Associate Director/Director - SCM & Design - Retail

Associate Director - Director - SCM & Design:

The Associate Director - Director - SCM & Design will own end-to-end operational excellence across all stores and the supply chain backbone. This leader will build teams, processes, and systems to deliver consistent in-store execution, customer delight, and a robust, scalable supply chain. The leader will also have PnL responsibility for all the network's operational costs.

Key Responsibilities:

1. Store Operations:

- Drive SOP adherence across our network of stores

- Ensure inventory, entrepreneur and consumer experience KPIs are met.

- Build and manage a team of cluster - area managers for daily retail discipline.

- Establish audit systems and tech-enabled dashboards for monitoring.

2. Supply Chain Operations:

- Manage procurement, warehousing, Fruits and Vegetables supply chain, and last-mile logistics.

- Drive vendor SLAs, OTIF delivery, and cost optimization.

- Design scalable supply chain processes for expansion into new cities

- Drive initiatives to reduce cost, improve efficiency and productivity of our supply chain and store operations.

3. People Leadership:

- Recruit, train, and inspire high-performing operations teams.

- Build a culture of accountability, ownership, and customer-first execution.

- Mentor entrepreneurs - franchisees to achieve operational excellence.

4. Strategy & Execution:

- Translate high-level sales and growth targets into operational plans.

- Design and improve operating models to ensure profitability at scale.

- Deploy technology for automation, visibility, and data-driven decision-making.

5. Key Metrics:

- SOP compliance score

- Store Instock %

- Shrinkage & waste %

- OTIF (On-Time In-Full) delivery %

- Stores compliance to promotions and merchandising execution

- Staff, entrepreneur satisfaction & retention

- SCM cost as a % of Sales

Requirements:

- MBA preferred (Tier 1 - 2 B-Schools).

- 8 - 12 years' experience in retail - QSR - FMCG with multi-store & multi-city operations leadership.

- Proven ability to design processes and also run on-ground execution.

- Strong people leadership: has led large teams (200+ people, 100+ outlets).

- Customer-obsessed, impact-driven, with a founder mindset.

The challenge at J24 is not classical FMCG supply chain. It is: 500+ distributed stores, Fresh + dry groceries, Demand uncertainty, Entrepreneur-operated stores, High SKU count, Low margins, Daily replenishment, Technology + operations working together, Need to scale from ~70 stores to potentially 1,500. That requires someone who has repeatedly solved ambiguous operational problems.

What capabilities matter:

- Building systems from scratch: 5 stars (store is still evolving)

- Operations excellence: 5 stars (daily execution is everything)

- Analytical - problem solving: 5 stars (demand, wastage, productivity)

- Supply chain design: 4 stars (network, inventory, replenishment)

- Leading large field teams: 4 stars (warehouses, delivery, store support)

- Tech + data orientation: 4 stars (algorithms, dashboards, visibility)