Chief Operating Officer - IT

An Overview of Chief Operations Officer role:

The Client is looking for a Chief Operations Officer COO to set up and build the business into a commercially profitable enterprise with at least 1 million users over 5 years.

The ideal COO would be able to define short/medium- and long-term strategic direction while also working hands on to get things done. S/he will work closely with the founder and under the guidance of a coach (if necessary).

The primary role of the COO will be to set up Client's application as a functioning and profitable business, to build a structure and systems that will allow Client's application to replicate itself across India and elsewhere, and thereby drive impact for the deaf community by enabling a seamless interpretation solution.

An ideal applicant:

- Should have an IT project management background or experience in taking an IT start-up to scale. In addition, S/he should have at least two of the following technical skills or experience:

- Specifying, testing, adapting, managing the deployment of a B2C IT solution

- Experience of delivering consumer facing IT solutions at scale

- Managing the technical component of a commercially run enterprise geared to creating social impact such as education, healthcare etc.

Our client's ideal profile should be a person who has the following qualities:

- An ideal candidate would have a management/COO/co-founder background or experience in taking an IT start-up to scale. In addition, they should have at least one of the following technical skills or experience:

- Specifying, testing, adapting, managing the deployment of a B2C IT solution

- Managing Call centre operations for client servicing

- Managing a commercially run enterprise geared to creating social impact such as education, healthcare etc.

- An ideal profile would be a person who has the following qualities:

- A person motivated by the need to create impact in society and has a vision beyond the workplace.

- The person should have experience of building teams, driving growth and scale, while maintaining values, standards and engagement.

- Good communication skills to present the organisation effectively internally, to the deaf community, the government, investors and potential corporate clients.

- Someone who is flexible, adaptable and forward looking, and can juggle and complete projects simultaneously

- An understanding of the social sector, of the need for inclusion, preferably with some direct experience

- A person who has experience of working in diverse work cultures (India as well abroad) and is happy to learn ISL.

- This position will be for 1-3 years, extendable, starting as soon as possible.

- The Client team will be open to negotiate salary, equity, against deliverables with the successful candidate.

- Reporting to Founder and Client's board/ advisory team.

 Reportees :

- Deaf Operations (QA)

- Customer Operations

- Admin/ Finance / Accounts

- Project Manager (shared resource)

- Data scientist (shared resource)

Key responsibilities of the COO include:

A. Organizational Strategy & Process

- Work closely with CEO/Co-Founder to define key organizational processes including team and individual goal setting, project roadmaps, performance evaluations and training.

- Partnering with CTO on the spec development, testing and deployment of the client's app.

- Leading the creation and implementation of standardized processes for internal/external user testing, feedback and new feature recommendations.

- Collaborating with the Marketing team to enhance deaf and hearing community engagement to drive usage, referrals and customer signups.

Deliverables:

- To drive the process of scaling up across the organisation including the interpretation service, technology integration, and customer satisfaction to reach 40,000 B2C and 5-100 B2B/G enterprise clients

B. Operations

- To champion inclusion and ownership by the deaf community, their participation and goodwill towards the VRS solution provided by Client's app.

- Set up and manage key personnel, resources and infrastructure with support from founder/ coach to make client's app an operational business including:

1. To drive recruitment, training, management, onboarding and service quality of at least 200 Sign Language interpreters for both B2C and B2B channels

2. Setting up of a physical and a virtual call centre for interpreters as appropriate; to ensure that quality, ethical, interpretation, user experience standards are set and adhered to in at least 7 states in India; to attract and sustain large numbers of people into sign language interpretation as a career.

3. Setting up an office and basic internal systems for effective management of operations, personnel, external partnerships, training etc.

Deliverables:

- Putting into place the team, technical capability, systems and interpretation service to supply Sign Language interpretation for over 100,000 deaf users in 2 years.

C. Governance and Strategy

- Make client's app investment ready by completing the requirements of registration, setting up protocols for governance, an advisory team, and putting in place an appropriate shareholding structure with support from legal and accounting firms.

- Build a realistic operational and financial plan for the future based on interaction with the founder and other key stakeholders to present for the management and board for approval within 3 months.

- To support the founder and the governance team to raise sufficient investment to allow organisation to deliver a quality service and deliver potential scale in India and elsewhere.

Deliverables:

- An operational plan and budget for the deployment of the VRS solution by the client, support in fund-raising, and management and agenda of initial governance and advisory team meetings.

D. Profitability and Impact

- To make Client's app into the go to interpretation solution for deaf sign language users in that it delivers Sign Language interpretation effectively, becomes an important part of a deaf person's daily life, and is engaging to them, their families, colleagues and others.

- To build a robust business model that returns an adequate profit to sustain its usage for poor users and turn the business into a company with a stable and growing market.

Deliverables:

- To integrate the use of Client's app into the daily pattern of lives of deaf people, while ensuring that efficiencies and systems ensure a 25% profitability on an annual revenue of Rs.10 crores