Product Manager
- Recruiter
- Hiring People
- Location
- Cambridge
- Salary
- £70k per year
- Posted
- 12 Mar 2018
- Closes
- 09 Apr 2018
- Ref
- KH01
- Contact
- Hiring People
- Sectors
- Management
- Contract Type
- Permanent
- Hours
- Full Time
Product Manager
KisanHub is a leading UK based Ag-Tech start-up that is focused on solving one of the world’s most important challenges - how to feed a population of 9 billion by 2050.
We do this by helping farmers produce more and be more productive, and we are getting some serious traction. Four years of insight and iteration, leading industry partnerships and international expansion means that the company is revenue generating, growing fast and looking for exceptional people. We are working on critical issues and meaningful problems, developing cutting edge and technically ambitious software to help farmers be more efficient and effective; growing more and using less.
We are a small team with big ambitions, coming from diverse, multi-sector, multi-disciplinary and multi-cultural backgrounds. This helps to bring a fresh perspective to agriculture but with the common belief that technology can revolutionise the way we feed the world.
Background
KisanHub’s Crop Intelligence Platform connects agri-businesses with farmers, providing them with valuable insights and actionable intelligence. Our target client is a producer group, such as a cooperative or farm produce aggregator, who have contractual arrangements with farmers as well as the processors or supermarkets.
Farmers, or growers, use KisanHub’s mobile app and web dashboard to enter farm data and, most importantly, receive intelligence on pests and diseases, fertiliser application, irrigation management and yield prediction. This intelligence is revealed via crop specific apps as each crop is different. Data is then fed in an aggregated form to a crop aggregator, for example yield prediction.
The Challenge
KisanHub wants to take this concept of "intelligence" to the next level. One can ask Alexa to order a printing cartridge. We want our app to work in a same way; to become the farmers “AI Assistant”. The app will tell the user, farmer and/or enterprise staff, what to do and when. We are using Computer Vision and Machine Learning to Scan, Identify and Measure various crop parameters to take informed agronomic decisions.
Today, the user has to log into the web dashboard or open the phone app to check status, data or look for insight. We want to reverse this and push insights directly to users without them coming to the dashboard. This will be done using field, crop, soil, weather, satellite, drones, sensor, product, and other sources of data.
The "platform" word in Crop Intelligence Platform comes from the fact that various market players are participating on the Platform and KisanHub has plans to provide access to other players in the market, via API’s, in much the same way as companies like Salesforce has. These players are the various service providers to the farmers and/or enterprises, for example soil testing labs providing soil analysis services to the farmer or a logistics company providing haulage services to the enterprise, with all players using the platform to access and/or consume data.
Current Situation
Product Management at KisanHub is, today, a blank canvas. The successful candidate will need to pour themselves into the role, and bring vision, creativity, an ability to manage complexity and a multitude of competing, sometimes conflicting, interests, strong interpersonal and communication skills, high standards and an excellent work and team ethic, to make their mark, shape the function and define what good looks like. And they will need to support the development of a product that both fits the KisanHub’s vision and meet their clients’ needs.
The role and environment are challenging with a culture that is characterised by rigor and discipline. There are pressure cooker moments and the successful candidate needs to be strong and be able to remain positive throughout. The team has emerged stronger from such moments and it is one of the things that defines KisanHub’s culture.
The Role
This is a business-critical role, sitting at the intersection of Sales and Marketing, Engineering, and Customer Success .
Key responsibilities will include, but not be limited to:
- Ensuring that great ideas are translated into real functionality;
- Minimising translational losses and product friction;
- Documenting everything and missing nothing;
- Managing communications across different sites, time zones and cultures to ensure timely and seamless delivery of the product;
- Ownership of product development lifecycle, status and release updates;
- Designing and implementing a process to filter, test, and validate ideas before turning them into requirements;
- Project management of product lifecycle to minimise, first, and then remove delivery slippages;
- Ensure that all release updates are consistent;
- Help the business understand the value of what it is doing, and creating for its’ clients, and then work with the business to articulate this value, both across the KisanHub and externally;
- Introduce a streamlined process for new features that prioritises client needs over good ideas, for example functionality to cover a growing season;
- Helping make things simple for the user, presenting complex datasets in the simplest of forms so that users understand what to do on the web and mobile app, for example, user navigation, data capture, data visualisation of time series and geospatial data, and doing it all in an easy to understand way; and
- Understanding that one size doesn’t fit all. The product will need to be different for different markets, for example, last mile delivery is often very different in the developed vs. the developing world, so finding ways to add value both within, and beyond, the product.
To apply please attach an up to date copy of your CV to the link provided and KisanHub will be in direct contact.