Zonal Head - New Merchant Acquisition & Sales - FinTech Startup

Do you have what it takes to join a booming startup that is bringing in a technology based revolution in the lending industry?

Our Client is an online lending platform focused on Education, Travel and Healthcare financing. They work closely with merchant partners to make quality education and services available and accessible to all. Founded in July 2016, the company started its lending operations in April 2017 and has rapidly grown in both online and point-of-sale channels.

The company operates on a "Lending as a Service (LAAS) model, providing end-to-end solution that includes customer acquisition, credit evaluation, risk analytics, customer on boarding, loan management post booking and collections. The company has partnered with leading Banks and NBFCs in India.

This Mumbai based startup has raised funds for nearly USD 312,000 from two non-banking financial services companies. The founding team has worked at leading institutions globally and has extensive experience in unsecured lending, credit analytics, decision sciences and technology.

As the Zonal Head - New Merchant Acquisition and Sales, you will be responsible to build and manage Region based team to prospect, negotiate and sign-up new Education Merchant Partnerships and Alliances for acceptance of the company's EMI solutions in a defined Region and in-accordance with agreed Sales Plan.

What you will do:

- Acquiring New Merchant Partners in the defined Zone / Region and driving loans volume throughput from them

- Building a sales strategy and annual merchant acquisition roadmap

- Overseeing execution of Sales strategy on the ground to achieve projected numbers

- Managing Cost budget and unit costs metrics for acquisition of merchants and achieving sales targets

- Ensuring optimal mix of different sub-categories of Merchants in Education (Schools, - Coaching Institutes, Skill Development programs, Management Colleges etc.), as per defined sales strategy

- Appointing and managing Regional and National aggregators, Sales agencies and Partners for acquiring Small and Medium Merchants

- Overseeing onboarding of newly signed Merchant Partners and personally tracking Key Account Merchant onboarding

- Maintaining Senior Management connect with Key Accounts and Cat A Merchant base and ensuring Merchant retention

- Reviewing Operational Processes to shorten turn-around-times of logged in loan cases for disbursals

- Working with Merchant Marketing team to create Training Programs and Collaterals for effective onboarding of Merchant channel

- Devising and implementing Incentive Plan for the merchant Acquisition team

- Enabling seamless hand-over of the Merchant to the Sales team

- Tracking local events and representing the company in these events, to build awareness of the company's Edu EMI brand in the Regional Education community

- Routinely reporting BD progress through MIS updation to Management team

- Monitoring and achieving the KPIs :

- No. of Education Merchants signed for the given Category and as per agreed mix

- Monthly Loan disbursed through the Merchants in the defined Zone

- Managing unit merchant acquisition Cost as per business plan

- Recruiting and managing a high performance Merchant Acquisition and Sales team

- Merchant retention

What you need to know/have:

- 12 - 16 years of experience in Business Development / Channel Set up and Development

- Experience of working with Merchant Acquiring or Business Development at a RSM / ZSM / National Head level

- Experience in the Education / Education Ancillary Industry is a great plus

- Should have hardcore sales operations experience - handling sales team, driving numbers etc.

- Candidates with Channel sales experience from Banking, FMCG (MT), Telecom industry is a great plus

- Should be a very good communicator, highly sales oriented, adept at people management and comfortable with numbers