Commercial Leader

Mission Brief: Build Lenskart's Commercial Engine

This is a high-impact leadership role focused on transforming how Lenskart buys, negotiates, and manages every rupee of external spend across manufacturing, retail, and corporate categories. You will be the architect of a tech-led, AI-first commercial function that turns procurement from a cost center into a structural margin and growth lever.

Lenskart spends across hundreds of categories, thousands of suppliers, and multiple geographies and that footprint is compounding as we scale globally. Your mission is to build the systems, frameworks, and team that convert this spend into a durable competitive advantage: delivering step-change cost savings while making procurement faster, more transparent, and more intelligent than anyone else in the industry.

This is your canvas to define what modern commercial leadership looks like and to build something that outlasts you.

Core Mandate: Commercial Transformation & Value Creation

1. Commercial Intelligence Platform (The Builder's Focus)

• Platform Visionary: Own the strategic vision and rollout of Lenskart's commercial intelligence stack — should-cost models, spend analytics, supplier scorecards, e-sourcing, contract lifecycle, and AI-assisted negotiation insights — moving procurement from spreadsheets and email threads to a real-time decision engine.
• Technical Partnership: Act as the primary business lead, translating sourcing and category requirements into actionable specifications for Tech, Data Science, and Finance Systems teams. Drive enterprise-grade ERP, S2P, and analytics adoption across the function.
• Systems Design Ownership: Define the logic for category strategies, approval workflows, vendor risk scoring, and exception-based management — so that the majority of routine decisions are system-guided and only true exceptions reach human review.
• AI-First Operating Model: Embed AI and ML into every layer of the function — supplier discovery, price prediction, contract intelligence, negotiation playbooks. Set the bar for what an AI-native procurement org looks like.

2. Strategic Sourcing & P&L Impact (The Business Focus)

• Margin Impact: Directly influence gross margin and EBITDA through strategic sourcing, negotiations, demand consolidation, and value engineering across manufacturing inputs, retail spend (store CapEx and OpEx, marketing, logistics), and corporate categories.
• Year-on-Year P&L Delivery: Own and deliver structural year-on-year Store EBITDA cost savings benchmarked to the best in the industry — step-change, not incremental.
• Should-Cost & TCO Discipline: Make should-cost, total-cost-of-ownership, and value engineering the default lens for every major category decision — embedded in tools and workflows, not one-off exercises.
• Supplier Ecosystem: Build a supplier base optimized for cost, quality, speed, and resilience. Drive localization, alternate sourcing, and dual-sourcing strategies to de-risk global supply volatility.
• Strategic Buying: Transition the team from tactical PO-pushing to strategic oversight — system-generated demand signals, dynamic category playbooks, and contracts linked to real-time business KPIs.
• Negotiation Excellence: Be the commercial sharpshooter at the table for the highest-stakes negotiations — and build a team that negotiates with the same rigor.

3. Cross-Functional Leadership & Adoption

• Change Agent: Lead the cultural and technical adoption of the new commercial platform across Finance, Supply Chain, Manufacturing, Retail, and Marketing. Enforce a data-driven, evidence-led decision-making culture and challenge entrenched ways of working.
• Commercial Voice: Be the commercial conscience in planning, budgeting, and capital allocation forums. Bring rigor to make-vs-buy, vendor selection, and CapEx decisions across the business.
• Team Building: Build, mentor, and develop a high-performing commercial team spanning category leaders, sourcing analysts, and platform owners — and create the next generation of commercial leaders for the industry.

The Essentials:

• Experience: Proven leadership in procurement, strategic sourcing, or commercial roles, with proven ownership of end-to-end procurement across manufacturing, retail, and corporate spend. Exposure to global or multi-country sourcing is a strong plus.
• Commercial Track Record: Proven history of delivering breakthrough — not incremental — cost savings through strategic sourcing, negotiation, and value engineering at scale. Consistent year-on-year P&L impact, benchmarked against the best in the industry.
• Negotiation Mastery: Track record of leading complex, high-stakes negotiations and building negotiation discipline into the broader team.
• Tech & AI Acumen: Familiarity with enterprise procurement platforms and an open, curious mindset toward leveraging data, ML, and AI in commercial decision-making. A willingness to learn and partner with tech teams matters more than deep technical expertise.
• Education: Bachelor's or Master's degree in Engineering, Supply Chain, Operations, or a quantitative field; MBA preferred.

The Mindset:

• Systems & Product Thinking: You see procurement as a product to be built, not a queue to be cleared. You're as comfortable specifying a sourcing platform with engineers as you are negotiating with a Tier-1 supplier.
• Analytical Rigor & Speed: You thrive on spend data, supplier benchmarks, and cost models. You move at the pace of a high-growth tech company — fast, decisive, willing to ship a V1 and improve it.
• Transformational Leadership: You're a compelling commercial voice — capable of driving change across functions, securing alignment from CXOs to category managers, and developing the next generation of commercial talent.
• Hands-On & Outcome-Driven: You don't outsource the hard parts. You're in the room for the toughest negotiations, the messiest data, and the most stuck stakeholders — and you deliver outcomes, not decks.
• Tech-First & AI-First Operator: You default to automation, data, and intelligent systems. You believe the next generation of commercial leaders will be defined by how well they harness AI and you're already building that way.