Manager - Consulting & Research

Position: Manager - Consulting & Research

Location: Nairobi, Kenya / Remote

Preferred start date: As soon as possible

About Pula:
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 12 countries across Africa and Asia, impacting 4.5 million farmers so far. In 2021 we are on track to double this number and achieve financial break-even.

Pula is fast-paced, constantly adapting to new opportunities and challenges. We are a high-performance, multi-cultural team. We expect our team to value performance, results and professionalism.

At Pula, we are:

1. Customer Obsessed**:** Pula’s insurance protects those who feed the world, and we are obsessed with delivering value to smallholder farmers as we build the systems that protect them against catastrophic risks together with global insurers, businesses and international NGOs.
2. Groundbreaking**:** We stretch the limits of what’s possible, bringing agricultural insurance to places where it has never been before.
3. In the trenches together: financially sustainable businesses for agriculture in Africa are tough to build and rare to achieve success, and so we have each others’ back as we build this new Africa.
4. Make it happen**:** We execute at a high level, even in complex circumstances and with tight seasonal deadlines, with the goal of building a sustainable and profitable enterprise

We have been funded by 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).

The Pula Manager - Consulting & Research

Pula is seeking an experienced consulting manager to build our insights into smallholder farmers. She/he must have a love for building partnerships across commercial and public sector, profits and nonprofits, probing into data, solving challenging problems, and structuring complex processes, while also being comfortable building a cutting-edge ag-tech startup.

She/he is expected to independently lead consulting engagements that leverage our trove of existing relationships, products, data and leverage the potential of new technologies, including remote sensing, with the goal of delivering tangible new consulting revenue and long term new commercial opportunities. Tasks will range from liaising with new research and corporate and philanthropic clients, to working with management and tech teams to ensure smooth delivery of research and insights, to visiting the field to understand the on-the-ground perspective, to synthesizing learnings from the business and clients, to contributing to the creation of new value-additive products for farmers, agribusiness, insurers, governments, mobile operators and their agent networks.

The Manager - consulting & research will report to the VP - Strategy & Research, and work in close collaboration with the partnerships, product, commercial, actuarial and operations teams.

A detailed job description for the position is as follows:

Independently lead consulting engagements with our clients that include governments, private sector companies and development agencies. Manage the whole consulting cycle from working with the commercial team to pitching for opportunities, developing proposals and managing a small team of analysts to deliver on the project. The nature of projects can be diverse ranging from advising governments on strategies for increasing agriculture insurance penetration to developing an agri-lending and insurance product for a regional bank to delivering capacity development programs for regulators and policymakers.

Lead our consulting and research projects partnering with our philanthropic and consulting partners that include the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Shell Foundation, MasterCard Foundation, KPMG, Bayer Foundation amongst others, working with a small team to deliver on the contracted deliverables.  You will lead discrete data analysis and research initiatives that help Pula better understand customer behavior as identified by these 3rd parties, for example: estimating impact of gender on insurance uptake in Kenya, Malawi and Zambia.

Lead and inform strategic decisions among management, product, operations, and commercial teams with data analysis based on millions of data points collected across 12 African countries. Work with our product and data teams to identify new products that can be developed and monetize Pula’s data, combining quantitative and qualitative research to understand customer behavior and uptake of key features. For example: undertaking surveys to assess customer demand for new product features and working with the product and commercial  team to ensure commercial insights are monetized.

The right applicant would have the following skillset:

• 7+ years management consulting experience, proven track record with a top tier consulting firm is a strong plus
• Extremely strong quantitative and data analytics skills, as well as report writing and presentation skills
• Skills and experience in working with diverse set of stakeholders and building strong relationships with clients
• Strong team management skills, ability to work with multi cultural and multi disciplinary teams to deliver to our clients
• Bachelor’s degree with an outstanding academic record in the area of economics, mathematics, finance or similar relevant field
• You have either experience or interest in working in rural farming contexts and are passionate about helping smallholder farmers build resilience
• You have the ability to translate complex and challenging concepts into detailed action plans
• You are willing to speak up independently when there is a problem to be solved
• You have the ability to professionally and respectfully dissent, and logically debate challenges
• You are fully comfortable with GSuite applications (Google Sheets, Google Docs, G-Slides, etc.) and are able to adapt to new systems easily (e.g., ClickUp, Slack, Jira, Metabase, CommCare)
• You are comfortable working in a dynamic, fast-paced environment and can manage multiple projects in parallel
• You are comfortable and willing to travel (30-40% of the time) to customer sites across Africa, Asia and Latin America

Benefits and compensation

Pula will offer a competitive remuneration package to the right candidate with benefits such as pension, health and life insurance as standard. For expatriate candidates we facilitate work permits.

To learn more about Pula:

• TED: Crop Insurance, an Idea Worth Seeding
• New York Times: He Grew up on a Farm. Now, He Helps Protect Them
• The Economist: The Poor, Who Most Need Insurance, Are Least Likely to Have It
• Capital: Pula Wins Insuretech of The Year

We accept applications on a rolling basis but recommend applying as soon as possible.

If interested, please send your resume to hr@pula.io