Rohan KesarwadeChief Operating Officer

Personal correspondence

A highway is judged in its worst hour

Chief Operating Officer India

I run toll highways for the hour when something goes wrong, not for the average day the traffic report describes.

In August 1999, three weeks after the monsoon arrived, I stood on a state highway in Haryana and watched water pond against an embankment I had helped build. The culvert beneath it was sound and placed where the drawing said. The field drains around it had been changed by farmers after the survey, and nobody had walked the catchment again. I was a graduate site engineer with Doabkhand Road Builders, a year out of Doabgarh Institute of Engineering and Technology. My supervisor sent me back with a measuring tape and a village map, and I learnt that a road is a negotiation with water, traffic and neighbours that the drawing only begins.

A highway is judged in its worst hour: a crash after midnight, a culvert overtopping in August, a queue on a festival weekend. Toll users pay for that hour as well as the quiet ones. I would rather explain an expensive repair or a lower distribution to directors than explain why we chose the cheaper risk on a road people cannot avoid.

Toll collections across six concessions
₹1,236 Cr
Year ended March 2026; trust revenue, not the operating company's
Route length operated
618 km
Haryana, Punjab, western Uttar Pradesh and Rajasthan
Toll plazas
11
136 lanes; over 98 per cent of transactions by FASTag

I run toll corridors so that the reported crash, the August flood and the road handed back at concession end all meet the standard the toll implies.

I am chief operating officer of Sindhuravi Road Operations, the project manager for a road trust that owns six tolled national-highway concessions in north India. Together they cover 618 route kilometres and 11 toll plazas across Haryana, Punjab, western Uttar Pradesh and Rajasthan, and they collected ₹1,236 crore of tolls in the year ended March 2026. I lead 540 of our 610 employees through six direct reports and supervise about 1,900 contracted staff in toll lanes, route patrol, ambulances and maintenance gangs. Investment decisions, distributions and financing sit with the trust's investment manager; I am responsible for how the roads perform.

My first job, in 1998, was as a site engineer for a road contractor in Haryana. I then supervised highway maintenance for a consultancy, ran toll plazas for a fee-collection contractor and managed a single concession end to end before joining Sindhuravi in 2016. That sequence matters to how I work. I have counted cash in a booth at two in the morning, argued with an independent engineer about a pothole and sat with a family after a fatal crash on a road I was paid to maintain.

The three decisions on this site each cost money that a lighter answer would have saved. We kept a flood-damaged carriageway closed for three weeks to rebuild it properly. We closed two median openings that villages relied on, after a run of deaths. And we paid for a full pavement overlay on a concession that ends in March 2027, a year when the trust gains little toll income to recover it. I do not present any of them as free of disagreement.

A flood repair done once

After the July 2023 monsoon scoured 340 metres of a bridge approach, we ran contraflow for 22 days and rebuilt with a relief culvert at ₹7.4 crore, accepting about ₹3.6 crore of lower toll collections.

Fewer deaths on a nine-kilometre stretch

Closing two median openings, adding a service-road link and a midpoint ambulance post preceded a fall from eleven deaths in 2022 to four in 2024. A new bypass also changed traffic, so I claim a contribution, not the whole result.

A road handed back in condition

The final overlay on the Rajasthan concession cost ₹51.6 crore against a ₹19 crore patching alternative. A survey vehicle found 96 per cent of lane kilometres within the acceptance value before rectification of the rest.

Current focus

I am preparing the March 2027 transfer of our Rajasthan concession: the joint inspection with the concession's engineer, the records and toll-system data the authority will need, and fair arrangements for the 212 people who work on that corridor.

Conversations I welcome

I am open to a first independent directorship at a listed or large unlisted company that operates physical assets for the public, with 22 days a year available, subject to my employer's consent and a careful review of relationships.

The leadership record

Trusted with consequential decisions.

In the boardroom

  • Sindhuravi Haryana Tollway Private LimitedNon-independent nominee director · 2022–present
  • Sindhuravi Tharpath Tollway Private LimitedNon-independent nominee director · 2022–present

Formation

  • Bachelor of engineering (civil)Doabgarh Institute of Engineering and Technology · 1997
  • Post-graduate diploma in management (part-time)Shivalikpur School of Management · 2009
Rohan puts the overnight incident log in front of our quarterly review before the collection figures. The investment manager's directors now read it first, because it usually explains the figures that follow.
Gurmeet BhandoliyaManaging director, Sindhuravi Road Operations
The full record ↗

Contact

I am open to a first independent directorship at a listed or large unlisted company that operates physical assets for the public, with 22 days a year available, subject to my employer's consent and a careful review of relationships.

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