Tele-Medicine, Healthtech SaaS, Patient Platforms & Digital Therapeutics
Digital Health & Healthtech
Executive Search
60+ Digital Health Placements — with an average 57 Days time-to-placement and a 12-month candidate guarantee.
60+
Digital Health Placements
57 Days
Avg. Time-to-Placement
93%
Offer Acceptance Rate
12 Months
Candidate Guarantee
Specialisation withinHealthcare & Life Sciences·Advancing Human Health
Digital health has moved from an experimental adjacency to a standalone sub-industry in under five years. India now hosts category-defining tele-consult platforms, healthtech SaaS serving hospitals, clinics, pharmacies, and insurers, patient-engagement platforms with hundreds of millions of registered users, digital-therapeutics companies building clinical-grade interventions for chronic disease, and a generation of venture-backed healthtech start-ups spanning every operating seam of the healthcare stack. Leadership hiring reflects the sub-industry's hybrid DNA — consumer-internet operating rhythm meets clinical-evidence discipline, product-engineering velocity meets healthcare-regulatory patience, and SaaS GTM meets hospital-and-clinician sales cycles.
Is This Your Situation?
If any of these sound familiar, you're speaking to the right practice.
→Series C tele-consult platform hiring a CEO succession — confidential search with investor-syndicate alignment, physician-advisor validation, and founder-to-CTO transition planning.
→Healthtech SaaS company hiring first institutional CRO to transition from founder-led hospital sales to outbound enterprise SaaS motion across hospital, insurer, and pharmacy channels.
→Digital-therapeutics company hiring a CMO with chronic-disease clinical-evidence credibility and parallel Head of Clinical-Evidence placement.
→AI-first medical-imaging company hiring a CTO with healthcare-grade data governance experience, clinical-AI product delivery credibility, and FDA / CDSCO pathway fluency.
Our Digital Health & Healthtech Track Record
Situation:
A Series D tele-consult platform serving 40+ million consults annually needed CEO succession. The founder-CEO was transitioning to CTO; the brief required consumer-internet operating rhythm, clinical-governance gravitas, and the board-and-investor political capital to navigate the transition without disrupting anchor-clinician retention or consumer growth.
Outcome:
Placed a CEO with prior consumer-internet leadership and subsequent healthtech-adjacent operating experience. Search ran 112 days under strict confidentiality. Engagement included alignment with investor syndicate, physician-advisor validation, and a 100-day transition plan presented to the board before announcement.
Situation:
A healthtech SaaS company with $25M ARR serving hospitals, insurers, and pharmacy chains needed a first institutional CRO to transition from founder-led hospital-by-hospital sales to an outbound enterprise motion across all three channels — with a Series C raise riding on demonstrable GTM institutionalisation.
Outcome:
Placed a CRO with prior enterprise SaaS sales leadership and subsequent healthtech-specific channel experience. Engagement included a parallel VP Marketing placement and two senior Enterprise AEs on a concurrent slate. Pipeline compounded 3.8x through the first year; Series C closed on target.
Situation:
A digital-therapeutics company with a chronic-disease platform needed a CMO with chronic-disease clinical-evidence credibility, real-world-evidence study leadership experience, and the gravitas to engage with chronic-disease KOLs and payer medical-advisory committees.
Outcome:
Placed a CMO with prior chronic-disease clinical practice leadership and subsequent industry clinical-affairs leadership at a pharma peer. Engagement included a parallel Head of Clinical-Evidence placement. Two published clinical-evidence studies were delivered within the first 18 months and the product achieved insurer-reimbursement coverage from two mid-size insurers.
All client details anonymised. Specific mandates available for reference under NDA upon request.
Our Digital Health & Healthtech Practice
Digital health has moved from an experimental adjacency to a standalone sub-industry in under five years. India now hosts category-defining tele-consult platforms, healthtech SaaS serving hospitals, clinics, pharmacies, and insurers, patient-engagement platforms with hundreds of millions of registered users, digital-therapeutics companies building clinical-grade interventions for chronic disease, and a generation of venture-backed healthtech start-ups spanning every operating seam of the healthcare stack. Leadership hiring reflects the sub-industry's hybrid DNA — consumer-internet operating rhythm meets clinical-evidence discipline, product-engineering velocity meets healthcare-regulatory patience, and SaaS GTM meets hospital-and-clinician sales cycles.
We place leaders across tele-medicine and tele-consult platforms, healthtech SaaS (hospital IT, clinic management, pharmacy, insurer-tech), patient-engagement and consumer-health platforms, digital-therapeutics (DTx) and chronic-disease platforms, corporate-wellness platforms, health-insurance-adjacent digital operators, and increasingly AI-first healthcare product companies. Engagements include CEO and founder-succession searches, CPO and VP Product hires with healthcare-consumer or clinical-product DNA, CTO and VP Engineering for platform-scale healthtech, Chief Medical Officers and Head of Clinical for clinical-evidence discipline, Chief Revenue Officers with hospital and insurer channel fluency, and board-level advisory placements.
Our practice is calibrated to the observation that digital-health leadership candidates rarely transfer cleanly from pure consumer internet or pure healthtech enterprise software. The operating rhythm is specific — patient-facing product velocity with clinician-facing evidence discipline, SaaS gross-margin economics with hospital-cycle sales timelines, and DPDP / HIPAA-grade data governance at consumer-internet volumes. We match each mandate to the specific sub-segment and the specific operating reality.
As a specialist CEO mandates in healthcare, our practice also covers CPO mandates for consumer-healthcare, our practice also covers CTO leadership for healthtech, and as a source for Healthcare & Life Sciences practice overview.
The Digital Health & Healthtech Landscape Today
India's digital-health industry has crossed $12 billion and is compounding at 25%+ annually — among the fastest growth rates in any sub-segment of Indian healthcare. Tele-consult volumes stabilised post-pandemic at materially higher steady-state levels than pre-2020, with category-leading platforms running 40-60 million consults annually. Healthtech SaaS (hospital IT, clinic management, pharmacy POS, insurer-tech) has emerged as a standalone sub-segment with listed and pre-IPO operators. Patient-engagement platforms (e-pharmacy, digital-diagnostics-D2C, wellness apps) have crossed hundreds of millions of registered users. Digital therapeutics has moved from experiment to regulated sub-category with India's DTx sector in active growth. Insurer-adjacent digital operators — running claims orchestration, provider networks, and digital-health underwriting platforms — form a specialised sub-segment with tight insurer and IRDAI-regulatory operating context. AI-first healthcare product companies — medical-imaging AI, clinical-decision-support, ambient-scribe, radiology AI — have emerged as a venture-backed sub-sector with cross-border GTM ambition. The regulatory envelope has tightened — the Digital Information Security in Healthcare Act (DISHA) draft framework, DPDP Act applicability to sensitive health data, the Telemedicine Practice Guidelines 2020, and the NDHM (Ayushman Bharat Digital Mission) interoperability obligations are board-level topics. Leadership compensation has re-rated alongside the category's maturation — senior digital-health CEOs and CPOs now command packages comparable to SaaS and consumer-internet peers.
Key Leadership Challenges in Digital Health & Healthtech
CEO and founder-succession searches for digital-health platforms — leaders with the hybrid consumer-internet plus clinical-discipline instinct that the category requires.
CPO / VP Product searches — product leaders with healthcare-consumer or clinical-product DNA, fluent in the product-velocity-plus-clinical-evidence operating rhythm.
CTO / VP Engineering hiring — engineering leaders fluent in healthcare-grade data governance at consumer-internet volumes (DPDP, HIPAA, interoperability standards).
Chief Medical Officer / Head of Clinical hiring — physician-leaders with clinical-evidence discipline, clinician-engagement fluency, and commercial-product-team partnership experience.
Chief Revenue Officer searches — commercial leaders with hospital, insurer, pharmacy, and corporate-wellness channel fluency concurrent with consumer-internet growth discipline.
Independent director searches with digital-health sectoral gravitas — including physicians, former insurer CXOs, and former hospital-group operators.
What We Look For in Digital Health & Healthtech Leaders
Across mandates, digital health & healthtech leadership tends to cluster into a small set of archetypes. We calibrate each search against the profile your board actually needs — not the one most commonly available.
The Digital-Health CEO
Executive with the hybrid consumer-internet plus clinical-discipline instinct the category requires. Fluent in patient-facing product velocity concurrent with clinician-facing evidence discipline, hospital / insurer sales cycles, and healthcare-regulatory-adjacent product governance.
The Healthcare CPO
Product leader with healthcare-consumer or clinical-product DNA — has shipped products at the interface of consumer app velocity and clinical workflow accuracy. Fluent in patient-journey design, clinician-workflow integration, and evidence-led product iteration.
The Healthtech CTO
Engineering leader fluent in healthcare-grade data governance at consumer-internet volumes. Fluent in DPDP, HIPAA, FHIR interoperability, and the specific security and integration architecture that hospital, insurer, and pharmacy integrations require.
The Digital-Health CMO
Physician-leader with clinical-evidence discipline, clinician-engagement fluency, and commercial-product-team partnership experience. Often a physician who transitioned from clinical practice or academic medicine into industry leadership.
The Digital-Health CRO
Commercial leader with the specific fluency to operate across hospital (long sales cycle, committee-based), insurer (contract-negotiated, volume-driven), pharmacy (high-frequency, operationally dense), and corporate-wellness (HR-led, annual-cycle) channels concurrently.
The Clinical-Evidence Head
Clinical-research leader who has designed and executed real-world-evidence studies, pragmatic trials, and published clinical-evidence programmes to support digital-therapeutics or clinical-AI product adoption. Operates at the interface of clinical research, regulatory, and commercial.
Regulatory & Compensation Context
Regulatory Backdrop
Digital-health leadership operates under a rapidly evolving regulatory envelope. The Telemedicine Practice Guidelines 2020 (issued by the Board of Governors in supersession of the Medical Council of India) govern tele-consult practice. The Digital Information Security in Healthcare Act (DISHA) framework has been in draft; the DPDP Act is applicable to all health data processing and treats health data as sensitive personal data with enhanced obligations. The NDHM (Ayushman Bharat Digital Mission) creates interoperability obligations through the Ayushman Bharat Health Account, Health Facility Registry, Health Professional Registry, and FHIR-based clinical-data exchange standards. The IT Act's intermediary-liability provisions and CERT-In's incident-reporting directions affect digital-health platforms at scale. For digital therapeutics and clinical-AI products with device-classification implications, the MDR-2017 under CDSCO may apply — and for export-oriented platforms, FDA Software-as-Medical-Device (SaMD) classification and EU MDR SaMD pathways are concurrent concerns. For insurer-adjacent digital operators, IRDAI's digital-intermediary guidelines, the Insurance Marketing Firm framework, and claims-intermediation obligations apply. For listed digital-health companies, SEBI LODR, cyber-governance, and ESG / BRSR disclosure discipline are ongoing obligations. Candidates are evaluated on their fluency across the specific subset of frameworks relevant to the target role.
Compensation Architecture
Digital-health leadership compensation has re-rated alongside the category's maturation. CEOs of pre-IPO or well-capitalised digital-health platforms command ₹5-12 crore fixed cash, 50-100% annual bonus, and equity — 1-4% for hired CEOs, higher for founder-operators. CPOs and VPs Product price at ₹3-6 crore fixed with 0.5-1.5% equity. CTOs at scale-stage platforms command ₹3-7 crore fixed with 0.75-2% equity, reflecting both the platform-engineering scale and healthcare-governance load. Chief Medical Officers at digital-health companies price at ₹2.5-5 crore fixed — higher for candidates with published clinical-evidence credibility. Chief Revenue Officers with hospital-plus-insurer-plus-pharmacy channel fluency command ₹3-6 crore fixed. Heads of Clinical Evidence are a specialised hire, typically priced at ₹2-4 crore fixed. For digital-therapeutics and clinical-AI companies with FDA / EU MDR pathways, Heads of Regulatory Affairs command an additional premium. Independent directors on digital-health boards are compensated at ₹40-75 lakh per year in cash plus committee premiums. Secondary liquidity at growth rounds has become standard as retention architecture for senior leadership; USD-denominated packages for leaders serving global markets are increasingly common.
Roles We Typically Place
Why Gladwin International Leadership Advisors for Digital Health & Healthtech
CEO, COO, and founder-succession searches across tele-medicine, healthtech SaaS, patient-engagement, and digital-therapeutics.
CPO, VP Product, and Head of Design searches for healthcare-consumer and clinical-product platforms.
CTO, VP Engineering, and Head of Platform searches for digital-health platforms at scale.
Chief Medical Officer, Head of Clinical, and Head of Clinical-Evidence searches.
Chief Revenue Officer, VP Sales, Head of Hospital / Insurer / Pharmacy Channel placements.
Independent director, board-chair, and audit committee chair searches for digital-health groups.
Organisations We Serve
Tele-medicine and tele-consult platforms
Healthtech SaaS companies (hospital IT, clinic management, insurer-tech)
E-pharmacy and patient-engagement platforms
Digital-therapeutics and chronic-disease platforms
Corporate-wellness and workplace-health platforms
AI-first healthcare product companies
Insurer-adjacent digital operators (claims, provider network, underwriting)
Digital Health & Healthtech leaders assessed on the Healthcare “VITALIS” framework
Seven dimensions calibrated for healthcare and life sciences leadership. Dimensions are calibrated for digital health & healthtech mandates where relevant.
Parent Practice
Return to Healthcare & Life Sciences
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