About The/Nudge
The/Nudge is an action institute building resilient livelihoods to alleviate poverty. We work with women, farmers, tribals and youth on rural development, agriculture, skilling and economic inclusion, along with 15+ central and state government partners. Our economic inclusion journey for 25 million Indians, has reached 10 states with $250M of government funding to cover 1.25M people. Our incubator, accelerator and grand challenges have supported 200+ social entrepreneurs including 17 Forbes 30U30, 3 EarthShot Prize winners, 1 Time Magazine cover and more.
Set up with support from 90+ eminent philanthropists , 40+ corporates and 15+ foundations including Gates, Mackenzie Scott, Vinod Khosla, Nandan Nilekani, Tata Trusts, Skoll, Meta, LinkedIn, HDFC, Mphasis, KPMG and L'Oreal, we are contributing towards a "poverty-free India, within our lifetime". About the Program
The/Nudge Prize guides markets to solve for the economically excluded through grand incentive competitions. We offer incentives that meet the seed / series capital aspirations of the brightest tech-fi rst problem solvers, demonstrate investability, and mobilize sustained attention and momentum for the problem area through our interventions. Three challenges (Cisco Agri Challenge, Ashirvad Water Challenge & DCM Shriram AgWater Challenge) have been launched so far with a strong emphasis on leveraging the potential of technology to solve the problems of India’s excluded populations. This role is open within the “Future of Women in Work” series (
Digital Naukri Challenge) - that aspires to bring more women into the workforce through flexible, fractional digital livelihoods.
Who are we solving for?
The/Nudge Prize is focused on building mission mode, market-led ecosystems to use technology to solve the stagnant challenges of various economically excluded populations that prevent their access to resilient livelihoods. Two of our past challenges have focused on the challenges faced by India’s smallholder farmers.
Our focus areas for FY 26-27 include,
● Future of Women in Work : Increase the participation of economically excluded women in productive livelihood sectors.
● Nanoentrepreneur Futures : Unlock the job creation potential of India’s nano and micro enterprises.
● Climate Futures 2047: Design systems and induce change through orgs that can solve climate-related challenges that infl uence and create resilient livelihoods.
Each focus area can have multiple incentive competitions, each of which may range from 12 to 36 months.
What are we solving for?
The ability of markets to solve large, wicked problems through the levers of technology and innovation, thereby serving the underserved, has been well-documented throughout history. However, their ability to play this role is limited by two key bottlenecks -
1. The high cost of acquiring customers from underserved populations, which is often tied to geographical fragmentation and low awareness of market solutions among these populations, and,
2. Solutions for the underserved typically have a longer gestation period before their impact and returns are visible.
Incentive competitions, or grand challenges as they are more commonly known, are an effective model to deploy philanthropic capital to align both economic and prosocial incentives that can act as powerful orchestrating instruments.
The/Nudge Prize is pioneering this social innovation model along with a tech-first lens across India, to induce markets to develop or scale solutions in a competitive environment, demonstrate real evidence of impact and growth, and grow with the support of an aligned, mission-mode ecosystem .
What will you do?
● Support in building, shaping and executing the journey, learnings and interventions of the challenge
● Lead cohort experience: Maintain relationship with the cohort through continuous engagements & support thorough networks
● Process Excellence: Setting up seamless processes(design, evaluation criteria, jury, etc) for smooth execution of challenges from announcement of the prize to its completion
● Cross Functional Collaboration: Interface with marketing, finance, product, technology & donor relations teams on areas critical to the success of the designed prize challenges
● Keep a keen eye on Monitoring & Evaluations across the Challenge and make sure we are moving toward identified objectives and goals
● Research: Primary & Secondary research on areas relevant for running Prize challenges and defining sharp problem statements
● Identify and foster new partnerships to aid Prize challenges and momentum for innovations to scale
● Design and execute collaterals that can help communicate the milestones and research related to the program and challenge
● Identify areas of collaboration and media engagement avenues to aid amplification & network effects
● Design interventions and refi ne as per execution - to be implemented across the challenge and subsequent challenges
● Manage a data structure for challenges and identify a sustainable way to share this data, information, platform & insights across various stakeholders
● Manage & lead resources in building communications & contestant journeys
(The actual role might evolve slightly based on your relevant experience and the overlap between organization requirements & your interests.)
Core abilities & transferable skills
● demonstrated ability to build mechanisms and muscles that can benefit the team, the organization, and potentially the larger ecosystem
● exceptional stakeholder & relationship management skills
● ability to plan and execute on strategic plans/outlines
● strong command over communications & ability to translate progress across various media channels
● ability to conceptualize and put in frameworks
● comfort with some degree of ambiguity in the absence of perfect information
● operations driven
● ability to think first principles and understand 2nd and 3rd degree change / impact
● bias for action and brings in humility
Apply if you have:
● graduate, post-graduate degrees - an added bonus if graduated in social entrepreneurship & grassroots market making
● 2-4 years of work experience in high performing set-ups and in intrapreneurial roles
● strong networking and stakeholder management skills
● proficiency in Excel, Word, and PowerPoint
● strong written and verbal communication skills | analytical skills - comfortable with slide making & data analysis
● comfortable with working from the office (based out of Bangalore)
● written and spoken fluency in English. Other languages are a bonus.
● willingness to stay and travel as and when required
● be comfortable with non-profit sector salaries
Would be great if you:
● Understand global and various formats of the Inducement challenges and designs for large scale impact
● Comfortable in managing events & convenings to enable participation
● Understand & interested in developmental economics & behavioral fundamentals ● bring a tech or data first lens to program design
● have designed programs in the social or impact sector
What’s in it for you?
Own your growth: An impact-led learning environment encourages Nudgesters to invest in their learning and capacity building needs through initiatives and policies, including L&D wallet, individual development plan and internal role change opportunities.
Find your tribe: Our hiring philosophy emphasises intent, attitude, smarts and skills, in that order, to build a cohesive environment for Nudgesters. The organisation is committed to curating people-centric policies, enhancing how employees experience life at The/Nudge.
Take big bets: Organisational initiatives are intended to facilitate Nudgesters with a view to the big picture, illustrated by our impact across 50000+ households, 15+ governments, 200+ social enterprises and Charcha: India’s largest social sector convening forum.
Make it happen: A product-based approach in an action-biased environment empowers Nudgesters to implement audacious plans. Driven to fail fast, we endeavour to optimise resources in favour of programs that align with our scale ambition.
You can learn more about what we do and how we do it through this deck. We aspire to be an inclusive and diverse organization and encourage qualified individuals irrespective of their religion, caste, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, ethnicity, age, or any other dimension of identity, to apply.
