Hackzone Demo Day, Bringing Founders and Executives Together

January 16, 2023

First started in 2020, HackZone Open Insurance Program was a 1-month marathon for startups aiming to pilot new products with Allianz, but more in “hacking” and design thinking. This year after the 3 Phases started on 24 November 2022, the demo day event took the scene on 10 October 2023 in Kolektif House Levent. Startups selected for the program passed through 3 major phases (Customer Development, Customer Test, and MVP & Prototyping) of the Co-Creation Process with the Allianz team, culminating with Proof of Concept. More than 40 Allianz team mentors supported entrepreneurs in different areas, including API and IT. 

120+ mentorship hours given by 40+ mentors and a design thinking workshop module gave startups a significant opportunity to benefit from the experiences and know-how of Allianz professionals. Product deployment was tracking live via Allianz API and Developer Portal.

The demo day event started with the opening speech of Kaan Akın, Founder & CEO, Hackquarters, where he shared his feelings about Allianz's approach towards startups and innovation, along with how excellent the results of the program are. The results are satisfying and motivate us to push more. “This total $750k investments will not remain the same. We’ll see how it will exponentially increase as startups strengthen their impact and expand their businesses.”

After Kaan’s speech, Onur Kırcı, CMO & Head of Digital, Allianz Turkey, talked about his perspective on the startup scene. “When Allianz or any big company intends to partner with startups, tech is not enough; Culture and Mindset are also crucial. That’s why we have been pushing cultural transformation in our company. HackZone Scaleup  and Open Insurance Programs let us raise innovation inside and outside us.”

Startups pitched during the demo day:

3pmetrics: 3pmetrics guides companies through their sustainability journey by developing software to quickly analyze their environmental, social, and governance (ESG) risks and develop action plans.

FINSO: Finso digitizes consumer loans and enables end users to complete shopping in physical stores and e-commerce.

LASKA: Laska is a high-tech company that upcycles end-of-life tires with innovative, environmentally friendly, and sustainable production approaches. 

Magnus: ML/AI-based portfolio optimization and investment management platform.

Pincident: Pincident is a location-based smart incident management system.

Wyseye: Wyseye analyzes your damaged photos within seconds and concludes your claim process as soon as possible without human intervention.

Later on, in the panel moderated by Hümeyra Boztunç, Innovation Manager, Allianz Turkey; Evren Ayorak, CIO, Allianz Turkey; Kaan Toker, COO, Allianz Turkey; and Murat Hacıoğlu, CEO, B2Metric discussed how to develop new business models with startups. “Allianz Turkey has over ₺500M annual IT budget. We are managing massive operations. The insurance sector covers many aspects of both our individual and business lives. We must push open innovation to create more excellent value for our stakeholders. That’s why we are opening our APIs to startups to motivate startups to contribute to us.” Kaan Toker highlighted.

“Ranging from hospital processes to damage assessment, the insurance world is an extensive ecosystem that touches almost everywhere. We need to serve our customers better in the sector's competitive dynamics. We look forward to improving presales and aftersales processes because customer satisfaction starts when a customer buys a service from us. It’s impressive to see the progressive side of Hackzone Open Insurance Program since we started.” Evren Ayorak added.

“Working with Allianz Turkey is prestigious. In many countries when we tell professionals about our 6 POCs with Allianz Turkey is very impressive. Allianz Turkey’s IT department has a global reputation in the insurance ecosystem. While we were trying to partner with Allianz Turkey, we were so busy to meet their expectations. We had to grow our team so that we could execute the sale. Eventually, we achieved the deal; now, we can sell our product to any company without pushing forward much, thanks to our iterations, according to Allianz Turkey’s feedback.”

The last panel was represented by Barış Karakullukçu, Next Generation Entrepreneurship Group President, İşbank; and Hümeyra Boztunç, where the panelists talked about the future of investing, emerging trends, and opportunities. “CVC structures are great ways for corporations to participate in next-generational entrepreneurship. Research indicates that companies investing in startups improve their KPIs and sustainability, thereby increasing the probability of maintaining their status in the future. We also know that 80% of innovation will come from startups by 2030. We’ll see insurance companies in Turkey engage more in the innovation ecosystem with partnerships and investments. Corporations should spend their efforts empowering startups and benefitting from them. That’s what we do at İşbank. We try to go beyond acceleration programs. We launched investment muscles. Right now, we are designing an upgraded version of a program to contribute to entrepreneurship more.”


Drumroll, please!

Allianz HackZone Open Insurance winners are 3pmetrics, Wyseye, and LASKA. Congratulations to the winners and all the startups who participated in the  Allianz HackZone Open Insurance Program! Hackquarters celebrates your success with Allianz Turkey and follows up on the next success stories!

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