Chief Strategy Officer / India
Keep the responsibility beside the opportunity
- Professional risk-engineering supplier
- 17 insurer clients
- 420 employees, twelve offices and ₹118 crore FY26 service revenue
- Strategy organisation
- 18 colleagues
- Three heads and ₹3.4 crore FY2026–27 function operating authority
- Engineering, operations and strategy
- 31 years
- Five contiguous appointments from July 1995; no statutory seat
Decisions & consequences
01Declining repair income that would change the inspection relationship
The 2022 proposal would add a repair-contracting division alongside our property-risk engineering service. Its central case projected ₹14 crore annual revenue after development. The operations sponsor saw a practical benefit: clients could obtain an inspection and an implementation route through one organisation. I initially supported further work because the sites, technical vocabulary and relationships were familiar. The question we had not sufficiently examined was how the new income would affect the way a client understood our original recommendations.
Girish Qevzari asked us to show what would happen when an inspection identified work the proposed division could sell. The issue was not a claim that every such recommendation would be wrong. It was the incentive and the explanation needed when professional findings could create revenue for another part of the same company. The sponsor argued that disclosure and separate teams could address the concern. I accepted that these were arrangements worth examining, but the review did not give me a sufficiently convincing basis for building this combination within our current business.
After ₹65 lakh of feasibility work, I recommended declining the division, and the authorised decision-makers agreed. We funded ₹30 lakh of referral-process improvement instead, clarifying how clients could seek an implementation route through appropriately selected outside providers without creating a repair commission for Dorlavi. Technical, commercial and professional owners reviewed the actual process. The change did not certify every outside contractor or transfer the site owner's responsibility for remediation to us.
We gave up the projected repair business and the convenience of a single supplier account. The ₹14 crore was a forecast, not revenue already lost, and the feasibility expense remained part of the cost of making the decision. I also retained my initial enthusiasm in the account. The review had changed my understanding of the adjacency rather than merely confirmed a concern I had always held. I would now ask how a proposed revenue stream changes the incentive behind an existing judgement before presenting customer overlap as evidence of strategic fit. Familiar work can still create a different business relationship, and the company should decide deliberately whether it wants to own that relationship.
Choosing travel clusters without pretending they were eight new offices
The 2023 expansion proposal comprised eight additional offices, with ₹7.8 crore setup expense and ₹4.2 crore planned annual operating expense. The commercial sponsor wanted a visible presence closer to prospective work. A permanent office could help relationships and make the company easier to reach. I asked operating colleagues to examine the requests behind the map before assuming that an address established the ability to complete the intended site work.
The review covered 120 requests. Forty-eight fitted routine access arrangements, 44 required special travel planning and 28 did not yet have agreed site access. Those categories described the reviewed requests, not every opportunity in the regions. Technical owners also needed to match specialist capability with the work. The expansion sponsor argued that local offices would make negotiations and travel easier over time. That could be true, but it did not settle the immediate access and capacity assumptions used to justify all eight openings.
We selected three travel clusters instead, with ₹3.1 crore setup and ₹2.7 crore planned annual operating expense. The clusters supported a different pattern of work and relied on agreed travel and specialist arrangements. They did not provide the same permanent presence as eight branches. The 28 requests without agreed access remained unresolved in the account; we did not count them as served because a regional team had been assigned. Operating and technical leaders retained decisions about suitable staffing, access and the actual conduct of visits.
The choice reduced the initial fixed footprint while giving up some local visibility and convenience. I did not report the difference in setup costs as a like-for-like saving, because the alternatives bought different service arrangements. The strategy review retained the regions and requests the narrower plan could not yet support. No universal delivery-time or safety conclusion was inferred from the classification. I would ask for this practical request account earlier in future expansion work, before a map of proposed offices becomes the organisation's preferred picture of growth. A geographic ambition becomes more useful when it explains the conditions under which work can actually be performed.
Changing a fee condition that depended on decisions outside our control
A 2024 client proposal offered a ₹6.4 crore annual fee schedule, with fifteen per cent dependent on every engineering recommendation being implemented at the relevant sites within ninety days. That placed ₹96 lakh behind the condition. The account sponsor liked the higher headline fee and the apparent alignment with the client's wish for action rather than reports alone. I agreed that our work should be useful. The difficulty was that implementation also depended on site-owner decisions, capital, access and operating circumstances outside our authority.
Girish and his technical colleagues explained why a recommendation's professional basis should not be altered to improve the chance of satisfying a fee condition. A difficult but justified recommendation might take longer to implement than an easier one. The commercial sponsor suggested accepting the term and managing the relationship closely. I recommended a different basis that held us accountable for defined quality and timeliness without making all site implementation a result we purported to control. Appropriate commercial and professional advisers reviewed the actual arrangement.
The parties agreed a ₹6 crore annual schedule on that revised basis. This was a contracted fee schedule, not a statement that ₹6 crore had already been earned or recognised as revenue. The company gave up ₹40 lakh of potential headline fee compared with the original ₹6.4 crore proposal, while changing the condition attached to payment. The revised route did not remove performance obligations or make the service immune from a justified challenge. It described those obligations in relation to the work and evidence the supplier could responsibly provide.
The decision required us to explain why a lower scheduled amount could be a better fit for the service than a larger amount carrying an inappropriate outcome promise. It did not imply that implementation was unimportant. Site owners remained responsible for remediation, insurers retained their own decisions and our technical colleagues continued to explain recommendations through the agreed professional process. I would examine the authority behind a performance condition before comparing headline fees next time. The strategic question is whether the commercial model supports the judgement clients need, rather than encourages the company to describe another party's action as its own deliverable.
Limiting a data pilot to the use that had actually been addressed
The 2025 data-product proposal began with 900 site files accumulated through professional work. The sponsor saw a potential aggregate view that could help clients understand patterns across properties. The files existed, but possession did not establish that each could be used for the new commercial purpose. I asked for the proposed use and relevant permissions to be examined before the full population appeared in a product-development commitment.
The product sponsor argued that removing obvious identifiers would address the concern and preserve the breadth of the dataset. I did not treat that as sufficient on its own. The actual arrangements, professional obligations and possibility of identifying a site through combinations of detail required appropriate specialist review. The strategy decision was to work from the material whose intended use could be explained, rather than assume that a technical transformation settled every question about the right to use it.
Of the 900 proposed files, 236 had the explicit permission required for the defined aggregate-use pilot. The other 664 remained excluded. We committed ₹42 lakh to that bounded pilot, with technical and professional owners retaining their respective assessments. The pilot did not establish a complete commercial product, permission for later extensions or revenue already achieved. Nor did the smaller admitted population automatically represent the wider set of sites. Its composition and limits would need to be considered when interpreting any result.
The consequence was a narrower learning exercise than the sponsor initially proposed. We gave up the apparent breadth of a 900-file product at that stage and retained uncertainty about whether the permitted population could support a useful commercial proposition. The excluded files were not described as worthless; they were outside the established scope of this use. I would put the proposed rights and population review before the revenue model next time. A company can have rich records without having a ready-made data business, and strategy should make that difference visible before the existence of the files becomes a promise about what can be sold.