Chief Operating Officer

Jagriti Enterprise Centre – Purvanchal

Position: Chief Operating Officer

Jagriti, one of the largest & most innovative nation-building programs, is looking for talented, passionate and energetic people to join its enterprising team.

BACKGROUND

Established in 1999, Jagriti is a non-profit with an objective of building entrepreneurship ecosystems in Tier 2/3 India. Its two key initiatives are:

Jagriti Yatra is a 15-day entrepreneurship train journey program to inspire youth to become entrepreneurs. In the last 17 years, it has impacted more than 9000+ youth, 28% of them turning into entrepreneurs.

Jagriti Enterprise Centre – Purvanchal (JECP) - an innovation and incubation ecosystem in Purvanchal (eastern Uttar Pradesh) to support local entrepreneurs and innovators. The ecosystem is designed as a hub and-spoke model across 10 districts of Purvanchal. Its mission is to create a robust district-level enterprise ecosystem by connecting local entrepreneurs with experts, mentors, investors, and market partners — thereby generating employment, reducing migration, and solving local development challenges through entrepreneurship.

About Jagriti

Jagriti is an ambitious organisation that aims to build India through enterprise, with a focus on Tier 2 & 3 districts (Middle India). It is creating an enterprise and innovation ecosystem designed to work across the spectrum of inspiration toincubation through three pillars: Jagriti Yatra (JY), Jagriti Enterprise Centers (JEC), and Jagriti Ambassador for District Enterprise (JADE).

Jagriti Yatra, the flagship entrepreneurship train journey program, focuses on identifying, inspiring, and connectingentrepreneurial talent. Through its Jagriti Enterprise Center initiative, Jagriti takes the mission to the grassroots byenabling entrepreneurs in Tier 2 & 3 districts with mentorship, access to funds, and market linkages. Through a network ofDistrict Ambassadors built up over the past decade, Jagriti has mobilized 9,500 young alumni, 28% of whom have goneon to become entrepreneurs at the district level. Together, these three pillars aim to build a grassroots enterprise revolution in the country.

Jagriti has a well-established track record and a credible board of members from corporate and development backgrounds, with experience in enterprise at both the grassroots and national level. It has strong links with leading private sector players in the country and seeks to bring that expertise to the social sector.

About JECP

JECP is an incubation and innovation ecosystem designed for 10 districts of Purvanchal. Its work is organized around a 3xI framework — Inspiration, Incubation, Innovation.

Incubation is delivered through the 7M process, implemented via a hub-and-spoke model across 7 districts (Deoria, Gorakhpur, Kushinagar, Sant Kabir Nagar, Ballia, Mau, and Maharajganj). The hub is a 6-acre Incubation and InnovationCentre in Deoria with world-class facilities; the spokes are Network Offices across the 7 districts, staffed by the Udyam Corps and Mitra (on-ground incubation team).

Innovation is delivered through 7 Centres of Excellence — Agriculture, Healthcare, Digital, Handicraft, Women, RuralUrbanisation, and Bioregional. The CoEs aim to nurture innovations with the potential for large-scale impact across the region. Each is chaired by an industry leader and run by an executive with an innovation background. Partners including Zoho, Rainmatter Foundation, and the Gates Foundation have supported the CoEs, which are in turn supported by a Digital Knowledge Centre.

Inspiration is about motivating local youth and women through outreach and mobilisation programs — including using the architecture and the building itself to circulate inspirational messages in and around the districts.

Position Summary

The Chief Operating Officer is a key leadership position at JECP, reporting to the CEO. The COO is primarily responsible for building and running JECP end-to-end — operations across the 10 districts, the Centres of Excellence, and the Deoria campus — while also supporting fundraising for the organisation's projects.

In this role, the COO works closely with the Incubation Director, the CoE Heads and Chairs, and the on-ground district teams (Udyam Corps and Mitra) to drive execution. The specific composition of the COO's direct reporting team shouldbe confirmed as part of the org design, since the responsibilities below span operations, the CoEs, the Knowledge Centre, and the JECP Centre.

Responsibilities Operations

• Manage operations at JECP across the 10 districts, assign resources, and ensure smooth execution.
• Supervise all operations and project activities, ensuring desired outcomes and alignment with Jagriti's overall strategy.
• Support the Incubation Director and on-ground district teams in building, adopting, and implementing the incubation process across the ecosystem.
• Supervise the disbursal and monitoring of funds in alignment with the Finance team.

Centre of Excellences

• Liaise with the CoE Heads and Chairs to design and deploy projects aligned with the Innovation framework.
• Ensure CoE Heads have adequate resources and support to guide their CoEs.
• Design the Digital Knowledge Centre as the enterprise, culture, and IP resource centre, and build a team to manage it.
• Manage the overall organization structure of the CoEs and the Knowledge Centre (Innovation).

JECP Centre

• Build and operationalise an organisation structure to manage daily operations at the JECP Centre in Deoria.
• Create and execute a utilisation plan for the Centre's spaces; design revenue models linked to the real estate.
• Support the Programming team in designing and executing programs at the Centre.
• Support the architecture and construction team in developing the full 6-acre campus.

Partnerships

• Identify and onboard potential partners for JECP — corporates, organisations, institutes, and government bodies.
• Manage partner relationships and ensure timely reporting to them.

Fundraising & Revenue

• Identify fundraising avenues for the JECP Centre and the CoEs.
• Support the fundraising team in creating proposals for potential funders and lead pitches.
• Support relationship-building with funders and manage funder accounts.
• Design and supervise overall revenue streams to ensure JECP meets its revenue targets.

Promotion

• Represent Jagriti at forums, events, conferences, and in the media to promote JECP's work.
• Liaise with the social media team to ensure adequate representation of the innovation work in the media.

Competencies

Thinking (Cognitive Ability)

• Curiosity in context: Ability to understand the local circumstances of a small town or district, and the curiosity to look for new solutions and approaches.
• Research mindset: Ability to go deep into areas requiring investigation — locally, at the district level, and nationally or globally.
• Cross-sector ideation: Enough working knowledge across the seven CoE sectors (agriculture, healthcare,digital, handicraft, women's enterprise, rural urbanisation, and bioregional) to understand, refine, and help progress ideas that can create local and national innovation.

Leading (Execution Orientation)

• Human-centred approach: Ability to understand a problem from a human-application point of view (design thinking), not only a technical or commercial one.
• Ease with ambiguity: Ability to live with ambiguity as an innovation is researched and progressed, hand-holding it until it gets onto the innovation track.
• Courage with humility: Courage to express a point of view and make the case for new ideas, even when that means going against the grain — done with enough humility to bring others along.

Being (Connection / Relationship)

• Cultural sensitivity: Ability to absorb and adjust to the local culture — understanding and respecting it so that innovation is nested in, and promoted through, local culture.
• Ecosystem & partnership mindset: Thinking beyond any single CoE — connecting innovation across all sevencentres as they are stood up, and situating each within JECP's broader regional development mission.
• Commercial focus: A mindset geared toward bringing in revenue and, over time, building a profitable sub-business under the innovation agenda — through local, national, and international partnerships as well as IP creation.

Overall, the person should bring transformative courage and a conviction attitude to the role.

Candidate Profile

Experience: At least 10 years of relevant experience in a corporate, incubator, accelerator, think tank, or comparable organisation.

Qualification: At least a Bachelor's degree (undergraduate) from a recognised institute. A relevant advanced degree (business and/or a Master's in another relevant field) is an advantage.

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