Category Lead - Grains - Procurement

Position Title: Category Lead Grains

Business: Godrej Agrovet

Location: Mumbai

About Godrej Industries Group (GIG)

GIGis a holding company of the Godrej Group. We have significant interests in consumer goods, real estate, agriculture, chemicals, and financial services through our subsidiary and associate companies, across 18 countries.

www.godrejindustries.com

About Godrej Agrovet Limited (GAVL)

Godrej Agrovet At Godrej Agrovet, a food and agriculture conglomerate, we are dedicated to improving the productivity of Indian farmers by innovating products and services that sustainably increase crop and livestock yields.

https://www.godrejagrovet.com/

Role Objective

The Category Lead Grains is part of the Central Buying Organisation (CBO) of Godrej Agrovet's Animal Nutrition Business, which procures over 1.5 MMT of agri-products annually. The incumbent owns the national grains category charter and leads the regional buying teams - Regional Buyers and support buyers - who handle on-ground sourcing, crop surveys, and vendor management in their geographies. The incumbent consolidates regional intelligence into a national sourcing and price-risk strategy, standardises processes across regions, develops the buying team, and represents the category to senior stakeholders, while holding each region accountable for cost, supply continuity, and supplier performance.

Key Responsibilities

1. Team Leadership & Category Governance

• Lead, coach, and develop Regional Buying teams (Grains) across sourcing geographies, setting clear regional targets aligned to the national category plan.
• Drive capability building and succession planning within the regional buying team; act as the escalation and decision authority for regional buyer on buying plans, quality, vendor disputes etc.
• Conduct periodic regional business reviews to track each buyer's performance against cost, OTD, and compliance metrics.

2. National Sourcing & Procurement Strategy

• Own the end-to-end national sourcing strategy for grains and allied agri-commodities (DDGS, Molasses, Hullar Bran, Maize Gluten, etc) used in feed manufacturing, translating it into region-specific buying plans executed by the regional buying team.
• Develop and drive short-term and long-term procurement strategies to address demand-supply gaps and optimise costs across regions, including opportunities for cross-regional aggregation of volumes.
• Identify new raw materials, sourcing geographies, and vendors that regional buyers should onboard to strengthen the national vendor portfolio.
• Support regional teams on operations of Fuel, Packing material and engineering items procurement in alignment with respective category leads.
• Own process compliance of the Procure-2-Pay cycle at the category level, ensuring Purchase Orders, delivery follow-ups, and payment processing are executed consistently by regional buyers.

3. Market Research, Analysis & Price Risk

• Consolidate on-ground crop surveys and market intelligence gathered by the regional buyers into a unified national view of supply, demand, and price movement.
• Track domestic and global market trends for grains and related commodities and translate this into a category-level price-risk and hedging approach.
• Periodically travel to key sourcing markets alongside regional buyers to validate ground realities, assess emerging risks, and resolve escalated business challenges.
• Present category-level market outlook, risks, and opportunities to Head CBO and cross-functional leadership.

4. Technology & Digital

• Drive standardised use of ERP platforms (e.g., SAP), E-Auction, and digital sourcing tools across all regions to enhance transparency and competitive buying.
• Own the category-level dashboard and MIS, consolidating inputs from regional buyers for real-time tracking of commodity prices, inventory, and supplier performance.
• Lead digital transformation initiatives for the grains category, including automation of reporting and adoption of advanced analytics tools for decision-making.

5. Logistics & Release-Item Selling

• Drive category-wide initiatives to maximise realisation from release items such as packing material and scrap, through technology and vendor development.
• Lead planning of warehouse space hiring/de-hiring, consumption plan of stocked RMs, coordination of inbound logistics and unloading of RMs.

6. Supplier Relationship Management

• Manage relationships with suppliers, while ensuring regional buyers maintain and expand a competitive vendor base within their geographies.
• Ensure that supplier performance management framework is applied consistently across regions, reviewing vendor evaluations conducted by regional buyers.
• Leverage organisational scale to negotiate long-term, national-level supply arrangements where regional aggregation creates a cost advantage.

7. Business & Stakeholder Collaboration

• Partner with Production, Stores, Supply Chain, and Finance leadership to ensure the category strategy supports uninterrupted plant operations across all regions.
• Ensure compliance with organisational value systems, internal controls, and reporting requirements across the regional buying team.
• Identify, prioritise, and drive category-wide cost-saving initiatives, allocating specific initiatives to regional buyers and tracking delivery.

Qualifications & Experience

• Post-Graduation (MBA in Agri-Business).
• Minimum 8-12 years of relevant experience in agri-commodities, feed, or allied industries, including a team management role.
• Demonstrated expertise in strategic sourcing, market intelligence, price-risk management, and supplier performance management at a multi-region or national scale.
• Working knowledge of SAP, E-Auction platforms, and digital procurement tools; prior exposure to leading category-level dashboards and MIS is desirable.
• High willingness to travel extensively across geographies to support and guide regional buying teams and consolidate market intelligence.

Key Competencies

• Team leadership and coaching ability to manage and develop a geographically dispersed team of regional buyers.
• Strong commercial and negotiation acumen, including at national/strategic-vendor level.
• Analytical mindset with the ability to synthesise regional inputs into a coherent national market view.
• Effective cross-functional collaboration and senior stakeholder management.
• Entrepreneurial mindset with an ownership orientation toward Total Cost of Ownership across the category.
• Integrity, compliance orientation, and the ability to operate independently while holding a team accountable.

Whats in it for you?

Be an equal parent

Childcare benefits for the birthing parent, commissioning parent (in case of surrogacy) or adoptive parent, and their partners

• 6 months of paid leave for primary caregivers, flexible work options on return for primary caregivers
• 2 months paid leave for secondary caregivers
• Caregiver travel for primary caregivers to bring a caregiver and children under a year old, on work travel

Coverage for childbirth and fertility treatment

No place for discrimination at Godrej

Gender-neutral anti-harassment policy

Same sex partner benefits at par with married spouses

Coverage for gender reassignment surgery and hormone replacement therapy

Community partnerships and advocacy

Persons with Disability (PwD) care

We are selfish about your wellness

Comprehensive health insurance plans, as well as accident coverage for you and your family, with top-up options

Elder care for those who might need to extend support to senior family members

Preventative healthcare support

Outpatient Department (OPD) coverage, including vaccinations, dental, vision, etc.

Uncapped sick leave

Flexible work options, including remote working and part-time work

Mental wellness and self-care programmes, resources and counselling

Celebrating wins, the Godrej Way

Structured recognition platforms for individual, team and business-level achievements

Digital and offline instant recognition platforms

An inclusive Godrej

Before you go, there is something important we want to highlight. There is no place for discrimination at Godrej. Diversity is the philosophy of who we are as a company. And has been for over a century. It’s not just in our DNA and nice to do. Being more diverse - especially having our team members reflect the diversity of our businesses and communities - helps us innovate better and grow faster. We hope this resonates with you.

We take pride in being an equal opportunities employer. We recognize merit and encourage diversity. We do not tolerate any form of discrimination on the basis of nationality, race, colour, religion, caste, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, disability, age, or marital status and ensure equal opportunities for all our team members.

If this sounds like a role for you, apply now!

We look forward to meeting you.