Chief Operating Officer

DSM Fresh Foods Limited; Gurugram District; On-site; INR 5,000,000 - 8,500,000; Full time

Job summary

DSM Fresh Foods Ltd seeks a high-impact Chief Operating Officer to own the end-to-end operations of Zappfresh and Meevaa Foods across Delhi NCR and other facilities. You will drive procurement, processing, cold chain, and last‑mile delivery, building an operations leadership team and ensuring food safety and strong unit economics.

The role requires regular travel to Mumbai, Bangalore and Chandigarh, and a minimum of 15 years in senior operations, preferably in perishable/frozen foods.

Qualifications

• Minimum 15 years of experience in operations.
• Experience leading multi-site food manufacturing/processing operations.

Responsibilities

• Own the full operating chain—from farm and supplier through processing, cold chain and last-mile delivery—for multiple brands.
• Lead procurement of poultry, mutton and fish across operating cities with cost, yield and quality terms.
• Establish and enforce common SOPs for cutting, packing, labeling across sites with traceable yield and quality metrics.
• Ensure compliance with food-safety standards, licences (FSSAI) and export requirements across sites.

Job description

Chief Operating Officer (COO)

Company DSM Fresh Foods Ltd (listed on BSE, SME platform) Zappfresh and Meevaa Foods

Reports to Chairman & Managing Director

Location Delhi NCR, with regular travel to Mumbai, Bangalore and Chandigarh

Experience Minimum 15 years

Employment Type Full-time

1. ROLE SUMMARY

DSM Fresh Foods Ltd, listed on BSE since October 2025, owns Zappfresh, a fresh meat and seafood brand, and Meevaa Foods, a frozen vegetarian snacks brand. Zappfresh serves consumers through pin-drop delivery clusters in Delhi NCR, Mumbai and Bangalore via its own app and website, supplies restaurants and institutional buyers, and supports a growing network of co-branded partner meat shops. Meevaa is manufactured at the company's Chandigarh facility and sold through the Zappfresh network, e-commerce, quick commerce and export markets.

The business has scaled quickly and its operating model now spans fresh and frozen categories, multiple processing sites, B2B and B2C channels, and a new aquaculture-led sourcing programme. The next stage of growth depends on running this network to a single standard of quality, cost and service.

The Chief Operating Officer will own the full operating chain, from farm and supplier through processing, cold chain and last-mile delivery, for both brands. The role carries accountability for food safety, unit economics and working capital, and for building the operations leadership team that will take the company through its next phase as a listed business.

2. KEY RESPONSIBILITIES

Procurement & Sourcing

• Lead procurement of poultry, mutton and fish across all operating cities, with clear price, yield and quality terms for every supplier.
• Manage contract-farming partnerships with poultry farmers, ensuring each arrangement delivers measurable gains in cost and supply security.
• Integrate the company's aquaculture programme, including its subsidiary and farmer-producer partnerships, into a dependable and fully costed seafood supply plan.
• Track realisation on every live-bird batch, including by-products, so that procurement yield is measured rather than assumed.

Processing & Quality

• Run the secondary processing units in Delhi, Mumbai and Bengaluru and the Meevaa manufacturing facility in Chandigarh.
• Establish common SOPs for cutting, portioning, packing and labelling across all sites, with yield and rejection tracked by shift.
• Keep every site audit-ready under its FSSAI licence and existing certifications, and meet the requirements of export buyers for Meevaa.
• Ensure every quality, freshness or weight complaint is traced to batch, site and shift, and closed with a documented corrective action.

Cold Chain & Warehousing

• Own temperature integrity from receipt to doorstep across cold storage, hubs, reefer vehicles and delivery, with logged readings and clear escalation.
• Determine, lane by lane, where cold-chain logistics are run in-house and where third-party partners are used, based on cost and compliance.
• Plan frozen and chilled storage capacity across fresh and Meevaa stock, including consolidation for export shipments.
• Enforce FEFO and stock-ageing discipline at every node, and provide Finance with accurate stock data for month-end close.

Cluster & Last-Mile Delivery

• Run pin-drop cluster delivery in Delhi NCR, Mumbai and Bangalore, including slot design, rider allocation and serviceability.
• Review delivery performance, cost per order and cancellations by cluster every week, and act on underperforming clusters.
• Design and validate the operating model for each new city or catchment before launch.
• Use the company's in-house rider application to manage dispatch, proof of delivery and rider productivity.

Unit Economics & P&L

• Own the operating cost base – procurement, processing, cold chain, last mile and partner-store supply – in partnership with the CFO.
• Build contribution margin per order and per kg, by channel and city, from farm-gate price to customer.
• Protect and improve gross margin as the channel mix changes, through yield, product mix and cost to serve.
• Improve the working capital cycle with the CFO, covering inventory days, B2B credit terms and collections linked to proof of delivery.

Quick-Commerce & B2B Operations

• Lead fulfilment for HoReCa and institutional customers against agreed specifications, cut-off times and on-time-in-full commitments.
• Run supply to the co-branded partner-store network, including replenishment, quality checks, store audits and stock reporting.
• Manage Meevaa operations on e-commerce and quick-commerce platforms, including inbound appointments, fill rates and shelf life at dispatch.
• Define the operating terms – pack formats, shelf life and cost to serve – under which fresh products are offered on third-party platforms.

Meevaa Operations

• Own the Chandigarh plant: production planning, line utilisation, changeovers and finished-goods inventory.
• Balance production between domestic channels and export customers, with documentation and buyer audits in place before each shipment.
• Take new Meevaa products from pilot to steady-state production, with costed recipes and validated shelf life.
• Integrate the acquired frozen-foods business into group processes, systems and reporting.

Working with the In-House Tech Team

• Act as business owner for the company's in-house operations software, including the consumer platform and the rider, partner and sales applications.
• Set requirements for demand forecasting, cluster routing, inventory visibility and temperature logging, and approve releases that affect operations.
• Ensure every operating KPI is system-generated and reconciles with the Sales Dashboard.

FSSAI & Statutory Compliance

• Maintain valid FSSAI licences for all premises and meet the hygiene requirements of the FSS (Licensing and Registration of Food Businesses) Regulations, 2011.
• Ensure meat is sourced only from authorised slaughterhouses, with records at every site and municipal licences in place for each location.
• Ensure labels and online listings comply with the FSS (Labelling and Display) Regulations, 2020 and the Legal Metrology (Packaged Commodities) Rules, 2011.
• Meet FSSAI shelf-life requirements for food sold through e-commerce platforms.
• Work with HR to implement the four labour codes across processing staff, contract labour and delivery partners.

Hiring & Team Building

• Build the operations leadership team across city operations, manufacturing, quality assurance, procurement and logistics.
• Set role-level SOPs and food-handling training, with medical fitness records for every food handler.
• Plan hiring ahead of partner-store and cluster expansion so that every new site opens with a trained team.

Listed-Company Governance

• Present operating performance and risks to the Board and Audit Committee, and own operational risks in the risk register.
• Provide the CFO and Company Secretary with accurate operational inputs for results, investor communication and SEBI LODR disclosures.
• Comply with the SEBI (Prohibition of Insider Trading) Regulations, 2015 as a designated person.
• Report on the deployment of IPO proceeds allocated to operational capital expenditure.

3. LEADERSHIP COMPETENCIES

• Data-led operator — can show the performance reports they built and the decisions those reports changed.
• Hands-on site leadership — has run processing or fulfilment operations day to day and can explain how they resolved a yield or wastage problem at its root.
• Uncompromising on food safety — can cite an instance of holding product or exiting a supplier on quality grounds despite commercial pressure.
• Cash discipline — has reduced inventory days or cost to serve in partnership with Finance, with results to show.
• Team builder — has hired and developed site and city leaders who have gone on to larger roles.
• Technology partner — has defined requirements for an in-house operations system and led its adoption.
• Transparent communicator — raises issues with leadership and the Board early, together with a plan to resolve them.

4. DESIRED CANDIDATE PROFILE

• Minimum 15 years in operations, of which at least 5 years in a senior leadership role running multi-site operations for perishable or temperature-controlled food.
• Proven end-to-end ownership of procurement, processing, cold chain and delivery in fresh meat, poultry, seafood, dairy or frozen foods.
• Track record of running city-level last-mile or hyperlocal delivery with accountability for service levels and cost per order.
• Experience managing an operations P&L or cost base and improving contribution margin and working capital in partnership with Finance.
• Strong working knowledge of FSSAI licensing, hygiene and labelling requirements, and Legal Metrology, with a clean audit record.
• Exposure to B2B or HoReCa supply, quick-commerce or marketplace operations, and frozen or ready-to-eat manufacturing for domestic and export markets.
• Experience of building leadership teams, integrating acquired businesses and reporting to a Board, ideally in a listed company.
• Degree in engineering, food technology, veterinary or dairy science, or supply chain; an MBA in Operations or Supply Chain is an advantage.

5. ABOUT THE COMPANY

• Founded in 2015 and headquartered in Delhi NCR; listed on the BSE SME platform in October 2025.
• Two brands: Zappfresh (fresh chicken, mutton, fish and seafood, ready-to-cook and ready-to-eat) and Meevaa Foods (frozen vegetarian snacks).
• Operations across Delhi, Uttar Pradesh, Haryana, Karnataka and Maharashtra, with processing facilities in Delhi, Mumbai, Bengaluru and Chandigarh.
• Sells through its own app and website, HoReCa and institutional customers, co-branded partner stores, e-commerce and quick-commerce platforms, and export.
• Building backward integration in seafood through an aquaculture subsidiary and farmer–producer partnerships.