Category Manager

Category / Growth Manager — D2C

One growth loop: bring demand in → shape the assortment → price & promote → time it to the devotional calendar. You own all four.

Experience: 4–5 years

About AppsForBharat

AppsForBharat, a series C-funded faith-tech startup, is backed by India's best venture capital investors including Fundamentum, Susquehanna Asia VC, Peak XV partners (prev. Sequoia Capital), Elevation Capital, & BEENEXT. Our highly ambitious and audacious team comprises alumni from prestigious institutions like IITs & IIMs, with extensive experience in scaling high-growth startups. We're dedicated to developing mobile and web apps catering to the devotional and spiritual needs of 100s of millions of users across the globe.

Our flagship product, Sri Mandir, launched in November 2020, is the world's largest app for Hindu devotees. It serves as a digital sanctuary for millions of devotees worldwide. Our mission is to enrich individuals spiritual lives through innovative technology, offering seamless access to sacred pilgrims & rituals, divine teachings, and a vibrant community. The overwhelming user love motivates us as we aim to serve 100s of millions more in the coming years.

The devotion market is a $44B opportunity in India (growing at 10% CAGR), which is primarily offline and unorganised. Of the $44B, the temples drive GMV of $27B in temple offerings, services, and commerce. There are 2M+ temples in India - about 10k of these temples have a strong historical and cultural significance. Tourism to these religious places is a $10B opportunity. The Sri Mandir app is the world's largest app for Hindu devotees and growing 20-25% month-on-month.

Learn more about AppsForBharat: Business World Article, Indian Silicon Valley Podcast, YourStory Article

Try the Sri Mandir app: Android / iOS

Role Overview

You own growth and category for Srimandir's own D2C channel end-to-end. It's a full-loop role: you generate the demand, decide the assortment (how deep within a category, how wide across categories), set the price and promotion, and orchestrate all of it against India's devotional calendar, the rhythm that drives this business. You run the store like a P&L and grow it.

What you'll own

1 · Category — vertical & horizontal thinking. Build the assortment on two axes:

• Vertical (go deep): depth and premium ladders within winning categories, drive the NPD pipeline (new SKUs, variants, price tiers).
• Horizontal (go wide): expand into new categories, cross-sell and basket expansion — decide what to add, what to scale, and what to cut.

2 · Pricing & promotion. Set the pricing and margin architecture per category; design the discounting, offers and bundling that grow volume without eroding margin.

3 · Calendar planning. Build and run the festive / muhurat / seasonal calendar (Sawan, Navratri, Diwali and the rest) as the operating rhythm — plan launches, campaigns, inventory and promotions against each peak, well ahead of time.

4 · Demand generation (Marketing). Own the funnel end-to-end - traffic (performance marketing across Meta / Google), on-site / in-app conversion, and repeat (CRM, notifications, WhatsApp). Partner with performance and creative teams; own the growth number, CAC and ROAS.

What success looks like (first 6–12 months)

• D2C revenue and growth at or above plan; category contribution up.
• AOV and repeat-purchase rate rising, with healthy CAC / ROAS.
• Margin held while scaling volume, pricing and promo discipline.
• Calendar-led launches shipped on time, with demand captured at each festival peak.

What you bring

• 4–6 years in category management, growth, or D2C e-commerce - deally a mix of category ownership and demand generation.
• Performance-marketing fluency - run or closely partnered on Meta / Google plus CRM / retention.
• Pricing and P&L comfort; a sharp assortment / NPD instinct (vertical depth + horizontal expansion).
• Data-driven - strong analytics; makes decisions from funnel and category data.

Nice to have

• D2C consumer-brand / FMCG / e-commerce background; app or store growth experience.
• Feel for festive, seasonal, calendar-driven categories.
• Affinity for the spiritual / devotional space and Indian consumer nuance (Hinglish a plus).