Gramhal
is a social enterprise that aims to structurally solve the problem of
distress selling among smallholder farmers in India. We empower
smallholder farmers to gain a fair price for their produce by
providing them with bundled post-harvest services of price
information, quality inspection, warehouse storage, post-harvest
credit, and market linkage. We are on a mission to build a
competitive, transparent, and efficient supply chain that provides
farmers the agency to decide when to sell, whom to sell, and at what
price. In a short span of our existence, our promising work has won
multiple prestigious awards at Massachusetts Institute of Technology,
Echoing Green, Mittal Institute, Harvard Kennedy School, Harvard
Business School, and National Institute of Agricultural Marketing,
Government of India.
Position:
Manager
(Agri-Business Sales)
Base
Location: Yavatmal,
Maharashtra
Apply
by: 10th
February 2020; (The opportunity is on rolling basis. Please apply at
the earliest.)
Joining
Date: Immediate
Remuneration:
As
per market standard and commensurated with your experience and
qualification
The
Manager will work closely with the leadership team of Gramhal and
will play an important role in providing farmers seamless
post-harvest services. Currently, we are working with Soybean and
Arhar Dal. In the next six months, we are planning to expand to four
new crops - Chickpea, Bengal Gram, Groundnut, and Sesame. The manager
will be responsible to do an in-depth study of value chain of these
crops and build relationships with multiple buyers - who are either
processing plants or retail distributors. Once the relationships are
established, the manager will be responsible for day to day
operations like order fulfillment, accounts, and logistics. In
addition to this, the manager will support the Gramhal team in
building sales strategy for new crops and geographic expansion.
The
role will provide extensive opportunity to work across the supply
chain of multiple crops from farmers to the buyers. The role is
challenging as it will require shifting your location to Yavatmal
district in Vidarbha region. This region in infamous for highest
number of farmers’ suicides. If you are passionate about solving
the problem of agricultural distress in India, we are excited to meet
you. We are a problem focused startup and are constantly iterating
our solution to create a perfect service model that can genuinely
address farmers’ need. Thus, we are looking for an individual who
has a learning mindset and the agility to adapt to the changing
demand of our work.
We
will prefer if you have prior experience in sales, especially in
agricultural supply chain, and rural livelihoods. Nonetheless, feel
free to apply - years of work experience and a college degree are not
barriers. The role requires extensive travel thus a willingness to
travel is an important criteria for us. The candidate must be
proactive and motivated. The person should take ownership and
independently execute the projects.
Gramhal
provides an entrepreneurial, supportive and flexible work environment
that encourages independent thinking and leadership development. The
organization not only focuses on its employees’ ability to perform
the role but also supports them to grow personally.
If
you are interested:
We
believe that to respect each other’s time and effort, transparency
and accountability in the recruiting process is of utmost importance.
Hence, we are providing the details of the process and would request
you to keep this in mind as you interact with us. We will be
following the principles of blind recruitment, therefore we will not
ask for your CV until the third stage. There are four steps to the
selection process.
-
First stage
The
interested candidate must fill this google form
https://forms.gle/LpWUUemrUZnb2aDFA
Language
is not a restriction for us. You can submit the response in any of
the three languages – English, Hindi or Marathi. You will hear back
from us within 24 hours whether your application is moving forward or
not. If your application is moving forward, then we will schedule our
first call at a mutually convenient time.
The
second stage will involve a 45 minute call with one of the team
members of Gramhal. The first part of the call will be devoted to
introduce you to Gramhal, and address your queries. The second part
will be to better understand you as a person, your expectations and
aspirations. The aim of the call will be to understand whether we are
fit for each other. Please do ask as many questions as you have so
that you can also take an informed decision about joining us. After
the call, the candidate will have to send a written response of less
than 100 words about their reflection of the call – what did you
like about the call, what did you not like about the call, how did
you feel? If you forgot to ask anything include it here.
You will hear back from us
within 24 hours of your reflection submission whether your
application is moving forward or not. If your application is moving
forward, then we will schedule our second call at a mutually
convenient time.
-
Third Stage
The
third stage will be a 60 minute Skype call with the Gramhal team and
will involve a more in-depth discussion about the job
responsibilities and the required skillset. We will require your CV
at this stage. You will hear back from us within 3 days of the call
whether your application is moving forward or not. If moving forward,
you will be required to meet us in person at our Yavatmal office.
-
Fourth Stage
This
is the last stage, where we will call a handful of applicants to
visit us in Yavatmal and to spend two days with us on the field. We
will pay for the second AC train ticket or airfare, whichever is
lower. For professionals, who are currently working somewhere, we
will try to plan the trip on weekend. As soon as the visits of all
the applicants is completed, we will collate the results and let you
know about the final selection.
Note:
-
If you chose to apply, and do not move forward at any stage, we humbly request you to not consider it as a rejection; the aim of our selection process is not to reject anyone but to find a mutually fit person, who is equally excited about our work. Gramhal will always be grateful to you for putting your time and energy to go through our selection process.
-
Gramhal believes in workforce diversity. We encourage applications from women, the LGBTQ community, minority communities, historically deprived communities, indigenous groups, other marginalized groups, and persons with disabilities. All applications will be treated with the strictest confidentiality.
-
Read more about our work here:
https://www.gramhal.org/
http://news.mit.edu/2019/agribusiness-prize-gramhal-velaron-0503
https://mittalsouthasiainstitute.harvard.edu/2019/06/gramhal-breaking-debt-indias-farmers/
https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2019/05/harvard-student-starts-nonprofit-to-help-indias-small-farmers/
https://echoinggreen.org/fellow/vikas-birhma/