AI Partnerships Lead

Gnani Innovations Private Limited.; India; On-site; INR 1,200,000 - 1,800,000; Full time

Job summary

Gnani Innovations Private Limited. is seeking a high-impact partnerships leader who will own the ecosystem strategy, build the business case, negotiate deals, and stay engaged through to revenue.

This independent IC role offers outsized influence over Gnani’s GTM direction and requires driving partner strategy with AI-enabled, data-backed storytelling. You will operate without a pre-existing partner program, defining GSIs, Big 4, hyperscalers, and agentic AI platforms, then executing the plan

Qualifications

• 4–6 years of experience in consulting, strategy, BD or partnerships.
• Independent IC role with no initial team to manage.
• Comfort operating solo and owning end-to-end initiatives.
• Ability to sell and build a business case to CXO-level executives.

Responsibilities

• Diagnose and prioritize Gnani’s ecosystem, structuring partnerships (GSIs, Big 4, hyperscalers) into a clear GTM plan.
• Own the portfolio's numbers: activated partnerships, partner-sourced pipeline, co-sold deals, revenue targets.
• Run the hyperscaler motion: marketplace listings, private offers, co-sell programs, joint events.

Skills

Partnerships

Strategy

BD

Executive communication

AI-enabled selling

Tools

CRM

AI tools

Job description

This role is built for someone who has spent a few years solving other people’s hardest problems — in a consulting engagement, a strategy team, a BD function, or a partnerships seat — and now wants to own the problem end-to-end: define the ecosystem strategy, build the business case, negotiate the deal, and stay in the room until it converts to revenue.

This is an independently operating IC role — there’s no team to build or delegate to, at least not initially. What you get instead is outsized influence: your read on which partnerships actually matter, which deals to prioritize, and how Gnani shows up across the ecosystem will directly shape company GTM direction, not just execute someone else’s plan.

There is no existing partner program at Gnani to inherit. You are the case team of one: you’ll structure the opportunity — which GSIs, Big 4 practices, hyperscalers, and agentic AI platforms actually move Gnani’s revenue — build the plan, and then, unlike a consulting engagement, execute it yourself and own the number. Expect the job to never fully separate strategy from execution: you’ll step back to think through the play, then step back in to make the call, build the deck, and ship the prototype, often in the same day.

Key Responsibilities

• Diagnose and prioritize the ecosystem. Structure Gnani’s partnership landscape — GSIs, Big 4 consultancies, hyperscalers (AWS/Azure/GCP), CCaaS/CRM platforms, agentic AI platforms — into a clear, sequenced GTM plan, not a scattershot of relationships.
• Own the portfolio’s numbers. Activated partnerships, partner-sourced pipeline, co-sold deals, closed-won revenue against quarterly targets
• .Run the hyperscaler motion. Marketplace listings, private offers, co-sell programs, PDM relationships, joint outbound, field presentations, partner conferences.
• Build the GSI/Big 4/SI motion from zero. Vet and sign the right partners; structure co-sell, resale, referral, and implementation models; map shared accounts; drive joint pursuits from first conversation to deployment.
• Own the last mile from signed partner to closed deal, using AI to move faster than a traditional BD motion. A signed or enabled partner isn’t the finish line. Use AI tools yourself — for rapid prototyping, solution documents, proposal drafting, and technical scoping — to compress the pre-sales cycle, pulling in FDEs/Product/Engineering only where deeper build is genuinely needed. You’re the one who turns partner interest into a working demo the client can say yes to, fast — not something that waits three sprints for engineering bandwidth.
• Design partner enablement like a case deliverable. Training paths, certification, GTM plays, and solution assets that let partner consultants confidently pitch and deploy Gnani inside their own client work.
• Own joint market development and co-marketing — joint launches, case studies, joint events, and roundtables that build Gnani’s standing inside partner ecosystems.
• Sell the roadmap, not just the product. Build the kind of structured, data-backed narrative a consulting background trains you for — but pitch it as a solution architecture and business case to partner and client executives, not a slide for an internal steering committee.
• Operate at CXO level — build the executive trust to get a partner or client leader to bet their own credibility on recommending Gnani.
• Collaborate cross-functionally with Sales, Delivery/FDEs, Product, and Marketing to keep every partnership aligned to Gnani’s actual revenue strategy.

What We’re Looking For

• 4–6 years of experience — management consulting, corporate strategy, business development, or partnerships all qualify. What matters is the pattern, not the job title: you’ve taken ambiguous, high-stakes problems, structured them, and driven them to a decision.
• ~2 years in a consulting/strategy seat is a strong plus (Big 4, MBB, or boutique) — that background tends to build the structured problem-solving and executive-narrative habits this role leans on hardest, even if the rest of your experience is on the operating side.
• Genuinely comfortable operating solo. This is an IC track, not a manager track — no team executing behind you. You need to be equally at ease designing the strategy and being the person who picks up the phone, builds the deck, and scopes the prototype yourself.
• A builder’s instinct, not a caretaker’s. You want to build something from nothing and be judged on whether it worked — not maintain a process someone else designed.
• Quota-carrying orientation, not necessarily quota-carrying history. You don’t need to have owned a sales number before; you do need to want to be measured like you already do.
• Structured problem-solving as a default mode — hypothesis-driven, comfortable breaking down a messy ecosystem into what actually moves revenue versus what looks good in a partner logo wall.
• Executive-ready communication — able to build the crisp, data-backed narrative a consulting toolkit trains for, and use it to move a CXO to a decision, not just inform them.
• Genuine comfort with ambiguity — this role will have more undefined territory than defined process for at least a year.
• AI-native competence as a core differentiator, not a convenience. You already use AI tools as a personal force multiplier — for account/partner research, proposal and solution drafting, competitive analysis, even lightweight prototyping. At an AI company, this is a hiring bar: your ability to out-execute a traditional partnerships hire by using AI is part of the credibility you’re selling to partners and clients.
• Working familiarity (or the ability to get there fast) with how hyperscaler co-sell/marketplace mechanics and GSI/Big 4 partnership economics actually work.

You’ll Thrive Here If You

• Came up through consulting, strategy, or BD and are looking for the operating role where you execute your own recommendation instead of handing it off.
• Want influence over company direction without needing a title or a team to get it — your judgment on partner strategy will directly shape how Gnani goes to market.
• Don’t experience “thinking” and “doing” as separate modes on a calendar — you expect to move between strategy and execution within the same deal, the same day.
• Get more energy from closing a structured deal than managing a steady-state relationship book.
• Are commercially minded — pipeline and closed revenue are how you keep score.
• Can hold your own in a technical conversation about AI infrastructure and agentic platforms without an engineer translating for you.
• You already treat AI tools as leverage in your own daily workflow, and expect that edge to show up in how fast you move deals versus how a traditional BD/partnerships hire would operate.
• Enjoy travel, industry events, and being a visible face for Gnani across partner ecosystems.

Skills Required

Primary Skills Artificial Intelligence (AI) Sales Artificial Intelligence (AI) Tech Sales Business partnerships