Chief Executive Officer, Smart Meter Manufacturing - Water and Gas

The mandate

A confidential diversified industrial group is creating a smart utility-metering business focused on water and gas. The Chief Executive Officer will build this greenfield enterprise end to end: establish the investment case, define the product and technology portfolio, select the manufacturing model and site, commission the operating system, obtain the required product and metrology approvals, win anchor customers and lead the business through a controlled production ramp.

The mandate begins before a plant or organisation can be treated as fixed. The CEO must convert customer demand, target specifications, make-or-buy choices, localisation options, capacity scenarios and unit economics into a board decision. Site selection must account for supplier access, skills, utilities, logistics, testing and calibration needs, statutory permissions and expansion logic. Capex is released through evidence-based gates; neither construction activity nor equipment orders will substitute for a viable product and market thesis.

Water and gas meters share connected-device capabilities but do not present identical measurement, materials, safety or approval questions. The business must establish separate product evidence and conformity routes for each portfolio while deliberately reusing platforms, electronics, communications, data services or suppliers where that reuse is technically sound. Qualified product, metrology, legal, safety and certification specialists retain their formal conclusions. The CEO owns the system that brings those conclusions into investment and launch decisions.

The finished proposition extends beyond the physical meter. Product architecture must address sensing, measurement stability, power and battery life, communications, device identity, secure provisioning, firmware control, utility-system integration and maintainable field service. Technology choices may include cellular or non-cellular connectivity according to the customer and regulatory context; no protocol should be selected merely because it is fashionable or familiar to one supplier.

This is an open-ended permanent appointment with a Mumbai corporate base and extensive presence at the selected manufacturing site, supplier locations, test facilities and customer pilots. The CEO owns business performance and delegated greenfield decisions but cannot waive statutory approvals, measurement integrity, safety evidence, cybersecurity review or board-reserved capital authority to protect a launch date.

What you will own

• Build the board investment case across addressable customer segments, product families, pricing, localisation, make-or-buy choices, capacity scenarios, capex, working capital and downside exposure, with explicit assumptions and release gates.
• Define the water and gas meter portfolio, deciding which measurement technologies, communication options, data capabilities and service propositions merit development while preventing uncontrolled customer variants from fragmenting the platform.
• Lead site selection and the factory blueprint, integrating process flow, utilities, tooling, automation, calibration, laboratories, warehousing, EHS, logistics and future expansion before construction and equipment commitments are approved.
• Establish the product-development and industrialisation system from requirements through design verification, supplier qualification, pilot builds, process validation and controlled release, preserving traceability when engineering changes affect certified configurations.
• Own the approval roadmap for applicable Indian and target-market requirements, including legal metrology, product standards, test evidence, wireless or telecom permissions and gas-specific safety considerations, using qualified specialists for authoritative determinations.
• Build the supply network for meter bodies, flow elements, sensors, electronics, communications modules, batteries, enclosures and other critical components, balancing localisation, quality, continuity, intellectual-property exposure and landed economics.
• Commission the operating backbone for quality, calibration traceability, material genealogy, production planning, cost control, firmware configuration and field feedback, ensuring that ERP, MES and laboratory records reconcile at the product-serial level.
• Recruit and integrate the leadership team across product, engineering, plant operations, quality, metrology, procurement, finance, commercial, digital platforms and service, with decision rights that remain usable during launch pressure.
• Lead utility, municipal, city-gas, channel and strategic-account development, governing tenders, pilots, technical qualification, pricing and contractual commitments so customer acceptance evidence precedes scale assumptions.
• Direct production ramp and ongoing P&L performance through yield, rework, calibration stability, supplier quality, inventory, cash, warranty and field-reliability evidence, authorising containment when output volume begins to outrun control.

Candidate qualifications

Bring twenty or more years of leadership across precision manufacturing, utility metering, industrial instrumentation, flow measurement, connected hardware or a comparably regulated electromechanical product business. Direct water- or gas-meter experience is strongly preferred; adjacent experience is credible only where the measurement, approval and field-reliability disciplines are genuinely comparable.

Demonstrate personal accountability for at least one greenfield business, factory or major manufacturing line from feasibility and board approval through industrialisation and commercial production. Your evidence must identify the capex choices, site or process decisions, approval dependencies and ramp problems you personally resolved rather than describe a project managed by another function.

Show command of product and manufacturing economics, including portfolio choice, BOM and landed cost, localisation, capacity, yield, inventory, warranty, working capital and pricing. You must be able to explain why a technically viable design or successful pilot did not yet justify a scale decision.

Bring practical understanding of metrology, calibration, conformity assessment and controlled product change. You need not personally hold every technical authorisation, but you must have built an organisation that obtained and preserved approvals without allowing commercial schedules to override measurement integrity or specialist judgement.

Demonstrate connected-device leadership spanning hardware, firmware, communications, secure provisioning, lifecycle support and enterprise or utility integration. Describe how you governed supplier access, configuration, vulnerabilities and field updates rather than treating connectivity as a module purchased once and left to a vendor.

Evidence enterprise leadership across engineering, operations, quality, supply chain, finance, sales and service. A degree in engineering, manufacturing, electronics, instrumentation or another relevant discipline is expected; advanced management education is advantageous. Regular plant, supplier, laboratory and customer travel is integral to the appointment.

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 hiring panel in its confidential form, your answers to the three questions above 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 hiring panel reads what the Terminal delivers and nothing else, which keeps the process consistent for every applicant and keeps your name out of it until you release it. Applications close on 20 October 2026. Mandate reference ARC-PER-2026-IND-004.