Executive summary / Personal profile

Systems that hold up between network towers

Chief Technology Officer India

I build intercity coach systems that still tell the truth in a ghat section with no signal and on the busiest night after Diwali.

Open to Board appointments

01 / Leadership approach

A record made in a moving vehicle will sometimes be incomplete. I would rather show that gap to the person relying on the record than hide it behind a confident map or a tidy total. Systems earn trust when the people who live with them have argued about their rules first, and when every number that touches pay, a passenger's seat or a compliance document states how it can be wrong.

02 / Areas of responsibility

Telematics evidence standards
Offline-first crew applications
Seat inventory at festival peaks
Parcel compliance and toll reconciliation
Build, buy and exit terms

Revenue, year ended March 2026: ₹612 Cr; Passenger fares ₹531 crore; parcels ₹81 crore
Coaches in service: 418; 284 owned and 134 attached from owner-operators
Seats sold on the peak day: 41,600; Busiest day after Diwali 2025, all channels, no outage
Trip-hours with location gaps: 2.6%; Down from 17 per cent in 2022

Evidence from practice

Suspending speed-based pay deductions until the tracking data could carry them: When I joined Malvaneer in 2021, its 352 coaches carried tracking units from three different installers.
Holding two berths on each conductor's handheld at a cost to online sales: Roadside boarding matters on our routes. Passengers wait for coaches at highway junctions and small towns without a counter, and in 2023 roadside sales were about seven per cent of passenger revenue.
Buying the e-way bill layer of our parcel system and building only the counter: By 2024 parcels earned Malvaneer ₹62 crore a year, carried in the holds of passenger coaches.

The complete case record ↗

I build coach and parcel systems that stay truthful when the signal drops, the device is doubtful and the festival crowd books at once.

I am chief technology officer of Malvaneer Coachways, a family-promoted intercity coach operator headquartered in Indore. We run 418 sleeper and seater coaches on 146 routes across Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Gujarat, Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh, and we carry parcels in the luggage holds of those same coaches. Revenue for the year ended March 2026 was ₹612 crore, of which parcels contributed ₹81 crore. A private-equity investor has held a minority stake since 2022. I report to the managing director and lead 84 people through five managers. Route planning, driver rostering and safety decisions remain with operations.

My first job, in July 2000, was repairing handheld ticket machines for private bus owners around Indore. A conductor would hand me a machine that had lost a day's sales because its battery failed between two towns. Since then I have written tracking-unit firmware in Pune, built depot software for bus operators, designed delivery handhelds for an express parcel carrier and led engineering at an Ahmedabad freight-matching platform. The constant has been a vehicle that leaves coverage and a record that must still be correct when it returns.

The work I would put before a board is less about new features than about which data can carry a consequence. I suspended pay deductions based on speed alerts until we could trust the devices producing them. I held a small block of berths on each conductor's handheld, knowing it would cost online sales. I bought the e-way bill layer of our parcel system instead of building it. Each decision had a capable colleague arguing the other way, and each is described here with its cost.

Trip records with fewer blind hours

In 2022, 17 per cent of recorded trip-hours had location gaps longer than fifteen minutes. After we replaced 210 units and corrected firmware and wiring on the rest, the figure was 2.6 per cent by March 2023. Speed-based deductions resumed only after that.

Seat conflicts down to eighteen a month

Offline roadside sales once collided with online bookings about 310 times a month. A device-held quota of two berths per coach reduced conflicts to 18 a month, at an estimated ₹2.3 crore of online sales forgone in the first year.

Fewer coaches held at roadside checks

Detentions linked to parcel documents fell from 23 in 2023–24 to three in 2025–26, after the counter system stopped labelling consignments that needed an e-way bill until a valid one was recorded.

A festival peak without an outage

On the busiest day after Diwali 2025 we sold 41,600 seats across every channel with the booking system available throughout, a year after a two-hour slowdown had stranded our agents.

Current focus

I am preparing our passenger and crew records for the Digital Personal Data Protection Act as its rules take effect, and replacing the oldest part of the booking engine, the fare and seat-hold service, before the 2027 wedding season.

Conversations I welcome

I would consider a first independent directorship in logistics, passenger transport or another business whose people work away from reliable networks. I have twenty-four days a year available, subject to my managing director's consent and a review of our vendors, partners and competitors.

The leadership record

Trusted with consequential decisions.

Formation

Bachelor of engineering, electronics and telecommunicationRevakhand Institute of Engineering · 2000

Devika brings me decisions with their costs already worked out, including the ones her own team dislikes. When she asked to hold berths back from online sale I expected a technical argument; she arrived with conductors' complaints and a six-month trial. We have argued often, and I have usually learnt something.

Siddhant RathvekarManaging director, Malvaneer Coachways

The full record ↗

Contact

Board appointments

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