Head NPD

Job Purpose
The purpose of the role is to lead the NPD and innovation processes to achieve long term growth in revenue, profitability and premium through a portfolio of offerings.

The role will deliver on the strategic business objective by driving the new product contribution to total sales, developing identified new revenue streams in both existing and new spaces, & uplifting brand imagery through consumer centric innovation in both B2C and B2B segments.

Job Context & Major Challenges
UltraTech is India's No.1 brand in cement brand. We have an indomitable volume leadership and we are significantly ahead on all key brand metric and imagery parameters compared to our nearest competition.

With sustained investment in brand building and through successful organic and inorganic expansion in the last couple of years, UltraTech has emerged as the biggest brand in the country. Competition has realized that they cannot beat UltraTech on scale & GTM strategy. Hence they are rapidly shifting gears and focusing on NPD with aggressive product launch across markets. Most of these launches have been supported by media investment and on ground activations to drive differentiation, premium and imagery. UltarTech should not allow competition to get a foothold in this space or in the consumer's mind.

It is also important to note that only on the innovativeness parameter, our lead with the closest competitor is the lowest. Therefore, accelerating the rate of Innovation is now a key priority for UltraTech.

Our industry has been driven by inside-out thinking leading to feature led product proposition and hyperboles in communication. Unfortunately features can be copied easily and have never been a source of durable competitive advantage in this industry. NPD in our category today has easily replicable and reverse engineered products with unsubstantiated claims in the market. Hence, this role is intended to deliver not a feature-led product portfolio, but a well-thought out, sharp output that addresses a core consumer need: from product performance to proposition. This role is responsible for driving these end-to-end – from identifying a consumer/customer need, to defining the product characteristics and getting it developed from R&D, to testing the product, developing the GTM (including proposition, pricing etc.) and finally launching the new product.

Thus the role will be responsible to drive the NPD stage-GATE review process & each project from idea to commercialization. The role will collaborate with large cross functional teams to create product charter, business case and governance documents to facilitate product development process to minimize organizational risk and facilitate stakeholder decision. The role will rely extensively on consumer research and research data to define the consumer problem and to develop and validate the unique value proposition with consumers, influencers, legal & technical teams. The role will support the marketing team to build a compelling GTM strategy for successful launch. And will demonstrate post launch agility in capturing & sharing learning & updating the NPD governance document.

Through the implementation of these projects, the role is expected to drive a delta in the organization's ability to innovate.

The Key Challenges For This Specialist Role
Must have the ability to instill a consumer centric thinking to accelerate innovation rate and success

Must always have the consumers point of view to guide and enable management decision

Must be comfortable dealing with ambiguity and complexity of data, reporting structure and process

Strong process orientation to drive the stage GATE process throughout the organization

Ability to drive and prioritize multiple NPD products through various departments

Exceptional ability to forge strong relationship across hierarchy to drive the NPD agenda

Must have the ability to identify and resolve critical challenges with out of box thinking

Ability to build and reinforce the governance processes, to drive change within the organization

Must be capable of managing agency relationship to get NPD prioritized and extract quality work

Build & strengthen organizational processes and capability to best serve the changing needs of customers

Key Result Areas
KRA (Accountabilities) (Max 1325 Characters)
Supporting Actions (Max 1325 Characters)
KRA1 Drive consumer centric new product development process  Identify the consumer problem & develop key insight through consumer research.

 Leverage the consumer insight to optimize the product development process

 Define the action standard & real life testing methodology for each NPD with R&D and Technical Services Team

 Drive the process throughout the cross-functional team for respective areas of work

KRA2 Developing the strategic NPD funnel  Scan the environment data to generate ideas, identify potential need spaces ahead of competition

 Shortlist potential ideas to be consumer tested

 Build a clear and cogent project charter & business case for potential ideas to get management approval

KRA3 Defying and validating the consumer value proposition  Engage CMI and research agency to test and validate shortlisted ideas and initial hypothesis

 Consumer validate the problem statement and the value proposition through qualitative and or quantitative research with customers/ technocrats/ influencers

 Analyze & interpret research data to frame the real consumer problem

 Distil unique consumer insight and build proposition to create value and drive differentiation for consumers

KRA4 Institutionalize the stage GATE review process in the organization to deliver successful innovation  Induct and inculcate the stage GATE review process in the project teams

 Create all NPD governance documents for stage GATE signoff with the SPOC – from cross functional teams

 Drive NPD review meeting to periodically share progress update and enable management decision

 Build organizational processes and capabilities to best serve the changing needs of the customers

KRA5 Impact on business performance through successful innovation  Increase NPD contribution to total sales to drive premium and imagery of an "Innovative Brand"