Job Opportunity for Senior Manager – Sourcing & Selection at Wadhwani Foundation in Bengaluru

About Wadhwani Foundation (www.wfglobal.org):

Mission: Accelerating economic development in emerging economies through high-value job creation Objectives: Enabling the creation of 10M jobs and placement of 25M by 2030 across 20-25 emerging economies

Wadhwani Foundation is a not-for-profit with the primary mission of accelerating economic development in emerging economies by driving large-scale job creation through entrepreneurship, innovation and skills development. Founded in 2000 by Silicon Valley entrepreneur, Dr. Romesh Wadhwani, today the Foundation is scaling impact in 25 countries across Asia, Africa, and Latin America through the following Initiatives:

1. Wadhwani Advantage: Accelerating the growth of tens of thousands of SMEs by providing personalized, on-demand knowledge and consulting resources through an AI-enabled mobile platform to create millions of new jobs.

2. Wadhwani Entrepreneur: Inspiring, educating, and enabling Startup entrepreneurs

·      Wadhwani Venture Fastrack: Maximizes success rates of early-stage startups with enhanced business traction and funding opportunities

·      Wadhwani NEN: Empowers students with knowledge and skills through Courses and Startup Labs to create high-potential startups

·      Wadhwani Inspire: Establishes a nationwide culture of entrepreneurship

3. Wadhwani Opportunity: Empowering millions of students with 21st century employability skills that drive family supporting wages.

4. Wadhwani AI (a partner program): A first-of-its-kind AI research institute in the world – a non-profit dedicated exclusively to applying AI for social good.

5. Wadhwani Catalyst: Invest in high quality entrepreneurs with scalable business models across emerging markets, with a focus in India. The fund will catalyse businesses across sectors, with the overall objective of accelerating economic development by creating livelihoods/ jobs.

6. Wadhwani Institute of Technology and Policy (WITP):

Support government and civil society at large with the dual mission of –

(1) Providing information, insights, and recommendations for the application of technology for policy making, policy implementation, and policy outcomes measurement.

(2) Creating a Technology-focused Training Academy for upskilling policy makers, bureaucrats and technocrats with relevant technologies and the application of the same to their respective ministries and missions.

Our Culture:

WF is a global not-for-profit, and works like a start-up, in a fast-moving, dynamic pace where change is the only constant and flexibility is the key to success. Three mantras that we practice across job roles, levels, functions, programs and initiatives, are Quality, Speed, Scale, in that order. We are an ambitious and inclusive organization, where everyone is encouraged to contribute and ideate. We are intensely and insanely focused on driving excellence in everything we do. We want individuals with the drive for excellence, and passion to do whatever it takes to deliver world class outcomes to our beneficiaries. We set our own standards often more rigorous than what our beneficiaries demand, and we want individuals who love it this way. We have a creative and highly energetic environment – one in which we look to each other to innovate new solutions not only for our beneficiaries but for ourselves too. Open to collaborate with a borderless mentality, often going beyond the hierarchy and siloed definitions of functional KRAs, are the individuals who will thrive in our environment.

This is a workplace where expertise is shared with colleagues around the globe. Individuals uncomfortable with change, constant innovation, and short learning cycles and those looking for stability and orderly working days may not find WF to be the right place for them. Finally, we want individuals who want to do greater good for the society leveraging their area of expertise, skills and experience. The foundation is an equal opportunity firm with no bias towards gender, race, colour, ethnicity, country, language, age and any other dimension that comes in the way of progress. Join us and be a part of us!

Job Overview or Role Context:

Venture Fastrack’s (VFT’s) mission is to empower start-ups and their founders with knowledge and skills to create high potential businesses that lead to job creation. We are looking for a high energy, passionate individual excited to work in the entrepreneurship and startup domain. As the sourcing and selection lead, your role would be to help with identifying and building strategic partnerships within the startup ecosystem and work towards sourcing and selecting high potential start-ups from from incubators, start-up ecosystem partnerships and through direct marketing of VFT Programs

Responsibilities and Duties:

• Build strategic partnerships with incubators, start-up ecosystem partners like corporate innovation programs, HNI networks and early stage angel networks to source high potential start-ups
• Communicate with future partners via tele prospecting and emailing to generate interest and create rapport for the VFT offering
• Develop and execute strategy for outreach, attracting and onboarding deserving and qualified innovative entrepreneurs, and start-ups.
• Qualify and evaluate applicants for, innovation, sustainability of business models, investability and founder quality and commitment.
• Work with the marketing team to proactively research and identify new start-ups through direct marketing, lead generation from start-up databases.
• Develop relevant website and other collateral to showcase the program and attract start-ups to apply for VFT programs
• Use relevant selection criteria to develop processes for start-up selection along with the VFT team and lead onboarding efforts of promising start-ups
• Build processes and work towards enabling a more structured pipeline building and selection process

Qualifications/Credentials:

• A seasoned professional with at least 10+ years’ experience with minimum 4 years in the start-up ecosystem in a similar role with a reputed incubator/ accelerator / angel networks /start-up ecosystem enablement role.
• Prior business development and sales experience in reaching out to customers
• MBA/post graduate degree from a reputed institute will be a plus
• Extroverted with an entrepreneurial mindset – you should be able to think outside the box and on your feet to creatively solve problems
• Must be incredibly organised and able to help others get organised
• Excellent communication – both written and verbal ability to establish strong partner relationships
• Must have ‘no job is too small’ attitude
• Must be willing to take on responsibilities beyond own job description when necessary.