Black-Owned Casava Gets $4M Pre-Seed To Make Insurance Is Affordable And Accessible

 Casava, the self-described “Nigeria’s first 100% digital insurance company”, has raised a $4 million pre-seed round.

It was first founded by Bode Pedro. Before starting Casava, Pedro ran VisaCover, an insurance brokerage company, in 2014.

The idea for Casava came while VisaCover provided an alternative in the auto insurance market by allowing drivers of Uber, which was one of its partners, to make weekly insurance payments instead of quarterly or yearly payments insurance partners before it operated, according to TechCrunch.

He left the VisaCover company in 2016 and Pedro brought on Olusegun Makinde, an ex-VP at JP Morgan, as a chief operating officer to build Casava in 2019 and launched fully in 2021.

The company focuses on providing affordable insurance products to millions of Nigerians.

According to the company, subscribers can insure their income from $1 (~₦500) monthly, and get paid monthly for six months if they lose their job, become sick, or disabled.

Subscribers can also use its Health Insurance product and access more than 1,000 doctors on telemedicine and 900 hospitals across Nigeria. 

There’s also HealthCash, which lets users get reimbursed when they visit the hospital for specific periods, all for ₦250 (~$0.5) – ₦300($0.6) a month.

Berlin-based Target Global led the pre-seed round, with foreign VCs and angel investors such as Entrée Capital, Oliver Jung, Tom Blomfield, Ed Robinson, and Brandon Krieg participating.

The local investors involved are all founders. They include Uche Pedro, Babs Ogundeyi, Musty Mustapha, Shola Akinlade, Olugbenga “GB” Agboola, Honey Ogundeyi and Opeyemi Awoyemi, among others.