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Providing emergency and security services to employees, Base Operations raises $1M
In 2017, when a destructive earthquake struck Puebla, Mexico, sending shock waves to Mexico City and destroying buildings in the nation’s megalopolis and its surrounding suburbs, both public and private emergency services sprung into action.
For multinational corporations operating in the city it was a test of their internal support services, which were established to meet the “duty of care” requirements that multinationals have to their foreign employees. That’s a minimum threshold which companies must meet to ensure the safety of their employees.
After the Mexico City earthquake, at least one Fortune 500 insurance company found its services lacking. It took two weeks for the company to contact all of its employees and account for everyone.
So the company turned to a new Washington-based startup called Base Operations to see if they could do a better job.
Founded by a former security and risk management consultant, Cory Siskind, Base Operations uses a suite of hosted software services and mobile applications to provide security updates to corporate customers and their employees.
The insurance company tested Base Operations’ check-in feature to see how it would perform in a simulated natural disaster and Siskind said that Base Operations had identified the location of 80% of the company’s workforce in less than two days. More than half of the company’s employees checked in within the first 24 hours.
Base Operations offers a dashboard for corporate customers to monitor their employees’ locations and for staff traveling abroad, the company has an app that provides geo-tagged alerts on potential risks based on an individual’s location.
“This is a compliance situation for companies… They have to do it,” says Siskind. “We work with a company’s chief security officers and travel security. If you send people off into an emerging market with a risk PDF… It’s not dynamic information and it just sits in a report and nobody reads it.”
Companies with a sales or marketing team traveling around need to have some sort of tool to meet their compliance regulations and duty of care standards, says Siskind.
“We have a whole set of features that nudge towards safer behaviors so that you don’t end up getting mugged and so that you don’t end up in a situation that would be damaging to you,” she says.
Siskind recently raised $1 million for Base Operations from investors including Glasswing Ventures, Spiro Ventures, the Latin American early-stage investment firm Magma Partners and Good Growth Capital. Base Operations graduated from Techstars Impact Accelerator in 2018.
The money from the company’s most recent round will be used to expand the company’s sales and marketing efforts and continue its research and development.
So far, the company has three customers, including the undisclosed insurance provider, the energy company Enel and another, yet unnamed, corporation.
Base Operations provides its services in 15 cities, including: Mexico City, São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, Buenos Aires, Santiago, San Juan (Puerto Rico) and San Jose (Costa Rica).
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Legged lunar rover startup Spacebit taps Latin American partners for Moon mission
U.K.-based lunar rover startup Spacebit, a company developing robotic exploration hardware for use on the Moon, announced two new partners that will help it develop and finalize its technology ahead of its target mission date of 2021. The Ecuadorian Civilian Space Agency (EXA) and Mexico’s Dereum will be providing the technology that Spacebit will employ on both its deployer and the robot rover it’s preparing for use on the Moon.
This marks the first time that Latin American companies will participate in a mission to the lunar surface, and Spacebit CEO Pavlo Tanasyuk was joined by Dereum CEO Carlos Mariscal and EXA COO Ronnie Nader to talk about the news at the International Astronautical Congress in Washington, D.C.
“We have Ecuador and Mexico as our technical partners,” Tanasyuk said. “So in addition to this being the first lunar mission from the U.K., it also is the first Latin American mission with a consortium of Latin American countries participating along with the U.K.”
Both the EXA and Dereum have strong technical chops when it comes to spacecraft and space-based robotics, with the EXA focusing on developing technology that is “efficient, cheap and reliable,” according to Nader, while Dereum’s Mariscal said that his organization is well-known globally for its work on building robots for use in space, with an extensive track record. Their expertise should help a lot in Spacebit’s efforts to build, test and validate its robotic lunar rover, which employs a novel walking system for getting around, whereas all rovers to date have used wheels for transportation.
Spacebit CEO Pavlo Tanasyuk
“We are planning on doing a swarm technology exploration plan, where we have multiple small spider walking rovers deployed from a wheeled mothership, along with being able to have some redundancy and the ability to do 3D lidar scanning of the interior lunar caves and lava tubes,” Tanasyuk said.
“It’s essentially a data as a service business model,” he added, explaining how they’ll seek to monetize the business. “Our primary focus for early missions are to do exploration and mapping of lunar lava tubes to be able to characterize the lunar subsurface environment for potential suitability for future human habitation.”
Spacebit, founded in 2014, is funded privately via Tanasyuk himself, along with a couple of other private investors. He said that his company is fully funded through its first mission, a berth aboard the Peregrine Moon lander being launched by Astrobotic in 2021 (which itself has a price tag of $1.7 million he said). The first mission won’t be an entire swarm, but a single rover sent up as a demonstration unit to prove out its technology.
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Latin America roundup: SoftBank bets on Brazilian unicorns and Konfio raises $250M for lending plans
SoftBank did not let up the flow of capital to Brazil this month, staying busy despite the WeWork debacle. With two more $100 million-plus rounds in QuintoAndar and MadeiraMadeira, the Japanese investor has funded at least one more unicorn in the Brazilian ecosystem. Their investments in Brazil from the past two months alone far outstrip Latin America’s venture capital funding in all of 2016.
In early September, SoftBank backed QuintoAndar for a $250 million Series D round alongside Dragoneer, General Atlantic and Kaszek Ventures, which recently made headlines for raising $600 million to invest in Latin America. QuintoAndar is a real estate rental startup that simplifies the process of locating and renting an apartment in Brazil. Although the startup only has 2% of the rentals market share in Brazil, QuintoAndar’s tech solution enabled them to scale rapidly, beating out traditional incumbents in the region’s bureaucratic rental structure.
QuintoAndar’s founders ideated the business model while they were struggling to find an apartment in São Paulo after finishing their MBAs at Stanford. They have seen property rentals grow 5x on their platform since raising a $70 million Series C just nine months ago.
SoftBank stayed bullish in Brazil with a $110 million investment in home goods marketplace Madeira Madeira, which has been described as the “Wayfair of Brazil.” This drop-shipping business has grown to sell thousands of products online with a relatively capital-light model that connects buyers directly with warehouses, saving on overhead costs. The SoftBank investment dwarfs all of Madeira Madeira’s previous capital raised — $38.8 million — by almost a factor of three.
Madeira Madeira plans to use the capital to expand across Latin America, as well as improve logistics and customer service.
David Arana, Konfio founder and CEO
Mexico’s Konfio receives $250 million credit line from Goldman Sachs, Victory Park Capital
Konfio provides unsecured loans to small and medium businesses in Mexico that are currently underserved by the traditional banking sector. Goldman Sachs contributed up to $100 million in secured credit to Konfio to allow them to make up to $250 million in loans to 25,000 companies over the next 12 months. Victory Park Capital also contributed to this debt round, bringing Konfio’s total raised to $43 million in equity and $260 million in debt.
This capital mints Konfio as one of the largest fintech startups in the region. It will also allow them to take on larger loan sizes. Konfio’s average loan size hovers around $20,000. Konfio uses credit ratings to calculate risk and disburse loans within 24 hours, and at half the rate of a traditional bank loan.
To date Konfio has served over 1 million clients in what is currently a $100 billion market in Mexico. Mexico’s access to credit is still significantly lower than the rest of Latin America, so Konfio is well-placed to grow within this market, especially with this new funding.
Klar, Mexico’s newest challenger bank, raises $57.5 million from U.S. investors
Mexican challenger bank Klar, a Chime clone, recently raised over $57.5 million in debt and equity in one of Mexico’s largest seed rounds. The $50 million credit line came from San Francisco’s Arc Labs, while Quona Capital led the $7.5 million equity round with support from Santander InnoVentures, aCrew Capital, FJ Labs and Western Technology Investment.
Klar was founded less than 10 months ago to help Mexicans access free and fair financial services through digital banking. Currently Klar offers a debit and a credit product with transparent fees; today, only 15% of Mexicans have access to credit cards, most of which have +60% interest rates and a lot of hidden fees. Klar wants to make banking accessible for everyone in Mexico through their free digital platform.
This startup will be one to watch over the coming months as it competes with Nubank and other local neobanks to bank Mexico’s unbanked.
U.S. and Mexican investors back Flat, an Opendoor clone in Mexico
Mexican property-tech startup Flat is taking the Opendoor model to Latin America. This startup raised an unprecedented $4.6 million in their pre-seed round led by ALL VP, with support from Liquid2 Ventures, Next Billion, Picus Capital and angels.
Besides Mexican e-scooter giant, Grin, Flat’s pre-seed is the largest ever for Mexico. Flat’s founders, Victor Noguera and Bernardo Cordero, are betting on a $25 billion home sales market in Mexico that is currently stuck in the 20th century. Flat will allow homeowners and buyers to gain access to accurate information about home prices (think Zillow in the U.S.), as well as managing the slow process of notarizing the purchase after the fact. With Flat, the startup manages everything from valuation to ownership transfer, all through their platform, and within 72 hours of purchase.
Flat will use this investment to vertically integrate within the Mexican market, rather than expanding across Latin America.
News and notes: Mexican fintechs in focus, more VC funds opening in LatAm
- Other deals in September included Mutuo Financiera’s $100 million credit facility granted by Crayhill Capital Management, a New York-based alternative asset management firm, at the beginning of the month. Mutuo Financiera is a vehicle fleet leasing company that focuses on clean energy transportation. The investment will help the startup acquire new compressed natural gas vehicles to serve increased demand in Mexico for clean transportation alternatives.
- Brazilian growth-stage VC fund Base Partners closed a further $135 million to invest in scaling Latin American startups. The fund, founded by Fernando Spnola and Arthur Mizne and backed by over 43 limited partners, has previously invested in companies like ByteDance and Stripe, recently crowned the U.S.’ third most valuable startup. Base Partners will now compete against investment giants like Kaszek and SoftBank to participate in Latin America’s top expansion stage deals.
- Mexico’s Credijusto, which offers asset-backed loans and equipment leases to SMEs, raised their Series B this month, topping $42 million led by Goldman Sachs and Point72 Ventures. Credijusto has processed more than $90 million in loans since they were founded in 2015 and closed a $100 million credit agreement with Goldman Sachs just months before this round.
- Looking ahead to October, SoftBank is said to be evaluating several investments in Brazil and will likely continue deploying capital rapidly in Latin America’s largest market. We may see a few more unicorns in Brazil before the year is out. It is also likely that the Innovation Fund will make its way out of Brazil to other big markets like Colombia or Mexico, where SoftBank has invested in the past.
- Accion Venture Lab launched a social impact fund and Ewa Capital began raising capital for a female-focused fund in September, so hopefully investment in female founders and inclusive tech will rise in coming months.
- Mexico’s Square clone, Billpocket, also recently announced an undisclosed round from Axon Capital Partners. Billpocket has been accelerating e-payments in Mexico at a triple-digit pace since it started, carving out a name for itself in a competitive space where incumbent Clip has already received funding from SoftBank.
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Flat, a Mexican property tech startup, raises $4.6M pre-seed led by ALLVP
Flat has raised one of Mexico’s largest pre-seed rounds to take the Opendoor real estate marketplace model across the Rio Grande.
The company snagged a $4.5 million pre-seed round to expand its business helping homeowners quickly sell their properties in Mexico. The round was led by ALLVP, an active early-stage fund in Mexico. California-based Liquid 2 Ventures (for which Hall of Fame quarterback Joe Montana is a GP), NextBillion and a few angels supported the round, as well.
At the time of writing, Flat’s raise is the largest pre-seed funding round for a Mexican startup aside from the scooter company, Grin, which was backed by Y Combinator and later went on to raise a $45 million Series A and consolidate with Brazil’s bike-sharing startup, Yellow.
While this ‘i-buying’ business model was initially pioneered by Opendoor in the U.S., the same need to efficiently sell property exists for consumers in other growing markets around the world. That’s why co-founders Victor Noguera and Bernardo Cordero founded Flat.
Bucking a trend that has seen many new Latin American founders hailing from Stanford University, Cordero and Noguera met at the University of California, Berkeley — just across the bay.
The founders estimate the total value of the 40 million homes in Mexico to be a $1.6 trillion total addressable market. They equate the value of homes sold per year to $25 billion. Let’s not forget the elephant in the room — SoftBank is undoubtedly eyeing Mexico with its $5 billion LatAm commitment.
Flat says it’s solving a few problems in the local home-buying market in Mexico. Firstly, anyone interested in selling their property lacks information about how much their home is actually worth. In the U.S., sellers can reference Zillow — but no such centralized database of real estate pricing information for the market of Mexico exists.
Then there’s the operational piece of transferring ownership of the property, which Flat says can take up to eight months and is a notarized process — making the overall experience incredibly illiquid.
Flat’s actual product is a marketplace focused on helping the seller sell quickly. Flat visits your home, takes measurements, documents how many bathrooms and bedrooms exist in the property and determines how much your home is worth. From there, they manage renovations and transfer ownership of the property. The seller is paid within 72 hours.
International expansion has been difficult for many startups operating in Latin America as every country has its own regulatory barriers. That’s why when it comes to growth, Flat says it’s more focused on growing out their product within other verticals of property management to only serve a Mexican market, rather than expand to other Spanish-language countries in the LatAm region.
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What is Andela, the Africa tech talent accelerator?
As someone who covers Africa’s tech scene, I’m frequently asked about Andela . That’s not surprising, given the venture gets more global press (arguably) than any startup in Africa.
I’ve found many Silicon Valley investors have heard of Andela but aren’t exactly sure what it does.
In a bite, Andela is Series D stage startup―backed by $180 million in VC―that trains and connects African software developers to global companies for a fee.
The revenue-focused venture is often misread as a charity. In 2017, Andela CEO Jeremy Johnson described the organization as “a mission-driven for-profit company” ― a model for the concept “that you can actually build businesses that create real impact.”
I asked Johnson recently to clarify the objective behind Andela’s drive. “It’s the exact same mission as when we started, based around our founding principle… that brilliance and talent are distributed equally around the world, but opportunity is not,” he said.
“We’re about breaking down the walls that prevent brilliance and opportunity from connecting to each other.”
A major barrier for Africa’s software engineers, according to Johnson, is simply the fact that the continent has been totally off the network that companies look to for developer talent.
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Techstars Detroit announces first class after major refocus
At the beginning of 2019, Techstars Mobility turned into Techstars Detroit. At the time of the announcement, Managing Director Ted Serbinski penned “the word mobility was becoming too limiting. We knew we needed to reach a broader audience of entrepreneurs who may not label themselves as mobility but are great candidates for the program.”
I always called it Techstars Detroit anyway.
With Techstars Detroit, the program is looking for startups transforming the intersection of the physical and digital worlds that can leverage the strengths of Detroit to succeed. It’s a mouthful, but makes sense. Mobility is baked into Detroit, but Detroit is more than mobility.
Today the program took the wraps off the first class of startups under the new direction.
Techstars has operated in Detroit since 2015 and has been a critical partner in helping the city rebuild. Since its launch, Serbinski and the Techstars Mobility (now Detroit) mentors have helped bring talented engineers and founders to the city.
Serbinski summed up Detroit nicely for me, saying, “No longer is Detroit telling the world how to move. The world is telling Detroit how it wants to move.” He added the incoming class represents the new Detroit, with 60% international and 40% female founders.
Airspace Link (Detroit, MI)
Providing highways in the sky for safer drone operations.
Alpha Drive (New York, NY)
Platform for the validation of autonomous vehicle AI.
Le Car (Novi, MI)
An AI-powered personal car concierge that matches you to your perfect vehicle fit.
Octane (Fremont, CA)
Octane is a mobile app that connects car enthusiasts to automotive events and to each other out on the road.
PPAP Manager (Chihuahua, Mexico)
A platform to streamline the approval of packets of documents required in the automotive industry, known as PPAP, to validate production parts.
Ruksack (Toronto, Canada)
Connecting travelers with local travel experts to help them plan a perfect trip.
Soundtrack AI (Tel Aviv, Israel)
Acoustics-based and AI-enabled Predictive Maintenance Platform.
Teporto (Tel Aviv, Israel)
Teporto is enabling a new commute modality with its one-click smart platform for transportation companies that seamlessly adapts commuter service to commuters’ needs.
Unlimited Engineering (Barcelona, Spain)
Unlimited develops modular Light Electric Vehicles as a fun, cheap and convenient solution to last-mile trips that are overserved by cars and public transportation.
Zown (Toronto, Canada)
Open up your real estate property to the new mobility marketplace.
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What everyone at a startup needs to know about immigration
Sophie Alcorn is the founder of Alcorn Immigration Law in Silicon Valley and 2019 Global Law Experts Awards’ “Law Firm of the Year in California for Entrepreneur Immigration Services.” She connects people with the businesses and opportunities that expand their lives.
The immigration process in the U.S. has become a high-stakes undertaking for employers, workers, and entrepreneurs. Predictability has eroded. Processing times have soared. And any mistake or misstep now has dire consequences.
Over the past three years, immigration policies and procedures have been in a state of flux and the process has become more unforgiving for even the smallest mistakes. Putting your best foot forward is crucial. Employers and individuals need to formulate a long-term strategy and backup options to stay protected.
The increase in Requests for Evidence and the backlog for many visa and green card categories has meant longer waiting times. What’s more, the Trump administration’s recent decision to close all USCIS’s international offices—and shift that workload back to the U.S.—is expected to compound the backlogs and delays.
We are seeing these issues affect startups every day. My law firm works with hundreds of startups every year to help them and their employers figure out their immigration paperwork. The overall piece of advice we give is to decide on a specific goal based on a deep understanding of the company and the individual and by examining the options strategically.
Then, you can figure out the right approach for a visa, green card, or citizenship application. Regardless of my personal interest in the matter, now more than ever, I recommend consulting with an experienced immigration attorney who can handle the process with integrity, creativity, compassion, and rigor.
What employers should know
The new normal for immigration means increased employee recruiting and retention costs for employers. However, hiring immigrants remains possible.
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Nowports raises $5.3 million to become Latin America’s digital shipping answer to Flexport
Nowports, a developer of software and services to track freight shipments from ports to destinations across Latin America, has aims to become the regional answer to Flexport’s billion-dollar digital shipping business.
Almost 54 million containers are imported and exported from Latin America each year, and nearly half of them are either delayed or lost due to mismanagement.
Nowports is pitching shippers on its digital management software to keep track of each container, and has signed on a number of leading venture capital firms to fulfill its mission.
The Monterrey, Mexico-based company raised $5.3 million in its seed round of financing. The round was led by Base10 and Monashees, with participation from Y Combinator and additional investors like Broadhaven, Soma Capital, Partech, Tekton and Paul Buchheit.
“In Nowports we saw a very strong combination: well prepared and ambitious team using technology to help thousands of customers to improve their importing and exporting processes. By adding efficiency, reliability, and transparency to change a multi-billion dollar industry, Nowports has been able to attract many clients that saw significant improvements in their daily routines by using the solution” said Caio Bolognesi, general partner from Monashees, in a statement.
The company said it would use the money to expand into new markets, grow its team and integrate with more companies involved in the (very fragmented) Latin American logistics industry. It’s a market that needs a range of better logistics technologies.
“Even though over 90% of the world’s trade is carried by sea, the most cost-effective way to move goods en masse, there has yet to be a solution that’s able to connect suppliers, customs brokers, carriers and transportation companies to provide an efficient and reliable service,” said Maximiliano Casal, founder and chief executive of Nowports, in a statement. “This is why we launched Nowports, combining our 10 years of industry expertise to fill this void and are currently working with over 40 customers in the region and growing.”
The company now has offices in Chile and Uruguay, and is planning to expand to Brazil, Colombia and Peru.
“With platforms, algorithms with AI and integrations, our platform allows companies to take control of their shipments and plan and predict the best timing to move the freight based on the needs of their own company,” said Alfonso De Los Rios, founder and CTO of Nowports.
As the company looks to expand, it has a strategic road map it can follow in the growth of Flexport, the Silicon Valley startup that has become a billion-dollar business by applying technology to the outdated shipping industry.
The two co-founders of Nowports met at a program at Stanford University, with De Los Rios hailing from a family with deep ties to the shipping industry. He and Casal linked up and the two began plotting a way to make the deeply inefficient industry more modern and transparent. To familiarize himself with the market for which he’d be developing a technology, Casal worked in a freight forwarder in Kansas City that had been operating for more than 30 years.
In all, freight providers are getting paid nearly $40 billion per year to move freight into Latin America.
“Alfonso and Max are the ideal founders we look to invest in as they are industry experts and passionate about evolving the industry using technology and automation,” said Adeyemi Ajao, general partner from Base10. “We are proud to be investors in Nowports alongside our friends at Monashees and look forward to watching the company’s continued growth.”
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Colombian point-of-sale lender ADDI nabs $12.5 million from Andreessen Horowitz
Andreessen Horowitz <3 Latin American startups.
Latin America is the only region outside of the U.S. where the venture firm is routinely investing capital, and it just made another commitment, doubling down on its early-stage support for the point-of-sale lending startup ADDI.
ADDI picked up $12.5 million in new financing in April of this year as the company looks to expand its lending services online.
For an American audience, the closest corollary to what ADDI is up to is likely Affirm, the point-of-sale lender that’s raised a ton of cash and come in for some (valid) criticism for its basic business model.
Like Affirm, ADDI lets its borrowers apply for credit at the moment of purchase. The company likens its service to the layaway and credit plans that already exist in Colombia — but involve pretty onerous requirements to use. Company co-founder Santiago Suarez and Andreessen Horowitz general partner Angela Strange both commented on how, in some cases, Colombian shoppers have to have three people vouch for a borrower before a store will issue credit or agree to a layaway plan.
The difference between an ADDI loan — or any loan — and layaway is that an installment payment plan doesn’t charge interest (and even with the fees that installment plans do charge, they are often still cheaper than taking out a loan).
But financial products are coming for consumers in Latin America whether those buyers like it or not — and for the most part, it seems they do like it.
Historically, only the wealthiest clientele in Latin America received anything resembling the kinds of financial products that are more widely available in the United States, according to Strange. And the investment in ADDI is just part of her firm’s thesis in trying to make more services more broadly available in a region where a technological transformation is creating unprecedented opportunities for challengers.
That assessment is what drew Santiago Suarez back to Latin America only two years ago. A former executive at Lending Club who previously had worked as the head of New Product Development and Emerging Services at J.P. Morgan, Suarez saw the tremendous growth happening in Latin America and returned to Colombia to see if he could bring some much needed services to his home country.
Suarez partnered with his childhood friend, Elmer Ortega, who was working as the chief technology officer of the local hedge fund where he had previously been employed as a derivatives trader before learning how to code.
Together, the two men, who had known each other since they were five years old, set out to transform how credit was offered in retail shops. It’s an industry that Suarez had known well since his parents had owned stores.
“In the U.S. there are all of these gaps that fintech companies are filling,” says Suarez. “But the gaps in Latin America are bigger.”
Suarez and Ortega incorporated the company in September 2018, around the same time they raised $2.3 million from the regional investment firm, Monashees, Andreessen and Village Global . They then raised another $1.5 million in an internal round of financing before closing the most recent funding.
The company offers loans at annual percentage rates ranging from 19.99% to 28.90%. The company started with a digital solution for brick and mortar retailers because 90% of retail in Colombia still happens offline.
Although it’s in its early days, the company has already originated 10,000 borrowers and typically loans out roughly $500 since it launched on February 22, according to Suarez. He declined to comment on the company’s default rate on loans.
Now with 40 employees on staff, the company is looking to bring its lending tool to more e-commerce and physical retailers, according to Suarez. And despite the threat of cyclical political turmoil, Suarez says there’s no better time to be investing in Colombia.
“It’s the most stable country outside of Chile… Way more stable than Brazil, way more stable than Argentina and way more stable than Mexico,” Suarez says. “What we’re looking at is more than cyclical instability… those things go beyond that. Nubank was able to build a multibillion business in the worst political and economic crisis in Brazil’s history. I think Colombia is an incredibly attractive space with a deep talent pool.”
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WorldCover raises $6M round for emerging markets’ climate insurance
WorldCover, a New York and Africa-based climate insurance provider to smallholder farmers, has raised a $6 million Series A round led by MS&AD Ventures.
Y Combinator, Western Technology Investment and EchoVC also participated in the round.
WorldCover’s platform uses satellite imagery, on-ground sensors, mobile phones and data analytics to create insurance options for farmers whose crop yields are affected adversely by weather events — primarily lack of rain.
The startup currently operates in Ghana, Uganda and Kenya . With the new funding, WorldCover aims to expand its insurance offerings to more emerging market countries.
“We’re looking at India, Mexico, Brazil, Indonesia. India could be first on an 18-month timeline for a launch,” WorldCover co-founder and chief executive Chris Sheehan said in an interview.
The company has served more than 30,000 farmers across its Africa operations. Smallholder farmers are those earning all or nearly all of their income from agriculture, farming on 10-20 acres of land and earning around $500 to $5,000, according to Sheehan.
Farmers connect to WorldCover by creating an account on its USSD mobile app. From there they can input their region and crop type and determine how much insurance they would like to buy and use mobile money to purchase a plan. WorldCover works with payments providers such as M-Pesa in Kenya and MTN Mobile Money in Ghana.
The service works on a sliding scale, where a customer can receive anywhere from 5x to 15x the amount of premium they have paid. If there is an adverse weather event, namely lack of rain, the farmer can file a claim via mobile phone. WorldCover then uses its data-analytics metrics to assess it, and, if approved, the farmer will receive an insurance payment via mobile money.
Common crops farmed by WorldCover clients include maize, rice and peanuts. It looks to add coffee, cocoa and cashews to its coverage list.
For the moment, WorldCover only insures for events such as rainfall risk, but in the future it will look to include other weather events, such as tropical storms, in its insurance programs and platform data analytics.
The startup’s founder clarified that WorldCover’s model does not assess or provide insurance payouts specifically for climate change, though it does directly connect to the company’s business.
“We insure for adverse weather events that we believe climate change factors are exacerbating,” Sheehan explained. WorldCover also resells the risk of its policyholders to global reinsurers, such as Swiss Re and Nephila.
On the potential market size for WorldCover’s business, he highlights a 2018 Lloyd’s study that identified $163 billion of assets at risk, including agriculture, in emerging markets from negative, climate change-related events.
“That’s what WorldCover wants to go after…These are the kind of micro-systemic risks we think we can model and then create a micro product for a smallholder farmer that they can understand and will give them protection,” he said.
With the round, the startup will look to possibilities to update its platform to offer farming advice to smallholder farmers, in addition to insurance coverage.
WorldCover investor and EchoVC founder Eghosa Omoigui believes the startup’s insurance offerings can actually help farmers improve yield. “Weather-risk drives a lot of decisions with these farmers on what to plant, when to plant, and how much to plant,” he said. “With the crop insurance option, the farmer says, ‘Instead of one hector, I can now plant two or three, because I’m covered.’ ”
Insurance technology is another sector in Africa’s tech landscape filling up with venture-backed startups. Other insurance startups focusing on agriculture include Accion Venture Lab-backed Pula and South Africa based Mobbisurance.
With its new round and plans for global expansion, WorldCover joins a growing list of startups that have developed business models in Africa before raising rounds toward entering new markets abroad.
In 2018, Nigerian payment startup Paga announced plans to move into Asia and Latin America after raising $10 million. In 2019, South African tech-transit startup FlexClub partnered with Uber Mexico after a seed raise. And Lagos-based fintech startup TeamAPT announced in Q1 it was looking to expand globally after a $5 million Series A round.
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