There are millions of truck drivers on the road, and Nirvana wants to make insurance easier and cheaper for them.
The San Francisco startup announced a $22 million Series A on Wednesday, bringing its total funding to more than $25 million. The round was led by Lightspeed Venture Partners and also included General Catalyst, Elad Gil, Fidji Simo (Instacart), Spike Lipkin (Newfront) and Sam Hodges (Vouch).
CEO Rushil Goel, 32, co-founded the company in 2021 with Abhay Mitra and Alex Carges. He had been working at Samsara, another local trucking services company, when he noticed that fleet operators were struggling to control their insurance costs.
One fleet operator that he'll never forget was based near Chicago with around 20 trucks.
"One of the most consistent pain points they brought up just was how much they were paying for insurance and how much those rates were rising," Goel told me. "To the point where these folks were getting forced out of business, and really despite doing everything right."
The company installs devices on trucks to track data points around location, speed, hard braking, distracted driving, weather and traffic patterns. Then it uses that data to assess risk as well as help keep truckers safer while on the road.
This data can also then be used to give fleets with safer driving records discounts of up to 20% off of their premiums.
It has also streamlined sales with an online platform that cuts down on paperwork and speeds up the buying experience with instant quotes that would traditionally take months of back-and-forth paperwork with underwriters.
Nirvana's main revenue generator is insurance premiums but the company could explore additional products in the future, Goel told me. And for now the company is also focused on the U.S. market where it sees lots of demand.
There were around 3.4 million truck drivers employed around the country in 2020, which was down almost 7% from the previous year, according to the American Trucking Associations, an industry group based in Virginia.
More than 90% of fleets only operate half a dozen or fewer trucks, and the industry generated $732 billion in gross revenue last year.
This Series A funding will allow Nirvana to grow its team, which is currently around 30 employees, and invest more in customer growth, sales, underwriting, engineering and product development.
