New Ventures Associate/Manager: Rural Retail, Iringa, Tanzania

Wanted: Exceptional leaders with 2+ years' work experience (Associate) or 4+ years' work experience (Manager) to design and grow a new distribution business model across markets, globally.

Job Location: Iringa, Tanzania. Alternative locations may open up with the development of the program.

Duration: Minimum 2 years commitment, full-time job.

Job Description

To generate more impact for more farm families on a national level, One Acre Fund is developing new business units within the organization to push innovation in retail, finance and marketing in rural communities. In particular, the Rural Retail Unit aims to rapidly accelerate the distribution of impact-generating products and services to rural communities via One Acre Fund Outlets or 'Dukas' that provide products, financing and training to clients.

The vast majority of the world's smallholder farmers do not have access to the goods and services they need to succeed. Where retailers do exist, the quality of inputs is often variable and farmers often do not have the capital to purchase goods, nor the training to make the best use of them. The Rural Retail program exists to solve these problems on a global scale.

The Rural Retail program is designed to scale rapidly; our goal is to serve more than 100,000 clients in the next five years and become one of the largest retailers in rural East Africa. The program is also designed to scale as a business – we will generate annual profits to fund our scaling program impact. Having proven concept, we are seeking exceptional individuals to join this early stage team to design and scale this new business model.

Members of the Rural Retail program will be working on the below core functions. An Associate coming on to the team would initially be responsible for 2-3 core functions in the early stage development, and we hope that successful hires will go on to provide key leadership roles in a rapidly scaling and successful business model.

• Strategy Design and Startup Operations
  • Design a Scalable and Sustainable Rural Retail Business – Early members of the rural retail unit will develop strategy for how we can create a scalable rural retail business. Key strategic decisions will include market and geographic selection, operational design for regions and individual shops, selection of products to make available in our shops, as well as development of pricing and marketing strategies.
  • Startup Operations – We need to transform our ideas into a successful operating This means opening pilot stores and running marketing and operations experiments to develop the most effective business possible.
• Accelerate Scale: We want to serve at least 100,000 clients by 2020. Every member of the unit will need to contribute to our efforts to scale operations at a fast pace.
  • Open New Markets and Location:s – Conduct market assessments on regions and districts. Once we select new locations, we will plan to open new stores and connect with new clients.
  • Grow Total Clients: Design and improve marketing strategies and efforts in the field, identify new products to offer in stores, and explore financial products to help farmers afford impactful products.
• Improve Quality of Products, Services and Client Experience: Our farmers will need to receive the best possible quality of service from our program.
  • Measure and Strengthen Impact: We will collect and use data to evaluate the impact and sustainability of our ideas. We will use data to drive changes to achieve our key goals.
  • Maximize Client Satisfaction and Expand Our Product Platform: We will treat farmers as respected clients, collect data on their feedback, and drive change when necessary. Change will include the addition of new, impactful and exciting products.
• Build a Sustainable Business
  • Drive Revenue: Strengthen marketing, product adoption, transaction size, loan repayment rates and number of overall clients to drive up revenue to accelerate growth.
  • Reduce Inefficiencies and Costs: Trial new operating methods to reduce overheads, work with suppliers to reduce costs, identify potential economies of scale-savings and reduce operational efficiencies to reduce unnecessary expenditure.
• Build and manage a team: People will be the key to success in the Rural Retail model. We will build an amazing team of talented, passionate individuals who are invested in the success of our farmers.
• Hire, develop, and lead a team to effectively execute in the field.
• Team Building and Culture: Our leadership team stays connected to all levels of staff. Early members of the unit will need to maintain an entrepreneurial culture with detailed focus on impact for farmers and scalability of our model.
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