Director - Procurement

Job Title: Director – Procurement, India
Location: Madurai/Bangalore

Role Purpose:

To lead procurement across India and deliver sustainable business value through cost leadership, supply resilience, cash improvement, responsible sourcing, and strong governance. The role supports direct materials, indirect services, factory operations, green energy, and supplier compliance, while building procurement capability aligned with Coats’ growth, audit, digital, and sustainability priorities.

Principal Accountabilities:

Strategic Procurement Leadership

• Define and execute India procurement strategy aligned with business growth, profitability, cash delivery, sustainability, risk management, and global procurement priorities.
• Lead procurement across direct materials, indirect services, factory operations, green energy, supplier governance, and business-critical sourcing.
• Build a balanced imported and domestic sourcing model to improve cost competitiveness, supply resilience, lead time, supply continuity, and business agility.
• Translate business priorities into category plans, sourcing actions, savings delivery, cash initiatives, supplier development plans, and sustainability roadmaps.
• Partner with global category teams and business leaders to align local sourcing priorities with global strategy and enterprise value creation.

Category Strategy and Sourcing Excellence

• Lead category strategy across direct materials, indirect spend, factory services, energy, MRO, labour contracts, utilities, logistics, and capital-related spend.
• Manage sourcing for key materials including fibre, filament, dyes and chemicals, packing materials, technical textile inputs, and footwear component materials.
• Drive structured sourcing through market intelligence, supplier identification, RFQ/RFP, negotiation, contracting, onboarding, and performance governance.
• Deliver supplier substitution, localization, dual sourcing, value engineering, and alternate material initiatives to improve resilience and competitiveness.
• Build sourcing pipelines for critical and high-risk categories to reduce dependency and support uninterrupted factory operations.

Commercial Value Creation and Cash Delivery

• Deliver procurement savings, cost avoidance, inflation mitigation, productivity, and value creation across direct and indirect spend.
• Improve profitability through disciplined buying, price governance, cost modelling, market benchmarking, contract optimization, and proactive negotiations.
• Support Free Cash Flow and DPO improvement through payment term optimization, supplier engagement, working capital initiatives, and commercial levers.
• Lead strategic negotiations for long-term agreements, imported and domestic supply contracts, energy contracts, and critical service contracts.
• Track procurement value through strong governance on savings, cash, risk reduction, compliance, sustainability, and supplier performance.

Supplier Strategy, Risk and Resilience

• Build and manage a resilient supplier ecosystem across imported and domestic supply markets.
• Segment suppliers by spend, risk, strategic importance, compliance, sustainability maturity, innovation potential, and business criticality.
• Lead strategic supplier relationship management to improve cost, quality, service, innovation, sustainability, compliance, and continuity.
• Scout, qualify, and develop new suppliers to reduce dependency, improve competitiveness, and support new business requirements.
• Use market intelligence to anticipate supply risks, raw material volatility, capacity constraints, regulatory changes, and price movements.

Sustainability and Responsible Sourcing

• Lead procurement’s contribution to Coats’ sustainability agenda through responsible sourcing, sustainable materials, emissions reduction, supplier compliance, and renewable energy sourcing.
• Develop and execute the roadmap for transitioning to recycled, bio-based, certified, lower-impact, and responsibly sourced materials where viable.
• Lead green power and renewable energy sourcing through long-term commercial contracts aligned with business energy strategy.
• Embed sustainability criteria into supplier selection, contracting, performance reviews, supplier development, and category strategies.
• Partner with Sustainability, Manufacturing, Quality, Product Development, and Commercial teams to deliver customer, regulatory, and group sustainability expectations.

Governance, Compliance and Audit Readiness

• Provide leadership oversight for supplier governance, supplier code compliance, ethical sourcing standards, and procurement controls.
• Lead supplier code audit programs with third-party audit partners, ensuring audit planning, execution, corrective action closure, and escalation.
• Ensure procurement compliance with Coats policies, Delegation of Authority, local laws, EHS requirements, and group governance standards.
• Maintain audit readiness for group audits, internal audits, supplier audits, external reviews, and customer compliance requirements.
• Strengthen controls covering supplier onboarding, due diligence, contract approvals, purchase governance, documentation, and policy compliance.
• Build a culture of integrity, transparency, accountability, and zero tolerance for unethical procurement practices.

Indirect Procurement Support

• Ensure reliable, cost-effective, and compliant procurement support for factory operations covering materials, services, utilities, energy, spares, consumables, and operating inputs.
• Partner with Manufacturing, Supply Chain, Planning, Engineering, Quality, Finance, HR, Legal, IT, and Administration teams to support production continuity.
• Lead indirect procurement for labour contracts, MRO, engineering services, professional services, facility services, logistics, utilities, and enabling categories.
• Strengthen governance over labour and service contracts, ensuring statutory compliance, safety, commercial discipline, supplier code adherence, and service reliability.
• Improve MRO sourcing through supplier rationalization, rate contracts, technical standardization, stock optimization, and critical spare availability.

Digital Procurement, Analytics and AI Enablement

• Build procurement analytics capability to improve spend visibility, supplier performance, savings governance, risk monitoring, contract visibility, and decision quality.
• Lead the digital procurement roadmap, including automation, dashboards, AI-enabled tools, self-service reporting, and productivity improvement.
• Use analytics to identify savings opportunities, supplier consolidation, payment term improvements, tail-spend reduction, compliance gaps, and risk exposure.
• Champion AI use cases in sourcing, supplier discovery, contract review, risk sensing, spend classification, market intelligence, and reporting.
• Partner with IT, Finance, Global Procurement, and business teams to implement scalable tools and improve data-led decision-making.

Stakeholder Partnership and Leadership

• Act as a trusted advisor to business leadership by providing procurement insights, market intelligence, commercial judgement, supplier risk views, and sourcing recommendations.
• Partner with stakeholders to deliver growth, margin protection, working capital improvement, service, compliance, sustainability, innovation, and operational resilience.
• Represent procurement in business reviews, S&OP discussions, budget planning, cash reviews, supplier escalations, risk forums, and transformation programs.
• Lead, coach, and develop a high-performing procurement team with strong commercial, technical, analytical, digital, sustainability, and stakeholder management capabilities.
• Build a culture of accountability, collaboration, continuous improvement, ethical conduct, business ownership, and measurable value delivery.

Education, Qualifications and Experience:

• Bachelor’s degree in supply chain management, Engineering, Business Administration, Economics, Finance, or a related field.

• Minimum 15 years of progressive experience in procurement or supply chain, including at least 7-8 years in people leadership roles and 3–5 years in a strategic leadership position.
• Proven success in managing procurement functions within large-scale manufacturing or industrial operations.
• Demonstrated expertise in delivering high-value, complex CAPEX projects.

• Skilled in strategic sourcing, commercial negotiations, and stakeholder management.
• Excellent communication, influence, and interpersonal skills.

• In-depth understanding of supplier markets and global sourcing dynamics.

• Strong leadership capability with a track record of building and inspiring high-performing, diverse teams.

Desirable:

• Master’s degree in business administration (MBA), Supply Chain Management, Procurement, or a related field.
• Experience managing procurement across multiple manufacturing sites within India.
• Exposure to global procurement networks, regional sourcing teams, or expatriate assignments.
• Experience in digital procurement and transformation and procurement analytics tools.

At Coats Group, we are committed to innovation, excellence, and fostering a diverse and collaborative environment where every team member can thrive. If you are passionate about making an impact in the textile industry and eager to join a global leader with a rich heritage and a forward-thinking approach, we invite you to take the next step in your career with us.