OKO, an Insurtech start-up that provides inclusive agricultural insurance to secure farmers’ income across Africa, has closed a Seed investment of $1.2 million. The round was led by by Newfund and ResiliAnce. Mercy Corps Venture, Techstars, ImpactAssets and RaSa also participated in the round. The start-up which currently operates in Mali and Uganda uses satellite data and mobile payments to create automated insurance products for farmers whose fields are affected adversely b

The GSMA represents the interests of mobile operators all around the globe. They have been a prominent actor in standardising the industry, promoting mobile operators' initiatives and testing new products. This week the GSMA released a full report on mobile-delivered crop insurance called "Agricultural insurance for smallholder farmers: Digital innovations for scale". It is a brilliant piece of work for anyone interested in index-insurance, and is a great tool used by the GSM

The whole OKO team is getting ready for our nationwide launch in Mali in partnership with Orange Money. This event will take place at the International Convention Center of Bamako in presence of Orange Mali's CEO, the General Secretary of the Ministry of Agriculture, the Ambassador of Senegal and many more. If you wish to be part of this major milestone in our development, feel free to connect to our livestream on Facebook on Tuesday 21st at 4pm CET. Click on the link below t

KPMG and H2 ventures just released their yearly ranking of the top 100 Fintech companies globally. The Fintech100 comprises a ‘Top 50’ and an ‘Emerging 50’ and highlights companies that are disrupting the financial services industry. This second list includes OKO! This positions OKO alongside other emerging companies like Next Insurance and Tokeny, and rewards the efforts made by OKO this year to create traction and promote our services globally. This comes only a few weeks a

The FinTech 50 is the first list in the world to recognise Fintech in Europe for innovation. In this year's edition you will find many of the global stars of the industry, that are changing the face of banking and insurance, such as Alan, N26 and Revolut. You can also find BIMA, eToro and WorldRemit in the "Hall of Fame". All the companies in the list were selected by 47 judges that work all around Europe in the finance ecosystem: lawyers, bankers, investors, incubator manage

OKO is back from Rwanda with another award: The 1st prize at the Fintech Showcase organised by Alliance for Financial Inclusion. AFI is the world's leading organisation on financial inclusion policy and regulation. AFI promote and develop evidence-based policy solution that improve the lives of the poor through the power of financial inclusion. The summit in Kigali gathered representatives of Central Bans from more than 70 countries. Chosen by popular vote, OKO won over Glob

OKO has received some great coverage recently, and we would like to share some of it with you: - Luxemburger Wort (French): the most famous Luxemburgish newspaper wrote a full story about OKO as part of their series about the Start-up Ecosystem in Luxemburg. It is a great introduction to what we do, explaining things in a simple manner https://www.wort.lu/de/business/s-assurer-contre-le-changement-climatique-5d5ea8c9da2cc1784e34a343 - SPORE magazine (French / English): Spore

Allianz partners with OKO for the development of index-based crop insurance in Africa. An early adopter (and beneficiary) of OKO’s mobile crop insurance in Mali Allianz has entered a cooperation partnership with the InsurTech start-up OKO. The partnership aims at bringing crop insurance in an innovative and efficient way to smallholder farmers in Africa. Allianz and OKO will design index-insurance products that automatically compensate farmers when they are facing adverse wea

OKO was the first runner up in Luxembourg’s Fintech Awards! The competition received 194 applications from 33 countries, of which 20 semi-finalists were invited to Luxembourg to compete. This included our CEO Simon Schwall! The seven jurists spent an hour deliberating, discussing all of the amazing companies and their creative solutions to pressing issues. OKO’s SMS and digital compensation platform caught the judges’ attention, landing the company in second place. We are v

OKO is here to support the farmers when they suffer from a bad season. And it's just what we did with rice producers in Mali who suffered a bad harvest. Immediately after their loss was confirmed, OKO paid their claims over mobile money, and beneficiaries received it only minutes later. We went to meet them in their field to ask them how they felt about this new process. We just published all these testimonials in the OKO Mali section of our website. Finally you can hear and

The Orange Social Venture Award for Africa and Middle East aims to reward every year the best innovative and socially responsible business projects in Africa and the Middle East. This 8th edition unfolded in two phases: first the candidates participated to a national competition, then an international jury gave a grand prize to the best national winners. OKO arrived 3rd in the National competition in Mali, therefore qualifying for the international competition. National award

OKO is happy to introduce their partners, Développement International DESJARDINS and SOCODEVI, responsible for the FARM project, granted by Global Affairs Canada. SOCODEVI is a network of cooperative and mutual enterprises that shares its expertise and know-how with its partners in developing countries to create, protect and distribute wealth. And Development International DESJARDINS is a pioneer in the deployment and development of microfinance around the world, they provide

OKO was in the news yesterday, with our CEO Simon Schwall interviewed on ILTV. In this news segment, Simon briefly explains how farmers can benefit from a low-cost crop insurance product through our technology. It is a safety net needed by billions of people to be able to invest in their business without the risk of losing it all. Simon also mentioned the latest achievement of OKO, with the Mali pilot reaching almost 500 farmers who registered for insurance. #OKO #Interview #

OKO is thrilled to announce the launch of our first pilot in Mali, made accessable through Orange payments and underwritten costs by Allianz. With 10 agents in the field focusing on the education and registration of new customers, we are witnessing considerable traction. The positive reaction from the market response was clear, with 215 new registered customers joining OKO within 5 working days, and we will continue to onboard new clients until the start of the season on the

We are excited to introduce everyone to Mariam Doumbia who will be serving as our Interim Mali Country Director for the duration of our pilot . Mariam holds a degree in International and Development Economics and has a background in frontier market’s advisory. Before joining the team, she worked at CrossBoundary to mobilize capital for agriculture and health projects in Mali. She will be helping us with external relations, field operations, people management, and so on.

We are thrilled to announce that OKO is one of the next ten companies to the 2018 Barclays Accelerator, powered by Techstars in Tel Aviv. The program will run for the next 15 weeks with a Demo day will taking place on the 5th of September 2018 in Tel Aviv. The program brings together two powerful networks: Barclays, who is shaping the banking landscape and quickly making itself the first partner of choice for the most promising FinTech companies, and Techstars, the worldwide

OKO has been invited by Airbus Defence & Space to have a booth on their "hub" at VivaTech 2018. Viva Technology is nicknamed France's CES and last year hosted 68,000 people, 6,000 startups, 1,400 investors, 103 countries and 1 Emmanuel Macron OKO will be showcasing how satellite information can be used to measure weather risk and create affordable insurance products. We will be at the summit for 3 days and would be very happy to meet you there! Please contact us at info@oko.

Today was the end of The Hive's acceleration programme and all participating Start-Ups were given the opportunity to pitch in front of a panel of investors. OKO was chosen by the jury as the grand winner of this event, and received a financial reward of USD 1,450 by Gvahim association. This is a great recognition and validation of our idea. Competition was fierce with several other very promising start-ups. Winning this competition gives us confidence that we are on the right

According to a new market research conducted by Questale, the market of Weather-index crop insurance will grow by 20 to 45 % per annum in the coming years. As satellite imagery and radar-based technologies are improving, and algorithms are developed to interpret this data, index-based insurance product emerge as a solution to provide cover in previously un-served areas. Index-insurance products replace on-site damage assessment by a an estimation of the production loss, using

In December 2017, OKO was one of the 6 stat-ups invited by the World Bank to pitch in front of an audience of young leaders and decision makers. Our full 7-min pitch (and the Q&A session) is now available online on YouTube. Subscribe to our YouTube channel to be notified next time we post a video! #YouthSummit #OKO #Pitch #Event