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)