“Formulating the right search strategy”

Client

A very big Indian conglomerate with varied business interests. It is one of the leading sugar producers in India. The company was ramping up its sugar producing capabilities to cater to the growing demand of sugar in India which involved setting up new units with greater capacity than the current ones. The company was growing at a rapid pace and was looking to align the plant activities with the corporate office.

Role

The Client was looking for someone to head the commercial function in its sugar business reporting to the Chairman. The role cut across all functions including finance, sales, production, information technology, etc. The incumbent was responsible for setting up new units as well as managing the existing units. The position did not exist previously within the organization and was supposed to play a critical role in the organization’s journey to next level of growth.
Challenge

The skill sets required for commercial function were available in abundance in the Indian market. However, people with knowledge of the commercial function within the process industry, with prior experience of project management, were scarce.

What we did

We first researched on all commercial managers in the process industries. However, we did not come across anyone with relevant exposure to manage the size and scale of operations of our client. Thereafter, we counseled our client, whose original preference was for a person from the process industry, to broad base the sourcing grounds and look beyond the process based industries. The business dynamics and skill sets required for the role could have been found in the heavy engineering sector. On interviewing and assessing the relevant people from that industry, we finally zeroed on one individual who was later on hired for the job.