Operations Manager - D2C eCommerce Startup

About Merito :

Merito is a curated talent platform where we identify, assess, and connect candidates for matching job opportunities. We are working with the mission to change the way hiring is done. The company is founded by a team consisting of alumni from IIM Ahmedabad, McKinsey with more than 2 decades of experience in recruitment, training, and coaching.

About our Client :

Our client is an Indian retail conglomerate which is setting up a tech driven brand co-creation platform that transforms powerful ideas into authentic, profitable and experience-led brands that will define the future of brands in fashion, beauty, food and home decor space.

Role: Operations Manager

This opportunity is for new brands that are in stealth mode & backed by major retail giant.

It's a house of Personal care D2C brands in the space of haircare, skin care & kids personal care.

In 2020, CoVid 19 affected every business, few positively and many negatively. However, E- commerce adoption has gone through the roof and we have seen consumer's e-commerce spends grow. India's fast-growing e-commerce market is seen growing by 30 percent a year to $200 billion (roughly Rs. 14,68,640 core) by 2026.

On the back of strong product-market fit and a change in human behaviour due to CoVid that buoyed e-commerce, we are currently building D2C personal care brands. The overall D2C market in India is expected to reach $100 billion in the next 7-8 years. We will be building a digital first content led approach to target this community of consumers. We aim to win shoppers at the moment of purchase by algorithmically managing demand forecasting, promotions and advertising spend, supply chain, content optimization and other aspects that help shoppers make online purchase decisions, all backed by Data Science.

As the Operations Manager, you will be part of the founding team setting up the processes, tools and communication that will ensure that every product launched has an enormous impact on the customers and the market.

Responsibilities:

- Lead research for new product development. Analysis of user research, usability studies, data-driven experiments and customer interviews to identify new product opportunities and product strategy.

- Brainstorming with cross-functional teams to rapidly ideate, prototype and iterate on the product need that appeal changing consumer behavior.

- Research Market trends and Conduct Competitive analysis & price parity

- Manage Strategic sourcing (imports & local) & procurement for the product creation. Assess production costs and initiate cost improvement projects based on strategic sourcing - Imports and customized packaging in line with brand story

- Identify and Conduct Vendor assessment & finalization. Create standards & processes for maintaining QC

- Sales forecasting: Monthly monitoring of budgeting, ROI, cost forecast to actuals burn rate, Forecasting on scalability for projects

- Set up omni channel sales network & Optimizing marketplace performances

- Manage marketplace listings through the cataloguing team

- Manage and control all aspects of stock management of the brand, ensuring adherence to procedures and guide the team towards achieving targeted stock levels and minimizing shrinkage.

- Periodic ageing analysis, clearance of non-moving stock and initiate markdowns.

- Determining additional needed sales promotion & recommending clearance sales.

- Process improvement to ensure a high delivery of service standards by automating processes and procedures. Build governance mechanisms to ensure process compliance

- Collect qualitative and quantitative data from within and outside from product prototyping/experiments, product usage, customer feedback, feature requests, and support tickets as well as data from sales, marketing, and finance.

- Drive overall customer product experience - setup and improve key processes across customer order to fulfilment journey up to the last mile delivery

- Own and drive key efficiency KPIs - Inventory Days, Delivery TATs, Returns, Fulfillment cost and customer NPS

The ideal candidate will have :

- An MBA from a top tier B School who has in it to help raise the bar and hustle to build new business

- At least 3-5 years work experience in supply chain & operations preferably in digital/e-commerce startups

- Experience in working with multi-functional teams

- Experience in D2C brands is preferred

- Intermediate level of proficiency with MS Project, Excel, Visio, PowerPoint, SharePoint, Jira with experience presenting to stakeholders and / or senior leadership.

- Ability to analyse customer/market data, and your understanding of customers to effectively drive the execution of our roadmap

Competencies:

- Comes with a brand led thinking along with sales orientation

- Have good analytical skills

- Good listener, able to respond to results and consumer research

- Ability to work well with multiple teams

- Ability to manage different projects at the same time

- Understanding & appreciation of the new age consumer's needs