Division / Function: Corporate
Location of the Job: Abuja, Nigeria with 60% travel for business expansion/ goals.
Reports to: Country Director

About Us

Husk Power Systems (“Husk”) is an award-winning clean energy company serving rural India and Sub-Saharan Africa. In 2023, it was named “World’s Best Challenger Brand” in the energy industry and is a 3-time Global Cleantech 100 company. The company’s AI-powered rural energy platform provides 24/7 renewable power to rural households, commercial customers, institutions, and small factories. It also delivers a range of other products and services, including e-commerce and credit financing of branded appliances for home and commercial use, as well as community-based solutions for e-mobility and the agriculture value chain. Husk’s mission is to supercharge economic growth and social well-being in rural communities that are unserved and underserved.

Husk Values

Safety; Honesty and Integrity; Mutual Respect; Frugal Innovation; Quality and Reliability; Excellence as an Attitude; We > I; Fail Fast and Learn Faster.

Husk is an equal opportunity employer and is committed to diversity and inclusion and welcomes all applicants regardless of age, disability, gender, marital status, pregnancy and maternity, race, or religion. Husk is committed to improving gender balance within its teams in India, Nigeria and globally. Female candidates are therefore highly encouraged to apply even if not all requirements are met.

Benefits

Husk offers flexible working conditions with employee benefits that are in line with the best global practices. These include clear career growth planning, transparent annual review processes that are gender inclusive, maternity and paternity leave, gender-inclusive workplace conditions, family health insurance, and frequent training to assist the employees to grow in and to the next roles. Husk does not believe in micromanagement and encourages its employees to have a healthy work-life balance hence giving them the freedom to manage their workload to be compatible with their lives.

Role Summary

The Program Manager, Energy Services will be responsible for establishing and commercializing identified new businesses (irrigation, cold storage, rice mill, etc.) leveraging Husk’s provision of reliable energy within the areas we operate. This role will be responsible for driving business expansion, executing strategies, and working with internal teams to identify and grow relevant partnerships for funding and asset deployment for market expansion.

The candidate will build and nurture strategic partnerships to commercialize identified energy services and play a critical role in extending market reach, accessing customer segmentation, to enhance the company’s market presence.

The individual should also be passionate about solving one of Nigeria’s most critical challenges – the energy access deficit. This position provides the opportunity to join a growing team that is changing the face of rural electrification in many countries in Asia and Africa, including India, Nigeria, etc.

Key Responsibilities

• Drive the strategy for deployment of energy services from conceptualization, evaluation, and delivery of new business opportunities linked to the arrival of mini grid power in rural communities. This will include data collection for scoping new opportunities, developing proposals for potential market leads, strategic sourcing of assets/equipment, supplier relationship management, marketing and sales to customers, project implementation, monitoring and evaluation.
• Research new markets for deploying new initiatives across present and future mini grid locations ensuring that Husk minigrid locations have interventions leveraging the presence of reliable power.
• Maintain extensive knowledge of current market conditions and present data points and reports regularly.
• Work with the Sales, Marketing and Customer Experience Teams to ensure effective marketing, broad community buy-in, and customer satisfaction with energy services.
• Lead the monitoring and evaluation of commercial, technical and customer related KPIs and effects of energy services offerings on minigrid capacity utilization asset performance.
• Formulate performance measures, parameters and targets, in line with business objectives and annual performance reviews on energy services deployment strategy.
• Institutionalize lessons learnt from new energy service initiatives with a view to commercialization and expansion across various locations – ensuring energy service offerings are well spread across Husk minigrid locations.
• Responsible for handling commercial operation activities for locations where energy services are deployed and offered.
• Support internal teams on minigrid deployment and augmentation plans to serve energy services and new initiatives.

Asset Supplier Management

• Maintain an active database of asset/equipment suppliers identifying new and updated assets and equipment.
• Manage O&M contracts with asset/equipment suppliers with proper liaison and effective monitoring.

Partnership Management

• Build and manage external partner relationships for energy services deployment and management.
• Cultivate and maintain relationships with different customer groups – farmers, bike associations, butchers, co-operatives etc.

• Develop the strategy, and plan for partnerships with relevant partners across the value chain of the energy services deployed and offered.

Energizing Agriculture

• Support the development and fostering of business solutions that underpin the agriculture-energy nexus including cold storage, irrigation, agri-processing etc.
• Implement and execute strategies to drive asset utilization for deployed agri value chain assets.
• Work with relevant team members on efficient service delivery and execution for business solutions supporting the agriculture-energy nexus.

Electric Mobility

• Drive market growth and adoption for e-bikes leasing, rentals etc across various locations targeting agreed asset utilization rates across timelines.
• Manage the key supplier and lessee relationship including ensuring an adherence to operational agreements and repayment obligations.
• Facilitate community engagement activities towards growing the acceptance for the EV business.
• Manage all EV customers and ensure efficient data collection and documentation.

Innovative Business Models

• Identify and build new business models based on opportunities evident in and around areas that Husk is serving with reliable power.

Required Skills & Attributes

• Bachelor’s degree in Business or related field, with at least second class upper class. MBA or MSc degree is desired.
• 10 years of total experience with 5 of these years spent driving business development and growth for services in rural and peri-urban areas of Nigeria, and/or other countries in sub-Saharan Africa.
• 3 years consecutive minimum experience working with a multinational company or a company with global focus or leadership.
• Proven track record of proactively and effectively engaging and closing deals, with an entrepreneurial mindset.
• Ability to effectively manage and grow business initiatives in line with set monthly business objectives.
• Comfortable working in a fast-paced and dynamic environment with a high level of autonomy.
• Demonstrated ability to organize, manage, and prioritize multiple deliverables.
• Excellent verbal and written communication skills. Has the ability to evaluate and convey complex information to others in an effective manner through persuasive communication, negotiating skills, and clear presentation skills in both verbal and written contexts.
• Exceptional customer service and attention to detail.
• Quickly and successfully implements changes and improvements in operational activities and services. Effectively carries out tasks that are required by the Leadership Team in addition to carrying out own role.
• Adapts to changes in company strategy whilst developing own strategy to achieve a personal goal of competently developing projects.
• Excellent business skills, including fair knowledge of accounting and bookkeeping, in order to manage daily records and client transactions.

Location of the Job

This role is based in Abuja, Nigeria. 60% travel for business expansion/ goals.

Salary

NGN800,000 to NGN 1,000,000 monthly gross based on experience

To apply candidates can send a resume and a one page Cover Letter detailing how their experience fits the role and their interest in Husk.

These can be sent to careers_ng@huskpowersystems.com with a copy to bizdev_ng@huskpowersystems.com.

DISCLAIMER:

This description indicates the general nature and level of the qualifications and duties required of employees in this job classification, as well as the essential functions a person must be able to perform to do this job. It is not designed to be a comprehensive inventory of all duties and qualifications required of employees assigned to this job.

Husk Power Systems and its subsidiaries are equal-opportunity employers and make employment decisions on the basis of merit and business need. We hire without consideration to race, colour, religion, citizenship, political activity or affiliation, marital status, age, national origin, ancestry, disability, veteran status, sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, sex or gender, or any other basis protected by law.