Lead - Public Relations

About the Role

Shiprocket is India's largest e-commerce enablement platform, and this role exists because our story is underreported relative to our scale. We're looking for someone who can fix that through sharp narrative instincts, deep journalist relationships, and the credibility that comes from having sat on the other side of the table.

This is a senior individual with strong execution muscle. You'll own Shiprocket's earned media strategy end-to-end, from proactive narrative building and executive positioning to crisis management and enterprise PR, while working as a genuine partner to the marketing function on every major GTM, brand campaign, and product launch.

What You'll Own

Narrative & Earned Media

•  Own Shiprocket's overarching communications narrative, how we talk about ourselves across business, tech, logistics, D2C, and policy media
•  Drive proactive media strategy: Understand the product and the solutions end to end, identify angles, pitch stories, and place coverage that goes beyond the press release
•  Build and maintain personal relationships with senior journalists, editors, and bureau chiefs across print, digital, and broadcast. This is a relationship role as much as a strategy role
•  Develop executive positioning and thought leadership for the CEO and leadership team, including op-eds, keynote narratives, and media briefings

Marketing Partnership & GTM

•  Embed with the marketing team on every significant product launch, campaign, and GTM as a co-creator from the start. Take the lead on select GTMs where marketing becomes a support function
•  Take the lead on earned and organic storytelling for launches; hand off to marketing where paid and owned amplification begins
•  Represent the communications lens in campaign planning: what can PR do that advertising can't, and how do the two reinforce each other?
•  Build campaign-specific media plans with clear coverage targets, publication tiers, and spokesperson strategies

Enterprise & B2B PR

•  Own PR strategy for Shiprocket's enterprise and B2B audience across logistics, supply chain, retail, and D2C brand media
•  Build narratives that resonate with enterprise decision-makers, not just startup press
•  Support policy and regulatory communications, industry reports, and stakeholder engagement with analysts and trade publications, including DPIIT, logistics policy, and fintech-adjacent regulatory environments where Shiprocket operates
•  Partner with Sales and Customer Success on case study development and customer storytelling at enterprise scale

Crisis & Reputation Management

•  Own the crisis communications playbook. Build it, maintain it, and lead it when called upon
•  Be the first call when something goes wrong: able to assess risk, draft holding statements, manage media escalation, and advise leadership in real time
•  Monitor media and industry discourse continuously for emerging reputation risks and proactively flag and prepare
•  Manage sensitive communications with the composure and speed that crisis demands this is a non-negotiable capability for this role

Stakeholder & Financial Media Communications

•  Manage communications with a complex and expanding external stakeholder map across financial media, institutional audiences, and industry analysts alongside traditional earned media
•  Build and maintain relationships with financial and markets journalists (ET Markets, Mint, Bloomberg, Moneycontrol) with the same depth as business and tech media relationships
•  Ensure all external communications in high-scrutiny environments are accurate, legally aligned, and consistent. Working closely with Legal, Finance, and IR teams as needed
•  Manage the narrative transition that comes with significant corporate milestones: balancing growth storytelling with the discipline that more complex stakeholder environments demand

Agency Management

•  Own the relationship with Shiprocket's PR agency: set the brief, hold them to outcomes (coverage, not activity), and ensure strategic alignment
•  Push agencies beyond execution into storytelling. Expect and demand ideas, not just delivery
•  Evaluate agency performance on meaningful metrics: quality of coverage, journalist relationships built, share of voice, message penetration

What We're Looking For

Non-negotiables

•  Prior experience as a journalist. You have sat in a newsroom, filed stories under deadline, and understand how editors think about what makes news. Former journalists who have transitioned into communications bring a credibility and instinct that is very difficult to replicate.
•  Exceptional written skills. We mean the ability to write a compelling op-ed, a tight press release, a crisp media pitch, and a leadership statement under pressure, all at a level that does not require heavy editing. Your writing should be a competitive advantage.
•  A real journalist network that goes beyond the contact book. Senior journalists at ET, Mint, Business Standard, Forbes, TechCrunch India, and category-relevant trade publications who will take your call and give your story a fair hearing. Equally important: relationships with the financial and markets desks.
•  Demonstrated crisis management. You have handled at least one significant reputational situation and can articulate what you did, why, and what the outcome was.
•  Experience managing communications in high-scrutiny environments with multiple external stakeholder groups, including financial media, institutional audiences, and situations where legal and regulatory considerations shape what can be said and when.
•  10+ years of experience in PR/corporate communications, preferably within technology, eCommerce, consumer internet, startups, or high-growth organisations

Strong advantages

•  Experience in B2B and Enterprise communications.
•  Track record of working as a genuine marketing partner on GTMs
•  Experience managing PR agencies from the client side and a clear point of view on what good agency performance looks like
•  Familiarity with media monitoring tools and comfort using data to demonstrate PR impact beyond clip counts
•  Experience building or managing a small PR team

What Success Looks Like

•  Shiprocket appears in tier-1 business and technology media with consistent, accurate narrative
•  The CEO and leadership team are recognised voices in e-commerce, logistics, and India's startup and business ecosystem
•  When a crisis occurs, we respond faster, more accurately, and with more control than our stakeholders expect
•  Marketing and PR operate as one team on every major launch
•  Financial and institutional media understand and accurately represent Shiprocket's business, growth, and strategy