Amenli, an Egypt-based startup backed by Y Combinator, has raised $2.3 million in a seed round to provide insurance services to Egyptians. Several local and international firms participated in the round, including co-lead investors P1 Ventures, GFC, and Anim Fund (Founders Fund scout fund), as well as Costanoa VC, Liquid2 Ventures, Cliff Angels, and other angel investors.
“Right now, we are still trying to prove that there is demand in the market for selling insurance because there was no benchmark and we did not know if people would receive the insurance online,” said co-founder and CEO Shady El Tohfa.
“Everyone would say that in Egypt, people do not want to understand or buy insurance. But what we found is that educated people in the middle-income segment are aware of insurance, understand it and want to buy it, even though it wasn’t accessible to them before.”
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The new money, according to the CEO, will be used to grow the company’s personnel, scale quickly, and attract more clients in a market that is predicted to develop at a CAGR of 7% per year over the next five years.
Why The Investors Invested
Considerable traction and backing from Y Combinator. Amenli was a member of the Y Combinator Summer 2021 program and has progressed rapidly since then. Amenli’s revenue has tripled since graduating from the accelerator, according to Shady El Tohfa, a co-founder at the startup.
However, while the number of policies has increased, the number of customers has not increased because the same consumers are using several plans. Amenli issues over 500 policies in less than 10 minutes, compared to the insurance industry’s three-week minimum policy issuance. Despite the great results, Amenli’s founders believe the company is on its way to discovering product-market fit.
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Previous experience co-founding a startup was also helpful. Before creating Amenli, El Tohfa and Nauman were members of the founding team of Paymob, an Egyptian fintech startup. In 2017, they also worked on a microfinance program, which introduced them to the concept of insurance for the first time. Their continued research and enthusiasm in the business encouraged them to pursue insurtech full-time. El Tohfa, on the other hand, first began looking at market potential as a result of a series of personal events.
Based in New York, P1 Ventures has actively been investing in the African startup space, investing notably in Kenyan HR startup WorkPay, Nigeria’s OnePipe; Kenya’s Lami Technologies and MarketForce; Nigeria’s VertoFX; Egypt’s Yodawy, among others.
Berlin, Germany-based Global Founders Capital, has invested in notable startups such as LinkedIn, DeliveryHero, Facebook, Slack. The fund is sector-agnostic. The investment in Egypt’s first digital bank, Telda, in May this year is the first investment in any Egyptian startup for Global Founders Capital.
Based in Palo Alto, California, Costanoa Ventures is an early-stage venture capital firm that invests in b2b startups.
On the other hand, Liquid 2 Ventures is a San Francisco-based VC that provides technology startups with seed-stage investments. The investor had previously invested in one of Africa’s newest unicorns Chipper Cash.
A Look At What The Startup Does
Amenli was formed in 2020 by Adham Nauman and Shady El Tohfa to solve Egypt’s $2 billion underserved insurance market. The startup makes its users’ lives easier. Users only have to answer a few questions when they first log onto the Amenli platform. What insurance policies will be proposed to them will be determined on the answers they provide. Amenli has its own infrastructure, offers APIs to other insurers, and its methodology gives rapid quotes.
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The startup is the first Egyptian online insurance firm to be issued an insurance license.
Amenli Egypt Amenli Egypt
Charles Rapulu Udoh
Charles Rapulu Udoh is a Lagos-based lawyer who has advised startups across Africa on issues such as startup funding (Venture Capital, Debt financing, private equity, angel investing etc), taxation, strategies, etc. He also has special focus on the protection of business or brands’ intellectual property rights ( such as trademark, patent or design) across Africa and other foreign jurisdictions.
He is well versed on issues of ESG (sustainability), media and entertainment law, corporate finance and governance.
He is also an award-winning writer