A leading international freight forwarding company is seeking an experienced and well-connected Business Development Leader to build India- and China-origin freight business from the ground up.

This is a hands-on, individual-contributor role. Ideal candidate must be comfortable with direct market development, prospecting, agent follow-ups, rate coordination, reporting and day-to-day commercial groundwork.

This is not a senior people-management position, but a market-building role designed to create profitable business and support a future independent India presence.

Priority Trade Lanes

Core: India–China, China–India, India–Middle East, China–Middle East, China–US, India–US, India–Canada and China–Canada.

Emerging: India–UK and India–Thailand.

Key Responsibilities

- Build profitable export, import and cross-trade business across priority and emerging trade lanes.
- Identify and approach shippers, exporters, importers, overseas agents and referral partners.
- Promote India- and China-origin freight business to selected global regions and priority corridors.
- Close contract rates with carriers, co-loaders, agents and customers across air freight, ocean freight and related services.
- Manage buy rates, sell rates, FOB-origin charges, local charges and lane-wise margins to protect profitability.

- Use WCA, local market contacts and origin-based business leads to develop agent and shipper opportunities.
- Work with the existing local operating partner for operational execution while identifying additional local partners where needed.
- Convert shipper and agent relationships into recurring import, export and cross-trade traffic.
- Define and supervise the sales-to-operations workflow from enquiry, quotation and rate confirmation through booking, documentation, execution, invoicing and post-shipment follow-up.
- Ensure every confirmed booking is handed over through a transparent process, with shipment details, rate approvals, documentation, escalation ownership and follow-up responsibilities defined.
- Resolve pricing, service,



documentation, capacity and contractual escalations.
- Maintain daily, weekly and monthly reports covering pipeline, quotations, bookings, shipment status, revenue, gross profit, conversion, lane performance and service issues.
- Support the phased development of a scalable and increasingly independent India business model.

Requirements

- 10–15 years of international freight-forwarding or cross-border logistics experience.
- Strong air freight, ocean freight, export/import and cross-trade knowledge.
- Proven exposure to India–China, China–India, Middle East, US and Canada lanes; India–UK and India–Thailand exposure is advantageous.
- Existing relationships with shippers, exporters, importers, overseas agents, carriers, co-loaders and forwarding networks.
- Strong ability to sell directly to shippers and overseas agents.
- Proven capability in contract-rate negotiation, buy/sell pricing, FOB-origin charges, local charges and lane-wise margin management.
- Strong understanding of India export documentation, origin operations and local market realities.
- Experience with WCA or comparable forwarding networks is strongly preferred.
- Comfortable working independently, starting from zero and handling hands-on business-development groundwork.
- Able to coordinate effectively with overseas leadership, local operating partners and internal operations teams.
- CRM experience, preferably Salesforce or equivalent, is preferred.

KPIs / Performance Metrics

- New shipper, agent and referral accounts secured
- Revenue, shipment-volume and gross-profit growth across priority lanes
- Contract rates and profitable buy/sell margins secured
- Growth in recurring India- and China-origin import, export and cross-trade traffic
- Active overseas-agent partnerships and reciprocal business generated
- Quote-to-booking conversion and lane-wise win rate
- Quality of booking handover and commercial-to-operational workflow
- Daily, weekly and monthly reporting discipline
- Resolution of pricing, service, documentation and operational escalations
- Progress toward a scalable India business model

📌 Business Development Manager (Gurugram)
🏢 Universal Aviation
📍 Gurugram