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^delta Prize
The/Nudge Prize (the^delta) guides markets to solve for the economically excluded through grand incentive competitions. We design and deploy prizes, incentive competitions, and inducement funding that meet the seed/series capital aspirations of the brightest problem-solvers, demonstrate investability, and mobilise sustained attention for a problem area.
Our work spans three focus areas for FY26–27:
- Climate Futures: designing systems and inducing change through organisations that can solve climate-related challenges influencing resilient livelihoods
- Future of Women in Work (FoWiW): increasing the participation of economically excluded women in productive livelihood sectors
- Micro-Enterprise Futures: unlocking the job creation potential of India & nano and micro enterprises
Each focus area runs multiple incentive competitions, ranging from 12 to 36 months, alongside product- building work that strengthens how the^delta designs, evaluates, and scales the grand challenge model Itself.
Who are we solving for?
The^delta Prize is focused on building mission-mode, market-led ecosystems that use technology to solve the stagnant challenges facing India & economically excluded populations — populations for whom access to resilient livelihoods remains structurally blocked.
What are we solving for?
Markets are well-documented instruments for solving large, wicked problems at scale — but their ability to serve underserved populations is limited by two bottlenecks: the high cost of acquiring customers from geographically fragmented, low-awareness markets, and the longer gestation period before impact
and returns become visible for solutions built for the underserved. Incentive competitions — grand challenges — are an effective model for deploying philanthropic capital to align economic and prosocial incentives, acting as powerful orchestrating instruments. the^delta is pioneering this model with a tech-first lens across India, inducing markets to develop and scale solutions in a competitive environment, demonstrate real evidence of impact and growth, and grow within an aligned, mission-mode ecosystem.
Role and Responsibility
What will you do?
This role sits within the^delta& product function — supporting the design, research, and institutional memory that underpins every challenge the^delta runs, rather than the operational delivery of any single challenge. You will work across themes and projects simultaneously, moving fluidly between research, documentation, and programme design support.
- Research: conduct primary and secondary research across the^delta&focus areas (climate, FoWiW, micro-enterprise futures) to sharpen problem statements, support challenge frame development, and build the evidence base behind prize design decisions
- Programme design support: support the design and refinement of the^delta & prize products including prize^beta and prize^sprint models — by structuring design briefs, mapping eligibility and milestone frameworks, and translating design intent into documentation the challenge teams can use
- Monitoring, Evaluation & Learning (MEL): support the build-out and maintenance of MEL frameworks and systems across challenges; help structure data, evaluation criteria, and reporting so that learnings are captured consistently and can inform future challenge design
- Documentation and institutional memory: maintain playbooks, process documentation, and the^delta product history — capturing design rationale, ecosystem learnings, and evaluation evolution as a structured, reusable knowledge asset
- Cross-workstream support: work concurrently across multiple themes and challenge teams (Climate, FoWiW, Micro-Enterprise Futures) — prioritising and context-switching between research, documentation, and design tasks as priorities shift
- Cross-functional collaboration: interface with challenge teams, marketing, finance, and donor relations on product and research questions relevant to challenge design and execution
- Content and collateral: support the production of research outputs, briefs, and collaterals (distillation reports, synthesis notes, thought leadership pieces) that communicate the^delta& research and design thinking to internal and external audiences
- Partnerships research support: support the scoping and evidence-gathering for strategic research or academic partnerships that strengthen the^delta& credibility and design base (The actual role might evolve slightly based on your relevant experience and the overlap between organisational requirements and your interests.)
Who are we looking for in this role?
Core abilities transferable skills
- Strong research skills — comfortable moving between secondary literature review and primary data collection (structured interviews, field consultations)
- Strong documentation skills — able to convert raw inputs (field notes, interviews, workshop outputs) into structured, reusable written material
- Comfort working across multiple themes and projects simultaneously, prioritising and context- switching without losing rigour
- Ability to think in frameworks — structuring ambiguous problems into research questions, design parameters, or evaluation criteria
- Comfort with some degree of ambiguity in the absence of perfect information
- Operations-driven, with a bias for action and humility
- Ability to think in first principles and understand second- and third-order change or impact
- Exceptional stakeholder and relationship management skills
Apply if you have:
- A graduate or postgraduate degree — an added bonus if in a research-adjacent, social science, or development field
- 1–4 years of work experience in high-performing set-ups and intrapreneurial roles
- Demonstrated research skills, ideally across both secondary research and primary data collection
- Comfort with MEL frameworks, or a strong willingness to build this skill
- Strong written and verbal communication skills, with the ability to structure research into clear
- documentation
- Proficiency in Excel, Word, and PowerPoint
- Comfort working from the office (based out of Bangalore)
- Written and spoken fluency in English; other languages are a bonus
- Willingness to travel as required for field research
- Comfort with nonprofit sector salaries
Would be great if you:
- Understand global formats of inducement challenges and grand challenge design for scale
- Are interested in developmental economics and behavioural fundamentals
- Bring a data-first lens to programme design and evaluation
- Have prior experience in MEL, monitoring frameworks, or programme evaluation in the social/impact sector
- Have experience managing documentation or knowledge systems across a team or organisation
