Six roles on both sides of outsourced engineering

Mandate

Establish the company's first strategy office and address its dependence on a few vehicle clients and the risk of client insourcing.

Outcomes

• Designed the build-operate-transfer model; first centre of 640 engineers transferred in March 2025
• Reduced mobility revenue from 64 to 52 per cent of the total between 2019-20 and 2025-26
• Proposed and planned the Coimbatore centre, now 1,450 engineers
• Two further build-operate-transfer agreements signed in 2025 and 2026

Decisions in context

The board created this office in April 2019, and I asked that it begin with our exposure to a few vehicle clients rather than with acquisitions. My work has three parts. I prepare the five-year plan with the chief executive and chief financial officer, and present it to the board each February. I keep an account map that estimates which client work is likely to move into captive centres. I also report on strategic risk to the Risk Management Committee twice a year. Business heads keep authority over pricing, staffing and delivery, and I have no profit responsibility in this role. The results are mixed in an instructive way: the build-operate-transfer model has become a product line, while the reduction in vehicle dependence fell short of the board's stated aim. I report both with the same care.

Reason for the move

Current role; seeking one independent directorship alongside it.

Mandate

Grow the company's largest unit while improving its margin and delivery consistency.

Outcomes

• Grew unit revenue from ₹610 crore in 2013-14 to ₹980 crore in 2018-19
• Built an electrification practice from a standing start to 420 engineers
• Raised unit operating margin by about two percentage points over five years
• Documented that two of the five largest clients were building their own Indian centres

Decisions in context

Running the mobility unit gave me profit responsibility for the first time, and with it a clear view of a weakness. The unit grew by about sixty per cent in five years, yet five clients provided nearly three-quarters of its revenue. Two of them opened engineering centres of their own in Bengaluru and Chennai during my tenure, and both told us only after leases were signed. I built an electrification practice, hired battery and power-electronics engineers and improved the unit's margin through better staffing ratios. I also learnt how difficult it is for a business head to argue for less dependence on clients who are paying well. That experience made me a more credible strategy officer, because the colleague who succeeded me faced exactly the incentives I had faced, and I could speak to them honestly.

Reason for the move

Asked by the founder chairman and chief executive to establish the strategy office.

Mandate

Scale vehicle-engineering delivery across two centres without losing quality or client confidence.

Outcomes

• Expanded the Hyderabad centre from 300 to 1,300 engineers
• Reduced repeat defects in delivered design packages by about a third
• Prepared the delivery-risk disclosures reviewed for the 2010 listing
• Introduced quarterly account reviews of work clients expected to bring in-house

Decisions in context

These years taught me how a delivery organisation actually grows. Hyderabad expanded fourfold, which meant recruiting team leads faster than we could develop them, and I learnt to measure readiness by the defects returned in delivered packages rather than by headcount. The listing in 2010 changed the discipline around information. I worked with the finance team on how delivery risks were described for investors, and quarterly results meant that a slipping programme became a matter for the board. I also introduced a quarterly conversation with each account director about the work the client expected to bring in-house. Some account directors resisted, believing that the question would encourage clients to leave. My experience at Brandtholm had shown me that clients made that decision whether or not we asked about it, and asking at least gave us time to respond.

Reason for the move

Appointed to lead the newly combined mobility business unit.

Mandate

Grow European vehicle accounts from overflow drafting into longer design and validation programmes.

Outcomes

• Grew three European accounts from ₹22 crore to about ₹95 crore of annual revenue
• Moved one client's work from drawing conversion into full sub-system design
• Helped establish the company's first European client office in 2005

Decisions in context

I joined Varunthal because I wanted to understand the supplier's side of the bargain I had managed at Brandtholm. The company was then a founder-owned business of about 1,700 people, and much of its vehicle work was drawing conversion and overflow design. I managed three European accounts and tried to move each one towards work that the client would value more and would be slower to take in-house, such as complete sub-system design and validation. One account made that transition; another remained overflow work, and the third declined after its parent restructured. I spent a large part of each year in Germany and Sweden, which taught me how engineering leaders there described our work to their own boards. That knowledge later shaped the way I presented strategy to ours.

Reason for the move

Promoted to lead vehicle-engineering delivery across Pune and Hyderabad.

Mandate

Package engineering work for Indian vendors and assure the quality of what returned.

Outcomes

• Managed eleven engineering vendors across drafting, analysis and testing
• Set up acceptance checks that reduced rework on vendor packages
• Helped plan the forty-person in-house design cell formed in 1999

Decisions in context

This role shaped my career more than its size suggests. I divided engineering tasks into packages, chose vendors and checked their work against our German parent's standards. I learnt that a buyer quietly sorts outsourced engineering into overflow, specialist work and knowledge it is only borrowing until its own people are ready. In 1999 the subsidiary formed a forty-person design cell, and I helped plan it. Two vendors lost most of their work with us within a year, and neither had asked what we intended. I completed a part-time management programme at Kharvelan School of Management during this period. When I left in 2001, it was because I wanted to test whether a supplier who asked those questions early could build a more durable business.

Reason for the move

Joined an engineering-services company to work on the supplier side of the same relationship.

Mandate

Design and revise steering linkages and brackets to customer specifications.

Outcomes

• Redesigned two linkage parts after failed durability tests within four months
• Moved the team's linkage drawings from the drawing board to design software
• Represented the design team in customer engineering reviews from 1991

Decisions in context

My first job taught me the cost of a late change. Two of my linkage designs failed durability tests at a customer's proving ground, and the redesign, new tooling and retesting took four months. I learnt to ask for the test conditions before I began drawing rather than after a failure. From 1991 I led three junior engineers and represented our team in customer reviews. Those meetings gave me an early view of how a vehicle maker's engineers thought about suppliers: they already knew which parts they would design themselves once their own teams grew. I moved to Brandtholm because I wanted to understand that decision from the inside. The habit I took from Morvanthi was simple: establish what a part must survive before committing to its design.

Reason for the move

Moved to a vehicle maker's Indian subsidiary to manage engineering work from the buyer's side.