Board & Directors

Two things, kept separate.

A seat on a board, and coaching for the people who already hold one. They carry different obligations, different confidentiality, and different reasons to say no — so this page does not blur them into a single “board practice”.

01 · Appointment

Available as an Independent Director.

Certified, empanelled, and open to nomination. The credentials below are matters of public record and can be verified before any conversation begins.

Certification
IICA-Certified Independent Director
Empanelment
Independent Director’s Databank, since March 2020
Also certified
IOD India Certified Corporate Director, since November 2017
Prior board
Savari Systems — Additional Director and Board Member, September 2018 – January 2021. Acquired by Harman International.
Sectors
Pharma and IT in particular; open to Retail and Agri
Based
Hyderabad, India

One prior seat, not a portfolio. Savari Systems is the only board on which this has been the role, and saying so is more useful to a nominating committee than an implied track record. What comes with it is twenty-two years of operating leadership across pharma, knowledge services and global IT — P&L ownership, delivery turnaround, and the rebuilding of an account from twenty-five million dollars at the edge of pullback — alongside nine years spent reading how senior leaders actually behave under pressure.

02 · Coaching

Coaching a serving director.

A confidential one-to-one engagement with someone who already sits on a board — the same room, the same discipline, and the same rule as every other coaching engagement: no client is named, anywhere, ever.

This is deliberately not the same service as the one above, and the two are never run into the same company at the same time. Coaching a director creates a private obligation to that person. Holding a seat creates a fiduciary obligation to the company. Those two things do not belong in one engagement.

The engagement structure, phases and measurement are the same as the flagship practice, described in full at Executive Coaching.

03 · Scope

What is not offered.

Board advisory

Retained board advisory is not part of this practice. There are two engagements here — an appointment, or coaching an individual director. A request for standing advisory work to a board, as a service distinct from a seat, is one to decline rather than stretch to fit.

Two other engagements sit nearby and are described elsewhere: fractional CLO work for organisations, and keynotes and leadership workshops. Neither is a board service, and neither should be read as one.

04 · Before an appointment

What gets examined first.

There is no sector bar, no revenue floor and no standing conflict list. Two things decide whether a nomination goes further:

Conflicts are checked against current commitments at the point of nomination rather than screened in advance, because the answer depends on the company in front of you.

05 · Enquiry

What a nomination enquiry should contain.

Enough to answer the two questions above. No confidential board material at first contact.

From Certification to the Boardroom

A free seventeen-page reckoner for newly certified independent directors in India — the law, the liability, the fees, and how boards actually hire. Written for the other side of this conversation, and the clearest picture of how the subject is thought about here.

Read the reckoner

Start with the company, not the credential.

Nomination enquiries and director-coaching enquiries both begin the same way — a thirty-minute conversation, no agenda and no slides. Say which of the two you are asking about.