Everything you need to know about working with KPS India. Can't find your answer? Talk to an expert.
KPS is a strategic HR and pharma marketing partner for India's healthcare and life-sciences sector. We've spent 12+ years helping founders, HR leaders, and organizations across healthcare, pharma, medtech, and other high-growth industries hire faster, scale operations, and build market-leading teams.
We work with startups through enterprise—from first-hire through CXO search and scaled recruitment operations.
Our core expertise spans three sectors:
We also work across other high-growth sectors (fintech, edtech, B2B SaaS) where hiring speed and operational excellence matter.
We partner with both. We support early-stage startup founders building their core leadership teams and help large hospital/pharma groups with scaled hiring and specialized recruitment.
If you're a 5-person startup hiring your first COO or a 500-person organization scaling across three divisions, we've worked with your stage.
We offer six core services:
Most clients combine services—for example, recruitment + payroll support, or executive search + ongoing staffing.
Yes. Most of our clients bundle services. A hospital group might start with executive search for a Chief Medical Officer, then add recruitment consultancy for nursing and allied health roles, and layer in HR compliance & payroll for ongoing operations.
We structure these as coordinated engagements with aligned timelines and pricing. During discovery, we'll map your needs and propose what makes sense together.
We do both. We don't just place candidates—we solve hiring challenges.
Our engagement always starts with a strategy phase where we align on your business goals, role expectations, market realities, and execution plan. This informs how we source, vet, and negotiate offers.
For larger mandates (building out an entire sales team, scaling operations across geographies), we often propose a hybrid approach combining advisory and execution.
For standard roles, we provide initial shortlists within 48–72 hours.
For executive search roles, the research and mapping phase typically takes 2–3 weeks to ensure the highest quality of candidates and confidentiality.
Time-to-offer depends on your approval speed and market conditions, but we push for hiring decisions within 4–6 weeks of engagement launch. Outliers (specialized technical roles, multiple-round assessments) are flagged upfront.
We can move fast. For urgent placements, we leverage existing networks and database of pre-vetted talent to compress timelines to 2–3 weeks or less.
Urgent engagements may command adjusted pricing and come with reasonable caveats (smaller candidate pool, higher negotiation overhead), but we're built to flex.
Flag urgency at the start of your discovery call—it shapes our approach entirely.
Depends on scope. A single executive search may run 8–12 weeks. A recruitment consultancy mandate for 4–5 roles might run 12–16 weeks. HR compliance & payroll is ongoing—we manage it month-to-month.
Most clients renew or expand engagements once the first mandate closes because they discover additional hiring needs or decide to hand off operational HR.
Our pricing models are flexible based on the engagement. We use three primary structures:
We also offer blended models combining multiple services at a coordinated rate.
During discovery, we'll understand your budget and propose the structure that makes sense.
Yes. We work with companies at every stage, from pre-revenue to scale.
For startups, we often structure engagements with commission-based placement (success-based fees aligned to your budget) or a modest retained fee for advisory + execution. Your investment scales with your hiring velocity.
Early-stage conversations often start with a single critical hire (e.g., first COO or first VP Sales) before expanding.
No hidden costs. Pricing covers:
If your scope expands (e.g., you add a third role or extend the engagement), we'll discuss it upfront and adjust the fee accordingly. We don't surprise you with invoices.
We deliver vetted, credentialed candidates who are culture-fit and ready to perform on day one.
Our screening process includes skills assessment, industry experience verification, reference checks, and alignment calls to ensure fit. We don't push numbers—we push quality.
For executive roles, candidates are hand-selected and pre-vetted for both competence and cultural alignment. For larger hiring volumes, we batch shortlists and brief you on each candidate's strengths and development areas.
We stand behind our placements. If a hire doesn't perform in the first 90 days, we'll re-engage to help find a replacement at no additional fee (contingency model) or revisit the role definition and try again (retained model).
We also stay involved through the onboarding phase, so issues are caught early.
Pre-vetted. Every candidate we send has been screened for skills, experience, background, and fit.
You won't receive 100 resumes and do the filtering. You'll get a lean shortlist (typically 3–5 candidates) with our assessment of each, interview guides, and talking points. Your job is to decide who fits your team and culture best—not to eliminate noise.
For retained (fixed-fee) engagements, we ask for exclusive search rights for the mandate. This protects our investment and ensures we're not competing internally.
For contingency (placement-based) engagements, we accept non-exclusive arrangements—you can work with multiple recruiters simultaneously. We compete on quality and speed.
Either way, we'll be clear upfront about our expectations and what that means for your hiring process.
We're reasonable. If you hire someone we introduced into a materially different role (we sourced them for a VP role; you hire them as a consultant), we view that differently than a standard placement.
These edge cases are handled on a case-by-case basis during our onboarding. The principle: we're not trying to nickel-and-dime you, but we also don't want to be circumvented. Let's talk openly.
For recruitment searches, it's typically one mandate (8–12 weeks), but we're flexible.
For HR compliance & payroll, we ask for a 3-month minimum to establish processes, integrate with your systems, and deliver value.
Longer commitments (12+ months for ongoing staffing or payroll) often come with pricing discounts.
Define → Build → Close.
Week 1–2 (Define): We align on business goals, role expectations, market strategy, and compensation. We develop a detailed role brief, candidate profile, and sourcing strategy.
Week 3–6 (Build): We source, screen, and conduct initial interviews. You meet shortlisted candidates. We facilitate your interview process.
Week 7–10 (Close): Final interviews, offer negotiation, background checks, onboarding prep. We stay involved through day 30 to ensure smooth start.
Timelines compress or extend based on role complexity and your decision velocity.
We believe in cadence over noise. You'll have:
You'll also have a dedicated point of contact at KPS for consistency. If you need daily updates, we can flex, but most clients find weekly momentum calls sufficient.
You'll be assigned a dedicated engagement lead from our team—the person responsible for sourcing, vetting, and shepherding candidates. They'll own your mandate from kickoff through onboarding.
You'll also meet the founder/senior leadership early in the process so you know who to escalate to if needed. But your day-to-day is with the engagement lead.
Yes, absolutely. We often start with a strategy conversation rather than a fully spec'd role.
If you know you need "someone to lead operations" but the exact title, scope, and profile are fuzzy, our first phase is to workshop that with you. We'll ask about your growth plan, existing team structure, biggest bottlenecks, and market context. Then we'll propose a role architecture.
This may be a shorter paid advisory engagement, or it may be bundled into your search fees. Either way, we'll be clear about scope and cost upfront.
That's our bread and butter. Niche requirements are where we outperform generalist recruiters.
Healthcare, pharma, and medtech have specialized talent pools. We have domain networks, understand regulatory nuances, and can identify candidates with the right background. Roles requiring USFDA experience, GAMP compliance, hospital IT architecture, or pharma regulatory expertise are exactly what we handle.
Specialist hiring takes longer and may command adjusted fees, but we'll set expectations upfront.
We handle global executive search for board-level and CXO roles where candidates need to be sourced internationally. Our network spans UK, US, Southeast Asia, and Middle East for pharma and healthcare talent.
For large-scale global hiring (hiring 20 developers in Germany), we'd likely partner with local recruiters and coordinate. Talk to us about your global needs.
We focus on growth and hiring, not downsizing. That said, downsizing conversations often lead to restructuring and rehiring. If you're consolidating and need to hire differently post-restructure, we can help with that part.
We can also advise on retention strategies and role design to help you right-size your team. Reach out for a conversation.
Three steps:
The whole process from first call to kickoff is typically 5–7 days.
Schedule a discovery call: Talk to an expert for a direct conversation.
Email: Send us a note with your hiring challenge and timeline. We'll respond within 24 hours.
LinkedIn: Connect with our team directly for a low-friction intro.
