From the culvert to the concession

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.

In 2002 I joined Pathrekha Consulting Engineers to supervise maintenance on state highways. Most of my days were pavement condition surveys and measurement of contractors' work. The lesson that stayed with me was about repetition. A pothole patched in October and reopened in July was usually a drainage failure we had paid for twice. I began asking contractors and clients to record where repairs recurred, and that habit later shaped how I plan maintenance budgets.

I had never counted cash when Chaukhat Toll Management Services hired me in 2006. The firm ran toll plazas under fee-collection contracts, and I eventually managed nine of them. A plaza is the one place on a highway where the user meets a person, often at night, often angry. I dealt with misclassified vehicles, exemption claims, monthly passes for nearby residents, lane staff who needed protection and cash that had to reconcile every shift. I completed a part-time management diploma at Shivalikpur School of Management during those years, mainly to understand the contracts I was operating under.

Ravishal Tollways gave me a whole concession in 2011: 112 kilometres, two plazas, route patrol, ambulances, cranes, routine maintenance and the monthly inspections of the concession's independent engineer. For the first time I was accountable for the road and its revenue together. I learnt to read traffic counts against toll records, to plan periodic renewal years ahead and to treat the incident log as seriously as the collection report.

I joined Sindhuravi Road Operations in 2016, when it was the road-operating subsidiary of Haldhara Constructions. We ran three concessions then and six by 2019, when the sponsor formed Sindhuravi Highways Trust and we became its project manager. The trust changed my audience. Unitholders, a trustee and an investment manager's board now saw operating choices through distributable cash. I had to explain why a drainage programme or a patrol vehicle belonged in the budget, using evidence rather than an engineer's instinct. The FASTag transition in 2021 tested that discipline: lanes, exemptions, blacklisted tags and dispute handling all changed within weeks.

The managing director appointed me chief operating officer in April 2021, when my predecessor retired. I report to him and lead six heads: four corridor heads, a head of tolling systems and revenue assurance, and a head of road safety and incident management. Since 2022 I have been a nominee director of two of the trust's road companies, and I present quarterly to the investment manager's board and its risk committee. I do not decide financing, distributions or the trust's acquisitions.

My working pattern is simple to describe and harder to keep. I read the overnight incident report before the collection figures. I visit each corridor at least monthly, including at night. When I recommend spending that the trust will not recover, I state what we give up and who disagrees. Three of my four corridor heads began as section engineers or plaza managers, and I promote from the field where I can. I ask them to bring bad news early, and I judge them on how their teams respond to an incident rather than on whether one occurred, because on a busy highway some incidents will always happen. The flood repair, the median closures and the final overlay on our Rajasthan road were all decisions where the cheaper option had serious supporters, and where I could have been wrong.

I am now looking for a first independent board role, outside the road companies I serve. I would bring a practical sense of how physical assets fail and how public obligations shape the response, together with a clear view of the limits of an engineer's judgement on finance, law and markets. I expect to learn as much as I contribute.

Open to Board appointments

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