Learning what the project asks the company to become

The twelve estimates looked persuasive because each described a real question the technical team had examined. I approved the portfolio total without asking whether the measures could be combined in the way the total implied. Several affected the same underlying system. Their standalone estimates could not simply be added and presented as the result of a package. When Hamid's team challenged the account, I had to correct a strategic interpretation I had helped make credible. The lesson was not that an efficiency opportunity lacked value; it was that the proposed combination required its own explanation.

I grew up in Kottayam and completed economics at the fictional Velzethi School of Economics in June 1994. The next month I joined Dorvemi Project Advisory as a market analyst. The firm employed fifty-seven people and recorded ₹8.4 crore revenue for FY ending March 1995. I worked within a five-person analysis group without staff responsibility or spending delegation. My early work involved describing industrial customers and the conditions behind project demand. I learned that an attractive market total could contain businesses with very different reasons and abilities to invest.

I became market-planning manager in June 2001. Dorvemi then had 131 employees and ₹31 crore revenue for FY ending March 2002. Eleven colleagues worked through two leads within ₹82 lakh annual function expense. Managing assignments made me more attentive to what a recommendation required after the report was delivered. A customer might value an improvement yet lack the site arrangement, capital approval or operating context assumed by the proposal. I began to ask how the opportunity would become a workable relationship rather than treating the expression of a need as the completion of the commercial question.

In September 2008 I joined Zemlavi as head of portfolio development. The efficiency-project business employed sixty-four people and recorded ₹18 crore revenue for FY ending March 2009. Seven planning colleagues worked through two leads within ₹76 lakh annual expense. The move gave me continuing responsibility for the choices inside one enterprise. We could own selected retrofit assets at a customer's premises, so the investment account had to consider where the equipment would operate, who could authorise that use and what happened when the relationship ended. A plausible technical benefit was necessary but not sufficient.

The strategy-director appointment followed in July 2015. Zemlavi had 112 employees and ₹61 crore revenue for FY ending March 2016. Ten strategy colleagues worked through two leads within ₹2.1 crore annual expense. The title was a functional executive role, not a statutory directorship. I reviewed the shape of the portfolio, the customer-acquisition model and the assumptions carried into later stages of a project. I became less interested in a large list of possible measures and more interested in whether the company had assembled a coherent service around the particular combination it wanted to finance and deliver.

Since January 2021 I have served as CSO. My fourteen colleagues work through three leads with ₹4.2 crore FY2026–27 operating expense. I coordinate ₹9.8 crore of proposals, while authorised boards and financial owners retain approval and accounting decisions. Zemlavi now has 165 employees and ₹124 crore FY26 revenue. The engineering parent owns 57% and the private fund 43%; I have no personal equity. Priya Jevqani is my reporting line, and Hamid Povzari leads technical assessment. I present strategic choices to directors without holding a statutory seat.

The portfolio correction reduced the unsupported aggregate of 19.2 GWh a year to a package model of 11.4 GWh under stated assumptions. The ₹72 lakh review remained a cost, and neither model was reported as realised savings. Three pilots with ₹2.6 crore approved expenditure became the next step. In a separate site review, nine of twenty-one proposed locations had tenure arrangements compatible with the seven-year service proposition; twelve remained unresolved. After ₹39 lakh of review, a four-site ₹1.7 crore pilot replaced the proposed ₹8.4 crore wider commitment. The alternatives did not buy the same scope.

The equipment-exit review examined eighty units. Fifty-two were candidates for removal, subject to the relevant rights and technical assessment, while twenty-eight were integrated into their sites. After ₹58 lakh of review, the model's potential gross resale assumption changed from ₹3.2 crore to ₹1.1 crore. That was neither a sale nor an accounting impairment finding. The free-assessment review likewise required careful categories: ninety-six assessments cost ₹84 lakh, fourteen led to ₹36 lakh paid follow-on fees at the review date and eighty-two had not progressed. We began a six-client paid-scoping trial with ₹24 lakh approved expense, without declaring a proved improvement in acquisition economics.

I am considering one first outside board role. My fictional IICA record shows registration in February 2026 and a passed proficiency assessment in June; those steps do not settle independence or suitability for a particular appointment. Twenty-six days are provisionally available subject to employer consent and the actual calendar. I would bring experience of connecting a technical opportunity with the enterprise that must carry its obligations. I would also need to learn the prospective company's business and collective duties, using my strategy background to ask better questions rather than directing another management team.

Open to Board appointments

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