Lead- Seeds Category

AgroStar Group is the fastest-growing Indian agriculture company, powered by technology with a mission of #HelpingFarmersWin. Shardul and Sitanshu started AgroStar with a vision to solve two of the biggest problems in Indian agriculture - Lack of guidance for scientific/sustainable farming & limited access to great quality farm inputs.

Today, AgroStar Group provides full-stack solutions to millions of farmers across 9 Indian states via an Omni channel approach. Along the journey, we have built India’s largest agronomy advisory center powdered by 400+ agri graduates, a highly engaged digital farmer network with over 7 million users and the highest-rated agri app, and a retail network of 7000+ stores. These technology-enabled channels help farmers produce better and achieve higher price realizations by providing appropriate advice, timely input delivery, and output market linkages.

In March 2022, AgroStar forayed into the output space by acquiring INI farms. With this acquisition, AgroStar Group is Helping Farmers Win with better price realization across 10+ crops by exporting high-quality F&V under the brand name ‘Kimaye’ to 25+ countries across the globe.

With 1500+ employees, AgroStar group believes in a culture of ownership and high growth and has been a recipient of multiple Best Startups to Work awards.

With massive synergies across the value chain to unlock, we are excited about our next exponential growth phase while being more mission-focused than ever!

Role Overview:

The Head of Seeds will be responsible for building the Seeds business portfolio including vegetable seeds, Field crops, and oil seeds. The current portfolio of seeds is a healthy mix of our own brands and external branded assortments. The Head of seeds will have the opportunity to grow the seeds business by 5X in the next 3 years by focusing on our own brands.

This role reports to the Co-Founder and COO.

This is an ideal role for someone who has been in the Product development and marketing domain, someone who has successfully launched new brands of seeds before, and who is passionate about delivering extremely high-quality seeds to Indian Farmers.

The Role:

• Strategy: Develop a comprehensive seeds category strategy to ensure 5X growth over the years, which includes identifying opportunities to launch new seeds and forming strategic partnerships to strengthen the product portfolio.
• Portfolio Management: With a solid team, oversee the entire product portfolio that involves managing seed life cycles, assessing the seed performance, and making data-driven decisions regarding product development, enhancements, and discontinuations.
• Strategic relationship management: Build and maintain strong relationships with key partners from the industry, negotiate favorable terms, and collaborate on joint initiatives to ensure a reliable supply chain and competitive pricing.
• Collaborate with Marketing and sales: Work closely with the marketing teams to develop effective strategies and campaigns to launch new products, drive demand, and increase market share. Provide necessary support in terms of schemes, pricing, and product training to enable sales teams to achieve targets.
• Collaborate with Farm Solutions: Work closely with our Farm Solutions team to stay abreast of regulatory requirements and industry standards related to seed products, to ensure quality testing of seeds in our own NACL-accredited AgroStar Quality Assurance Lab, and to ensure compliance with relevant regulations and standards in all aspects of category operation.

Who are we looking for :

• Master’s degree in Agribusiness or a related field.
• 15+ years of proven experience in category management, product management, or related roles within the agriculture or seeds industry and understanding of multiple states' agriculture landscape.
• Excellent leadership, communication, and interpersonal skills.
• Demonstrated ability to build and maintain strong customer relationships.
• Strategic thinker with the ability to analyze market trends and develop effective strategies.

Personal Attributes :

• Proven leadership ability.
• Excellent interpersonal and collaboration skills.
• Exceptionally self-motivated.
• Analytical and problem-solving abilities.
• Exceptional service-orientation.
• Ability to motivate people in a team-oriented, collaborative environment.
• High on empathy, learnability, and hustle.
• Ability to get hands-on and at the same time zoom out.
• Ability to deal with Ambiguity and chaos