CXO India Research Report: The State of Executive Search in India 2025

CXO India is pleased to share the key findings from our 2025 State of Executive Search report, the most comprehensive analysis of India's senior leadership talent market that we have published. The report draws on data from 840 executive search assignments completed in India over the past 18 months, supplemented by in-depth interviews with 60 boards, CEOs, and candidates. The defining theme of this year's report is what we call the "great expectation mismatch." Companies are conducting more rigorous executive search processes than ever before — longer shortlists, more interview rounds, more psychometric assessment, more reference checking. Yet first-year failure rates for externally hired senior executives have not fallen; if anything, they have risen slightly. Our analysis suggests the culprit is not assessment quality but onboarding and context-setting. Companies invest heavily in finding the right executive and then provide inadequate support for their integration — assuming that a highly capable individual will figure out the cultural and political landscape of a new organisation without structured assistance. The report also examines the rise of internal promotions relative to external hires at the executive level. Across our dataset, internal promotions now account for 48% of C-suite appointments — up from 38% five years ago. This shift has been driven partly by cost (external hires are significantly more expensive when agency fees and higher compensation expectations are factored in) and partly by a genuine improvement in internal talent development programmes at a subset of Indian companies. The full report is available to CXO India platform members.