Head of Cross Border Trade - HAL

About This Role

Job Summary About SC Ventures SC Ventures is Standard Chartered ’s innovation, fintech investment and ventures arm. We were established to reinvent banking, as the significant technological disruptions to the industry was impacting its ability to serve clients and customers, in the ways they needed to be served. We are a unique ecosystem of innovators, banking experts, business builders and partners who are focused on rewiring the DNA in banking and bringing breakthrough ideas to scale, together. We are building ecosystems around four high conviction themes: Online Economy & Lifestyle, SMEs & World Trade, Digital Assets, and Sustainability & Inclusion. We are a global team of "Members" (excluding individual ventures), including dedicated colleagues from the Group's support functions, based in Singapore, Hong Kong, London, and the United Arab Emirates

About HAL HALis a B2B domestic and cross border marketplace being built for SMEs in the UAE. Incubated by SC Ventures, the ventures arm of Standard Chartered Bank, the platform will enable digital commerce and access to financial & value-added services. Hal ‘s vision is to act as a super glue connecting multiple partners & ecosystems by bringing together buyers, sellers, financial institutions, logistics partners under one roof. We are building this as an agentic AI native stack along with a number of strategic partners in the UAE who bring different capabilities into the platform.

SMEs are the backbone of the UAE economy and vital for economic growth and diversification. We want to help SMEs grow profitably, safely and with ease. Hal is being built for scale with the latest technologies and with a vision to truly become the one stop shop for SMEs. We are looking to launch later in the year.

Key Responsibilities About the role The Business Head will be responsible for owning the India-side commercial strategy for the India–UAE trade corridor. The role requires a hands-on leader who can independently size the opportunity, define the go-to-market strategy, build strategic partnerships, and deliver revenue outcomes.

The individual will work closely with senior leadership, institutional partners, and ecosystem stakeholders across exporters, aggregators, fintech’s, and logistics providers.

Strategy

• Define the channels for Go-To-Market
• Recommend the preferred channel with pros, cons and dependencies.
• Analyse the B2B platforms in India and recommend the ones to partner with justification
• Engage with platforms with presence in UAE to explore opportunities to collaborate with recommendation.

Business & Processes Platform Partners

• Map out the customer journey for Indian Exporter to UAE Importer and vice versa
• Work closely with the product team to convert customer journey into client value proposition and product/platform requirement.
• Co-create and validate customer journeys and Value proposition with partners.
• Onboard partners

Financing and Logistics Partners

• Identify the initial set of other partners to complete the customer journey
• Lead partner engagements end-to-end, including commercial structuring and negotiations

Revenue and Commercial Objectives

• Own and deliver revenue targets, including exporter acquisition, transaction volumes, and monetization initiatives
• Build and manage a robust commercial pipeline aligned with platform growth objectives
• Act as the primary India-facing leader for internal and external stakeholders
• Work closely with UAE team

Risk Management

• Responsible for identifying risks associated with cross-border regulations
• Will work closely with product and operations team to identify operational risks for eg frauds etc and mitigants.

Governance

• Ensuring the B2B platform adheres to both Indian and UAE licensing requirements.

Regulatory & Business Conduct

• Display exemplary conduct and live by the Group’s Values and Code of Conduct.
• Take personal responsibility for embedding the highest standards of ethics, including regulatory and business conduct, across Standard Chartered Bank. This includes understanding and ensuring compliance with, in letter and spirit, all applicable laws, regulations, guidelines and the Group Code of Conduct.
• Effectively and collaboratively identify, escalate, mitigate and resolve risk, conduct and compliance matters.

Key stakeholders

• CEO, CCO, CTO, Product and Partnership Head

Other Responsibilities

• Embed Here for good and Group’s brand and values in the business and SC Ventures;
• Perform other responsibilities assigned under Group, Country, Business or Functional policies and procedures.

Skills And Experience

• Familiarity with product management is preferred
• Strong strategic thinking combined with execution depth
• Commercially astute with experience in negotiating and closing partnerships
• Comfortable operating in an entrepreneurial, build-from-zero environment
• Excellent communication and stakeholder management skills
• Preferred Background
• FMCG, consumer goods, export-led manufacturing, or trade finance ecosystem experience
• Exposure to B2B and fintech platforms is a strong advantage

Qualifications Education MBA or equivalent.

Languages English

• Establish operating rhythms, performance metrics, and execution discipline
• Act as a culture carrier aligned with the company’s long-term vision and values
• 8–15 years of experience in Cross Border B2B commerce, exports, trade platforms etc
• Hands-on experience working with IndianB2B platforms, with a strong understanding of their operational, financial, and compliance challenges in Exporting from India
• Proven track record of building or scaling B2B platforms, marketplaces, or trade-led businesses
• Ecosystem & Network
• Strong network across: Domestic Indian platforms and aggregators

About Standard Chartered We're an international bank, nimble enough to act, big enough for impact. For more than 170 years, we've worked to make a positive difference for our clients, communities, and each other. We question the status quo, love a challenge and enjoy finding new opportunities to grow and do better than before. If you're looking for a career with purpose and you want to work for a bank making a difference, we want to hear from you. You can count on us to celebrate your unique talents and we can't wait to see the talents you can bring us.

Our purpose, to drive commerce and prosperity through our unique diversity, together with our brand promise, to be here for good are achieved by how we each live our valued behaviours. When you work with us, you'll see how we value difference and advocate inclusion.

Together We

• Do the right thing and are assertive, challenge one another, and live with integrity, while putting the client at the heart of what we do
• Never settle, continuously striving to improve and innovate, keeping things simple and learning from doing well, and not so well
• Are better together, we can be ourselves, be inclusive, see more good in others, and work collectively to build for the long term

What We Offer In line with our Fair Pay Charter, we offer a competitive salary and benefits to support your mental, physical, financial and social wellbeing.

• Core bank funding for retirement savings, medical and life insurance, with flexible and voluntary benefits available in some locations.
• Time-off including annual leave, parental/maternity (20 weeks), sabbatical (12 months maximum) and volunteering leave (3 days), along with minimum global standards for annual and public holiday, which is combined to 30 days minimum.
• Flexible working options based around home and office locations, with flexible working patterns.
• Proactive wellbeing support through Unmind, a market-leading digital wellbeing platform, development courses for resilience and other human skills, global Employee Assistance Programme, sick leave, mental health first-aiders and all sorts of self-help toolkits
• A continuous learning culture to support your growth, with opportunities to reskill and upskill and access to physical, virtual and digital learning.
• Being part of an inclusive and values driven organisation, one that embraces and celebrates our unique diversity, across our teams, business functions and geographies - everyone feels respected and can realise their full potential.