Learning when the calculation had answered another question

I entered retail analysis with a strong interest in calculation and a weaker understanding of the decisions calculations were expected to support. A formula could be correct while its label invited the wrong interpretation. A record could be complete in the system while omitting the context a manager needed. My career has made me more interested in those boundaries: what the number describes, what it excludes and who is responsible for the decision made with it.

I completed statistics studies in May 2002 and joined Delqerni Retail Analytics the following month. In a six-person group, I prepared reporting inputs and checked basic reconciliations under a senior analyst. I had no independent spending or client decision authority. I learned to preserve counts and definitions alongside a result so that another person could reconstruct it. That work also taught me to resist a reassuring total when the underlying observations had changed their meaning. The first responsibility was to make the calculation inspectable, not to make the presentation look finished.

In 2008 I became a reporting lead with seven colleagues and ₹79 lakh annual delivery expense. Clients retained their commercial policies and their own accounting responsibilities. My team had to explain what a report could support and where it needed an owner’s judgement. I found that a familiar heading could survive several changes in the data beneath it. Reviewers would recognise the title and assume the measure remained comparable. I began asking for a definition review when the population, collection route or reporting boundary changed, instead of treating the existing dashboard as evidence that its meaning was settled.

Zarqelvi appointed me data manager in 2013. Ten colleagues worked within ₹1.7 crore annual function expense. Moving into a retailer let me see how a measure entered buying, shop and service conversations. A report could be technically available before those functions agreed what its denominator meant. I learned to make that disagreement explicit and to distinguish an analytical question from a policy decision. The appointment did not let me rewrite the returns offer or replace finance’s reporting judgement. It let me improve the evidence those owners used and retain the limitations they needed to understand.

I became head of data in 2018, leading fourteen colleagues through two leads within ₹2.9 crore annual expense. The unequal-volume basket check occurred during this role. I had approved a summary that averaged daily averages while calling the result an average order. The synthetic example showed why the mistake was in the question we had attached to the calculation, not in arithmetic alone. Correcting it meant revisiting the report and telling colleagues whose earlier comparisons might require review. I asked the analyst who found the issue to explain it directly, so my sponsorship would not dilute the account of what had gone wrong.

The CDO appointment followed in 2022. My current team has eighteen colleagues and a separately stated programme allowance alongside annual function expense. The trading-day work required technology and finance participation; the missing-reason review required service and privacy participation. Neither could be solved by changing a chart in isolation. I report to Meera Qernlavi and work with Rafiq Zelqeshi while keeping their respective enterprise and financial authority explicit. The company’s employees hold 51% and founders 49%; my 0.2% interest is part of the employee holding.

In April 2024 I joined the statutory board as an executive director while continuing as CDO. I describe the overlap openly because presenting a function’s account and participating in a collective decision are different responsibilities. The appointment gives me no basis to claim independence from my employer. I have become more conscious of when a technical explanation helps directors ask a better question and when it risks encouraging them to manage the analysis. I want both the executive and board record to preserve uncertainty without making it an excuse for an unusable recommendation.

An outside contribution would need further preparation, an appropriate role and a calendar compatible with both responsibilities. I would bring experience of making numerical claims inspectable while learning the receiving company’s financial and sector context from others. I would not treat its data as an extension of my employer’s analysis or assume that a familiar measure has the same meaning in another business.

Open to Board appointments · Executive opportunities

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