With artificial intelligence (AI) disrupting lives and industries, and the job market, FulcrumQ, a global strategy and human capital advisory firm specialising in business success, aims to enhance outcomes by aligning talent in areas that drive the maximum value by focusing on the intersection of strategy, human capital, and value creation.
The company is looking to build a new category in the global human capital management landscape, deploying its proprietary framework called “Science of Talent to Value,” to help companies across scales and sizes identify the areas and roles within their business that drive the maximum value within a given cycle. Shefali Salwan, Founder of FulcrumQ, says the company is keen to invest capital, talent, and resources in India to serve this market for the long term. In an interview with The Economic Times Digital, Salwan discusses the current job market scenario, explains the importance of India as a market, why FulcrumQ’s commitment to this market is personal, and more. Edited excerpts:
The Economic Times Digital (ET): What sets FulcrumQ apart from executive search and HR consulting firms, and why does that matter?
Shefali Salwan (SS): Executive search fills roles. HR consulting builds systems. Both are important, but neither answers the question that determines whether a strategy delivers: where does a leadership decision actually change value? FulcrumQ focuses on that question. Across 120+ client engagements, spanning organisations from $49 million to $300 billion in revenue, we consistently find that a small set of roles, typically 20-35, carries disproportionate influence on outcomes. We identify those roles and concentrate leadership precision there. At scale, success is not about better talent everywhere; it is about placing the right leadership in the few roles that matter most.
ET: How has India’s growth environment exposed the limits of traditional talent management?
SS: India’s growth environment is forcing a shift from managing talent broadly to deploying it precisely. Most traditional systems—nine-box grids, succession plans—evaluate people in isolation. But value is not distributed evenly across the organisation, and those tools were never designed to answer where it concentrates. The shift underway is from “Who are our best people?” to “Where do leadership decisions change value?”
ET: Tell us about your ‘Science of Talent to Value’ framework, and how does it apply to Indian enterprises?
SS: The Science of Talent to Value is built on more than 230 applications across geographies, sectors, and business life stages, including 42 client engagements across India and Asia-Pacific. The consistent finding is that enterprise value is disproportionately driven by a small number of roles, and outcomes improve when those roles are identified, assessed, and enabled with discipline.
In practice, this typically translates into 20-35 critical roles linked to a handful of value hotspots, defined not by hierarchy, but by where value will be created.
One example: for a PE-backed company executing a $340 million to $1 billion+ growth trajectory, FulcrumQ mapped the entire value agenda to 19 critical roles and quantified $125 million in execution risk before a single leadership decision was made. Critically, 80% of those critical roles sat below N-1—a level of exposure the client had not previously quantified. The same discipline, applied to Indian enterprises navigating simultaneous scale and transformation, produces the same clarity.
In conditions where every day feels like a pivot, value is not created by managing the whole organisation equally; it is created by governing the few roles closest to it with precision.
ET: In the context of AI and rapid technological change, how should leadership strategy and hiring evolve?
SS: AI is not just accelerating change; it is shifting where value sits inside the organisation. The implication is structural: leaders who were right for one phase may not be right for the next, not because they have failed, but because the inflection point has moved.
AI accelerates this dynamic. It does not increase the number of critical roles. It changes where they sit and compresses the window through which organisations must reposition their leadership to capture new value hotspots before their competitors do.
Leadership strategy, therefore, cannot remain broad-based. It must continuously identify where value is migrating and ensure leadership is positioned there ahead of the shift.
ET: What is FulcrumQ’s roadmap for India, and how does it plan to move forward on this vision?
SS: India is being built as a core geography, anchored on three elements. First, the Science of Talent to Value— establishing that talent decisions can be made with the same discipline as capital allocation. Second, the Talent to Value Academy—helping organisations internalise the discipline. The first cohort is already underway across sectors. Third, Powering the Pivot—applying this discipline at the moments where outcomes are determined.
The foundation for this roadmap is grounded in evidence: a proprietary study across 500 roles and 40+ client engagements established that nearly 70% of execution risk sits in work and role design—not in the capability of the individual leader. It is this finding that defines the discipline FulcrumQ is scaling in India. The country is not just a growth market. It is where the Science of Talent to Value is being applied, tested, and advanced in real time.
Over the next 12 months, our India focus will move across three parallel tracks: capability building, ecosystem creation, and India-specific research.
On the capability side, we plan to expand our India team, as the market becomes a more dedicated operating geography. Earlier India operations were being managed as part of a broader regional structure spanning the Middle East, India, and Southeast Asia. Going ahead, the focus will be on building local advisory capacity closer to Indian enterprises and transformation journeys.
Our other priority is ecosystem creation through the Talent-to-Value Academy. We intend to deepen our practitioner network in India by conducting recurring workshops and leadership cohorts that enable senior executives to apply the Talent-to-Value framework within their own organisations. The framework has already seen adoption among leaders from organisations such as Dr. Reddy’s through the Academy.
A third area of focus is building India-specific models for early-growth and scaling companies. With India now home to over 2 lakh DPIIT-recognised startups, we see a growing need for structured, value-linked talent frameworks among founders navigating rapid scale and organisational complexity. We are exploring delivery models that make the Talent-to-Value discipline more accessible to a wider base of high-growth Indian companies.
ET: How does India compare with the other markets in FulcrumQ’s global portfolio?
SS: What distinguishes India is the simultaneity of its ambition. Enterprises are scaling and transforming at the same time, often under compressed timelines. In most markets, companies choose between growth and transformation. In India, they are required to do both—continuously. Now with macroeconomic headwinds adding a third pressure, the bar on leadership decisions has risen further. Boards and CHROs can no longer afford broad, undifferentiated talent investment. We increasingly see CEOs and CHROs asking: ‘Where will this create value, and where should we concentrate effort?’ That question has always been important. In the current environment, it has become unavoidable.
ET: What is the biggest gap between talent strategies and business performance among Indian enterprises, and why do organisations struggle to identify it themselves?
SS: The biggest disconnect is that organisations tend to invest in talent broadly, while value, in reality, concentrates very narrowly. Most enterprises assume execution risk sits with individuals—that outcomes improve if they simply hire better leaders or invest more in leadership development. What the Talent-to-Value framework repeatedly surfaces is that the larger issue is often structural: organisations have not identified where value truly concentrates, which roles carry disproportionate influence on outcomes, and whether those roles are designed with sufficient clarity and authority.
One example we can provide is from a global oil and gas field services company turning around from bankruptcy. The business had contracted from nearly $15 billion to $3 billion in revenue and was attempting a simultaneous turnaround and transformation toward digitisation and new energy.
When we mapped the company’s value architecture, we found that three of five value hotspots carried nearly 90% of the available value upside. More importantly, the analysis revealed that a small group of leadership roles, particularly within the global business management and supply chain functions, sat directly in the path of the transformation.
One supply chain leadership role alone held nearly four percentage points of unrealised EBITDA margin opportunity, yet the role itself lacked structural clarity and decision rights. The issue was not leadership capability in isolation, but the misalignment between value concentration, role design, and accountability.
By concentrating leadership precision on 22 critical roles and restructuring decision ownership around those areas, the company was able to establish a clearer execution path toward doubling EBITDA within three years.
The broader pattern is consistent across organisations, wherein enterprises often underestimate how much execution risk sits in role architecture and leadership deployment, rather than in leadership capability alone.
ET: How important is India as a market for FulcrumQ?
SS: India is one of the most consequential markets for FulcrumQ. The firm’s commitment to this market is personal as much as it is strategic. It is somewhat a homecoming for us. We are investing capital, talent, and resources to serve this market for the long term. That commitment does not change with cycles. India is where the gap between strategy and execution is most visible, and where precision in talent deployment has the greatest impact. It will play a central role in how FulcrumQ evolves and applies the Science of Talent to Value globally.
Article Published By – The Economic Times (https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/small-biz/entrepreneurship/we-are-building-india-specific-models-for-early-growth-and-scaling-companies-fulcrumqs-shefali-salwan/articleshow/131219679.cms)
