Chief Operating Officer / India
RohanVayelkar
I started as a warehouse records assistant in August 1993 at the fictional Nivarth Freight Services.
18
Leased warehouse sites
Company estate at October 2026; 1.9 million square feet, not universal available capacity
1560
Operating colleagues in my remit
Seven direct reports within a 2100-person company
₹286 Cr
Delegated operating expense
2026–27; separate capital, financing and lease approvals
I believe
I want to know what has to happen inside the building before I call its space available. Storage, picking, replenishment and returns can compete for the same floor while appearing in different reports. My operating account should make that competition understandable to the customer and the people doing the work. An attractive capacity number is useful only when its conditions remain attached.
— Rohan Vayelkar
The work
A customer programme in 2024 remained at 240000 order lines per month in the comparison we examined. The headline volume looked stable. Its composition did not: full-case work fell from 66% to 38% of lines, while unit-pick work rose from 34% to 62%. The two categories covered the same defined monthly population. I did not think the unchanged total was enough evidence that the warehouse’s resource requirement should also remain unchanged. The customer’s commercial lead challenged additional support because the contract discussion had used volume as its main reference. Our site team argued that the handling pattern had materially changed. I asked for the work mix to be examined alongside how we were actually operating. A more demanding profile could explain part of the requirement without proving that every local practice was efficient. We needed a discussion that did not force one explanation to erase the other. I supported ₹1.8 crore in additional operating support and change mobilisation over six months. That was a disclosed expense of the response, not an annualised saving or a charge automatically owed by the customer. The responsible commercial colleagues continued the scope and terms discussion through the appropriate agreement. I did not treat a percentage change as permission to vary a contract unilaterally or to lower an existing service undertaking. One alternative was to insist that the original resource plan absorb the change because the total had not increased. Another was to accept every request for more support without examining the site’s method. I supported neither. The chosen approach kept the altered work profile and our own performance under review, while making the temporary support and its duration explicit. It gave up the simplicity of one volume measure and required more detailed operating evidence. The fictional result is a clearer basis for resourcing and customer discussion, not a claim that the programme permanently improved margin or that the observed mix caused every cost. A COO’s account should say what the comparison establishes and what remains to be decided. In this case, the line total remained useful, but it could no longer stand alone as a description of the job arriving at the warehouse.
In 2017 a customer’s returns programme brought 18000 units into the warehouse cohort under review. Physical receipt was a common event across that population, but the instructions for what should happen next differed. The customer had authorised 11200 units for sale; 4100 awaited inspection, and 2700 had an approved write-off decision. Those categories reconciled to the received total. They did not describe 18000 units of available saleable inventory. The receiving team wanted its completed handling task recognised. The customer’s supply-chain team needed a reliable account of what could re-enter the forward flow. Some colleagues proposed presenting the cohort as one cleared returns batch, with unresolved decisions followed elsewhere. I thought that would obscure the space and responsibility still attached to the goods. We retained the disposition states in the operating account without denying that receipt itself had been completed. I supported ₹42 lakh in segregation and inspection expense for the programme. The amount was separate from the value of the customer’s stock and did not represent a write-off booked by our company. Customer authority over sale, inspection outcome and approved disposal remained intact. Our responsibilities concerned custody, permitted handling and an accurate account of the instructions received. I could not turn the warehouse’s need for space into authority to choose a commercial disposition. The customer challenged the additional operating cost, while the site team wanted an earlier answer about unresolved units. We worked through the relevant instructions and the responsibility for providing them. The alternative of treating all received units as available would have made the summary look simpler but would not have described the actual position. Keeping the distinctions visible meant the unresolved 4100 units could not disappear behind a completed receiving measure. This invented case illustrates a boundary a logistics leader should be able to explain without reproducing a real customer’s stock information. It does not prescribe inspection standards, accounting treatment or disposal procedures. The decision I own was to retain condition and authorised disposition alongside receipt, with the expense and remaining customer decisions still visible. The cohort’s physical presence was a fact; its next commercial use required a separate basis.
A six-site contract mobilisation in 2022 had been planned around a common start date. At the readiness review, four sites could support the agreed operating work. Two still needed customer master-data and inventory-reconciliation tasks completed before the same undertaking could be made responsibly. Buildings and teams were present, but that was not sufficient evidence that every site was ready for the service described in the programme. The commercial sponsor favoured one visible launch, both for coordination and for the confidence it would communicate. The implementation team identified specific dependencies at the two sites. I supported a staged start agreed with the customer and the responsible commercial colleagues. Four sites began first; the remaining two followed three weeks later after the required work. I did not treat an internal readiness label as a power to rewrite the customer agreement without that discussion. The staged arrangement incurred ₹96 lakh in overlapping space and team expense. I retained the cost as part of the mobilisation account. It was not a calculation of hypothetical losses avoided or evidence that every later operation was free of difficulty. The account needed to show what became ready, which conditions delayed the remaining sites and what we paid to preserve a workable transition. The separate capital and lease approvals remained with their authorised owners. One option was to launch all six and ask the receiving teams to work around the unresolved records. Another was to hold every site until the slowest dependency closed. Neither described the actual readiness distribution well. I supported the staged alternative because it allowed the prepared work to proceed while retaining the two sites’ requirements as explicit programme obligations. That introduced additional coordination instead of hiding the incomplete work inside ordinary operations. The fictional case is not a claim that staging is always the best mobilisation method. Its value lies in showing the evidence behind the selected sequence and the cost of that choice. A COO should be able to explain why a building’s availability did not settle the start of its customer service, and why the remaining programme responsibility stayed open after the first four sites began. The launch date mattered, but it did not replace readiness.
In 2011 I supported a slotting proposal within a 720-SKU warehouse operation. Eighty fast-moving items were grouped nearer dispatch, and the proposal emphasised the shorter picking journey this would allow. It did not adequately represent replenishment interference at eighteen locations. Floor colleagues had raised concerns about the interaction, but I accepted the comparison before those concerns had been examined with enough weight. The weakness was in the basis I used to endorse the change. Revising the arrangement cost ₹26 lakh in rework and operating adjustment. I kept that amount in the record rather than presenting the final layout as if it had been our intention from the beginning. The earlier proposal had favoured one movement through the warehouse. It had not sufficiently described the work required to keep the selected positions supplied while other activities continued. A shorter picking journey was a relevant consideration, but it was not the whole operating pattern. The planning team wanted a consistent way to place high-frequency items. The replenishment team wanted its timing and access requirements represented in the same decision. I supported a revised assessment involving the responsible operating and layout specialists. Design and safety authority remained with qualified people; neither the original efficiency argument nor my later acknowledgement settled that assessment. We did not use the correction as evidence of a quantified safety improvement or a universal productivity result. One response would have been to blame execution for failing to deliver the travel advantage. Another would have been to abandon any effort to improve picking journeys. I rejected both explanations. I had to examine the interaction the proposal omitted, including why the earlier warning had not changed my decision. The correction retained the legitimate objective while changing the account of the surrounding work and the resource needed to make it practical. This is an invented example of an operating assumption I would expect a senior leader to own. It contains no live warehouse plan or instruction for configuring equipment. The useful lesson is the cost of optimising one movement without a sufficient view of another. My responsibility was to give the competing evidence a place before approval, not ask the floor team to absorb an incomplete decision after the arrangement had been introduced.
In 2025 a customer-space proposal referred to 18000 nominal pallet positions. Examination of the actual goods mix and the approved operating configuration supported 15600 usable positions for the selected programme. The difference was not a universal occupancy allowance or a new rule for every warehouse. It reflected the circumstances of the work being proposed. I asked that the customer allocation and operating account use the supported capacity rather than the larger nominal count. The commercial team challenged the resulting space requirement because the original number had made the proposal attractive. Operating and specialist colleagues explained the conditions that limited its use for this mix. I supported their assessment and coordinated the alternative-space discussion. My role was to decide within the appropriate commercial and operating authority, not to overrule qualified design or safety judgement to recover an earlier capacity assumption. The response included ₹74 lakh in alternative-space expense over four months. That amount described the selected arrangement, not the value of extra pallet positions or a speculative avoided-loss benefit. The proposal also needed to keep the conditions of the 15600-position assessment visible. A changed goods mix or operating pattern could require another examination. I did not want a corrected number to become a new context-free promise simply because it was smaller than the first one. One alternative was to retain 18000 in the main account and describe the difference as a local implementation matter. I did not support that because it would leave the customer commitment resting on an assumption the review had not confirmed. Another was to treat the whole building as unsuitable. The evidence did not support that conclusion either. The decision concerned the capacity usable for this particular programme and the resource needed beyond it. The fictional account separates physical space, nominal positions, assessed capacity and commercial allocation. It offers no warehouse-design standard, storage limit or operating instruction for a real site. The outcome I claim is an explainable undertaking with its expense and conditions attached. An operating leader should be able to make that account clear without asking the customer to infer suitability from the largest number in the property description.
Others say
Rohan kept our returns instructions separate from the warehouse’s receipt record. The discussion became more useful when it showed which units we had authorised and which still needed a decision from us.
I challenged the earlier slotting proposal because replenishment had not been represented adequately. Rohan acknowledged his part in the decision and kept the correction expense in the account.
Point of view
An invitation
I would consider a logistics operating mandate or a first-board discussion where experience of contracted services and customer-owned goods is relevant. Any role would need a clear authority, preparation, conflict assessment and time agreement. This fictional profile is an example of a leadership narrative, with no actual service offer, customer relationship or professional enquiry channel.
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