The corner offices of India Inc. are increasingly occupied by a new breed of executives: the strategic consultant. Veterans from McKinsey & Co., Bain & Co., BCG, and Kearney are swapping advisory roles for the driver’s seat, as top companies seek out executives capable of navigating a leadership depth crisis in a volatile world.
Recent transitions underscore the trend. Rahul Guha, managing director (MD) and chief executive officer (CEO) of Thyrocare and API Holdings, moved in 2022 after 17 years at BCG. Anuj Khandelwal joined JK Cement as business head for the grey division in 2023 after 12 years at BCG. In 2024, Abhishek Malhotra, who has worked at McKinsey and Kearney over 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. In general, there is a leadership depth crisis in corporate India.”
McKinsey, HPCL and RPSG did not respond to Mint’s queries.
Reinvention drive
Jain of Kearney pointed to a broader pattern across sectors—particularly in healthcare, energy, financial services, and diversified conglomerates—where former partners or senior leaders from consulting firms have moved into CEO, business head, or group strategy roles.
“Traditional industry leaders often rise through operational depth within a specific sector. Today, however, many companies are undergoing reinvention—digital pivots, portfolio reshaping, or global expansion,” Jain said.
According to Khandelwal of , consulting conditions you to “challenge the status quo from day one. You are trained to ask fundamental questions rather than accept legacy ways of working, and that often helps uncover disproportionate value”.
“After years of advising businesses, I wanted to move from shaping decisions to owning outcomes to operate with true skin in the game. Leading a company means driving that answer at scale through people, processes, and culture and living with the results. You’re not influencing from the outside; you’re building the team, setting the tone, and being accountable every single day.”
For Shyam Unnikrishnan, managing partner, India, Bain & Co., what clicks is industry expertise with a strong cross-functional perspective, shaped by working on some of the most complex transformations in business, particularly in a period defined by volatility and the rapid rise of . “That experience builds real muscle memory: comfort with ambiguity, the ability to cut through complexity and focus on what truly creates value, and the capability to align diverse stakeholders while mobilizing teams toward a bold ambition”.
One thing is for sure: for the modern CEO, industry experience is no longer the sole currency. In volatile times, companies are prioritizing cross-sector expertise and the ability to cut through complexity.