Anansi Technology raises £1.5m in a seed funding round led by Octopus Ventures
Anansi Technology, the embedded insurance platform for goods-in-transit, shippers’ interest and cargo insurance, today announces it has raised £1.5m seed funding led by Octopus Ventures.
Global parcel volumes reached 103bn in 2019, yet less than 1% of these shipments were insured. Anansi’s co-founders Ana Martins de Carvalho and Megan Bingham Walker saw a gap in the market to create an easy-to-use platform that delivered an end-to-end insurance solution for ecommerce platforms, retailers, third party logistics partners and shipping firms.
Accelerated by the pandemic, global ecommerce sales are also predicted to reach $6.3bn by 2024, providing more demand for goods-in-transit cover. Anansi Technology’s integrated platform provides all aspects of insurance for this market, from sales to claims handling, enabling customers to get coverage and receive claims directly into their bank accounts via open banking.
Anansi Technology is launching a Shopify App on October 28th 2021, enabling ecommerce businesses to integrate their shipments with Anansi’s automated goods-in-transit product. The £1.5m seed funding will be used to help to deliver new partnerships across the goods in transit value chain with freight forwarding companies, major ecommerce platforms and retailers and third party logistics firms both in the UK and Europe.
A number of angels who invested in Bought by Many, the $2bn pet insurtech, also joined the raise alongside other prominent angel investors. These included Evelyn Bourke (ex-Bupa CEO), Andrew Rear (ex-CEO Munich Re Digital Partners), Anthony Stevens (president of Victor Insurance), Richard Turner, president of the International Union of Marine Insurance (IUMI) and international head of marine at Victor Insurance Holdings, UNIQA Ventures and leading fintech angel, Chris Adelsbach.
Talking about her investment in Anansi Technology, Evelyn Bourke, former CEO of Bupa, said: “I’m very excited about the insurance proposition that Megan and Ana are creating for online sellers. It’s hugely relevant to the world we live in now.”
Nick Sando, fintech investor at Octopus Ventures, says: “The insurance market has seen lots of innovation over the last five years but there are still large untapped markets. Embedded insurance, where all covers and protections are bundled into one service is set to transform the way people and businesses purchase insurance. By offering insurance in an affordable, relevant and personalised manner, Megan and Ana are transforming the landscape for goods-in-transit protection. We are excited to be working with them and the broader Anansi team as they build the first embedded goods-in-transit insurance product”
Megan, Co-founder and CEO of Anansi says: “We’re building a cutting edge platform to embed goods in transit insurance across the logistics value chain. Our goal is to automate the insurance experience and extend our support beyond Shopify and integrate with multiple ecommerce platforms, insurance partners, third party logistics APIs and in the future, many other services. This funding round will enable us to build more sophisticated infrastructure as we scale and add new features and automations, such as damage, international shipments and fraud detection.”
