Principal Specialist, Solutioning

About Udhyam

Udhyam Learning Foundation (Udhyam) is on a mission towards Making Bharat Entrepreneurial. We believe that entrepreneurship is a powerful way to channelize an individual's potential. Entrepreneurship enables agency and allows an individual to work on their strengths while creating value for the world.

Our programs

• Udhyam Vyapaar focuses on nano businesses in India, and solving large problems faced by them, at scale; having already enabled an income uplift for close to 10,000 entrepreneurs.

• Udhyam Shiksha works on developing entrepreneurial mindsets among the youth and enabling them to achieve their potential, having impacted ~40,00,000 learners across 12 Indian states.

The goal for Udhyam is to build a thriving and supportive ecosystem, where every individual feels empowered to define their own path.

About the team -

Udhyam Vyapaar is working with Nano Entrepreneurs in enabling their sustainable income uplift and positively influencing their entrepreneurial mindset. One of our focus segments is nano entrepreneurs in the peri urban areas especially urban slums. The common business segments that we work with includes fruit and vegetable vendors, petty/kirana shops, fancy carts, food vendors, cloth selling, etc. Once the nature of the business and challenges are understood, various templatised solutions in terms of Sourcing, Market Linkage, Diversification, Innovative practices and Business centric training are conducted with the ultimate goal of sustainable income increase and positively influencing entrepreneurial mindsets. The program has been running successfully on the ground. 

The team is now looking at codifying the solutions and coming up with replicable and scalable solutions that can then be scaled with the help of technology. 

Key Responsibilities:

• Codify solutions. Study what is working on the ground, in sourcing, market linkage, diversification, innovative practices and training and other solutions that have been commonly used. Turn it into clear playbooks covering the problem, the segment it fits, the steps, the inputs and costs, and the expected income outcomes.

• Analyse segments and solutions that haven't worked thus far and come up with work arounds

• Build and refine frameworks that factor in the reality of nano entrepreneurs, their challenges, opportunities and limitations to match the right solution to the right segments

• Design for replication. Identify which solutions can run in new cities, segments and partner contexts, and which depend on local conditions. Document what must stay fixed and what can be adapted.

• Test and prove. Design pilots and measurement plans. Use data and field evidence to decide which solutions to scale, fix or retire, and track income and mindset outcomes.

• Partner with technology. Work with product and tech teams to turn solution playbooks into workflows, tools and digital products. This includes writing requirements, testing prototypes and giving feedback from the field.

• Ground Connect. Regularly visit field, meet entrepreneurs, engage with field teams to keep solutions grounded in real conditions.

• Share learning. Present findings and recommendations to leadership, partners and funders

Qualifications/Skills: 

• ~10 years of experience in livelihoods, social enterprises, or program or product design in similar settings.

• Hands-on experience designing, running or scaling field-based programs for low-income or informal-sector entrepreneurs.

• A track record of turning field practice into structured, repeatable models, such as playbooks, SOPs, frameworks or curricula.

• Problem Solving mindset, curiosity and navigate the challenges to try new things 

• Comfort with data, design simple experiments, read results and use evidence to make decisions.

• Experience working with technology or product teams, and a strong interest in doing so.

• Excellent  written and verbal communication, in English along with knowledge of Kannada . Working knowledge of Tamil will be an added bonus

• Willingness to be on the ground and ability to work in urban slum and informal-market settings