Business Development

Business Development: Help Bring Complete Nutrition to the World

I don't really know what I'm doing.

Thirty years launching businesses, all of it in tech, none of it in physical products. So I'm figuring this out as I go, which, to be honest, is how I started in the first place and pretty much how I've operated all along.

I never expected to be making food. Especially not now, with AI transforming the world and me sitting right there, able to be part of it.

But tech has left a lot of people behind. We live in the future and people are still starving. I saw a dire need, and I saw a solution. I had to act.

A year and a bit later, there is a company. There is a meal, built with the food-science team behind Yoga Bar, against ICMR-NIN's 2024 reference values, tested in an accredited lab, and now through pilot production at a licensed manufacturer in Hyderabad: plant-based, ready to eat, designed to deliver about a third of daily nutrition without a kitchen, fuel, clean water, cold chain or preparation staff, at a price people can afford. It carries no wheat, dairy, soy, nut or peanut, so almost anyone can eat it. No ingredient in it is new. The format is. The first factory-produced meals rolled off the line in August.

I need someone who can grasp the vision, and share it.

Why this company exists

Over five billion people don't get enough of the key micronutrients from food. That's not famine. That's ordinary diets. Most of those five billion eat every day: fed, but not nourished. Designing and distributing healthy meals to the urban poor in the Philippines opened my eyes to the logistical nightmare they face daily, just to eat properly. Never mind the poor: almost nobody knows whether they got enough B12 yesterday, including the people who try.

The raw ingredients for a nutritionally complete meal cost less than 15 rupees at scale. They are cheap and they are everywhere. What has never existed is a way to get them into a person, complete, at a price they can afford, with no kitchen standing behind them, and enjoyed enough to be eaten again tomorrow.

That is what The Core Meal is for. The goal is to take the ingredients for complete, healthy nutrition and get them into the bodies of people, sustainably. Daily nutrition, no dependencies. And in time, the plan is buy one, feed one: the meals that make money pay for meals for people who can't afford them.

At a glance

Role: Business Development, full-time. You work with the Founder's Associate and report to me.

Starting salary: ₹60,000 a month, all of it fixed. ₹7,20,000 a year.

Applications: close Monday 28 September 2026 at 11:59pm IST. We read them as they come in and move on strong ones immediately, so apply as early as you can.

Location: Anywhere in India within easy reach of a major airport. Delhi and the National Capital Region preferred. Most buyer conversations happen online; you travel when it matters.

Company: The Core Meal, from TCM Nutrition Systems Private Limited, Bengaluru. Incorporated June 2026, self-funded, not raising. The mission is the point; profit is how it keeps going.

Team: You'd be my second hire. After you, we're three people, and an organisation of AI seats helps carry the other functions of the company.

Start: As soon as you can after the process below.

The job

Find the person who can say yes for a whole organisation, get in the room, and come out with a pilot or a pre-order.

The door might be a corporate CSR programme, a disaster-preparedness buyer, a foundation, an NGO, a technology campus, a night-shift workforce, a relief stockpile. The first conversations are happening in India, and we're already looking into export. If the meal belongs somewhere else, open that door too.

You won't start with an empty address book. There's a list of decision-makers, and warm paths into some of them, and the AI organisation keeps producing more, with the research on each buyer done before you pick up the phone. I'm hiring you for the room, and for the ask.

At first I'll close alongside you. What I want is for you to take the whole conversation and close without me.

After every meeting, write a short debrief: what the buyer cared about, what changed in the room, what you promised, what happens next.

Early interest

The meal itself is two bars and a crunchy snack packet, in one tray. Bar plus crunch, because enjoyment is part of a real meal.

The Head of Dietetics at ICMR-NIN, the institute whose reference values this meal is designed against, read our concept note and travelled to Bengaluru to meet the formulation team. She left enthusiastic.

We're in discussion with Rise Against Hunger India, one of the world's larger hunger-relief organisations, about pilot deployment. That conversation, and the ones like it, are what you would take over.

Those are two of many. The interest is easy to find: state disaster-response teams, nutrition scientists, animal-welfare advocates. Turning it into orders is the job.

What's hard

Nobody has bought this meal yet. There was no meal to buy. Now there is. Samples are ready. The first commercial run comes next. The job is to have customers waiting when it ships. The first paying customer in the company's history is yours to sign, and there's no playbook to hand you.

"Everyone needs to eat" makes for fantasy TAM. Targeting everyone is how you kill a company. We've narrowed the field strategically, but in the end it's about who'll actually write a cheque, and finding them first is a big part of the challenge. AI helps, but you'll be the one talking to people and leading us to the right markets.

The company is new, and we're figuring it out as we go, so expect some mess. Until the sales come in, we spend carefully, you included.

Who I'm looking for

One to three+ years opening institutional doors, at an NGO or a company. Corporate fundraising, CSR partnerships, meal contracts, corporate accounts: you already know how to find the person who actually decides, and you walk out with a commitment.

Or fresh out of college, and you've already sold. You're the one who cold-called companies for the college fest and came back with sponsorship money.

Or you are already paid more. You have the record to command it, and this matters enough to you that you'd take a cut.

Whichever of those you are, what I'm screening for is a natural talent for getting a stranger to yes, and the traits that come with it: passion and confidence, which this job will expose quickly; the nerve to make a real ask; the persistence to keep going after the tenth polite no; and the self-direction to run your own week.

All three routes above have one thing in common: you've already sold something, and the application below assumes it. A sales job on the CV is a big plus on top. Good writing is a nice-to-have.

Probably not for you if

You want a research role, a finished playbook, or a product whose hard questions have already been answered.

You count a full calendar as a good month even when nobody commits.

How we hire

This is how we expect it to run. You'll have gathered that things are fluid here, so the details may move, but we like the paid trial format.

1. An application form. Your experience, availability and a link to your resume.

2. A longer written round for the strongest applications.

3. Structured conversations, including live buyer scenarios. Finalists speak with me.

4. A paid trial. Two weeks, real targets, the company's name behind you, ₹10,000 flat whether we hire you or not. I prescribe no hours. What you choose to do with the window is part of what I'm learning.

Apply

Apply here on Wellfound before Monday 28 September 2026. Everyone who applies hears back. Short is fine, but feel free to elaborate. Specific is what I'm reading for. And if you're already paid more than this and would come anyway, say so.

The work is not to teach five billion people how to design a complete meal. It is to hand them one.