Job Description

PRISMA - Business Research Lead (Consultant)

Company Overview:

About Palladium - Palladium is a global leader in the design, development and delivery of Positive Impact – the intentional creation of enduring social and economic value. We work with governments, businesses, and investors to solve the world's most pressing challenges. With a team of more than 3,000 employees operating in 90 plus countries and a global network of over 35,000 experts, we help improve economies, societies and, most importantly, people's lives.

Equity, Diversity & Inclusion - We welcome applications from all sections of society and actively encourage diversity to drive innovation, creativity, success and good practice. We positively welcome and seek to ensure we achieve diversity in our workforce; and that all job applicants and employees receive equal and fair treatment regardless of their background or personal characteristics. These include: (but are not limited to) socio-economic background, age, race, gender identity, religion, ethnicity, sexual orientation, disability, nationality, veteran, marital or Indigenous status.

Should you require any adjustments or accommodations to be made due to a disability or you are a neurodivergent individual or any other circumstance, please email our team at accessibility@thepalladiumgroup.com

Safeguarding - We define Safeguarding as “the preventative action taken by Palladium to protect our people, clients and the communities we work with from harm”. We are committed to ensuring that all children and adults who come into contact with Palladium are treated with respect and are free from abuse. All successful candidates will be subject to an enhanced selection process including safeguarding-focused interviews and a rigorous due diligence process.

Project Overview and Role:

Australia-Indonesia Partnership for Promoting Rural Incomes through Support for Markets in Agriculture (PRISMA) is a multi-year development program working to accelerate poverty reduction through inclusive economic growth. PRISMA adopts a market systems development approach by partnering with key-stakeholders to improve agriculture market efficiency and sustainably benefit the poor. The program aims to achieve an income increase for a total of 1,000,000 smallholder farming households by 2023. It operates in six provinces of Central Java, East Java, West Nusa Tenggara (NTB), East Nusa Tenggara (NTT), West Papua, and Papua.

Maize hybrid seed market is dominated by multinational seed companies. In the last decade, several national maize seed companies have enter the market but mainly serving for government subsidies. PRISMA is encouraging the growth and resilience of commercial hybrid maize seed market to increase farmers access to affordable quality seed on a sustainable basis. For creating a strategic approach to support national maize seed producers, this research is conducted to understand the challenges they are facing and business analysis for commercializing their seed products.

Primary Duties and Responsibilities:

The assignee elected in this assignment will conduct research on national maize seed companies for exploring current business positioning, challenges and opportunities for sustainably expanding their business in a way that would benefit smallholder maize farmers. This will include but not limited to:

• Identify growth opportunities for these companies to expand their business in the commercial market. This may include assessing their product (seed) features and USP of the products, price, business strategy (including strategies for seed production, storage and distribution, sales and marketing), and key core competencies of the companies.
• Given the opportunity, identify existing and potential challenges in expanding their business in the commercial market
• Identify possible supports needed for expanding their seed business in commercial market

The research lead is expected to deliver areas of work as outlined below:

• Coordinating with PRISMA Maize sector team to develop a market research framework to discover and evaluate business potential of promoting seed in commercial market.
• Conducting secondary data collection to add the depth and context to primary data.
• Conducting qualitative and quantitative data collection of approx. 8 national maize seed producers and key market actors (e.g.: Balitsereal Maros, variety registration dept, etc) within maize seed market.
• Analysing data and presenting research results about the challenges faced by national maize seed companies to develop commercial market for their products and types of support and/or feasible business model to be promoted.
• Providing recommendations for PRISMA’s business model for commercialized seed product based on the business potential analysis. / Providing recommendation on how PRISMA can support and add-value to these companies to expand their business sustainably and in a manner that would benefit smallholder maize farmers.

Required Qualifications:

The consultant must have:

• Strong business acumen especially on business development strategy in agriculture sector
• Good communication and people management skills.
• Sufficient knowledge on research and statistics to plan, carry out, and analyse social and behavioural research
• Strong commitment to focus on the task in the allocated period of the contract and willingness to travel to meet national seed companies.

Desirables Criteria:

• Min 8 years of experience in business consultation or business development for medium sized agriculture companies
• Experience in engagement with government institutions and managerial level of private organisations
• Fluency in written and spoken Bahasa Indonesia and English
• Graduated from business, management, or relevant major of reputable university

Female candidates and people with disabilities are strongly encouraged to apply.
Application closed on Monday, 20 March 2022.