Associate Sector Lead / Sector Lead - Climate Smart Livelihoods, Bangalore

Role: Associate Sector Lead / Sector Lead - Climate Smart Livelihoods, Bangalore
Experience: 12+ years
Salary: Upto 30 LPA

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Key Deliverables:

The leader of the Climate Smart Livelihoods Sector is expected to drive systemic change through enterprise support, focusing on:

• Scaling up startup solutions aimed at income enhancement and livelihoods resilience in both urban and rural contexts.
• Implementing a systems-level approach to integrate supported startups into existing rural value chains (e.g., agriculture and allied sectors).
• Building and launching new startup-centered initiatives specifically focused on urban livelihoods.
• Deploying blended finance solutions to address critical credit and working capital challenges faced by early-stage enterprises.

Role & Responsibilities

1. Acceleration and Business Support

• Program Leadership: Lead and manage accelerator programs focused on sustainable urban and rural livelihoods.
• Hands-on Support: Provide direct support to enterprises to improve product-market fit, accelerate sales, and create measurable social and environmental impact.
• Model Validation: Work collaboratively with startup teams, Farmer Producer Organizations (FPOs), and other intermediaries to validate and strengthen enterprise models.

2. Partnerships & Fundraising:

• Stakeholder Engagement: Drive proactive engagement with key external stakeholders, including impact investors, research organizations, Monitoring, Evaluation, and Learning (MEL) partners, and relevant government agencies.
• Funding Strategy: Use program insights and market trends to support the Partnerships team in raising new funding for sectoral initiatives.
• Proposal Leadership: Lead the development and pitching of proposals to secure new grants and investments.

3. Advocacy & Communication

• Insight Generation: Generate critical insights from field visits and enterprise performance data to continuously improve the organization's effectiveness in delivering results.
• Champion Transformation: Serve as a champion for the organization's core hypothesis of combining market development, demand generation, and credit enablement through blended finance mechanisms.

Candidate Requirements

Experience and Education:

• Experience: 15 or more years of experience in large-scale program operations or implementation leadership, preferably in the education or social development sectors.
  • This experience should include a combination of rural sales, marketing, operational roles, livelihoods financing, or development finance.
• Education: A Master's degree in Social Sciences or Economics, OR deep sectoral specialization in agriculture (and related fields) or renewable energy solutions.
• Sectoral Knowledge: Working knowledge in one or more topics related to impact investing, agriculture value chains, waste management, and social entrepreneurship is required.
• Donor Exposure: Exposure to grant or donor project execution is desirable.

Skills and Mindsets:

• Leadership: Excellent people-management skills and the ability to lead diverse teams, fostering high levels of initiative and ownership.
• Communication: Effective communication and persuasion skills required to influence internal and external stakeholders.
• Data Command: Strong numerical ability and data interpretation skills, with proven ability to use operational data to drive coordination and accountability.
• Action Bias: High degree of ownership and a bias for action, with a willingness to be hands-on and frugal.
• Adaptability: Ability to work with ambiguity and innovative ideas in a dynamic environment.

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Hiring Note: Applications will be reviewed on rolling basis. This job is first posted on Dec 4, 2025, on https://groundzero.community/

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