Confidential mandate
Director of Strategic Procurement — Interim, Omnichannel Retail
Urgent / Replacement
Director of Strategic Procurement mandate in Bengaluru, India · Omnichannel Retail
An omnichannel retail business requires a twelve-month interim director to retender major categories, recover value and establish transparent supplier governance across categories.
The mandate
A ₹900 crore procurement portfolio requires independent leadership to maintain continuity without interrupting store openings or customer delivery.
The interim must begin within two weeks for a fixed twelve-month remediation. A permanent director search begins once the first retenders close, with six weeks for supplier and control transition.
Handover requires retender of six high-risk categories, ₹85 crore of finance-validated annualised value, complete beneficial-ownership screening for critical suppliers, and the successor chairing two sourcing councils without exception backlog.
The director may pause sourcing, exclude conflicted suppliers and approve awards below ₹3 crore within the new process. Awards above ₹10 crore, supplier litigation and settlements need committee approval; the interim cannot prejudge the employment investigation or select merchandise for resale.
Direct merchandise buying, store-location strategy and customer pricing are excluded. The brief covers indirect, technology, facilities and logistics procurement where governance confidence must be rebuilt.
Why this seat is open
The investigation created an authority gap across categories that cannot wait for its legal conclusion. Delegating awards to existing category teams would not provide sufficient independence. A time-bound procurement leader will retest the supply base, recover defensible value and hand over a transparent council system.
What you will own
- Map the six high-risk categories by incumbent, beneficial ownership, award history, dependency and renewal date.
- Decide which sourcing events pause, proceed under enhanced review or require immediate competitive retender.
- Establish bid custody, conflict declarations, scoring evidence and independent approval for material awards.
- Run clean-sheet or should-cost challenges across facilities, logistics, technology and marketing services.
- Validate savings with finance after implementation, separating price, demand, scope and cost avoidance.
- Resolve critical supplier continuity while preserving investigation evidence and competitive fairness.
- Transfer supplier dossiers, sourcing calendars and council authority through two successor-led award cycles.
Candidate qualifications
- Eighteen-plus years in strategic procurement with large retail, consumer, logistics or technology spend responsibility.
- Led sourcing remediation following fraud, conflict, collusion or material supplier-governance failure.
- Demonstrated delivery of finance-validated value from competitive retender and clean-sheet cost analysis.
- Strong knowledge of beneficial ownership, bid integrity, third-party risk and evidence-preservation requirements.
- Ability to protect operational continuity while suspending or replacing high-dependency suppliers.
- Experience testifying to ethics, audit or board committees on sourcing decisions under investigation.
More seats like this one
This mandate is confidential. The client is named only under a mutual NDA, and your own record is never listed, sold or shown to a company under your name until you release it for this specific mandate.