Director - Growth

Own the entire growth engine for 20M+ users across 15+ regional languages - paid, creative, organic, and the acquisition product journey - with scope to go global soon. Build a growth machine that acquires quality subscribers at scale, not just spends media budget.

Location: Noida, STAGE HQ

Company: STAGE OTT

Reports to: CEO

What You Will Own (Non-Negotiable):

- This role owns growth of the business end-to-end - media, creative, organic, and the acquisition product surface that turns attention into paying subscribers. There is no separate Product function to hand this to. You decide what ships on the acquisition journey; Engineering builds it.

You are the final authority on:

- How STAGE spends its multi-million dollar acquisition budget across Meta, Google, and every other acquisition channel - including paid re-engagement ads that bring users back through social media.

- What "quality" acquisition means - cohorts that return to watch and renew, not cheap installs.

- How STAGE's ad creatives are conceived, tested, and scaled.

- How STAGE wins organically - App Store, Play Store, YouTube, SEO, content-led and product-led inbound.

- The acquisition product journey: funnel, paywall, pricing and business-model experiments, and payment/checkout experiences that convert to paying subscribers.

- The systemic rigor that turns growth spend into a compounding, defensible engine.

- Your mandate is one unified role: AI-native Paid Acquisition + Creative Strategy + Organic Growth + Acquisition Product + Growth Analytics + Team Leadership.

Scorecard (KPI Spine):

- CAC / payback discipline - cohort-level CAC, LTV, and payback-period models by channel, region, and language; strict CAC and payback discipline on multi-crore spend.

- Quality acquisition - cohorts that return to watch and renew, not cheap installs or vanity install volume.

- Creative velocity - high-velocity pipeline of high-converting creatives; structured testing with fast kill/scale decisions.

- Organic / owned share - systematically growing the organic and owned-channel funnel share; reducing long-term dependency on paid.

- Acquisition product conversion - funnel, paywall, pricing, and checkout outcomes that turn attention into paying subscribers.

- Attribution hygiene - clean, trustworthy attribution across paid and organic channels; no black-box spend.

The Mission:

STAGE is an Entertainment Platform for India's Regional Cultures.

We exist to celebrate, represent, and elevate the stories, emotions, and identities that define India - across regions, communities, and cultural worlds that mainstream entertainment has historically underrepresented.

The Growth function ensures that this mission reaches the right audience, at the right cost, and converts into loyal, paying subscribers who return to watch.

We are looking for a Growth Head with a Builder's Mindset - someone who owns how STAGE finds, wins, and converts users, and who treats every rupee of acquisition spend as an investment that must compound. You will run a lean, AI-native leadership seat: extreme ownership, clear priorities, and no handoffs of the acquisition product surface to another function.

You will own the end-to-end Growth function, from daily campaign execution to paywall and pricing experiments to the long-term organic moat. Your mandate is to build a growth engine that is efficient, creative-led, data-informed, and increasingly less dependent on paid spend over time.

Why This Role Exists Now:

- STAGE's growth mandate is end-to-end - media, creative, organic, and the acquisition product surface. There is no separate Product function to hand the acquisition journey to; Engineering builds what Growth decides ships.

- Acquisition spend at multi-million-dollar / multi-crore scale needs systemic rigor - cohort-level CAC, LTV, and payback discipline - so growth compounds rather than just burning media budget on installs.

- "Quality" acquisition must mean cohorts that return to watch and renew, not cheap installs. Without that definition owned clearly, spend optimizes for vanity volume.

- Creative is a core growth lever, not a support function - STAGE needs high-velocity creative testing and an AI-native execution engine to get to winning creatives fast.

- Long-term defensibility requires growing organic and owned-channel share (App Store, Play Store, YouTube, SEO, content-led and product-led inbound/viral) so the engine is increasingly less dependent on paid spend over time.

- Clean attribution and a single Growth Command Center are required so leadership can reallocate budget with confidence - no black-box spend.

Key Responsibilities:

1. Lead Customer Acquisition:

- Build STAGE's Growth Command Center - the single source of truth on acquisition performance, spend efficiency, and channel-level unit economics.

- Own the entire paid acquisition funnel (Meta, Google, and other acquisition channels) across all markets.

- Command a multi-crore monthly budget to meet aggressive growth targets on installs and subscriptions - while maintaining strict CAC and payback discipline.

- Own re-marketing channels such as push notifications, SMS, Whatsapp or Outbound calling that helps improve conversion.

- Own acquisition of quality audiences - users who engage, return to watch, and demonstrate strong recurring-subscription behavior, not just cheap installs.

- Build and defend cohort-level CAC, LTV, and payback-period models by channel, region, and language.

- Present a regular Growth Insights Deck to leadership with clear recommendations on budget reallocation, channel mix, and scaling decisions.

- Identify and act on channel-level margin leaks - rising CAC, saturation signals, fraud/invalid traffic, attribution gaps.

- Lead and mentor a lean team of performance marketers, building a world-class, self-sufficient agentic AI-native execution engine.

2. Own Acquisition Product:

- Acquisition media without ownership of the conversion surface is incomplete. You own the product decisions that turn traffic into paying subscribers.

- Own the acquisition product journey end-to-end: install - signup - paywall - checkout - first purchase or subscribe.

- Set priorities and experiments for paywalls, pricing, business models, offers, and payment/checkout experiences that affect acquisition conversion.

- Instrument conversion drop-offs and close the loop between creative, paywall, and checkout reality.

- Partner with Retention so that the cohorts you acquire are ones that return to watch and renew - quality is a joint outcome, acquisition product ownership is yours.

3. Scale Winning Creatives:

- Creative is the single biggest lever on CAC at STAGE's scale - this is not a support function, it is core to the mandate.

- Be the driving force behind ad creative strategy, directly guiding promo priorities and output.

- Foster a culture of rapid, data-informed experimentation across ad formats, hooks, and messaging.

- Ensure a high-velocity pipeline of high-converting creatives that resonate with STAGE's dialect-speaking audiences across regions.

- Own creative testing frameworks - structured hypothesis testing, statistically sound read-outs, and fast kill/scale decisions.

- Use AI tools to accelerate creative ideation, variant generation, and performance prediction.

- In short: own and optimize the ad production pipeline to get to winning creatives fast and efficiently.

4. Dominate Organic Growth:

- Build a sustainable, long-term growth engine beyond paid ads through SEO, ASO, and content-led strategies.

- Own App Store, Play Store, and YouTube optimization to maximize high-intent, low-cost acquisition.

- Turn cultural trends, regional search behavior, and audience insights into powerful inbound marketing campaigns.

- Reduce STAGE's long-term dependency on paid channels by systematically growing the organic and owned-channel funnel share.

- Partner with Content teams to identify which regional content and trends translate into acquisition opportunities.

- Identify and build product-led viral growth loops.

5. Growth Analytics & Tooling:

- Own the growth measurement stack end-to-end - attribution tools, dashboards, and experimentation infrastructure.

- Maintain fluency and hands-on command of AppsFlyer, GA4, Ads Manager, and other core analytics and attribution tools.

- Ensure clean, trustworthy attribution across paid and organic channels - no black-box spend.

- Build self-serve dashboards so Content, Engineering, Finance, and Leadership can see acquisition performance without waiting on Growth.

- Build agentic AI-native systems for audience targeting, creative prediction, and spend optimization.

6. Strategic Thinking & Cross-Functional Leadership:

- You are not just the Growth head - you are a strategic thought partner to the CEO and leadership team.

- Challenge assumptions with data: rising CAC by language market, creatives that win clicks but lose return-to-watch, spend that breaks payback, paywall or pricing tests that move conversion.

- Build scenario models for major decisions - new market launches, pricing changes, channel expansion.

- Partner closely with Content, Retention, and Engineering to align growth strategy with the content slate and the acquisition product roadmap you own.

- Translate complex growth data into clear, compelling narratives for leadership and the board.

7. Team Building & AI-Native Growth Culture:

- Build and lead a lean, high-agency team of performance marketers and creative/growth collaborators.

- Create a culture of rapid experimentation, intellectual honesty about what's working, and relentless CAC discipline.

- Foster an AI-first mindset across the growth function - automation and AI-native workflows embraced, not resisted.

- Mentor the team to think like owners of growth outcomes - including the acquisition product surface - not just channel operators.

Who You Are:

- You are obsessed with efficient, quality growth - not vanity install numbers.

- You operate at the intersection of AI, data, creative, culture, and conversion product judgment.

- You are a systems builder - not a campaign operator running the same playbook on repeat.

- You thrive on rapid experimentation and treat every campaign and paywall test as a hypothesis.

- You can zoom out to build a multi-market growth strategy - and zoom in to question why one creative variant or checkout step is underperforming.

- You are strong enough to challenge leadership with data-backed conviction, delivered calmly.

- You have led growth/performance marketing teams before, but remain hands-on in Ads Manager when needed.

- You have earned respect through results, not title - and you practice extreme ownership.

Requirements:

- Experience: 10+ years in performance marketing and digital growth, with a proven track record of scaling consumer tech, content, or D2C brands. Subscription, paywall, or checkout product judgment strongly preferred.

- Proven ownership of:

1. Large-scale, multi-crore Meta and Google ad campaigns with measurable, CAC-disciplined results.

2. Ad creative strategy and high-velocity creative testing pipelines.

3. Organic/inbound growth - SEO, ASO, YouTube optimization.

4. Acquisition funnel or conversion-product decisions (paywall, pricing, checkout, or equivalent) - not media alone.

5. Growth analytics, attribution, and experimentation infrastructure.

6. Team leadership - building and mentoring performance marketing talent.

- Must-have experience:

1. Performance Marketing Mastery - hands-on, multi-crore budget ownership across Meta and Google with demonstrable CAC/LTV discipline.

2. Acquisition Product Judgment - comfort owning funnel, paywall, pricing, and checkout outcomes, with Engineering as the build partner.

3. Creative Leadership - driving ad creative strategy and production velocity, not just briefing agencies.

4. Organic Growth Ownership - SEO, ASO, and YouTube-led inbound acquisition.

5. Growth Stack Fluency - AppsFlyer, Metabase, GA4, Ads Manager, and other core attribution/analytics tools.

6. AI-Driven Growth - using AI tools for creative testing, targeting, or spend optimization.

7. Consumer Scale - OTT, D2C, content, or consumer tech with deep understanding of subscription/recurring-revenue unit economics.

8. People Leadership - proven ability to build, lead, and mentor lean, high-performing growth teams.

9. Cultural Curiosity - genuine interest in regional India; fluency in Haryanvi, Rajasthani, or Bhojpuri is a plus, not required.

This Role Is NOT For:

- Media buyers who only optimize for CPI/CPM without connecting to return-to-watch and LTV.

- Leaders who want media-only ownership and expect another function to keep final say on paywalls, pricing, or checkout for acquisition.

- Leaders who see creative as 'the agency's job' rather than a core growth lever they personally drive.

- Those who chase install volume over subscriber quality.

- Candidates uncomfortable with AI, automation, or fast iteration cycles.

- Growth leaders who have never owned organic channels (SEO/ASO/YouTube) - paid-only backgrounds won't fit.

- Anyone who wants a steady-state channel to manage rather than a growth engine - including its conversion product - to build from the ground up.

Why This Role Matters:

- Growth is not a spend function at STAGE. It is the engine that gets India's regional stories in front of the people who've been waiting for them - and converts that attention into subscribers who stay.

- This role will define whether STAGE becomes: Just another app burning cash on installs that never convert, or a category-defining platform with a compounding, efficient acquisition engine - media and acquisition product as one mandate - that funds its own growth.

- Your work will directly impact: Subscriber growth and CAC efficiency, Conversion quality of the acquisition product journey, Creative velocity and conversion rates, Organic/owned-channel share of acquisition, Regional market penetration, Leadership confidence in growth spend, Long-term defensibility of the growth engine.

Why STAGE?:

- Shape Culture: We are building more than an OTT; we are preserving and celebrating India's cultural identities through entertainment in regional context. Your work will have real-world impact.

- Build a Legacy: This is a career-defining opportunity to build a dominant growth engine from the ground up and be a key leader in a category-creating company.

- Extreme Ownership: We believe in hiring the best and giving them the autonomy to succeed. You will own your function end-to-end - including the acquisition product surface tied to growth.

- Unmatched Growth: Get in on the ground floor of a high-growth startup and scale with us. We offer an unlimited leave policy because we trust you to deliver.