Job Description

Area Manager - Sales

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Student Living | Zolo

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Own the city. Grow the business. Deliver the experience.

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Offered CTC: 12 - 15 LPA

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Why this role exists

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Student Living is not just about operating residences.

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Each city is a business that needs to consistently acquire students, maintain strong occupancy, deliver a reliable living experience, control costs, and build relationships that enable long-term growth.

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As the business scales, success in each city depends on having one leader who sees the complete picture and takes accountability for the overall outcome.

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The City Head exists to own the city as a business.

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This means bringing together:

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- Revenue and occupancy
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- Student acquisition and sales
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- Property operations
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- Customer experience
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- Cost and profitability
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- Team performance
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- Institutional and local relationships
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- New property ramp-up and city growth
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If this role is strong, the city grows profitably, properties remain occupied, students have a strong experience, teams execute consistently, and new opportunities are identified early.

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If this role is weak, functions operate in silos, occupancy suffers, costs increase, customer issues escalate, and growth becomes difficult to sustain.

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Your mandate is clear

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- Own the complete P&L; for the city
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- Deliver revenue, occupancy, and profitability targets
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- Drive student acquisition and business growth
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- Ensure properties operate consistently and efficiently
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- Own the end-to-end student experience
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- Build and lead strong city teams
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- Develop institutional and local partnerships
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- Identify and execute new growth opportunities
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- Build a city business that can scale sustainably
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This is not a functional role.

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It is end-to-end ownership of the city business.

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About Zolo and Student Living

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Finding dependable accommodation has historically been fragmented and inconsistent.

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Students and parents often have to choose between location, affordability, safety, quality, convenience, and community.

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People settled for compromises because the system offered few trustworthy options.

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Zolo reimagined living and hospitality as a connected journey.

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Zolo Coliving simplifies urban living and student living creates safe, structured environments where students can focus and grow.

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Z Hotels serves the contemporary traveler with consistency, warmth, and operational discipline.

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Today, over 100,000 people trust Zolo across different phases of life.

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Our ambition is to build the most trusted living and hospitality ecosystem for the new generation by partnering deeply with property owners who think long term.

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Our Student Living business brings together accommodation, operations, service, community, and technology to create environments where students can live comfortably while focusing on their education and growth.

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What you will be responsible for

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Own the City P&L;

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- Take complete accountability for city revenue, costs, margins, and profitability
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- Build and deliver against annual, quarterly, and monthly business plans
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- Understand the key drivers of city-level financial performance
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- Identify revenue gaps and cost leakages early
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- Take corrective actions to ensure achievement of P&L; targets
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- Make business decisions balancing growth, customer experience, and profitability
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Drive Revenue & Occupancy

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- Own occupancy and revenue targets across Student Living properties in the city
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- Build strong visibility into demand, inventory, pricing, and conversion
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- Work closely with sales and marketing teams to drive student acquisition
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- Identify underperforming properties and create recovery plans
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- Drive renewals and retention wherever relevant
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- Ensure available inventory is monetized effectively
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Build the City's Growth Engine

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- Understand the student housing market, demand pockets, colleges, universities, and competitive landscape
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- Identify opportunities to grow the Student Living business within the city
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- Build relationships with colleges, universities, educational institutions, and other relevant partners
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- Identify new demand channels and partnerships
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- Support evaluation and ramp-up of new properties
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- Build a strong local network that enables future growth
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Own the Student Experience

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- Ensure students receive a consistent and reliable living experience across properties
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- Track customer feedback, complaints, service issues, and experience metrics
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- Ensure critical issues are resolved with urgency
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- Identify recurring problems and drive permanent solutions
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- Build strong service standards across properties
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- Balance student expectations with practical and sustainable business decisions
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Drive Operational Excellence

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- Ensure properties consistently meet defined operating standards
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- Maintain visibility across housekeeping, maintenance, security, food/service delivery, and other critical operations
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- Review property-level performance and intervene where execution is weak
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- Ensure operational issues do not remain unresolved or repeatedly escalate
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- Build systems and review mechanisms that improve execution discipline
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- Ensure new properties stabilize quickly after launch
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Lead & Build the City Team

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- Lead city-level sales, operations, customer experience, and other relevant teams
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- Set clear targets and ownership across functions
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- Build strong second-line leaders and property-level teams
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- Review performance consistently and address gaps quickly
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- Create accountability without becoming the bottleneck for every decision
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- Build a high-performance culture focused on outcomes
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Use Data to Run the Business

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- Maintain strong visibility into city and property-level performance
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- Track revenue, occupancy, conversion, costs, customer metrics, and operational performance
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- Identify trends and risks before they become larger problems
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- Conduct structured business reviews with teams
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- Use data to prioritize interventions and allocate resources
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- Ensure decisions are based on business outcomes rather than assumptions
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Manage Stakeholders & Partnerships

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- Work closely with central Sales, Marketing, Finance, HR, Product, Procurement, and Operations teams
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- Build strong relationships with institutional partners and other external stakeholders
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- Align different teams toward common city-level outcomes
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- Resolve cross-functional blockers that affect business performance
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- Represent the Student Living business effectively within the city
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What success looks like after 6–12 months

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- City revenue and profitability are on or ahead of plan
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- Strong and sustainable occupancy across properties
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- Clear improvement plans exist for underperforming assets
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- Student acquisition channels are diversified and predictable
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- Customer experience and service metrics remain consistently strong
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- Operational escalations and recurring issues reduce
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- City teams operate with clear accountability and ownership
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- Strong relationships are established with relevant colleges, universities, and local partners
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- New properties and growth initiatives are ramped up effectively
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- Leadership has clear visibility and confidence in the city's performance
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The city begins to operate as a predictable, profitable, and scalable business unit.

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Who this role is for

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You will likely thrive here if:

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- You naturally think like a business owner, not a functional manager
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- You are comfortable owning a P&L; and being accountable for the final number
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- You can move between strategy and on-ground execution
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- You understand that revenue, operations, and customer experience cannot be managed in isolation
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- You enjoy building businesses and solving ambiguous problems
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- You are comfortable taking difficult calls when business outcomes require them
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- You can influence teams and stakeholders even when they do not directly report to you
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- You use numbers to understand problems but are equally comfortable getting on the ground to solve them
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- You have the energy to operate in a fast-moving, execution-heavy environment
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- You take ownership when something goes wrong instead of looking for which function is responsible
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Experience we value

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- Experience owning a city, region, cluster, category, or business unit
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- Demonstrated exposure to P&L; / revenue / profitability ownership
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- Strong experience across business operations, growth, sales, or general management
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- Experience managing multiple properties, locations, branches, centres, or distributed operations is valuable
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- Strong people leadership and cross-functional management experience
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- Experience in Student Housing, Education, Hospitality, Co-living, PropTech, Hotels, Managed Accommodation, Consumer Services, or other multi-location businesses is preferred
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- Exposure to institutional / B2B partnerships is an advantage
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- Strong commercial and analytical orientation
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The strongest candidate may not necessarily come from Student Living.

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What matters is evidence that they have owned a business outcome rather than only one part of the business.

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The impact you will have

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You will directly influence:

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City P&L;

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Revenue & Occupancy

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Student Acquisition

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Customer Experience

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Operational Performance

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Team Capability

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City Growth

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The quality of your decisions will determine how successfully Zolo's Student Living business grows within the city.

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Why join now

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Student Living is a business where scale creates significant opportunity — but only when growth, operations, customer experience, and economics work together.

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As Zolo expands its Student Living footprint, City Heads will play a critical role in building these businesses market by market.

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This role provides an chance to own far more than a function.

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You will own a city-level business, work across the complete P&L;, build teams and partnerships, and create a foundation for larger regional and business leadership roles.

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This is a path from managing a city to building and leading businesses.

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- Seniority Level
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- Mid-Senior level
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- Industry
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- Hospitality
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- Employment Type
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📌 Area Manager - Sales (Bengaluru)
🏢 Zolo
📍 Bengaluru