From auto components to capital goods, we work alongside the leaders who run India's manufacturing base — and the founders building its next generation.
Our work in manufacturing spans the spectrum: mid-cap promoter-led businesses professionalising their leadership, large public companies hiring for the next phase of growth, and global multinationals scaling their Indian operations. Every mandate sits in a different version of the same question — who can take this business where it needs to go next?
The leadership challenges here are sector-defining. Succession in family-run manufacturers. The shift from cost-led to platform-led thinking. Greenfield projects that need someone who has actually built one before. Quality and safety leadership that boards finally take seriously. We are retained where the appointment is too important to leave to the obvious shortlist.
The talent market is layered. Large public manufacturers have built strong succession benches internally; family-run businesses, however successful, often have a thinner second line. Multinationals operating in India rarely recruit Country Heads from within their global organisation — they need someone who knows India's industrial geography. Each of these calls for a different kind of search.
We go deep. The strongest plant heads, supply-chain leaders and engineering CEOs are rarely the ones answering their LinkedIn. The work is in knowing the market, building the trust over years, and making the introduction that matters at the moment it matters.
OEMs and Tier-1 suppliers, through the EV transition.
Open →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 →Promoter-to-professional transitions are the defining leadership challenge in mid-cap Indian manufacturing today. The board often needs a CEO who can earn the founder's trust without becoming an extension of him — and who can introduce process and governance without breaking the entrepreneurial culture that built the business in the first place.
EV, electrification and the China-plus-one shift are reshaping demand for engineering leadership. Platform thinking, software in hardware, modular manufacturing, end-of-life and circularity — the deepest candidates are not yet visible in the open market because the work itself is new. We spend considerable time mapping people who are doing this work today, often inside multinationals or specific captive units.
ESG, EHS and process safety are no longer cost centres. The Plant Heads and EHS Directors who can lead from the front — with credibility on the shop floor, with regulators, and in the boardroom — are in genuinely short supply. The good ones are typically already running a function the size of a business unit, and they are rarely looking.
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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