Pineapple, a South African insurtech startup, has raised ZAR80 million ($3.4 million) in Series A funding. The startup will use the funding to expand further into the car insurance industry.
The Series A funding came from Lireas Holdings, the ASISA ESD Fund, E4E, Vunani Capital, and the Old Mutual Enterprise & Supplier Development Fund.
Pineapple will use the funds to expand deeper into the car insurance market, following a strong first six months of growth.
Founded in 2018 by Marnus van Heerden, Matthew Elan Smith, and Ndabenhle Junior Ngulube, Pineapple see the traditional insurance model, user journey, and products as lacking and set out to remedy these by doing the following: 1) Changing the business model to align incentives, show people how premiums are used and award members leftover premium back 2) making insuring as easy as snapping a picture where AI does the rest and cover is issued in under 60 seconds 3) Allowing per-item insurance and new product innovation to address cover not currently offered or accessible to many.
The Google Launchpad Africa accelerator graduate raised funding won US$1.5 million in the VentureClash competition in the United States,
“We did not expect to grow by 200 percent in the first 6 months of this year, but it goes to show that customer insurance purchase behavior is starting to shift online and that customers are becoming more astute as to the online ratings of insurance providers and not settling for second best with respect to customer experience,” said Pineapple co-founder Ndabenhle Ngulube.
