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Aftab QorvethiChief Marketing Officer · Essays & perspective

Chief Marketing Officer
India
Practice / Perspective

Attendance begins a conversation; it does not authorise every next step

Aftab Qorvethi / Published perspectives
No.The ideaSubject / reading
01

The next conversation needs its own invitation

Participation and purpose
5 min read
02

A broker can be useful without borrowing the insurer's promise

Intermediary identity
5 min read
03

Before accepting sponsorship, explain what the money buys

Programme funding
5 min read
Portrait of Aftab Qorvethi

The practitioner

Aftab Qorvethi

The list looked like a successful programme: 480 attendees and a full set of contact details supplied for an education event. The commercial team wanted to give every record to relationship colleagues. Only 312 people had separately asked for that follow-up. The other 168 had accepted the original invitation and nothing more. I had begun my career organising events, so I understood the work behind the attendance figure. That made it more important to preserve what the invitation meant rather than turn the effort spent filling the room into authority for a different conversation.

Open to Board appointments

Start a conversation
  • 01 / Participation boundaries in client education
  • 02 / Broker-role clarity in business communication
  • 03 / Commercial pipeline stages with distinct buying organisations
  • 04 / Sponsorship conditions that preserve programme purpose
Regional commercial-insurance broker
9 offices
230 employees and ₹63 crore FY26 brokerage and service revenue
Marketing organisation
22 colleagues
Three heads and eight agency colleagues counted separately
Events to brokerage communication
28 years
Five contiguous roles from July 1998; no statutory seat

Attendance begins a conversation; it does not authorise every next step

Four hundred and eighty people attended a fictional workplace education programme. Three hundred and twelve separately asked to hear from our brokerage; 168 did not. The event was worthwhile for both groups. Treating every attendee as a sales lead would have made the campaign report larger while changing the meaning of the invitation they had accepted. I had to explain why our marketing result should retain the smaller number rather than let attendance become permission by default.

I am Aftab Qorvethi, CMO of Navzuri Insurance Brokers in Agartala, originally from Lucknow. We are a commercial-insurance broker, not an insurer. The company has nine offices and 230 employees, with ₹63 crore brokerage and service revenue for FY ending March 2026. Premiums placed are not our own revenue. Founders hold 54%, an institutional investor 36% and an employee vehicle 10%; I have no personal holding. My organisation comprises 22 marketing employees through three heads and eight separately counted agency colleagues, within ₹8.4 crore FY2026–27 marketing operating authority.

CEO Nisha Belqemi leads the business, while principal officer Vivek Dazvethi retains professional broking responsibility. My work is to make the brokerage's role and its invitations understandable. We corrected material that left selected readers believing we were the insurer paying claims. We separated campaign contacts from distinct buying organisations and signed brokerage appointments. We also declined event funding whose conditions would have let one insurer decide the programme's speaking position. Each decision gave up a convenient headline, a wider contact list or external money.

An attendee could decline the next conversation

The education programme cost ₹46 lakh. Of 480 attendees, 312 requested separate follow-up and 168 did not; neither attendance nor a request was counted as a policy sale.

The brokerage had to explain whose promise it made

Forty-eight of 72 selected readers initially thought a proposed brochure made Navzuri the insurer. Revised material cost ₹38 lakh; later conversations still found fifteen of 72 readers needing clarification.

A contact was not a signed client appointment

A campaign's 126 contact records represented 84 buying organisations. Nine later signed brokerage appointments; no policy count or premium was inferred from that number.

Current focus

Making business-client marketing useful without obscuring the broker's role, the participant's choice or the stage a commercial relationship has actually reached.

Conversations I welcome

A first external board discussion where communication judgement is relevant and relationships, preparation and a realistic calendar permit participation.

Beyond the page

The record behind the perspective.

Formation

  • Bachelor of CommerceDorvethi Commerce Institute · 1998
Aftab kept the four events we did not run in the account. We could see what declining the sponsorship condition cost us in reach, rather than hear that the smaller programme had somehow delivered the original plan unchanged.
Nisha BelqemiCEO, Navzuri Insurance Brokers; fictional colleague
The full record ↗

Contact

A first external board discussion where communication judgement is relevant and relationships, preparation and a realistic calendar permit participation.

  • Board appointments
Write to Aftab Contact page