The Apex 100 · India
The India House
Five Circles of one hundred, for leaders in transition to a next chapter — the seat after this one, or the portfolio that outlasts the executive career. India is the first House. It will not be the only one.
We work with no more than one hundred leaders in a Circle at a time. That is a limit on our capacity, not a judgement of anybody’s standing — there is no list, no ranking and no nomination.
What a year delivers
Your core offerings.
All twelve run for both Pursuits. A member on the Domestic Pursuit is not buying a smaller family office — what the wider fee buys is reach, and where a line genuinely works differently across a border it says so rather than being withheld.
How you are held
The standing relationship, whether or not anything is happening.
The Career Family Office
A named Principal and an associate, holding your trajectory for the year.
A family office does not manage a transaction; it manages capital across a horizon, and reviews it whether or not anything is being bought. Your career is the same asset and has never been managed that way. One senior Principal owns your trajectory, an associate does the work behind it, and the relationship is designed to run three to five years — a search is one event inside it, not the reason for it.
What this includes
- One named Principal for the year, and the same name on every reply
- A dedicated associate carrying the research, the dossiers and the diary
- A quarterly review of market value, comparable compensation and reputational standing
- A written statement of position each quarter — what changed, what it is worth, what to do
- A standing line for the decision that cannot wait for the quarter
The Reputation Desk
What a chairman reads about you before you meet. Managed, and reviewed quarterly.
Before a first meeting, the chair searches you. What comes back for most Indian chief executives is a stale corporate biography, a conference photograph and somebody else with the same name — which is not neutral, it is an absence where authority should be. The desk runs your public standing as a P&L: written, placed, measured and reviewed every quarter alongside the rest of the portfolio.
What this includes
- A definitive biography, properly sourced and maintained
- Thought leadership ghostwritten in your voice and placed under your name
- Targeted placements in the business press, and podcast and platform bookings
- A speaking pipeline: conference chairmanships, panels, and the programmes worth saying yes to
- A quarterly reputation review — what was published, what ranks, what a chair now finds
The Member Brief
Who is moving, which boards are reshuffling, which funds have closed and need an operator.
A private weekly brief, written for the hundred members of a Circle and circulated nowhere else. Departures inferred from filings before they are announced, boards approaching a retirement cliff, funds that have just closed and will need chief executives within four quarters, and succession events flagged out of the firm’s own governance intelligence. Members read the market roughly a quarter before it becomes news, which is the entire window in which anything can be done about it.
What this includes
- A weekly written brief, to the Circle only, never forwarded and never published
- Board and committee churn drawn from filings rather than from press releases
- Capital events that create operator demand — closes, exits, carve-outs, restructurings
- Succession signals from the firm’s governance intelligence, ahead of announcement
- An annual compensation study for your function, drawn from what seats actually paid
How you are found
The work that happens while you are not looking.
The Shadow Search
Placed in front of the people who decide, before there is anything to decide.
Most seats at this level are settled before they are described, and by the time a mandate is written the board has usually already met the person who will take it. So the work runs continuously and quietly: your Principal keeps you in front of chairmen, promoters, fund partners and the sector leads of the search majors while you are not looking, so that when a seat opens you are not a candidate for it — you are the obvious answer to it.
What this includes
- Continuous mapping of succession risk, capital events and board churn across the field
- Introductions made on your behalf, unnamed, before a vacancy exists
- Standing relationships with the sector leads of the retained majors, kept warm on your behalf
- Your name released only when there is something real to release it into
- No listing, no profile, no register — nothing about you is published anywhere
The Salon
Eight to ten at a table. Two chairmen, two investors, two search partners, four members.
The introduction that matters is almost never made across a desk. The Salon is a dinner with no agenda, no presentations and no pitching, and the composition is the entire product: the room is built so that the four members at it are sitting with the six people who decide the seats they want. Nobody is asked to speak. Members meet their next chairman at these tables, and it happens because the table was designed rather than because a session was scheduled.
What this includes
- Held by invitation through the year, in small rooms, off the record
- Composed rather than opened: chairs, promoters, fund partners and search leads at every table
- No agenda, no presentations, no pitching, and no firm on a stage
- The Chatham House rule, stated at the table and enforced afterwards
- Attendance is never sold and never a headcount — a table is filled or it is not held
Board Portfolio Design
The second career, designed now rather than assembled later.
Almost every chief executive ends up with board seats and almost none of them chose the shape. A portfolio is designed the way an investment portfolio is — one listed company, one private equity backed board, one institution that pays nothing and is worth more than either — and it is built while you still hold the executive seat that makes you attractive to it. The work is repeated for each seat, because a nomination committee reads a different document than a chair does.
What this includes
- A deliberate portfolio designed by exposure: listed, sponsor-backed, and not-for-profit
- Board documents built per seat: the record shaped for that board, and the committee reading it
- Governance narrative, independence analysis and the questions a nomination committee will ask
- Direct representation into India ID Exchange and the mandates the firm holds
- Sequencing advice — which seat to take first, and which one to decline
How a seat is taken
What happens once a specific chair becomes real.
Named Pursuits
A war room for each target: the dossier, the hundred-day plan, the rehearsal.
When a specific seat becomes real, it stops being a search and becomes a campaign against one company. Your associate builds the file — strategy, board composition, activist and lender pressure, succession gaps, what the last incumbent actually left behind — and you go in with a hundred-day plan written for that board rather than a record written for anybody. You rehearse it against a former chief executive of that sector before you present it to the one who can hire you.
What this includes
- A full dossier per target: strategy, capital structure, board and committee composition
- The succession gap and the thesis the board is actually hiring against, worked out in advance
- A bespoke hundred-day plan, written to be presented rather than filed
- Rehearsal with a former chief executive or chair from that sector
- Board and committee documents prepared to the standard the seat is read at
The Reference Architecture
A reference bench, curated and briefed. Most people lose the seat here.
More senior appointments are lost at reference stage than at any other, and almost nobody who loses one is ever told that is what happened. A referee who is fond of you but vague is worse than no referee at all. So the bench is built deliberately and years in advance — former board members, investors, clients, the chair you served under — and each one is briefed on what this particular seat is testing before the call comes.
What this includes
- A standing bench of referees assembled and maintained, not gathered at the last minute
- Each referee briefed for the specific seat, on what is being tested and what to speak to
- Back-channel exposure identified early: who will be called who is not on your list
- The record of your last exit narrated consistently by everyone who will be asked about it
- A candid read of which relationships will not survive being asked
Compensation and Exit Counsel
The offer structured by counsel. The departure handled with equal care.
At this level the package is the smallest part of the negotiation and the part most likely to be handled alone. A compensation lawyer and a former group chief human resources officer sit on your side of the table for the structure — equity, vesting, clawback, severance, change of control — and for the half nobody prepares for, which is leaving well. Non-compete, garden leave, the announcement and who says what to whom are settled before you resign, not after.
What this includes
- Offer structuring with a compensation lawyer: equity, vesting, clawback, severance, change of control
- Benchmarking against comparable seats, so the number is argued from evidence
- The mandate itself negotiated — runway, authority over the team, what happens if the thesis changes
- Exit counsel on the current role: non-compete review, garden leave, restrictive covenants
- Narrative control: the announcement, the sequence, and what your board is told and when
How it is kept
After signature, which is where a search firm stops.
The First Hundred and Eighty Days
The counsel does not stop at signature. That is where most of them fail.
A concierge that ends at the offer letter is selling a transaction and calling it a relationship. The most dangerous six months of an appointment are the first, and the failures are almost never about capability — they are about a leadership team that was inherited, a board that was never properly met, and a first hundred days spent learning what could have been known in advance. Retention is the only honest proof that any of this worked.
What this includes
- A chief executive coach for the first two quarters
- Pre-arranged introductions to the board members and investors you have not met
- An assessment of the leadership team you have inherited, run through SYMPHONY
- The first-year narrative: what you will be measured on, agreed with the chair in writing
- A standing review with your Principal through the transition, at your cadence
Discreet Life Logistics
Every practical reason to say no to the right seat, removed.
Senior appointments collapse over school admissions, a spouse’s career and a house, far more often than over money or mandate. These are not soft matters and they do not belong to human resources at the hiring company, who will hear about the hesitation long before they hear the reason. Handled quietly, on your side of the table.
What this includes
- Relocation and home search, run to a brief rather than to a listings portal
- School admissions and the timelines that actually govern them
- Spouse career support: introductions, search, and a plan that is not an afterthought
- Private banking and wealth introductions where a change of income structure requires them
- Travel and diary management around a search run alongside a demanding job
The Sabbatical Concierge
A gap becomes a chapter, and a chapter has a title.
A leader between seats is asked one question at every subsequent interview, and the honest answer — that the last eighteen months were spent waiting — is the one that costs the appointment. So the time is structured deliberately and in advance: an interim mandate, two advisory seats, a programme at a school whose name settles the question, a book, a series. The gap is engineered into a period a board reads as a decision.
What this includes
- Interim and advisory mandates arranged through the firm’s own book
- Executive programmes at Harvard, INSEAD, Oxford and the Indian institutes, chosen and applied for
- A book, a column or a speaking series, ghostwritten and placed where it is read
- Non-executive and not-for-profit seats that hold their value on a record
- The narrative written and rehearsed, so the question is answered before it is asked
The fee
One choice changes it: how far we look.
The Circle decides the room. The Pursuit decides the field, and it is the only input to the retainer — there is no separate rate by function, and no seniority surcharge. Annual only, because nothing described above can be delivered in a quarter.
The Domestic Pursuit
India. Every listed group, every promoter house, every fund portfolio in the country.
₹20,00,000
+ 18% GST · per year · ₹23,60,000 all in
The full counsel, aimed at the Indian market. Your Principal maps the seats that exist and the ones about to, and works the chairs, promoters and fund partners who decide them long before a mandate is written.
- Mapping across Indian listed groups, promoter houses and domestic PE and VC portfolios
- Approaches made to Indian chairs, promoters and fund partners directly
- A reputation programme built for the Indian financial press and the Indian stage
- A board portfolio designed against the Companies Act and SEBI LODR, piped into India ID Exchange
- Salons held in Mumbai, Delhi and Bengaluru
The International Pursuit
Every market on the platform, India included. The Gulf, South-East Asia, the United Kingdom, Europe and North America.
₹35,00,000
+ 18% GST · per year · ₹41,30,000 all in
Everything in the Domestic Pursuit, and a border stops mattering. The map widens to global groups and their India-facing seats, and the practical machinery of actually moving — visas, schools, a spouse’s career, a bank — is handled rather than mentioned.
- Everything in the Domestic Pursuit, unchanged and undiminished
- Mapping across global groups, their regional holdings and the India-facing seats inside them
- Relationships with the sector leads of the international search majors, not their India desks
- A reference bench assembled across markets, briefed for readers who have never met you
- Cross-border compensation, equity and tax structuring taken by counsel who practises in both jurisdictions
- Relocation, visa, schooling, spouse career support and private banking introductions, handled
- Salons in London, Dubai and Singapore alongside the Indian table
₹4,99,000 reserves the seat at admission. The balance of ₹18,61,000 is invoiced on signature of the Charter and settled by transfer. A retainer of this size is invoiced and settled by transfer, the way every other engagement of this size at the firm is; the deposit exists so a seat can be held the day it is offered, not so that a membership can be bought from a payment sheet.
Admission
How a seat is taken.
A referral, or a direct approach
Most seats are taken on the introduction of a member, a chair or a partner of the firm. A direct application is read with the same seriousness — a good leader who does not happen to know one of us is not a worse candidate — but it is read, not processed.
The application
Five things: your name, the seat you hold, your total annual compensation, and two ways to reach you. No company name is asked for at any point and no employer is ever contacted. The email address is verified before anything is recorded against it.
The admission interview
Forty minutes with the Principal who would carry you, on what you are actually trying to do with the next five years. It decides both directions: whether the Circle is right for you, and whether we can do the work well enough to charge for it.
The Charter
Signed by you and by your Principal before a seat exists. It states what is owed in both directions and what is not promised in either, and it is the document a disagreement is later settled against.
The seat
A deposit reserves it and the balance is invoiced on signature. Your Principal is named, the associate is assigned, and the first quarterly review is scheduled before any work begins.
12 lines · 5 Circles · 500 seats · nine clauses, signed both ways