Jean-Charles Samuelian has the art of taking the markets from behind. In April 2021, when France was undergoing its third confinement, the co-founder of Alan, the complementary health insurer, announced a spectacular raising of 185 million euros. Almost a year later, when the faucets of the financing of French tech seemed to have closed, he announced this Thursday, May 5, to have completed a new financing of 183 million, led by the Teachers venture growththe Ontario teachers’ pension fund and half a dozen investors: Singapore’s sovereign wealth fund Temasek, Index, Coatue, Ribbit Capital, Dragoneer, Lakestar and even Exor, the Agnelli family fund.
“We have known each other for a long time, the process was quick,” explains the entrepreneur. With a valuation of 2.7 billion euros, Alan finds himself among the best endowed InsurTechs in Europe, where Jean-Charles Samuelian, 34, wants to establish himself as the “One-stop health partner” of companies and people. “It’s the consecration of things that I dreamed of doing for a very long time,” he says. Since the age of 14 precisely.
Transform the system
He grew up in this medical universe, brought up by psychiatrist parents. And very quickly, he acquired the conviction that it was necessary “to transform the operation of this expensive system, devoid of quality of service and prevention mechanism, hospital-centered.” But it took time to trigger the mutual health insurance revolution. As a teenager in Marseille, this big geek spent his time building computers and websites for local businesses. Graduated from Ponts et Chaussées in his pocket, he created his first company at the age of 22: Expliseat manufactures the lightest airplane seats in the world.
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But in 2016, he returned to his teenage dream and with his friend Charles Gorintin – who was working at the time in Silicon Valley for Twitter – they dropped everything to create Alan, an ultra-simple and 100% digital platform. “Insurance was a commodity, we became the wellness partner for mental and physical health,” he says. Alan has 300,000 members and 16,000 corporate clients in France, Belgium and Spain. It aims to reach 3 million customers in 6 countries by 2025.