Aliens Tattoo
Website:
alienstattoo.com
Job details:
Manager – Site Acquisition & Studio Development
The opportunity
Aliens Tattoo is the most recognised name in premium tattooing in India — a ₹45 Cr brand with a credible line of sight to ₹500 Cr by 2030, built on a franchise network we're taking to 100 studios across India and select international markets. Every one of those studios has to be found, negotiated, designed, built and switched on — on budget, on time, to the standard the brand demands. Right now that whole chain, from first site visit to the studio's opening day, has no single owner. That is the gap you fill. You are the person who makes sure we open in the right place, on the right terms, built right, on schedule — every time.
The mandate
You own everything that happens to a property before it opens as a studio: identifying the markets and sites worth pursuing, running feasibility, negotiating and signing the lease, clearing due diligence and statutory approvals, then coordinating design, BOQ, procurement and the build through to a launch-ready handover to Studio Operations. You don't run franchise sales, and you don't hold final sign-off on budget or vendor selection during the build — that sits with management and the franchise owner. You are the person who finds the site, closes the deal, and then chases every workstream — design, contractor, vendor, compliance, launch readiness — until the studio is open. You report to the Head of Franchise Development, work to the ~35-studio-a-year cadence the business needs, and have the room to pick markets, kill bad sites, negotiate hard, and run the build to schedule with your own methods.
What you'll be doing
• Picking markets and sites the way a serious operator does — catchment, demographics, footfall, co-tenancy, competition, visibility, and format fit across Base, Prime and Signature. Driving the location-failure rate down with a real scorecard, not instinct.
• Running feasibility on every shortlisted site and making a clear, evidenced call: pursue or walk.
• Building and working a live property network — brokers, developers, landlords, property lawyers — in every market we enter.
• Negotiating leases with teeth on the terms that matter: deposit, fit-out period, rent escalation, assignment, exit. Walking from bad deals.
• Driving due diligence and the permitting line-of-sight — zoning, signage, fire, hygiene, shop establishment, bio-hazard — so the site is genuinely ready to move into design and build.
• Coordinating with Interior Design for 2D/3D layouts and tracking design approvals to the agreement timeline.
• Coordinating BOQ preparation and cost estimates with contractors, and getting a clean commercial approval from management and the franchise owner before execution.
• Coordinating procurement of furniture, fixtures, equipment and branding materials, and building a working bench of contractors and vendors across cities.
• Running the project timeline and milestone tracker, flagging risks early, and conducting regular site inspections and quality audits.
• Coordinating the studio through launch readiness — branding, civil, equipment, utilities, internet, POS — to a clean, documented handover to Studio Operations.
• Coordinating execution kick-off with the approved contractor, keeping every stakeholder aligned with weekly execution reports, and acting as the franchise owner's single point of contact through setup.
• Codifying how we do this — the site scorecard, market playbooks, vendor bench, trackers — so it scales as the network grows.
What we're looking for
You've done this before — personally, not from a strategy deck. You've walked markets, scored sites, sat across the table from a landlord and won the terms that mattered, and then stayed on the project through design, procurement and the build to see it open on time. You know what separates a location that works from one that quietly bleeds money for three years, and you know what makes a build slip.
You are commercial and analytical in equal measure. You read a catchment and a rent-to-revenue ratio, and you read a BOQ and a cost estimate, with the same fluency — spotting gaps and pushing back on padding before it reaches management.
You are unusually resourceful. The right broker, the right property lawyer, the right contractor, the right vendor in a new city — you either know them or know how to find them by the end of the week.
You negotiate well and hold the room on the property side, and you coordinate relentlessly on the build side — chasing approvals and deliveries without needing to be chased yourself. You know the difference between the calls you own outright (the site, the lease) and the calls you drive to a clean recommendation for someone else to sign off (the budget, the vendor).
Premium retail, F&B, salon, wellness or hospitality site and build experience is a strong plus. Tattoo-industry background is specifically not required — the category can be learned.
What success looks like
Early on, you've taken what's in the pipeline and given every site a clear, evidenced verdict — pursue or walk — with the ones worth pursuing moving cleanly through lease signature, design, BOQ approval and into build.
Within your first year, you're securing and delivering sites at the cadence the business needs — roughly 35 build-ready, launch-ready studios a year. Our location failure rate is measurably lower, projects land on or close to their approved BOQ, first-time inspection approval is high, and franchise owners rate the setup experience well. The site scorecard and the project tracker exist, are trusted, and are how we run this end-to-end.
As that volume builds, you've laid the groundwork to grow a small site / project team beneath you to keep pace.
Practical details
Mumbai-based, with significant domestic travel as we enter new markets and run builds in parallel. Reports to the Head of Franchise Development. Individual-contributor role at launch, with a clear growth path to building and leading a small site-and-project team as the network scales.
Reports to: Head of Franchise Development
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