Senior Manager Strategy Consulting Job Opening in Kenya

Position: Senior Manager – Strategy Consulting

Location: Nairobi, Kenya
 

Since 2002, our client has been committed to economic and social development through market-based solutions that help build and scale innovative businesses for social change. 

The organization’s mission is to accelerate the growth of socially relevant businesses by connecting markets, people and capital. 

Over the past 12 years in India, the organization has built and refined an ecosystem-based approach to accelerating entrepreneurship and innovation at the SME-level. They have built services, tools, products, and methodologies to unlock support for SMEs from several private commercial and donor organizations. 

This approach has demonstrated success: over 900 SMEs connected with 300 investors, US$ 200+ million equity investments intermediated, over 70 angel investors committed to invest in impact SMEs, 10 angel investments facilitated and over 50 private sector firms joined hands to build the entrepreneurship and innovation ecosystem.

They seek to build institutional capacity and channel investments in the development sector through Consulting and Research services as well as Investment Banking services as well as through market building initiatives to further the inclusive development agenda and plug critical gaps.

Our client’s strengths include extensive field experience and a unique understanding of the last-mile development environment, as well as large international investors and corporations. 

As a result, they are well-positioned to act as a bridge between the development and commercial sectors.  

They also have proven capabilities in implementing market-based solutions to help low-income populations and their success is largely made feasible by a wide and diverse network of stakeholders combined with an awareness of Base of the Pyramid (BOP) market conditions. 

Through their work with social entrepreneurs, they have developed unique insights across six high-impact sectors: financial services, agriculture and rural business, clean energy, healthcare, water and sanitation and education and vocational training. 

They use these insights in a variety of engagements covering a spectrum of services that include raising equity and debt capital for early and growth-stage enterprises to specific advisory services that enable their growth such as market research, market entry, strategy and solution design, innovation management, stakeholder engagement and policy advocacy.

In addition, our client incubates and invests in business models that have high potential to create, scale and improve financial and market access for the BOP. 

Our client’s subsidiary is a financial services company that provides venture debt to small and growing social businesses in India to address the severe shortage of appropriate debt finance options for the SME sector. 

With a more than-money approach, its subsidiary also provides dedicated business development assistance to help fuel growth for these companies. 

Another subsidiary provides incubation and consulting services to Microfinance Institutions (MFIs).

Our client in Africa: Our client’s vision is to be the global market leader in providing advisory services to clients who seek to create social and environmental impact at the Base of the Pyramid (BOP) in emerging markets.

As part of their plan to realize this vision, they propose to replicate this approach in East Africa over the next several years. 

They will bring together capital, advice and networks to support high impact small and medium enterprises (SMEs) at two levels: 

(i) they will provide direct support to SMEs in the form of acceleration, fund-raising, technical assistance, innovation transfer, and market linkages, and 

(ii) they will discover and engage critical ecosystem players such as African corporations, and international corporations in supporting SMEs.

They have done advisory work in the region since 2008, and since 2013, have developed and run ecosystem building initiatives that have brought together over 600 SMEs, investors, corporations, governments and others to catalyze innovation and entrepreneurship. 

They have also selected, supported and showcased East African SMEs to angel, seed and VC investors. 

They are in early stages of launching East Africa’s first impact-focused angel network. 

They now have a strong East Africa foundation and a small local team in place which is being further strengthened in the next few months.

As they look to evolve and scale up in Africa, it envisions a roadmap that helps to link inclusive development hubs of the Global South to each other; and also with the Global North to drive a cohesive inclusive development agenda. 

This will include:

• Corridor building programs in Sub Saharan Africa that lead into the Global Convening
• Build a knowledge corridor between India-Africa and create a platform to scale high impact SMEs in the East African region.
• Create a South-South Knowledge corridor that can exchange learning and create a common action platform for building a similar ecosystem for small and growing businesses in Africa.
• Advisory work and thought leading research including landscape analyses, advocacy, and developing tools and other market infrastructure to drive inclusive development.

Role Objective: Over the last decade, our client has emerged as one of the leading global strategic services firm, strongly associated with driving change and social outcomes in the BOP Markets.

The growth roadmap that they envision for Africa, will pose exciting challenges for this role as the Senior Manager (Strategy Consulting) will be part of the 'start-up' team that shall set up the foundation of its organization in Africa. 

She/ he should have ‘entrepreneurial’ mind-set to sustain the focus on profitability and shareholder returns.

The ideal candidate should be a strong communicator and negotiator, who is self-motivated and has a proven track record of strategic planning, business development, marketing and working with multiple stakeholder and partners. 

She/he should be capable of creative and non-traditional thinking and should have experience developing new and innovative strategies for business development and fundraising.

Key Responsibilities

• Develop client relationships in order to stay abreast of business opportunities and industry trends
• Business development  and delivery on a topline target
• Conceptualizing, designing and ensuring effective execution of the organisation’s  services and engagement platforms (both offline and online)
• Building marketing strategies that ensure the success of the platform (this includes building PR relations, media-channel partnerships)
• Provide management and oversight to project delivery, guide execution teams on project approach and structure, manage client expectations and deliverable quality
• Liaising with various sector stakeholders especially social entrepreneurs, investors (including donors and lenders) and policy makers
• Straddle multiple day to day roles that include project delivery, client relationship management, team building and mentorship
• Be part of the team that contributes towards developing the domestic and global strategy for the consulting practice
• Undertake relevant national and international field travel and exposure as and when required
• Prior experience of pitching businesses to investors and driving of closures of mandates will be an added advantage

Experience / Education:

• 9-10 years of experience in consulting to corporations and/or multilaterals and/or government
• MBA qualification
• Strong exposure to inclusive business/BOP/Social enterprise/Impact investing spaces
• 3-4 years of experience in managing consulting teams and driving business development

Skills:

• Good business acumen and understanding of business issues across multiple focus sectors
• Strong problem solving and analytical skills
• Ability to engage senior client management on our offerings, emerging issues in focus sectors, lead project scope discussions and provide insightful recommendations
• Excellent written and oral communication skills; experience of leading published work highly desirable
• Ability to mentor, coach associates and senior associates and managers
• Ability to work under pressure, straddle multiple projects
• Strong project planning and leadership

Application Procedure
 

Please send your updated CV in WORD FORMAT to recruiterbpm@gmail.com by 30th June 2015. 

On the subject line please indicate what position you are applying for and within the email please indicate you current salary, expected salary and remuneration package.