually partnering with digital enterprises like e-commerce websites and travel booking firms. Some of the start-up’s offerings help cover losses due to flight and train delays, and damage to smart phone screens.
Qoala also offers traditional insurers a digital mode of delivery through an app designed for insurance agents or brokers. The start-up claims that it processes over two million policies every month and uses photo-based methods assisted by machine learning tools to process claims, thereby speeding up insurance delivery.
Qoala plans to use the fresh capital to double its headcount and continue to establish partnerships with digital and traditional enterprises. It counts more than 20 insurers as merchants.
“Our thesis identified that Indonesia has a considerably low gross written premium (GWP) to GDP ratio in comparison to other emerging countries, coupled with the large growing middle class in need of more security in their financial planning which allows immense potential for the insurance sector to take off in Indonesia through innovative propositions,” said Kenneth Li, a managing partner at Centauri Fund.
This is the first investment by Centauri, a $150 million growth-stage fund established by KB Investment, a subsidiary of KB Financial Group, and MDI Ventures, the corporate venture capital arm of Telkom Indonesia. It seeks to invest in early-stage companies in Indonesia leveraging the network of Telkom Indonesia, the country’s largest telecom operator.
Other operators in Indonesia's insurtech space include Gojek-backed PasarPolis, AXA MyPage, Fuse and Igloo, which raised $16 million last week.
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