Category Manager - Agri Inputs

Category Manager - Crop Protection (Agri Inputs)

Katyayani Organics | Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh (On site) | Full time | 6+ years

About Katyayani

Katyayani Organics manufactures and sells its own brands of crop protection and crop nutrition products. We sell directly to retailers and farmers across India through our own apps, our telesales team and online marketplaces. This gives the category owner a direct line from a product decision to what sells.

About the Role

You will own our crop protection portfolio as a business: insecticides, fungicides, herbicides and plant growth regulators. You decide what we sell, at what price and margin, and what we launch or retire, and you make sure sales and marketing execute on it. You will work closely with our crop nutrition category team to build crop-stage solutions that combine protection and nutrition.

What You Will Own

• Portfolio: classify the crop protection portfolio every season (for example, ABCD by contribution) and decide which SKUs to grow, fix or retire.
• Pricing and margin: set prices against competitor reference prices, own gross margin and contribution by SKU, and keep scheme spend under control.
• New products: identify launch opportunities from pest trends, resistance issues, farmer needs and market gaps; take launches from decision to first-season result.
• Crop-stage solutions: work with the crop nutrition team to build combination packs and spray schedules by crop and stage.
• Manufacturing and R&D: work with our production and R&D teams on new formulations, product costing, pack sizes and seasonal production plans.
• Regulatory: work with the regulatory team on CIB&RC registrations and label claims.
• Execution with sales: turn category priorities into focus SKUs, call scripts, product training and daily tracking for a telesales and app-based sales team.
• Execution with marketing: brief content, app, WhatsApp and campaign teams by crop, pest and season, and measure the sales impact.
• Demand and inventory: plan seasonal demand with production and supply chain, and manage stock cover and liquidation of ageing stock.
• Competition: track competitor molecules, brands, prices and schemes in our key states and respond to them.
• Reporting: run weekly and monthly category reviews and present growth plans to leadership.

What Success Looks Like in Year One

• Higher contribution margin on the crop protection portfolio, with scheme spend under control.
• A classified portfolio with dead SKUs retired.
• Successful kharif and rabi launches.
• Crop-stage packs with nutrition that lift order value.
• Focus SKUs selling through telesales and apps without depending on discounts.

What We Are Looking For

• Degree in Agriculture, Agronomy or Agribusiness. An MBA is a plus.
• 6+ years in the agri-input industry, including at least 3 years in category, product or brand management for crop protection with direct ownership of pricing, portfolio or launches.
• Strong knowledge of crop protection molecules, modes of action, leading brands, and pest and disease cycles in major crops of central and north India.
• Working knowledge of crop nutrition: fertilizers, micronutrients, biostimulants and how they fit into crop schedules.
• Comfortable with margin, contribution and scheme economics; makes decisions from data.
• Able to get sales, marketing and production teams to execute without direct authority.
• Experience in direct-to-retailer, agritech or app-based selling is preferred.

Why Join

You will own a crop protection portfolio end to end in a brand that manufactures and sells direct, where the path from your decision to a retailer's order is short and measurable.