Senior Venture Coach

About the Role

The Senior Venture Coach (SVC) position at the Venture Development Centre in Visakhapatnam involves leading and mentoring promising startups and entrepreneurial teams including students, faculty, alumni, and external founders through pre-incubation and incubation stages.

Key Responsibilities

• Provide coaching and mentoring to diverse startup teams across the Venture Development Centre’s programmes.
• Take ownership of assigned ventures—ensuring achievement of programme milestones, deliverables, reviews, documentation, and graduation criteria.
• Assist founders in progressing from initial idea to prototype development, customer discovery, business model validation, market testing, go-to-market strategies, and funding readiness.
• Lead Venture Coaches and team members by overseeing venture reviews, milestone tracking, engagement with founders, coordination of mentors, and programme execution.
• Scout and assess innovative projects, faculty-led ideas, student and alumni ventures, and external startups for programme inclusion.
• Organize and conduct venture review meetings, founder clinics, validation sessions, pitch preparations, bootcamps, workshops, and masterclasses.
• Leverage networks including mentors, makerspaces, industry partners, investors, and other ecosystem resources to support venture teams.
• Develop and sustain partnerships with mentors, investors, corporates, government agencies, incubation collaborators, academic units, and ecosystem facilitators.
• Maintain updated venture data, progress reports, impact documentation, dashboards, and stakeholder records; represent the Centre on relevant ecosystem platforms.

Required Skills and Interpersonal Qualities

• A dynamic, confident, and mature professional with exemplary leadership and execution skills.
• Empathetic and structured coaching approach for early-stage founders, emphasizing clarity and accountability.
• Deep knowledge of entrepreneurship, innovation, incubation, venture development, and startup ecosystems.
• Excellent communication abilities, strong facilitation, stakeholder management, networking, and effective problem-solving skills.
• Proactive, organized, and goal-driven, capable of managing multiple ventures, programmes, and partnerships simultaneously.
• A strong collaborator and mentor comfortable guiding junior staff and working within a coaching network.

Educational Background and Experience

• Applicants must hold either a Bachelor's degree with at least 7 years of relevant experience, or a Master's degree or MBA with a minimum of 5 years relevant experience.
• Relevant experience includes entrepreneurship ecosystem development, startup incubation, venture building, accelerator programme management, corporate innovation, innovation management, partnership development, investment readiness, or technology commercialisation roles.
• Experience within educational institutions, university incubation centres, research organisations, accelerators, venture studios, corporate innovation teams, or government-backed entrepreneurship initiatives is preferred.
• Exposure to early-stage startups, founder coaching, business model validation, market discovery, mentoring networks, and investor preparedness is advantageous.

Additional Information

The position is based onsite in Visakhapatnam, Andhra Pradesh. Interested candidates are invited to apply by filling the prescribed application form.