Outbound Sales Representative

What we do
Raga connects boutiques and independent designers in North America, Europe, and Australia with Indian artisan craft networks. A designer in Copenhagen wants a run of Ajrakh block-printed linen. A boutique in Toronto wants white-label Phulkari pieces with their label on it. A brand in Melbourne wants custom fabric with specifications their mill can't touch. They come to us. We make it happen — through a decentralized network of artisan clusters across India.

Everything is made-to-order. No dead inventory. Each order is a conversation — swatches, specifications, sampling, production. The founder manages all of that. What we don't have time for is finding the right people to have that conversation with. That's where you come in.

Honest context
We're early. There's no sales playbook, no SDR team, no hand-holding. This role starts as a short term contract — a 3-month period where we figure out if we're a good fit for each other. If you are, it converts to a longer term contract engagement with expanded scope and compensation. We'll make that criteria clear from day one so there's no ambiguity about what conversion looks like.

The founder works full-time elsewhere and manages Raga on the side — which means once you open a door, they'll walk through it. Your job is to find the right doors. If you like figuring things out rather than following a script, this is that kind of job.

What you'll actually do

Find the right people

Research and build prospect lists of boutiques, emerging designers, and small fashion brands across NA, Europe, and Australia. Not spray-and-pray — the right 50 over the wrong 500.

Reach out and follow up

Cold email, LinkedIn, Instagram DMs — whatever works. Write outreach that doesn't sound like outreach. Follow up without being annoying. That's the whole art of it.

Have the first conversation

When someone's interested, you don't immediately bounce them to the founder. You handle the initial exchange — what are they looking for, what's their timeline, what craft traditions interest them. Your textile background means you can speak their language. Once it's warm and qualified, you hand off.

Automate everything you reasonably can

if you're doing the same thing three times, build a system for it. Processes, lead enrichment, follow-up triggers — we want this machine to get smarter over time, not just bigger. If you spot something inefficient, fix it.

Tell us what's working

Weekly debrief with the founder. What messaging landed? What personas responded? What objections keep coming up? You're also our market research function.

You might be a fit if

• You have a background in textiles — NID, NIFT, or just years of genuine obsession. You know what GSM means, what a warp is, and can tell an ikat from a jamdani. That knowledge is what lets you have a real first conversation with a designer, not just a booking call.

• You write well beyond emails. A blog post, a product description, a caption that made someone stop scrolling — you have work that shows you can tell a story in writing, not just communicate information. Share something you've written when you apply.

• You think like an engineer. When a process is broken or repetitive, your first instinct is to fix it — not complain about it. You've probably already automated something in your personal life that most people do manually.

• Your written English is excellent. Not just grammatically — you write with personality. The person on the other end should feel like a human wrote to them specifically, not an AI.

• You're comfortable with rejection and don't need constant validation to stay motivated. Cold outreach is mostly silence. You treat that as data, not discouragement.

• You're funny. Not performatively — just actually. We spend a lot of time working through ambiguous problems and life is too short to do that without a sense of humor about it.

• This is an internship to start — we care more about the right instincts than an impressive resume.

Nice to have

• Experience with CRM or sales automation tools — Apollo, HubSpot, Lemlist, Instantly, Clay, whatever.
• Exposure to international fashion or design markets.
• You've used AI tools to do something useful, not just to generate text.

Where this goes
This short term contract runs for 3 months. If it's working — for both of us — it converts to a longer term contract role with broader ownership and better pay. In 6–12 months from there, as you learn the artisan network and the clients, the expectation is you own relationships end-to-end. We'll define what conversion looks like in writing during your first week. No vague promises.