The customer relationship a depot could not transfer

The map in my 2019 acquisition paper was accurate. It showed two depots close to customer assignments that our company wanted to serve. The conclusion I allowed it to support was weaker: buying the depots would bring the work with them. Three anchor customers had not agreed to transfer their assignments, and the assets themselves could not supply that consent. I had mistaken a useful operating location for continuity of a commercial relationship.

I grew up in Lucknow and completed a Bachelor of Arts in Economics at the fictional Navrendu College of Economics in May 1995. I joined Pelnarvi Commercial Research the following month as one of eight assistants. We assembled client and sector records for senior researchers. I did not own investment recommendations or a discretionary budget. A large part of the work was discovering that a familiar label could refer to different economic activities in two companies that appeared comparable.

In April 2002 I became a commercial analyst leading twelve colleagues within ₹1.6 crore annual practice expense. Our clients wanted recommendations that connected market opportunity to the business they could operate. I learned to distinguish an enterprise’s addressable customers from customers who had chosen its service. That distinction was intellectually familiar long before I failed to preserve it in my own depot recommendation. The later error cannot be excused as something an early-career analyst had never been taught.

I joined Dharvani Network Services in April 2010 to lead planning with eighteen colleagues and ₹3.4 crore annual function expense. The company’s field work brought the practical cost of availability into strategic discussions. A maintenance contract could demand readiness even when completed visits were infrequent. Gurleen’s teams needed travel, skills and standby arrangements that a simple count of assignments did not describe. Planning became more useful when I let those requirements change the commercial proposition rather than add them as delivery detail after the market argument was complete.

I became strategy director in April 2016, leading twenty-two colleagues within ₹5.2 crore annual function expense. The depot proposal followed three years later. I favoured an ₹8.4 crore acquisition because the facilities appeared to shorten our route into a regional service market. During ten weeks of diligence, costing ₹36 lakh, the customer-transfer assumption could not be established. Satish asked whether the board was buying an operating capability or a customer relationship, and I could not support the second claim. I withdrew my recommendation before purchase commitment. There is no acquired business or realised avoided-loss figure in that story.

I became CSO in April 2021. The appointment widened my work to the continuing choice of markets, service propositions and partnerships. Twenty-seven colleagues now work through four heads within ₹7.1 crore annual function expense, including ₹1.3 crore research. Enterprise investments remain decisions for Satish and the authorised board. Gurleen retains field delivery. My responsibility is to make the recommendation explain the obligations and alternatives well enough for those decisions to be taken consciously.

In 2023 we completed a twelve-month expansion trial across five districts at a cost of ₹73 lakh. The proposed renewal terms in three districts did not cover the standby and travel commitment our service would require. We renewed two arrangements and declined those three proposed renewals after completing existing obligations. That was a choice about the terms offered, not a claim that the districts could never support a viable service. In 2025 I recommended a non-exclusive equipment-partner proposition with a ₹3.1 crore annual prospect over a ₹4.8 crore exclusive offer. The restriction would have narrowed our ability to support customers’ mixed equipment. Both figures described proposed opportunity, not earned income.

I hold no statutory directorship. My small personal holding,0.12%, is included in the employee vehicle’s 26%. A first outside contribution would require more governance preparation and an appointment-specific review. I would bring the experience of correcting a recommendation whose geography was convincing but whose customer continuity was unproven, and of accepting a smaller proposition when the larger one quietly changed the service we could provide. The next recommendation must still earn its conclusion; having corrected one attractive assumption does not make my later judgement immune to another equally persuasive shortcut.

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