NPD Innovation Manager

Company Overview

The company is India's largest premium bakery and patisserie brand, headquartered in Mumbai. Founded in 2004 as a family business, it is now professionally managed and PE-backed. Its portfolio spans brownies, pastries, desserts, Viennoiserie, chocolates, savouries, breads, and beverages. Innovation is a core growth driver, executed across several structured pipelines.

Job Summary

The NPD Innovation Manager is responsible for governing and accelerating the end-to-end New Product Development (NPD) lifecycle across several parallel pipelines. This role enforces stage discipline, controls work-in-progress (WIP), compresses cycle times, tracks financial and yield performance, and closes post-launch loops. The NPD Innovation Manager operates as the operational backbone of the NPD function, enabling chefs to focus exclusively on product excellence by managing innovation flow and escalating issues as necessary.

Responsibilities

• Maintain a real-time Innovation Dashboard across several pipelines, tracking stage position, ageing, WIP load, cycle time, and launch forecast accuracy.
• Enforce WIP discipline per chef and across the system, holding projects in backlog when capacity thresholds are reached and escalating bottlenecks to the Head of NPD.
• Drive stage-gate compliance for all internal Stock Keeping Units (SKUs) and fast-track discipline for the Open Innovation pipeline, recommending launch deferment where gate criteria are unmet.
• Lead weekly Innovation Control Tower reviews and monthly portfolio health reviews, facilitating biweekly launch readiness checks.
• Track cost sheet freeze milestones and analyze estimated versus actual Cost of Goods Sold (COGS) variance post-launch, escalating deviations.
• Monitor yield performance in the first 30 days post-launch and trigger reformulation or process correction recommendations where instability persists.
• Conduct mandatory 30-day and 60-day post-launch reviews covering ratings, complaints, yield, and margin, and recommend actions such as Scale, Modify, or Withdraw accordingly.
• Govern the Open Innovation pipeline independently, maintaining a risk register across vendor reliability, minimum order quantity (MOQ) exposure, compliance, and cost volatility.
• Absorb all coordination, scheduling, documentation tracking, and cross-functional follow-up to preserve the chefs’ bandwidth, prioritizing trials, panels, and technical sessions.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's or Master's degree in Engineering, Operations Management, Business Administration, Food Technology, or related discipline.
• 8–12 years of experience in program management, innovation governance, or manufacturing Project Management Office (PMO), with demonstrated experience managing 20+ parallel projects in a stage-gate environment.
• Strong background in Fast-Moving Consumer Goods (FMCG), Quick Service Restaurants (QSR), food manufacturing, or consumer product development is preferred.
• Proven ability to coordinate cross-functional stakeholders without direct line authority; exposure to vendor or contract manufacturing is an advantage.

Preferred Skills

• Advanced program management and dashboard capabilities with high proficiency in Excel and Business Intelligence (BI) tools.
• Financial literacy to interpret COGS structure and margin variance, familiarity with Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) or Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems in a manufacturing context.
• Understanding of yield management and batch production variability in food or bakery environments.

Experience

• Minimum of 8–12 years in relevant roles, with substantial experience managing multiple projects simultaneously within a structured stage-gate environment.

Environment

• The role is primarily office-based at the company's headquarters in Mumbai, with potential for hybrid work arrangements based on project needs.

Salary

• Salary details are not specified.

Growth Opportunities

• Opportunities for career advancement within the company as it continues to expand its innovative product offerings and market reach.

Benefits

• Details of offered benefits are not specified.