COLUMBUS, Ohio — Car insurance? Check. Home insurance? Check check. Space Travel Insurance? Yes, you can now check that too.
“The travel insurance industry should be at the forefront of developing products,” says Sasha Gainullin, co-founder and CEO of battleface, Inc, which launched the first of its kind civilian space travel insurance plan. “For example, just to get to a space station, say the launch is in Kazakhstan, you still need insurance to get there.”
Gainullin says his company started battleface by insuring people traveling to unconventional and remote parts of the world that perhaps weren’t covered or serviced by traditional insurance policies.
The mission of battleface is to design insurance plans based on the customer’s unique interests like cliff diving, COVID-19 protection, or in this case, space tourism.
“Essentially create travel insurance products that are relevant to today’s travelers,” says Gainullin who recently relocated his company to the Columbus-area after a multi-million-dollar investment from Drive Capital, LLC, a venture capital and private equity firm for the Midwest based in Columbus.
“Space tourism is just an extension [of today’s travelers] because many travelers are going based on experiences, not based on commodity travels,” Gainullin explains further. “We see travelers going to India to learn how to cook or travel to Argentina to learn how to tango and space tourism is just an extension of that desire.”
There are projections that the space tourism industry will grow to a $1 trillion value by 2024. That is less than three years away, not light years.
And with interest growing following the trips to space by billionaires Richard Branson and Jeff Bezos, the momentum is now.
According to a company press release, a typical space travel insurance policy will cover accidental death and permanent disablement.
It is valid for any of the space flights operated by Tesla Founder Elon Musk’s SpaceX, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin, Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic, and high-tech balloon manufacturers Space Perspective among others.
Gainullin says he is positioning his company to be at the forefront of the next frontier. He says battleface is not your traditional one-size-fits-all policy approach of the more traditional insurers who offer the same policy regardless of whether you are flying to the next state or another country.
“With technology and the way data science works, and our knowledge of how customers are, we should be in the business of custom-building products for you on the go, based on your needs as a traveler,” Gainullin said.