Personal Assistant

Personal Assistant — Long-term part-time role (research, grants & business support)

Remote work — best if you're based in Benares (Varanasi) or Delhi, but open to strong candidates elsewhere in India. Some travel within India may be needed occasionally, fully covered.

Pay: ₹25,000–30,000/month to start, depending on experience.

Time: part-time, 15–20 hrs/week.

Contract: starts at 3 months, but I'm genuinely looking for someone long-term — real chance of more pay or more hours after the first year if things go well.

A bit about me

I'm a Classics, Ancient Philosophy, and South Asian Philosophy scholar (Princeton), currently doing independent research in Varanasi. Working languages: English, Hindi/Urdu. You can see my academic profile here: https://classics.princeton.edu/people/wintor-scott-25, and my dissertation/research work here: https://dataspace.princeton.edu/handle/88435/dsp01ww72bf984. Alongside the academic side, I'm building two early-stage businesses, which is where the rest of this role comes in.

What this is

I need someone to work closely with me across two sides of my life that overlap more than you'd think: my academic work (grants, fellowships, applications) and two early-stage businesses I'm building — a specialty coffee export venture right now, and a fintech project around pilgrimage networks that'll pick up over the next year. This isn't a narrow task list. I want someone who can move between spreadsheets and scholarly writing without blinking, and who's in it for the long haul, not just three months.

The range of work is genuinely wide — one day it might be calling a coffee estate in Karnataka to follow up on a sample shipment, another day it might be helping me put together a business portfolio to present to potential funders. I need someone equally comfortable with both ends of that spectrum.

The two halves of the work

Academic: tracking down grants, fellowships, and funding opportunities; drafting application materials — statements of purpose, bios, budget narratives — from my notes and past work. I do the final review and any research content myself.

Business: starting with the coffee venture — registration paperwork, supplier and funder coordination, trackers, prospect lists — then expanding to the fintech side once that moves past early networking.

What you'll need

• Strong English, spoken and written. This is the big one — you're drafting real documents, not just admin.
• Real networking ability — comfortable making a cold call, following up with a supplier, or building rapport with someone you've just met
• Some background in business, law, finance, or grant-writing — doesn't need to be extensive, but real working familiarity helps
• Public speaking and a bit of natural charisma — there will be moments where you're representing me or the businesses directly
• Good instincts for staying organized across a lot of moving pieces at once
• Comfortable doing your own research — finding grants, figuring out eligibility, tracking deadlines
• Can handle paperwork and bureaucratic portals without getting stuck
• Decent with Excel/Google Sheets
• Comfortable emailing and calling funders, program officers, lawyers, and suppliers on my behalf, professionally
• Discreet — you'll see personal, academic, and financial information
• Able to travel within India occasionally if needed (fully covered) — some meetings need to happen in person
• Happy to use AI tools to proof and check your own work, but I want you doing the actual thinking and drafting yourself first — not outsourcing the work itself

Also good to have, not required

• Some real interest in humanities, art, or creativity — a lot of this work is scholarly writing, and I'd rather work with someone who finds that genuinely interesting
• Self-starter energy — someone who runs with a task instead of waiting to be told exactly what to do
• Patience for a coffee meeting that goes nowhere practical. A lot of this is slow relationship-building, not transactional networking — I want someone who actually enjoys that kind of conversation

What you'd actually be doing

• Tracking grant and fellowship deadlines, flagging what's worth pursuing
• Drafting from my source material — narratives, bios, emails — I handle final calls
• Running the task tracker for the coffee business (and later fintech): filings, appointments, prospect lists
• Making calls and setting up meetings with advisers, lawyers, suppliers, institutional contacts, coffee estates
• Helping prepare and occasionally present materials — from a quick phone follow-up to a full portfolio pitch to potential partners or funders
• Keeping everything visible in one shared tracker, so it's always clear what's moving and what's waiting on me

How we'd stay in sync

A quick 30-minute check-in each week, plus a shared correspondence over email and phone so we're not guessing what's next.

Where this goes

Three months to start, so we can both see if it's a good fit. If it is, I want to build this into something ongoing — more pay or more hours after year one.

To apply

• Send your CV, a short writing sample, and your available hours to the following email: [email protected]. Tell me a bit about yourself too — I want to know who I'd actually be working with.