LOCO BEAR

Job Description:

R&D Manager / Senior Manager

Department:

Research & Development

Location:

Bengaluru, India (HQ) with travel to centres and market visits

Employment Type:

Full-time

Role Summary:

The R&D Manager / Senior Manager will drive Loco Bear's research and insights function, with a sharp focus on market research, product research, and competitive analysis. This role exists to keep the organisation ahead of the curve tracking what's happening across the industry globally, decoding emerging trends, benchmarking competitors, and translating findings into actionable input for product, business, and leadership decisions. The ideal candidate is equal parts researcher, strategist, and storyteller: someone who can dig into data and the field, and then distill it into insight that changes how the business thinks and builds.

Key Responsibilities:

Market Research & Global Trend Tracking:

- Continuously track global trends in the industry new formats, emerging markets, consumer behaviour shifts, and category innovations from India and abroad.

- Build a structured process (reports, dashboards) to keep leadership updated on "what's happening across the globe" relevant to the business.

- Conduct primary and secondary market research to identify white spaces, growth opportunities, and emerging customer needs.

- Track macro factors economic, demographic, and regulatory that could impact the business or category.

Product Research & Innovation:

- Lead research to inform new product/format development, from concept validation to pilot feedback.

- Partner closely with product, operations, and marketing teams to translate research findings into product roadmaps and business cases.

- Run structured customer research surveys, focus groups, interviews, on-ground observation to test ideas before they scale.

- Evaluate new technologies, tools, and operating models that could be adopted or piloted.

Competitive Analysis:

- Own ongoing competitive intelligence direct and indirect competitors, both domestic and international covering positioning, pricing, offerings, and expansion moves.

- Build and maintain a competitive benchmarking framework (formats, experience, pricing, geography, growth strategy).

- Deliver periodic competitive landscape reports and flag emerging threats or opportunities early.

- Conduct mystery visits / experience audits of competitor properties where relevant, and translate findings into recommendations.

Project Execution & Cross-Functional Coordination:

- Identify, search, and evaluate product suppliers/vendors relevant to new concepts covering pricing benchmarking and quality checks before onboarding.

- Coordinate with architects to translate research and concept ideas into overall design and drawings.

- Coordinate with the PMC (Project Management Consultant) and drive execution of the project through to completion.

- Coordinate with the Operations team to ensure the best possible operating mechanism is built into the new concept/format.

- Observe the initial on-ground activation closely to check progress against plan, troubleshoot early issues, and then formally hand over to the Operations team once stable.

Insight-to-Action & Stakeholder Management:

- Present research and insights to leadership in a clear, decision-ready format not just data, but recommendations.

- Work cross-functionally with business, product, marketing, and operations to embed research into planning cycles.

- Build and mentor a small research team as the function scales; manage external research vendors/agencies where needed.

- Own the R&D budget, research calendar, and prioritisation of research projects against business impact.