Job Description:
About PRAGATI
Rural India is central to India's economic future, accounting for 63% of the population and 70% of the workforce. Yet a large share of rural livelihoods remains concentrated in relatively low-productivity agriculture, creating a significant opportunity to shift towards higher-income economic activity.
PRAGATI (Programme for Rural Advancement, Growth and Transformative Initiatives) is a TCF-incubated organisation focused on accelerating economic prosperity in rural India. Its work is centred on two priorities:
- Increasing agricultural incomes by addressing structural constraints across land, inputs, finance, markets, processing and trade.
- Creating scalable non-farm livelihoods by identifying, financing and supporting promising rural enterprises that can generate local jobs.
PRAGATI works with central ministries and state governments to combine policy and economic analysis with hands-on implementation. It identifies high-potential opportunities, partners with relevant government institutions, tests solutions on the ground, and develops models that governments can ultimately own and replicate.
PRAGATI is also leading Amrit Prayas, a 10-year economic development initiative in the Deoria Lok Sabha constituency. It serves as a live testbed for coordinated interventions across agriculture, agro-processing, labour-intensive manufacturing and other growth sectors, with the aim of developing a replicable district transformation playbook.
Role Summary
The Lead – Strategy & Institution Building will work closely with the CEO and play a central role in building PRAGATI as an institution. This is an opportunity to help shape an organisation from an early stage while working on some of the hardest questions in India's economic development.
The role spans strategy, execution, partnerships and organisational effectiveness. The individual will help determine where PRAGATI should focus, lead high-priority initiatives, build trusted external relationships and strengthen the systems and capabilities required for the organisation to scale.
The role offers unusual breadth—from strategy and policy to markets and businesses, and from senior government engagement to field execution. It requires someone who can move comfortably from understanding a complex economic problem to forming a point of view, aligning stakeholders and driving execution on the ground.
Key Responsibilities
- Work with the CEO to identify PRAGATI's highest-leverage opportunities, structure complex problems, develop clear hypotheses and make evidence-based choices on where the organisation should—and should not—invest its effort.
- Take selected priorities from research and design through stakeholder alignment, pilots and early execution. Convert ambiguity into clear actions, resolve bottlenecks and assess when an initiative should scale, adapt or stop.
- Develop trusted relationships with senior government officials, businesses, funders, experts and other ecosystem partners. Understand stakeholder incentives and build alignment without relying on formal authority.
- Build effective processes for planning, reviews, decision-making and accountability. Surface risks early, ensure decisions translate into action and help allocate people and resources towards the organisation's most important priorities.
- Work across PRAGATI's teams and partners, mentor colleagues, raise the quality of problem-solving and execution, and help create structures and ways of working that become stronger as the organisation scales.
Qualifications and Skills
We are looking for someone with approximately 8–10 years of high-quality professional experience, with evidence of increasing responsibility and ownership. The individual may come from consulting, strategy, investing, economic development, public policy, a high-growth operating environment or a similar problem-solving role. Prior experience in rural development or agriculture is useful but not essential.
The strongest candidates will demonstrate:
- Exceptional structured problem-solving and the ability to independently navigate complex, ambiguous situations.
- A track record of taking important initiatives from an unclear starting point to tangible outcomes.
- Strong economic and commercial judgment, with the ability to distinguish high-potential opportunities from activity unlikely to create meaningful impact.
- The ability to influence senior and diverse stakeholders and build alignment across organisational boundaries.
- Excellent written and verbal communication, including the ability to simplify complexity and make clear recommendations.
- Strong people judgment and an ability to make teams more effective through collaboration, coaching and candid feedback.
- High ownership, persistence and comfort taking responsibility beyond narrowly defined role boundaries.
- The judgment to balance ambition with practicality, move with urgency and change course when evidence suggests a different answer.
- A genuine commitment to improving economic opportunity through jobs, enterprise, productivity and functioning markets.
- An instinct to build for scale, considering economics, incentives, replicability and institutional sustainability from the outset.