Paris-based pet insurance startup Dalma has raised a €15m Series A round as pet tech investment continues to grow in Europe.
What does Dalma do?
It’s atech-enabled pet insurance provider that wants to use its Series A to launch an app that will bundle new services beyond insurance: unlimited video calls, direct payment to vets, and an e-commerce section selling items for pets.
Today’s round brings the total investment in the one-year company to 17 million euros. Dalma claims to have generated €6 million in revenue from 20,000 customers in just 12 months.
Who invests in Dalma?
Northzone led Series A and were joined by Project A and Anterra Capital.
Existing investors Global Founders Capital also participated, alongside Frst and Kima Ventures, as well as angels such as Sam Edelson (ex-director of product management at ride-sharing platform Airbnb), Olivier Bonnet (CTO of the company ridesharing company Blablacar) and Julien Gigoi (chief actuary of insurtech Luko – one of Sifted’s French tech startups to watch in 2022).
The pet technology market
Following an increase in the number of pet owners in the pandemic era, pet insurance funding volumes in Europe remain high after a record in 2021 (Much of this money went to UK pet insurer ManyPets when it raised $350 million).
France is Europe’s second-largest pet tech market after the UK, according to Dealroom data analysts.
Startups are betting that pet owners will continue to lavish spending on their four-legged friends in 2022. With around 200 million cats and dogs in European households – a pet population now twice as larger than Europe’s population of children under 15 – pet tech is a 30+ billion euro industry “where no player has yet emerged as a leader”, says Alban De Préville , co-founder of Dalma.
Dalma’s raise is the second significant pet tech raise in Europe in less than a month, after Sweden’s Lassie announced an €11 million seed round in May. Lassie has its own particular spin on insurance – a focus on preventative health care and discounts for customers who interact with Lassie’s content. If, for example, you read Lassie’s articles about foods – like chocolate – that are unsafe for dogs, you could get cash on your next bounty.
Subdued plug
Enthusiasm for furry friends, it seems, was not just a pandemic phenomenon. Big names in venture capital continue to sniff out deals in pet tech, a sector where startups are seeing more restrained valuations than their counterparts in hotter industries.
Eanna Kelly is an editor at Sifted. He tweets from @EannaKelly1
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