The factory needed buyers beyond our own shops

Our proposed component acquisition began as a supply-security argument. The seller made parts our luggage range used, and owning that capability appeared to shorten the distance between a retail promise and the factory that supported it. Then the forecast was set beside our own requirements. We would absorb eighteen per cent of the plant's output. The remaining eighty-two per cent would need outside customers. We were not merely buying control over our supply; we were considering entry into a component business whose commercial success would mostly depend on other buyers.

I grew up in Shillong and completed commerce at the fictional Zelruni Commerce College in May 1992. In July I joined Terqavi Consumer Products as a cost analyst. It employed 120 people and recorded ₹19 crore revenue in the year ending March 1993. I belonged to a six-person analysis group without direct reports or spending delegation. The work taught me to ask what sat inside a unit-cost figure and what the business still had to pay outside it. A useful number could become misleading when its boundaries disappeared in a later presentation.

Sourcing management followed in June 1999. Terqavi had 360 employees and ₹94 crore revenue for the year ending March 2000. I led twelve colleagues through three team leads with ₹1.7 crore annual function expense. Supplier commitments required the relevant approvals; my expense authority did not turn every purchase into a decision I could make alone. I learned how tooling, qualification, production capacity and commercial dependence could sit in different places. A part-time MBA at Vaqrani Management School, completed in November 2004, helped me examine those relationships as business choices rather than only procurement arrangements.

In September 2007 I became general manager of the travel-products division. Terqavi then employed 840 people and recorded ₹286 crore company revenue for the financial year ending March 2008. My division had eighty-four employees through five leaders, ₹72 crore revenue and ₹6.3 crore contribution before central overheads on that year's account. Running it made the trade-offs less theoretical. A custom order could look attractive in sales while leaving stock the ordinary range could not use. A supplier relationship could be commercially useful without giving us every kind of control a customer expected.

I joined Qarvelli as strategy director in February 2014. The retailer then had twelve shops, 240 employees and ₹76 crore revenue for the year ending March 2015. Six strategy colleagues worked through two leads within ₹1.6 crore annual expense. The move took me from a divisional financial account into recommendations that other executives would implement. I needed to make the alternative legible, including why an operating colleague might disagree with the route I preferred. The title was functional; it did not make me a statutory director.

I became CSO in May 2020. Today eleven employees work through three leads within ₹3.8 crore function expense. Qarvelli has twenty-two shops and 420 employees, ₹168 crore revenue and ₹12.6 crore operating profit for FY ending March 2026. I hold no shares. Naveen Dorqavi takes enterprise recommendations to the authorised bodies, while Elsa Merqethi owns the financial account. I present strategic choices without borrowing the authority of the functions whose commitments make those choices real.

The repair partnership followed a 2021 comparison with six wholly owned centres. Qarvelli invested ₹2.45 crore for 35% of Velqeri Service Partners, whose other two service partners hold 40% and 25%. I joined its board as a company-nominated director in April 2024. That is one statutory seat, not an independent appointment. Velqeri's fifty-four employees are separate from Qarvelli's workforce. Its FY2026 revenue of ₹6.8 crore and operating loss of ₹42 lakh remind me that useful service activity and a satisfactory financial result are different questions.

The component acquisition, corporate-order limits and take-back pilot extended that discipline. I had initially found the acquisition's supply-control story persuasive and needed to revise it. Our 2025 collection pilot also required an honest account of what happened to the bags, rather than a broad claim of circularity. I registered in the fictional IICA databank record in May 2026, with assessment preparation unfinished and no exemption asserted. Eighteen additional days is a provisional allowance for a further role, subject to both existing responsibilities and the proposed company's requirements. I would bring an operator's questions about what an adjacency asks the company to become, while continuing to learn the different duties of collective oversight.

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