What we do
End-to-end leadership advisory — from C-suite search to board placement, backed by India's only 12-month candidate guarantee.
Intelligence for the full CXO lifecycle — from silent market discovery to mandate-ready assessment, compensation truth, career forks, and CV depth.
Silent market intelligence and matched opportunities — no public footprint.
Self Assessment PortalMulti-layer psychometrics, archetypes, and mandate-ready fit intelligence.
Compensation IntelligenceP25–P90 benchmarks, negotiation playbooks, and scenario modelling.
Career Progression StudioSimulated paths, peer percentiles, and a 12-month readiness roadmap.
Resume Intelligence12-dimension scoring, JD fit, and AI positioning variants.
CXO platform
Whisper, Symphony, Compensation Intelligence, Compass, and Resume Intelligence share context — so your profile, comp view, and market briefings stay aligned.
Sector expertise
We place senior leaders across India's most dynamic sectors — from BFSI and technology to healthcare, manufacturing and beyond.
C-suite expertise
From CEO and CFO to CISO and ESG leader — we cover every C-suite function across India's private, listed and PE-backed organisations.
Gladwin International
& Company
Explore the Ancient Wisdom
An effective board of directors is one of the most powerful competitive advantages an organisation can possess — and one of the most underutilised. Great independent directors do far more than fulfil statutory compliance requirements: they bring strategic insight from adjacent industries, challenge management thinking constructively, provide crisis counsel, open critical relationships, and represent the long-term interests of all stakeholders with genuine independence.
Our Board Practice at Gladwin International Leadership Advisors advises boards, promoter families, institutional investors, and nomination and remuneration committees on building diverse, effective boardrooms. We place Independent Directors, Non-Executive Directors, Board Advisors, and Board Committee Members — identifying leaders who bring the combination of functional depth, industry experience, personal integrity, and the temperament to contribute constructively at the highest level of governance.
MCA and SEBI have significantly raised the governance bar for listed companies in India. Fit-and-proper criteria, mandatory committee compositions, independence requirements, and enhanced disclosure obligations have created both obligations and opportunities for boards to build genuinely better governance structures. We help organisations navigate these requirements while focusing on the substantive quality of board composition.
Board governance has evolved from a largely ceremonial function in many Indian companies to a genuinely consequential oversight and advisory role. The Companies Act 2013, SEBI LODR regulations, and rising institutional investor activism have elevated expectations. Independent directors are now personally accountable for governance failures — driving demand for directors who are deeply engaged, not just nominally independent. New board priorities are emerging: cybersecurity oversight (requiring directors with technology expertise), climate and ESG oversight (requiring sustainability knowledge), and AI governance (requiring digital fluency) are all reshaping the ideal board composition.
Our 14 years of placing Board & NED leaders has taught us exactly where searches go wrong. Here is what we watch for.
Guaranteed placement · 12-month candidate guarantee · Affordable pricing for organisations across the value chain.
For Board & NED Professionals
Built exclusively for senior Board & Non-Executive Directors leaders. Five integrated modules that benchmark your profile, scan the market in silence, and surface the right opportunity — before it becomes public.
Research & Insights
Thought leadership on the Board & Non-Executive Directors role — strategy, skills, and the future of the function in India.
Serving as an independent director requires a distinct mindset, skill set, and professional identity from executive leadership. This is how India's most capable NEDs built their board readiness — and how aspiring candidates can do the same.
By 2030, India's boards will need a fundamentally different composition mix — diverse backgrounds, digital fluency, deep ESG literacy, and global exposure. The transition starts with how we search for, develop, and appoint NEDs today.
Generative AI is reshaping every sector from banking to pharmaceuticals. India's independent directors who lack AI literacy are governing with a fundamental blind spot — and regulators, investors, and management teams are noticing.
Common questions about recruiting a Board & Non-Executive Directors in India.
Board search is fundamentally different from executive search. Independent directors are not 'hired' — they are carefully appointed through a process of matching the board's skill gap analysis with individuals of the highest credibility, experience, and governance standards. Our board search process begins with a rigorous skills matrix assessment of the current board, identifying gaps in sector expertise, functional depth (finance, technology, international markets, risk), and diversity. We then identify and approach individuals who would genuinely add value — not those seeking board mandates for income.
We identify: Independent Directors (SEBI-mandated and voluntary), Non-Executive Directors (representing strategic investors or institutional shareholders), Lead Independent Directors, Audit Committee Chairs, Risk Committee Members, Nomination & Remuneration Committee Members, Advisory Board Members, and Board Observers for VC and PE portfolios. We work with listed companies, large unlisted companies, PE-backed boards, family business boards, and the boards of regulated institutions (banks, insurance companies, NBFCs).
An outstanding independent director combines genuine independence (free from conflicts of interest), relevant sector or functional expertise that fills a real gap in the board's collective knowledge, the courage and confidence to ask difficult questions in the boardroom, and the time and commitment to meaningfully prepare for and contribute to board proceedings. In the current governance environment, directors with experience in audit oversight, risk management, digital transformation, ESG governance, and international business development are in particularly high demand.
SEBI mandates at least one woman independent director for listed companies, but we believe board diversity should go far beyond regulatory compliance. We actively identify qualified women leaders, professionals from diverse regional and cultural backgrounds, and individuals with non-traditional expertise (technology, sustainability, customer experience) who can bring perspectives not currently represented on the board. Our board practice has placed over 40 women directors across listed and significant unlisted boards in India.
Independent director remuneration consists of sitting fees per board and committee meeting plus an annual commission on net profits, subject to SEBI and Companies Act limits. Sitting fees typically range from ₹50,000 to ₹2 lakh per meeting, and annual commission typically ranges from ₹20 lakh to ₹1.5 crore depending on company size and complexity. For PE-backed companies, directors may also receive ESOP-linked compensation. We provide detailed board remuneration benchmarks and governance guidance for every board search mandate.