Based in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Addenda is disrupting the motor insurance industry. The startup is taking advantage of blockchain technology to connect all insurance companies in the Middle East to a trust-based network running on local Azure datacenters. The scalable SaaS platform published through Microsoft Azure Marketplace is changing how insurers transact and interact, cutting down claims reconciliation time from six months to nine days.
The company faced some initial challenges. "We wanted to deploy a decentralized blockchain platform where every single company has a node. But it was going to cost us an insane amount of money," says Walid Daniel Dib, CEO at Addenda. The company applied to the Microsoft for Startups program, which provided the technical support, strategic advice, and credit package necessary to secure the launch phase. “We were then able to land our first client and investor, and it took off from there. We’ve now signed one of the biggest insurers in the Middle East, bringing the total number of insurance companies on the Addenda blockchain to nine,” explains Dib. The startup also took advantage of a recently established local Azure cloud datacenter to ensure the scale, reliability, compliance, and security its software as a solution (SaaS) required.
The company needed an efficient distribution channel to reach customers with a trusted, immutable bridge for swift and secure data exchange. It again teamed up with Microsoft for Startups to deploy the blockchain platform on Azure Marketplace. "Now, an insurance company simply clicks a few buttons on the marketplace, and Voila! They're deployed and can reconcile with all other companies on the blockchain using our portal," explains Karim Davis Dib, Walid’s brother and COO at Addenda.
Once connected, the parties on both ends can seamlessly share claims documentation in real time, and in a fully traceable, automated manner. Karim Davis Dib emphasizes the solution’s efficiency, "The claims reconciliation time dropped from six months to nine days, but our goal is to streamline that process even more."
“Security is paramount for a solution addressing an industry processing ultra-sensitive data,” stresses Harsh Ajmera, CTO at Addenda. The company delivers complete data protection not only through blockchain's cryptography and traceability, but also through Azure built-in security tools. "We don't want anybody reaching out to the blocks, and we needed something up and running 99 percent of the time. Therefore, we started using private Azure DNS zones. It's running on the cloud, and nobody can access it," he says.
In three months, the number of claims processed through Addenda's platform swelled from 0 to 23 million dirhams (6 million USD), and keeps growing exponentially. "There are about 1.6 billion dirhams (435 million USD) in the UAE stuck in the recovery of motor insurance claims," says Walid Dib. Addenda aims to support more insurers in reclaiming that money, with plans to cover travel and healthcare markets, within the country, and abroad. Next, it intends to deploy Azure AI and ML services to detect fraudulent claims and benefit its customers further.
According to Daniel Dib , "Microsoft for Startups enabled us to land our first client and investor, and it took off from there."
