Learning to question the purpose behind a total

I began my career in Jodhpur after completing a Bachelor of Commerce at Merqathi Commerce College in May 1996. My first role at Orqeshi Industrial Accounts involved preparing account schedules for industrial clients. I had no authority to approve a client's expenditure or decide how its directors should use the results. The work taught me to ask what a total contained before trying to explain why it had changed. A correct addition could still combine items that belonged to different periods or answered different questions.

In 2002 I became a cost accounts supervisor, coordinating five colleagues and reviewing client schedules before they reached the engagement manager. The role exposed me to manufacturing assumptions that were less visible in the ledger. A unit cost depended on the production basis used to distribute expense. A product margin depended on which costs were included and how much of that product was actually sold. I learned to ask the operating colleague who supplied a volume estimate how it had been formed, rather than treat a populated cell as a settled fact.

I joined Tevlaqni Transit Packaging as plant finance manager in April 2009. It was my first role inside the business whose decisions I was helping explain. Six finance colleagues supported a plant making pallets and crates for industrial customers. Timber, labour, transport and product configuration influenced the commercial discussion, while engineering and quality retained technical responsibilities. My task was to make the financial consequences intelligible without claiming that an accounts view could determine whether a packing structure was suitable for a particular use.

That period changed how I worked with operations. A supervisor's account of an awkward production run could explain a financial movement better than another summary column. I began attending planning discussions before the month-end result was complete. That gave finance a chance to identify an assumption while it could still be revised. It also exposed me to the pressure behind optimistic volumes and urgent quotations. The answer was not to dismiss the operating plan, but to show what would happen if the plan changed.

Promotion to financial controller in April 2016 widened my responsibility to enterprise reporting, budgeting and credit analysis. I led nine colleagues and worked with commercial managers whose customers had separate accounts but sometimes belonged to the same wider group. The account structure served billing and collection needs. It did not necessarily describe the company's economic dependence. I began to distinguish the view needed for an individual contract from the view needed for management to understand common exposure.

I became CFO in April 2021 and now lead twelve finance colleagues through two heads. The role carries a ₹2.8 crore annual finance expense budget and responsibility for financial review across a company with ₹92 crore FY 2025–26 revenue. I report to CEO Prakash Dervqethi. The founding family owns seventy per cent and employee shareholders thirty per cent; I hold no shares. I present to the board when invited but have no statutory appointment. Those distinctions matter when describing both my authority and the experience I could bring to another organisation.

One of my most instructive corrections concerned a contribution summary our own function had approved. Equal averaging of two product rates produced thirty-five per cent when their unequal sales weights produced twenty-three per cent. I could not ask commercial colleagues to trust finance while treating the error as an analyst's isolated mistake. I withdrew the summary, explained the consequence and changed the review so that the rupee contributions and sales basis accompanied the percentage. The correction became part of my leadership account because it shows how I respond when the challenge belongs inside finance.

My work since then has focused on making financial reasoning easier to examine. A lower fixed cost per unit is not automatically a cash saving. A largest customer account is not automatically the largest related exposure. Each statement needs a defined purpose, period and boundary. I want colleagues to question those choices before a recommendation becomes difficult to revisit. For a future board contribution, I would bring that habit alongside further governance preparation and an explicit account of where my experience stops. I am a manufacturing finance executive, not a technical product assessor or an already appointed independent director.

Open to Board appointments · Executive opportunities

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