With $4 million Pre-Seed Raised, Casava Wants to Make Insurance Affordable and Accessible to Nigerians
Casava, a digital insurance company has raised a $4 million pre-seed fund. According to Techcrunch, this is the largest pre-seed for an African insurtech company and second-largest for a Nigerian startup after Nestcoin.
The round was led by Target Global with foreign VCs and angel investors including Entrée Capital, Oliver Jung, Tom Blomfield, Ed Robinson and Brandon Krieg.
The local investors involved include founders like Uche Pedro (BellaNaija), Babs Ogundeyi (Kuda), Musty Mustapha (Kuda), Shola Akinlade (Paystack), Olugbenga “GB” Agboola (Flutterwave), Honey Ogundeyi (Edukoya), Tosin Eniolorunda (TeamApt) and Opeyemi Awoyemi (Moneymie) and others.
Before Casava was founded, its founder, Bode Pedro led VisaCover, an insurance brokerage company, in 2014. He got the idea to start Cassava when VisaCover provided an alternative in the auto insurance market by allowing drivers of Uber – which was one of its partners, to make weekly insurance payments instead of quarterly or yearly payments used by past partners.
“We saw mass adoption and knew the market needed insurance payments to be broken down. But then we noticed that as brokers, we didn’t have full control about that process and we weren’t giving people the best experience,”
“We knew if we were going to take insurance to the next level, then maybe we need to control that product and be involved in product end-to-end.”
In 2016, Bode Pedro exited the insurance brokerage company and brought on Olusegun Makinde as a Chief Operating Officer to build Casava in 2019. Olusegun Makinde was an ex-VP at JP Morgan. After securing a micro-insurance license, the startup was launched fully in April 2021 to provide affordable and accessible insurance products to millions of Nigerians.
Casava offers various attractions to first-time users and existing customers. First, when consumers subscribe to its insurance products directly via the website, mobile app or WhatsApp, they are given a month-free trial with an option to opt-out if they are not interested in the service. However, if they decide to continue, they would be provided with value-added services such as executive coaching, telemedicine and job services.
The digital insurance platform currently provides cover for health and job loss. Unlike health, insurance around job loss is not common in Nigeria. With Casava, subscribers can insure their income from ₦500 monthly, and get paid monthly for six months if they lose their job, become sick or disabled.
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Subscribers can also use its Health Insurance product and access more than 1,000 doctors on telemedicine and 900 hospitals across Nigeria. Its HealthCash product also allows users to get reimbursement when they visit the hospital for specific periods, all for ₦250 – ₦300 monthly.
On the pre-seed funding received, Bode Pedro informed that it will support more product launches from life and travel insurance to home and smartphone insurance. He also added that Casava would use the investment for customer acquisition, growth and to develop its product and technology stack. The company plans to work with fintech and digital partners to include insurance products into its offerings.
This way, Casava hopes to gain access to over 500,000 financial service agents to reach millions of uninsured customers nationwide.
Find out more about Casava on casava.com