Investment Associate

Title: Investment Associate 

Location: Remote within ±3 hours of the EAT time zone. Preference for candidates located in Africa/ in countries where Pula has an office (e.g. Kenya, Ethiopia, Uganda).

Reports to: President & Co-Founder

About Pula Xcelerator: 

The Pula Xcelerator functions as Pula’s internal M&A and strategic investment arm, responsible for sourcing, evaluating, and supporting high-potential businesses that align with Pula’s long-term growth strategy.
It’s a platform designed to fast-track the growth of high-potential, capital-light businesses across Africa. Building on Pula’s decade of experience in delivering innovative insurance and data solutions to millions of smallholder farmers, the Xcelerator extends this impact by enabling selected companies to scale through our established distribution, data, and partnership networks.
The Xcelerator supports enterprises generating at least $500K in annual revenue and operating in agriculture, insurance, financial services, or technology. Through structured acceleration, market access, funding pathways, and hands-on operational support, the
Xcelerator helps ambitious teams turn proven solutions into continent-wide scale.
By joining the Xcelerator, companies gain access to Pula’s unrivalled ecosystem, spanning governments, agribusinesses, insurers, and global development partners, and become part of a platform built to solve Africa’s most pressing agricultural and climate resilience challenges.

About the role:
This role is designed for someone who wants to help build a function that is still taking shape. You will be at the heart of the Xcelerator’s work: analysing businesses, testing assumptions, working through the numbers, and creating the internal systems that will eventually define how the programme runs.
What matters most is the skillset you bring: the ability to understand how businesses work, confidence working with financial information, and a practical, opportunity-driven way of thinking. You should have the discipline to handle detail, the appetite to shape new processes and take responsibility from early on.

What you'll do:

• Lead end-to-end commercial and financial evaluation of prospective Xcelerator companies, including deep-dive analysis of revenue models, unit economics, cost structures, and growth assumptions.
• Conduct hands-on due diligence across financials, operations, and business fundamentals, similar to internal M&A or private equity processes.
• Engage directly with founders and senior management teams to test assumptions, challenge narratives, and assess management capability.
• Independently reconstruct and normalise P&Ls and balance sheets, often from incomplete or inconsistent information.
• Prepare investment-style internal memos and recommendations that support go/no-go decisions at senior leadership level.
• Operate as a lean execution lead, personally driving analysis and outputs rather than delegating work to a team.
• Engage directly with founders and senior management teams to test assumptions, challenge narratives, and assess management capability.
  

What we're looking for:

• 5 - 7 years’ work experience.
• Strong commercial background in private equity, corporate M&A, transaction advisory, or strategic finance.
• Solid finance and accounting foundation, supported by formal education or professional qualifications (e.g. Finance, Accounting, Economics, CFA, ACA, ACCA or similar).
• Experience working in or closely with an internal M&A, investments, or corporate development team is highly desirable.
• Advanced ability to interpret, rebuild, and interrogate financial statements rather than relying on polished management reports.
• Comfortable acting as both analyst and deal lead, from first conversation through to recommendation.
• Experience operating in small, high-trust teams where individual ownership is critical and delegation is minimal.

Personal attributes:

• Stamina to work through complex or detailed tasks.
• Curious, commercially aware, and quick to learn.
• Trustworthy and careful with sensitive information.
• Comfortable with uncertainty and able to create structure where needed.
• Clear thinker who can explain reasoning and insights without jargon.

If you are currently part of Pula or have previously worked within the organisation, we welcome your application. Familiarity with our mission, markets, or operational realities is an advantage but not a requirement.