UK Startup Flock Taps Chamath Palihapitiya as Lead Investor in $17M Series A Funding Round

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by Godfrey Benjamin · 3 min read
UK Startup Flock Taps Chamath Palihapitiya as Lead Investor in $17M Series A Funding Round
Photo: TechCrunch / Flickr

The backing of the Flock’s funding round by Palihapitiya was born out of the conviction that the firm is all in to redefine the scope of our growing hyper-connected world.

United Kingdom-based Connected car insurance startup Flock has completed its Series A funding round, pulling as much as $17 million. According to TechCrunch, billionaire investor, Chamath Palihapitiya leads the funding round with $10.6 million, and the firm’s existing investors Anthemis and Dig Ventures also participated in the funding round.

Flock’s journey since it was founded in 2015 by Ed Leon Klinger and Antton Pena has been quite disruptive in the auto insurance industry. The firm started out by redesigning insurance policies to commercial drone operators such as Netflix, the BBC, and a medical delivery service operated by Britain’s National Health Service. The package it offers takes a detour from the regular annual insurance subscription on offer by its competitors, rather, the firm bills its clients only the insured vehicle is in motion.

As a means to broaden its reach, Flock now offers its products to commercial ride-sharing services or outfits with fleets of cars for their daily operations. The firm’s technology is able to adapt driving data from telematics devices in cars, vans, and trucks. This info is then used to estimate how much the customer should be charged.

“Transportation is changing faster than ever, but the traditional insurance industry can’t keep up! The proliferation of electric cars, new business models such as ridesharing, and the emergence of autonomous vehicles pose huge challenges that traditional insurers just aren’t equipped for,” said Ed Klinger, CEO of Flock. “Modern fleets need an equally modern insurance company that moves as fast as they do. Commercial motor insurance is a $160Bn market, crying out for disruption. The opportunity ahead of us is enormous.”

In recognizing its potentials in the auto-insurance ecosystem, the firm has onboarded clients including Self-drive hire companies like Virtuo and Jaguar Land Rover’s The Out. Flock aims to complement its growth with the signing of such major clients like ecommerce giant, Amazon.com Inc (NASDAQ: AMZN) per a CNBC report.

Flock Funding Round: What Investors See

The backing of the Flock’s funding round by Palihapitiya was born out of the conviction that the firm is all in to redefine the scope of our growing hyper-connected world.

According to the Social Capital CEO, “Flock is bridging the gap between today’s insurance industry and tomorrow’s transportation realities. By using real-time data to truly understand vehicle risk, Flock is meeting the demands of our rapidly evolving, hyper-connected world. Flock has the potential to help unlock and enable a truly autonomous world, and even save lives. We’re excited to be a part of their journey.”

Additionally, Klinger reiterated the firm’s flexibility in integrating with its client’s vehicles billed to be insured.

“We’ve built our own integrated approach whereby we partner with some and we build bespoke integrations with them. Often they are not as advanced as others. So we’ll either use our integration platform or we’ll use their approach. We’re highly flexible. The core value proposition at Flock is its flexibility, so we don’t force our own integration approach,” he told TechCrunch in a phone interview.

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