Product Manager at ThinkZone

Title
Product Manager

Location
Bhubaneswar, India
Job Type & Duration
Full Time
Background
ThinkZone is an award winning social start-up that empowers women in low income communities to provide quality education through a technology-enabled “school in a box” approach. It implements a comprehensive, scale-driven lean model that enables them to implement standardized early-childhood and primary education programs at minimal costs. ThinkZone has ambitious plans for transforming the pre-primary and primary education landscape in India and impacting millions of children in the process.

From the continuous on-ground work and learning from mistakes, ThinkZone has developed pedagogy specifically for first generation learners and for teachers who come from limited education background. It has found that the current education system is not pro-actively addressing aspects like language challenges in low income communities. This is precisely the reason why we have failed to educate our children in villages because we try to replicate urban schooling in rural India!
Role & Responsibilities
The Product Manager will be an integral part of the Leadership Team and will be responsible for managing the development lifecycle, from inception to launch. She/he needs to thrive in a start-up environment, have a passion for innovation and should understand how to balance time, quality and cost to deliver. The Product Manager should understand the needs of both education and technology, is able to balance them and deliver a high quality product.

​Following are the Product Manager's key responsibilities: 

  • Manage the day-to-day development life cycle, from inception to launch 
  • Review, revise and build on current 'ThinkZone Way' curriculum framework, offering feedback and editing where needed
  • Fine-tune and develop a classroom pedagogy that uses children’s and community repertoire to enhance language and thinking abilities
  • Envision, discover and create fun, engaging and innovative learning aids for the effective delivery of the curriculum i.e. generate easy-to-use classroom curriculum materials and resources
  • Develop locally relevant and global best practice curriculum, including schemes of work, lesson plans, activity cards, posters etc
  • Assess effectiveness of learning / play materials, and revise / iterate as needed
  • Assist in learning material implementation at the grassroots
  • Work on training module development for women entrepreneurs that are tailored and relevant to the specific audience and which will help the organization deliver high quality education programs
  • Work towards creating entrepreneur identification, interview and hiring strategy
  • Develop pre-service and in-service teacher training execution plan and work towards structuring the ThinkZone entrepreneur profile and experience/education/ teaching approach requirements
  • Work directly with the operations team to develop ‘The ThinkZone Playbook’ which would ensure ThinkZone’s efficient and effective transition to scale-up programs.
  • Study successes and failures of current operations to understand needs, challenges and mitigation strategies
  • Systemize and document ThinkZone’s model into a step-by-step operating manual to ensure ease of implementation
  • Develop a ThinkZone ‘starter kit’, detailing all the resources and materials that go into the planning for launching new operations
  • Generate business plan template for new areas of operations to ensure sustainability
  • Develop ‘ThinkZone Quality Checklist’ and implementation systems to ensure consistent adherence within areas of operations 
  • Work closely with target customer segment (i.e., low-income clients), taking surveys and interviews of women entrepreneurs, low-income families etc. and analyzing results
  • Coordinate with multiple stakeholders including seasoned education experts for product development
  • Evaluate effectiveness and quality of delivered product, using the learning to drive improvement
Prerequisites
  • Bachelor’s or Master’s degree
  • Entrepreneurial mindset, a go-getter with excellent organizational and relationship management skills along with a willingness to work with a small team 
  • Ability to work independently and follow a structured process / guidelines 
  • Good research and analytical skills
  • Excellent verbal and written communication skills in English; Fluency in Hindi required and knowledge of Odia is a big advantage 
  • Some amount of knowledge in product management as well as in developing and delivering education products will be a great asset
  • Prior experience working with bottom-of-the-pyramid (BoP) / low-income / informal sector is a plus
  • Flexibility to travel, as required
  • Some skill(s) that could come in handy: Adobe Photoshop, CorelDRAW, Adobe Illustrator, Adobe Creative Suite, Adobe Indesign etc (Not Mandatory that you know all but some designing tool knowledge is an advantage)
  • Ability to think out of the box
  • Disciplined and comfortable working with tight deadlines
  • Decent know-how about the problems facing the education system
  • Self-starter and willingness to work in a start-up environment
  • Passion for social business  and activity-based, child-centred learning
Benefits & Compensation
  • Combination of Cash and Stock Options as Remuneration
  • Flexible Work Hours
  • Working with Kids
Application Deadline
July 31, 2017
Website
www.thinkzone.in
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