Associate Director/Director - SCM & Design - Retail

Associate Director - Director - SCM & Design: The Associate Director - Director - SCM & Design will own end-to-end operational excellence across all stores and the supply chain backbone. This leader will build teams, processes, and systems to deliver consistent in-store execution, customer delight, and a robust, scalable supply chain. The leader will also have PnL responsibility for all the network's operational costs. Key Responsibilities: 1. Store Operations: - Drive SOP adherence across our network of stores - Ensure inventory, entrepreneur and consumer experience KPIs are met. - Build and manage a team of cluster - area managers for daily retail discipline. - Establish audit systems and tech-enabled dashboards for monitoring. 2. Supply Chain Operations: - Manage procurement, warehousing, Fruits and Vegetables supply chain, and last-mile logistics. - Drive vendor SLAs, OTIF delivery, and cost optimization. - Design scalable supply chain processes for expansion into new cities - Drive initiatives to reduce cost, improve efficiency and productivity of our supply chain and store operations. 3. People Leadership: - Recruit, train, and inspire high-performing operations teams. - Build a culture of accountability, ownership, and customer-first execution. - Mentor entrepreneurs - franchisees to achieve operational excellence. 4. Strategy & Execution: - Translate high-level sales and growth targets into operational plans. - Design and improve operating models to ensure profitability at scale. - Deploy technology for automation, visibility, and data-driven decision-making. 5. Key Metrics: - SOP compliance score - Store Instock % - Shrinkage & waste % - OTIF (On-Time In-Full) delivery % - Stores compliance to promotions and merchandising execution - Staff, entrepreneur satisfaction & retention - SCM cost as a % of Sales Requirements: - MBA preferred (Tier 1 - 2 B-Schools). - 8 - 12 years' experience in retail - QSR - FMCG with multi-store & multi-city operations leadership. - Proven ability to design processes and also run on-ground execution. - Strong people leadership: has led large teams (200+ people, 100+ outlets). - Customer-obsessed, impact-driven, with a founder mindset. The challenge at J24 is not classical FMCG supply chain. It is: 500+ distributed stores, Fresh + dry groceries, Demand uncertainty, Entrepreneur-operated stores, High SKU count, Low margins, Daily replenishment, Technology + operations working together, Need to scale from ~70 stores to potentially 1,500. That requires someone who has repeatedly solved ambiguous operational problems. What capabilities matter: - Building systems from scratch: 5 stars (store is still evolving) - Operations excellence: 5 stars (daily execution is everything) - Analytical - problem solving: 5 stars (demand, wastage, productivity) - Supply chain design: 4 stars (network, inventory, replenishment) - Leading large field teams: 4 stars (warehouses, delivery, store support) - Tech + data orientation: 4 stars (algorithms, dashboards, visibility)