● Hakuna, the embedded insurance provider for e-commerce and retail companies has
announced the successful closing of their seed funding round
● The round is led by Earlybird and joined by Visionaries Club, Discovery Ventures,
Klarna founder Victor Jacobsson, SumUp founder Marc Christ, Target Partners founder
Dr. Berthold von Freyberg, and other top tier business angels
● The €4.0 m investment backs further insurance product development, leading to a
more sustainable product life-cycle environment.
Founded by former SumUp and abracar executives one year ago, Hakuna provides embedded insurance products for e-commerce platforms as well as Retailers. The start-up is Europe’s front runner player when it comes to fully embedded insurance products into customer journeys and checkouts. Now the team announces its €4.0M seed round led by Earlybird with participation from existing investors Visionaries Club, Discovery Ventures, Klarna founder Victor Jacobsson, SumUp founder Marc Christ and other top tier business angels.
Backed by the strong founding team of Sebastian Jost (ex-CCO SumUp), Orhan Köroglu (ex-Managing Director abracar) and Rupert Mayer (ex-Head of Product at abracar), Hakuna achieved several milestones within its first year: Multiple insurance partners went live, well-known merchants such as Watchmaster, Sushi Bikes or Office Partner embedded the End-to-End Protection Technology Platform and 12 core team members joined.
“We are very proud to provide access to insurance products for online merchants of any size and industry, which has previously been accessible only to the top 1%” says Hakuna co-founder and Co-CEO Orhan Köroglu. “Insuring products leads to repairing and recycling, which increases the life cycle of products enormously and can make a major contribution to greater sustainability.”
Dr. Christian Nagel, Partner and Co-Founder of Earlybird, says: “We are confident that Hakuna’s team, with their common B2B InsurTech past, dedication to product protection, and super high level of professionalism, will succeed in enabling merchants of any size and industry to offer an AppleCare-like user experience. We are excited to support them on this path.”
The funding will support Hakuna in onboarding their merchant pipeline, doubling down on the
product side and extending internationalisation as well as their offline offering.
About Hakuna
Hakuna is a technology company in the insurance space founded by serial entrepreneurs Sebastian Jost, Orhan Köroglu and Rupert Mayer. Backed by well-known VC firms such as Visionaries Club and Discovery Ventures, and top tier business angels including Victor Jacobsson (Founder Klarna) and Marc Christ (Founder SumUp), Hakuna provides embedded insurance solutions for eCommerce platforms as well as Retailers with the goal to enable merchants of any size and industry to offer an AppleCare-like user experience. The insurtech with offices in Munich and Berlin provides the complete infrastructure European-wide, with an API-first approach that delivers tailored protection plans and warranty extensions that perfectly blend into the merchant’s value proposition.
About Earlybird
Earlybird is a venture capital investor focused on European technology companies. Founded in 1997, Earlybird invests in all growth and development phases of a company and supports its portfolio companies with financial resources, strategic support, as well as access to an international network and capital markets. Earlybird invests out of a family of focused and independently-managed funds: Digital West (Western Europe), Digital East (Emerging Europe), Healthcare, UNI-X (University spinoffs), and Growth Opportunity. With EUR 2 billion under management across all fund streams, 8 IPOs, and 30 trade sales, Earlybird is one of Europe’s most established and active venture capital firms.
