How we collect, use, share and protect personal data — written to be read, not to be survived. This notice covers our obligations under India's Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023 and, where it applies, the EU and UK GDPR.
Contango Search Private Limited ("Contango Search", "we", "us") is a retained executive search firm placing commercial leadership across the energy industry. We are the Data Fiduciary under the Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023 ("DPDP Act") and the data controller under the EU and UK General Data Protection Regulation ("GDPR") in respect of the personal data described here.
| Registered office | [FARIDABAD ADDRESS], Haryana, India — [PIN] |
|---|---|
| CIN | [CIN] |
| Contact for all data protection matters | GY@contangosearch.com · +91 9899 660 760 |
We collect this from you directly, and — as is inherent to executive search — from publicly available professional sources such as LinkedIn, company websites, industry press and public registries, and occasionally from referrals made by people in our network. Where we have identified you through research rather than an application, we will tell you so at first contact.
This website does not use advertising or analytics cookies. Our hosting provider records standard server logs, including IP address and browser type, for security and reliability purposes. See section 10.
We do not seek sensitive personal data. Please do not send us information about your health, religion, caste, sexual orientation, political views, biometric or financial account details. If a client's process legitimately requires such information, we will ask you separately and explain why.
We do not sell personal data. We do not share candidate databases with other recruiters. We do not use your personal data to train artificial intelligence models.
Under the DPDP Act, we process personal data on the basis of your consent, given at the point you contact us or when we first approach you, and for certain limited legitimate uses permitted by the Act.
Where the GDPR applies — broadly, if you are in the EU or UK — we rely on:
| Purpose | Lawful basis |
|---|---|
| Assessing you for a specific role you have expressed interest in | Legitimate interests, and steps taken at your request prior to entering a contract |
| Approaching you about a role based on public professional information | Legitimate interests — the ordinary conduct of executive search, balanced against your rights |
| Retaining your details for future opportunities | Consent |
| Presenting you to a client | Consent |
| Sending you insights or market updates | Consent |
| Meeting tax, accounting and legal obligations | Legal obligation |
Where we rely on consent, you may withdraw it at any time. Withdrawal does not affect the lawfulness of anything we did before you withdrew it.
| Category | Retention period |
|---|---|
| Candidate data where you have consented to future consideration | 24 months from our last meaningful contact, then deleted or re-consented |
| Candidate data for a specific assignment only | 12 months from the close of that assignment |
| Data relating to a completed placement | 7 years, to meet contractual, tax and limitation requirements |
| Client contact and assignment records | 7 years from the end of the engagement |
| Website server logs | As retained by our hosting provider, typically under 30 days |
We review retained candidate records periodically and delete what we no longer need.
We keep personal data on access-controlled, password-protected and encrypted systems provided by established enterprise vendors, with multi-factor authentication enabled. Access is limited to those who need it — in practice, for most records, the Managing Partner alone. We do not keep candidate CVs on portable storage devices or personal email accounts.
If a personal data breach occurs, we will notify the Data Protection Board of India and affected individuals as required under the DPDP Act, and the relevant supervisory authority within 72 hours where the GDPR applies.
You have the right to:
If the GDPR applies to you, you additionally have the right to restrict processing, to object to processing carried out on the basis of legitimate interests, to data portability, and to lodge a complaint with your national supervisory authority — in the UK, the Information Commissioner's Office.
To exercise any of these, email GY@contangosearch.com. We will respond within 30 days, and in any event within the timeframes required by law. We may ask you to verify your identity first.
If you are unhappy with how we have handled your personal data, please contact our grievance contact in the first instance:
| Grievance contact | Gaurav Yadav, Founder & Managing Partner |
|---|---|
| GY@contangosearch.com | |
| Response time | We aim to respond within 30 days, and will resolve grievances within 90 days as required under the DPDP Rules |
If you remain dissatisfied, you may complain to the Data Protection Board of India, or — where the GDPR applies — to your national data protection supervisory authority.
This website sets no advertising, analytics or tracking cookies, and does not embed third-party trackers. We load typefaces from Google Fonts, which means your browser makes a request to Google's servers; no cookie is set by us in doing so. Our hosting provider keeps short-lived server logs containing IP addresses for security and to keep the site running. Because we set no non-essential cookies, no cookie consent banner is required.
We will update this notice as our practices develop — in particular when we adopt an applicant tracking system. The version number and date at the top will change, and material changes affecting people whose data we hold will be notified by email.
This notice describes our actual practice. If anything here is unclear, or if you would like to know exactly what we hold about you, write to GY@contangosearch.com and you will get a straight answer from a person.