Sayata has raised $17 million in new venture capital and has a broad growth strategy in mind. The Massachusetts-based InsurTech startup has a platform designed to help wholesale brokers and carriers quickly and easily grow their business insurance portfolios, and the cash infusion will help it expand into new insurance lines.

Team8 Capital and Vertex Ventures led the Series A funding round, though original investors Elron, Kamet and OurCrowd also participated.

“This round is coming just as we’re hitting our stride,” Sayata CEO Asaf Lifshitz said in prepared remarks. “The market has responded incredibly well to our offering since launch with both our broker and carrier partners asking to see more business insurance lines represented on the platform.”

Sayata was formerly known as Sayata Labs, and under that name the company raised $6.5 million in seed funding in March 2019 to pursue development of its cyber risk assessment platformed designed for insurers to use with small and medium-sized businesses. This involved using advanced cybersecurity and data science expertise (including AI-based algorithms) to help insurers quickly and accurately assess cyber risk, and help existing and potential insureds reduce their risks.

Overall, the model was designed to give insurers andwholesale brokers a wide ability to identify cyber risks by analyzing a number of data sources directly linked to most cyber breaches.

Lifshitz said Sayata changed its name to make things easier, but also better reflect what it is now.

“At this point, Sayata is offering wholesale brokers the ability to discover and place more types of risk. Previously, Sayata Labs only offered cyber,” he told Carrier Management via email. “This is not a change to a new focus, but an expansion. We are adding more lines of insurance beyond only cyber.”

Sayata launched its platform in February 2020, and claims to have had robust growth and interest in the platform since then.

Sarit Firon, Managing Partner at Team8 Capital, said in prepared remarks that Sayata has targeted a clear market need – “the ability to automate the business insurance sales cycle in a way that removes friction and ambiguity.”

Sayata describes its platform as streamlining the quote-bind-issue process so insurance professionals can seamlessly place more insurance policies in a fraction of the time. Sayata says its system accomplishes this with both technology, automatation and educational tools. The company claims that more than 1,000 users across 75 brokerages and carriers have used its technology to date. The pitch: That its platform gives brokers a single destination at which they can find multiple insurance options, “easily present them and digitally secure coverage in one place.”

Sayata’s headquarters are in Boston but its technology was developed in Tel Aviv, Israel.

Source: Sayata