A persuasive explanation should leave fewer assumptions

I used to think a good service brochure made the work look effortless. Then I watched a software buyer arrive at a proposal discussion with a translated word count and no plan for the next release. The brochure had been persuasive, but it had not helped the buyer understand what needed to be prepared. That gap became a lasting interest for me. Marketing should make a specialist service understandable without removing the questions that determine whether it can be delivered well. A simpler explanation is useful only when it leaves the buyer with a more accurate picture.

I was born in 1975 and completed a BCom in Marketing at Shavren Commerce College in May 1996. My first job, beginning that July, was account coordination at Dovrali Business Communications in Kolkata. The agency prepared business publications and campaign material for regional service companies. I worked under an account director in a five-person team, without budget authority. The practical education was in asking what a client meant before turning its words into finished copy. A polished sentence could move through several approvals while the people reading it still imagined different services.

In October 2001 I joined Nelmethi Software Services as a marketing executive. I became marketing manager in 2005, leading seven colleagues and a ₹90 lakh annual programme budget. The company sold implementation and support services to regional businesses. I learned to work with sales and delivery colleagues who could explain why an attractive enquiry was not always ready for a proposal. An incomplete brief could consume specialist time without bringing either party closer to a decision. I became interested in material that helped a buyer prepare, rather than treating every request for information as evidence that the campaign had finished its job.

Serlavi recruited me as product marketing manager in March 2008. At the time it had 160 employees and ₹34 crore revenue for FY 2008. I led fourteen colleagues with ₹2.8 crore annual marketing expense, reporting to the commercial director. Software localisation was often described through the volume of language work, but engineers and reviewers showed me how much depended on context: where a string appeared, how a user reached it and what changed between releases. I did not become a linguist or software engineer. I learned enough to ask for a demonstration that represented the work and to involve specialists before making a claim about it.

I became head of market development in September 2014, leading twenty-four people through three managers and ₹5.6 crore annual expense. Serlavi had 290 employees and FY 2015 revenue of ₹78 crore. The remit included international campaigns and the way the company explained its service to different buying groups. I learned to resist a common shortcut: translating the campaign and calling the market ready. Buyers also needed a response process, a credible discovery conversation and a proposal that reflected the work their teams could support. Different requirements should be investigated directly rather than inferred from a country label.

The 2018 ownership transition gave an employee trust seventy per cent of Serlavi, with the founding group retaining thirty per cent. I also served as a non-executive director of Vemrali Learning Services from July 2018 to June 2021, a separate fictional business with ₹4.8 crore FY 2021 revenue and thirty-six employees. The term exposed me to collective decisions about customer commitments and expenditure beyond my own marketing function. I completed the term and did not seek renewal. I would not present that experience as proof of independence for another company; the relationships and conditions of each appointment need their own review.

I became Serlavi's CMO in January 2020, reporting to Ritwik Neshpali. By March 2026 the company employed 480 people across Kolkata, Bhubaneswar and Kochi, with ₹142 crore revenue and ₹17 crore operating profit. My thirty-two-person function works through four heads with an ₹8.8 crore annual budget. Sales owns the contract and delivery owns project execution. My responsibility is to help the market understand the service, choose where we invest attention and keep our claims connected to the capability behind them. Company turnover is context for that responsibility, not a personal revenue claim.

Recent work has brought that approach into four concrete decisions. We examined forty-eight lost bids without assuming price explained them all. We rebuilt eleven of thirty-six demonstration journeys whose screenshots hid relevant context. We delayed a Japanese-market campaign until an appropriate response process was ready. We also changed the discovery brief so that a word count could no longer stand in for a release plan. I want our next stage of growth to preserve that curiosity about the buyer's actual task. For an external board, I could bring questions about whether the market story, the operating capability and the customer's understanding still describe the same service.

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