Learning what the favourable response had left unanswered

The engineer had understood our brochure, and I mistook that for a complete explanation of the service. Our material described methods, expertise and the form of a report. The owner's operations colleague wanted to know how the work would fit around the building's use. Finance wanted to understand what subsequent decision the expenditure was meant to support. Those were not objections to technical quality. They were different parts of a buying decision that our communication had left disconnected. I had approved a document for the audience most comfortable with it and then expected that audience to sell the proposition internally on our behalf.

I grew up in a Christian family in Kottayam and completed commerce at the fictional Qevzali College of Commerce in June 1995. The following month I joined Peqzavi Business Publishing as an advertising account assistant. The company had seventy employees and ₹11.4 crore revenue for FY ending March 1996. I worked in a five-person account group without reports or spending authority. An advertiser might admire a publication and still be unable to explain why its organisation should pay for a programme. I learned to ask about the decision behind the account rather than assume that a positive response was a commitment.

In March 2001 I became account development manager. Peqzavi employed 154 people and recorded ₹34 crore revenue for FY ending March 2002. I led nine colleagues through two leads within ₹86 lakh annual expense. We dealt with organisations whose technical, purchasing and commercial staff read the same proposal for different reasons. I completed a part-time postgraduate marketing diploma at Qevzali in November 2003 while working. The study helped me organise questions I was already encountering, but it did not make an account conversation behave like a neat sequence in a textbook. Timing, competing expenditure and internal relationships remained part of the decision.

I moved to Vezqami as marketing manager in September 2007. The consultancy had eighty-eight employees and ₹21 crore revenue for FY ending March 2008. Six marketing colleagues worked through two leads within ₹1.1 crore annual expense. The business assessed the condition of existing commercial and industrial buildings and helped owners plan maintenance. It did not own or develop the properties, execute construction or act as a regulator. I needed to learn enough about the service to explain its purpose while leaving methods and professional conclusions with the qualified practice. A compelling phrase could not settle a question about a particular building.

In July 2013 I became head of client research and propositions. Vezqami had 175 employees and ₹52 crore revenue for FY ending March 2014. Twelve colleagues worked through three leads with ₹2.7 crore annual expense. I spent more time listening after a proposal had been considered, including when the answer was no. Our own account of a lost opportunity was often shorter and more flattering than the buyer's. Calling a decision a price loss could spare us the harder work of understanding an unclear scope or a service that did not fit the customer's operating calendar. I learned to treat those conversations as selected evidence, not a survey of the entire market.

My CMO appointment began in January 2020. The current enterprise employs 290 people and reports ₹96 crore FY26 revenue. I lead twenty-two marketing staff through four leads within ₹6.3 crore FY2026–27 expense. The ₹3.2 crore campaign allocation is included in that total, not additional to it. Mahesh Dovzemi is CEO and Leena Tezqori leads the qualified technical practice. Fees, contracts, operating capacity and building conclusions have their own owners. The family vehicle holds 41%, the employee vehicle 24% and a long-term investor 35%. My employment includes neither personal equity nor a statutory appointment.

The buying-group programme made me revisit my own confidence in an engineering-led explanation. Thirty selected interviews across ten organisations informed connected material for technical, operating and financial questions. Later work examined eleven buyers' accounts of lost assignments rather than treating every refusal as a fee problem. We also rescheduled two of six campaign waves when operations could not support the advertised appointment window. These decisions required marketing to accept limits on what it could claim and when it should create demand, without turning caution into a reason to avoid commercial ambition.

A more recent programme asked existing clients whether a planning conversation would be useful instead of assuming that every relationship required another assignment. Fifteen of twenty-four invited organisations accepted, five deferred and four declined. Of the fifteen reviews, nine raised future planning questions, three clarified existing reports and three found no new matter to discuss. Those were not fifteen new jobs. I wanted our account of the relationship to leave room for a useful conversation that produced no immediate sale.

After thirty-one years, I am considering how that experience could contribute to a first external board role. I speak Malayalam, English and working Kannada. I have presented to directors as an executive but have never held a board seat. The fictional record includes IICA databank registration in June 2026, with the assessment still unfinished and no exemption claimed. Twenty-three days is a provisional allowance requiring a real calendar review. I would bring questions about how a customer reaches a decision, what demand generation obliges the enterprise to deliver and whether management listens carefully enough when the answer is no.

Open to Board appointments

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