India Hair Care Procurement Manager

Job Title: India Hair Care Procurement Manager

Function: Procurement

Location: Mumbai HO

Req ID: R-1176204

Role Purpose
The Hair Procurement Manager is accountable for end to end procurement leadership of the Hair Care category in India, partnering closely with the business to enable growth, innovation, margin delivery, and resilience.
This is a business partnering role, requiring strong cross functional influence, category ownership, and the ability to translate business strategy into clear procurement and supplier strategies. The role plays a critical part in supporting Hair Care as a scale and growth engine for India Beauty & Wellbeing.

Key Responsibilities
Business Partnering

• Act as the primary procurement business partner for the India Hair Care category.
• Partner closely with Global buying team, Marketing, R&D, Supply Chain, Finance and CD to support category strategy, innovation and execution.
• Provide fact based input into decisions on cost, margin, complexity, speed to market and risk.

Category & Sourcing Strategy

• Develop and execute Hair category sourcing strategies aligned to India B&W priorities.
• Drive total value delivery, including cost, margin improvement, innovation enablement and agility.
• Lead initiatives on specification optimization, complexity reduction and demand shaping.

Supplier & Partnership Management

• Build and manage a strong supplier ecosystem for Hair Care.
• Lead strategic supplier partnerships to unlock innovation, competitiveness and long term value.
• Drive supplier performance through governance, KPIs and continuous improvement.

Risk, Resilience & Execution

• Proactively identify and manage supply, cost, quality and operational risks.
• Ensure continuity of supply and execution excellence in a fast paced, innovation heavy environment.
• Partner with Supply Chain and Quality to ensure robust delivery.

Ways of Working & Leadership

• Demonstrate end to end ownership for the Hair category agenda.
• Influence stakeholders without formal authority and role model strong business partnering behaviours.
• Contribute to building procurement capability and talent within India.

Key Stakeholders

• Internal: Marketing, R&D, Supply Chain, Finance, CD, Quality, Global Procurement
• External: Strategic and operational suppliers, innovation and manufacturing partners

Skills & Experience
Essential

• Experience in Procurement / Strategic Sourcing / Category Management, preferably within FMCG, Beauty or Consumer Goods.
• Proven experience in a business partnering role with cross functional stakeholders.
• Strong commercial acumen and ability to link procurement actions to business outcomes.
• Excellent stakeholder management, communication and influencing skills.

Desirable

• Experience managing high spend, high complexity categories.
• Exposure to innovation driven or fast changing portfolios.
• Experience working with strategic supplier partnerships.

Leadership Expectations

• Operates with ownership and accountability.
• • Balances strategic thinking and hands on execution.
• • Leads through influence, collaboration and clarity.
• • Demonstrates learning agility, resilience and a growth mindset.

All official offers from Unilever are issued only via our Applicant Tracking System (ATS). Offers from individuals or unofficial sources may be fraudulent - please verify before proceeding.