Chief Operating Officer / India
The work that a convenient total had left unfinished
- Two owned, seven leased
- 9 buildings
- 2160 bed spaces for adult residents
- Operating team through six managers
- 176 staff
- ₹ 43 crore FY 27 expense; capital separately approved
- Residential service and operations
- 32 years
- July 1994 entry; COO since January 2021
Decisions & consequences
01Replacing my daily average with the arrival pattern residents actually faced
In 2022 we planned for 480 adult residents arriving over five days. I approved reception staffing using the daily average of 96. The total was known, but the plan did not adequately examine when people would reach the building. In one four-hour window 236 arrived. Residents had arranged travel around dates we had accepted, and the front desk could not make the demand even simply by explaining how the original average had been calculated. I owned the planning assumption that had left the team facing that concentration.
Some managers preferred to ask every resident to accept a tightly assigned arrival slot. That would make the operating schedule easier, but it did not reflect every travel arrangement or the terms already agreed. I supported clearer communication and voluntary coordination alongside additional capacity, rather than treat a scheduling request as permission to disregard somebody who arrived outside it. Property managers considered the actual reception tasks and residents' practical needs. Qualified facilities and other responsible teams retained the conditions for access and use; reception throughput did not override them.
We spent₹ 18 lakh on additional reception cover and arrival coordination. The revised account showed the expected pattern within the intake, the resources available during the busiest periods and the unresolved arrangements needing a conversation. It required more preparation than dividing a total by five. It also cost more than the original staffing plan. I kept that cost with the correction instead of attributing it entirely to residents who had failed to distribute their journeys conveniently for us.
A later, separate intake comprised 510 people and had 148 arrivals in its busiest four-hour window. Fourteen residents still waited more than forty-five minutes. The cohorts and circumstances differed, so I did not claim a controlled percentage improvement caused solely by our change. Nor did the smaller peak establish that every arrival was satisfactory. The remaining waits required their own review. My lesson was to ask what a forecast means at the point where people and work meet. An average can describe the total accurately while offering a poor account of the period in which the promise will be tested.
Counting the linen in circulation before calling it available
At one 240-bed residence in 2023, the property account showed 360 complete bed-linen sets. That total appeared comfortably above the number of beds. A closer operating review found 210 sets in use,96 at laundry and 54 clean released sets in reserve. The planned turnover required 72 sets. The immediate reserve was therefore eighteen short, even though the company owned more sets than the building had beds. The total had combined resources at different stages of the service and treated them as though they could all meet the same next task.
The purchasing team preferred to solve the issue through additional stock. The residence manager wanted a more dependable account of laundry return and release before deciding how much to buy. I supported a combined response. Extra sets could provide useful capacity, but an unexamined circulation process could make them disappear into the same uncertainty. We purchased ninety additional sets for₹ 5.4 lakh and funded₹ 9 lakh of coordination and handling work. Finance retained the appropriate classification of the purchase and programme costs rather than treating every amount as the same kind of recurring expense.
The review followed sets through use, laundry and clean release, with responsible owners retaining the handling and quality conditions. An item ordered or returned was not automatically counted as ready for use. I did not ask colleagues to relax those conditions to close the eighteen-set gap on paper. The ninety purchased sets would contribute as they were received and accepted through the proper arrangements. We avoided adding them immediately to the old reserve figure as though no other stock had moved in the meantime.
The case concerned one selected property and a particular turnover plan. It was not a fleet-wide measure of all nine residences, and it did not establish a health outcome or a universal stock ratio. The supported result was a funded response and a more useful account of where the resource actually was. I would now require that state-and-timing account before approving a stock sufficiency claim. Ownership matters to the financial record; availability matters to the resident whose room needs preparation. The operating leader must connect the two without allowing either number to stand in for the other.
Correcting private-room commitments that a bed total had concealed
A 2024 review examined 160 resident agreements against their supported accommodation allocations. One hundred and thirty-eight matched. Twenty-two specified private rooms without an allocation capable of supporting that promise. The inventory summary I had accepted showed sufficient bed spaces overall, but some were in shared rooms. The commercial commitment was therefore more specific than the unit the operating account had used. A vacant bed did not by itself satisfy an agreement for exclusive use of a room.
The commercial team wanted to offer an upgraded shared arrangement and keep the intake intact. That could be a useful option for some residents, but it could not become a unilateral redefinition of what everyone had agreed to buy. I asked property, commercial and contract owners to examine the actual agreements and explain the alternatives individually. We retained the twenty-two mismatches in the management account rather than quietly changing their category to make the inventory reconcile. Residents could consider a revised proposition or an appropriate cancellation route under their arrangements.
Fourteen accepted revised shared terms. Eight cancelled, and₹ 15.2 lakh was returned under the relevant agreements, including accommodation advances and deposits as applicable. The company also incurred₹ 12 lakh of relocation, support and administration expense. The refunds and the support expense were separate categories. Finance retained their proper treatment, and I did not describe the entire returned amount as lost profit or as an operating cost. The number accepting revised terms was not used as a satisfaction score or proof that the original error had caused no inconvenience.
I acknowledged my part in approving the insufficient inventory summary. The correction required us to match the resident's actual promise to a supported room allocation before confirmation, with exceptions reaching a responsible decision owner. It made some commercial conversations slower because a broad spare-capacity total no longer supplied an immediate answer. That was a real consequence of taking the product distinction seriously. I would make the unit of the promise explicit at the beginning of future inventory reviews. A residence does not deliver interchangeable bed spaces when its agreements describe different kinds of privacy, occupancy and use.
Keeping the resident's deposit question open after departure
In 2025 we reviewed deposit settlement across 310 completed departures. Two hundred and eighty-two accounts had settled; twenty-eight remained disputed. Nineteen disputes concerned the supporting condition record and nine concerned utility allocation. A departure summary could describe all 310 residents as checked out while leaving these financial questions largely outside the operating conversation. I wanted the property account to follow the obligation beyond the resident's physical exit, without asking operations to take over finance or decide a contractual dispute by itself.
Property managers wanted a clearer point at which their responsibility ended. Finance needed supported information to settle each account, and residents wanted an explanation of amounts retained or returned. These were compatible needs if the process identified who had to provide which evidence. We spent₹ 18 lakh on the review and supporting coordination. Appropriate finance, property and contract owners examined the actual arrangements. This was not an assertion that one standard deduction or deadline applied to every resident, nor a reason to delay undisputed amounts while an unrelated question remained open.
Eleven of the disputed cases were corrected, with₹ 6.8 lakh returned. Ten were resolved with agreed charges retained, and seven remained open at the review date. Those outcomes account for the original twenty-eight disputes. The returned funds were distinct from the₹ 18 lakh cost of carrying out the review. Refundable deposits remained separate from the company's accommodation and service revenue, and a corrected allocation did not become an invented saving for either party. We kept the seven open accounts visible with responsible owners and the next decision required.
The process took more attention than marking the resident record inactive and moving on to the next intake. I regarded that as part of the operating obligation the company had accepted. We did not claim that resolving twenty-one cases proved every historic settlement correct or that no new dispute could arise. My improvement would be to make the departure evidence and settlement responsibilities explicit before the first disagreement, rather than reconstruct them afterward. A resident may no longer be in the building, but the company still needs to explain the money it holds and the basis on which the account will end.