Intellecap - Associate/Senior Associate - Strategy Consultant

About Intellecap :

Since 2002, Intellectual Capital Advisory Services (Intellecap) has been committed to economic and social development through market-based solutions that help build and scale innovative businesses for social change. Intellecap's mission is to accelerate the growth of socially relevant businesses by connecting markets, people and capital. Over the past 12 years in India, Intellecap has built and refined an ecosystem-based approach to accelerating entrepreneurship and innovation at the SME-level. We have built services, tools, products, and methodologies to unlock support for SMEs from several private commercial and donor organizations. This approach has demonstrated success: over 900 SMEs connected with 300 investors, US$ 200+ million equity investments intermediated, over 70 angel investors committed to invest in impact SMEs, 10 angel investments facilitated and over 50 private sector firms joined hands to build the entrepreneurship and innovation ecosystem.

We seek to build institutional capacity and channel investments in the development sector through Consulting and Research services as well as Investment Banking services as well as through market building initiatives to further the inclusive development agenda and plug critical gaps. These initiatives include Sankalp Forum - the world's largest high impact SME focused platform and Intellecap Impact Investment Network (I3N) - India's first angel network focused on impact enterprises.

Intellecap's strengths include extensive field experience and a unique understanding of the last-mile development environment, as well as large international investors and corporations. As a result, we are well-positioned to act as a bridge between the development and commercial sectors. We also have proven capabilities in implementing market-based solutions to help low-income populations and our success is largely made feasible by a wide and diverse network of stakeholders combined with an awareness of Base of the Pyramid (BOP) market conditions. Through our work with social entrepreneurs, we have developed unique insights across six high-impact sectors: financial services, agriculture and rural business, clean energy, healthcare, water and sanitation and education and vocational training. We use these insights in a variety of engagements covering a spectrum of services that include raising equity and debt capital for early and growth-stage enterprises to specific advisory services that enable their growth such as market research, market entry, strategy and solution design, innovation management, stakeholder engagement and policy advocacy.

In addition, Intellecap incubates and invests in business models that have high potential to create, scale and improve financial and market access for the BOP. Intellecap's subsidiary IntelleGrow is a financial services company that provides venture debt to small and growing social businesses in India to address the severe shortage of appropriate debt finance options for the SME sector. With a more than-money approach, IntelleGrow also provides dedicated business development assistance to help fuel growth for these companies. Another subsidiary, IntelleCash, provides incubation and consulting services to Microfinance Institutions (MFIs). IntelleCash recently took a majority stake in Arohan Financial Services, one of the most respected MFIs in eastern India and the two businesses have consolidated.

Intellecap Africa

Intellecap's vision is to be the global market leader in providing advisory services to clients who seek to create social and environmental impact at the Base of the Pyramid (BOP) in emerging markets.

As part of our plan to realize this vision, we propose to replicate this approach in East Africa over the next several years. We will bring together capital, advice and networks to support high impact small and medium enterprises (SMEs) at two levels: (i) we will provide direct support to SMEs in the form of acceleration, fund-raising, technical assistance, innovation transfer, and market linkages, and (ii) we will discover and engage critical ecosystem players such as African corporations, and international corporations in supporting SMEs.

We have done advisory work in the region since 2008, and since 2013, have developed and run ecosystem building initiatives (through Sankalp Forum and I3N) that have brought together over 600 SMEs, investors, corporations, governments and others to catalyze innovation and entrepreneurship. We have also selected, supported and showcased East African SMEs to angel, seed and VC investors. We are in early stages of launching East Africa's first impact-focused angel network. Intellecap now has a strong East Africa foundation and a small local team in place which is being further strengthened in the next few months.

As Intellecap looks to evolve and scale up in Africa, it envisions a roadmap that helps to link inclusive development hubs of the Global South to each other; and also with the Global North to drive a cohesive inclusive development agenda. This will include:

- Corridor building programs in Sub Saharan Africa that lead into the Global Convening

- Build a knowledge corridor between India-Africa and create a platform to scale high impact SMEs in the East African region.

- Create a South-South Knowledge corridor that can exchange learning and create a common action platform for building a similar ecosystem for small and growing businesses in Africa.

Advisory work and thought leading research including landscape analyses, advocacy, and developing tools and other market infrastructure to drive inclusive development.

Role : Strategy consulting

Intellecap's Consulting's clientele is global, and the team has delivered over 100 diverse projects across Asia and Africa. The team works with:

- Social Enterprise models to help them achieve scale and faster integration with the mainstream through better business planning, market intelligence and process excellence

- Large businesses and corporations to help them engage better with the Bottom of the Pyramid markets

- Private foundations, multilateral and bilateral funders and investors to help them understand, strategize and design interventions for the inclusive business space

Position : Role title : Senior Associate, Strategy consulting

Location : Hyderabad/Mumbai, India

Experience/ Education :

- 3-7 years in business strategy - consulting/corporate strategy roles

- Post-Graduate degree from a premier school

- An MBA degree would be preferred

- Experience in the development sector would be a plus

- Profiles in IT operations are discouraged.

Skills :

- Strong problem solving and analytical skills

- Ability to synthesize information and assist in creating insightful recommendations for clients

- Flair for building quality relationships with clients

- Ability to mentor and coach associates

- Excellent written and oral communication skills

- Outstanding teamwork and commitment

- Prior exposure to domains in which Intellecap works is desirable

a) Base of the Pyramid/Social Entrepreneurship/Inclusive Business in Asia/Africa

b) Financial services/energy/water/education/smallholder agriculture and sanitation/health.

Job responsibilities :

- Manage delivery of work streams within a project in line with client expectations and company standards

- Straddle multiple day to day roles that include project delivery and assist in client relationship management

- Support business development and other internal initiatives

- Contribute to institutionalizing knowledge gained through projects

- Undertake relevant national and international field travel and exposure as and when required.