Insurance contracts, exposés, invoices—to avoid drowning in the daily flood of documents, the Munich-based startup Konfuzio has developed a software solution that uses artificial intelligence to not only sort these documents but also scan them for important information. The founders explain exactly how this works. Christopher Helm and Florian Zyprian in an interview.
Munich Startup: Who are you and what do you do? Please introduce yourselves briefly.
Confucius: We, Christopher and Florian, met during our master's program in Finance and Information Management at TUM and won various hackathons. During this time, the idea for the AI software Konfuzio, the "Swiss Army knife for processing complex business documents," was born. Since 2016, we have been working together in a growing team for our corporate clients.
Konfuzio automates the processing of unstructured documents such as insurance contracts, exposés, and invoices using artificial intelligence. To achieve this, our software recognizes the type of document and then extracts all relevant information.
Konfuzio not only makes back-office processes faster and more cost-effective, but also unlocks previously untapped data treasures in real time. Structured business reports enable precise selection of new corporate customers and provide a comprehensive conversation guide for sales staff. Konfuzio provides the right information for customer acquisition that was previously hidden in business reports several hundred pages long.
Munich Startup: But that's been around for a long time!
Confucius: Konfuzio processes documents regardless of their layout. The manual creation and maintenance of rules, as was previously necessary, is completely eliminated. The Konfuzio algorithm learns independently to understand even previously unseen documents. This works with photos, scans, and digital documents.
Challenge: Win first customers
Munich Startup: What has been your biggest challenge so far?
Confucius: In the area of B2B software solutions, it's usually difficult to acquire the first customers. However, with Siemens, various subsidiaries of WWK Versicherungen, a large real estate fund in Frankfurt, a bank in Munich, and various medium-sized companies, we have demonstrated that we can bring modern technologies into everyday use for both large corporations and German SMEs.
Munich Startup: Let’s get to the point: How is business going?
Confucius: We have a mid-double-digit number of paying customers from the insurance and finance industries. We have continuously invested our profits since our founding in 2016.
In good hands in the “insurance capital” of Europe
Munich Startup: What does Munich mean to you?
Confucius: Munich, as the "insurance capital" of Europe, offers us direct access to one of our largest customer groups. The Insurtech Hub Munich, in particular, has enabled us to connect with the right contacts at (almost) all major German insurers. Through our participation in the DIA (Digital Insurance Agenda) Conference, we were also able to reach insurance companies abroad from Munich. Programs such as Xpreneurs the UnternehmerTUM and offers of the LMU Entrepreneurship Centers helped us make the right decisions in the early stages of our founding and establish contacts with other founders.
Munich Startup: How can your startup become the next unicorn? Or will we see you soon at Epic Fail Night?
Confucius: The potential offered by AI-supported access to unstructured data for insurance and financial service providers is enormous. For example, transferring the relevant key data of an eight-page document into an IT system costs €8 and results in an average of three transmission errors.
The learning process of the Konfuzio algorithm is not limited to specific languages or industries. We also expect that in an increasingly connected world, the amount of unstructured information being exchanged will continue to grow.
Munich Startup: Helles or Prosecco?
Confucius: Light.
