Vice President – Operations

Salam Kisan is India's agri-tech platform bringing drone-based crop spraying, farm advisory, and precision-agriculture services directly to farmers across the country. We're scaling that mission through a larger group — PRYM Aerospace (our manufacturing arm for both civil & defence drones) and a DGCA-approved drone training school — and our core challenge is fundamentally an operations problem: getting a large, distributed pilot workforce and a fleet of high-value drones to the right farm, on the right day, in season, at scale. The same category of problem quick-commerce and food-delivery platforms solve for riders and dark stores — applied to Indian agriculture.
We're hiring a Vice President, Operations to own this end to end, pan-India, reporting directly to the CEO.
- Location: Mumbai — multi-state travel required
- Reports to: CEO
WHAT YOU'LL OWN
- The entire pan-India field operations stack — the state-level operations leadership layer (DGMs/Regional Managers) and, through them, the pilot workforce executing on the ground
- The core operating model: territory/cluster design, workforce deployment, route/turnaround efficiency, and capacity planning against seasonal crop-cycle demand spikes
- A company-wide operations scorecard — acreage sprayed, drone units deployed, pilot utilisation, fleet uptime, and turnaround time — reviewed weekly and monthly against target
- The pilot workforce operating model — sourcing velocity, deployment scheduling, utilisation, retention, and quality — using the same playbook gig/last-mile platforms use to manage rider fleets
- Last-mile deployment logistics for drones, consumables, and spares, plus fleet uptime and maintenance turnaround
- The operations P&L — budgeting, cost control, and unit economics (cost-per-acre, cost-per-deployment) — in partnership with Finance
- Customer and stakeholder satisfaction across farmers, channel partners, and institutional clients
- The long-term operations roadmap and scaling strategy, plus end-to-end project management on major cross-functional initiatives (new-state launches, fleet expansions, system rollouts)
- The operations input that feeds directly into a daily 30-minute leadership decision-making call with the CEO
YOU SHOULD HAVE
- 5–7+ years in heavy, high-frequency operations, with a track record of running a large, distributed workforce against daily/weekly throughput targets
- A background in EITHER gig-heavy/last-mile workforce operations (Q-Com, Food Delivery & likewise) OR agri last-mile deployment and rental/fleet operations.
- Experience managing operations through a layer of managers — i.e. you've run a regional/state structure with team leads beneath you, not just a flat individual-contributor team
- Comfort operating in tier 2/tier 3 markets and being personally present in the field, not just reviewing dashboards from an HO
- A strong bias for building systems and playbooks under pressure, not just running an existing one
- Strong operations management skills — process design, capacity planning, and multi-location field operations oversight
- P&L management experience — budgeting, cost control, and performance tracking to support sustainable growth
- Customer service and stakeholder management skills, with a track record of keeping satisfaction high among farmers, partners, or institutional clients
- Strategic planning capabilities — long-term roadmap development, scaling strategies, and data-driven decision-making
- Project management skills for planning, executing, and monitoring complex, cross-functional initiatives
- Proven leadership experience managing large teams and building an inclusive, performance-focused culture
- Master's degree in Business, Operations, Engineering, or a related discipline
- Willingness to be on-site in Mumbai and travel extensively to field locations across states
- Strong Hindi and English; Marathi is a meaningful plus
GOOD TO HAVE
- Experience managing seasonal/cyclical demand (agri crop cycles, or festive/peak-season surges in gig/quick-commerce)
- Experience owning a fleet or physical-asset operation alongside a workforce operation
- Exposure to drone operations, agri-input distribution, or agri-equipment rental/service models
- Experience scaling an operations function across multiple states from a smaller base
- Background in agriculture, agri-tech, logistics, or technology-enabled services
HOW TO APPLY
- Email your resume and a short note on the largest distributed workforce/fleet operation you've personally run to parikshit@salamkisan.com — subject line: "Your Name_VP Operations"
& hit Easy Apply below

Work arrangement
No