Personal correspondence

Make the model answer the real decision

Chief Technology Officer India

I develop energy-planning software whose forecasts, constraints and time resolution must support the decision being proposed, before a polished result becomes a customer promise.

My first models were satisfying because they made complicated relationships visible. Inputs went in, alternatives could be compared and a result emerged with enough precision to feel decisive. Product leadership taught me that the harder question was whether the model had been allowed to answer an easier problem than the customer faced. A forecast could know the future through its evaluation data. An optimisation could buy a better score by violating a supposed limit. An hourly average could remove the short peak that mattered to the decision.

A useful model should make the limits of its decision support harder to overlook than the attractiveness of its answer.

Research and engineering employees: 52; Five heads; company employment totals 164
Annual technology operating expense: ₹9.8 crore; Distinct ₹1.7 crore equipment and laboratory capital
Career since June 1999: 27 years; Simulation development through energy-software CTO

Make the model answer the real decision.

In 2019 I approved a forecast demonstration that appeared stronger than the evidence available at the time could support. A review of 120 historical forecast windows found that eighty-six had used weather observations unavailable at the moment the forecast was supposed to have been issued. Thirty-four used inputs available at that time. The problem was not whether the historical observations were accurate. They answered a later, easier question. I withdrew the performance claim and funded a reconstruction of the evaluation around what the forecaster could actually have known.

I now lead technology at Drevlqari Energy Software in Visakhapatnam. Five heads lead fifty-two research and engineering employees within ₹9.8 crore annual operating expense, with a distinct ₹1.7 crore approved equipment and laboratory capital programme. The company employs 164 people and earned ₹82 crore in FY2025–26, divided between software and implementation or analytical services. I report to CEO Anita Vezlqerni and hold a 0.25 percent beneficial interest through the employee vehicle, without a statutory seat. Our products support industrial energy planning. They do not autonomously dispatch equipment or replace customers’ engineering, safety and commercial approvals.

Later work challenged recommendations that violated a stated planning constraint and hourly summaries that concealed a shorter demand peak. Those cases required the software to admit when an attractive answer did not satisfy the question. I would consider a CTO mandate where evaluation, feasibility and time resolution receive the same attention as the demonstration. An outside-board contribution would need preparation, relationship assessment and a calendar tested against my executive role; twenty-three days is an initial annual proposal. I would bring experience of changing a technical claim I had supported, while preserving the difference between a model that can produce an answer and evidence that the answer is suitable for a particular decision.

Forecast evidence available at issue time

Later weather observations were removed from an evaluation that purported to represent earlier forecasting.

Feasibility before a ranked recommendation

A favourable score did not excuse violating the stated planning constraint.

Short peaks beside hourly energy

Equal hourly totals were not treated as equivalent demand profiles.

Decision support with accountable users

The software does not assume authority to dispatch equipment or certify operating choices.

Current focus

Energy-planning products evaluated against information timing, hard constraints and the resolution of the decision.

Conversations I welcome

Energy-software technical leadership and a separately assessed first non-executive contribution.

The leadership record

Trusted with consequential decisions.

Formation

Bachelor of Technology in Computer EngineeringZevlqarhi Engineering College · 1999

Sohail changed the product claim when the model answered an easier question. He kept the unresolved result visible even when the demonstration would have looked stronger without it.

Anita VezlqerniFictional CEO, Drevlqari Energy Software

The full record ↗

Contact

Energy-software technical leadership and a separately assessed first non-executive contribution.

Board appointments
Executive opportunities

Write to Sohail Contact page