Overview:

Manager - Business & Growth

Experience: Only applicants with 5–7 years of relevant agency/creative studio/design studio experience will be considered.

Location: Mumbai

Interests: New Business, Brand Strategy, Creative Business, Client Relationships, Negotiations, Growth, Branding & Design

Target Industries: F&B;, Hospitality, AlcoBev, FMCG, Consumer & Lifestyle Brands

:

Like building business around ideas that make the world around you go Holy Duck?

Then you've waddled onto the right opening.

Holy Duck is a no-nonsense, new-age creative studio working across brand strategy, branding, design, digital and everything that makes good brands make sense.

We're looking for someone to lead Business & Growth at Holy Duck — working closely with the Founder to drive new business, build relationships and help take the studio into its next phase of growth.

This isn't a traditional sales role.

We're looking for someone who understands the business of creativity — someone who can walk into a room, understand a brand problem, know how a creative studio can solve it, and sell that thinking just as well as they can negotiate the commercials behind it.

What will you be doing? Other than helping us find more exciting brands to work with:

- Own and drive new business across branding, strategy, design, digital retainers, campaigns and standalone creative projects .
- Build a healthy pipeline of relevant opportunities through active outreach, industry relationships, referrals, partnerships and inbound enquiries.
- Identify and pursue brands and businesses that are genuinely the right fit for Holy Duck — not just add names to a lead sheet.
- Be one of the first people prospective clients interact with, and represent Holy Duck, our thinking and our capabilities confidently and intelligently.
- Understand prospective clients, their businesses and their problems before recommending what Holy Duck should be doing for them.
- Lead initial conversations, discovery meetings and commercial discussions with prospective clients.
- Work closely with the Founder and strategy/creative teams to develop pitches, proposals, scopes of work and commercial structures .
- Own negotiations across scope, timelines, retainers and project commercials while protecting the value of our work.
- Drive opportunities from the first conversation through proposal, negotiation and closure.
- Build relationships with founders, marketing teams, hospitality groups,



brand heads and decision-makers across relevant industries.
- Develop and maintain a structured current-business pipeline with clear visibility on leads, conversations, proposals, closures and projected revenue.
- Identify opportunities to grow existing relationships through additional mandates, projects and longer-term partnerships.
- Bring market intelligence back into the studio — what brands are looking for, where budgets are moving, what categories are growing and where Holy Duck should be looking next.
- Work closely with the Founder to develop a more proactive and scalable business development function for the studio.

What are we looking for? Business development experience matters. But where and what you've sold matters just as much.

Ideally, you've spent 5–7 years working within a creative agency, branding/design studio, advertising agency or a similar creative business , with meaningful experience in new business and client acquisition.

You'll probably be a great fit if:

- You have a proven track record of bringing in and closing new business, not simply servicing accounts after they have been won, or connecting with incoming leads.
- You have experience selling branding, strategy, creative, design, digital or integrated agency mandates .
- You understand how agencies and creative studios work — from strategy and creative development to design, production, retainers and project scopes.
- You've worked with or successfully brought in clients across F&B;, Hospitality, AlcoBev, FMCG, Consumer or Lifestyle categories . You already have strong relationships within some of these industries. That's a very big bonus.
- You're comfortable discussing budgets, negotiating commercials and holding your ground on the value of creative work.
- You can understand a client's business problem beyond the brief sitting in front of you.
- You're articulate, confident and extremely strong at written and verbal communication.
- You know how to build relationships without making every conversation feel like a sales pitch.




- You're organised enough to run a pipeline rigorously, but curious enough to spot opportunities that weren't sitting in the pipeline to begin with.
- You're comfortable working directly with a Founder and taking ownership of a function rather than waiting for instructions.
- Work closely with the Founder and finance/accounts team to build revenue forecasts and projections across the new-business pipeline, retainers and projects — helping translate business development into predictable studio growth.
- Look beyond topline revenue and help shape commercial strategy around profitability, margins and cash-flow efficiency — from how mandates are priced and structured to payment terms, project milestones and longer-term engagements.
- Own the commercial relationship beyond signing the dotted line — ensuring invoices, payment schedules and commercial commitments are followed through, with proactive client follow-ups to keep receivables and cash flow on track.
- Maintain clear visibility on pipeline value, expected closures, contracted revenue and collections, helping the Founder make better decisions around growth, capacity and business planning.

Most importantly, we're looking for someone who can understand Holy Duck inside out and represent it to the world. You should be able to understand the strategic and creative thinking behind our work, articulate why it matters, and make prospective clients want Holy Duck in the room. Because for many of them, you'll be their first experience of the studio.

A little about us:

We're motivated, curious and fairly allergic to doing things simply because that's how they've always been done.

We work with ambitious brands across hospitality, F&B;, consumer and lifestyle categories, and we're looking for someone who can help us find more of them — while helping the studio grow intelligently.

Your love for food, coffee, cocktails, restaurants and generally knowing what's happening around town will probably serve you particularly well here.

If you've spent the last few years winning business for a creative company and think you could do the same for Holy Duck, we'd like to hear from you.

Send your application to [email protected] with Manager — Business & Growth in the subject line.

Tell us where you've worked, what you've helped win, and — more importantly — what you'd like to help us win next.

📌 Manager - Business & Growth (Mumbai)
🏢 Holy Duck
📍 Mumbai