Partnerships & Program Lead

Location: Bangalore (with regular travel across India) | Type: Full-time

About uDot

uDot has developed a refreshable tactile display, a 2,400-pin device that renders Braille, diagrams, graphs, and even tactile animations paired with a curriculum-aligned learning platform for blind and visually impaired students. Over 95% of blind children in India drop Math and Science by Grade 7 because there's no way for them to engage with these subjects independently. We're changing that.

We're a young, fast-moving hardware and edtech startup already deployed in live classrooms, and scaling across India with an international pipeline opening up in the US and Europe.

The Role

We're looking for someone to own uDot's India expansion. This is not a desk job with a fixed script — it's a founding-team-adjacent role where you'll be the connective tissue between schools, NGOs, and CSR/donor partners, and you'll be trusted to figure out what needs to happen next.

You'll be responsible for the partnerships that bring devices into schools, the relationships that keep those partnerships healthy, and the judgment calls that determine whether a given school-NGO-CSR combination is actually going to work on the ground.

What You'll Do

Partner relationship management

• Own and maintain relationships with CSR partners, NGOs
• Represent uDot at events, conferences, and partner meetings; be a confident, credible voice for what we're building
• Prepare impact reports and updates for different stakeholders

Partner scouting and proposals

• Scout and qualify the right CSR partners and implementation NGOs for uDot's deployment model
• Build and write partnership and CSR proposals tailored to each partner's priorities and funding cycles
• Handle whatever documentation each partnership requires — MOUs, deployment agreements, reporting templates, and anything else that comes up

Deployment coordination and fit assessment

• Sit at the intersection of school, NGO, and CSR expectations, and make sure they're actually compatible before a deployment is committed to
• Work out how many schools and how many devices a given rollout realistically needs
• Assess whether a school can accommodate the deployment — infrastructure, staffing, classroom space, willingness
• Evaluate whether the student cohort's learning level and needs fit uDot's current content and deployment parameters
• Collect and organize the school-side data needed to plan and justify a deployment
• Flag mismatches early rather than let a bad-fit deployment go live

What We're Looking For

• 4–7 years in education or disability NGOs or a similar organisation
• You've personally raised CSR or corporate funding, even small amounts, and are comfortable owning a fundraising target
• You've run programmes in or with schools
• Based in Bengaluru, working onsite, with regular travel to schools and partner sites
• Someone who can operate as a generalist — this role will touch relationship management, strategy, coordination, writing, and fieldwork in the same week, sometimes the same day
• Strong written communication; you'll be the one writing proposals and reports that represent uDot externally
• Comfortable making judgment calls with incomplete information and course-correcting as things change — this is a startup, not a mature org with a playbook for everything
• Willingness to travel regularly, including to schools and partner sites outside Bangalore
• Hands-on CSR fundraising experience is required; experience in education-sector programme management is a strong plus

How You Work

We care more about how fast you learn and how you act without a playbook than about your résumé. Tell us about something you figured out from scratch. As uDot grows, working with our international partners is a growth path in this role.

A Note on What This Role Is (and Isn't)

This is a young startup. Priorities shift, timelines move, and you'll often be building the process at the same time as you're running it. If you're looking for a predictable, sit-at-your-desk role with a fixed scope, this isn't it. It is expected that the day to day work continuously evolves, and being comfortable with that is necessary

How to Apply

Along with your application, please send a short note (150 words) to [HIDDEN TEXT] with the subject Partnerships & Program Lead – [Your Name]: tell us about a time you had no clear brief and made something happen. What did you do in the first week, and what did you learn