Meet the 6 insurtech startups in Swiss Re accelerator’s first batch

After banks, it’s the turn of insurance companies to tap fintech startups to give a digital boost to their business. An example is Swiss Re, which set up an insurtech accelerator in the startup hub of Bangalore in India this year, to find and help develop innovative products and services for the insurance industry. These can range from data analytics for predicting health outcomes, to artificial intelligence for smarter customer engagement.

As for the startups in this corporate accelerator – the first by Swiss Re anywhere in the world – it’s an opportunity to validate their ideas in the real world.

“Insurtech startups are innovative, agile and tech-focused, but they may not be fully evolved when it comes to having a strong understanding of global insurance industry dynamics, regulatory environments, and data protection challenges,” explains Amit Kalra, head of strategic initiatives at Swiss Re Bangalore, to Tech in Asia. “Therefore, it is critical to connect technology and innovation with global expertise.”

The Swiss Re accelerator in Bangalore has selected six startups for its first batch. They will get grants and other support, without having to give up any equity in return.

The selected startups will have access to the company’s global pool of mentors, resources, and operational support – as well as workspace at our Bangalore office, says Amit.

“The startups will be given insurance business problems and use cases and we will provide domain mentoring through the program. At the end of the program, Swiss Re will host a demo day where the startups will present their ideas to Swiss Re’s senior leadership.”

The Indian government has been taking initiatives such as the unified payments interface to enable fintech to play a larger role in financial services. This has given a boost to fintech startups over the past year or two, and attracted global initiatives such as the Swiss Re accelerator. This augurs well for fintech startup ecosystem in the country.

And now, let’s take a look at the six startups in Swiss Re’s first global accelerator program in Bangalore:

Arya.ai

Photo credit: Pixabay.

Arya.ai is a developer platform for deep learning. It provides tools, modules, and APIs to help developers build and customize artificially intelligent products based on neural networks. These AI bots can be used in a wide range of real life businesses, from smarter customer engagement to predicting health disorders.

“There will be complete empathy between machines and humans, a symbiotic existence where machines will be helping humans with every task. In the next four or five years, everyone will have a robot of their own,” Arya.ai founder Vinay Marla told Tech in Asia in an earlier interview. Before being selected for Swiss RE, Arya.ai was in Mumbai-based accelerator Venture Nursery.

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