India Desk
Someone experienced running your Indian operation while you work out what the permanent role should be, or while you recruit for it.
Full profit and loss responsibility, or a defined mandate such as fixing the channel, stabilising a plant, or preparing the business for a permanent hire.
Hiring a country head before you know what the role actually needs to do is the most common expensive mistake foreign companies make in India, and the hardest to reverse.
An interim buys you the information to write the job description properly, and keeps the business running while you use it.
The problem
Most India country manager job descriptions are written in Europe by people who have not yet run a business in India, which is why so many of those hires do not last two years.
A country manager who is right for a distributor led sales business is rarely the right person for a plant, and neither is the right person for a turnaround. The profile follows the situation, and at the point of hiring, the situation is often not understood.
Meanwhile the vacancy itself costs money. Decisions wait, the channel drifts, and the parent starts managing India by exception from a different time zone.
An interim closes both gaps. The business has a competent adult in charge from week two, and by the time you recruit you have a real account of what the job involves, written by someone who has been doing it.
It also gives you an exit that a permanent hire does not. If the situation turns out to be smaller than expected, an interim ends. An employee does not.
Mandates we take
The mandate is defined in writing before it starts, with what success looks like and when it ends.
Full responsibility for the Indian entity: the team, the channel, the numbers and the compliance position, reporting to the parent on an agreed cadence.
Holding the operation steady between a departure and a permanent hire, so the business is not managed by absence for six months.
A defined intervention where the Indian business has stalled: diagnosing why, fixing the channel or the cost base, and handing back a business that works.
Taking a newly incorporated entity from certificate to functioning business: hiring the first team, setting the systems, and running it until the permanent leader arrives.
Where the requirement is oversight rather than management: a director on the Indian board, chairing meetings, and giving the parent an independent read.
A written account of what the country role actually requires, used to specify the recruitment properly rather than guessing at it.
How it runs
Interim engagements typically run six to eighteen months. Anything shorter is a consultancy assignment, and anything longer is usually a hire.
Two weeks understanding the business, the team, the numbers and the actual problem, which is frequently not the one described in the brief.
What the interim is responsible for, what authority comes with it, what success looks like, and the end date. In writing, agreed with the parent.
Stabilise, decide, and act on the things that cannot wait. A written report to the parent at day one hundred on what has changed and what has not.
The business run, with monthly reporting and the parent involved in decisions that belong to it rather than all of them.
The permanent specification written from experience, the search supported, and a proper handover with an overlap rather than a departure.
Common questions
General guidance rather than advice on a particular matter. Requirements and timelines change, and sector rules vary.
Usually within two to four weeks, which is the main practical argument for one. A permanent country manager search in India realistically runs three to six months from brief to start date, and that assumes the specification is right.
The parent company, on an agreed cadence, and where there is an Indian board, to that board. The reporting line is set at mandate stage precisely so it is not improvised later.
It depends on the mandate. A turnaround or a new operation usually needs full time presence in the early months. A steady state bridge frequently does not, and paying for full time attention the business does not need is waste.
We will tell you which one you have rather than selling you the larger version.
They hand over and leave, ideally with a few weeks of overlap. That is the point of the arrangement, and it is written into the mandate at the start so there is no drift into permanence.
Where it suits the structure, yes, and it can help satisfy the resident director requirement. It carries real duties and liabilities under Indian company law, so it is a decision to take deliberately with Onesto Legal rather than as an administrative convenience.
A monthly fee against a defined mandate, with travel and expenses separate and agreed in advance. Not a day rate, because a day rate creates the wrong incentive on both sides.
Related
Lighter than an interim, for when the business does not yet need a manager.
Read more →The permanent hire the interim prepares you for.
Read more →When the subsidiary exists, the headcount exists, and the growth does not.
Read more →Directors, resident director requirements and the governance around them.
Read more →Write to us
Whether it is a vacancy, a stall, or a new entity with nobody senior in it, describe the situation and we will tell you whether an interim is the right answer or whether you should simply hire.
We answer from New Delhi and from Bilbao, so European clients are not waiting a day for a reply.
Onesto Management Consultancy
New Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore, Hyderabad and Bilbao