Project Lead

Overview

Run the startup-collaboration engine of Zinnov's open innovation program for enterprise clients, owning startups from sourcing and selection through pilots to product adoption and go-to-market. This is a high-ownership, client-facing role and the first point of contact for founders and the client.

What you'll do

• Track emerging innovation models, startup-ecosystem shifts, and what leading corporate startup programs are doing, and translate that into fresh thinking for how the program evolves.
• Have a point of view and challenge how things are done.
• Scan the startup ecosystem, scout, identify, and bring in startups that genuinely fit the program's technology and business challenges, drawing on your own network and building new pipeline.
• Run custom evaluation to explore synergies between startups and the enterprise.
• Own the operational spine day-to-day, keep every workstream on track, and report progress and outcomes to the senior program owner and enterprise sponsors.
• Be the point of contact for founders across the journey, understand their technical and business needs, and be their voice inside the program.
• Scope focused, measurable proof-of-concept engagements between startups and enterprise teams and drive them to a quantified outcome.
• Move startups from pilot to adoption, working alongside solution architects and enterprise stakeholders, and open co-sell and go-to-market opportunities where they fit.
• Sit at the center of founders, mentors/advisors, enterprise sponsors, and internal Zinnov teams, matching the right startup to the right problem and holding momentum across all parties.
• Capture and package metrics and results achieved over time to build the outcomes narrative.

What you'll need

• 4–9 years' experience with meaningful time in the startup ecosystem (accelerator or incubator, corporate innovation or open-innovation team, VC/PE, or as a founder or early operator).
• A real, active network of startup founders and ecosystem players you can draw on from day one.
• A point of view and the curiosity to keep forming one; you spot patterns across the ecosystem, form original perspectives on where innovation is heading, and can argue against them credibly with senior stakeholders.
• Demonstrated experience running structured programs (cohorts, accelerators, pilots, or innovation challenges) from start to measurable finish.
• Strong stakeholder skills: equally credible in a founder's Slack and a GCC leader's boardroom.
• A bias for outcomes over activity; you measure success in pilots landed and business value created.
• Comfortable being embedded and client-facing and operating with autonomy in a fast-moving program.

Nice to have

• Direct experience operating a corporate or platform startup program, with first-hand understanding of program strategy, thesis and operations.
• Command of enterprise technology or a specific deep tech / AI / data domain, enough to earn credibility in a technical conversation.
• Familiarity with GCCs / global captives (welcome but not required).
• Prior consulting or client delivery experience.

Details

• Location: Koramangala, Bangalore, Karnataka, India.