The Key Learning Points:

1.The future of tech innovation and its effect on the insurance industry

2. How female founders struggle to seek funding and how investors view business ambition in women more apprehensively than in their male counterparts

3. The importance in establishing a community to speak to other founders and exchange tips, particularly for those with intersectional characteristics that face even further oppression in creating their businesses

This week on the Risky Mix Podcast we’re joined by the head of AXA NEXT lab Europe, and a lady who was announced as one of the Top 17 Powerful women in Insurtech 2020, identifying the most influential women in insurance innovation. It’s Parul Kaul-Green!     

We start by chatting about Parul’s career journey. Parul admits that she never set out to be a business person, but instead wanted to be a moviemaker and used to do theatre production at university. In search of better career options, she decided to take a different path, studying economics and subsequently getting her MBA. Parul spent a short time at a startup which sadly went bust, but the VC who funded that start-up noticed her skills and recruited her. After some time investing in a range of industries, including healthcare and aerospace, she decided to move into the large corporate world, initially as global head of M&A and strategy at Aviva and subsequently to AXA, becoming head of AXA NEXT Europe.

Parul sees tech innovation every day and believes that the new technologies coming into play will have a profound effect on the insurance industry: “How we ingest data and what kind of insights we drive from the data are becoming more and more extensive. There’s so much real-time data that we receive about the risks in the world.” She continues: “Even consumers are demanding that insurance be more useful to them, rather than a quote and buy and then claims journey. It’s a very interesting time and it’s only going to speed up.”

We move on to discuss the gender inequality she has witnessed when founders seek funding: “If you look in the European VC market, only 8% of funding goes to mixed founders. 92% of funding goes to all-male founders. If you just put a subset of only female founders, the number is shocking - 0.4% of funding goes to female founders only!” (State of European Tech report, 2019). Parul explains that often female founders get asked different questions: “If their business case has ambitious numbers they are made to feel as if they won’t be able to reach those numbers.” She adds that many investors are men and that actually, “they invest in people who look like them.” 

We then talk about intersectionality and the compounding effect of intersectional characteristics, making it even harder for some people to fundraise: “Most of the waves of feminism have benefited mostly white, middle-class women. Income increases and lifestyle increases, especially in the US and Europe, have been attributed to this subset of the population. Which has led to these waves of feminism being derogatively termed as white feminism.” She continues: “There’s a very different form of oppression which is faced by people who lack privileges. These privileges get ascribed because of the colour of your skin, where you were born, the way you speak.” 

We end our chat with Parul sharing her advice to entrepreneurs looking for venture capital, particularly those with intersectional characteristics. Her first tip is to become part of a community where you can exchange tips. Speak to founders and narrow in on your specific area/industry - build a strong support network. Her second tip is to explore other sources of funding - those could be grants for specific industries or start-up loans. Finally, Parul recommends growing a thick skin and maintaining optimism despite any negative feedback.