A startup analyzing crash location data from police reports to help auto insurers better rate risk has raised $1.75 million from investors including Columbus-based Grange Insurance.
Tnedicca Inc. – "accident" backward – also has released a free app to help drivers plan safer routes. The Liberty Township startup markets the technology to mapping programs.
"After more than quadrupling our revenue last year, this funding enables us to take on key strategic initiatives such as gaining regulatory licenses as a rate service organization ... so insurance companies can easily adopt Tnedicca’s unique solutions,” co-founder and CEO Yiem Sunbhanich said in a news release.
Tengro Ventures led the Series A round, and Chris McKay, managing principal of the Austin firm, has joined Tnedicca's board as chairman. Repeat investors Pixel Perfect Ventures and Grange also participated; they had led a $750,000 round in 2019. Raj Malik, a partner in Pixel Perfect who's also a Tnedicca director, splits his time between Columbus and Washington, D.C.
"Tnedicca has developed a unique, high-value solution that is the first new category of auto risk information to be released in the past 20 years,” McKay said in a release.
Tnedicca has built a database of more than 30 million crash reports covering 91% of the U.S. auto insurance market, as well as a UK database, breaking the grid into much finer segments than the ZIP code data insurers usually use.
In city after city, two-thirds of crashes are confined to 10% of locations, Sunbhanich said in a recorded presentation last fall. That means collisions are not caused only by "good" or "bad" drivers, but in part by the design and physical conditions of a stretch of road.
"We have done enough work to show that is the case," he said.
The company's analytics add to a growing trend to capture real-world risk of driving conditions, such as the telematics data that Columbus startup Root Insurance Co. draws from member phones to assess risk from driving behavior.
A dozen insurers use the technology. Tnedicca also is adding clients in life insurance and logistics companies.
"Their product is a win for all – as we’re able to offer policyholders competitive rates, which makes it easier for our agency partners to do business with us," Cheryl Lebens, Grange president of personal lines, said in the release.
Sunbhanich and CTO Nizam Syed started the company in 2015 after decades in analytics. Both had prior positions at Nationwide and then at Dun & Bradstreet, according to their LinkedIn profiles.
The company is part of a fast-growing insuretech community in Central Ohio, also home to several large legacy insurers pursuing technological transformation.
