NextBillion - An Initiative of the William Davidson Institute at the University of Michigan

About Essmart
Essmart is an assisted B2B e-commerce platform that connects 400+ socially impactful, livelihood products to local family-owned retail shops in rural India. Our curated livelihood products include efficient agricultural tools, solar lanterns, and clean cooking appliances. We have 30 branches located mostly in Tier 3 cities in UP, BH, KA, AP and TN, a team of over 140 people, and works with a network of 4500+ local shops. We distribute products that improve the incomes of local shop owners and have collectively improved the lives of over 1 million end users.

Overview of the Role
The Head of Technology will be a member of Essmart’s leadership team, based in Bangalore.

Essmart runs on a proprietary logistics, invoicing, inventory management and tracking software application called ELSA. The Head of Technology will, together with Essmart’s leadership and Board, lead the strategic direction of our technology development, and will hold the responsibility of maintaining and working on all future enhancements of the web and mobile application, which has been led by the founders to date. This will include assuming end-to-end ownership of the conceptualization, interface design, production and support of ELSA as it aligns with our vision and strategy. Essmart also has an Android based shopkeeper/retailer app (called ‘Essmart’ on Google Playstore) which was launched in March 2021. Currently around 65% of orders are sourced through this app. The Head of Technology will be responsible for envisioning the future growth, tech development, and deployment of the app to enable faster geographic expansion and penetration through our network. The Head of Technology will also work on a pilot for an end customer facing application that will be integrated to the existing ELSA platform.

While working on future enhancements, the Head of Technology will be required to work across functions such as Operations, Accounting, HR and Field Sales to understand requirements and communicate the same to our current IT partner. The Head of Technology take over the product management role that is currently being jointly held by Essmart’s leadership, and will initiate and lead the process to transition all development to be in-house, including hiring an internal team that will report to the Head of Technology.

Responsibilities
• Contributing to high-level strategic discussions and decisions about operational strategies
and programs.
• Understanding Essmart’s entire field operations and backend processes including
management decision mechanisms, controls, etc.
* Managing ELSA development from start-to-finish, such as:
* Conceptualizing new development ‘sprints’ based on Essmart’s needs and prioritizing existing projects
o Defining the scope and schedule, organizing and leading working meetings,
managing progress, measuring deviations from plan and planning delivery of
sprints.
o Defining and managing a project management process
o Organizing and managing all phases and availability of inputs from Essmart to the
developer to ensure on-time completion of development
o Manage deliverables from IT developer
o Manage communications to all stakeholders including internal team members on
the field
* Providing leadership and role modeling Essmart’s values across the company.
• Building an internal tech team with front end and back end developers for web, android and iOS in the future.
• Contributing to future investor pitches for tech deep dives and growth mapping.

Qualifications
– You are passionate about improving livelihoods in rural India through technology. You understand that being a core part of a company involves both the high level strategy as well as the on-the-ground execution, and you are not afraid to get your hands dirty and delve into detailed work.

– You are an expert at managing multiple initiatives at the same time, at time management, and at meeting deadlines. You are excited to learn and try new things as part of your professional development, and you enjoy working on a range of diverse projects. You are meticulous and do not let deadlines or emails slip past you.

– You work well in flat leadership structures with little hierarchy and are prepared to join these leadership conversations. You communicate well and often to your teammates, and you are adept at incorporating feedback from both senior management and junior staff into your work. You provide constructive feedback to your teammates on their work.

Other Expectations for the role include:
• Proven ability to lead software development teams to ensure goals, objectives are met
• IT Project Management experience
• Prior startup or fast paced growth experience will be a great advantage
• Comfortable working with our current tech stack: NodeJS, AngularJS, Kotlin
• Experience in Agile Development Projects
• Experience in Jenkins/GitHub, MySQL, Jira/Greenhopper, Rally, VersionOne, MSProjects, Visio
• Coding experience will be a major asset
• Strong critical and computational thinking skills
• Creative approach to problem solving while maintaining the ‘larger goal’
• Ability to create workflow charts and algorithms for processes
• Strong, proven time management skills
• Detail oriented and data driven
• Self-driven and capable of working autonomously in a fast-paced start-up environment
• Extremely comfortable in MS Word, Excel, Powerpoint and strong report writing skills
• Fluent in written and spoken English
• Knowledge of Tamil, Telugu and/or Kannada is a bonus