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Our pilot with Pula revealed that most data sets in the countries where Pula works still focus on larger farm sizes, not the very small farms of poorer, vulnerable farmers, which reduces variation in the model. Additionally, if yield data are not available for a long period or across climatic regions, the predictability of the model is further reduced. This innovation holds tremendous promise for inclusion but will need space for experimentation to perfect.

Lumkani, a Johannesburg-based startup that leverages proprietary hardware and a tech-enabled agent network to provide customers living in informal settlements within South Africa with insurance products that protect against loss of life, shelter, and assets in the case of a home fire. Lumkani, which means ‘be careful’ in Xhosa, originally began as a hardware company, deploying its first fire detector in late 2014. Within the first 18 months, they were able to prove that their technology “in 73 percent of cases was able to reduce the spreading of fires [beyond] the first home.” But it was not enough just to alert the community and stop the spreading of fires.

Destructive fires are a regular, and potentially devastating, occurrence for the approximately 10 million South Africans that live in informal settlement communities. These townships are particularly susceptible to the threat of fires due to the use of flammable building materials, the ubiquity of open flame fires, limited space between dwellings, and a lack of road infrastructure for adequate emergency response.

At Pula, we are radically restructuring agricultural insurance, using technology to insure the previously unbanked, uninsured, untapped market of 1.5 billion smallholders worldwide. We work in nine countries across Africa and Asia, and in 2017 alone, we facilitated crop and livestock insurance cover to 611,000 farmers in Kenya, Rwanda, Uganda, Nigeria, Ethiopia and Malawi.

Pula uses satellite data and farm yield measurements to understand how weather patterns affect a smallholder farmer’s yield, and uses this information to automate compensation in case of loss. The company also provides farmers with targeted agronomic advice via SMS messaging, helping them grow more from their existing landholdings.

Insurtech startup Pula announced today that it has closed a seed funding round to advance its efforts to provide insurance to smallholder farmers in Africa and South Asia.

Bismart is a Kenya-based insurance aggregator, allowing its users to compare and buy various insurance products from multiple companies. The business was started in 2017. Founder Eunice Maina answers our questions.1. Give us your elevator pitch.Bismart is an online insurance marketplace where insurance firms list their products and customers are able to compare the policies. We recently introduced a feature that allows our users to compare policies based on other customers’ reviews – similar to what hotel booking platforms offer. We bring much-needed transparency to the insurance industry, which increases insurance literacy and awareness, especially for the youth. The insurance companies pay us a commission for every customer who buys through the Bismart platform.

The Mastercard Foundation Fund for Rural Prosperity (FRP) is investing $2.8 million in three companies from Burundi, Malawi, and Uganda to support projects that expand financial inclusion in rural Africa.

The three companies, Prothem Usine, Pula Advisors, and Enviu BV, were selected from among 195 firms that submitted applications to the third phase of the Fund’s 2017/2018 rolling competition. This competition is an effort to find and support scalable financial products and services for rural areas of Africa.

Pula is at the center of an ecosystem that provides insurance to smallholder farmers and has amassed 50 insurance partners and six reinsurance partners. Its clientele includes the likes of the World Food Programme and Central Bank of Nigeria, as well as the Zambian and Kenyan governments among others.