Fuse, an Indonesian insurtech firm, has announced the completion of its Series B investment round, which was led by GGV Capital.
EV Growth, SMDV, Golden Gate Ventures, Heyokha Brothers, and Emtek were among the existing investors.
According to a news release, the firm would utilise the fresh funds to develop new products and platforms, as well as expand into new Southeast Asian regions.
Andy Yeung and Ivan Sunandar, two industry professionals, founded Fuse in 2017 to address the country’s last-mile trust gap in the insurance business (97 percent of Indonesians are underinsured for a lack of trust in the current system).
The company has chosen an agent-centric business strategy. The firm now has over 50,000 agent partners on its platform, claiming to deliver fast closure and rapid claims processing. In 2020, it had a total gross written premium (GWP) of moreover $50 million (IDR 720 billion).
On the platform, it has relationships with over 30 insurance providers and 300 insurance products. From employee benefits to digital insurance integrated into e-commerce platforms, it covers everything.
It aided Tokopedia with the introduction of its first transactional top-up micro-insurance product in 2018.
Fuse raised “a couple of million dollars” in a Series A round from investors including EV Growth in October 2019.
“We have always been very focused on product and platform innovation and will continue to invest into developing products and platforms that make insurance accessible and affordable for everyone in Southeast Asia. Seven insurance companies have already chosen Fuse to be their strategic Insurtech partner in Indonesia. Lastly, we will expedite to replicate our successful experience on Agent Partner and micro-insurance model to other parts of Southeast Asia, on top of Indonesia and Vietnam,” said CEO Andy Yeung.
“We made Fuse our first Insurtech investment in Southeast Asia as we believe it has the most thoughtful and strategically sound approach to insurance distribution in the region. Our experience in other emerging markets suggests that there is a ‘trust deficit’ in local communities that can be bridged by local leaders. They function as trust nodes in these localities. Similar to how a warung owner bridges the ‘trust deficit’ between FMCG brands and consumers, Fuse agent partners can bridge the ‘trust deficit’ between insurance brands and consumers”, said Jenny Lee, Managing Partner at GGV Capital.
GGV Capital is a global venture capital business that backs local entrepreneurs. It has investments in the United States, Canada, China, Southeast Asia, India, Latin America, and Israel, totaling $9.2 billion under our control. GGV invests in seed-to-growth stage startups across three sectors: social/internet, enterprise tech, and smart tech as a multi-stage, sector-focused organisation.
CGV has invested in over 400 companies around the world over the last two decades, including Affirm, Airbnb, Alibaba, Big Commerce, Boss Zhipin, Grab, HashiCorp, Hello, JD MRO, Keep, Kujiale, Manbang, NIU, Opendoor Technologies, Peloton, Poshmark, Qunar/Ctrip, Slack, Square, StockX, Udaan, Wish, Xpeng, Zendesk, Zuoye.
