Head / General Manager – Freight Forwarding
Company: GloboTrans ProLogistix Private Limited
Base Location: Mumbai
1. POSITION DETAILS
Particulars Details Department International Freight Forwarding (Ocean & Air)
Reports To Director
Role Mix 50% Sales & Business Development / 50% Operations & Service Excellence Location Mumbai, with extensive travel to ports, sites and client locations across India Direct Reports Vertical Operations, Sales and Support Team (to be finalised as per organisation structure)
2. ROLE PURPOSE
Build and grow a profitable ocean and air freight forwarding business by developing trade-lane strategies, strengthening carrier and agent partnerships, and building a consultative sales engine, while ensuring disciplined operations that deliver documentation accuracy, on-time bookings, proactive shipment visibility and superior customer service.
3. KEY RESPONSIBILITIES
A. Business Development & Sales – 50%P&L Ownership
- Own the vertical's revenue, gross margin and EBITDA targets.
- Prepare and deliver the annual business plan and quarterly forecasts.
- Monitor business performance against budgets and take corrective actions where required.
New Business Development
- Build, manage and convert a qualified pipeline of new clients.
- Lead RFQ/RFP/tender responses, solution design, pricing and commercial negotiations through to contract closure.
- Develop new business across PSU, MNC, EPC, manufacturing and EXIM customer segments.
Key Account Retention & Growth
- Act as the senior escalation point and relationship owner for key existing clients.
- Drive contract renewals, Quarterly Business Reviews (QBRs) and year-on-year wallet-share growth.
- Develop strategic relationships with decision-makers and CXO-level stakeholders.
Cross-Selling
- Identify and convert cross-selling opportunities across GloboTrans verticals, including:
- Customs
- Freight Forwarding
- Warehousing
- CFS
- SEZ/FTWZ
- Transportation
- Project Cargo
- Crane Services
- Develop and offer integrated logistics solutions to customers.
Market Intelligence
- Track competitor activity, market pricing trends, trade flows and regulatory developments.
- Provide market intelligence and insights for pricing, trade-lane development and service enhancement.
Commercial Governance
- Ensure contracts, credit terms and rate agreements are properly documented, risk-reviewed and approved as per the delegation of authority.
- Monitor receivables, credit exposure and Days Sales Outstanding (DSO) for the vertical.
4. OPERATIONS & SERVICE EXCELLENCE – 50%
Service Excellence
- Define, publish and achieve SLA/KPI standards for the vertical.
- Institutionalise daily performance reviews and exception management.
- Conduct Root Cause Analysis (RCA) and implement Corrective and Preventive Actions (CAPA) for service failures.
SOPs & Process Discipline
- Develop, implement and periodically review Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs), work instructions and client-specific playbooks.
- Drive process standardisation across locations, teams and shifts.
- Ensure consistent service delivery across all operational touchpoints.
Compliance & Statutory
- Ensure 100% adherence to applicable:
- Customs regulations
- GST requirements
- Labour laws
- Environmental regulations
- Health & Safety requirements
- Maintain complete audit-readiness and ensure timely closure of audit observations.
People Leadership
- Build, coach and retain a high-performing team.
- Define KRAs and performance objectives for the team.
- Conduct periodic performance reviews and identify training and development requirements.
- Develop succession plans for critical roles.
- Monitor productivity and performance of subcontracted manpower.
Cost & Productivity
- Drive continuous improvement in cost per transaction / cost per tonne.
- Improve productivity through automation, process optimisation and vendor negotiations.
- Identify and eliminate operational waste and unnecessary costs.
Digitalisation & MIS
- Drive adoption and effective utilisation of TMS/WMS/ERP and track-and-trace systems.
- Ensure accurate and timely operational MIS and dashboards.
- Provide management and clients with actionable performance reports and business insights.
5. VERTICAL-SPECIFIC RESPONSIBILITIES & EXPERTISE
Trade Lane & Pricing
- Develop and execute target trade-lane strategies covering:
- Middle East
- South-East Asia (SEA)
- Europe
- USA
- Negotiate ocean carrier service contracts, NVOCC/consolidator arrangements and airline/GSA rates.
- Maintain competitive tariffs and disciplined spot-quotation practices.
- Continuously evaluate trade-lane profitability and market opportunities.
Product Management
- Manage and grow:
- FCL
- LCL Consolidation
- Air Freight
- Sea-Air
- Break-Bulk
- Multimodal Transportation
- Design solutions aligned with applicable Incoterms.
- Develop end-to-end, door-to-door logistics solutions.
Operations Desk
- Ensure accurate and timely documentation, including:
- HBL / MBL
- HAWB / MAWB
- Dangerous Goods (DG) declarations
- Pre-alerts
- Ensure effective booking-to-delivery milestone management.
- Establish proactive exception escalation and resolution mechanisms.
- Manage overseas agent settlements and maintain strong relationships with WCA, FIATA and IATA networks.
Procurement & Yield Management
- Own buy-sell spread and yield management.
- Optimise carrier allocation and utilisation.
- Monitor and recover detention and demurrage costs.
- Manage exposure to GRI/PSS volatility and protect business margins.
Network Development
- Identify, appoint and performance-manage overseas agents.
- Establish reciprocal routing arrangements.
- Ensure alignment of SOPs, service standards and commercial terms across the overseas agent network.
- Strengthen controlled and routed business opportunities.
6. KEY PERFORMANCE INDICATORS (KPIs)
- TEU / tonnage volume and yield per shipment against target.
- Revenue and gross margin against budget.
- New business revenue generated (₹ Cr per annum).
- Documentation accuracy rate.
- On-time booking and pre-alert compliance.
- Client SLA adherence, including:
- On-time performance
- Documentation accuracy
- Turnaround time
- Client retention rate and revenue churn.
- NPS / customer satisfaction scores.
- Agent network receivable/payable reconciliation within defined norms.
- DSO and receivables ageing within agreed limits.
- Zero reportable safety incidents.
- Statutory compliance score of 100%.
- Team attrition and productivity metrics.
- Carrier allocation utilisation and yield performance.
- Detention/demurrage recovery performance.
7. QUALIFICATIONS & EXPERIENCE
- Graduate in any discipline.
- Minimum 10 years of relevant experience in Freight Forwarding / International Logistics.
- Minimum 5 years in a senior leadership role with independent P&L and sales responsibility.
- Demonstrable track record of winning, managing and retaining institutional clients across:
- PSU
- MNC
- EPC
- Manufacturing
- EXIM Trade
- Strong knowledge of Ocean and Air Freight Forwarding.
- Strong commercial negotiation, contract management and analytical skills.
- Strong understanding of trade lanes, carrier management, pricing and international logistics operations.
- Excellent communication and stakeholder-management skills.
- Fluent in English and Hindi.
- Willingness to travel extensively across ports, plants and client locations across India.
8. LEADERSHIP COMPETENCIES
Entrepreneurial Ownership
Runs the vertical as a business, with complete ownership of revenue, profitability, customers, people and operational performance.
Consultative Selling & Solution Design
Ability to understand customer business requirements and develop commercially viable end-to-end logistics solutions at CXO level.
Operational Rigour
Detail-oriented, data-driven and process-disciplined approach with strong focus on service quality and execution.
Stakeholder Management
Strong ability to manage relationships with clients, port authorities, customs authorities, regulators, vendors, unions and internal stakeholders.
Integrity & Compliance
Demonstrates a strong integrity-driven and compliance-first approach to business and operations.
Team Building & Collaboration
Ability to build high-performing teams, develop talent and foster strong cross-functional collaboration.
9. CORE SUCCESS MEASURES
The successful incumbent will be expected to deliver:
- Profitable revenue growth in Ocean and Air Freight Forwarding.
- Strong new-client acquisition and key-account retention.
- Expansion of strategic trade lanes and carrier/agent network.
- High service reliability and customer satisfaction.
- Strong operational controls and documentation accuracy.
- Improved yield, productivity and cost efficiency.
- Effective P&L, receivables and working-capital management.
- A high-performing and accountable freight-forwarding team.
- 100% statutory and regulatory compliance.
- Sustainable growth of the Freight Forwarding vertical.
Benefits:
- Health insurance
- Life insurance
- Provident Fund
Application Question(s):
- Do you have a minimum 10 years of relevant experience in Freight Forwarding / International Logistics?
- Do you have a minimum 5 years in a senior leadership role with independent P&L and sales responsibility?
Work Location: In person
