Vice President, Commercial Finance — Secure Cargo Networks

The mandate

A secure cargo operator is adding customer corridors faster than its pricing controls can distinguish genuine yield from volume purchased through concessions. Contract amendments, insurance charges, custody requirements and regional collections practices currently reach finance through separate routes. This permanent vice president role brings those decisions together without transferring operational custody or physical security accountability away from the specialists who own them.

The first eighteen months should produce a customer-level contribution view that explains the cost of handling complexity, delayed settlement and exceptional service obligations. The role is open-ended: after that initial build, the leader continues governing bid economics and commercial exceptions. A fourteen-person team will combine analysts and collections specialists, with scheduled depot visits and customer negotiation travel rather than a desk-only reporting remit.

The vice president may reject bids below approved contribution hurdles, settle documented billing disputes within a ₹25 lakh delegated limit and require revised payment security before releasing new credit exposure. Changes to insured-value policies, material customer termination and any commitment beyond existing credit limits require executive approval. Commercial finance must make its reasoning visible enough that sales can challenge assumptions rather than treating finance clearance as an unexplained obstacle.

This is not a mandate to build a transport fleet, redesign security procedures or own statutory tax interpretation. It is a commercially consequential finance seat: margin leakage must be distinguished from service investment, and collections recovery must not rely on promises that regional teams cannot honour. The CFO expects a monthly account decision forum, a documented concession register and clear evidence that profitable customers are not subsidising structurally uneconomic work.

What you will own

• Build a cargo customer contribution model that separates route capacity, handling intensity, declared-value exposure and service exceptions, reconciling its inputs to invoices and operational shipment records before using it in negotiations.
• Decide which concession requests meet approved return thresholds, recording the commercial rationale, expiry date and accountable sales owner so temporary discounts cannot quietly become permanent contract economics.
• Establish a receivables intervention ladder that distinguishes genuine custody or billing disputes from credit deterioration, linking each route to documentary evidence and an executable recovery decision.
• Negotiate financial safeguards alongside sales and legal specialists, translating uncertain shipment patterns into minimum charges, escalation clauses and payment protection without promising security capabilities the network lacks.
• Review corridor expansion cases using downside shipment mix, regional collection behaviour and working-capital demands, recommending whether finance should support launch, impose conditions or require further evidence.
• Develop commercial finance managers who can defend cost allocation choices in account forums, challenge misleading averages and produce concise decision papers without escalating every routine pricing question to the CFO.

Candidate qualifications

• Bring an 18–22-year finance career with substantial personal accountability for commercial decisions in logistics, trade or a similarly transaction-intensive service network. Show a contract where your intervention changed price architecture, payment protection or service scope, and distinguish that decision from a forecast or analysis someone else ultimately negotiated.
• Demonstrate customer profitability methods that survive operational challenge: allocation of shared route costs, treatment of idle capacity, exceptional handling and disputed revenue must be explainable. Evidence should include reconciliation to financial records and an example of revising a convenient model when shipment or collection data contradicted its initial assumptions.
• Have led finance professionals across commercial and collections interfaces, including situations where sales priorities conflicted with cash discipline. Describe how you established delegation, coached regional managers and avoided either indiscriminate credit restriction or acceptance of uncollectable growth. Experience influencing operating executives matters more than the size of a presentation audience.
• Show mature judgement in contract confidentiality, customer concentration and financial risk escalation. Accounting or finance training should support reliable interpretation of revenue and receivables, but this role does not require a particular professional designation. You must be able to work closely with qualified tax, legal and security advisers while remaining accountable for the financial recommendation.

Application

Applications for this mandate are received in one way only: through the India Board Terminal's application process. It is automated end to end. Your Executive Passport travels to the mandate holder in its confidential form, your answers to the three questions below are read before anything else in your file, and every stage that follows is recorded on your applications page.

There is no address to write to and no intermediary to call. The mandate holder reads what the Terminal delivers and nothing else, which is what keeps the process the same for every applicant and keeps your name out of it until you release it. Applications close on 11 October 2026. Mandate reference CVU-PER-2026-IND-092.