Position: General Manager
September 2017
Nairobi, Kenya
Reports To: CEO
Start Date: ASAP
Twiga Foods is Rebuilding Africa’s Food Markets
- We believe food is too expensive, and producers aren’t getting enough of the cut. And, it’s our job to fix it.
- We don’t hire just anyone. We are looking for high energy team members able to drive rapid change in our business and in our markets.
- But, once you’re in, you’re in. Part of the club. We’re a company who deeply care for one another, with low staff churn, where we pressure each other to grow into our collective objectives. We believe strongly in sharing in our success, and helping each other develop.
We’re looking for a qualified General Manager to come and help “make the trains run on time” whilst the business rapidly scales, assist in building our institutions, and run the team managing the full supply chain of operations.
The right candidate will be target oriented, and bring a true operational and enterprise building mind-set. This is an opportunity for the right candidate to join a passionate executive team in solving one of the core, unsolved, opportunities of our time: building Africa’s Urban Markets.
About Twiga:
Twiga believes the world doesn’t need informal markets. Twiga gives small shops, who represent some 96% of Food and FMCG sales in East Africa, a mobile-based platform to order the stock they need the next day. Twiga takes the purchasing and demand data from the thousands of vendors and pushes it to collection points throughout the country, where farmers deliver produce to meet predicted demand, formalizing the market for thousands of producers across Kenya. Twiga operates the logistics from these collection points to its hub in Nairobi and on to delivery routes across the city. In the past vendors had to travel to wholesale markets at 4 a.m., haggle for goods, and get their stock back to their shop. Through Twiga they access better quality products, at lower prices, delivered directly to their shop.
Having recently completed a fundraising with some of the pre-eminent venture capital investors in the region, we are now set for a period of rapid expansion with an objective of serving 4,000 shops across East Africa’s largest and most dynamic city.
Responsibilities
- Day to Day Operations: from product sourcing in the field, through in bound logistics, warehouse management and outbound distribution.
- Ownership of the Profit & Loss Account: ensure the business meets its budgeted revenues and stays within budgeted costs. Working with the CEO, COO and CFO to put in place the resources we need in the medium term and ensuring effective monthly operations of these resources to meet the short-term goals.
- Goal Setting/Obtainment: work with the supply chain managers to set regular goals and achieve them – in budget, execution, and institution building
- Team Growth & Retention: build an operations department designed to scale through up-skilling internal talent, high retention rates, and constructive feedback
- Company Culture and Vision: the team you will oversee conveys Twiga’s culture and vision to our community. They must embrace it, live it, and share it.
- Logistics/Operations Build-Out: oversee the team building new supply lines, warehousing needs, logistics needs, and field operations growth.
Requirements:
- Leadership: you know how to get people bought-in to a plan that scales rapidly, and follow-up on seeing that plan through. You have a proven track-record of leading large (100+ member) teams.
- Structure: you can pull together the needed paperwork (which then becomes tech products) to manage supply chains efficiently. It’s important to us you’ve shown you can scale-up a supply-chain based enterprise quickly.
- Know-How: You need to be grounded in tactics of supply chain. 5+ years of management experience in supply chain, FMCG, physical scale-ups, route to market, or consumer goods operations management; degree in business, engineering, logistics, or other relevant fields; you’ve overseen a budget of +$2mil annually.
- Team: You fit in with us, are collaborative, work well in a flat environment, can create your own direction, and have shown a willingness to make sacrifices to reach big objectives. You have an entrepreneurial mindset, are innovative and willing to take risks.
- Preference will be given to candidates with emerging market experience.
Perks:
- Twiga is fundamentally changing the world for millions of farmers, small businesses and consumers, and you can have a lead role in building that. Coming to Twiga is a great reason to get up every day.
- A work-environment that offers lots of road-trips across a beautiful country. We are casual, fun, and offer career growth through initiatives like global mentorships and continuing-ed opportunities. Plus we have a great in-office chef!
- Full benefits including family health-care, a personal vehicle, and internationally competitive compensation.
To apply, please send your CV to [email protected] with “General Manager” on the subject Line