What are we solving for in the Asha Kiran Program?

The poorest households in India, especially the landless, marginal and small landholding farmers, are heavily dependent on either seasonal agriculture or wage labor for their incomes. Women in these households are not considered wage earners or decision makers. Livestock interventions are stable and diversified sources of income to such households, especially when such interventions target higher agency of women.

However, while livestock rearing (backyard poultry and goat rearing) is quite prevalent it is still not perceived or acted upon as a durable income source. The mindset, infrastructure, value chain, products and services are not attuned towards increasing the income share of the women farmers.

Our Program, Asha Kiran, works with women in self-help groups and aims to increase their incomes through livestock interventions (backyard poultry, goatery), delivered through a cluster-based model that enables scale, ownership, and system integration.

Position Overview:

We are looking for a Head of Product who can lead the design and continuous evolution of scalable livelihood solutions that work for women at the centre. We are looking for someone who can bring a first principles approach to product design, the ability to build partnerships, collaborate across systems—government, markets, and communities—to create durable change and build a replicable and scalable program model. We are looking for someone who brings a technology-first mindset and a good balance of markets and development thinking.

The key responsibilities include:

Shape and articulate the product vision rooted in women’s lived realities and aligned with Asha Kiran’s scale goals (internal and external stakeholders)

Design simple, scalable livelihood solutions by combining field insights, systems thinking, and first-principles reasoning.

Translate design into action by building toolkits, pilots, and SOPs that implementation teams can run with.

Drive continuous learning and iteration through feedback loops, data, and on-ground evaluation.

Build and mentor a strong product team that can deliver with clarity, creativity, and ownership.

Build partnerships with stakeholders in the ecosystem, including government, market, and non-profits, to scale solutions.

Key Skills:

Systems thinking: To see the whole, map relationships, and design for long-term change across complex rural systems
Design & Development: To deeply understand rural women’s needs and design scalable, intuitive solutions across livelihoods, learning, technology, and others, grounded in first principles at pilot & scale
Implementation and Rollout: To operationalize products by building the capacity of field teams, operations teams, and government teams
Research and Evaluation: To drive continuous research and evaluation to enable design improvements, by setting up feedback loops, driving data-driven iterations, and embedding learning into product evolution
Coaching: To build and mentor a high-performing team capable of delivering quality outcomes by design
Partnerships: To co-create solutions and build strong partnerships with internal and external stakeholders for integrated and scaled, impactful delivery

Experience and Qualifications:

16+ years of experience
Experience in product development and business strategy
Experience in building/working with operations at scale will be a great advantage
Experience in coaching and supporting high-performance individuals
Experience as an entrepreneur or an intrapreneur.

Must-haves:

Must have demonstrated a growth mindset and a can-do attitude
Must have strong analytical acumen and a user-centric mindset
Must have demonstrated ability to work under uncertainty

Head of Product at The/Nudge Institute - PM Job Opening