Business Planning and Operations Manager

Location

HQ (Field visit is required if it is necessary)

iFarmer is an award-winning agri-fintech business focusing on innovative financial services for smallholder farmers. iFarmer uses agriculture expertise, agronomic machine learning, remote sensing, and mobile phones to deliver financing, high-quality agriculture inputs, optimized farm advises and creates access to markets that can improve profitability for millions of farmers.

We are on a mission to “Democratize Agriculture financing and Supply chain”.

iFarmer works closely with multiple stakeholders across the agriculture value chain. We are supported by organizations such as UNCDF, UNESCAP, Asia Accelerator, Falcon Ventures, Startup Bangladesh, UNDP Youth CoLab, Acumen, and more.

1

Vacancy

Full Time

Job Type

Negotiable

Salary

20 June 2023

Deadline

Vacancy

Job Type

Full Time

Salary

Negotiable

Deadline

20 June 2023

Department

Field Operations

Job Responsibilities

1. Operational Leadership: Create, maintain, and refine excellent processes and systems to support the effective and efficient functioning of the field operations vertical. This will include:

Expand into new locations and increase farmer financing in current locations.
Ensure SOP is being followed on the field.
Ensure smooth recovery of the loan.
Coordinate with stakeholders such as banks at local and regional levels.
Manage Regional Coordinators and support them in business planning.
Support the development and implementation of new services such as input financing and embedded services such as insurance and advisory

2. Develop iFarmer’s Financing Strategy: Develop iFarmer’s financing strategy: This includes everything from designing, field surveys, and owning the execution of the whole process to guide expansion decisions and inform where, how, and when we expand to new regions and farming areas across the country and in new countries as we grow.

Develop tools, systems, teams, and processes for field expansion scouting.Selecting new high-growth, high-impact regions for expansion, scouting these on the ground and collecting farmers, agro-dealers, partners, and regional agro-economic data, complementing internal data with appropriate desktop research and data from external sources and stakeholders; synthesizing this into actionable insights and criteria to inform high-impact expansion decisions.

Develop and Own Expansion Infrastructure & Stakeholder Relations. He will identify, locate and set up the requisite infrastructure needed to operate the program successfully in new expansion areas. Also, initiate and build strong stakeholder relationships in new locations to facilitate strong, mutually productive relationships and synergies with existing stakeholders.

3. Be responsible for leading the department, assuring its full integration with other team’s activities, especially to identify and implement cross-strengthening activities.

4. Organizing team roles and evaluating employee performance.

5. Verify the accuracy of the loan applicants and project details to the point as per loan requisition.

6. Support and coordinate with legal and external affairs (Lawyer) to recover loans.

7. Help senior management in facing the internal and external audit teams and serve them with all required data and documents.

8. Identify repayment-related challenges and barriers on the farmer’s end and find ways to remove these to have an accurate loan collection process.

9. Documenting operational tasks and reporting to senior management.

Requirements

5-10 years of working experience in managing field operations for micro-finance organizations, agricultural input companies, and financial institutions.
A Master’s degree in the relevant subject is a must.
Knowledge of farmer financing, seasonal loan, credit recovery, and agriculture product trading will be preferred.
Ability to establish operational systems and processes to meet deliverables.
Excellent communication in Bangla and English, with the ability to develop presentations and reports from the field office.
Strong knowledge of MS Office (MS Word, MS Excel, and PowerPoint).

Additional Qualifications

Strong communication and interpersonal skills.
Flexibility to travel for the official tour (30%).
Strong analytical ability.
Excellent people management and decision-making skills.
Outstanding organizational and leadership skills.
Problem-solving aptitude.
Forward planning and strategic thinking.

Apply Procedure

If you think you are fit for this role, you are requested to send your updated CV to career@ifarmer.asia by mentioning "Application for Business Planning & Operations Manager" in the subject line.