India's auto sector is going through its biggest transition in a generation — from ICE to EV, from cost-leadership to platform engineering. We help OEMs and Tier-1 suppliers find the leaders for what comes next.
The Indian auto industry is a layered ecosystem: a handful of dominant OEMs, a deep Tier-1 components base supplying both domestic assembly and global export, and a sprawling Tier-2 and Tier-3 layer that often outgrows itself faster than its leadership can keep up.
The current decade is about transition. Electrification is no longer a future story; it is reshaping product roadmaps, supply chains, and the talent profile that wins. Battery, motor and power-electronics expertise is in short supply. Software-defined vehicle thinking is rarer still. Suppliers who built capability around ICE platforms are quietly rebuilding their leadership benches.
Tier-1 suppliers sit at the centre of this churn. Most were built around legacy platforms — ICE components, conventional engineering, established customer relationships. The shift to EV platforms requires not just new products but new disciplines: power electronics, battery management systems, software validation, and a different commercial model where the OEM relationship is platform-based rather than program-based. The leadership benches at the strongest Tier-1s reflect this reality; the benches at most others are still being built.
Our work here covers OEM and Tier-1 mandates across operations, R&D, commercial and finance. We are retained when the brief is harder than the obvious one — when promoters are professionalising, when boards want a leader from outside the usual shortlist, or when the role itself is being created for the first time.
Software is becoming the central discipline. OEMs increasingly think of vehicles as platforms; Tier-1s are expected to deliver software-enabled components, not just hardware. Engineering leaders comfortable in this hybrid mode are a small global pool, and Indian businesses are competing for them with global peers.
The Tier-2 and Tier-3 layer is where the most interesting consolidation is happening. Family-run businesses with deep engineering capability and weak governance are being approached by larger players, PE investors and global strategics. Each of those situations creates a different leadership conversation.
The EV transition has reshaped what a credible operations CV looks like. A Plant Head who has only run ICE-based manufacturing is no longer a complete profile for a forward-looking role. We pay attention to who is making the cross-over successfully — and who only looks like they have.
Project businesses, long cycles, and the leaders who hold them together.
Open →Cement, steel, tiles and the businesses that build India's cities.
Open →From extraction to finished metal, an industry returning to centre stage.
Open →Pumps, motors, compressors, automation — the businesses behind every plant.
Open →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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