Chief Strategy Officer / India
The larger fleet was not always the next decision
- Strategy function through three leads
- 18 staff
- ₹4.8 crore FY27 expense; capital approval remains separate
- Cost, commercial and fleet strategy
- 34 years
- Career begins July1992; CSO since January2021
- Provisional board capacity
- 24 days
- Consent, relationships and calendar remain to examine
Decisions & consequences
01Changing my depot recommendation after putting movements into the account
In 2022 I favoured a peripheral depot option with ₹72 lakh annual rent over a closer site at ₹112 lakh. The property comparison appeared to support a restrained commitment. Operations challenged the starting point: the depot would serve a pattern of customer sites, and its movements belonged in the decision. Under the stated planning assumptions, annual transport and handling were ₹128 lakh at the peripheral option and ₹69 lakh at the closer one. The compared recurring subtotals were therefore ₹200 lakh and ₹181 lakh.
The property sponsor still preferred the peripheral site because it required less initial fit-out. That objection was valid. The respective fit-out assumptions were ₹45 lakh and ₹88 lakh, bringing the first-year subtotals to ₹245 lakh and ₹269 lakh. The closer option was ₹24 lakh higher in that first-year account, despite a ₹19 lakh lower recurring subtotal under the model. Other operating costs, financing, tax and the treatment of expenditure were outside this bounded comparison; Sajid retained the fuller financial assessment.
We spent ₹38 lakh on the option review, separately from those modelled site subtotals. I revised my recommendation toward the closer depot, and the authorised decision-makers approved that route with the higher initial fit-out commitment visible. Operations and qualified owners retained site suitability, permissions and delivery arrangements. The case does not claim that the forecast transport cost was achieved, that the annual difference became savings or that the simplified arithmetic established a complete investment return.
The decision gave up the lower property rent and the smaller first-year requirement. It also required me to explain why the line I had initially emphasised was insufficient. I would now bring the expected service movements into a depot proposition before ranking locations by property expense. The question is not whether proximity is always worth paying for. It is whether the strategic comparison describes the service the location will support, including the initial cash burden and the assumptions that would have to remain true for the later account to be useful.
Testing a different use for thirty units instead of following the peak daily rate
A 2023 review examined ninety units assigned to the event segment over a defined twelve-month period. They recorded ₹96 lakh rental revenue and ₹81 lakh of specified direct segment costs, leaving ₹15 lakh before depreciation, central costs and financing. The event team had emphasised the attractive daily rates available during busy periods. Those rates were real within the account, but they did not describe the months between assignments or the movement and preparation work surrounding each rental.
A separate ninety-unit construction-site group recorded ₹168 lakh rental revenue and ₹87 lakh of specified direct costs over its review year. That comparison suggested a different question about sustained use, but it was not a matched experiment. The units, customers, locations and assignment conditions differed. I rejected the idea that transferring all event units would automatically reproduce the other group's account. The segment head also pointed out that withdrawing too broadly could damage relationships built around seasonal peaks and reduce our ability to respond when those customers returned.
We chose a thirty-unit construction-site pilot with ₹1.4 crore approved expenditure for the defined relocation, preparation and supporting programme. Operations and qualified colleagues retained decisions about suitability for the intended uses; the programme did not make every event unit appropriate for every site. We kept the remaining seasonal proposition under review instead of declaring the segment closed. No pilot revenue or profit uplift is asserted here, and the ₹1.4 crore was not netted against a hypothetical improvement to create an invented return.
The choice gave up some immediate seasonal capacity and required us to test a different operating pattern. It also retained the possibility that the new use would be less attractive once its actual conditions were understood. I would now ask for the annual segment account before allowing a peak rate to lead a fleet-growth proposal. Strategy should recognise the value of seasonal business without letting its most profitable-looking days speak for the whole year. A bounded trial was the next commitment, not proof that we had discovered a universally better use for the assets.
Finding one project behind half the units in a supposedly diverse contract set
In 2024 a proposed addition to the fleet was supported by an account of eighteen rental contracts covering 540 units. The different customer names appeared to offer a spread of demand. A review connected eight of those contracts, covering 270 units, to one underlying construction project through four contractors. The remaining ten contracts covered another 270 units across six projects. The selected population therefore contained seven underlying projects, not eighteen separate sources of project activity.
The growth sponsor argued that the contractors were distinct counterparties and that their different work packages reduced the likelihood of identical rental needs. That was relevant, but it did not remove their shared dependence on the larger project's timing. I asked the team to retain both views: contractual relationships and the project conditions linking them. The review cost ₹44 lakh. Commercial and legal owners examined the actual relationships, while credit and operations retained their decisions. We did not infer that a particular contractor would default or that every unit would return simultaneously.
The original growth discussion concerned one hundred additional units. We changed the sequence and approved a narrower forty-unit addition for two unrelated projects with ₹4.8 crore of authorised fleet expenditure. The other sixty units were not committed through that decision. The smaller programme was not a like-for-like saving against the original scope, and adding two projects did not by itself establish a fully diversified company portfolio. The finding concerned the selected review population and the next growth choice.
The decision gave up part of the immediate expansion the commercial team wanted. It required a more complicated explanation of demand than a count of customers, but that complexity already existed in the business. I would now map the underlying project alongside the counterparty when a fleet proposal is formed. Several contracts can be commercially distinct and still share an important dependency. A strategy paper should make that relationship assessable without converting it into an unsupported prediction about failure, payment or the exact timing of future unit returns.
Choosing a two-district trial over a five-year exclusive territory
A regional intermediary approached us in 2025 with a proposal covering twenty-eight districts for five years on an exclusive basis. The partner had useful local relationships and argued that broad rights would justify investment in developing the territory. Our expansion sponsor liked the prospect of reaching more customers without immediately building a full direct presence. I wanted to understand which rights the company would give away before it had learned enough about demand, service economics or the partner's actual contribution.
The choice was not simply between a committed partner and no growth. We negotiated a twelve-month non-exclusive pilot in two districts, with legal and commercial owners reviewing the actual terms and operating colleagues confirming the service route. The narrower arrangement could reduce the partner's incentive and the scale of its initial effort. I retained that disadvantage in the recommendation. Flexibility had value for us, but it was not free, and a partner was entitled to decide that the bounded proposition did not justify the work it expected to undertake.
The agreed pilot had ₹84 lakh of programme authority. At review, ₹52 lakh had been spent and ₹32 lakh remained unspent. Six rental contracts had been signed within the pilot account: four through direct relationships and two introduced by the intermediary. Those counts were not a measure of equal contract value, profit or the partner's lifetime potential. The result did not establish that a broad exclusive arrangement would have failed. It supplied a limited record for the next discussion while leaving the company's wider regional choices open.
We gave up the possibility of a rapid twenty-eight-district announcement and accepted a smaller experiment. The sponsor's concern about momentum remained legitimate. My view was that the company should earn a larger territorial commitment through a clearer account of what each party contributes and what the service can support. I would now define the learning question, review period and practical obligations before discussing the size of a territory. A larger map can be an ambition; it becomes a strategy only when the commitments behind it are understood by the people who must live with them.