Category Manager

Key Responsibilities

• Understand customer needs through:
• Visits to customers
• Interactions with customer-facing teams
• Focus groups and customer delight tickets
• Analyze competing offerings across multiple offline and online channels
• Study on-app customer behavior, including:
• Search patterns
• Traffic flows
• Conversion funnel performance
• Monitor market trends and industry dynamics influencing customer demand
• Define the Customer Value Proposition and craft the end-to-end customer experience for the category
• Develop a category strategy and create annual category plans at both overall and city/regional levels using top-down and bottom-up inputs
• Translate annual plans into detailed monthly plans with defined owners and clear checkpoints
• Drive execution of category plans to achieve topline and bottom-line goals
• Define the ideal selection/assortment to meet customer needs and collaborate with Category Buyers to ensure product availability
• Partner with Central Marketing to:
• Drive relevant traffic to the Super Category
• Optimize traffic flow to individual categories
• Improve product discovery and boost conversion rates
• Collaborate with Catalog and Product teams to:
• Enhance catalog quality
• Showcase key attributes to support informed customer decisions
• Work with Product teams to improve organic category navigation and search performance
• Own the creation and execution of targeted promotions & campaigns
• Track campaign performance daily and coordinate with merchandising/marketing to optimize ROI
• Collaborate with Business Operations and Price Benchmarking teams to:
• Build and maintain a price benchmarking process (online and offline)
• Ensure competitive pricing
• Own the Category P&L and customer experience
• Provide accurate demand projections to Category Buyers for consistent availability and minimal inventory losses
• Support Category Buyers with insights to drive high-ROI investments for brand partners
• Continuously improve customer experience by aligning internal stakeholders (product, supply chain, buying) to customer expectations
• Establish a robust process for early identification and resolution of product quality and CX issues
• Partner with city and regional Customer Growth teams to deliver local growth and profitability goals
• Hire, train, and mentor a team (Category Planning, Category Marketing, and Category Managers) to scale this strategy across 50–100 cities in India

Skills Required
Define the Customer Value Proposition, Develop a category strategy, Monitor market trends, Study on-app customer behavior, Understand customer needs