Program Analyst– WEN Accelerate Program

Job Title: Jobs Projection Analyst / Program Analyst– WEN Accelerate Program

Location: Flexible (with travel to hubs as needed)

Reports to: Head of Accelerate Program

Collaborates with: Selection Manager, Program Manager, Ecosystem Portfolio Managers, Venture Sourcing Teams

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Role Overview:

The Jobs Projection Analyst plays a critical role in ensuring that Wadhwani Foundation’s Accelerate program delivers on its mission of high-quality job creation through scaling of startups and SMEs. This role combines macro-level research, venture-level diligence, and data modeling to guide venture selection and track job creation trajectories over time. The analyst will develop and maintain scoring models, predictive frameworks, and decision-support tools to ensure every portfolio selection is aligned to long-term employment outcomes.

The analyst will also be responsible to study hub ecosystems in details at a sector level to identify future job creating sectors. Would also be studying the spokes for each hub to identify regional coverage

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Key Responsibilities:

1. Job Creation Modeling:

Develop frameworks to project potential job creation across different sectors, geographies, and business models.Build predictive models and benchmarks using company-level inputs (revenue, stage, business model, etc.).

2. Venture Scorecard & Diligence:

Support the Selection Manager in refining and applying the venture evaluation scorecard with a jobs-centric lens.

Provide data-driven recommendations on shortlisting ventures with high job-creation potential.

3. Macro & Sectoral Research:

Track employment multipliers across sectors such as advanced manufacturing, healthtech, agri-tech, etc. Prepare regular insights on trends, policy changes, and sector-specific employment dynamics.

4. Portfolio Analytics & Tracking:

Create dashboards to track job creation metrics over time across hubs and cohorts.

Work closely with ecosystem managers to validate projections vs actuals.

5. Internal Decision Support:

Advise the Program Head and Portfolio Managers on cohort mix optimization for achieving annual job targets. Support scenario planning for the 1M jobs goal.

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Desired Skills & Experience:

3–5 years of experience in data analysis, impact measurement, management consulting, research, or startup investing.

Exposure to labor market dynamics, MSME/startup ecosystem, or public policy is a strong plus.

Strong data modeling, Excel, and visualization skills; familiarity with tools like Power BI, R, or Python is a bonus.

Comfort with ambiguity and strong business acumen to assess non-obvious job creation potential.

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Key Competencies for Selection:

1. Analytical Rigor: Ability to build robust, data-backed models to project employment potential and track outcomes.

2. Business Insight: Understanding of business models, scaling levers, and how different ventures grow workforce.

3. Communication & Storytelling: Can translate complex data into clear insights for internal and external stakeholders. Has strong working skills of dashboard tools like power BI

4. Curiosity & Sectoral Research Ability: Hunger to understand emerging job-rich sectors and keep learning.

5. Collaborative Execution: Works effectively across functions—selection, sourcing, hub managers—to influence decisions.