Elevation Capital - Head - Supply Chain & Procurement - Fresh Vegetables & Fruits

Head of Supply Chain / Procurement, Fresh (Vegetables & Fruits) (12-18 yrs)

This role is with one of our portfolio companies.

Responsibilities:

- Responsible for end-to-end procurement of fresh vegetables and fruits to ensure the right quality, quantity, price, freshness, and availability across stores.

- Manage all buying and commercial terms, demand planning, replenishment, and inventory norms.

- Manage supplier relationships, sourcing, negotiations, market intelligence, quality standards, and supply planning while minimizing wastage and procurement costs.

- Define and enforce quality specifications for each SKU, including size, grade, maturity, colour, freshness, and acceptable tolerance levels.

- Oversee warehouses - owned ambient, third-party frozen and chilled - plus the vegetable grading and ripening facility as an operating node in that network.

- Manage inbound and outbound transport including cold chain, vendor selection, qualification, and development, and achieving the product specification.

Requirements:

- 10 - 15 years of experience in fresh vegetables and fruits procurement, preferably in retail, FMCG, food distribution, e-commerce, or organised fresh-food businesses.

- Experience running a multi-city perishable supply chain at scale.

- Experience running a distribution network - owned sites and third-party, ambient and cold chain.

- Comfortable interrogating a price-per-kilo dataset directly.

- Experience buying agricultural produce at source - mandis, farmer producer organisations, or offtake from contract farming programmes.