Three Insurance Tech Startups Announce Moves To Hartford

April 19--With the inaugural Hartford InsurTech Hub in the books, the city has joined a map dotted by some of the world's most vibrant centers of new technology, from San Francisco and Miami to Singapore and London.

Hartford's first annual insurance accelerator -- run by U.S.-based company Startupbootcamp, which runs a global network of industry-boosting programs -- culminated Wednesday in Demo Day at The Bushnell Center for the Performing Arts.

Ten startups hailing from five states and five countries took to the stage to share presentations honed over four months of close collaboration with Hartford insurance anchors, daily networking downtown and practice pitch nights at noisy city breweries.

Collectively, the companies announced plans to raise nearly $15 million to grow their operations and build on their technology, which most are piloting with Hartford carriers, including Travelers and Cigna. Three of the startups said they're relocating to Hartford, two more hope to build teams here and several said they've vastly changed their businesses based on their time in the accelerator.

"If we did so much in a year, can you imagine where we'll be next year?" said Shana Schlossberg, CEO and founder of co-working space Upward Hartford, where the hub was located. "We won't recognize our city."

Each of the participants -- who were whittled down from a pool of 300 top applicants and 1,000 interested companies -- worked from an initial grant of $25,000, plus free office space at Upward Hartford, downtown's 27,000-square-foot co-working space. In return, the startups agreed to offer the hub a potential future stake in their companies.

In at least a few cases, that should be a decent trade-off. One of the companies moving to Hartford, artificial-intelligence software startup Boundlss, expects to bring in $5 million in revenue by 2019.

Founded in Singapore in 2016, Boundlss builds personal health coach apps that are part human, part artificial intelligence. Insurers can offer the app directly to their policyholders to improve individuals' health and prevent disease, bringing down premiums and payouts.

Shana Cotterill, Boundlss' first investor and the company's business development director, said she's looking for office space in the city, working with Travelers and finalizing plans for two more pilots with another local carrier.

During the Hartford accelerator, Boundlss also developed a new "coach" for workers injured on the job. That app helps answer employees' questions about their medications and treatments while speeding up the workers' compensation claims process.

Cotterill announced a $3 million investment round to expand in the U.S.

"You have helped us shape and validate our product for the U.S. market and we thank you for the time you have given us," she said Wednesday, speaking to the Hartford insurance companies, investors and mentors in the Belding Theater.

The two other companies opening Hartford offices, Aureus and Pentation Analytics, were founded in India.

Aureus offers a platform for improving customers' experience using insurance, a system that's being piloted by Travelers and another Hartford-area carrier. The startup has already raised 60 percent of its new, $3 million investment round for U.S. growth.

Pentation is a data analytics company that builds revenue for carriers behind the scenes. It's already being used by 15 percent of India's property and casualty insurers, and has now secured two Connecticut pilots while planning a new, $2 million investment round to expand here.

Another startup said it made a major change to its business during the accelerator.

TrueDime, founded out of Columbia University in New York, entered the program as a provider of insurance and benefits for international students studying in the U.S.

CEO Kaushik Tiwari said on his first day at Upward Hartford, he wrote the word "freelancer" on a white board and circled it. Three months later, TrueDime primarily offers insurance to the self-employeed, including freelancers and small business owners.

Tiwari, whose chief technology officer studies at Trinity College in Hartford, says he came to this city because he believes in insurance.

"I think you guys are onto something. Insurance is a fundamental good, unlike your blood-sucking cousins on Wall Street," Tiwari said, his joke sending a shock of laughs through the auditorium.

Though a few of the startups, including TrueDime, did not announce specific plans to raise money or partner with local carriers, all 10 have a grace period of a few months to finish their work from the program.

The hub itself was supported by a $1.5 million grant from CTNext -- a division of the state's main investment arm, Connecticut Innovations -- and matching funds from Travelers, The Hartford, Cigna, White Mountains Insurance Group, USAA and other partners of the hub. Startupbootcamp, a U.K.-based, global network of accelerators, ran the program.

Wednesday's showcase also marked the completion of the first major element of Hartford Innovation Places, a quasi-public initiative by CTNext to transform the capital into a center of enterprise and economic development in the areas of insurance, medical technology and aerospace and advanced manufacturing.

And it's vital to the city's future, project leaders say. Though nicknamed the Insurance Capital of the World, Hartford has the fifth-strongest insurance cluster in the nation -- employing almost 36,000 people -- and the local industry lost nearly 20,000 jobs between 2004 and 2014, according to the Innovation Places strategic plan.

Hartford's leaders say this accelerator puts the city back on the map, competing with Silicon Valley and advanced technology hubs like Austin, Texas, New York City and Chicago.

"I'm optimistic as I've ever been about this city's future," Hartford Mayor Luke Bronin said at the start of the showcase.

Nektarios Liolios, who founded Startupbootcamp's financial technology program, told the audience he agreed. He conceded that "Hartford, Connecticut" doesn't roll off the tongue, but said it made sense to invest where the insurance industry sits.

And for more than 100 years, that's been Hartford.

"If you look around the room, you have startups pitching, you have the industry engaged, and I get goose bumps when I think about this, because what you have is an ecosystem building," Liolios said.

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