Centre for Social Innovation (CSI)

Program Manager- Challenge Lead(Prize)

Bengaluru, Karnataka
Work Type: Full Time

About The/Nudge:

The/Nudge is an action institute working towards a poverty-free India, within our lifetime. We partner with governments, markets, and civil society to build resilient livelihoods for all.  We are a collective of some of India’s best leaders and entrepreneurs from across the industry, academia, government, and development sectors, and our work is organized across three impact streams:

  • Centre for Skill Development & Entrepreneurship (CSDE): exists to enable underprivileged youth to lead flourishing lives

  • Centre for Rural Development (CRD): exists to enable families to come out of extreme poverty

  • Centre for Social Innovation (CSI): exists to nudge top talent to solve India’s biggest challenge


About The/Nudge Prize:

The/Nudge Prize is a platform to draw talent, capital, and public attention towards the most pressing developmental problems in India. The/Nudge Prize is part of the CSI impact stream and is a strategic partner to build a thriving livelihood ecosystem across India's social landscape. 

The/Nudge Prize aims to guide markets where they are needed the most.

By inducing population scale solutions & innovations that have disproportionate impact on stagnant livelihood opportunities & ecosystems for underserved segments. 

We research, design & conduct ‘tech based scale-up competitions’, to discover/innovate disruptive solutions and pull in capital to solve the most complex problems in India, faster.


This role is to lead the DCM Shriram AgWater Challenge - one of India’s first challenges/competitions to induce solutions that improve agricultural water use & smallholder farmer’s livelihoods.


At The/Nudge Prize you will: 

  • Be an early team member - spend time across the functions of the program and be a execution & design partner to the program team 

  • Lead the defined challenge, but also help in building the product across other challenges & initiatives

  • Stakeholder Management: Onboarding of relevant partners for specific prize challenges and design opportunities for collaborations & continuous engagements - identify and foster new partnerships

  • Process Excellence: Setting up seamless processes for smooth execution of challenges - maintain data & dashboards for internal & stakeholder reviews

  • Cross Functional Collaboration: Interface with Marketing, Impact, Analytics, Technology & Donor relations teams on areas critical to the success of a challenge

  • Tight governance on Monitoring & Evaluations (process & agency) across the challenge

  • Research: be the guardian of primary & secondary research on areas relevant for running Prize challenges and defining sharp problem statements

  • Create high-quality collaterals, proposals which educate and inspire stakeholders

  • Identify media engagement avenues to aid amplification & network effects

  • Design interventions and refine as per execution - across various challenges

  • Manage a data structure for challenges and identify a sustainable way to share this data, information, platform & insights across various stakeholders

  • Manage & lead a team in managing communications & contestant journeys


(The actual role might evolve slightly based on your relevant experience and the overlap between organization requirements & your interests.)


Core abilities & transferable Skills

  • exceptional stakeholder & relationship management skills

  • program management & operational excellence - ability to conceptualize & act

  • strong command over communications & ability to translate progress across various media channels

  • ability to think first principles and understand 2nd and 3rd degree change / impact 

  • bias for action and brings in humility

Apply if you’re profile is directionally 80% of the below:

  • graduate, post-graduate degrees - an added bonus if graduated in social entrepreneurship & grassroots market making

  • 7-8 years of work experience in high performing set-ups and in intrapreneurial roles (or having founded/co-founded an enterprise)

  • proficiency & command on MS office (slides/ppt)/google suite & understanding of design tools like canva & others

  • strong written and verbal communication skills | analytical skills

  • willingness to work in a fast-paced, startup environment

  • comfort with some degree of ambiguity in the absence of perfect information

  • comfort working with external and internal stakeholder groups - established networking and stakeholder management skills

  • be comfortable with nonprofit sector salaries

  • the ability to learn fast and multitask well

  • a history of exceeding expectations and are target-driven 

  • excellent time management skills and attention to detail

Would be great if you:

  • understand global and various formats of the Inducement challenges and designs

  • Comfortable in managing events & convenings to enable participation

  • understand & interested in developmental economics & behavioral fundamentals

  • has designed programs in the social or impact sector

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