AVP – Client Services, Gurgaon

Domain: Hospitality/Airlines/Travel/Tourism

Experience: 20 - 25 Years

Salary: INR 7000000 - 8000000

Experienced and dynamic Director of Professional Services to lead our growing Professional Services team.

Must-Haves:

• Bachelor’s degree in Business, Information Technology, or a related field (or equivalent experience).

• 20+ years of Total Work Experience

• 8+ years of experience in professional services, with at least 10 yearsin a leadership position.

• Proven track record in leading SaaS implementations and customer successinitiatives.

• Experience working with cross-functional teams(sales, product, engineering) in a fast-paced SaaS environment.

• PMP, ITIL, or other relevant certifications are a plus.

• Strong understanding of SaaS business models and subscription-based services.

Interview Rounds: 7 to 8 rounds with 1 F2F round

Profile Alignment

• Function: Professional Services / Implementation / Client Delivery

• Reporting scope: Likely leads Directors/Senior Managers (layered team), not first-line ICs

• Experience bar: 20+ years total experience; 8+ years in professional services; 10+ years in a leadership role

This is the person who runs the "getting clients live and successful" function at a large SaaS company for event/meeting management software. Think of it this way: Sales sells the software, but once the client signs, someone has to actually get them set up, trained, and using it well so they don't churn. That's Professional Services, and this person leads that whole team.

In practice, they own three things:

1. A team of people (project managers, implementation consultants, trainers) — hiring them, coaching them, setting their targets

2. A P&L-ish budget — services isn't free to deliver, so this person has to keep it profitable while keeping clients happy

3. The client relationship during and after rollout — when a big client implementation is going sideways, this person is the escalation point

It's a hybrid of operations leadership + client-facing leadership + financial ownership, not a hands-on technical implementer. They don't code or configure the software themselves — they run the org that does.

What kind of person actually fits this

• Comes from SaaS/enterprise software, ideally where the product needs real implementation effort (not simple self-serve tools) — think HR tech, CRM, ERP, martech, event tech, hospitality tech

• Has led Professional Services / Implementation / Customer Onboarding teams, not just Customer Success (CS is often relationship/retention-only; PS is delivery-heavy with budgets and timelines)

• Has genuinely managed P&L or a services budget, not just a headcount budget

• Comfortable being the escalation point for angry enterprise clients — so needs some scar tissue from high-stakes client situations

• 20+ years total experience, 10+ in leadership is a senior ask — this is a Director/Senior Director-level SaaS leader, likely mid-to-late 40s in profile terms, not someone freshly promoted into people leadership

Red Flags — Screen Out

• Pure Customer Success/Account Management background with no delivery or budget ownership

• Individual-contributor project/program managers without direct people leadership

• Career built entirely in on-prem/legacy software implementation, no cloud/SaaS exposure

• Frequent short tenures (<18 months) at senior leadership levels without clear rationale

• Title inflation risk: "AVP"/"Director" at a small company with a flat structure and no real span of control

Notes

• Relevant titles: AVP/Director/Senior Director/VP – Professional Services; Director – Implementation/Onboarding; Head of Customer Delivery/Client Services.

• Confirm with candidates upfront: number of direct/indirect reports, and whether they built or inherited the team.

• Candidates to quantify their services budget/P&L size in the initial screen — this is the single fastest disqualifier/qualifier.

• Location: Gurgaon-based or willing to relocate/commute; confirm client's stance on remote/hybrid before filtering out strong non-NCR candidates.

Relevant Companies

Tier 1 — Direct/Adjacent Competitors (Event, Meetings, Hospitality Tech)

• Certain Inc. · Bizzabo · RainFocus · Splash · Eventbrite

• Oracle Hospitality (OPERA) · Agilysys · Shiji Group · IDeaS Revenue Solutions

• Amadeus · Sabre

Tier 2 — Large Enterprise SaaS, Mature PS/Implementation Orgs in India

• Salesforce · ServiceNow · Workday · SAP / SAP Concur (Concur = closest domain adjacency)

• Oracle (Fusion Cloud, NetSuite) · Adobe Experience Cloud · Genesys · Zendesk

• Freshworks · Zoho (large scale, though culturally distinct — less "enterprise PS" structure)

Tier 3 — India-Origin/Global Product Companies, Strong Delivery Functions

• Darwinbox · Icertis · Chargebee · Whatfix (sells implementation/adoption tooling) · MoEngage · Innovaccer

Tier 4 — Broader Net (Global CRM/HR/Fintech SaaS with India GCCs)

• HubSpot · Atlassian · Snowflake · UiPath (RPA — maps to "AI/ML/RPA" nice-to-have in JD) · Amex GBT