South African Insurtech Pineapple Emerges Winner At Global Challenge, Walks Away With USD 1.5 Mn

Pineapple, a Johannesburg-based peer to peer insurtech startup based in South Africa has won USD 1.5 Mn after emerging first in a US startup competition.

The competition dubbed VentureClash is a USD 5 Mn global venture challenge for early-stage startups and is managed by Connecticut Innovations. It brings together tech-enabled startups from the sectors healthtech, insurtech, fintech and Internet of Things (IoT) to compete for investment, mentorship, introduction to customers among other things.

The startup scooped the top position in a live pitch event at Yale University against nine other startups where three were from the US, four from Israel and two from Canada. Pineapple had been declared a finalist in the USD 5 Mn competition last month. It was also the only African startup to reach the finals, having been selected from a pool of 300 startups that applied from twenty countries around the world.

Matthew Elan Smith, a co-founder at the startup expressed how they had been excited just to be in the top ten, terming their competitors as ‘truly amazing companies.’

“We are extremely humbled by this award and too grateful to everyone who has helped us along the way. From the Hannover Re Group in SA, Compass Insure, ASISA ESD Fund managed by Edge Growth, as well as the people of Connecticut who have received us with open arms, especially the teams at StartupBootCamp, Travelers, CTi and Nassau Re, to name a few,” Elan added.

The startup will reportedly use the prize money to develop its motor insurance product that has been in the works and is set to launch in six months. Part of the funds could also go into venturing into the US market, as talks with a US partner were at an advanced stage.

Pineapple was founded in 2017 by Matthew Elan Smith, Ndabenhle Junior Ngulube and Marnus van Heerden. They had come together to discover innovative and disruptive models in the reinsurance and insurance space at an innovation competition run by Hannover-Re, the third-largest reinsurance company in the world.

Pineapple allows users to insure their products by taking a photo of their possessions and uploading them to its mobile application. The app also allows users to add things to their asset register to insure them later.

Commenting about the win, Ndabenhle Junior Ngulube added, “We are excited about what this means for the future of software development in South Africa. It shows that we can compete on a global stage and that there is a bright future for the South African technology industry.”

Feature image courtesy: Twitter