India ID ExchangeFrom your first board seat to building a portfolio of board roles, and chairing or preparing to chair.
A board career runs in four stages, and almost nobody is at the stage they think. Find yourself here — each engagement below states the stages it is built for. One-to-one work with our Board Practice — and with Chairs who have served — on the part of a board career that is decided by judgement rather than credentials.
Every engagement is one-to-one with the Board Practice, and priced exclusive of GST.
Board Candidacy Programme
You are aspiring to your first board seat. You have the executive record; what you do not yet have is a candidacy a nomination committee can act on.
₹1,77,000 payable, inclusive of GST
- Session one — eligibility and independence, screened against your actual record: Sections 164 and 167, DIN and KYC status, and any struck-off or defaulting company still carrying your name
- A written readiness note after that screen: where you stand today, and what is genuinely missing
- Session two — your record read the way a nomination committee reads it, and rebuilt into a Board Profile and a full portfolio document
- Your one-page board thesis: the governance problem you are the answer to, in language a committee can repeat to each other
- Three evidence episodes structured and rehearsed, because committees appoint on episodes rather than on responsibilities
- A complete conflict, independence and tenure map you can disclose from without preparing it again
- Session three — a full mock nomination-committee panel, convened from people who have sat on that side of the table, with direct written feedback
- Session four — committee and sector targeting: which seats to pursue, which to decline, and why declining matters more than it sounds
Ten weeks of preparation is worth nothing without somewhere to take it. Your membership begins the day the engagement does, so the profile built in session two is live on the platform, and you are applying and being matched while the work is still fresh.
First Seat Intensive
You are already being considered, and you want to shorten the road. This is for running an active search properly — not for building a candidacy from scratch.
₹3,24,500 payable, inclusive of GST
- Everything in the Board Candidacy Programme, done first — the screen, the profile, the thesis, the evidence episodes and the mock panel
- Six months of retained access to the Managing Partner or CEO, by call or in writing, for whatever the search puts in front of you
- Named-board targeting — a working shortlist of boards where your profile genuinely fits, revised as seats appear and close
- Interview and nomination-committee preparation before each real shortlist you reach, on that board's actual agenda rather than on generic questions
- Reverse diligence on any board that invites you: what its last three years of filings, auditor changes and board exits actually say, before you consent
- Terms, fees, D&O cover and letter-of-appointment review when an offer arrives
- A monthly written review of what moved, what did not, and what changes next month
A retained search runs on seats you can actually see. Your membership carries the radar and the applications for the six months we work together, and for six months after the retainer closes — so a search that runs long does not fall off a cliff on the last day.
Chairmanship
You chair a board or a committee — or have just been asked to. This is for the decisions you cannot take to your own board.
₹4,95,600 payable, inclusive of GST
- Private one-to-one conversations with Chairs who have served on top Indian boards and committees, arranged when you need one rather than on a fixed calendar
- Brainstorming on a live decision before you have to take a position in the room — the call you cannot make to your own directors
- Counsel through the difficult stretches: contested decisions, a divided board, CEO succession, an auditor or regulator who has started asking
- Committee-chair craft — setting an agenda that forces the real discussion, handling dissent without losing the room, and what the minutes must carry when a decision is close
- Board and committee evaluation from both sides: running one that is worth the paper, and coming through one
- A confidential sounding board for twelve months, available when the decision arrives rather than when the curriculum says so
A Chair's use of the platform is not a job search. It is knowing which boards are losing directors, what a seat pays before you are asked, and who is coming free — the same intelligence used to build a bench rather than to find a seat.
Included with all three engagements — 12 months of Foresight
The same membership on every track, starting the day the engagement begins. Advisory makes you appointable; this is where an appointable candidate meets seats.
- Apply to every board seat the moment it is posted, up to 10 a day — Confidential Roles shared where you are an absolute match
- Upcoming Board Seats radar — every ID seat in your sector, named, up to 18 months before it is advertised
- Targeted Introductions — name one board a month, and we put your portfolio in front of its nomination committee, company secretary or CHRO
- Board Messages — write directly to three boards a month that have a genuine seat coming
- Foresight Intelligence — ask for a governance deep-dive on any board and have it back within 24 hours
- Full sitting fees and remuneration on every seat, and full company profiles — financials, board movements, ownership, auditor
- Your profile stays confidential: a board expresses interest, you review it, and only when you consent does it see your portfolio
You choose the track. From there you are taken through it, not left to work it out.
The stages above tell you where you are; each engagement states the track it serves. Pay online, in full, at the stated price. Nothing is quoted later and nothing is added.
One named person from the Board Practice owns your engagement end to end. They schedule every session, prepare you for it, chase what is outstanding and answer you between sessions.
Your Foresight membership starts on the day you pay. Your concierge sets up your profile, your seat radar and your alerts with you, so nothing sits unconfigured.
One-to-one sessions with written work between them, and a guided hand-off into applying. You finish with material you can send the same day, and somewhere to send it.
Anandh Shanmugaraj
Founder, MD & CEO — Gladwin International & Company
The person on the other side of the table has spent 16 years on the hiring side of it.
Anandh has run board and C-suite search in India since 2010 — briefing nomination committees, building shortlists, and watching, from the inside, exactly which candidates get chosen and which get quietly set aside. Advisory is that vantage point turned around and pointed at your candidacy.
16 yrs
In board & C-Suite Search & Selection
1,500+
C-Suite mandates fulfilled
by Gladwin International under his direct leadership
2010
Practising since
He personally retains the First Seat Intensive. The Candidacy Programme is delivered by senior members of the Board Practice, with the mock nomination-committee panel convened from people who have sat on that side of the table; Chairmanship conversations are held with Chairs who have served on top boards and committees.
Nobody is screened out for lack of ability. They are screened out for lack of evidence.
Eliminated before anyone reads you
A lapsed databank entry, a consultancy retainer that defeats independence, a dormant directorship in a struck-off company. Most first-time candidates never learn this is why the process went quiet.
Broadly qualified, specifically forgettable
Boards do not appoint experience; they appoint an answer to a problem they already have. A 25-year record that is not converted into one governance proposition reads as a long CV, not a candidacy.
Appointed, then out of your depth
Reading a 400-page pack in an evening, knowing which number is load-bearing, knowing when a question must become a recorded objection. First terms are lost here, and a poor first term ends a portfolio.
Every angle of the independent-director question, in the order it decides your outcome.
Whether you can be appointed at all
Most first-time candidates are screened out on a technicality nobody told them about — a lapsed databank entry, a consultancy retainer that defeats independence, a directorship that triggers a disqualification. This is the work that has to be right before positioning matters at all.
Active Independent Directors Databank registration is a statutory precondition for a listed-company appointment. We confirm your registration status, your proficiency-test position or valid exemption, and the renewal dates that quietly lapse.
Section 149(6) of the Companies Act and Regulation 16(1)(b) of LODR, applied to your actual history — pecuniary relationships, employment within the look-back period, relatives, material suppliers and professional firms you have billed through.
Sections 164 and 167, DIN status, KYC compliance, and any struck-off or defaulting company still carrying your name. A single dormant directorship can end a candidacy at the diligence stage.
A written map of every relationship a nomination committee will find — competitors, customers, suppliers, investors, advisory roles — so you disclose it first rather than explain it later.
Five-year terms, the two-consecutive-term cap, the cooling-off period, and the age thresholds that require special resolution. Planned before the first seat, not discovered during the second.
Why a committee should choose you specifically
Boards do not appoint experience; they appoint an answer to a problem they already have. A 25-year executive record is raw material. The work is converting it into one governance proposition a nomination committee can repeat to the rest of the board without you in the room.
We locate you in the taxonomy boards actually recruit against — audit chair, risk and technology, ESG and BRSR, IPO readiness, family-business professionalisation, turnaround, sector-regulated. Being the answer to one named problem beats being broadly qualified for all of them.
An executive CV argues you can run something. A Board Profile argues you can oversee it. We build the one-page profile and the full portfolio document in the structure nomination committees, company secretaries and search firms actually read.
One page linking your specific evidence to a named board need. It is the document that travels when someone recommends you, and the reason most candidates are recommended vaguely or not at all.
Boardroom-grade accounts of moments where your judgment was tested — a control failure, a contested decision, a disclosure call. Selected, structured and rehearsed, because generalities do not survive an NRC interview.
Where your industry reads strongest, which committee you should be seeking, and which one you should decline. Chairing the wrong committee is a worse outcome than waiting for the right seat.
For candidates with international careers: how overseas governance experience is read by an Indian board, and where it is a genuine differentiator rather than a translation problem.
What you will actually be expected to do
The gap that ends first terms is not knowledge of the Act. It is the practical craft of the room — reading a 400-page board pack in an evening, knowing which number is load-bearing, and knowing when a question must become a recorded objection.
What to read first, what to skip, and the five questions that expose a weak paper. Practised on real, anonymised pack extracts rather than described in the abstract.
Expected credit loss and provisioning, revenue recognition judgments, impairment, going-concern language, auditor key audit matters, and the qualifications that should stop a meeting.
Risk appetite as a system of linked limits, internal financial controls, the whistleblower mechanism and what a board is expected to have done before an incident, not after.
CEO succession, remuneration design, board evaluation that is not a formality, and the independence of the evaluation process itself.
Where sustainability reporting has genuine board consequence, what assurance means, and how to avoid chairing a committee that produces a document nobody acts on.
The approvals that must come to you, the ones that must not be delegated, and the trading-window discipline that personally binds you from day one.
The most consequential skill an independent director has. When a concern must be minuted, the exact language that protects you and the company, and what happens if the minutes come back changed.
How the appointment actually happens
Independent-director searches run quietly, through nomination committees, company secretaries, search firms and existing directors. Understanding the mechanics is most of the advantage — and reverse diligence, the step almost every first-time candidate skips, is what stops a first seat becoming a liability.
Who initiates, who screens, who decides, and the point in the process where a name can still enter. Where being visible matters, and where it does not.
A full simulated NRC panel with real questions, followed by direct feedback on what you said, what you should not have said, and where your evidence thinned.
Which references carry weight with a board, how informal checks are made in a small market, and how to prepare the people who will be asked about you.
The step candidates skip. Financials, promoter conduct, litigation and penalties, auditor history, board churn, D&O cover, and the workload behind the seat. Some invitations should be declined, and it is far easier to decline before consenting.
How commission and sitting fees are set, what is negotiable and what is not, and the indemnity and directors-and-officers cover you should confirm in writing before you accept.
DIR-2, DIR-8, the declaration of independence, the appointment letter terms worth reading closely, and the filings that follow.
The seat is the beginning, not the outcome
How you perform in the first two board cycles determines whether a second seat ever arrives — most subsequent appointments come from directors who have seen you work. This is the part almost nobody prepares for.
Induction you should insist on, the management relationships to build and the ones to keep at arm's length, and the first questions that establish what kind of director you are going to be.
How many boards is realistic against the statutory caps and your actual calendar, what mix of listed, unlisted and private serves you, and the concentration risk of taking three seats in one sector.
Where subsequent appointments come from, and how to become the director other directors put forward.
Governance writing, panels and professional presence that reads as credibility rather than self-promotion. Where a dedicated director profile and visibility build genuinely helps, and where it does not.
Planning the end of a term from the beginning, and how to resign properly if a board goes somewhere you cannot follow — including the disclosure obligations a resignation now carries.
Advisory prepares the candidate. Foresight finds the seat.
Advisory prepares the candidate. Foresight finds the seat. They solve different halves of the same problem — advisory makes you appointable, Foresight puts what you have built in front of boards that are actually appointing. Every advisory engagement now carries twelve months of Foresight for that reason, so the preparation and the search run together rather than in sequence. Foresight is still sold on its own, and does not require advisory.
- Advisory is preparation, not placement. No board seat is promised, and no timeline is guaranteed.
- We do not sell introductions. Where an introduction is genuinely warranted it is made on merit, and never as a purchased deliverable.
- Fees are for the work and the time, and are not contingent on an appointment. There is no success fee.
- Advisory fees are non-refundable once the engagement has begun; unused sessions can be rescheduled within the engagement window.
- We will tell you if you are not ready, or if board work is not the right ambition right now. That answer is part of what you are paying for.
- Every engagement includes twelve months of Foresight, but buying advisory buys no advantage inside it. No member is ranked higher, matched sooner, or shown to a board because they engaged the Board Practice — the platform does not know what you paid, and matching runs on your record alone.
The questions we are actually asked.
I have already cleared the IICA proficiency test. Do I still need this?
The proficiency test establishes that you know the framework. It says nothing about whether a nomination committee will choose you over the other eleven people on the long-list — that is a positioning and evidence problem, and it is the one this practice solves. Most people who write to us have already cleared the test.
Which programme is right for me?
These are three different tracks, not three sizes of the same one, so there is no recommended option. The Board Candidacy Programme is the preparation track: you are aspiring to a first seat and your material is not yet at committee standard. The First Seat Intensive is the live-search track: you are already being considered and want the road shortened. Chairmanship is the chair's track: you already hold, or have just been offered, a board or committee chair. Each is priced and delivered independently, and there is no credit or roll-over between them. All three include the same twelve months of Foresight.
I am already a Foresight member. Am I paying for it twice?
No. If your current Foresight period began within the last 6 months, everything you paid for it comes off the engagement price — sign in before you buy and the credit is applied at checkout. Your twelve months then restart from the day you pay, and if your existing membership already runs past that date we leave the later date alone rather than shorten it. Past 6 months there is no credit: you have had the use of most of the year, and the twelve months the engagement adds is new.
Do you guarantee a board seat?
No, and you should be cautious of anyone who does. An appointment happens only when a company has a genuine need and concludes that you fit; that decision is always theirs. What advisory changes is whether you are ready and credible when the need appears.
Is this the same as Foresight membership?
Advisory prepares the candidate. Foresight finds the seat. They solve different halves of the same problem — advisory makes you appointable, Foresight puts what you have built in front of boards that are actually appointing. Every advisory engagement now carries twelve months of Foresight for that reason, so the preparation and the search run together rather than in sequence. Foresight is still sold on its own, and does not require advisory.
Who actually delivers the sessions?
The Board Practice at Gladwin International. The First Seat Intensive is delivered by the Managing Partner or CEO directly; the Candidacy Programme is delivered by senior members of the practice, with the mock nomination-committee panel convened from practitioners who have sat on the other side of that table. Chairmanship conversations are held with Chairs who have served on top boards and committees.
I am not in Mumbai or Delhi. Does that matter?
No. Sessions run remotely by default and in person by arrangement. Board work in India is increasingly geography-tolerant, and several of the seats we track sit with companies headquartered outside the metros.
What if I am already on a board and want a second seat?
Tell us that when you write. The work is different — portfolio design, concentration risk and the question of what your first board says about you — and we will scope it accordingly rather than sell you a first-seat programme.
Tell us where you are. We will tell you honestly what is missing.
Advisory engagements are scoped by a person, not bought from a page — so this reaches the Board Practice directly. If you are not sure which programme fits, say so; that is the most common answer, and advising on it is part of the work.