About Pula
We are an insuretech firm that provides agriculture insurance design and execution services, specialising in index based insurance and are backed by top tier VC investors who have invested more than $25 million in the business. Since 2015 we have provided climate insurance to 15.4 million smallholder farmers, 41% of which were women across 19 markets in Africa and Asia who pay an average of $6.8 per season to insure their crops. So far we’ve unlocked over $2.22 billion of capital from local and international insurance markets for climate risks since we started in 2015 and paid out $40.8 million to our client farmers.
Pula is a fast-paced space, constantly adapting to new opportunities and challenges and we are made up of a high-performance, multi-cultural team. We expect our team to value performance, results and professionalism.
At Pula, our values are:
- Obsessed with results: We are responsible for our future and therefore we get things done!
- Connect the Dots: We continuously identify different customer needs & business problems and build solutions that deliver value.
- Have a Can do Attitude! We dare to do things differently to make things work.
- We have each others’ back: We look out for each other & we share high quality, timely feedback that makes us better.
According to the UN’s InterGovernmental Panel for Climate Change more than 3.3 billion people globally live in hotspots with high vulnerability to climate change and are now already feeling the impact of climate change through increased temperatures and increasingly erratic rainfall.
Insurance is a tool for vulnerable households in these affected regions to adapt to the effects that climate change is already having today on these households. It is a tool that enables for compensation payment for losses and damages that these households had no part in causing. Insurance compensation enables these households to make adjustments to their day to day livelihoods and practices and therefore allows for an equitable and just transition.
At Pula, we are building the systems that enable farmers worldwide to access insurance, using technology to insure this previously uninsured worldwide. We work in over 17 countries across Africa and Asia, and by 2021, have facilitated crop insurance cover to over 6 million farmers, 30% of which are women, across Kenya, India, Nepal, Pakistan, Rwanda, Uganda, Nigeria, Mali, Senegal, Zambia, Ethiopia, Madagascar, Tanzania, Mozambique and Malawi. We are a for profit, and have raised over $10 million from leading venture and institutional investors as well as developed philanthropic relationships with private foundations and bilateral donors such as the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and German Insure Resilience Solutions Fund that have accelerated investments in our target markets.
Pula is proudly fast paced, constantly learning from the challenges we face and overcome. We are proudly culturally diverse but united in our ambition of continuous high-performance. By challenging ourselves we believe that we can overcome the hard problems we love solving.
At Pula, our culture is defined by our:
1.Obsessed with results: We are responsible for our future and therefore we get things done!
2. Ability to connect the Dots: We continuously identify different customer needs & business problems and build solutions that deliver value.
3. Our Can do Attitude! We dare to do things differently to make things work.
4. Ability to have each others’ back: We look out for each other & we share high quality, timely feedback that makes us better.
Overall Objective:
- This is a new role and you will be given the responsibility and freedom to build our communications strategy for our national and international partners across platforms and media.
- You will be given the pen to shape our language, develop the look and feel of our company, collaborating closely with every business unit and external stakeholders to ensure the timely, successful, and high-quality publication and amplification of our initiatives in the right fora.
- You will raise to profile of Pula to be recognized as a global brand Insuretech, comparable to brands such as Lemonade, Descartes and Wefox and comparable to established national and international insurers such as Old Mutual, Allianz and Axa.
Key Responsibilities:
- Develop and implement the company communications strategy, including annual reports, social media campaigns, impact materials for partners, op-eds and development of a conference agenda of key industry events for key staff.
- Develop and write original content and direct creative execution to provide a consistent, targeted, and impactful message across all communication channels.
- Organize and -where relevant- accompany key partner field visits, organize and publicize payout events, organize roundtables and support the communications aspects of any workshops of our different departments where needed.
- Upgrade and update the Pula website as well as manage and grow Pula’s social media accounts (Twitter/X, LinkedIn, amongst others )
- Oversee and direct the work of external designers, photographers, and other media-production specialists to ensure the production of compelling and effective communication materials.
- You will report to the President of Pula.
Required Skills:
- Amazing written and visual communication skills built over the last 5-10 years as an in-house communication, marketing or other relevant role or working for an external dedicated marketing/ PR agency.
- You have a proven ability to communicate ideas across formal platforms (e.g. op-ed, briefs, and presentations) and informal platforms (e.g. social media) and have the work samples to show for it.
- You are as comfortable writing a piece from scratch as editing a piece developed by a technical colleague.
- You are comfortable developing quick designs yourself as well as working with designers for larger deliverables and have a portfolio of work to prove it.
- You have a religious dedication to deadlines and are not bashful about chasing down your deliverables from others to ensure your news doesn’t get ‘stale’.
- You are comfortable getting a quote from the minister of agriculture, and have a pair of boots ready to get into the farm.
- You are tenacious and resilient. You are able to be politely persistent to get that quote from the Minister or get the right pictures from the photographer in Bangladesh who you have never met in person.
- Pula is a remote-first company. It is critical to be self motivated and to have good time management
- Willing to travel up to 30% of the time to see our work in action so you can tell our stories based on your first hand knowledge.
With your application send us:
- Up to 2 pages of your best written work samples done to date -articles/ op-ed’s/ social media materials/ blogs
- 2 pages of your best visual materials – social media, meme’s, ppt/canva, flyers, conference materials
Please note that for your application no new material will be requested. Your material will be treated confidentially and will not be used for any other purpose but this interview. Nevertheless we cannot guarantee materials that covered under any company confidentiality and would trust you have enough material that you can find something that can be shared with 3rd Parties.
Our process:
Stage 1 The Culture Interview: Your complete applications will be reviewed and those shortlisted will be invited for a culture interview to understand if you have Pula DNA
Stage 2 The Technical Interview: Those that pass the culture interview will be invited to complete an assignment that will give you a good sense of what working at Pula is like. This way you will get to know if you like the job, and we get to know you. Those with completed assignments will be invited for a technical interview with the hiring manager.
Stage 3 The Panel Interview: Those that pass the technical interview will be interviewed by a panel of future colleagues who you will be working with at Pula so you can get to know your new colleagues and they can get to know you.
Stage 4 The Reference Check: as described 🙂
Stage 5 Offer: If you have gotten this far, you may clap for yourself- as you’ll receive an offer!
What Pula will bring to the table
- Growth potential: With an untapped market of 1.5 billion smallholders worldwide, on track to doubling the number of farmers insured in 2021 and Pula’s global leadership in Agriculture Insurance, our new staffers have a tremendous upside growth potential.
- Market Leader: Not only is the opportunity massive, but Pula is by far the market leader in it’s category with 11m farmers insured as of 2023.
- Solid: Pula has been funded by leading venture capital investors (Omidyar Network, ACCION, MercyCorps) and global philanthropic institutions (MasterCard Foundation, CGAP/World Bank as well as the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation). Pula closed a $6m series A funding in December 2020 in the right in the middle of the pandemic a clear testimony of the opportunity that Pula is going after.
- Respected: Winner of the Singapore FinTech Festival 2019, Winner of The InsureTech of the Award, Africa. Featured on TED talks, The New York Times, The Economist.
- Impact and creation: This is a high-impact role, that offers a unique opportunity to bring the company to the next level, whilst developing new strategies, approaches and ideas.
- Leadership: The founders & CEO foster a culture of transparency, respect, high performance, pragmatism, execution and personal development.
- Purpose: It is rare to find a professional opportunity that offers accelerated professional development and a life purpose. Pula is going through a second phase of accelerated growth that will naturally provide professional development, whilst contributing to the financial stability of small farmers in the emerging markets.
- Remuneration: Competitive base salary accordingly with seniority and experience, commission on closed sales and an employee share option plan that offers an attractive equity upside.
