Aware of the challenges faced by small-scale farmers, he co-founded Pula to provide insurance products to people who need them but have never bought any. 

Thomas Njeru (photo) is a Kenyan entrepreneur and co-founder of insuretech Pula. He graduated from the University of Nairobi, in 2009, with a bachelor's of Actuarial science. In 2015, he got a chartered financial analyst degree from the Institute of Chartered Financial Analysts of India University. In 2018, he graduated from Strathmore Business School with a Master of Commerce. 

His insuretech, Pula, operates in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. It handles insurance product design, risk placement, farmer and herder training, and claims assessment. It offers three main products, namely Yield Index Insurance (YII), Hybrid Index Insurance, and Indexed Livestock Insurance (IBLI).

Its yield index insurance covers all yield-related risks. Among other things, it insures the value of purchased inputs in the event of low yield. Its hybrid index insurance is a combination of weather index insurance (WII) and yield index insurance (YII), offering farmers comprehensive coverage by maximizing the benefits of both insurance products.

The third product, indexed livestock insurance, is an asset insurance program that covers farmers when pasture is inadequate, often due to drought or delayed rainfall. Since 2015, Pula's products have impacted more than 6.7 million smallholder farmers. Thomas Njeru, the man who made that possible, entered the insurance world, in 2009, as an actuary at UAP-Old Mutual Insurance Group. In 2011, he joined Aon Hewitt as a consulting actuary. Then, in 2012, Deloitte South Africa hired him for the same position. About two years later, he was promoted to the position of director of actuary and coinsurance advisory. In 2019, the New York Times named him one of the global agriculture visionaries.

Melchior Koba