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Pula says it provides farmers with insurance bundled with inputs (such as seeds and fertiliser) and farmer advisory services to help increase their yields and boost (and protect) their income. “In our five years since launching, we’ve built strong traction for our products. However, the fact remains that across Africa and other emerging markets, there are still millions of smallholder farmers with risks to their livelihoods that have not been covered,” says Goslinga. Insurance is unpopular in Africa, with the continent’s insurance penetration estimated to be 2.8% in 2017. Insurance penetration is particularly low in the agricultural sector, and convincing farmers to buy insurance during favourable seasons is difficult.

Pula, a five-year old insurtech startup, provides small scale farmers with agricultural insurance to help manage the risk of enduring extreme conditions. Insurtech is one of the fast-growing sub-sectors of the fintech, which has booming with investors in African startups.

Pula will also be expanding to Asia, targeting smallholder farmers as it has in Africa, with a focus on Philippines, Thailand, Turkey, and Pakistan. “What we’ve realized is that African solutions are in no way inferior to Asian, European solutions

Since it was founded in 2015, Pula has impacted 4.3 million farmers across 13 African markets. Goslinga says key to Pula’s business model is helps insurance companies better understand the risks of small scale farming.With an average premium subscription of $4 for small-scale farmers in Africa, Pula actually markets the insurance product to banking partners rather than directly to farmers. The banks make the insurance mandatory before they approve loans to the farmers.

The company was recognized for successfully managing over 4.3 million smallholder farmers through their Area Risk Index and yield insurance product. It provides insurance services and digital solutions to farmers in Africa. The company uses the crop cut experiment as a claim assessment procedure. This assessment relies heavily on ground crop cuts and it’s fed on mobile apps which relay instant feedback to clients. 

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.