Reference: GILA/ID/ESG-046/BATREC
Board seat: Independent Director, Non-Executive
Primary board location: Hyderabad with recycling and collection-network visits
Meeting model: Five boards, four sustainability/risk and three site reviews
Mandate type: ESG, Sustainability & BRSR Director
Status: Confidential live-search specification; client identity released only after conflict clearance and NDA.
The anonymised enterprise
A listed recycler recovering lithium, nickel, cobalt and other materials from end-of-life batteries and production scrap through hydrometallurgical processes.
Installed capacity is 35,000–50,000 tonnes annually with collection partners across India. Feedstock provenance, fire risk, recovery yields and extended-producer-responsibility claims drive value.
The board problem and strategic reason for appointment
Circularity claims can hide imported scrap, unsafe aggregation, yield estimates and residue disposal. The board needs operating and assurance depth as capacity scales ahead of stable domestic feedstock.
The board is not buying a credential. It is appointing an independent decision-maker who can convert this problem into a governed sequence of choices, evidence and accountability. Success will be judged by the quality of decisions and control improvement, not by the number of recommendations made.
Board position, authority and interfaces
Chair of Sustainability/Risk; Audit member for inventory, yield accounting and environmental provisions; direct access to EHS and traceability owners.
The appointee will have direct, unfiltered access to the Company Secretary and to the relevant control-function leaders. Any advisory support requested by the board must remain management-executed: the director sets questions, tolerances and evidence standards, but does not become an executive or consultant.
First 12–18 month strategic charter
- Verify chain of custody from collection through recovered output and EPR certificates; establish thermal-runaway and hazardous-material critical controls across aggregators and plant; test recovery-yield, inventory and by-product accounting against mass balance; review residue disposal, water use and capacity economics under feedstock-price scenarios
- Connect sustainability metrics to capital allocation, operating risk, customer access and cost of capital; reject a reporting-only programme detached from plant and supply-chain decisions.
- Create control ownership for material sustainability data, boundary decisions, estimates and assurance evidence, with documented treatment of value-chain information and green claims.
Decision profile sought
Essential evidence
- Recycling, batteries, metallurgy, hazardous processing, circular economy or environmental assurance leader; board risk capability; mass-balance literacy
Differentiators
- EPR systems, commodity offtake or serious fire-event governance; scale-up of first-of-kind process capacity
GILA will assess operating or investment decisions involving environmental and social trade-offs, data assurance, stakeholder judgement and resistance to both greenwashing and empty anti-ESG rhetoric. Candidates should expect a case discussion based on an ambiguous board decision from this mandate, not a career-history interview alone.
Independence, suitability and downside diligence
The search will apply Section 149(6), Sections 164–165, Schedule IV and the applicable listing or sector rules to the entity’s legally verified status at the appointment date. Databank/proficiency status, listed-entity directorship and committee ceilings, pecuniary relationships, relatives’ interests, recent audit/advisory work and interlocking directorships will be checked. The appointment is subject to formal legal and secretarial confirmation; this posting is not a substitute for that determination.
Mandate-specific screens: Collector, battery OEM, commodity trader, EPR consultant or environmental-auditor interests; competitor board; prior certification of current claims.
Before accepting the seat, the candidate will receive under NDA the latest board composition, committee charters, material litigation/regulatory schedule, related-party map, last audited accounts, current D&O policy and the specific risk papers necessary to make an informed liability assessment.
Twelve-month outcomes
The board expects decision-useful sustainability governance, assured material data and a transition plan linked to economics rather than slogans. For this particular seat, the evidence will be:
- Auditable mass balance and provenance; critical fire/environment controls verified across network; capacity decisions use realistic feedstock and recovery sensitivities
Commitment, protection and economics
- Expected load: 24–30 days annually including high-risk site work.
- Terms: Five-year term; chair differential; pollution, fire, product and D&O cover.
- Protection: Appointment letter, deed of indemnity where legally available, appropriate D&O cover including discovery/run-off terms, access to independent advice under the board-approved protocol, and complete minuting of dissent.
- Equity: No stock options where the appointment is legally an independent-director seat subject to Section 149(9). Any private-company structure outside that perimeter will be expressly classified and separately advised; no equity is implied by this posting.
Search process
Conflict pre-clearance → GILA/SYMPHONY™ board-fit interview → mandate case → document-led diligence under NDA → references from board peers and control functions → NRC/owner interviews → statutory, regulatory and reputation checks → board recommendation. Candidate consent, disclosures and appointment approvals will follow the law and the entity’s constitutional documents.