Brand Manager for a culture-first South Indian brand at a new consumer venture by a leading Indian brand builder.

About the Company

Our client is a new venture by a leading Indian consumer brand builder, focused on building tasteful brands across categories and geographies. The company is about six months old with a team of ~25 people, each driven to do the best work of their lives. The founder previously built a major consumer brand not just by making good products, but by understanding what a generation of Indians wanted to feel about themselves and making that buyable. Now they are replicating that approach across more categories for more kinds of Indians, from scratch.

Role Overview

We are looking for a Brand Manager to run one of our brands, deeply rooted in South India — its culture, rituals, and everyday habits. The category has historically sold heritage, nostalgia, and authenticity, but with little relevance to how people live and shop today. We are building a culture-first brand that represents regional taste in the present tense — rooted enough to carry authority, current enough to appeal to a 24-year-old without explanation. You will own the brand’s commercial success: the plan, portfolio, budget, partners, calendar, and shelf presence. There is a creative lead who owns the look and feel; you own how the brand works in the market.

Key Responsibilities

• Own the brand plan: annual, quarterly, and dynamically rewritten based on market signals.
• Understand the consumer deeply — who buys, who almost buys, and what drives 20-year buyers to switch. Use both data and regional learning.
• Manage the product portfolio: pack sizes, price points, SKU ladder, launches, and discontinuations.
• Drive go-to-market strategy: launch sequence, city and channel prioritisation, and threshold conditions for scaling.
• Oversee all channels: quick commerce, marketplaces, modern trade, general trade, and D2C. Manage listings, content, ratings, search share, and merchandising calendars.
• Own media and budget allocation: decide where money goes, track returns, and ruthlessly cut underperforming spends.
• Track and report key metrics: awareness, trial, repeat, velocity per store, ROAS, share of search. Maintain an honest dashboard, even when it looks bad.
• Write crisp creative briefs that empower the creative team to act.
• Plan activations, brand partnerships, and regional calendars — prioritising tasting over telling.
• Coordinate cross-functionally with founders, supply chain, sales, growth, and product teams.

Tech Stack

• Marketing & Analytics: Google Analytics, Excel / Google Sheets, dashboard tools (e.g., Tableau, Looker), CRM platforms (e.g., HubSpot)
• Digital Advertising: Meta Ads Manager, Google Ads, programmatic platforms
• E-commerce: Quick commerce (Zepto, Blinkit, Instamart), marketplaces (Amazon, Flipkart), D2C platforms (Shopify or custom)
• Collaboration: Slack, Notion, Asana, or similar project management tools
• Data & Insights: SQL (preferred), survey tools (SurveyMonkey, Typeform)
• Content: Familiarity with regional language content creation tools (not mandatory but a plus)

While the role is not heavily technical, comfort with numbers and data-driven decision-making is essential.

Must have:

• 3+ years in brand or marketing with real ownership of a brand, category, or launch.
• South Indian cultural fluency: understand that southern states are four distinct markets, know which festivals actually move sales, and are fluent in at least one South Indian language (enough to converse with shopkeepers).
• Comfort with numbers: can build a plan, defend it line by line, and spot when it stops making sense.
• Judgment on spend: harder half is deciding what not to fund.
• Ability to write briefs that creative teams want to work on.
• Execution across levels: from pricing strategy at 11am to fixing a listing title at 8pm.
• Comfort with ambiguity and lack of playbook.
• Can think without AI – use tools to accelerate, not replace judgment.

Strongly preferred:

• Food or FMCG background, understanding packaging as a media buy, sampling, and FSSAI constraints.
• 0-to-1 launch experience.
• Deep knowledge of quick commerce and marketplaces (listings, ads, assortment, share of search).
• Experience in large FMCG systems and startups (rigour + speed).
• Real experience in southern markets (distributors, trade, regional media, local creators).
• Experience managing agencies, vendors, and a small team.

Quirks that matter:

• Knows the difference between a brand that is famous and one that is bought.
• Reads back of packs in other people’s trolleys.
• Admires a regional brand that never ran a national campaign, and knows why.
• Holds strong opinions about a shelf they had nothing to do with.

Full ownership of a brand at a house of brands from day zero. Direct access to one of the sharpest consumer brand builders in India. Opportunity to build a culture-first brand rooted in a region that most national brands still market to badly.