THE CEO REVOLVING-DOOR

BOARDS ARE INCREASINGLY SCEPTICAL OF GRAND VISIONS UNSUPPORTED BY GRANULAR DELIVERY

- SHYAMAL MAJUMDAR

IF 2025 HAD A soundtrack for corporate India, it would be the scrape of boardroom chairs.

Across sectors—FMCG, aviation, startups, financial services, media and even old-economy manufacturing—India saw an unusually high churn of chief executives. In the first half of 2025 alone, 16 CEOs of BSE 200 companies stepped down, a pace last seen at the height of the Covid-19 disruption in 2020. Nearly 40% of these transitions occurred within three years of appointment, according to the Spencer Stuart CEO Transition Study covering January 2020 to July 2025. Anecdotal evidence suggests the exits have continued into the second half of the year.

Some departures were orderly, the outcome of long-planned successions. Many were not. They were abrupt, sometimes tense, and often revealing. Together, they marked a clear break from an era when Indian CEOs could rely on long tenures, patient boards and the comforting belief that scale alone offered protection.

In 2025, the corner office became a pressure cooker. And the churn cut across old and new India. It was neither confined to venture-backed startups—where founder exits have become almost routine—nor limited to legacy conglomerates grappling with generational change. It spanned both.