Mercury; Innovative startup in the car insurance industry

industry Insurance It is one of the industries that is not far from the startup and innovation space, and several Startup are known in this industry. However, it is still possible for innovative startups to enter this industry Mercury It is one of these startups that has been able to capture a part of this market with a proper needs assessment. According to the words of its co-founders, this startup, which is active in the field of car body insurance, has participated in every related event and won awards in many of them. From the first event that succeeded in attracting capital to the event of the National Day of Insurance and Innotex Pitch 2019 and Transaction 2019. In the following, we had an interview with one of the co-founders of this startup. Stay with us.

Introduce yourself and tell about your experiences before entering this field.

My name is Fateme Vali, co-founder and marketing director of “Hermes Sharif” company. Hermes Sharif Company is active in the field of financial and insurance technologies; One of the company’s products is called “Mercury” which is related to smart travel insurance. Before working in this field, I didn’t have any other startup experience, but I was thinking about innovative ideas and was active in the Tehran Chamber of Commerce, where I was also drawn to start a startup and create entrepreneurship.

Explain a little about Hermes and its products.

The Hermes company is mostly active in the field of financial and insurance technologies and plans to create a studio for the teams Fintech And Insure-tech be; Currently, there are teams in this company in the banking field. One of the products of Hermes company is “Mercury”; Mercury is a smart body insurance online issuance application, the current version of which offers body insurance; People who do not have annual body insurance can their car No face-to-face visit And only by sending pictures of the car to insure and body insurance Within thirty minutes Be issued.

When did the Mercury team start working and what are the core competencies of the team?

The Mercury team started working and researching insurance companies from March 1995, and in September 1997, 7 companies were established, and in March 1997, applications were launched. The core of the team consists of 5 people; Mr. Berdia Javadi works in the field of ui and ux and graphic design. Mr. Kazemi is the CEO of the team. Mr. Mohsen Rukni is a programmer, Mrs. Fatemeh Darwishmand is an expert Artificial intelligence are; I also work in the field of marketing and research.

What does the name “Mercury” mean?

“Mercury” is the goddess of travel protection in ancient Greece; On the other hand, the first insurance company in Iran was called “Mercury Caucasus” and for these reasons we chose this name for the team.

What marketing methods did you use?

Through market research conducted through interviews with people, we found out that only 3% of people with third party insurance also have car body insurance. In the meantime, we realized that the high price of the annual body insurance and the lack of continuous use of the car, as well as the waste of time that a person has to spend to get the body insurance, have caused them not to use the annual body insurance despite the damages they suffer. These reasons made us go in the direction of offering a body insurance that a person can get body insurance at a low price whenever he needs it; And on the other hand, the process of insuring it does not take a lot of people’s time. Finally, we thought of the idea of ​​providing short-term, cheap and convenient insurance.

Do you have competitors in the market?

Yes. Bimito and Bazar Bazar are competitors, although they also have many differences and are a kind of online agency; But a similar competitor to Mercury is a startup called “advance“And currently, this startup has cooperation with two insurance companies, and we also intend to cooperate with different insurance companies.

Is there a successful foreign example in this field that cooperates with domestic companies?

About three to four years ago, foreign insurance companies cut off their relationship with companies inside Iran due to sanctions issues. As much as Airbnb startups are likely to enter Iran, this possibility also exists for insurtech startups, but otherwise it will not happen.

Have you won a place in a competition or event?

Yes. After the formation of the idea, we went to the pre-acceleration stage in a period of three months accelerator Diamond, we went to Tehran University, the result of which was the exit of MVP; Immediately after that, we participated in the Novardgah event. The first event we participated in was in November 1996 at “Novardgah Bimah”. This event was held in collaboration with Avatech and Kausar Insurance Company, and we were the first team among the ten teams present. investment Our startup Kausar insurance company also started from the same event; Then, in an event on December 13, the National Insurance Day, we were chosen among the top startups in the insurance industry. We were also selected as the first national team at Innotex Pitch 2019 and also at the Transaction Exhibition 2019, we were the first team of the Smart City Festival.

How does participating in events affect the progress of startups?

Participating in events, even if it did not lead to a position for us, made us very good connections. Naturally, if teams constantly expose themselves to experts, it will help them improve; Because for cooperation, an introduction must be made first, and what is better than participating in events to introduce startups?

Your investor is working in the same industry. Corporate venture capital (cvc) What do you think are the advantages and disadvantages?

Entering the insurance industry due to lack of knowledge in Venture capital And even the lack of knowledge in the investor is a problem. The investment on the Mercury startup was in the form of CVC, but it was practically no different from VC investment; It is true that we tried to launch a startup in the context of a traditional ecosystem, and the Mercury startup investor was also convinced that he was investing in a fledgling startup; But losing a startup in the first years is a bit strange for the investment fund of insurance companies. Although many investment funds are investing in various startups, they do not perform professionally in CVC issues.

ecosystem The insurance industry is also not widespread in Iran, and a startup that loses according to the startup’s plan does not receive positive feedback from the insurance industry, and this industry does not have a long-term view of a startup’s plan. On the other hand, the type of investment is different, and when an investor invests in a startup, he should consider that “marketing output” is not the only issue with the startup’s value. If our team had a higher level of information on the investment issue, maybe they would not invest in this way and change the contract; In any case, this investment experience was the first for us and for Kosar Insurance Investment Company.

One of the issues raised in corporate venture capital is the issue of smart money that investors provide to startups. Did you use this capacity of your investor?

Yes. From the beginning, we were looking for smart money and not just financial capital. Due to the fact that our investor was an insurance company, the most important thing it brought to us was the insurance plans that we implemented in the startup, which insurance companies have little resistance to this insurance plan model because they feel that the risk It is higher and the sales efficiency is lower, but Kausar company accepted this risk and entered the business, which was a positive thing. Another positive point for us was the communication that Kausar Insurance made for us with Central Insurance. The more the investor is related to the startup topic, the more benefits it will bring.

What challenges did you face in developing your business?

In all our challenges in technical fields, we reached one final principle, and that is: Be sure to have a plan B in all influential decisions! Circumstances such as internet disconnection may become a problem, and in this context, even though our service is based on the internet, we should still be able to use our native services. Another challenge in technical issues is the presence of sanctions and a service may not be provided in the next month due to the sanctions, so we must prepare ourselves for all eventualities.

We had another challenge in the field of marketing, and that was the trust of users who often did not trust a software for insurance, and we are still facing this challenge now, but by producing the right content and presenting the application in person, we can build trust and solve it. We went to this challenge.

Have you found yourself in a situation where you thought of collecting the business?

Events are happening at the community level that this thought may come to the minds of many startup teams; On the other hand, we are working around the clock without making money, and we think that entrepreneurship always brings these issues with us.

Did you get any feedback from users to improve the product?

After the expiration of the person’s insurance policy, we make a phone call and follow up on the user’s opinion, which made us change the insurance processes and move forward according to the customer’s wishes. In the design department, we act based on the feedback of users and their experience of using the application.

If you were to go this route again, what activities would you not do?

If we were to go back in time, we would focus more on our human resource management. The strength of our startup was the team, because all the people in the team were experts and needed by the startup, and they thought that all the people who join the team should work like themselves, but unfortunately, this does not always happen. All startups need strong human and financial resource management because teams expand and this financial and human resource management is very influential in the future of the team.

What do you expect from government institutions?

Our biggest expectation is that there are no obstacles in the way of startups; Because government centers have a lot of inhibiting bureaucracy; Of course, in this field, the central insurance has a very good performance, but there are frameworks in this industry that an insurance company must submit requests to the central insurance; That is, if an insurance company does not cooperate with us, there is nothing we can do, although we have solved this problem with the help of our investor. We also have expectations in the technical field that we have shared with the information technology management of the Central Insurance Company, which we hope will be resolved in the near future.

last word

My advice to startups is “follow up”. In every team, the people present in it have a task, but successful startups must persevere beyond these tasks in order to achieve a good result.