Pineapple, a South African Insurance Technology start-up will now be incubating at the U.S. based Hartford InsurTech Hub, this is coming months after being part of Google Launchpad Africa Accelerator.
In August this year, Pineapple, along with 10 other start-ups were accepted into Google’s second class of Launchpad Accelerator Africa.
The company was the only African start-up picked by the accelerator from over 200 applicants and it will receive mentorship and access to investors from Hartford InsurTech Hub’s global network.
The peer-to-peer decentralized insurer gives its members fully indemnified insurance coverage – and is funded by Startupbootcamp – affiliated with SBC Afritech in Cape Town. The 10 teams will relocate to Hartford, Connecticut in the US for the three-month programme which starts in February 2019.
“We were the only African applicant who made it to the top 22 and after spending last week in Hartford for the final selection we were selected as part of the 10… adding that the goal is to launch Pineapple in the US next year,” says Pineapple’s co-founder, Matthew Elan Smith in a statement.
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The company is also launching a motor insurance product to increase user growth by 2019. In July, the start-up announced its insurance product — claiming to have made insurance “as simple as snapping a picture.”
The company’s co-founder, Ndabenhle Junior Ngulube in July told Ventureburn – “Once a user has snapped an image of an item they want to insure, we have artificial intelligence (AI) that recognises what the image is and proceeds to place that image in an appropriate category for pricing purposes — if the AI fails to categorise the item, we allow the user to manually select the appropriate category for the item). We then require the user to enter the value of that item.
“Based on this value and its associated category — as well as a few actuarial parameters that we take into consideration — we return a premium to the user,” he said, adding that compared to the industry at large, Pineapple’s premiums are market-related.”
In 2017, the start-up secured R5.2-million in seed funding from Lireas Holdings, the strategic investment arm of Hannover-Re Group Africa, in return for a 25% stake in the business.
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