Functions/CEO & General Management
Function

CEO & General Management

CEO, Managing Director, Country Head, Business Head — the appointments that define what a company becomes. Our work in general management is the closest we get to working on the future of a business itself.

How we work here

The leadership picture in CEO & GM today.

The CEO seat is rarely searchable from a directory. The strongest candidates are running other businesses well, and finding the moment they are ready for the next move requires years of relationship, not weeks of outreach.

Promoter-to-professional CEO transitions are one of the defining challenges in mid-cap Indian businesses. The board needs someone the founder will trust, the culture will accept, and the markets will believe in. We have worked these transitions for decades; the conversations are rarely about competence and almost always about timing, fit and the signal the appointment sends.

Country Head mandates for multinationals are their own discipline. The candidate needs to be from outside the global system but credible inside it; to understand India deeply but represent the country back to a head office in a language that head office understands. The pool of leaders who can do this well is smaller than the demand.

Business heads below the CEO — running a division, a P&L, a country, a category — are where many CEO successors are quietly being built. We map these layers carefully because the next generation of CEOs is forming in them today.

Mandates we typically run

The seats we are asked to fill.

  • CEO and Managing Director — for listed companies, family businesses transitioning to professional management, and institutionally-owned businesses entering a new phase
  • Country Head and Country Manager — for multinationals in India, often replacing a long-tenured incumbent or building the role for the first time
  • Business Head and Divisional CEO — running standalone P&Ls below the corporate CEO, often as CEO-track appointments
  • Executive Director and Whole-Time Director — for board-level executive roles, often in succession contexts
  • President and Chief Operating Officer — the senior #2 to the founder or CEO, in businesses where the role is on a CEO track
  • General Manager — for autonomous business units, new market entries, and turnaround situations
What is distinct here

Three things about CEO & GM search.

The CEO conversation is rarely just about competence. It is about fit, timing, what the markets will read into the appointment, and where the business is going. We spend as much time on those questions as on the candidate themselves — because the wrong fit can survive an interview and not the first year.

Many of our most consequential CEO mandates are confidential by default. The names involved, the conversations underway, and even the fact of the search are kept inside the engagement until the moment of announcement. The discretion is the product.

The strongest CEO candidates are almost never looking. They are running businesses they have made their own. The work is in earning the right to have the conversation at the moment they are ready to consider it — and that moment is not usually negotiable.

Connected expertise

Our work in other functions.

Talk to us about your next leadership search.

Every enquiry is handled in confidence. Tell us about the role, and we will tell you honestly whether it is one we can do justice to.

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