Associate / Senior Associate

Zstate AI; Kolkata Metropolitan Area; On-site; INR 1,200,000 - 2,000,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Competitive compensation

ESOPs

Direct exposure to founders

Job summary

Zstate AI is inviting a generalist problem-solver to join the founding team in Gurugram to drive business development from day one. You will source leads, build outreach, and manage partnerships while coordinating with founders to shape pricing and proposals.

You will also recruit and coordinate an ever-growing network of domain experts (pharmacists, radiologists, engineers) and ensure data contracts, NDAs, and onboarding processes run smoothly. This role rewards high ownership and rapid impact.

Qualifications

• 0-2 years of post-MBA experience in business development, sales, strategy, consulting, or a similar generalist role.
• Strong written and verbal communication; comfortable drafting outreach and pitching to senior stakeholders.
• High ownership, structured thinking, and comfort operating with ambiguity in a fast-moving startup.
• Genuine curiosity about AI; no prior AI background required, but a fast learner.

Responsibilities

• Sourcing leads, building outreach and partnership pipelines, and helping close deals.
• Help build and manage Zstate's network of domain experts who power our datasets and evaluations.
• Own CRM hygiene and pipeline tracking, and report on funnel health and deal status.

Skills

Business development

Sales

Strategy

Consulting

Communication

Startup environment

Ambiguity handling

Education

MBA

Job description

Associate / Senior Associate

Founding Team

• Full-time
• Gurugram, India

About Zstate

As AI models become increasingly capable, the industry needs better ways to measure reasoning, reliability, and real-world performance.

Zstate AI is building the evaluation and post-training infrastructure powering the next generation of AI systems. We create expert-driven benchmarks, reward signals, RL environments, and high-quality datasets that help frontier AI models become more capable, reliable, and trustworthy across diverse real-world domains.

Zstate AI is led by a founding team from IITs, IIMs, and DCE, bringing together deep technical and strategic expertise to build category-defining AI infrastructure. We are backed by Giraffe Studios, a venture studio focused on deep-tech startups founded by Himanshu Aggarwal (Co-founder & CEO, Aspiring Minds) and Mohit Tandon (Co-founder, Delhivery).

As one of our earliest hires, you'll work directly with the founders to solve challenging engineering problems and help shape both the product and the company from day one.

What this role looks like

A generalist problem-solver sitting close to the founders, primarily driving business development: sourcing leads, building outreach and partnership pipelines, and helping close deals, while also helping build and manage Zstate's network of domain experts (pharmacists, radiologists, engineers, and others) who power our datasets and evaluations.

A day in the life

• Be a thought partner in building a 0-1 journey and organisation in a fast-paced industry.
• Identify, research, and build outreach lists of target AI labs, enterprises, and partners across coding, healthcare, finance, and other domains.
• Draft and run outbound campaigns and manage a structured pipeline from first touch to signed deal.
• Prepare pitch decks, one-pagers, and proposals tailored to each prospect, working closely with the founders on positioning and pricing.
• Own CRM hygiene and pipeline tracking, and report on funnel health and deal status.
• Support deal execution: NDAs, data agreements, and coordination with legal and finance on contracts and onboarding.
• Help source, screen, and onboard domain experts into Zstate's annotation and evaluation projects, and support expert operations such as tranche-based payments and quality checks.

Who you are

• 0-2 years of post-MBA experience in business development, sales, strategy, consulting, or a similar generalist role.
• Strong written and verbal communication; comfortable drafting outreach and pitching to senior stakeholders.
• High ownership, structured thinking, and comfort operating with ambiguity in a fast-moving startup.
• Genuine curiosity about AI; no prior AI background required, but a fast learner.

Extra credit

• Prior experience in an early-stage startup, consulting, or a founder's office role.
• Exposure to enterprise sales cycles, partnerships, or B2B GTM motions.
• Interest in AI/ML, healthcare, or finance domains.

Why this matters

• Competitive compensation for the right candidate, plus meaningful ESOPs.
• Work directly with the founders and help shape both the business and the company from day one.
• High ownership from day one: no ticket queues, no layers, direct impact.
• Solve challenging problems alongside people working at the frontier of AI.