What we cover in this edition

• Why did Thomas & Rose take on agricultural insurance?

• How did Pula win their first customer & investor?

• What issues did Pula overcome at Seed?

• How did Thomas define Pula's culture at Series A?

• What does the future look like for Pula after Series B?

• What roles are Pula currently hiring for?

Founding Pula: How Thomas Njeru decided to take on agricultural insurance

The early days: After spending weekends and holidays working up on his family’s farm in Kenya, Thomas Njeru observed the devastating impacts of systemic shocks like droughts on his family and economies dependent on rain-fed agriculture.  Smallholder farmers can lose up to 90% of their crop income during severe droughts if they are not protected by insurance (MDPI) (BioMed Central)

Finding the whitespace:  While studying actuarial science and working in the insurance industry for several years, Thomas realised traditional insurance models were not feasible for smallholder farmers due to high upfront costs driven by physical asset assessments and low premium-generating opportunities. For example, traditional models required physical visits to assess farms, which was costly and time-consuming, making it impractical for small plots often worth less than the cost of the assessment itself. Additionally, low premiums from smallholder farmers did not justify the operational costs involved for insurance companies. The existing approach by incumbents presented a clear mismatch between farmer requirements and existing insurance solutions copied from Western models, which were designed for large-scale farming operations.

This led to Thomas and co-founder Rose Goslinga founding Pula, which is bridging this critical gap by providing suitable insurance products for smallholder farmers, who represent ~80% of farmers in Africa today (AGRA) and contribute to ~90% of food production in some countries (World Bank).

Pula’s core product is the Area Yield Index Insurance (AYII), which insures crops based on the average historical yield in a specified area, using field data to assess actual yields and trigger payouts when average yields fall below a threshold. It covers any type of risk including weather, pests, floods, etc. Pula also offers hybrid AYII/weather index insurance products, as well as livestock insurance, disaster risk financing and insurance to cover incidents of human wildlife conflict.

Meeting Rose: Thomas met his co-founder, Rose in 2009 when she was working for the Syngenta Foundation. They collaborated on an agricultural insurance project, which, despite initially experiencing challenges, laid the foundation for their partnership. While they went their separate ways, Thomas to Deloitte, and Rose at Syngenta, a shared passion for providing smallholder farmers financial stability ensured that the pair stayed in touch. The two formally launched the business in 2015. For Thomas, Pula was a side hustle until 2018.

Leaving a Big Four job for uncharted waters: Transitioning from a professional services background at Deloitte to founding Pula was driven by Thomas’s desire for deeper personal fulfilment and broader impact in his community. At Deloitte, while at the peak of his consulting career he faced the decision to become an equity partner. This presented a clear turning point for Thomas:

Feeling the push towards deeper meaning, Thomas put the consulting skills and competencies he had gained at Deloitte to use  in solving the agricultural insurance problem, especially:

• First principles thinking was key when building a brand new insurance offering for smallholder farmers - “We were not just copy pasting another car insurance model, what Pula offers has never existed before”

• Sales as a director at Deloitte forced Thomas to step beyond his comfort zone and become a true salesman - “Sales is one of the most important skills I learnt at Deloitte -  we are selling to clients and employees to come and join our mission”  

Their Firsts!

First investor 

Initially, Pula was bootstrapped until they found the product-market fit required to raise outside capital. Once that was clear, they leveraged their expertise and existing relationships in the insurance and agricultural sectors to attract investors, and had term sheets from their seed investors even before doing Pula full-time  

First customer

Pula targeted customers who were already collecting yield data for other purposes (e.g., impact assessment for farmers) and offered to structure insurance solutions using that data. This reduced the initial costs and made it easier to onboard the first customers. This approach was key for Pula as going after customers that were open to more favourable contract payment plan structuring allowed them to bootstrap for much longer than initially anticipated. 

Building the foundation: raising a $1.8m Seed round to demonstrate scalability

At the seed stage, Pula wrote less than $1m in premiums and served around 500,000 farmers with 24 employees. While investors believed in the vision and the market, they remained focussed on Pula proving out how scalable their technology truly is. 

The technology was still rudimentary, and Pula needed to show investors a clear path to scale its product across both (i) more geographies (Asia, Latin America) and (ii) new & innovative insurance products, with a relatively low marginal cost. 

Automating everything. Pula’s pre-seed processes were initially highly dependent on constant human input, resulting in significant lead times to deploy products. Thomas was set on automating as much as possible to make Pula a technology-first business. For instance, the company initially ran all analytics on manual spreadsheets, resulting in a wait of several days to test complex scenarios. This wasn’t a viable solution for the future. Pula continues to iterate its products to date.

Hiring the best talent. Finding talent to help the business scale became Thomas’ number one priority during this stage - as new hires across Go-To-Market/Sales, and engineering became the key unlock. 

Picking up speed: beginning the Asian expansion through a $6m Series A 

At the Series A stage, Pula grew to c. $13m in premiums and served around 1.6m farmers with 47 employees. Stakeholders increasingly became  more focussed now on the more technical KPIs, like loss ratio (claims to premiums) and client renewal rate, both of which Pula excelled in. 

Defining Pula’s Culture. Once Pula raised their Series A round  they found themselves aggressively expanding the team. However, this time the challenge was one step down the road, as they not only had to hire people who they believed would be good fits at Pula, but also someone who would be able to identify another good fit at Pula.

The team’s approach was clear: define Pula’s culture as simply and transparently as possible. This meant not only aligning the entire team on singular goals, but also making sure those goals were measured in similar ways: 

Creating operational independence. As the business scaled, it became integral for Thomas and Rose to hand over as much of operations to staff vs owning it themselves.

Pivoting the business model. Initially they operated a B2B2C model, which sold into businesses that sold products to farmers (their end customers). However, this wasn’t a profitable model given Pula lost 30-40% of revenue to the intermediary. Instead, Pula now goes for a B2G (Business to Government) model, which saves them the time of onboarding single asset level farmers and given that government organisations already have a financial relationship with the farmer (through subsidies, grants etc), they can expand that relationship into insurance relatively easily.

Looking forward: enabling global scale through a $20m+ Series B

Pula has remained true to the initial vision and the product – delivering easily accessible insurance to smallholder farmers. What changed drastically during this time was mainly how they delivered this product (their go-to-market), specifically the agents, commercial systems & teams that would get this product to the farmers.

Looking ahead from Pula’s $20m Series B, success is measured by: 

Reaching over 100 million farmers, optimising technology to reduce payout times, and setting up an insurance company to participate in risk management.

Expanding product offerings, such as human-wildlife conflict cover, by leveraging existing capabilities in fieldwork and insurance.

Scaling the team effectively, Pula aims to refine the recruitment process by making key hires in sales and technology, whilst maintaining the balance between front and back office.

In a competitive landscape that requires continuous innovation, Pula aims to leverage its strong relationships and proven track record to maintain its market position. The path forward is defined by a commitment to solving the insurance gap for smallholder farmers, optimizing internal processes, and sustaining growth in revenue and impact.

💼 Work at Pula!

If you are interested in working at Pula (https://www.pula-advisors.com/), please reach out to [email protected] if you are interested in any of the roles below: