Assistant Business Development Manager – Markets (Seeding) at Unilever

As the ninth global cluster, we work across the world to fill white spaces for Unilever.

We treat the business as our own.

As intrapreneurs, we introduce Unilever’s brands into white space geographies like Korea, Pacific Islands, Mongolia, and spearhead launches of iconic household brands like Dove, Lifebuoy, Sunlight, Fair & Lovely, TRESemme into big markets like U.S, China, Western Europe and SEAA.

As Unilever’s growth engine, we establish global white space businesses in key channels such as Health & Beauty, Discounters, E-Commerce and alternate channels such as travel retail, marketing to institutional partners like the United Nations, and seeding Unilever brands to overseas diaspora who crave for a taste of their familiar home brands.

Singapore is our global hub leading strategy, marketing thinking, seeding plans, and alignment with the global categories and supply chain.

Game changing business

SPEED is the mantra for our resounding success. To serve the underserved, we embrace a founder’s mentality, explore unchartered territories, redesign end-to-end business models to establish successful businesses. We make a difference by working fast and smart, nurturing our tribe, winning together and living by five tenets:

We will be the fastest route-to-market globally;
We go where no (man, woman or distributor) has ever explored;
Impossible is an opinion, not a fact;
Speed is our currency;
When brands are built right, they can last a lifetime.

About Business Development in UI…

We build market positions in white spaces by identify new opportunities, developing, defining, negotiating and nurturing strong business relationships. We own the business’ P&L end-to-end, partner with customers, distributors and internal cross-functional teams to manage and grow existing businesses, to deliver growth through flawless execution of projects.  

This role is important because …

You’ll drive end-to-end management of seeding initiatives and manage existing business within East Africa (Kenya, Uganda & Tanzania);
You’ll coordinate across multi-functional teams to bring projects to life and drive business growth.

Your key responsibilities include…

• Prospecting
  • Leading, mapping and developing business and seeding opportunities in East Africa through data and insight activation
  • Screening potential businesses through market analysis, deal requirements, potential and financial analysis
• Establishing and Executing Business Plans
  • Developing and managing business plans internally and externally, to craft end-to-end launch plans to drive route-to-market for new product development (NPD)
  • Establishing supply chain networks and alignment with Category team on launches
• Tracking and Monitoring Performance
  • Creating business cases (P&L) and activation spend for sales and marketing budgets (TTS & BMI)
  • Tracking and managing of key business metrics and KPIs across marketing and trade activities
  • Reporting in-market activities and competitor data
• Stakeholder Management
  • Leading and align cross functional teams to effectively manage projects
  • Collaborating with local OpCo for synergies

You’ll work closely with…

• UI Business Development, Finance, Marketing and Supply Chain teams
• External distributors

KEY EXPERIENCE & SKILLS…

• Be a strategic, highly adaptable and entrepreneurial person
• Embrace a high growth mindset with strong love for consumers, shoppers and customers
• Have strong financial acumen and analytical skills
• Have strong communication, negotiation and influencing skills with key stakeholders
• Have experience working and leading in cross-functional teams
• 3 - 7 years’ experience in FMCG industry in Customer Development
• A Bachelor’s degree in any discipline