Regional Manager Educate and Fasttrack at Wadhwani

Overview :

The Wadhwani Educate and FastTrack endeavors to support ‘job creation’. It supports to do this by mainstreaming entrepreneurship in education for national impact and by supporting start-ups and advantage to grow their companies.

The Skills Platform initiative is an attempt to alleviate the skill gap in knowledge workers while mainstreaming employability in education for national impact.

The Wadhwani Foundation has set to enable the education and advantage eco-system to function with higher relevance, support, knowledge and know-how so that thousands of young people can develop entrepreneurial skills able to leverage the opportunities in the country and advantage get the necessary support and networks to grow their businesses competitively. Also to enable the Vocational & Professional education eco-system to function with higher relevance, skilling and supporting thousands of young people into entry level jobs in industry.

Responsibilities:

• Partnerships with educational institutes including Engineering and Management institutes and Colleges to provide entrepreneurship education as an integral part of the training, exposure and experience for the students, so that they are skilled entrepreneurially.
• Identify, engage and support early stage Start-ups through learning, connects and other resources for sustainability and growth – through the campus and ecosystem partnerships
• Develop city based entrepreneurship eco-systems with strong networks of mentors, investors, service providers and entrepreneur-peer groups that can support new start-ups
• Key activities will be in the area of planning, implementation, coaching and consulting with partners.
• Interfacing with Engineering and Management institutes, Entrepreneur organizations, Mentor and Investor groups.
• Entrepreneurship education network
• Scope the Colleges and Entrepreneurship development stakeholders and framework in the country for a strong understanding of current status, challenges and opportunities
• Help identify the needs and define the goals and scope of the program partnership with clear roles and deliverables of the entities involved – keeping in mind the key WF programs on offer
• Work with the team to create a detailed project plan, monitor actions and ensure timely completion of deliverables to meet the needs.
• Liaison with all parties involved, ensuring common understanding and that deliverables meet the requirements.
• Responsible for developing and managing the NEN institutions & other partner Organizations including Entrepreneur & Startup Associations in a given market
• Qualify and sign up relevant institutes as per target & within timelines
• Facilitating the capacity development of member institutes –this includes working with the head of the institution, faculty leaders, and students to help structure, design and execute the right experiential programs
• Facilitate access to different resources from within and outside (ecosystem) the Wadhwani Foundation.
• Initiate and lead collaborations, networking & training programs on ground
• Identify & develop local resource teams including key faculty, mentors & entrepreneurs
• Work with the Central Team in mapping the market training needs and help implement these programs on ground
• Help administer the surveys on campuses at regular intervals
• Catalyze interest in entrepreneurship amongst students on campuses
• Drive participation for programs
• Start-up network and support
  • Identify and enroll high potential startup entrepreneurs for different kinds of programs
  • Identify and strategically engage all the relevant ecosystem partners such as mentors, investors, incubators, accelerators.
  • Deploy the NEN service offerings intelligently to the respective target customers in each region
  • Monitor the impact of the program through jobs created
  • Identify critical needs of startup entrepreneurs in the region and provide recommendation to program and product teams for modifications or development of relevant programs and content.
• Advantage (Small and Medium Enterprise) Ecosystem:
  • Supporting thousands of SME’s in identified countries that achieve 100% growth in 3-5 years. Ecosystem development to include the following:
  • Establish the WF SME network and programs. Strategize on building a nationwide community of SME’s.
  • Develop annual plans, targets and budgets in executing workshops and events. Supporting collaboration and increased communication across the entrepreneurship community.
  • Mentors: Establish an average of 50 mentors (including vertical and horizontal experts) per city across a minimum of 20 cities.
  • Customers/Service Providers: Build 25-30 customer (prospects for start-ups/SME) and 25-30 service provider networks per city, in each of the 20 cities, start a number of cohorts in discussion with the management

Requirements:

• Good academic pedigree with minimum of MBA from B schools and Strong executive presence with strong networking and leadership skills.
• Experience: Minimum 15+ years in roles leading projects and successful teams. Experience in handling multiple markets across Africa and should include interfacing with higher educational institutes, government departments, start-ups and entrepreneurs. Strong analytical, conceptual and strategic planning skills. Excellent interpersonal and supervisory skills. Business consulting & strategy experience across variety of SME sectors, business leader having consulted and supported launch and scale several business units. Has been a leader, managed business
• Communications: Able to listen, understand and communicate effectively. Able to develop documents and other write-ups for communication on paper, via the web and other means. Ability to communicate effectively to a range of audiences including students, teachers, principals, government as well as industry personnel.
• Project Management: Strong program management skills. Ability to break up a complex deliverable into a project plan with realistic tasks. Ability to manage aggressive deadlines with ownership and required hard work to keep to deadlines.
• People/Team Skills: Highly presentable and pleasant. Confident and able to interface with senior faculty/ industry experts/ Education Partners and government officials to derive results. High energy, exhibiting passion and drive for their work and able to rally other people around common goals. Work as an independent contributor and also as coordinator in a team.
• Technology Savvy: Good knowledge of tech solutions or tech-enabled services businesses. Extensive experience in deploying and scaling technology based solutions with achievement and outcome orientation.
• Highly desirable: Worked in the education structures and systems. Experience setting up projects from scratch and handling team.