Listening became a commercial responsibility

My first professional habit was listening to an answer long enough to discover that it did not fit the question I had prepared. After completing a communication degree at Renkavi College of Communication in May 2002, I joined Eshnora Audio Cooperative in Bhubaneswar that July. We produced commissioned audio programmes for local organisations and public listening events. I researched subjects, recorded interviews and edited programmes under an experienced producer. The work taught me that a polished script could be less useful than a precise account of how someone actually understood a decision.

I spent time recording conversations outside an office, where the language of a formal brief often changed. People described a service through the person who introduced it or the practical step they needed to take. I learnt to ask permission for the intended use of a recording and to distinguish a contributor's willingness to talk from agreement with every possible edit. I was not a journalist with a national platform or a financial adviser. I was learning a production craft and the responsibility that comes with selecting another person's words for an audience they may never meet.

In August 2007 I joined Velnathi Household Products as a regional marketing executive. The company sold small household appliances through distributors and retailers. I moved from producing a finished programme to understanding what happened between a campaign and a purchase. A retailer could add an explanation, omit a limitation or use the brand's material in a setting the marketing team had never seen. I visited outlets and listened to customers describe where they had heard an offer. The role taught me to treat distribution as part of communication, rather than assume that a centrally approved message arrived unchanged.

I entered Avirneli Home Finance in April 2012 as branch marketing manager. A housing-loan enquiry carried consequences very different from an appliance purchase. The household might be considering a long commitment, and the person introducing the lender might be trusted for reasons unrelated to their authority. I learnt the boundaries of marketing's role from credit, legal and branch colleagues. We could explain the application route and the service available. We could not decide eligibility, promise sanction or certify a property's title. I became interested in the moment when a helpful introduction was mistaken for an assurance that another function had not given.

In October 2018 I became head of customer research. The role gave me a way to examine those assumptions systematically. My team interviewed people who had proceeded, paused or decided against an application, with an appropriate process for participation. We also examined the records used to describe demand. The same household could contact a branch, respond to an event and submit a web enquiry, appearing several times in a channel report. I wanted the company to understand the relationship between those entries before treating every one as a separate prospect won by a campaign.

Research sometimes made a familiar result less flattering. A partner sign could be recognised while its meaning remained wrong. An event could be well attended without producing permission for sales follow-up. A customer might have agreed to a photograph without agreeing to the proposed account of their finances. I learnt to explain these findings as decisions the business could act on, rather than a list of defects for another team to defend. That meant bringing an alternative, its cost and the limits of the evidence. A small comprehension exercise was useful without being represented as a definitive measure of every household's understanding.

I became CMO in June 2023, reporting to the CEO. I now lead 37 colleagues through four managers and administer a ₹24 crore annual marketing and research budget. Avirneli operates 58 branches across Odisha, Chhattisgarh, West Bengal and Jharkhand. At March 2026 it employed 1,120 people and held ₹3,260 crore of housing loans; FY 2026 income was ₹466 crore. Two family investment vehicles own 80% and an employee-benefit trust owns the remainder. These figures describe our fictional regional business. They are not amounts under my lending authority or evidence that marketing determines a household's credit outcome.

The cases on this site come from my CMO appointment. We changed material at 46 referral points, corrected the meaning of an 8,600-entry enquiry report, kept information-only attendance separate from an application-contact request and withdrew a customer film that exceeded its permissions. I present relevant research and acquisition matters to the board when invited, without being a director. I would like a future board contribution to draw on this attention to how a company meets its customers through other people. I would also need to learn the discipline of oversight, so that my questions improve the board's decisions without creating a second marketing department around my own preferences.

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