Chief Strategy Officer / India
The opportunity survived as a different proposition
- Strategy employees
- 16
- Three heads; company employment totals 210
- Annual strategy function expense
- ₹3.8 crore
- ₹28 crore proposal portfolio requires separate approval
- Career since June 1992
- 34 years
- Measurement support through technical-services strategy
Decisions & consequences
01Withdrawing the capacity recommendation behind a twenty-four-job opportunity
In 2018 I supported a ₹12 crore laboratory-expansion proposal whose market account included twenty-four prospective jobs. The planning summary allocated forty chamber-hours to each, producing 960 hours. It made the opportunity appear compatible with 3,000 uncommitted chamber-hours in the reviewed period. Laboratory head Suresh Qezvalthi then separated sixteen forty-hour assignments from eight requiring four hundred hours each. The revised workload was 640 plus 3,200, or 3,840 chamber-hours, before setup and other allowances. The initial model had hidden the duration mix behind a single job count.
The development sponsor wanted to retain the investment recommendation while operations refined the schedule. I had already supported the paper, which made it tempting to describe the finding as a later delivery detail. Instead I withdrew the recommendation. The demand evidence had not disappeared, but the service route and timing used to justify the commitment were no longer supported. The twenty-four entries were prospects, not contracted orders, and neither the original nor revised hour count established what the company would actually win.
Management authorised ₹36 lakh and ten weeks for a rebuilt opportunity and capacity account. The revised proposal separated the short and long-duration work, identified additional allowances and retained the unresolved scheduling question before any expansion approval. The ₹12 crore remained a proposal, not expenditure recovered or a saving realised. We did not shorten test durations to fit the commercial model or claim that unused hours at another facility automatically provided an equivalent service. Qualified laboratory owners retained the assessment of methods, staffing and suitable resources.
The outcome was a different basis for the investment discussion, rather than a completed new laboratory. I explained my own part in approving the uniform duration assumption. A simple demand count had allowed me to believe I understood the operating consequence. The correction made the workload and uncertainty visible before the board was asked to commit. I now want the resource occupied by an opportunity to appear beside its commercial appeal, with enough detail to show when a larger pipeline could make an existing service promise harder to fulfil.
Removing favourable-result fees from the proposed growth route
In 2023 a proposed service programme contained twelve prospective contract arrangements. Nine used fixed fees for defined work. Three made a material fee element contingent on a favourable test conclusion. The sponsor argued that customers preferred paying for a useful outcome and that the arrangement could help the company win work against larger competitors. Laboratory colleagues challenged what the company would be selling if its commercial reward depended on the direction of the result rather than the competent performance of the examination.
I recommended that the three outcome-linked arrangements remain outside the proposal submitted for approval. The decision did not imply that the nine fixed-fee arrangements were automatically acceptable in every other respect. Their methods, scope, relationships and terms still required the relevant reviews. Nor did strategy claim to determine a regulatory breach from the wording alone. Qualified laboratory and legal owners assessed the actual arrangements. My responsibility was to state that the proposed incentive was inconsistent with the impartial-service position on which our growth plan depended.
Management approved ₹22 lakh and eight weeks to rebuild the commercial proposition and explain it to prospective counterparties. The three outcome-linked proposals were withdrawn from the programme; the nine work-based proposals continued through their separate review process. They were not described as nine signed contracts or booked revenue. We retained the cost of the redesign and the possibility of losing interested customers, rather than suggest that defending the service position was commercially free. No completed test was alleged to have been manipulated, and no favourable result was invented as evidence of harm.
The result was a narrower and more coherent offer. I wanted the business to earn money in a way that supported the value of its reports, not merely add an impartiality statement to a conflicting commercial incentive. That choice belongs in strategy because the service’s credibility affects which growth routes are worth pursuing. A fee model can change the nature of the proposition even when the equipment, staff and proposed test remain the same. We chose to address that change before treating the programme as a reliable addition to the company’s revenue plan.
Narrowing overseas expansion to the reporting routes customers could consider
A 2025 market-entry paper considered fourteen prospective overseas customers for defined power-equipment testing services. The initial account treated them as a common addressable group. Conversations about their actual acceptance requirements produced a different picture: nine indicated that the proposed reporting route could be considered, while five required a different accepted laboratory route. Those responses were preliminary indications, not orders or a statement about every buyer in any country. They nevertheless changed the basis on which the company could sensibly plan to serve the group.
The expansion sponsor proposed a ₹16 crore owned-facility commitment, arguing that a stronger physical presence would demonstrate seriousness and help resolve acceptance questions later. I did not think location alone answered the five customers’ stated requirements. I recommended postponing that commitment and separating the direct-service proposition from a possible referral route. Technical quality remained essential, but it could not be used as shorthand for recipient acceptance where a different process governed the customer’s use of the report.
Management authorised ₹44 lakh and twelve weeks for further market and qualified acceptance review. The resulting account retained nine prospects for the direct route and five for examination of an appropriately defined external route. No partner appointment, accredited scope or customer approval was invented to close the gap. Contracts, competence, report ownership and any relevant recognition still needed their own assessment before work could proceed. The ₹16 crore was deferred proposed investment, not a cost saving or evidence that the company had abandoned every overseas opportunity.
The decision made the market-entry options more precise. A customer could want the service and still be unable to use the report through the route we initially offered. I wanted that distinction visible before a facility became the preferred answer to a question it did not solve. The review did not prove a later sale, but it prevented preliminary interest from being presented as a uniform expansion case. Strategy’s contribution was to change the route to market in response to the conditions of use, while leaving the remaining technical and commercial decisions with their responsible owners.