INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
French startup Luko has raised a $22 million Series A round led by Accel (€20 million)
Founders Fund and Speedinvest are also participating in today’s funding round.When you rent a place in France, you have to provide a
certificate to your landlord saying that you are covered with a home insurance product
And, of course, you might want to insure your place if you own it.While the market is huge, legacy insurance companies still dominate it
That’s why Luko wants to shake things up in three different ways.First, it’s hard to sign up to home insurance in France
It usually involves a lot of emails, a printer, some signatures, etc
It can quickly add up if you want to change your coverage level or add some options.As expected, Luko’s signup process is pretty
You fill out a form on the company’s website and you get an insurance certificate minutes later.Luko partners with La Parisienne
Assurances to issue insurance contracts
So far, 15,000 people have signed up to Luko.Second, if there’s some water damage or a fire, it can take a lot of time to get it fixed
Worse, if somebody breaks into your place, you’re not going to get your money back that quickly.Luko wants to speed things up
You can make a claim via chat, over the phone or with a video call using the mobile app
The company tries its best to detect fraud and pay a claim as quickly as possible
Luko also recently announced an integration with Lydia, a popular peer-to-peer payment app in France, so that your payment is instant.Third,
Luko has a bold vision to make home insurance even more effective
The startup wants to detect issues before it’s too late
For instance, you could imagine receiving a water meter from Luko to detect leaks, or a door sensor to detect when somebody is trying to get
We’ll find out if people actually want to put connected objects everywhere.Finally, Luko has partnered with a handful of nonprofits to
redistribute some of its revenue — it has received the BCorp certification
The startup makes revenue by taking a flat fee on your monthly subscription
If there’s money left at the end of the year, Luko donates it to charities
Investors signed a pledge so that Luko doesn’t trade this model for growth.
