Marijan Mumdziev (Amodo): “Data worth, even for customers”

The founder and CEO of Amodo, data startup that won Open-F@b Call4Ideas 2015, talks about the partnership with BNP Paribas Cardif and gives advice to those who apply for the 2020 edition of the contest

Published on 07 Aug 2020

Donatella Cambosu

Redattore

The activities of an insurance company are essentially based on data. In digital transformation, therefore, the problem has never been awareness of the “importance of data”, rather a much more substantial one: its use. How can we collect as much customer data as possible? Which data are more useful to get to better know the customer? How to analyze and turn them into new business models and value for customers? 

Amodo, Croatian insurtech based in Zagreb, is doing exactly this, very well indeed: it develops platforms for insurance companies to collect behavioral data. Since 2013, the company has created more than 25 products in 18 countries on 5 continents, processing data, for example, on more than 1 billion kilometres travelled by about 1.5 million cars. Last May it raised €3 million from the Hungarian Lead Ventures fund to support growth and grow fourfold by 2023. 

What Amodo is doing 

BNP Paribas Cardif  ‘discovered’ the startup as early as 2015, precisely on the occasion of the second edition of  Open-F@b Call4Ideas, when Amodo was one of the three winners. Since then, the startup has never stopped. 

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“Our technology can be integrated into a smartphone application (and other networked devices) and collects information about the user’s driving behavior – says Marijan Mumdziev, founder and CEO, referring to their main case of use in car policies – so we can know whether he/she is driving, where he/she is, how he/she is driving, whether he/she is using the phone while driving. This information is gathered by the application on the phone and sent to the platform, which analyzes it. So what can this information be used for? The first thing is to help companies calculate the risk associated with given profiles; the second is to help customers enhance their driving skills through feedback and other features”. 

Thanks to Advanced Data Analytics and Artificial Intelligence, Amodo allows customization of prices, automated advertising, pricing and sales. Its analytics feed on data collected through smartphones and other connected devices, but also through data enrichment and gamification: the result is the possibility for a company to offer new products and customized services. Together with BNP Paribas Cardif, Amodo has already implemented a first project called “Safe Ride & Drive“, a mobile protection app, and is now working on other possible applications, with a focus on innovations in new ways of getting around. “Due to Covid, there has been a surge in demand for electric bicycles in recent months: public transport is still scary, but at the same time not everyone has the chance to buy a car. This also pushes the demand for policies dedicated to this “soft” means of transport“, recalled Mumdziev. 

Customers don’t want to give data away, rather exchange for something 

“We collect a lot of sensitive data, yet trying to return a value to the customer for their use. In Germany, considered the most conservative market for privacy, 78% of users are willing to share their data if they get something worthwhile in exchange. The real question is, therefore, what do we give back to customers?” 

Customers don’t want to give away their data, rather they want to exchange them for some benefit. In the aftermath of Covid, we are recording this attitude even more. With the pandemic and lockdown, people have experienced new things, new needs, including insurance ones, and are looking for new products. Let’s think about the changes in mobility, the simple need for a customer to be able to ‘turn on or off’ a car insurance according to their needs”. 

Marijan Mumdziev, fondatore e ceo di Amodo

A tip for Open-F@b startups: adapt to big company business models 

The new edition of Open-F@b, the Call4Ideas by BNP Paribas Cardif, this year dedicated to the “Next Normal”, will expire on September 30th. We asked Marijan Mumdziev, who won the 2015 edition, to give a useful hint to those who will apply this year. 

They have to take into account that big companies like BNP Paribas Cardif have an operating pattern very far from a small company or a startup. The ‘time to market’ is longer than they would like it to be and this is particularly true when working in an innovation partnership and not a business one. 

Experiencing something together with a company is very different from ‘doing something’. Startups need to understand who they are dealing with and what benefits they can achieve, and then adapt their perspectives to the type of partnership shaping up”. 

Send your project by September 30th, apply now!

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Donatella Cambosu
Redattore

Scrive di tecnologie, startup e innovazione da oltre 15 anni. Dal 2015 collabora con il Gruppo Digital360, in particolare con le testate Startupbusiness, University2Business, EconomyUp. Collabora con InsuranceUp sin dal lancio del portale avvenuto nel 2015 e ha maturato un'ampia esperienza in ambito insurtech.

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