From comparing markets to owning a recommendation

Mandate

Recommend service growth with customer choices, coverage obligations and partner restrictions visible

Outcomes

• Renewed two of five trial district arrangements after examining availability terms
• Recommended a non-exclusive equipment proposition to preserve mixed-fleet service
• Kept prospective opportunity separate from signed contracts and earned revenue

Decisions in context

Four heads lead twenty-seven colleagues across planning, research and partnerships. The ₹1.3 crore research allocation sits inside our ₹7.1 crore function expense. Satish and the authorised board retain investment decisions, and Gurleen owns field delivery. The five-district trial required the renewal recommendation to recognise standby and travel before treating an expanded footprint as a permanent capability. The equipment proposal required us to price the loss of service freedom alongside prospective income. I hold no statutory appointment; my personal 0.12% interest is part of the employee vehicle. A useful recommendation should let decision-makers see the attractive part of the option we decline as well as the reason we decline it. The role has made me more willing to accept a smaller immediate proposition when the larger version depends on customer choices or operating restrictions the enterprise has not properly examined.

Reason for the move

Current CSO role; considering a prepared first non-executive contribution

Concurrent appointment

Strategy employment and executive presentations without statutory director status

Mandate

Translate expansion proposals into the capabilities and customer relationships actually available

Outcomes

• Withdrew my ₹8.4 crore depot acquisition recommendation before purchase commitment
• Separated asset proximity from customer agreement to transfer work
• Recorded ₹36 lakh diligence as incurred expense without inventing avoided losses

Decisions in context

The director appointment placed twenty-two colleagues and ₹5.2 crore annual function expense within my strategy remit. In 2019 I allowed a convincing depot-location argument to imply customer continuity that had not been agreed. Three anchor customers retained their choice over assignments, and buying the facilities would not make that choice ours. Ten weeks of diligence cost ₹36 lakh before I withdrew the recommendation. The proposed ₹8.4 crore purchase never became a commitment. I retained my approval mistake in the account because the facilities were genuinely useful; their usefulness made the unsupported commercial inference easier to overlook. Promotion to CSO carried that lesson into regional renewal and partner decisions. Each required the recommendation to identify what the enterprise could choose and what still depended on customers, operating capability or the terms offered by another party.

Reason for the move

Promoted to CSO with continuing enterprise portfolio and partnership responsibility

Concurrent appointment

Strategy employment and executive presentations without statutory director status

Mandate

Connect market opportunity with the availability and skills a field service must supply

Outcomes

• Brought travel and standby assumptions into planning discussions
• Distinguished potential service demand from agreed customer work
• Built continuing review between commercial and field-service colleagues

Decisions in context

I moved from research into an enterprise that had to deliver the proposition its planning described. Eighteen colleagues worked within a ₹3.4 crore planning expense allocation. Field maintenance made the cost of readiness visible even when a period contained relatively few completed visits. Gurleen’s operating account challenged the assumption that an attractive map of demand was enough to define a service. I learned to ask which skills, travel arrangements and standby commitments would sit behind the offer. That knowledge did not prevent my later depot error, but it explains why the error was mine to correct rather than a missing operational lesson someone else should have supplied. The strategy-director role widened the same responsibility to investments, where a useful asset could appear to solve a market-entry problem before customer continuity had actually been established.

Reason for the move

Promoted to strategy director across expansion and proposed transactions

Concurrent appointment

Strategy employment and executive presentations without statutory director status

Mandate

Distinguish a market a client could address from a relationship it had actually secured

Outcomes

• Separated customer potential from agreed commercial participation
• Compared businesses through the activity their revenue represented
• Prepared alternatives for clients without claiming their approval authority

Decisions in context

The analyst role combined twelve colleagues with ₹1.6 crore annual practice expense. Clients often wanted an answer about the business they could build, while the available data described the market around it. I learned to preserve the difference between potential customers and customers who had chosen the enterprise. We could examine a proposition and explain conditions, but clients retained investment approval and responsibility for execution. Joining Dharvani gave me a continuing relationship with those consequences after the research paper was finished. It also removed the comfort of treating every unanswered operating question as a client issue. The later depot recommendation revealed how a distinction understood in research could still disappear when I became invested in a particular strategic answer. My subsequent work has been to keep that customer choice explicit even when it makes an otherwise attractive recommendation harder to support.

Reason for the move

Joined a telecom-services enterprise to own planning through delivery

Concurrent appointment

Strategy employment and executive presentations without statutory director status

Mandate

Assemble comparable business records and identify what each figure actually describes

Outcomes

• Learned to distinguish an enterprise’s activity from the surrounding market
• Supported senior researchers without taking ownership of client recommendations
• Developed a habit of tracing attractive comparisons back to their commercial meaning

Decisions in context

I joined after completing economics studies in May 1995. Our eight-person assistant group assembled records and checked the basis of comparisons for senior researchers. I held no management or investment authority. A familiar business label could conceal different activities, and a large number could describe the market around an enterprise rather than work it had secured. The discipline was to make those differences visible before a senior colleague used the comparison in a recommendation. Later responsibility made the same discipline more difficult because I could become attached to the answer I wanted the evidence to support. The depot proposal was a reminder that experience does not remove that temptation. The early role gave me a foundation in checking meaning; the later career required me to apply it to my own recommendations rather than only to other people’s records.

Reason for the move

Promoted into commercial analysis and later team leadership

Concurrent appointment

Strategy employment and executive presentations without statutory director status