Site, lender, developer: twenty-five years in sequence

Mandate

Make the buyer's journey from booking to the end of the first year in the home verifiable at each stage, and decide which products the company should stop running.

Outcomes

• Replaced the app's completion percentage with dated, engineer-signed stage records across thirteen projects
• Linked each payment demand to its stage certificate and lender pack; median demand-to-receipt time fell from 39 to 21 days
• Closed the resident marketplace and rebuilt snag recording; median closure fell from 52 to 17 days
• Aligned the app's stage records with the quarterly project updates filed on the RERA portal

Decisions in context

This appointment brought product and possession under one remit for the first time. Before 2022 a buyer's journey belonged to sales until the agreement was signed, to finance during construction and to the projects team at handover. Each function kept its own records, and the buyer was left to reconcile them. I lead five teams covering the buyer app, the owners' app, the possession programme, design and research, and data. I report to the managing director and present a quarterly report to the board, where the fund's nominee asks the sharpest questions about cancellations and disputes. I do not set prices, approve drawings or certify stages. Each of the three cases on this site required one of those functions to accept a cost. My contribution was to show the buyer's side of the decision with figures, and then to see the work through on the sites.

Reason for the move

Current appointment; seeking one independent directorship alongside it, subject to employer consent.

Mandate

Bring booking, payment and handover records into one place for buyers after every ongoing project had been registered under RERA.

Outcomes

• Moved agreements, payment schedules and receipts into a single buyer app used by about 7,800 households
• Started weekly photographic site updates within a month of the 2020 site closures
• Wrote the first possession checklist used at joint inspections

Decisions in context

I joined shortly after every ongoing project had been registered under RERA, when the paperwork reaching buyers had multiplied. A buyer might hold an allotment letter, an agreement for sale, a payment schedule and a dozen receipts, each from a different office. The managing director asked me to bring them together. We built the first buyer app around documents and receipts rather than marketing content. When sites closed in 2020, buyers wanted to know whether work had stopped altogether, and we began weekly photographic updates within a month; those later became the basis for signed stage records. I also wrote the first possession checklist and saw how much a paper inspection lost between the flat and the contractor's crew. I approved the resident marketplace in 2021, a decision I later reversed and describe on the impact page.

Reason for the move

Appointed the company's first chief product officer when product and possession were combined under one remit.

Mandate

Shorten the time between a developer's stage demand and the lender's tranche release without weakening technical or credit checks.

Outcomes

• Built a stage-document checklist shared with 140 approved projects
• Reduced median tranche turnaround from 19 working days to 9
• Reported digital-journey complaints and process failures to the board's risk management committee twice a year

Decisions in context

A lender sees an under-construction home as a series of tranches, each released against evidence. I managed the product and process for those loans, working with branch credit officers and the technical valuers who visited sites. The commonest delay was not credit risk but a missing or inconsistent stage document from the developer. I built a checklist, shared with 140 approved projects, stating exactly what each tranche required, and median turnaround fell from 19 working days to 9. Twice a year I reported complaints and process failures to the board's risk management committee, my first experience of preparing material for directors and answering their questions. The role also showed me buyers charged interest by a developer for a delay neither they nor the bank had caused. I left to work on that problem from the developer's side.

Reason for the move

Moved to a developer to work on the buyer's journey before and after the loan.

Mandate

Improve the reliability of the listings that buyers and tenants used to shortlist homes.

Outcomes

• Introduced a verified-visit badge for listings inspected by field staff
• Removed a ready-to-move filter that brokers were applying to unfinished buildings
• Built the first measure of enquiries that led to a site visit

Decisions in context

I left construction for a listings start-up because I wanted to work on what people read when choosing a home. The product was straightforward: rental and resale listings across six southern cities, sold to brokers and owners by subscription. Reliability was the difficulty. Brokers posted the same flat several times and described unfinished buildings as ready to occupy. I introduced a verified-visit badge for listings our field staff had inspected, and removed the ready-to-move filter once we found it attached to buildings without occupancy certificates. Enquiries dipped for a quarter before site visits per enquiry improved. I completed a part-time MBA while working there, mostly in evenings and at weekends. When the company was acquired in 2013, its product team moved to the acquirer's offices in the north, and I decided to stay in the south.

Reason for the move

The start-up was acquired in 2013 and its product team relocated to the acquirer's northern offices; I chose to stay in the south.

Mandate

Prepare and maintain construction schedules and progress reports for developer clients.

Outcomes

• Separated achieved stages from forecast stages in monthly client reports
• Built resource histograms that exposed shuttering shortages before slab cycles slipped
• Prepared delay analyses that clients used in their own buyer communication

Decisions in context

Planning taught me the difference between a date a schedule could support and a date somebody wanted. I prepared construction schedules and monthly progress reports for six to nine developer projects at a time, and from 2007 I led a planning cell of five. Some clients' sales teams quoted possession dates from the best case in our schedules, so I began separating achieved stages from forecast stages in every report, making the two harder to confuse once they reached a brochure. Resource histograms helped us see shuttering and labour shortages before slab cycles slipped. At weekends, buyers sometimes walked onto our sites and asked the site staff when they would get their keys. We were not permitted to answer, and I understood why, but the question stayed with me and eventually took me out of construction.

Reason for the move

Wanted to shape what buyers were told, rather than the schedules behind it.

Mandate

Check work against drawings before each pour and keep measurement and inspection records.

Outcomes

• Kept pour cards and reinforcement checks for two apartment blocks of 96 homes
• Recorded the measurements behind subcontractor bills
• Prepared the snag list for a school building before its handover

Decisions in context

My first job was on two apartment blocks of 96 homes in Coimbatore, followed by a school building in Tiruppur. Before each pour I checked the reinforcement against the drawings with the foreman, recorded the inspection on a pour card and passed it to the senior project engineer to countersign. I also kept the measurement records that supported subcontractor bills. The pour card taught me that a record is only as useful as the inspection behind it, and that it should say what was checked and what was not. At the school, I prepared the snag list before handover and noticed how many items were closed on the contractor's word rather than by anyone looking again. These were small responsibilities, but they shaped how I later designed stage records and snag closure. I moved to Chennai to learn planning across several projects.

Reason for the move

Joined a larger Chennai contractor to learn planning across several projects.