Sug’urta Bozor — the first insurance marketplace in Uzbekistan

Azizbek Kurbanov, city — Tashkent, co-founder of the startup Sug’urta Bozor, @az.kurbonov  

How It All Started

We started our activities as an insurance marketplace in Uzbekistan. Today, we have become an InsurTech startup in Central Asia, providing infrastructure solutions for insurance companies. Additionally, I am a co-founder and Business Development Manager.

The startup was launched several years ago by two co-founders, two friends, without my involvement. The project was called Net Cost. However, at that time, there was no legislation regarding online insurance. Also, they did not have a team, so things didn’t quite work out. 

We, the founders, all graduated from the same university, the same faculty, and in the same year. They reached out to me, and that’s how we met. And from that day, the Sug’urta Bozor project began. We renamed it in 2022 and started everything from scratch. 

Target Audience

Initially, we helped car owners. Let me give an example, like in memes: on a plane, someone asks:
— Would you like tea or coffee?
— Coffee. 
— Wrong answer, tea. 

Imagine you are going to the mountains with friends, but at the last moment, you realize you forgot to buy an insurance policy. But don’t worry, through our platform, you can purchase it in just a few minutes. However, we noticed that every second person wants to create an insurance marketplace. Therefore, we went deep into the problems of insurance companies. 

Currently, we position ourselves as a superpower for insurance companies. If you have an insurance company and are interested in selling auto insurance policies, we provide a wide range of services: from scoring and online sales to remote vehicle inspection, defect detection, and tools for online contract signing. Like in Kazakhstan — Trustme, our product has a similar microservice. 

We have five partners, five insurance companies, and 400,000 users. Over the period of our existence, our company’s turnover exceeds $400,000. We have sold more than 60,000 policies and inspected over a thousand cars. 

Acceleration Programs

We participated in almost all acceleration programs that exist in our region and in Uzbekistan. We took part in Skart Ventures, Aloha Ventures, Plug and Play, Innotech, Startup Growth Program, and there was also a program from the IT Park. 

Initially, we invested our own money, about $10,000. At that time, all our employees left, and only my co-founders and I remained, working full-time. Working full-time was our first goal. The second goal was to create an MVP. And the third goal — after we created the MVP, we needed to raise funds. And nine months after we started working, we raised our first $100,000 from the local venture fund UZVC. There were also some insurance companies that wanted to invest in our startup. Some wanted to give $100,000, others $200,000, and so on. But for now, we have declined everyone. 

Achievements

Our first achievement is that we didn’t die during the first year. You know yourselves, 99% of startups die within the first year. We managed to keep our project alive.

The second is that the team grew. We started with three people, and currently, our team has more than 10 people.

The third is that we grow by approximately 350-400% every year. In the first year, we grew by 400%. And this year and last year, we grew by 400%. 

The fourth is that we have good and close relationships with insurance companies, i.e., our clients. They trust us and share their problems. Because when you are an insurance company, your ego is higher than Everest. 

We participated in many pitch competitions. Recently, we won in Baku at Tik Tok Academy, then we won in Uzbekistan and were finalists. Thus, without spending money on marketing, we already have brand recognition in the markets of Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, and Uzbekistan.

Plans

We are interested in Kazakhstan. The market is bottomless, large, ten times bigger than in Uzbekistan. 

I realized that once a startup, always a startup. That is, if you have already started a startup once, you will no longer be able to work in corporations or for someone else. I am glad that I position myself as a startupper. I think and behave like a startupper, and all my friends are startuppers. A startupper is not a poor person, as sometimes joked. It is a person with a different mindset who seeks 10X efficiency, 10X cheaper, 10X faster, and so on.