Company: Napo
Founders: Jean-Philippe Doumeng and Ludovic Lacay
Website: https://www.napo.pet/
Business: Napo is a pet insurtech company that provides additional educational and preventative support for pet owners.
About Jean-Philippe, Ludovic Lacay, and Napo
With impressive tech backgrounds including Meta, Titrac, and Babylon Health, co-founders Jean-Philippe (“JP” – CEO), and Ludovic Lacay (“Ludo” – CPO), wanted to create a pet insurance offering tailored to a digital native audience.
Named after co-founder Jean-Philippe Doumeng’s beloved Dachshund Napoleon, Napo was founded in 2021. Napo is a pet insurtech company that goes beyond comprehensive policies to offer additional educational and preventative support for pet owners. Examples of this include, amongst others, access to 24/7 online vet and behaviorist consultations, obesity awareness resources, and access to the Napo Puppy Academy – a series of expert-led live classes to help puppy owners get on top of crucial training that can help reduce potential health issues down the line.
So far, it has seen impressive growth and is on track to insure over 40k pets less than 12 months after launching in December last year. This makes Napo the fastest-growing pet insurer in Europe. This stellar performance has attracted significant investors despite the cooling of the VC funding market in 2022.
This autumn, Napo raised an oversubscribed Series A funding round, landing over £15m, led by DN Capital, and with the participation of the petcare focused Companion Fund, Helvetia Venture Fund, M Tech Capital, Picus Capital, DMG ventures, Sarona Partners, T0 Ventures, and FJ Labs.
With the pandemic having led to a boom in pet ownership, coupled with the demographic of pet ownership shifting significantly – Gen Z and Millennials now represent c. 70% of pet owners – the founders noticed a strong demand for a better value proposition with an enhanced customer experience in the pet insurance market.
It is Napo’s mission to fill this void by delivering true value-adds and offering expert advice and care to help prevent problems before owners ever need to claim. This is of huge importance and a core principle for Napo, as research shows 40% of health problems in pets are preventable with the correct care, support, and resources.
Having taken the decision to keep all of the critical parts of its tech platform in-house, Napo aims to make caring for pets as easy and stress-free as possible, by offering a supportive network and seamless service, alongside super comprehensive policies.
To support its growth strategy, Napo is expected to increase its 50-strong headcount, and has its sights set on market expansion. Napo’s ultimate ambition is to leverage insurance as a route into ‘all things’ pets, creating a one-stop, holistic service that forms an intuitive part of pet owners’ everyday lives.
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