Program Manager, IPs & Events

Keka Inc.; New Delhi; On-site; INR 2,000,000 - 3,500,000; Full time

Job summary

Inc42, India's leading media and intelligence platform for startups, seeks a Program Manager to own two to three IPs end-to-end each year. You will manage calendars, dependencies, budgets and cross-team collaboration to ship events on time and within scope.

You will drive weekly convenings, track progress, and enforce processes that reduce slippage. The role demands hands-on operation, vendor management, and a strong bias for delivering curated, high-impact rooms.

Qualifications

• Experience delivering complex programs with multiple moving parts.
• Ability to coordinate cross-functional teams and vendors.
• Comfort with building templates and checklists to standardize work processes.
• Familiarity with using AI as a working tool for drafts, summaries and versioning.

Responsibilities

• Own the programme end to end for each IP, including calendar, edition scope, and go-live sequence.
• Maintain a single live tracker per IP with ownership, dates and status.
• Manage cost sheets covering venue, production, and travel economics.
• Coordinate weekly cadence across five teams to assign owners and dates.
• Ensure quality control by ensuring resources are ready and founder review happens early.
• Lead retro sessions and document outcomes within a week of each event.

Skills

Community management

Collaboration

Leadership

Program operations

Communication

Program management

Process design

Room curation experience

AI tools usage

Job description

Inc42 is India's #1 media and intelligence platform on the startup economy, covering journalism, Datalabs (India's largest free startup database, with 75,000+ companies), our flagship editorial IPs (AI Summit, D2C & Retail Summit, FAST42, D2C Retreat, CTO Summit, MoneyX Dialogues), and Griffin, India's most curated private founder club.

Our IPs are rooms, not conferences. They are curated, selection is never sold, and the people in the room are the product.

Why this role exists

Inc42 runs five to seven tentpole IPs a year, plus a set of smaller retreats, dinners and closed-door programmes. Each edition is assembled across five teams that sit in different parts of the company: delivery, events operations, account management, marketing and design. Today that assembly is convened by a founder, by hand, edition by edition.

We are hiring Program Managers to own that assembly. You will run two to three IPs end to end, or a full season of them: the calendar, the T-minus timeline, every dependency and go-live date, the cost sheet, the live delivery tracker, and the retro. The founders keep the editorial call and the sponsor call. You make the whole thing ship, on the date, on the number, without anyone above you having to chase.

This is the first rung of a ladder we are building deliberately. The people who run two IPs well will run four; the person who runs six will lead the portfolio.

What you'll own

• The programme, end to end: for each IP you hold, the annual date, the edition scope, the T-minus plan from ninety days out, the dependency map across content, marketing, design, operations, account management and speakers, and the go-live sequence for the website, the agenda and the room.
• The tracker that everyone works from: one live view per IP with stage, owner and due date. You keep it true. When something slips, you know three weeks before delivery does, and you say so.
• The cost sheet: vendor, venue, production and travel economics for each edition, built early, updated as decisions land, reconciled after. You will make the model-level cost calls with the founders (six hundred people or four hundred, dinner or lunch, how many VIP tiers) and hold the envelope once it is set.
• The convening: a weekly cadence per live IP that brings five teams into one room and leaves with named owners and dates. You will be the neck below the founders that every cross-team question goes to first.
• Quality control, ensured not done: you do not write the agenda or design the deck. You make sure the people who do have what they need, on time, and that the founder review happens once and early rather than five times and late.
• The retro: what shipped, what slipped, what we fix next edition, written within a week of the room closing.

Who you are

• You have run programmes to a date with many moving parts: a launch calendar, an accelerator cohort, a live-events bet inside a consumer company, a chief-of-staff seat where you owned the operating rhythm. Something with real dependencies, real vendors and a day it had to be done.
• You are precise about operations and honest about slippage: you keep the tracker true even when the truth is uncomfortable, and you escal ...
• You convene without authority: you have made senior people from other teams show up, commit and deliver without being their manager.
• You are good with a cost sheet: you have built one, owned one, and been held to one.
• You build systems as you go: templates, checklists, the T-minus that gets reused. You would rather fix the process than run the same fire drill twice.
• You use AI as a working tool, for first drafts, research, summaries and versioning, and you know where it stops and judgment starts.
• You have taste for rooms: you understand why a smaller, better room beats a bigger one, and you have an opinion about it.

Open on industry. We are not looking for people who have run conferences; we are looking for people who have shipped complex things on time and want to learn how a curated room is made.

What we offer

• Ownership of named IPs that India's founders, investors and operators already plan their year around.
• A visible ladder: Program Manager to Senior Program Manager to the portfolio seat, with the criteria written down.
• A small team, decisions in the room, direct access to the founders and to the people who build the rooms.
• Compensation aligned to experience, plus meaningful ESOPs.
• Delhi-based, in-person. Travel for editions.

Required Skills

Community Management Collaboration Leadership Program Operations Communication program management Build, Enhance & Refine Processes community building