Chief Ingredient Officer

Company Description edobbon is a healthy-first convenience retail company dedicated to helping consumers make better everyday choices. Through a network of neighborhood stores and digital commerce, edobbon brings healthier groceries, household essentials, wellness products, and daily needs closer to communities. The company focuses on curated product selection, emphasizing quality, transparency, and affordability. Every product is chosen with long-term well-being in mind, creating a trusted destination for health-conscious shoppers. edobbon is building a modern, consumer-centric retail experience designed for convenience without compromising on health.

The Role

Location: Hybrid. Head office, our stores, and regular field travel to sourcing clusters across India.

Experience: 8 to 15 years across sourcing, procurement and private label / product development.

Reports to: Founder.

Type: Full time, senior leadership.

This is a field led role. Read this first

This is not a desk job. You will spend real time on the ground, at farmer producer organisations, farms, mandis and co packers across the country, because clean label sourcing can't be done over email. If being in a Vidarbha tur field one week and a Sangli turmeric cluster the next energises you, keep reading. If you want to manage suppliers only over a screen, this isn't your role.

Why this role exists

We're scaling clean label in-house brands (Good Habbit^TM, MixMix^TM) and sourcing direct from farmer producer organisations, not just traders. We need one owner for the whole journey: from the farm and the ingredient, to the formulation, to the finished SKU on our shelf. Someone who refuses to compromise on what goes in. This is the most important hire in our product organisation.

What you'll own

1. Clean label sourcing (the core). Build and manage a direct network of FPOs, farmer collectives and chemical free suppliers across India. Negotiate price, MOQ, lead time and payment terms; build a vendor scorecard and dual source critical SKUs. Own incoming quality: specs, clean label standards (no hidden additives, no undisclosed processing aids), lab testing and lot traceability.

2. Inh-house brand development (the rare other half). Take products from concept, to formulation, to packaging, to shelf. Own the clean ingredient deck on every SKU and defend it against cost cutting shortcuts. Work with contract packers and manufacturers; own the cost build up and commercial viability of each SKU. Clean label and sustainable margins are both your responsibility.

3. Data & AI fluency (core competency, not optional). Run sourcing, cost and margin decisions on data, not gut. Maintain the SKU, cost and vendor databases. Use AI tools actively to speed up vendor discovery, spec comparison, cost modelling and packaging and label workflows. We build our own tools and you'll be hands on in shaping them.

4. In store assortment (grows into the role). Initially partner with store operations on which SKUs land where and how they're placed. As we scale stores, grow into owning assortment strategy and planogram logic for our private brands.

You're probably right for this if you

• Have 8 to 15 years hands on experience and have genuinely done both sourcing and procurement and In-house label / product development, not just one.
• Are happy to travel and be on field regularly (farms, FPOs, manufacturing units), not just visit once for a photo.
• Know clean label and Indian food regulation cold: FSSAI standards, labelling, legal claims, and what additive free actually requires.
• Have worked with FPOs, agri supply chains, or clean label and organic brands.
• Are fluent with data and use AI tools as a daily multiplier.
• Read ingredient lists for fun and have strong opinions about what belongs in food.

This is probably not for you if

• You're a pure procurement specialist who's never built a product, or a brand and NPD person who's never run a supply chain. We need the spine that does both.
• You want to work only from a desk and won't get on the road.
• Clean label is a marketing line to you, not a standard you enforce.

What we offer

• End to end ownership of the product that defines the company.
• A founder who builds alongside you and wants honest pushback, not yes people.
• Fixed pay: ₹16 to 20 LPA, based on a proven sourcing and private label track record.
• Ownership: ESOP in edobbon (Marketplace & Retail). 0.50 to 1.0% equity depending on seniority and experience. The equity commitment is documented in your offer letter; the grant is allocated on completion of 1 year, then vests over 4 years with a 1 year cliff.
• We're hiring an owner, not an employee.

How to apply

Send us one clean label product you admire, and one you think is lying on the back of the packet, and why. That tells us more than a CV.

Here in Linkedln also Write to [[Confidential Information]] with the subject Chief Ingredient Officer.