Job Opportunities at Apollo Agriculture

About The Role

We are seeking a product manager to own the research, design, and iterative improvement of Apollo’s agricultural product offerings. Our core products have reached nearly 100,000 customers and we are well-positioned to expand our product portfolio into new crops and products that help farmers further increase their profits, access new markets, and help them manage the risks they face. In this role your mandate will be to maximize value per acre for our customers and for Apollo. You are a strong candidate if you have a deep knowledge of farming across Kenya/East Africa, the ability to think critically and commercially about the best opportunities for Apollo and our customers, and comfort designing products that delight our customers.

Your Core Responsibilities

• Product Development: Identify, prioritize, and launch agricultural products. Determine the best inputs (seeds, fertilizers, chem) to be used for these products to maximize farmer return on investment. Incorporate information and data to iteratively improve our existing product portfolio.
• Training Design: Curate the knowledge that customers need to succeed with our agricultural products. Build curriculums that upskill our customers. Determine the appropriate delivery model and collaborate with other teams to ensure this content is delivered effectively.
• User Research: Spend significant time with our customers to deeply understand current farming practices and cash flows; identify optimal opportunities for increased investment and commercialization of farming practices.
• Expansion: Define criteria for identifying a product’s service territory that ensure strong product-market fit and personally select pilot areas. Lead expansion strategy for every product and work with our operations team to ensure your strategy is implemented effectively.
• Cross-Functional Collaboration: Work with our credit, logistics & distribution, sales, and customer support teams to ensure that all systems support smooth product implementation and launch

You Are

• Knowledgeable about diverse farming practices across Kenya (and beyond)
• Comfortable making commercial judgements about what’s right for our farmers and Apollo
• Extremely comfortable and excited to spend extended periods of time in the field
• Hungry to learn and excited to make an impact
• Able to rapidly assimilate new information and make sound, strategic judgements
• Strong at data analysis in Excel or Google Sheets and have interest in learning SQL
• Equally comfortable admitting when you are wrong as defending your opinion
• Clear communicator who can clearly express complex ideas both verbally and in writing
• Considerate listener who takes the time to deeply understand customers, teammates, and partners
   

We

• Are a collaborative team of smart and ambitious people who are dedicated to serving our customers
• Make magic happen to solve hard problems and always come with solutions when challenges arise
• Are comfortable taking risks that can result in radical scale, and understand that failures are opportunities to learn and improve
• Are considerate listeners and take the time to deeply understand and seek out ideas from the people around us, even when we disagree
• Offer a dynamic environment that fosters talent, collaboration, and growth
• Take pride in our work and share the responsibility to see it through from conception to deployment
• Back up our talk with a competitive compensation and benefits package including equity
• Value autonomy, honesty, transparency, and respect
• Are excited to hear from you!

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About the Role:

Apollo is seeking an experienced Communications professional to manage our communication vertical. This role will be in charge of creating and executing a cohesive communications approach both internally and externally. The Communications Manager will play an important role leveraging communications to drive customer acquisition and retention. This role will be responsible for answering:  1) How do we communicate better with our customers? How do we ensure our communications achieve both customer understanding and customer engagement?  2) How do we drive specific customer behaviors through our communications? How do we use communications to more effectively market our products? 3) How do we measure the effectiveness of communications across the company? 

You Are:

• Excited to work closely with our customers, making frequent field visits to deeply understand their communication needs, and see firsthand the impact of the communications you develop
• An exceptional communicator across multiple different mediums 
• Extremely creative, with the ability to test new approaches to best communicate with Apollo customers
• Knowledgeable about how to develop communications strategies designed to deliver business goals
• A capable user of data
• An excellent manager who can build, maintain and motivate a high performing team
• A skilled professional with a background in B2C communications - FMCG experience would be an added advantage. You also have over 6 years working experience, including team management experience

We:

• Are a collaborative team of smart and ambitious people who are dedicated to serving our customers 
• Make magic happen to solve hard problems and always come with solutions when challenges arise 
• Are comfortable taking risks that can result in radical scale, and understand that failures are opportunities to learn and improve
• Are considerate listeners and take the time to deeply understand and seek out ideas from the people around us, even when we disagree 
• Offer a dynamic environment that fosters talent, collaboration and growth
• Take pride in our work and share the responsibility to see it through from conception to deployment 
• Back up our talk with a competitive compensation and benefits package and challenging projects
• Value autonomy, honesty, transparency, and respect 
• Are excited to hear from you!

Responsibilities Your Day-to-Day: 

• Support the creation, and execution of communication strategies both for internal stakeholders, and our customers (farmers, agents, agro-dealers, etc.) stakeholders. This will include: a) Designing, developing, and implementing our strategy for communicating remotely over SMS, phone, and automated phone calls with our customers b) Designing, field testing, and implementing SMS and automated call scripts for remote training on product and process communication, and ensuring alignment with our overall customer communication strategy  c) Documenting stories and testimonials among Apollo customers, including farmers, field agents, agro-dealers, and partners, and leveraging these assets in communications strategies  d) Work cross-functionally to ensure all comms and scripts are aligned to our overall customer communications strategy 
• Define a clear process to measure the impact and effectiveness of communications, and clearly tell what is working or not. 
• Work across departments to ensure their communications needs are met and that Apollo has a unified voice across all communications
• Recruit, train and manage a high performing team to ensure timely and quality delivery of the communications mandate
• Coordinate the creation of communications materials ranging from internal scripts for call center functions, to customer messaging content, to marketing collateral such as flyers and posters, to ensure they are in line with our overall communications strategy 
• Come up with strategic solutions to customer communication problems and needs and clearly define strategic objectives for the communication function.
• Manage digital communications as a part of the overall customer-facing communications approach
• Prepare budgets for all communications, track spending and utilize resources as efficiently as possible. This will also include developing TORs, as well as recruiting and managing suppliers for outsourced communications functions

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About the Role: Apollo is seeking an experienced Head of Strategy and BD to help us build pathways from subsistence to commercial farming. This role will drive Apollo’s growth in several areas, including new product strategy, geographic expansion, and partnership development.  This role is inherently cross-functional, touching on product and expansion strategy, agronomy, business development, and technology.

Location: Either Nairobi, Kenya or Amsterdam, Netherlands is preferred. The role can be remote for the first ~6 months.

Reporting: This role reports to the CEO.

You Have:

• Significant experience in product strategy and development in a growing technology company, likely in a strategy, growth, or product role working closely with a product team, and/or a background in management consulting.
• Significant experience building close working relationships and partnerships both within a company and externally.
• Strong financial modeling skills to evaluate potential growth opportunities.
• A demonstrated history of driving growth in a fast-paced environment.
• The experience to know when something is “close enough” to done to be valuable.
• Exceptional written and verbal communication skills.
• An MBA (useful, but not required) or similar skillset.

You Are:

• Entrepreneurial and ambitious, with a proven record of developing and executing strategic projects in a complex and dynamic environment.
• A skilled relationship builder, who is excited to bring together multiple teams and partners to understand and solve hard problems.
• Passionate about agriculture and sustainability.
• A considerate listener who takes the time to deeply understand customers, teammates, and partners.
• Incredibly curious.

We:

• Are a collaborative team of smart and ambitious people who are dedicated to serving our customers
• Make magic happen to solve hard problems and always come with solutions when challenges arise
• Are comfortable taking risks that can result in radical scale, and understand that failures are opportunities to learn and improve
• Are considerate listeners and take the time to deeply understand and seek out ideas from the people around us, even when we disagree 
• Offer a dynamic environment that fosters talent, collaboration, and growth
• Take pride in our work and share the responsibility to see it through from conception to deployment
• Back up our talk with a competitive compensation and benefits package and challenging projects
• Value autonomy, honesty, transparency, and respect
• Are excited to hear from you!

Responsibilities 

• The Head of Strategy and BD will work closely with Apollo’s CEO and Chief Customer Officer, as well as our product, engineering, agronomy, and operations teams, to evaluate opportunities and develop Apollo’s strategy in the following critical areas:
• Vertical scale: What crops, tools, services, and investments best enable Apollo’s customers to transition from subsistence maize farming to more profitable, more sustainable, and more commercial farming? How should Apollo evaluate, prioritize and actualize growth into these new crops, new products, and new services like market access for their crops, and on what timescale?
• Horizontal scale: How should Apollo expand, both within Kenya and internationally? What products are best suited to new regions, and how should product offerings be adapted to achieve product-market fit in new territories?
• Technology landscape: How should Apollo’s product and customer acquisition strategies evolve as our customers transition from feature phones to smartphones? How can Apollo best take advantage of opportunities brought about by smartphone adoption and other new technologies?
• Partnerships and Business Development: What partnerships can Apollo develop or deepen to increase both horizontal and vertical scale? How can Apollo expand existing partnerships, including with ag-input suppliers, local governments, insurance companies, and agrodealers to maximize our value proposition and achieve our growth goals?

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About the Role:

Apollo is seeking an experienced Recruitment Manager with a strong background in field and bulk recruitment of early career professionals. This role will be key to Apollo achieving our growth targets - the Recruitment Manager will be responsible for bringing onboard the ‘boots on the ground’ needed to execute our Sales strategy.  

You Are:

• A recruitment professional with extensive experience with in-the-field talent recruitment in peri urban/rural environments. Bulk recruitment experience will also be key for this role
• Highly detailed oriented and data-driven in your approach - recruitment at these high volumes requires a keen understanding of key metrics such as drop off rates at each stage of the funnel, churn rates to account for in recruitment planning etc.
• Passionate about understanding our customers and field agents to ensure you are onboarding talent that will be able to thrive in their local areas. This will also involve occasional field visits to get a feel for the areas of operation, and see the impact of agents hired first hand
• A skilled recruiter with 5+ years of relevant experience - team management experience is an added advantage

We:

• Are a collaborative team of smart and ambitious people who are dedicated to serving our customers
• Make magic happen to solve hard problems and always come with solutions when challenges arise 
• Are comfortable taking risks that can result in radical scale, and understand that failures are opportunities to learn and improve
• Are considerate listeners and take the time to deeply understand and seek out ideas from the people around us, even when we disagree 
• Offer a dynamic environment that fosters talent, collaboration and growth
• Take pride in our work and share the responsibility to see it through from conception to deployment
• Back up our talk with a competitive compensation and benefits package and challenging projects
• Value autonomy, honesty, transparency, and respect
• Are excited to hear from you!

Responsibilities

Your day-to-day:

• Deeply understand the Apollo Field Sales network, structure, and recruitment needs
• Work with relevant team leads to define the ideal field sales profile to source for to fulfil role needs in their respective operation areas 
• Create a recruitment plan to meet field hiring targets required to support sales and growth targets 
• Drive innovation in sourcing for field agents - identifying new sourcing channels, experimenting with outreach approaches etc.
• Roll out and monitor the hiring process, including defining, monitoring and reporting on key metrics
• Create, update and maintain recruitment communications: from messaging designed to attract talent, to interview communications, etc to keep applicants informed in a clear, concise and timely manner throughout the recruitment cycle
• Ensure applicants, both successful and unsuccessful, have a positive experience with the Apollo brand
• Define airtight processes and systems to manage the recruitment process from intake to onboarding to ensure each applicant is accounted for, informed and finalized within a timely manner
• Keep and maintain a database of prospective talent to meet talent requirements as the need arises e.g. for expansion, to maintain headcount accounting for natural churn etc. This means maintaining a headcount of 5000+ high performing field agents in action at any given time 
• Track placements lifecycle with Apollo to gain insights to refine recruitment profile/model, working closely with the Training and Sales management teams to create a feedback loop
• Build a Field Recruitment Team to support the execution of recruitment strategies

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About the Role: 

We are seeking a product manager to own the way that Apollo interacts with our customers at radical scale and in a rapidly changing environment. Currently, our customers primarily use feature phones which requires that we deliver critical training content and customer service through SMS and automated calls, as well as through our call center and field agent network. However, the rate of smartphone adoption is rapidly increasing, and we must ensure that we now provide exciting and powerful ways for our customers to interact with us through smartphones. In addition to our customers, we must continue to develop the smartphone apps that our field agent and point of sale partners already use to interact with Apollo. As we scale, these apps must deliver new and exciting functionality that drives additional engagement and enables new revenue streams for the business. Our smartphone apps, SMS, automated calls, call center, and field agent network comprise Apollo’s user interface. To succeed in this role you must deeply understand all of our customers and partners and take ownership for how Apollo interacts with them via our user interface.

You Are:

• Extremely comfortable and excited to spend extended periods of time interacting with our customers
• A considerate listener who takes the time to deeply understand customers, teammates, and partners
• Hungry to learn and excited to make an impactAble to rapidly assimilate new information and make sound, strategic judgements 
• Strong at data analysis in Excel or Google Sheets and have interest in learning SQL
• Equally comfortable admitting when you are wrong as defending your opinion
• Clear communicator who can clearly express complex ideas  both verbally and in writing
• Comfortable making commercial judgements about what’s right for our farmers and Apollo

We:

• Are a collaborative team of smart and ambitious people who are dedicated to serving our customers Make magic happen to solve hard problems and always come with solutions when challenges arise 
• Are comfortable taking risks that can result in radical scale, and understand that failures are opportunities to learn and improve
• Are considerate listeners and take the time to deeply understand and seek out ideas from the people around us, even when we disagree
• Offer a dynamic environment that fosters talent, collaboration, and growth
• Take pride in our work and share the responsibility to see it through from conception to deployment
• Back up our talk with a competitive compensation and benefits package including equity
• Value autonomy, honesty, transparency, and respect
• Are excited to hear from you!

Responsibilities Your day-to-day:

• Conduct field research to deeply understand our customers, including: farmers, agents, and point of sale partners
• Design a “user interface” for our customers that meets their immediate needs. Express a clear strategic vision for the future of Apollo’s UI as smartphone adoption increases
• Collaborate with our business intelligence and engineering teams to organize the delivery of automated content to our customers and ensure they engage with key content and hear from Apollo with the optimal frequency
• Transform ideas into clear, functional product features and work with our engineers to ensure projects are managed efficiently and features are built to spec
• Rally people across the organization to deliver high-quality products, on time, for our customers
• Coordinate with technical and operational teams to continuously launch, gather insights on, and make improvements to new products

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About the Role:

Apollo is seeking an experienced Logistics and Distribution Coordinator to manage and develop a growing number of partnerships with rural last-mile partners. As the M responsible for the Logistics and Distribution coordination you will drive performance across the network of partners. You will work closely with all members of the Logistics and Distribution team towards efficient product delivery through effective selection and management of carriers, people and systems. You will also work to support thinking around strategic growth and improvements on the channel’s development . Your work will be essential to the success of these partnerships. You will report directly to the Logistics and Distribution Lead.

You:

• Have 5+ years of experience in distribution/channel management in an agricultural context. Experience in supply chain management is an added advantage.
• Have previous experience in a fast-paced environment, preferably in a  startup context.
• Have world-class interpersonal, networking and influencing skills. Success in this role will require you to nurture relationships internally within your team and with leaders of other teams, and to also deeply understand the perspectives and needs of Apollo’s customers, external stakeholders, and channel partners.
• Are able to build and maintain effective supplier relationships to ensure that supplier performance consistently meets and exceeds business expectations. This will include measuring supplier performance in terms of time/ delivery of quality products.
• Are skilled at interpreting and leveraging insights from data to constantly enhance the customer experience. The ability to extract useful, actionable information from data, along with strong problem-solving skills, will be essential for success in this role. 
• Have the ability to understand business objectives and align team goals in service of these objectives. 
• Are able to build and manage a growing team efficiently and that represents Apollo’s values. 
• Are proactive and self-driven to ensure the smooth running of daily operations and consistency of customer experience across the network.
• Are able to handle product-related incidents, either vessel-related or while transporting to customer, warehouse or distributors or partners, as well as troubleshoot and resolve issues relating to the supply of products.
• Are up to date with market changes and able to review and update supply chain practices in accordance with all relevant legislation.
• Have an aptitude for technology, and can continuously review and improve the tools and technologies that help the business deliver, manage, measure, and improve the customer experience across the distribution channels/partners
• Are able to design and implement inventory tracking systems to optimize inventory control procedures.
• Are able to minimize inventory loss by incorporating best supply chain practices.

We:

• Are a collaborative team of smart and ambitious people who are dedicated to serving our customers. 
• Make magic happen to solve hard problems and always come with solutions when challenges arise. 
• Are comfortable taking risks that can result in radical scale, and understand that failures are opportunities to learn and improve. 
• Are considerate listeners and take the time to deeply understand and seek out ideas from the people around us, even when we disagree. 
• Offer a dynamic environment that fosters talent, collaboration, and growth. 
• Take pride in our work and share the responsibility to see it through from conception to deployment. 
• Back up our talk with a competitive compensation and benefits package and challenging projects. 
• Value autonomy, honesty, transparency, and respect. 
• Are excited to hear from you!

Responsibilities

Your Day-to-Day:

• Movement of goods from Source to Storage Locations: You will be responsible for ensuring timely and efficient movement of goods from manufacturers, importers, and other partners to our storage locations. You will work with partners and relevant stakeholders to ensure that we are efficiently moving product to maintain acceptable stock levels at all storage locations to enable fulfillment of Partner pickups at all times.
• Movement of goods from various storage locations to pick-up locations: You will manage our Logistics and Distribution Last mile needs, including the movement of goods from our storage locations to the pick-up locations and ensuring we are always stocked at these locations for the fulfillment of farmer pickups. 
• Designing and  Innovating for scale: You will be charged with the responsibility of designing and establishing structures and efficiency around our first and last mile functions in a scalable manner as well as ensuring that we can continue to innovate and provide oversight over the customer experience and agro dealer performance management on the ground.
• Warehousing and Inventory management: You will drive performance across the network of storage locations. You will work closely with the warehousing team and oversee the accurate recording, tracking, and transferring of inventory, both physically and through both the manual backup and also on the ERP system. You will also be responsible for the smooth running of their daily work as well as supporting thinking around strategic growth and improvements. Your work will be essential to eliminating shrinkage across the network.
• Performance management: You will build systems that ensure continuous performance management of the team and distribution partners. You will build the team, innovate and lean into the intersection of operations and technology to systematically manage its performance. You will also build, manage, and motivate the team, including setting KPIs, hiring required staff, and effectively managing the rapidly growing team with consistent team training and performance reviews.

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About the Role:

We are seeking an experienced Business Operations Analyst to generate insights, work on, and own strategic projects across our core customer-facing functions. Your mandate is to use data to solve, model, and identify problems, understand opportunities, and support rapid execution of solutions across functions. Success in this role will require a curious and commercial mindset, deep comfort with quantitative analysis, and a love of problem-solving. 
You Have:

• Demonstrated record of problem-solving and world-class analytical skills.
• Experience in management consulting, equivalent experience in a corporate role (e.g., Business Operations, Growth, Strategy), or experience in a product/engineering role in a high growth startup 
• Excitement to understand Apollo from the ground up, from our customers to our financial drivers
• Exceptional written and verbal communication skills. After you find the right answer, you can communicate it successfully to those who need to understand the solution. 
• Ability to work with data, use it to understand and solve problems, and effectively tell the story that this data illustrates
• Excellent data skills. We primarily work with SQL and Excel on this team but would be happy to teach someone who is comfortable with programmatic data analysis (Python/Jupyter notebooks, R, etc.) 
• A degree in Maths/Science/Engineering or a related field or Business degree with relevant experience

You Are:

• An excellent communicator, writer, and networker, capable of influencing outcomes without directly owning them
• A proactive problem-solver and quantitative thinker: you like to “pull threads” and dive deep into data to understand the key drivers of business performance
• A system-level thinker with a commercial mindset who quickly understands cause and effect in complex systems
• A considerate listener who takes the time to deeply understand customers, teammates, and partners
• A deeply curious person.

We:

• Are a collaborative team of smart and ambitious people who are dedicated to serving our customers. 
• Make magic happen to solve hard problems and always come with solutions when challenges arise. 
• Are comfortable taking risks that can result in radical scale, and understand that failures are opportunities to learn and improve. 
• Are considerate listeners and take the time to deeply understand and seek out ideas from the people around us, even when we disagree. Offer a dynamic environment that fosters talent, collaboration, and growth. 
• Take pride in our work and share the responsibility to see it through from conception to deployment. 
• Back up our talk with a competitive compensation and benefits package and challenging projects. Value autonomy, honesty, transparency, and respect. 
• Are excited to hear from you!

Responsibilities Your Day-to-Day:

• As part of the Business Operations team, you’ll provide advice and build models that directly drive the strategy and execution of the marketing, sales, operations, and various other business functions. Your work will enable the Chief Customer Officer to analyze the performance of key functions, identify challenges and opportunities, and design solutions that rapidly take advantage of these insights.
• As an example, you might partner with Apollo’s Field Sales team to understand the performance of sales agents, identify the key performance drivers for their success in an upcoming season, and determine needed investments and resourcing needs, or you might build a model to optimize output in Apollo’s call center, and develop a plan for resource provisioning on the basis of Apollo’s targets. 
• You’ll be directly involved in ensuring alignment between customer-facing functions, by defining seasonal targets and KPIs and ensuring that all functions are aligned around these goals.
• Ideally, you will be proactive, curious, excited to grow and learn, and will enjoy seeing problems and projects from inception to delivery. 
• You will spend meaningful time with Apollo’s customers in the field to understand their challenges and needs first-hand. (Covid travel precautions apply here.)