



The rise of India's consultant CEO: From advisor to executor
cement division in 2023 after 12 years at BCG. In 2024, Abhishek Malhotra, who has worked at McKinsey and Kearneyover 10 years, joined RPSG Group as president and strategy head.
Most recently, Vikas Kaushal was named chairman and MD of HPCL in 2025 following 25 years at Kearney.“Clients are demanding and experiencing true business partnership, and as a result, many organizations are actively finding senior consulting talent as good fitment,” says Rahul Jain, India head at BCG. According to Jain, this is a strong recognition of the evolving consulting model and its talent, particularly in an environment where leadership depth remains scarce and fiercely contested.What does the transition feel like for an advisor taking the reins? Before Thyrocare, Guha had worked in the life sciences and healthcare sectors at BCG, but even for someone who always wanted to be in the driver's seat, the first six months were like "drinking water from a firehose".According to Guha, there is one fundamental difference in the working style of the consultant versus the head.
“The data then brought to me (during my consulting days) had gone through many rounds of checks, and often was used to prove a hypothesis to a client. Now, even if it is correct and my intuition feels different, I ask for the data to get checked again.”Why do some companies pick consultants instead of industry veterans for the top job? Said Kearney India's managing partner and country head Siddharth Jain, “It's not so much a replacement of industry veterans, but rather a shift in the leadership profile required.
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