Houston entrepreneur has created a way to protect vehicles from devastating floods
Car safety
Floodwaters from Hurricane Harvey seriously damaged about 600,000 vehicles in the Houston area, driving millions upon millions of dollars in auto insurance claims. Rahel Abraham's 2008 Infiniti G35 was among them.
Rather than merely moving on from the hurricane, though, Abraham — drawing upon her experience as an engineer in Houston's petrochemical industry — invented something that she foresaw shielding cars from the economic wrath of flooding.
Now, Abraham's brainchild forms the backbone of her Houston-based startup, ClimaGuard LLC. The next several weeks promise to be momentous for the business — Abraham will enter the 12-week DivInc business accelerator program in Austin in late August, and the company's first product is set to hit the market in early September.
ClimaGuard's waterproof, temperature-resistant, portable Temporary Protective Enclosure (TPE) can entirely cover a compact car, sedan, or midsize SUV. It comes in three sizes; the cost ranges from $349 to $499.
To protect a vehicle, someone sets a TPE on the ground, a driveway, or another flat surface, then drives the vehicle onto the bottom part of the product, and connects the bottom and top parts with the zipper. Abraham likens it to a clamshell preserving a pearl.
Once the vehicle is inside the TPE, it can be anchored with straps to a sturdy fixture. It's designed to withstand up to three feet of water and keep the vehicle from floating away.
One person can set up a TPE in less than five minutes, Abraham says.
She hopes to team up with auto insurers to offer discounts for policyholders that have a TPE. This, Abraham says, would spur more people to buy the product.
"My goal is not to make it to where it's an exclusive product — available only to those who can afford it — but I want to be able to help those who it would make even more of an economic impact for," Abraham says.
Among potential customers for the TPE are car owners, homeowners, small businesses, first-responder organizations, and nonprofit agencies, Abraham says. Other than vehicles, the product could protect valuables like antique pianos and restaurant gear, according to Abraham.
The sense of "helplessness and vulnerability" Abraham felt after her car was lost in Hurricane Harvey propelled her to devise ClimaGuard's TPE, she says, so that others might avoid enduring the sort of "stressful and traumatic" ordeal that she did.
Another catalyst: After hatching the idea for the TPE, Abraham learned that more than 41 million Americans live in federally designated flood zones, and that flooding is the costliest type of natural disaster in the U.S. and is forecast to occur more frequently. That research "validated my gut feeling," she says.
Abraham, a first-time entrepreneur, founded the bootstrapped startup in 2018, just a year after Harvey. Today, she's the only full-time employee of ClimaGuard. She holds a bachelor's in chemical engineering from the University of Texas at Austin and a master's degree in environmental engineering from the University of Houston.
Abraham says she hopes participating in the 12-week DivInc accelerator program in Austin will broaden her business network and hone her marketing skills. ClimaGuard was among 13 companies selected for this fall's DivInc group, which is sponsored by JPMorgan Chase.
DivInc aims to diversify the startup environment by offering workshops, mentoring, and business-strategy assistance to underrepresented entrepreneurs — people of color and women. The Austin-based nonprofit organization chooses participants through an application process that its program director, Brooke Turner, describes as being "extremely competitive" this year.
"It's tough being a developer or entrepreneur when no one looks like you when you walk into a room of other developers or entrepreneurs," DivInc co-founder Ashley Jennings told Crunchbase in 2017. "How can they feel that they fit in? So what we have now is an opportunity to create role models with this generation."