The Pineapple Story

The Pineapple founding team (Matthew Elan Smith, Ndabenhle Junior Ngulube and Marnus van Heerden) got together as part of an innovation competition run by Hannover-Re, during 2016, in an effort to find disruptive models to the reinsurance/insurance space. The competition ran for 6 months and it was out of our little innovation spot in Rosebank, Johannesburg where the Pineapple story begins.

During the competition we went through a process called Design Thinking - A Silicon Valley framework for stimulating innovation.

It was out of our "Dark horse" phase of design thinking that the seeds of what would become Pineapple were planted (pun intended).

The team was fortunate enough to be coached by two brilliant minds in Business, Insurance and Entrepreneurship - Achim Klennert (CEO - Hannover-Re Africa) and Wayne Wheatley (Founder of ParrotSA). From coach to mentor - both Achim and Wayne continue to play a vital role in Pineapple's strategic direction.

Design thinking is all about putting the user at the center of your thinking, upon doing this with insurance in mind we noticed a few things:

• Consumers and insurers don't trust each-other
• This mistrust leads to fraud and this fraud leads to further mistrust - and there is no mechanism to address this
• There is a conflict of interest in the way insurance is done - Those approving claims stand to profit by denying them,
• Insurance is expensive and provides very little value for the purchase - estimated at R36 for every R100
• Fraud, heavy expenses and large profit margins are responsible for destroying value

After presenting what would become Pineapple in Germany at the end of 2016 the team worked through the first half of 2017 to refine the business model and lay all the technical and regulatory groundwork to take Pineapple from concept to reality.

In August of 2017 we started development of the systems, secured our seed funding as well as got licensed by the Financial Services Board. Things kicked into another gear from there on and we went full steam ahead along with our partners at Compass and Brolink to get our first product sorted and ready the Pineapple application for launch.

Early in 2018, Pineapple took on over 1000 early-access users who's feedback helped us enhance the experience and build what people want as apposed to what we think they want.

After a few months of early-access and invite-only subscribers Pineapple launched open to everyone on July 27th, 2018. Handing out 35 000 Pineapple's at intersections across SA to signal a fresh start to insurance as we know it. We might of caused a traffic jam but atleast it was Pineapple jam (buh dum tss...)

The initial service allows you to become a Pineapple member and cover the things you own with a snap of a picture.
Next on the agenda: Motor insurance.