In this episode of Scouting for Growth,  Sabine VdL interviews Naby Mariyam, CEO of Coverhero an insurance platform that provides cover for all types of gig economy hustle. The first product delivered by Coverhero, Hustlecover.com was recently launched to fill the gap of financial insecurity for the growing gig economy and self-employed generation.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• Before setting up Coverhero, the last two startups I did were in the gig economy and supply chain, so I have a bit of experience in building marketplaces and gig economy-based platforms. I launched Australia’s first ride-share platform, Ridehero, and a last-mile delivery platform, ZipMate.  Before transitioning into tech I was a social scientist in academia for about 15 years. 
• It’s very humbling to go into a whole different industry where you don’t know how it’s done after being an expert in academia. In my area, I was at the top, and then to go to a completely different industry and started from the bottom was deeply humbling. This is core to my existence, to who I am, I have to fight through these barriers pretty much every single day: I left the Maldives to move to another country and started over. I then decided to get into tech, tick all of the diversity boxes and fought those biases. And to build what we have built at Coverhero is a huge accomplishment.
• There’s no other way for us but to build a customer-centric business. This is what was truly weird when I first started talking to insurance industry executives who design products around the actuaries or the loss/expense ratios, it’s very product-centered rather than customer-centric. I then learned how broken the supply chain of insurance is and that got me really excited because I really love solving non-sexy, complex supply chain problems. I wanted to find out how we build a product that customers actually wanted, as well as determine how we acquire customers, and retain them at a lower cost. 
• Our philosophy is to build a really valuable piece of software that connects the insurer to distribution. There were a couple of things that led us to take this direction. When we first started we wanted to go direct to consumers and acquire customers that way, but along the way, we realized that to build a company that can dominate a category you need to find a gap, then define, refine and refine again this new category. The category that we define is "work integrated life cover", which is for someone who has finished university and who decided to go into the workforce as a self-employed.

BEST MOMENT

‘I wasn’t really interested in insurance, but I had a life-changing experience where I got really sick and we had an insurance claim rejected. That process led me to be curious enough to think “why is this so difficult? Why can’t it be as simple as booking an Uber?”’

‘To leave academia to jump into the startup world was an existential crisis, I think.’
‘I’ve always been passionate about creating equity and opportunity for people that don’t have access to networks, this is something the world needs to do a lot more of.’
‘The last four years I’ve been in the space I’ve seen a lot of money being invested into ideas that may or may not work, and the bar that’s being set by the insurance industry is very different from the bar that is set for a startup that is not from the InsurTech industry.’

ABOUT THE GUEST

Naby Mariyam says: Graduating with a Master of Philosophy in Management at the age of 22, I have had 18 years of experience in a wide range of industries across Senior level positions spanning Academia (Business studies, Research Methodology and Design), Management Consulting, Documentary production, Travel & Destination Marketing, and Technology. Naby's Research background is in social science where she deeply studied human behavior in her Academic career. Naby is currently taking a break from her PhD to focus on building technology-driven solutions that solve community problems. Naby shares that she is not a new face to the startup scene in Australia, with a number of her own startups, and Business ventures working closely with founders and catalysts of innovation in the Australian Startup Ecosystem in the last 8 years. Naby advised the United Nations Development Project on building start-up ecosystems and designed accelerator programs to drive innovation in developing Nations. Naby was an Australian delegate at the G20 Young Entrepreneurs conference in Berlin in 2017. Naby is a Keynote speaker, commentator, thought leader, and advocate for diversity of thought in the financial services and technology sector. She loves salsa dancing, poetry, and InsurTech (in that order). When Naby is not exploring her side hustles, she runs Coverhero, an embedded InsurTech startup focusing on revolutionizing insurance services focusing on the needs of Millennials and Gen Z. Coverhero Launched its first product www.hustlecover.com to fill the gap of financial insecurity for the growing Gig Economy and self-employed generation, and its smart home insurance API www.lucci.io in 2021.

Website: www.hustlecover.com
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nabymariyam/
Email: [email protected]
Instagram: @nabymariyam
Medium: @nabymariyam
Facebook: @nabymariyam
Podcast on Spotify: @hustlechat

ABOUT THE HOST

Sabine is a corporate strategist turned entrepreneur. She is the CEO and Managing Partner of Alchemy Crew, a venture lab that accelerates the curation, validation, & commercialization of new tech business models. Sabine is renowned within the insurance sector for building some of the most renowned tech startup accelerators around the world working with over 30 corporate insurers & accelerating over 100 startup ventures. Sabine is the co-editor of the bestseller The INSURTECH Book, a top 50 Women in Tech, a FinTech and InsurTech Influencer, an investor & multi-award winner. 

Twitter: SabineVdL
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