Nigeria’s Curacel raises funding to power insurance offerings and expand into North Africa
Summary
Founded by Henry Mascot and John Dada in 2019, Curacel is building the rails to make insurance work for the next billion Africans and empowering businesses everywhere with the technology to embed insurance for their users.Initially, Curacel was intended to be an electronic health information management platform for healthcare providers, enabling clinics to digitize and manage paper records, appointments, patient communications, billing and reporting through a web app. Something needed to be done to cut down on fraud so that insurance companies can reinvest into creating cheaper products for the end consumer, Mascot said in an interview with TechCrunch.The YC-backed startup is doing to insurtech what Flutterwave, Stitch and Anchor have done to payments and banking services with their various APIs. It is used by over 100 companies, including banks, fintechs, logistics and e-commerce platforms across eight African markets: Nigeria, Ghana, Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Rwanda, Morocco and Egypt. Companies such as Harlem Capital-backed Lami and Naspers-backed Naked provide similar services to increase insurance penetration across their respective markets.Weve got claims and distribution, which are our go-to products. For now, though, the company will use the investment to deepen its presence across the continent.Investors in the seed round include Tencent, Blue Point Capital Partners, Pioneer Fund, Olive Tree Capital, Y Combinator and AAF Management and Elefund (investors in New York-based insurtech Sure; the latter also backed Pie Insurance).Africa remains a relatively untapped market when it comes to insurance and technology presents the best opportunity to reach new users and deliver excellent services, Serik Kaldykulov, the general partner at Elefund, commented on the round.