Car insurance shopping startup Insurify picks up $2 mln seed

Cambridge, Massachusetts-based Insurify, a car insurance shopping startup, has raised $2 million in seed funding. Rationalwave Capital Partners led the round.

PRESS RELEASE

CAMBRIDGE, Mass.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–MIT spinout Insurify launched today with an online marketplace (insurify.com) that uses predictive modeling and advanced analytics to reinvent the experience of shopping for car insurance. The company also announced a $2 million seed funding round, led by Rationalwave Capital Partners, and a limited public beta release of Evia (which stands for Expert Virtual Insurance Agent), a patent-pending virtual insurance agent that makes finding the best car insurance as simple as texting a photo of your license plate.

In today’s $160 billion car-insurance market, shopping for car insurance is still a laborious, confusing, and frankly, painful process. Insurify makes it easier, first with Insurify.com, a recommendation engine that allows drivers to quickly and easily find the cheapest insurance policy for their needs, and second with Evia, a patent-pending virtual agent that will literally take all the thinking out of shopping for car insurance, through text messaging.

How is Insurify reinventing the customer experience in insurance shopping?
Data-driven approach to coverage and carrier recommendation: Insurify invented RateRank™, proprietary software that analyzes patterns and matches each user’s risk profile with the best and most affordable insurance carriers and coverage for their unique profile.

Price and quality comparison: Although price is one the most important drivers for switching insurance, people also care about reviews, discounts, customer service, and benefits. Insurify is the only platform which helps consumers make qualitative and quantitative insurance decisions and recommends the carriers which are the best match for the consumer.

The first message-to-quote insurance shopping experience: Available in a limited public beta that will continue to roll out through 2016, Evia is a virtual insurance agent built on machine learning and natural language processing. Simply snap a photo of your license plate, text it to Evia, and she will deliver policy quotes and recommendations via text message.
Currently available in 30 states, Insurify has partnered with the largest agencies and carriers in the US to quote 82 carriers in real-time, more than any other online platform for car insurance shopping. The company is led by CEO and co-founder Snejina Zacharia, an MIT Sloan Fellow and former Director of Business Development at Gartner. Ms. Zacharia is joined on the board of directors by Giorgos Zacharia (CTO of Kayak), George Kassabgi (former CEO of Bit9 and Keas) and Mark Rosenblatt (founder of Rationalwave).

About Insurify
Insurify is based in Cambridge, and is the first intelligent insurance agent for car-insurance shopping that uses predictive modeling and advanced analytics to truly simplify shopping for car insurance. Currently available in 30 states, Insurify has partnered with the largest agents and carriers in the US to quote 82 carriers in real-time, more than any other online platform for car insurance shopping.

Visit Insurify at www.insurify.com and get updates at https://twitter.com/insurify.