Director, India Innovation

Job description

As a Director in the India Innovation Customer Success team, your responsibilities and key expectations will include: Role Purpose • Provide senior leadership for India Innovation Customer Success, with direct responsibility for managing people and strengthening client delivery across strategic Innovation / BASES engagements. • Actively support commercial activities by partnering with commercial teams, identifying value-added insight opportunities, and leading senior client conversations that enable cross-selling and upselling. • Champion the transformation of current ways of working into an AI-first organization by embedding Studio, automation, prompting, AI-enabled delivery, and AI-enabled insight generation into day-to-day delivery. Client Management • Act as a trusted senior consulting partner for strategic global and regional Innovation / BASES clients in India, with the credibility to engage senior client stakeholders and C-suite audiences. • Lead and promote strategic client conversations that create business opportunities, strengthen relationships, and support India Innovation revenue priorities. • Partner closely with commercial teams to identify opportunities for value-added insights, cross-selling, and upselling across existing global and regional accounts. • Safeguard and deepen high-value client relationships where senior consulting involvement is required to improve confidence, satisfaction, and impact. • Rebuild momentum with under-leveraged strategic accounts by bringing sharper consulting, stronger recommendations, and more proactive senior engagement. • Drive overall client satisfaction by ensuring that deliverables are accurate, actionable, commercially relevant, and clearly connected to client business issues. Insights Delivery • Provide senior consulting and delivery ownership for strategic Innovation / BASES studies, including complex studies and critical deliverables. • Act as the senior reviewer and escalation point for analytical quality, storytelling, recommendations, and overall delivery standards. • Bring deep expertise across end-to-end Innovation / BASES processes, frameworks, methodologies, and client applications. • Apply BASES-specific and broader Innovation expertise across concept and product testing, volumetric forecasting, activation guidance, custom research, analytics, and recommendation development. • Translate data into insights, create compelling stories, and synthesize findings into high-impact recommendations that support client decision-making. • Actively drive issue-based analyses, build effective analytical presentations, and present recommendations to senior client stakeholders in a clear and consultative way. • Improve delivery quality, analytical accuracy, storytelling, actionability, and consistency across India Innovation Customer Success outputs. Team Management • Directly manage, coach, and develop members of the India Innovation Customer Success team, including setting performance objectives and providing ongoing feedback. • Upskill the team on Innovation / BASES expertise, analytical review, consultative storytelling, recommendation development, and senior client engagement. • Build a strong team culture with active engagement, clear standards, accountability, and positive energy. • Establish an open culture in which team members are challenged, supported, treated with respect, and rewarded as appropriate. • Manage team resources effectively to support on-time delivery, quality expectations, and consistent client experience. • Strengthen team capability by creating structured coaching moments, senior review routines, and repeatable best-practice approaches. Business Focus • Support delivery of India Innovation operating plan and strategic revenue priorities through strong senior consulting, delivery ownership, and proactive commercial partnership. • Be an active business developer by generating opportunities with existing global and regional clients through value-added insights, cross-selling, and upselling. • Drive fast track and automate solution platforms across India Innovation Customer Success, including Studio and related AI-enabled workflows that improve speed to market and consistency. • Embed AI-first ways of working across delivery through automation, prompting, AI-enabled insight generation, and process-efficient approaches. • Continuously monitor delivery quality, client feedback, and business performance, making interventions where needed to improve outcomes. • Be current with developments in Innovation, BASES, market research, AI-enabled delivery, and automation, and translate these into practical refinements to current processes and approaches. • Operate with a clear ownership mindset and deliver results from day one with limited ramp-up time. • Post Graduate degree in Business, Marketing, Social Sciences or related fields. • Minimum 8 years of Primary Quantitative research experience. • Working knowledge of the FMCG vertical preferred. • Deep BASES-specific and broader Innovation expertise across processes, frameworks, methodologies, and client applications. • Strong understanding of concept testing, product testing, volumetric forecasting, activation guidance, custom research, and analytics. • Experience in managing people/team (minimum 3 years). • Experience in managing a high volume of complex quantitative research studies under tight budgets and schedules. • Proven track record of positively impacting client outcomes and influencing senior client stakeholders. • Demonstrated commercial orientation, including the ability to p