Just a few months after the acquisition of start-up Relayr by reinsurer Munich Re, Talanx, the third-largest German insurance group, is entering the Berlin start-up Next Big Think. The Hanoverians participate via their industrial insurer HDI Global as a leading investor in current financing round at the start-up forge. The SDAX Group hopes to open up the growth market of the Internet of Things, ie the networking of items, as well as blockchain technology.
“Thanks to the new technologies and the Internet of Things open up completely new opportunities for us,” said HDI Global CEO Thomas Kuhnt the “Handelsblatt”. “This may mean that we can build other insurance products.” As co-investors, the FinLab EOS VC and private investors will join the HDI Global Financing Network, as well as private investors, in the current round of financing of more than EUR 12 million.
Next-Big-Think founder Harald Zapp wants to use the new money to accelerate the expansion of the company. Zapp is also one of the co-founders of Relayr, a startup recently acquired by Munich Re. Next Big Think acts as a kind of midwife for young fintech companies and has a focus on data-driven innovation. Since its inception in 2016, Next Big Thing has already launched six start-ups, including Metr, which aims to automate the housing industry and develop a cross-vendor cloud technology for remote heat consumption.
AssistMe, which develops technologies for a needs-based care approach, and Evertrace, which aims to revolutionize the entire shipping process using the Internet of Things, are also portfolio companies. Young start-ups in the internet of things sector are thus increasingly arousing the imagination of insurers. The world’s largest reinsurer, Munich Re, even swallowed up Relayr completely last September.
For the five-year-old company, the world’s largest reinsurer paid around $ 300 million. The DAX 30 Group is also convinced that the Internet of Things has the potential to fundamentally change traditional insurance and reinsurance. Because the insurance business depends on the collection of large amounts of data and their risk analysis.