Retail Manager – Air Conditioners

OctoLife is a startup founded by serial entrepreneurs with a mission to build the world's most efficient and sustainable cooling products. In a rapidly warming world, OctoLife is on a mission to democratise access to cooling solutions to 5 billion residents of the developing world. This is one the biggest challenges facing humanity, and core to OctoLife's existence. Headquartered in Bangalore, the R&D and product development of Octolife is based out of Gurugram.

Role Overview

The Retail Manager (RM) – NCR will be responsible for driving sales and profitability across all brand-owned and franchise stores in the region for the
air conditioners category
. This role includes
identifying and launching new stores
,
hiring and training store teams
,
ensuring operational excellence
, and
achieving revenue and margin targets
. The RM will serve as the business owner for the region, leading both strategy and execution to deliver superior customer experience and business growth.

Key Responsibilities

1. Sales Strategy & Revenue Ownership

• Drive sales performance and ensure achievement of revenue, gross margin, and productivity (sales/sq. ft.) targets for all stores in the NCR region.
• Execute regional sales strategies aligned with overall brand objectives and seasonal campaigns.
• Identify high-potential micro-markets and drive expansion through targeted store openings and localized marketing.

2. Store Launches & Expansion

• Identify and evaluate potential store locations based on market opportunity, catchment demographics, and competitor presence.
• Oversee end-to-end store launch process including site readiness, merchandising, staffing, and opening readiness.
• Collaborate cross-functionally with marketing, VM, and operations to ensure a successful go-live and steady state operations.

3. Team Leadership & Development

• Hire, train, and manage store managers and sales executives across all stores in the region.
• Conduct regular performance reviews and implement coaching interventions to improve productivity.
• Facilitate
  functional and behavioral training
  as per the training calendar to build strong product knowledge, selling skills, and customer orientation.
• Foster a culture of accountability, customer focus, and high performance within the sales team.

4. Merchandising, Inventory & Store Operations

• Optimize display stock and back-store inventory to increase stock turns and reduce holding costs.
• Ensure effective visual merchandising, product labels, updated pricing, promotional offers, and POS materials are implemented as per brand guidelines.
• Manage day-to-day sales transactions, returns, refunds, and ensure timely customer order fulfillment.

5. Market Intelligence & Competitive Benchmarking

• Conduct ongoing market surveillance across competitor retailers for product mix, pricing, promotional offers, and visual merchandising standards.
• Track customer footfall, conversion, and category trends to inform marketing and merchandising strategies.
• Provide inputs for product demand forecasting and inventory planning based on sales trends and consumer insights.

6. Financial & Operational Excellence

• Manage regional sales budgets and expenditures to ensure cost efficiency and profitability.
• Implement measures to
  increase margins and minimize store-level expenses
  without compromising customer experience.
• Track KPIs such as revenue per store, sales per sq. ft., inventory turns, customer conversion, and team productivity.

Key Result Areas (KRAs)

1. Achievement of revenue, gross margin, and productivity targets.
2. Timely and successful launch of new stores in identified catchments.
3. Inventory optimization and stock turn improvement across stores.
4. Customer satisfaction and NPS improvement through better store experience.
5. Team capability development and performance enhancement.
6. Regional profitability and budget adherence.

Qualifications & Experience

• Graduate/MBA with
  8–10 years of experience
  in
  retail sales, regional sales, or store operations
  , preferably in
  consumer durables, appliances, or air conditioners
  .
• Proven track record of managing multi-store operations and delivering revenue targets.
• Experience in new store rollouts, market expansion, and team building.
• Strong analytical, leadership, and communication skills with a hands-on operational mindset.

You should apply if:

✓ You want to do the absolute best work in your life

✓ You want to work on a tough problem that deserves solving.

✓ You are obsessed with doing better, at everything you do.

✓ You want an environment that challenges you every day.

✓ You want to be respected in ways that truly matter.

✓ You are curious, inventive, creative, action oriented.

✓ You value fairness, meritocracy, inclusiveness.