Category Manager

Location: Mumbai (base)

Role Type: Individual Contributor

Travel: Extensive field travel across rural India

Role Overview

We’re looking for a Category Manager who thinks like a field operator, not a traditional warehouse or inventory planner.

This role involves building and managing the labour-sourcing pipeline for a specific agricultural crop category. You will work directly on the ground to build relationships with local operators and communities, identify and mobilise skilled labour crews, and convert these learnings into a repeatable sourcing and operations system.

This is a ground-up, field-heavy role involving significant ownership across sourcing, field operations, process building, and technology enablement.

Responsibilities

• Build the end-to-end labour-sourcing playbook for an assigned crop category.
• Go on the ground and build strong relationships with local operators, labour communities, and other relevant stakeholders.
• Convert field-level insights and relationships into SOPs, processes, and scalable systems that can be replicated by others.
• Own first-mile and last-mile field operations for the assigned category once the sourcing model is established.
• Identify, source, and mobilise skilled labour crews into structured roles.
• Build a repeatable system for connecting skilled labour with farmers who require them.
• Bring sufficient technical understanding to translate field learnings into systems, tools, and product requirements.
• Work closely with relevant internal teams to define and improve technology solutions supporting field operations.
• Use data and analytical rigour to evaluate sourcing performance, identify gaps, and improve operational efficiency.

Requirements

• 8–9 years of experience with an MBA, or 10–15+ years of experience irrespective of educational background.
• Experience in field-heavy sourcing, workforce mobilisation, or operations, particularly in businesses involving distributed or on-ground teams.
• Experience specifically in sourcing and mobilising people into structured roles, rather than only managing an existing workforce.
• Strong exposure to field operations and last-mile/first-mile execution.
• Comfortable with extensive travel, including remote and rural parts of India.
• Strong analytical and problem-solving skills.
• Good technology fluency and the ability to translate operational requirements into systems, tools, or product specifications.
• Comfortable working in a build-from-the-ground-up environment with high ownership and ambiguity.
• Strong relationship-building and stakeholder-management skills.

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