Learning to hear the question after delivery

My first title was move coordinator, and the most useful part of the work was listening to two descriptions of the same event. A branch might say the shipment was ready. A household might say the new flat was not. A carrier might say the vehicle had arrived. The customer might still be waiting for help with the part of the service she believed she had purchased. I did not have authority to resolve every disagreement, but I could make the difference explicit and put it before the person who did. That remains central to my operating work.

I grew up in Kochi in a Christian family and completed a Bachelor of Commerce at the fictional Vezqanu College of Commerce in June 1996. Tevqanu Transit Support employed me the next month. It had fifty-eight employees and₹5.6 crore revenue for FY ending March 1997. I joined a seven-person coordination team with no reports or spending delegation. My assignments concerned move records, customer updates and liaison with branch colleagues. I learned to ask what a status meant before repeating it, and to avoid offering a date that the responsible operating team had not supported.

In April 2002 I became branch service manager. Tevqanu employed 130 people and recorded₹19 crore revenue for FY ending March 2003. I led twenty-two colleagues through three supervisors within₹1.6 crore annual function expense, reporting to the regional operations manager. The job brought the customer's experience and the branch's economics into the same conversation. A reassuring phrase could create work nobody had costed. A narrow description of completion could leave the family facing an unresolved task. I began reviewing the whole service account with supervisors rather than judging each contact in isolation.

I joined Zelqavi as regional relocation manager in September 2008 and moved to Rajkot. The company had 150 employees, four branches and₹31 crore revenue for FY ending March 2009. Sixty-four operating colleagues worked through four branch managers within₹11 crore annual expense. I reported to the network operations head. The move gave me responsibility across branches and their partners. A good local decision could cause trouble elsewhere if the destination team had not agreed the corresponding work. I learned to make an exception visible at both ends before treating the origin branch's solution as the customer's answer.

Promotion to network operations head followed in June 2015. Zelqavi employed 360 people across six branches and recorded₹78 crore revenue for FY ending March 2016. I led 230 operating colleagues through five regional managers within₹46 crore annual expense and reported to the CEO. The scale made common service definitions necessary, but it also made their weaknesses travel further. I had supported using a broad unpacking description because it simplified quotations. A later review showed that some households understood it to include furniture reassembly that the operating plan had not provided. The simplicity had transferred a difficult conversation to delivery day.

I became COO in March 2021. The present enterprise has eight branches, four storage depots, 620 direct employees and₹126 crore FY 26 revenue. My 420 colleagues work through six regional heads within₹74 crore FY 2026–27 operating expense. The separately approved capital programme is₹6.5 crore. I report to Rahul Qazmethi, and Farida Qezvuli leads branch service. A family holding company owns 58% and a private investor 42%;I have no personal holding or statutory seat. Contracted carriers remain responsible for their transport work, and qualified owners decide handling methods. An executive instruction cannot substitute for those judgements.

The first-use pilot grew out of sixty selected customer conversations. Twenty-two described difficulty finding what they needed after delivery. We then worked with forty-five different households on priority cartons. Thirty-eight received them in the agreed first sequence, while seven did not. The₹18 lakh annual expense provision paid for coordination and handling;it was not evidence that every move became easier or that the pilot measured a causal improvement against the earlier group. What changed was the operating question:we began planning the customer's first use alongside the movement of the consignment.

Temporary storage raised a related but different design problem. A carton could be recorded accurately without being accessible on the day a customer requested it. We established a selective-retrieval service with₹24 lakh initial expense and₹12 lakh additional annual provision. Eighteen of twenty-four selected requests met the agreed day and six did not. The assembly-scope review examined eighty moves and found thirteen mismatches. Ten households accepted revised company-supported arrangements and three chose their own providers;₹6.4 lakh funded the correction. We did not ask crews to improvise technical work outside their competence.

The partner-payment case made me reconsider how an administrative hold can become an operating decision. Fourteen invoices worth₹42 lakh were blocked while₹2.8 lakh was questioned. With finance and contract owners, we released the₹39.2 lakh accepted as due and continued the specific review. Paying a liability was not a procurement saving. I speak Malayalam, English and working Gujarati. I registered in the IICA databank in May 2026 but have not completed the assessment and claim no exemption. Twenty-two days is a provisional allowance for a possible external role. I would contribute practical scrutiny of a service promise, including the point where the company's completion and the customer's completion diverge.

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Languages / Malayalam · English · Gujarati — working proficiency