The name was right until the customer received it

The name on the screen was correct. The customer's copy of the quote contained broken characters. A colleague had checked the data entry and another had checked that the file opened. Neither check established that the customer could read the document we were asking them to accept. I had approved the project review that separated those checks, so the failure belonged in my account as well as in the technical team's repair list.

I grew up in Aligarh and completed a mathematics degree at the fictional Torvali Science College in June 1995. In July I joined Zeruvani Survey Services as a survey-data assistant. The firm employed eighty-six people and recorded ₹8.7 crore revenue in the year ending March 1996. I worked in a six-person group without direct reports or spending authority. Surveyors owned the measurements. My job was to help represent their work accurately, and I learned how easily a neat record could conceal a question that still needed to go back to the person who had seen the site.

I completed a part-time computing diploma at Brezani Systems Institute in November 1998 while remaining in employment. In September 2001 I became application manager. Zeruvani then had 190 employees and ₹27 crore revenue for the year ending March 2002. I led eleven colleagues with ₹76 lakh annual operating expense under the technology director. The appointment moved me from individual records to the behaviour of applications used by several professional teams. I became interested in revisions: a later file was newer, but it did not necessarily contain every agreement carried by an earlier one.

In May 2008 I joined Nerqali as business systems manager. The retailer had eleven showrooms, 240 employees and ₹61 crore revenue for the financial year ending March 2009. I led fourteen employees and four separate contractor positions within ₹1.8 crore annual operating expense. Customers brought room sketches, material preferences and several ways of describing the same requirement. The commercial team needed a practical process, while installers needed a sufficiently precise account of the work. I had to understand both without presenting myself as the qualified owner of measurements or installation methods.

Promotion to head of IT came in August 2014. Nerqali had twenty-one showrooms, 460 employees and ₹142 crore revenue for the year ending March 2015. My remit grew to twenty-nine employees, six contractor positions and ₹5.4 crore annual operating expense. I learned that a technically valid document could still fail the person receiving it. The language, font coverage and printed result had to be examined together. I also became more involved in information accumulated by services, including material retained after the immediate customer conversation had ended.

I became CIO in January 2020. Today I lead forty-eight employees and twelve separate contractor positions through five leaders. My FY2026–27 authority comprises ₹11.6 crore operating expense and ₹3.2 crore approved change spending. The company has thirty-two showrooms and 720 employees, with ₹284 crore revenue and ₹18.9 crore operating profit for the year ending March 2026. Thirty-eight installer enterprises collectively own 76% and management holds 24%; I own no shares. I report to CEO Nusrat Delvani and present to directors without a statutory seat. Commercial head Sanjay Qervathi retains responsibility for the customer proposition.

The quote-language project cost ₹42 lakh, followed by ₹8 lakh annual support expense. The room-plan revision project required ₹76 lakh capital and ₹19 lakh implementation expense. Both taught me to resist a convenient technical shortcut: a file that opens is not necessarily readable, and the latest upload is not necessarily the agreed plan. Reviewing consultation recordings then required us to involve the appropriate privacy and legal advisers. We could not infer a continuing purpose merely because storage was inexpensive.

The visualiser was the most uncomfortable recent decision because I had supported the ₹1.4 crore pilot. Forty-three of 176 viewers understood its room image as an exact shade preview. Revised explanations reduced that misunderstanding but did not remove it: twenty-six of 180 later viewers still made the same inference. We retained a limited layout tool and removed the unsupported shade-preview proposition. I am considering one outside non-executive opportunity, with twenty-four days provisionally available and governance preparation still to do. I have not yet joined the IICA independent directors databank. My useful contribution would be to ask what a system enables people to believe, who is responsible for that belief and whether directors have seen the limits alongside the appealing demonstration.

Open to Board appointments

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