Category Manager - Bazaar - Wheelocity
Company Overview
Wheelocity is building a rural doorstep commerce platform for Bharat, transforming traditional retail through a phygital model that combines supply chain, field execution, merchandising, cash discipline, and technology. Unlike typical e-commerce, Wheelocity delivers products physically to rural households via electric carts operated by gig workers called Bhuvanesh, who act as sellers and the physical interface of the business. The company aims to create a high-margin, scalable non-grocery proposition tailored to rural consumers, focusing on categories such as apparel, electronics, small appliances, and other daily non-essential items.
Job Summary
The Category Manager – Bazaar (Daily Non-Essentials) will own and develop Wheelocity's Bazaar business end-to-end, focusing on categories like apparel, electronics, and small appliances. The role involves discovering and building a high-margin, scalable proposition that resonates with rural households, primarily through iterative experimentation, customer insights, and disciplined category management. The manager will be responsible for topline growth, margin optimization, assortment architecture, sourcing, merchandising, inventory health, and category expansion, contributing to the company's goal of creating a differentiated rural retail experience.
Responsibilities
- Discover and Build the Bazaar Category Proposition: Develop a clear thesis for apparel and adjacent categories, identifying customer needs, demand drivers, and optimal assortment strategies through rapid field experiments and customer feedback.
- Build the Everyday Apparel Engine: Own the core apparel business, focusing on nighties and women’s everyday wear, emphasizing comfort, utility, affordability, and fit. Collaborate with local brands and unbranded players to meet Bhumi’s needs.
- Own Sourcing, Supplier Commercials, and Category Economics: Build and manage supplier relationships, negotiate purchase terms, and optimize SKU-level economics, ensuring a balance between margin and inventory rotation.
- Build Rapid Experimentation, Demand Planning, and Inventory Health: Lead demand forecasting, test quantities, replenishment, and liquidation strategies. Establish clear exit rules for failed experiments and aging stock.
- Improve Sell-Through through Field-Led Merchandising: Work closely with field teams to optimize cart display, product demonstration, bundling, and local activation, ensuring effective conversion and impulse buying.
- Build Adjacent Daily Non-Essential Categories: Experiment with and scale new categories such as electronics, small appliances, and home linen, applying a disciplined testing and validation approach.
- Build the Bazaar Operating System and Expansion Playbook: Create structured weekly rhythms, codify learnings into playbooks, and prepare for digital evolution by identifying categories suitable for digital discovery.
Qualifications
- 8-10 years of category management / merchandising experience in fast-moving consumer retail environments such as value retail, e-commerce, social commerce, quick commerce, or regional retail.
- Strong exposure to apparel, particularly women’s everyday wear, comfort, utility, fabric, fit, and inventory rotation.
- Experience working with local brands and unbranded players to build commercially viable assortments.
- Proven track record of running category experiments, launching new subcategories, testing hypotheses, and making data-driven scale or kill decisions.
- Experience with tier-2 / tier-3 / rural or value-conscious consumers and field-based customer insights.
- Educational qualifications such as BTech, BSc, or equivalent in relevant fields.
Preferred Skills
- Experience across adjacent categories like electronics, small appliances, or home linen.
- Strong analytical skills combined with practical field experience.
- Ability to manage supplier negotiations and optimize category economics.
- Skilled in demand planning, inventory management, and merchandising.
- Comfortable working in dynamic, experimental environments with a high degree of ambiguity.
- Excellent communication and collaboration skills across cross-functional teams.
Experience
- 8-10 years of relevant experience in category management, merchandising, or retail operations, with a focus on fast-moving consumer categories and rural or value markets.
- Demonstrated success in launching and scaling new categories through experimentation and customer insights.
Environment
- The role involves a hybrid work environment with significant field engagement in rural and semi-urban areas.
- The candidate should be comfortable working in dynamic, resource-constrained settings, with frequent visits to carts, villages, and local markets.
- Collaboration with cross-functional teams including Supply Chain, Data, Product, and Field Operations.
- The physical environment includes outdoor field visits, market interactions, and local community engagement.
Salary
Not specified
GrowthOpportunities
Not specified
Benefits
Not specified
