Nirvana Insurance launches to aid trucking industry with data-driven platform that modernizes commercial fleet insurance using data from sensors on trucks

Insurance platform on back of $25-million from Lightspeed Venture Partners and General Catalyst

Nirvana Insurance, a technology-driven platform that modernizes commercial fleet insurance using vast amounts of data from sensors on trucks, announced the public launch of its services to make our roads safer and aid the imperiled truck industry. 

Led by key former employees from IPO blockbuster Samsara, Rubrik, and Root Insurance, Nirvana recently closed a $22 million Series A funding round, bringing the total raised to more than $25 million.

The round was led by Lightspeed Venture Partners with additional participation from General Catalyst, Elad Gil, Fidji Simo (CEO, Instacart), Spike Lipkin (CEO, Newfront), Sam Hodges (CEO, Vouch), and more. Nirvana will use the funding to scale its operations, grow its team, and invest in R&D efforts to expand products and services.

The company uses telematics data to transform the stubbornly analog world of truck insurance to help fleets mitigate risk; improve driver performance; drop costs; and make the insurance process easier for everyone. This is especially important today as the world suffers through a global supply chain crunch that is worsened by a trucking industry under duress. More than 90 percent of the fleets nationwide have fewer than 50 trucks, and these small businesses operate on razor-thin margins.

Nirvana gives up to a 20-percent discount upfront to the safest fleets, and turns an insurance process that often takes months into mere minutes. 

“The analog approach to issuing insurance to commercial fleets is fundamentally broken,” said Rushil Goel, CEO and co-founder of Nirvana, who was previously VP Product at Samsara, where he helped them scale to more than $400 million ARR. “The process is confusing, slow, and comes at a high productivity and financial cost.”

“In my time working with more than 20,000 fleets at Samsara, I saw over and over again how these small businesses were completely frustrated with insurance and struggling to survive. Truckers who were doing all the right things and investing in safety, still saw their rates go up every year to the point where it forced them out of business,” said Goel.

The Nirvana platform connects billions of data points from these telematics and AI-powered dash cams, as well as public sources like the DMV and the department of transportation, to provide instantaneous quotes. Location, speed, video, erratic driving, weather, and traffic are all factors that are assessed by Nirvana’s bespoke machine-learning algorithms. Nirvana also gives regular recommendations to its clients, including specific coaching for drivers, as well as routes to avoid.

The policies are also usage based: Customers only pay for how much they drive, supporting the focus on reducing costs and tailoring coverage to a fleet’s actual exposure and usage.

“Rapidly rising premiums in commercial fleet insurance are causing trucking businesses to shut down,” said Raviraj Jain, partner at Lightspeed Partners. “Nirvana is bringing next-generation, data-driven insurance to the commercial fleet world by helping them operate not only more safely as business owners, but leverage that safety to positively impact customers and beyond. Nirvana’s mission and leadership team have impressed us from the very beginning and we’re excited to collaborate with the team to help unlock its full potential.”

Joel Cutler, partner at General Catalyst, said, “Today, commercial fleet insurance is creating high costs and inefficiencies for trucking companies. Nirvana Insurance is poised to transform the trucking insurance industry and bring it into the 21st century. Led by Rushil Goel, on the heels of his success as a product leader at Samsara, Nirvana is delivering an amazing product for customers and agents alike.”

“Partnering with Nirvana was a no-brainer for us,” said Nicole McMurtry, President of USI Insurance Services. “Their insurance platform has taken applications to quote processing time from 30-45 days to just 48 hours and has nearly eliminated any and all paperwork. On top of that, with commercial auto premiums continually on the rise, we feel like this is the exact product our customers need. Using telematics to underwrite customers accurately is the only way our industry will survive, and we are so excited to partner with Nirvana to make that a reality.”

Goel said that fleet insurance is only the beginning for Nirvana. “One day soon this use of smart data to mitigate risk will spread to factories and warehouses, for a safer and more efficient nationwide supply chain.”

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