Chief Operating Officer - Startup

Chief Operating Officer - Funded Startup

Job Description:

Key responsibilities of the COO include:

A. Organizational Strategy & Process :

1. Work closely with CEO/Co-Founder to define key organizational processes including team and individual goal setting, project roadmaps, performance evaluations and training.

2. Partnering with CTO on the spec development, testing and deployment of the Start-up

3. Leading the creation and implementation of standardized processes for internal/external user testing, feedback and new feature recommendations.

4. Collaborating with the Marketing team to enhance deaf and hearing community engagement to drive usage, referrals and customer signups.

Deliverables: To drive the process of scaling up across the organisation including the interpretation service, technology integration, and customer satisfaction to reach 40,000 B2C and 5-100 B2B/G enterprise clients

B. Operations :

1. To champion inclusion and ownership by the deaf community, their participation and goodwill towards the VRS solution provided by the Start-up

2. Set up and manage key personnel, resources and infrastructure with support from founder/ coach to make the Start-up an operational business including:

a) To drive recruitment, training, management, onboarding and service quality of at least for both B2C and B2B channels

b) Setting up of a physical and a virtual call centre for interpreters as appropriate; to ensure that quality, ethical, interpretation, user experience standards are set and adhered to in at least 7 states in India; to attract and sustain large numbers of people for making a career choice..

c) Setting up an office and basic internal systems for effective management of operations, personnel, external partnerships, training etc.

Deliverables: Putting into place the team, technical capability, systems and interpretation service.

C. Governance and Strategy :

1. Make the Start-up investment ready by completing the requirements of registration, setting up protocols for governance, an advisory team, and putting in place an appropriate shareholding structure with support from legal and accounting firms.

2. Build a realistic operational and financial plan for the future based on interaction with the founder and other key stakeholders to present for the management and board for approval within 3 months.

3. To support the founder and the governance team to raise sufficient investment to allow the Start-up to deliver a quality service and deliver potential scale in India and elsewhere

Deliverables: An operational plan and budget for the deployment of the VRS solution by the Start-up, support in fund-raising, and management and agenda of initial governance and advisory team meetings.

D. Profitability and Impact

1. To build a robust business model that returns an adequate profit to sustain its usage for poor users and turn the business into a company with a stable and growing market.

Deliverables: To integrate the use of the Start-up into the daily pattern of lives of deaf people, while ensuring that efficiencies and systems ensure a 25% profitability on an annual revenue of Rs.10 crores

Reporting to :

- Founder, CEO of the Start-up with board participation where required

- This position will be for 3 years, extendable, starting as soon as possible.

- The Start-up team will be open to negotiate salary, equity, against deliverables with the successful candidate.

Location: Bangalore, with travel as required, WFH until further notice

- We are a small team of people who bring together a diverse set of social impact experiences and business skills, and commitment to inclusive innovation.

- We are looking for a person to enlarge our team, someone with demonstrated experience and a real commitment to working on innovation in the disability space.

- An ideal candidate would have a management/COO/co-founder background or experience in taking an IT start-up to scale. In addition, they should have at least one of the following technical skills or experience:

a) Specifying, testing, adapting, managing the deployment of a B2C IT solution

b) Managing Call center operations for client servicing

c) Managing a commercially-run enterprise geared to creating social impact such as education, healthcare, etc.

Our ideal profile would be a person who has the following qualities:

- A person motivated by the need to create an impact in society and has a vision beyond the workplace.

- The person should have experience in building teams, driving growth and scale, while maintaining values, standards and engagement.

- Good communication skills to present the organization effectively internally, to the deaf community, the government, investors and potential corporate clients.

- Someone who is flexible, adaptable and forward-looking, and can juggle and complete projects simultaneously

- An understanding of the social sector, of the need for inclusion, preferably with some direct experience

- A person who has experience of working in diverse work cultures (India as well as abroad) and is happy to learn ISL.

ESOP Scheme would be applicable