Lead - Franchise Operations and Retail Expansion

About This Job

Pickyourtrail

Location: Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India

Work Mode: On-site

Industry: Travel Arrangements,Retail

Job Description

About the Role:

We operate on a FOFO (Franchise-Owned, Franchise-Operated) model, where the success

of each store depends heavily on the quality, ownership mindset, and operating capability of

the franchise partner.

We are looking for a hands-on operator to own the performance and expansion of this

network.

This is not a role for someone who wants to manage the business primarily through

dashboards and reviews. You will spend significant time in stores, with franchise partners,

understanding ground realities, solving operational problems, and building repeatable

systems that make our best stores the benchmark for the network.

What You'll Own

• Store hiring – Hiring is the store partner's own KPI, not yours — but you'll actively guide
  
  

and support them in hiring the right type of people, with a repeatable toolkit and tighter

handoff into our training team.

• Sales attrition – Also the store partner's KPI. You'll help them diagnose root causes and
  
  

adopt a retention playbook (comp, incentives, career path) rather than owning the

outcome directly.

• Local demand generation – Reduce over-reliance on centrally-sourced paid leads by
  
  

building partners capability to generate local demand (referrals, local tie-ups,

community/corporate outreach).

• Lead economics & conversion – Fix cases where partners consume paid leads (50%
  
  

CAC-charged post month 6) without converting — via better training, accountability, or

lead-routing fixes.

• Partner selection & store health – Sharpen partner vetting toward operators over
  
  

investors; run a regular store review cadence; drive real turnarounds for

underperforming stores.

• Playbook codification – Turn what works in our best stores into a standard playbook for
  
  

new and struggling ones.

• New store expansion – Scout markets and real estate (500-600 sq ft,
  
  

high-street/arterial- road, high-visibility), and screen partners rigorously — at the pace

needed to hit 20-25 stores without a quality drop.

• Leading the Store Ops team – Hire, coach, and manage this team directly. They train
  
  

store staff and resolve tickets (itinerary, pricing, deal support) — conversion stays with

the store seller/partner. Set standards for response time, quality, and scale the team as

stores grow.

• Stakeholder management – Work across performance marketing, training, and finance
  
  

to translate store-level reality into action, and vice versa.

• Commercial & compliance ownership – Own franchise LOB budgeting/forecasting,
  
  

track unit economics (CAC vs. revenue by store), and keep franchise agreements

compliant.

What Does Success Looks Like

• Underperforming stores show measurable turnaround, or an honest call on the partner
  
  

relationship

• Documented hiring/onboarding process adopted across most stores; attrition trending
  
  

down

• Growing share of revenue from partner-generated local demand
• Store-level lead-conversion economics visibly improving, not just tracked
• 11 20-25 stores in 12 months, without quality drop in stores or partners→ Store Ops
  
  

team scales with store growth, holding response quality steady

What's Needed

Non-negotiables

• Stakeholder management- credible with founders, partners, and internal teams at once
• Managing by influence — formal authority over Store Ops only; store partners must be
  
  

moved through relationship and credibility, not hierarchy

• Problem-solving — root-cause diagnosis, comfortable building the playbook where
  
  

none exists

• Go-getter mindset, hustle, and a willingness to get hands dirty — in stores, not just on
  
  

dashboards

• Based in Chennai, in person
  
  

Preferred

• Retail operations or multi-location/franchise management background — ground-level,
  
  

revenue-owning, not purely strategic/advisory

• Experience managing a hire-train-retain cycle for a distributed frontline team
• Direct people-management experience
• Comfort with franchise-model messiness — variable partner capability, local market
  
  

variance

• P&L / unit-economics fluency
• MBA preferred, min 5 years of prior work experience
  
  

Nice to have

• Travel, hospitality, or similar high-consideration sales category experience
• Experience scaling a partner/franchise network from a smaller base