Chief Executive Officer / India
The obligation stayed visible beside the growth number
- Manufacturing and business leadership
- 31 years
- Career begins July 1995
- Company employees
- 560
- Seven executive direct reports
- FY 2026 company revenue
- ₹214 crore
- ₹17.8 crore operating profit
Decisions & consequences
01Declining the coating acquisition after paying to understand it
We examined a proposed ₹58 crore acquisition of a regional coating business. Its geographic reach and capacity appeared attractive to one promoter representative and to our commercial team. The proposal could have expanded the enclosure offer more quickly than internal development. I supported due diligence because the opportunity deserved examination, not because the initial enthusiasm should become a commitment to complete it.
CFO Rohit Nalqeri and operations colleagues identified a further ₹7.4 crore estimated remediation and integration requirement. The estimate concerned work that would need specialist assessment and execution; it was not a certification that environmental or operating obligations had been resolved. The promoter representative argued that negotiating the price would preserve the strategic opportunity. I considered that alternative but concluded that the combined obligation and management demand were unsuitable for our current resources. After ₹42 lakh due diligence, I recommended declining the transaction and the board agreed.
We approved a ₹9.8 crore internal expansion programme within the board's capital process. Its expected output and returns remained forecasts. The smaller commitment did not provide the acquired business's geographic reach, and the due-diligence expense was not recovered. We retained both facts in the decision account instead of presenting the alternative as delivering every acquisition benefit at a lower price. Specialist technical and compliance work remained necessary for the internal programme too.
The case reinforced the value of paying to learn before paying to own. Money already spent can make a proposal difficult to stop, especially when colleagues have invested effort and reputation in it. I would ask a board whether the current decision is being justified by future value or by discomfort about acknowledging sunk cost. Refusal should still be supported by an alternative and its limits. My responsibility was to make those choices explicit while the company retained the ability to choose, rather than allow a promising headline price to conceal the obligations that would begin after completion.
Withdrawing a product family while funding the customers left behind
The custom-cover family contained ninety-six variants. Seventeen had consistently negative contribution in the reviewed account, but the wider question was not solved by deleting seventeen catalogue lines. Small orders, frequent changes and continuing support made the poorly differentiated family difficult to manage economically. It had generated ₹12.4 crore in the preceding financial year's revenue, so withdrawal would be visible in the commercial plan.
Sales proposed retaining the family and repricing the weakest variants gradually. That would preserve customer relationships and avoid a sudden revenue gap. Operations argued that the family consumed attention beyond the seventeen identified lines, while finance wanted the support and transition costs stated before any decision. I recommended withdrawing the family with a funded transition rather than rely on a series of price increases whose acceptance was uncertain. The board approved ₹1.3 crore for the transition, including customer arrangements and residual tooling and stock obligations.
Fourteen employees were redeployed to continuing product work. Customers received an account of the withdrawal and the remaining support arrangements through the commercial process. We accepted the loss of ₹12.4 crore historical annual revenue rather than count it as automatically replaced elsewhere. The transition expense remained in the result; stopping new orders did not instantly remove every cost. We did not claim that all ninety-six variants were loss-making or that the exit had already delivered a specified profit improvement.
The decision changed how I think about portfolio discipline. A catalogue can keep growing because each additional line looks small, while the combined support obligation becomes difficult to price. A responsible exit requires more than a margin table: it needs a plan for customers, people and the work that persists after sales stop. I would ask directors to examine those residual obligations alongside the proposed future benefit. The smaller range was a deliberate commercial choice with a revenue sacrifice, not proof that less variety is always the right answer for a manufacturer.
Choosing a smaller commitment that left the production cell available
A major customer proposed ₹32 crore of purchases over three years during a non-binding commercial discussion. The proposal depended on exclusive use of a defined production cell. It offered an appealing volume story, but the exclusivity would restrict our ability to serve other customers even if the indicative demand did not arrive in the expected pattern. We needed to separate the forecast from the obligation the company would assume.
The commercial team supported the arrangement because a large relationship could simplify selling and planning. Operations and finance questioned the capacity reservation and the absence of equivalent certainty in the proposed demand. I asked for an alternative that priced the actual commitment rather than rely on the headline total. We declined exclusivity and continued negotiations on a non-exclusive basis, accepting that the customer might place less work with us or choose another supplier.
The eventual agreement covered ₹18 crore of non-exclusive orders over two years. That is an order commitment, not revenue already recognised and not profit. It is also a different period and scope from the original three-year indication, so I do not describe the two figures as a simple like-for-like loss. The production cell remained available for other suitable work under our normal scheduling and technical rules. We retained ordinary delivery and customer obligations; non-exclusivity did not make the orders risk-free.
The lesson was to examine what certainty the customer was buying and what certainty the manufacturer was receiving. A dedicated cell can be sensible when the terms support the reservation and the downside is understood. In this case I preferred a smaller defined commitment that preserved choice. For a board, the useful question is how the commercial proposal changes the company's future options and whether an attractive forecast is being used to justify a much firmer operating promise. The decision belonged in a discussion of capacity and concentration as well as sales volume.
Paying for recovery without calling the disruption invisible
Flood disruption interrupted work affecting a thirty-seven-order cohort in our two-site production system. A nominal capacity report suggested that work could be moved, but the practical examination also had to consider tooling, material, trained colleagues and the condition of the receiving process. The COO and technical teams assessed what could be transferred; quality retained release authority. I did not treat spare machine hours as proof that every order could keep its original date.
One proposal concentrated on the easiest transfers to protect the strongest delivery statistics. Another was to wait for the interrupted site to resume and renegotiate the whole cohort together. I chose a funded two-site recovery that assessed orders individually and communicated the remaining delays. The board supported ₹2.6 crore of recovery expenditure. We accepted the additional handling and coordination cost while refusing to describe the spend as purchasing uninterrupted service.
Twenty-one of the thirty-seven orders were delivered within their original agreed dates. Sixteen required revised dates agreed with customers. Both groups remained in the management report. The result did not establish that all consequences of the flood had disappeared, that customers suffered no inconvenience or that the same recovery would work during a different disruption. Technical teams continued to determine whether transferred work met the relevant requirements; commercial colleagues managed the revised commitments with customers.
I learned to ask what continuity means for each obligation rather than for the company's headline. A plan can preserve some deliveries, delay others and consume substantial cash at the same time. Directors need that account to judge the next resilience investment. If management hides the sixteen revised dates behind the twenty-one recovered orders, the board may misunderstand both the capability and its limits. I would improve the pre-event record of transferable tooling and skills so that the next assessment starts with better evidence, while retaining the need to evaluate the actual conditions before promising a result.