Site Acquisition Manager

Manager – Site Acquisition

The opportunity

Aliens Tattoo is the most recognised name in premium tattooing in India — a ₹45 Cr brand with a credible line of sight to ₹500 Cr by 2030, built on a franchise network we're taking to 100 studios across India and select international markets. Every one of those studios lives or dies on a decision made before a single needle touches skin: where it opens. A strong studio in the wrong location fails; an average one in the right location thrives. Site selection is the single highest-leverage call in this entire expansion — and right now it has no one whose full-time craft is getting that decision right. That is the gap you fill. You are the person who makes sure we open in the right place, on the right terms, every time.

The mandate

You own the front of the property pipeline end-to-end: from identifying the markets and sites worth pursuing, through feasibility and scoring, to negotiating and signing the lease. You hand a secured, lease-signed, build-ready site across to the Head of Franchise Development and operations, and they carry it into build and launch. Everything up to the signature is yours. You don't run franchise sales and you don't run the build — you are the resident authority on WHERE and ON WHAT TERMS, and you own that judgment.

The business is opening on the order of 35 studios a year, year on year — so this is a sustained, high-cadence pipeline, not a one-off hunt. This is a craft role, not a coordination role. You'll build and own the site scorecard the whole company comes to trust — the method that turns this feels like a good spot into a defensible, repeatable call. You report to the Head of Franchise Development, work to the targets they set, and have the room to pick markets, kill bad sites, and negotiate hard with your own methods.

What you'll be doing

• Picking markets and sites the way a serious operator does — catchment, demographics, footfall, co-tenancy, competition, visibility, and format fit across Base, Prime and Signature. Driving the failure rate down with a real scorecard, not instinct.

• Running feasibility on every shortlisted site — the numbers, the risks, the disqualifiers — and making a clear, evidenced call: pursue or walk.

• Building and working a live property network — brokers, developers, landlords, property lawyers — in every market we enter, so you move fast and avoid the landmines others walk into.

• Negotiating leases with teeth on the terms that matter: deposit, fit-out period, rent escalation, assignment, exit. Walking from bad deals.

• Driving due diligence and the permitting line of sight — zoning, signage, fire, hygiene — far enough that the site you hand over is genuinely build-ready, not a surprise waiting to happen.

• Owning a clean handover: a secured, documented, lease-signed site passed to the Head and operations with everything they need to start the build.

• Codifying how we do this — the scorecard, the market playbooks, the vendor bench — so it scales as the network grows.

What we're looking for

You've done this before — personally, not from a strategy deck. You've walked markets, scored sites, sat across the table from a landlord and won the terms that mattered, and walked away from a deal that looked good on paper but wasn't. You've secured multiple sites for a multi-unit or franchise brand, and you know what separates a location that works from one that quietly bleeds money for three years.

You are commercial and analytical in equal measure. You read a catchment and a rent-to-revenue ratio and tell us, with reasons, whether a site clears the bar. You build a scorecard rather than trust your gut — and you have the judgment to know when the scorecard is wrong.

You are unusually resourceful. The right broker, the right property lawyer, the right developer in a new city — you either know them or know how to find them by the end of the week. Your network is real, current, and you use it.

You negotiate well and hold the room. Landlords and developers take you seriously, and you don't fold on the terms that protect us.

Premium retail, F&B, salon, wellness or hospitality site experience is a strong plus — you know what premium demands of a location. Multi-city or international exposure helps. A genuine interest in our category and brand is table stakes, not a bonus. Tattoo-industry background is specifically not required — the category can be learned.

What success looks like

Early on, you've taken what's in the pipeline and given every site a clear, evidenced verdict — pursue or walk — with the ones worth pursuing moving toward signed, build-ready leases. The site scorecard exists, is trusted, and is how we make this call from now on.

Within your first year, you're securing sites at the cadence the business needs — roughly 35 build-ready studios a year — and the locations you pick become studios that work. Our location failure rate is measurably lower than before, and the Head and operations trust that anything you hand over is genuinely build-ready. As that volume builds, you've laid the groundwork to grow a small site/analytics team beneath you to keep pace.

Practical details

Mumbai-based, with significant domestic travel as we enter new markets. Reports to the Head of Franchise Development. Individual-contributor role at launch, with a clear growth path to building and leading a small site-acquisition / analytics team as the network scales.

Reports to: Head of Franchise Development · Mumbai HQ