Serial entrepreneur Kuldeep Malik has been a familiar face in Chicago’s tech scene over the last decade.
He built a name for himself as the founder of Persio, a local adtech startup, and later leading Convr (formerly DataCubes), an underwriting decision platform for the insurance industry.
Now, Malik is building his third startup, also in the insuretech space, and he's working to simplify insurance for small businesses.
B2Z, which is gearing up for its official launch in November, is an insurance provider for small businesses across industries, such as real estate, health care and retail. The startup provides property and liability, workers compensation and automobile insurance policies.
B2Z targets small businesses that are still run by their original founders and have up to 25 employees, Malik said.
One way B2Z plans to differentiate itself from other small business insurance providers is by simplifying the language and buying process for business owners. Insurance can be confusing, and B2Z aims to make purchasing insurance straightforward and quick, Malik said.
“We’ve simplified line by line, item by item what they’re buying, what they’re covering and how they’re paying for it,” Malik said. “We believe we are going to transform small business insurance delivery from a cumbersome product to offering insurance as a solution.”
At first, B2Z will only offer insurance policies to business owners in Illinois and Texas, where the startup’s team of 12 is distributed. But Malik said he expects B2Z to expand to 30 more states next year and be in all 50 by 2022.
Malik began building B2Z in March right after he stepped down from the top role at Convr. March was also the month when the Covid-19 pandemic began spreading in the U.S., and nearly the whole country went into lockdown and quarantine mode.
A pandemic isn't the ideal circumstances to start a new company in, Malik said, but it wasn’t as difficult as he thought it would be. He was able to secure some angel funding to support the initial costs associated with getting the business off the ground and recruited a team quickly.
“We went into Covid lockdown sometime in the middle of March, and B2Z was born March 31,” Malik said.
Malik expects to raise a seed round for B2Z in 2021 using his fundraising prowess he gained while building his other companies. Over the lifecycles of Persio and Convr, Malik raised more than $23 million from investors.
Persio, which made software to help brands automatically send customized mobile messages to customers, was acquired by Clutch in 2017. Before being purchased, the startup had raised $5.5 million in equity from investors such as Origin Ventures, Hyde Park Angels, Hyde Park Venture Partners, Illinois Ventures and OCA Ventures.
Convr is still operating out of Schaumburg with Bruce Simpson, the former chief executive at Discovery Health Partners, as its CEO. To date, Convr has raised about $18 million.
When it comes to building B2Z, Malik isn’t alone in the small-business insurance industry. Other startups like San Francisco-based Trov are also building insurance products for small-business owners, but Malik isn’t intimidated by the competition.
“I want to build a unicorn here in Chicago and be in that league, and do it by solving the real problems in the world,” Malik said. “That’s the legacy I want to build for myself.”
