Koala secures €2 million funding round
French travel insurtech start-up Koala secured a €2 million (US$2.2 million) funding round on 28 March, which it will use to fund its expansion
Koala is a company which builds modular travel insurance policies ‘from the ground up’ – it currently offers two products: Koala Flex, a cancel-for-any-reason coverage; and Koala Trip Disruption, a coverage for delays, cancellations and missed connections.
The company said the funds will be invested in data and machine learning ‘to continue optimising the company’s pricing and protection details’, expand its tech and sales teams, support the development of new travel protections, and generally accelerate its growth across Europe.
The funding round was led by Insurtech Gateway, a UK-based venture capital firm and an existing investor of Koala. New investors included Uneti Ventures, Slimmer AI and Sterling Oak.
“Covid-19 was a real eye-opener for the travel market but also for travel protections which showed many of their limitations with messy exclusions and very long reimbursement processes,” said Léo Tordjman, co-founder of Koala. “All of our products are unique, automated and customisable to enable an unprecedented customer experience. And thanks to our data-driven approach, we enable our partners to generate much more revenue than with their current offers.”
The company covered around 100,000 travellers in 2022, and aims to significantly increase this to 500,000 tourists in 2023. It stated that it will already surpass its 2022 numbers by the end of March.
Fellow animal-themed insurtech Goose Insurance Services also secured US$4 million in a Series A funding round last month.