Category Manager

Overview

Who are we? When you think of food delivery in the MENA region, talabat comes to mind. Since delivering our first order in Kuwait in 2004, we've grown significantly. Today, we deliver hundreds of millions of food orders, grocery items and other products per year, to our customers in nine countries with more than 3,000+ employees. Our food delivery business works with over 27,000 brands and almost 50,000 branches, while our q-commerce concept, talabat mart, now delivers groceries to customers in Bahrain, Egypt, Jordan, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, and the UAE in 30 minutes or less. Our philosophy is to do what is right for our ecosystem-our customers, our partners, our people, our riders, and the communities in which we operate. Our program allows customers a safe and convenient way to contribute to important causes in their community through donating to local and international charities directly on talabat, focusing on food insecurity in the region. Since its inception in 2020, we have facilitated the donation of well over 1 million meals and donated over $1.5 million to charity with the help of our partners and customers. talabat is part of Delivery Hero, the global leader in online food delivery and q-commerce. As Talabat continues to grow, we have launched our very own end-to-end grocery service across the MENA region: tMart.

Role Summary

We're looking for a Regional Category Manager to join the team and focus on growing our own Grocery Store "tMart," which is the region's first cloud store concept offering 30-minute delivery of groceries at hypermarket prices. The service has expanded rapidly across Kuwait, UAE, Qatar, Jordan, Bahrain, Egypt, Oman and Iraq.

Qualifications

What's On Your Plate?

• Project & Tool Rollout Management: to lead regional projects related to data insights tools rollouts and commercial process automation; coordinate with Commercial and Finance teams for successful rollout, adoption and training of new tools/dashboards; track timelines, milestones, user feedback of implemented solutions.
• Regional Category Performance & Analytics: analyze category performance across all 8 MENA markets, identifying gaps, opportunities and market trends; monitor key KPIs: sales growth, margin, assortment penetration, pricing, promo, market share and supplier contribution on a regional level.
• Regional Business Development Agreements (BDAs) negotiation: lead negotiation of regional BDAs with top global and regional CPGs; align commercial terms, joint business plans (JBPs) and trade investments to regional priorities; ensure compliance to agreed terms, tracking performance and financial contributions per supplier; build and maintain strong relationships with senior vendor stakeholders.
• Cross-Market Category Support: act as a regional point of contact for Category Managers across 8 markets, providing guidance on category management, BDA negotiation, supplier management etc.
• Category Performance & Margin Analytics: develop dashboards, scorecards and business reviews (in close collaboration with the Data Team) - requiring strong analytical and data interpretation skills.
• Stakeholder Management: to collaborate effectively and drive discussions with multiple stakeholders across Central, Commercial, Finance and Supply Chain teams.

What Did We Order?

• You have at least 5+ years of experience in commercial functions within retail, e-commerce or FMCG sectors.
• You have built teams and led cross-functional projects at scale.
• You are very detail-oriented, structured and know how to prioritize - you consider yourself as someone who delivers solutions and not bottlenecks to be solved.
• You are willing to do anything necessary for the project to succeed, including working on the warehouse floor when you are short staffed to make a customer delivery, or to take customer calls. No job is too insignificant, no detail is too small for you.
• You are able to interact with senior-level executives and can manage the expectations of multiple stakeholders. You are someone energized by the unknown and look forward to learning each day on the job.
• You have excellent analytical and communication skills, and always like to be hands-on with several tools.
• Additionally, you have robust interpersonal and intercultural skills. You can inspire several teams and stakeholders to rally behind a mission.
• Language skills: Fluent English and Arabic would be highly advantageous.