Munich Startup: What does your startup do? What problem are you solving?
Lex Tan, Motionscloud: Every year insurance and automotive industries spend over €30 billion on processing inspections and insurance claims. These are manual and tedious processes, time consuming and expensive operations. That’s why we built Motionscloud. Motionscloud is an insurtech/inspectech company that helps vehicle & property insurance companies, fleet/mobility operators and airlines to streamline and automate damage inspections/claims processes using AI computer vision, augmented reality IoT and video technologies. Today, we are a global company, we are serving clients in the US, central Europe and Southeast Asia with big names like Generali.
Munich Startup: But that’s nothing out of the box!
Lex Tan: Motionscloud solutions are unique, we’re leveraging IoT, AI computer vision, augment reality and video technology modules to automate inspections/claims processes. All technology modules can be combined as a standalone platform or each individual module can be integrated flexibly with restful APIs without any replacement of existing core systems. Motionscloud also offers flexible customization and adaptation of each module toward the enterprise client market’s requirements and demands. Therefore, Motionscloud solutions can be out of the box depending on the use cases.
Frustrated by risk-averse and innovation-hostile superiors
Munich Startup: What is your founding story?
Lex Tan: I was an insurance claims manager in the property & auto insurance sector for over 5 years, I have seen a fair share of inefficient, manual and tedious claims processes, as well as dealing with not satisfied customers. With my previous experience in the startup innovation scene as well as the insurance claims sector, I came up with a way to improve claims processes using automation technology. I was pretty excited with the idea and suggested it to my superiors with a great proposal for months without responses due to internal politics, risk averse attitude and innovation as one of the last priorities.
After a couple of years of trying, I decided to leave the industry for good. In 2015 the insurtech trend started and insurance innovation started to become a hot discussion among insurance executives. That was the moment I realized Insurance companies have understood the importance of innovation. That’s when I teamed up together with long time friends, an AI scientist, a senior software developer and a former CEO of a claims management company, to create Motionscloud in Germany.
Why Germany? Germany is one of the biggest insurance markets in Europe with an average of 12 insurance products bought by each German citizen. Then the rest is history.
Munich Startup: What have been your biggest challenges so far?
Lex Tan: Most pressing challenges would be covering rare use cases, especially rare damage types and non visible damages. Aacquiring such a dataset and insight to cover rare and infrequent use cases is equally challenging as well.
Motionscloud: „Double up our sales and offer new technologie modules“
Munich Startup: Where would you like to be in one year, and where in five years?
Lex Tan: In 1 to 2 years: Motionscloud would extensively continue further expansion in the existing markets we are serving clients, to double up our sales as well as with new technologies modules offering such as digital fraud detection module and telematics module.
In 5 years, Motionscloud is looking into expansion beyond existing markets including South America, Africa and Middle East regions. In terms of sector, Motionscloud would grow beyond the insurance vertical, potentially in the E-mobility, airlines, property, construction, etc..
Munich Startup: How have you experienced Munich as a startup location so far?
Lex Tan: Munich is a very suitable location for Motionscloud due to the international scene of insurance and insurtech industry where global (re)insurance companies like Allianz and Munich Re headquarters are as well as regional and local insurance companies. Especially, located at WERK1 startup technology hub – The Most Startup-Friendly Place in Munich, a great ecosystem for startups to be as well as a very supportive Bavarian government toward the startup ecosystem.
Munich Startup: Quick exit or staying power?
Lex Tan: Our vision is to be staying in power to scale Motionscloud into a much bigger global company before considering an exit. We strongly believe our founders and early team members could make a significant impact at the global scale before opting for an exit.