Learning what the screen had not yet explained

I began in application support with users who could describe what they had tried but not necessarily what the system had done. A screen could stop responding after the underlying action had succeeded. The person at the counter still needed an answer, and a confident instruction to try again could create a second problem. That early experience made me interested in the space between a technical event and the user's understanding of it. It also taught me that an application is part of a service carried by people, not a complete explanation of that service.

After completing computer-science studies in 1994, I joined Zerqelvi Application Services as a support analyst. I worked in a five-person team investigating reported behaviour and preparing evidence for senior engineers. I did not approve client deployments or hold spending authority. The work required me to reproduce a problem carefully and to distinguish what had been observed from what I inferred. A useful report could say that the response was missing without claiming that the transaction had failed. I learned to respect that difference even when the user understandably wanted a quick, definite answer.

I became a support supervisor in 2000, leading six colleagues within ₹72 lakh annual delivery expense. Clients retained their commercial policies and deployment approvals. My responsibility was to make our investigation and handover dependable enough for them to act. I found that a technically correct explanation could still be unusable if it did not say what the front-line colleague should do next. Supervising the team also made me more conscious of the pressure created by a senior person's preferred diagnosis. I asked colleagues to preserve the observed sequence before adopting an explanation that merely fitted the last incident.

Tervqani appointed me applications manager in 2007. Ten colleagues worked within ₹1.6 crore annual application expense. Moving inside a retailer let me follow the result after a change was released. A support ticket might close while a shop still carried extra reconciliation work, and a new feature could create a customer expectation beyond its tested behaviour. I began involving operating colleagues earlier in acceptance. They could explain which uncertain states were tolerable, which needed a clear escalation and which would leave the customer carrying the cost of our incomplete design.

As head of systems from 2014, I led seventeen colleagues through two managers within ₹2.8 crore annual operating expense. The order-retry rehearsal occurred during this appointment. I had accepted a test account weighted towards successful completion and needed to own the omission when a deliberately lost response produced duplicate order records. Holding the release was uncomfortable because the planned date had become a shared expectation. The repair required engineers, finance and operations to agree the meaning of one order and the handling of an unresolved result. I learned to make the uncertain state part of the investment conversation rather than a problem discovered only after launch. I also asked the team to retain the objection that changed the plan, so later reviews could understand why we accepted the delay.

I became CIO in 2021. Today the technology function has twenty-four colleagues through three leaders, with operating and change authority recorded separately. The business has 244 employees and ₹4.7 crore operating profit for FY 2025–26. Founders hold 65% and employee shareholders 35%; I own no shares. I report to CEO Mira Delqeri and work alongside COO Rohit Veqnashi. My presentations to directors concern service dependence and investment choices, not membership of the statutory board. Before those discussions I ask the operating owner to explain the consequence of a technical limitation, so the recommendation carries the business responsibility as well as the engineering account.

The keyboard-access and device-support programmes widened my view of continuing service ownership. A customer should not need the same input method as the person who approved a demonstration. A shop device's physical usefulness should not make its support deadline disappear. Both programmes retained incomplete work and required cooperation outside technology. I remain interested in CIO responsibility that allows those constraints to be discussed before they become a crisis. A future outside contribution would require further preparation and a clear boundary: I could help directors examine a technology commitment without becoming another route for managing the receiving company's engineers.

Open to Board appointments · Executive opportunities

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