Chief Strategy Officer / India
The selected route left some control outside
- Travel-goods retail estate
- 22 shops
- Online business and 420 retailer employees; venture workforce separate
- Strategy function
- 11 employees
- Three leads and ₹3.8 crore FY2026–27 delegated expense
- Company-nominated venture director
- 1 board seat
- Velqeri Service Partners since April 2024; not independent
Decisions & consequences
01Buying a minority repair capability instead of six operating centres
In 2021 we compared a proposal for six wholly owned luggage-repair centres with a service partnership. The owned-centre estimate was ₹8.2 crore. Operations colleagues preferred its clearer reporting line: the retailer could set the operating model directly and employ the people carrying it out. A partnership would introduce negotiation and dependence into a part of the customer experience we wanted to improve. I regarded that objection as a real cost of the alternative, not resistance to a more modern business model.
I recommended investing with two service partners because their existing repair competence was part of the capability we needed. The authorised bodies approved ₹2.45 crore for a 35% holding in the new Velqeri Service Partners. Total initial capital was ₹7 crore, with the other partners holding 40% and 25%. The structure, commitments and governance needed appropriate professional review. The difference between ₹8.2 crore and ₹2.45 crore was not a like-for-like saving: the route changed ownership, influence, footprint and the responsibilities retained by each party.
Velqeri employed fifty-four people by October 2026, separate from Qarvelli's 420. It reported ₹6.8 crore revenue and a ₹42 lakh operating loss for the year ending March 2026. A reviewed service population of 1,280 jobs included 1,020 assessed as repairable and 260 declined. That account did not imply that every customer bag could be repaired or that service volume proved financial success. Technical suitability remained with the qualified service owners, and the commercial plan still needed to address the loss.
I joined Velqeri's board as Qarvelli's nominated director in April 2024. That later appointment must not be projected backwards into my 2021 executive recommendation. It also does not make me an independent director or permit me to treat the venture as an internal department. The result is a service capability accompanied by continuing operating and governance questions. I would define the escalation of differences between partners earlier in a future proposal, before a difficult case turns an abstract discussion of influence into a customer's immediate problem.
Declining a factory whose output mostly needed customers beyond us
The 2023 proposal to acquire Dorzali Wheel Components carried a ₹24 crore purchase price and ₹6 crore of planned capital work. Its products were familiar to our sourcing team, and ownership was presented as a way to improve supply control for the luggage range. I initially found that account persuasive. CFO Elsa Merqethi also saw value in reducing exposure to an outside supplier, subject to her financial assessment. The question was not whether components mattered. It was whether ownership of this particular business was the right response.
Our review showed that Qarvelli's forecast requirements represented eighteen per cent of the plant's forecast output. The remaining eighty-two per cent would need outside customers. I asked for the acquisition to be assessed as a component business with its own commercial capabilities, rather than as a captive supplier whose demand our shops would absorb. The forecast did not establish that the outside sales were impossible. It showed that our retail demand could not carry the justification on its own. Transaction, technical and financial specialists retained their respective reviews.
We spent ₹48 lakh on diligence. I recommended against proceeding, and the authorised board decision was to decline the acquisition. Instead, the company approved ₹2.8 crore for a narrower tooling and qualification route through contract manufacturing. Product and technical owners determined the relevant acceptance requirements; strategy did not certify the components. The chosen route addressed a defined sourcing need while leaving supplier dependence in place. It did not reproduce all the control or potential external revenue that ownership might have provided.
I did not report the unspent purchase price as a saving or treat the diligence expense as waste because no transaction followed. The review changed the business we believed we were considering. We gave up an opportunity to build a component enterprise and accepted continuing dependence in the retail supply model. I would separate internal demand from external sales in the first acquisition paper next time. That would make the case for ownership face its real commercial question before the familiar product gives the proposal a false sense of strategic proximity.
Limiting corporate customisation while retaining its residual-stock cost
Forty-two corporate travel-goods requests entered our 2024 review. They described an indicative ₹9.4 crore opportunity, not a signed order book. Some asked for colours, fittings or branding treatments that would leave us with products outside the normal retail range if the requirement changed. The commercial team wanted a broader response because larger corporate quantities could give the channel substance quickly. I wanted to distinguish the ability to quote an attractive order from the capability to carry the product consequences behind it.
We selected an eight-model offer with a limited replaceable-branding approach. Sixteen requests fitted that scope; twenty-six did not. Commercial and product leaders retained the actual pricing, terms and technical acceptance. My recommendation concerned the kind of customisation business we were willing to establish. The narrower offer gave up breadth and disappointed some prospective buyers. It did not prove that every excluded request was unprofitable or that another supplier could not serve it well. It meant that we had chosen not to build those additional capabilities around the initial channel.
Sixteen contracts subsequently produced ₹4.6 crore revenue and ₹62 lakh contribution after the defined direct costs. Central overheads were reported separately, so the contribution was not company operating profit. The account included a ₹27 lakh residual-stock provision arising when quantities changed after production commitments. The limited design approach reduced some forms of unusable customisation but did not remove commercial exposure. Finance owned the provision and contribution definitions; I kept the cost in the strategic review rather than describe the selected range as risk-free.
The result was a smaller actual business than the indicative request total and a clearer account of what it required. We did not claim to have lost ₹4.8 crore of contracted revenue by choosing the narrower route; the initial opportunities and final contracts were different stages of evidence. I would ask earlier which product elements remain saleable under a changed order and who carries the resulting obligation under the actual terms. A familiar luggage product can conceal a distinct corporate-supply business, and the request's quantity alone does not tell us whether we should enter it.
Stopping a collection pilot from becoming a permanent buyback promise
Our 2025 take-back pilot operated through four collection sites and received 620 bags. The commercial ambition was to explore a continuing customer proposition around used travel goods. Some sponsors wanted to announce a permanent buyback offer quickly, using the collection count as evidence that people valued it. I agreed that participation was worth understanding. But a bag arriving at the retailer did not establish its next use, the expense of handling it or the terms on which the company could responsibly repeat the offer.
The pilot allocated 350 bags to repair and resale, 180 to component recovery and ninety to documented disposal routes. The categories accounted for the 620 collected items. Relevant operational and professional owners determined suitability and the appropriate handling arrangements. I did not turn the counts into a claim of environmental benefit or a closed material loop. Nor did allocation to resale mean every item had already found a buyer. The report needed to preserve the difference between a planned destination and a completed commercial result.
Pilot expense was ₹42 lakh, while realised resale proceeds at review were ₹8.6 lakh. The ₹33.4 lakh gap on those defined figures was not a complete profit-and-loss account or a forecast of a mature programme. There was remaining material and work to examine. I recommended holding the permanent buyback promise and retaining a case-by-case assessment route without a universal credit commitment. That gave up a simple public proposition and left some participating customers without the certainty the proposed offer would have advertised.
The decision did not declare reuse commercially impossible or justify ignoring continuing obligations for the collected goods. It required us to learn more about the actual service and economic model before making the promise permanent. I would specify the destination and financial account before launch next time, rather than allow a collection total to become the programme's headline while its consequences were still being assembled. The strategic question was what continuing undertaking the retailer could support, with qualified handling decisions and honest treatment of the unfinished stock remaining part of the answer.