Insurance comparison site The Zebra announced Wednesday it raised $38.5 million in Series C funding led by Accel. Prior investors Silverton Partners, Ballast Point Ventures and the company’s CEO Keith Melnick also participated in the round.
The Austin-based startup offers comparisons for both car insurance and homeowners insurance, functioning as a kind of “Kayak for insurance,” as Melnick, the former president of the popular travel search engine, told Crunchbase News. Users can compare more than 100 insurance companies online and talk to an agent over the phone through The Zebra to find what policies might be the best fit for them.
This concept isn’t new. Other insurance comparison startups like Boston’s Insurify and New York-based Policygenius have also raised millions of dollars this year, slowly bringing the multi-billion dollar insurance industry online.
However, The Zebra has been especially successful since its founding in 2012, raising more than $100 million and claiming to have quadrupled its headcount in its Austin and New York offices. The company also reported its revenue grew by nearly 200 percent year-over-year to almost $37 million in 2019. Melnick told Crunchbase News he expects revenue to grow “well over” 100 percent this year.
The company says it plans to use this most recent funding to increase its use of machine learning and provide more customization to bring its platform to a wider audience.
