Six roles, each with a different customer to persuade

Mandate

Turn registrations into consuming households in every area, build the industrial business and give the board a truthful view of adoption.

Outcomes

• Consuming households rose from 41,000 in March 2021 to 3.62 lakh in March 2026.
• After the 2022 Jabalpur incident, fitters visited 58,000 homes in seven weeks; 1,540 of 2,100 cancellation requests were withdrawn.
• Converted 62 Belagavi foundry units after funded trials, taking cluster demand from 21,000 to 1,38,000 SCMD.
• Cut average evening waits at the twelve busiest CNG stations from 74 minutes to 19.
• With operations, reduced reported third-party damage from 31 incidents in FY2022-23 to 12 in FY2025-26.

Decisions in context

I became chief marketing officer in April 2021, when Indhanvi had gas flowing in three of its seven areas and 41,000 households cooking on it. The fund that controls the company wanted growth it could explain to its own investors, and the managing director wanted one owner for the customer from the first conversation to the hundredth bill. My remit widened in April 2023 to include industrial business development and in 2024 to include CNG dealer management. The work of these years has been to help each of our cities adopt a utility it had never had: through society demonstrations and deferred charges for households, published formulas and funded trials for factories, and supply investment before new stations for CNG. I lead 164 people with six direct reports and a budget of ₹52 crore. I present to the board and to its Health, Safety and Environment Committee, and I am not a director of the company.

Reason for the move

Current role. Not seeking an executive move; considering one independent directorship with the Indhanvi board's consent.

Mandate

Build a brand, an acquisition model and a customer-service operation for a company with pipe in the ground and no customers.

Outcomes

• Launched domestic gas in Amravati in October 2019 and in Jabalpur in February 2020.
• Moved agency payment from registration forms to sixty days of consumption in September 2020.
• Opened a 24-hour contact centre and emergency line before the first gas-in, handling about 1,900 calls a day by March 2021.
• Reached 41,000 consuming households across three areas by March 2021.

Decisions in context

I joined Indhanvi in July 2018, a year after its founders incorporated it and weeks after its first authorisations arrived. There was a pipeline design, an investment paper from the fund and a team of six. I wrote our first brand guidelines at a borrowed desk in the projects office. The early work was practical: a customer line that read the same way in Marathi, Hindi and Kannada; a contact centre built before the first gas-in, so that the emergency line was answered from the first day; and agencies for registration camps in Amravati. The lockdown of 2020 halted connections for several months and gave me time to examine our first funnel properly. What I found led to the decision to pay agencies only for consuming homes, which reshaped the business I later inherited as chief marketing officer.

Reason for the move

Promoted to chief marketing officer, responsible for every customer segment.

Mandate

Grow domestic and commercial customers in a mature network and reduce complaints about billing and service.

Outcomes

• Found 52,000 installed but never-gassed homes and brought 31,000 of them into use by 2018.
• Added 2,600 commercial kitchens, mainly restaurants, hotels and hostels.
• Cut billing complaints from 38 to 14 a month for every 10,000 customers.
• Introduced the company's first annual household safety visits, in two districts.

Decisions in context

Narmadeya was my first city gas employer and my education in a mature network. It served more than nine lakh households, and its growth had come from new housing, so nobody had looked closely at older connections. My team's first review found 52,000 homes where a meter had been fixed but gas had never been billed. Some needed a landlord's letter, some a repaired riser, some only a visit to light the stove. Over three years we brought 31,000 of them into use, and I learnt how a connection count can drift away from reality without anyone intending it. I also ran commercial sales to restaurants, hotels and hostels, adding 2,600 kitchens, and cut billing complaints by working with the meter-reading contractors rather than the call centre. I reported to the director, commercial, and presented customer and safety matters to the Risk Management Committee.

Reason for the move

Wanted to build a city gas business from its beginning, in cities that had never had piped gas.

Mandate

Reduce churn among industrial and commercial LPG buyers and build an autogas dealer network.

Outcomes

• Introduced a written price notice, with reasons, sent thirty days before each revision.
• Reduced annual churn among industrial accounts from 22 per cent to 11 per cent.
• Built an autogas network of 46 dealer-run stations in Maharashtra and Gujarat.
• Launched a kitchen safety audit for hotel and restaurant customers, taken up by 600 accounts.

Decisions in context

Prajval Fuels sold LPG in bulk tankers to factories and in cylinders to hotels and restaurants, and ran a small autogas business. It was my first business-to-business role, and the customers were unforgiving. Industrial buyers had been surprised by price changes so often that they negotiated every quotation as an opening position, and a fifth of them left us each year. I persuaded the promoter family to send a written price notice, with its reasons, thirty days before each revision, and churn halved within two years. I also built an autogas network of 46 dealer-run stations, which taught me how much a fuel dealer's economics depend on throughput he cannot control. The kitchen safety audit we offered to hotels was my first attempt at selling safety as a service. I left when it became clear that piped natural gas would replace much of our industrial business.

Reason for the move

Saw natural gas replacing LPG in industry and commercial kitchens, and wanted to work for a city gas distributor.

Mandate

Grow purifier adoption in the district towns of western India, where the category was unfamiliar.

Outcomes

• Moved demonstrations from shop counters into homes, raising demonstration-to-sale conversion from 18 to 31 per cent.
• Made filter-change visits a sales occasion; service-contract renewals rose from 44 to 63 per cent.
• Opened 120 dealers in 38 district towns of Maharashtra and Gujarat.

Decisions in context

At Tarangini I learnt to create a category rather than sell into one. In 2003 a home water purifier was an unfamiliar purchase outside the large cities, and customers in district towns doubted both the need and the claims. I joined as a brand manager and from 2007 ran marketing for the western region with a team of eighteen. The most important change we made was to move demonstrations from shop counters into homes, where a technician could test the family's own water in front of them; conversion from demonstration to sale rose from 18 to 31 per cent. We also turned the filter-change visit into a second sales conversation, and service-contract renewals rose from 44 to 63 per cent. I left in 2009 to work in fuels, where the same lessons about installation, trust and the technician's role would matter more.

Reason for the move

Wanted to move from appliances into fuels and to sell to business customers as well as households.

Mandate

Grow dealer sales in Vidarbha's district towns and keep dealer credit under control.

Outcomes

• Grew area sales from ₹13 Cr to ₹24 Cr in four years.
• Cut overdue dealer receivables from 71 to 38 days.
• Started joint promotions with LPG distributors, so that new connection holders could buy a stove on the same visit.

Decisions in context

I joined Agnivo as a management trainee in June 1998, two months after finishing my MBA, and was sent to Nagpur, close to where I grew up. Within a year I was responsible for dealers in district towns across Vidarbha, and by 2003 I had an area of 140 dealers and six sales officers. The job was mostly about credit and timing: which dealer could carry stock before the wedding season, and which would pay after the cotton harvest. In Yavatmal a dealer showed me his register of families waiting for LPG connections, and I realised our stove sales depended on infrastructure we did not control. We began joint promotions with LPG distributors so that a family receiving a new connection could buy a stove on the same visit. Area sales grew from ₹13 crore to ₹24 crore, and overdue receivables fell from 71 days to 38.

Reason for the move

Wanted brand-management experience in a category that had to be created rather than merely distributed.