Lately, hindering inflation, recession risk, and global logistics crisis has been all the rage in chatter. Nearly $10 Billion of estimated losses have been caused by supply chain disruption. Yet, the outlook for freight companies and insurers to get themselves out of their current trough remains bleak.
In a markedly different tone, Otonomi’s CEO and Co-founder Yann Barbarroux has strong ideas about the future of the logistics tech sector. Along with his Co-founder and CTO Jeremy Sutton, he founded Otonomi in 2020, a Brooklyn-based tech-enabled insurance agency startup focusing on freight insurance. The company just closed a $3.4M funding round led by ATX Ventures, followed by GSR Ventures, Greenlight Re Innovations, Punja.VC, Altari Ventures, Soundboard Venture Fund, Blackhorn VC, Bering Waters, REFASHIOND Ventures, and a number of specialized angels and syndicates.
“Otonomi is bringing a new product to market by building complex models to be able to profitably underwrite insurance against delays in shipments of freight. Traditionally, insurance at the point of sale has been focused on damages to goods. However, costly delays often arise across air, maritime, trucking, and last-mile logistics. Now brands, retailers, project managers, freight forwarders, TMS’s, and insurance brokers will have access to a better offering. Otonomi has a great team positioned to bring together aspects of parametric insurance, risk related to supply chain and shipment delays, and highly embeddable distribution”, said Chris Shonk, partner, and co-founder at ATX Ventures Partners.
The company is the first to market in providing parametric cargo delay insurance (a fast, transparent, and automated delay insurance product) that unlocks claims resolution in 45 minutes instead of 45 days, compressing administrative costs by up to 90%.
"[Otonomi’s platform] is as much of a unique value-add for the end-customers, shippers, logistics, 3PLs and freight forwarders on one hand than it is also a tremendous bottom line saver for the insurance carriers partners on the backend", mentions Yann, during an interview at the Nasdaq TradeTalks show last month.
Otonomi’s management tapped into six critical industries to assemble a core team of resolute go-getters in finance, insurance, blockchain, web/UX design, marketing, and security. The team thrives in bringing value-add to clients and insurers, both sectors screaming for a refresh.
“Our team of engineers continuously iterate over sprint cycles to deliver sophisticated products to our logistics end-clients and insurance underwriter partners. The result is a state-of-the-art parametric insurance platform combining cutting-edge technologies in web3, smart contracts using industry-leading oracles from our technology partner Chainlink, and advanced risk analytics.” proudly states the company’s CTO Jeremy.
