Confidential mandate
Retail GCC Location and Capability Director — Consulting
Planned Hiring / New
A global retailer needs a fourteen-week fact base and board recommendation for its India GCC location, capability mix, leadership footprint, partner boundaries and launch sequence.
The mandate
The problem is a location debate driven by anecdote, incentives and available property rather than capability requirements. The retailer must choose where and how to launch before committing a long lease.
The engagement delivers a capability demand model, city and micro-market scorecard, talent evidence, partner assessment, leadership design, risk analysis, launch sequence and board recommendation.
Milestone one lands 2 October 2026 with demand and evaluation criteria; milestone two on 6 November with field-validated city and partner evidence; milestone three on 11 December with recommendation, sensitivities and ninety-day launch charter.
Acceptance by the Location Decision Board requires blind agreement of criteria before city scoring, at least sixty role-level talent datapoints, finance validation of five-year cost, documented scenario sensitivity and unanimous sponsor approval of the first-wave scope.
The retailer provides demand forecasts, role profiles, security constraints, global process owners, cost policies and procurement access to comparable market data. City visits are arranged without landlord sponsorship.
Why this is external work
Potential locations have internal advocates, and property providers are shaping the evidence. A neutral team can separate capability fit from incentives and make assumptions comparable. The expertise is needed for a single irreversible location decision.
What you will own
- Translate functional demand into role, leadership, adjacency and risk criteria for milestone one.
- Lock city-score weights before collecting outcome data.
- Gather comparable talent, cost, infrastructure and ecosystem evidence.
- Validate shortlisted micro-markets and partner capacity through structured fieldwork.
- Design the first-wave leadership and retained-versus-partner boundaries.
- Build five-year scenarios with attrition, ramp and incentive sensitivities.
- Present the milestone-three recommendation and ninety-day launch charter.
Candidate qualifications
- 18–22 years in GCC strategy, retail operations, workforce planning or location advisory.
- Direct completion of at least three India location decisions for complex capability centres.
- Evidence of role-level talent analysis rather than generic city indices.
- Experience modelling property, labour, ramp, attrition and partner economics together.
- Board-level facilitation of politically contested location choices.
- Independence from property brokers, cities and implementation providers.
Non-negotiables
- No landlord, development-agency or vendor compensation.
- Named director attends every city validation visit and board review.
- Scoring weights frozen before comparative outcome data is revealed.
- Sources and confidence ranges documented for all market evidence.
- 49 words maximum. Which GCC location recommendation did you deliver, and what role-level evidence changed the preferred city?
- 49 words maximum. How will you prevent incentives and available property from biasing city selection?
- 49 words maximum. Which client role profiles and demand forecasts are indispensable by week two?
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.