Responsibility grew from one stock record to an estate of customer undertakings.

Mandate

Make the customer contract, the site’s work and the operating resource intelligible across the warehouse estate.

Outcomes

• Supported staged mobilisation of four sites followed by two three weeks later in 2022;₹96 lakh overlap expense retained.
• Addressed the 2024 full-case/unit-pick mix change with ₹1.8 crore additional support over six months.
• Kept 15600 assessed usable positions separate from 18000 nominal positions in the 2025 capacity proposal.

Decisions in context

The COO appointment made me responsible for the relationship between the business we undertook and the operating account across sites. I could no longer regard a difficult mobilisation or changed order profile as a problem belonging only to one contract team. The six-site start, the altered handling mix and the capacity review each required commercial and operating colleagues to examine a shared assumption. I led the coordination without taking over customer disposition rights or specialist design authority. My remit covers 1560 people within the company’s 2100-person workforce. The expense delegation is not unrestricted authority over capital, financing or lease commitments. Company revenue and customer stock values therefore describe different things from my financial scope. I would expect a search partner to retain those boundaries alongside the scale of the estate, because the title alone does not explain the decisions for which I can give an account.

Reason for the move

Appointed COO after leading contract logistics; current role.

Mandate

Connect customer instructions and contracted service requirements with the operating responsibilities of the warehouse teams.

Outcomes

• Retained three authorised-disposition states in the 2017 cohort of 18000 returned units.
• Supported ₹42 lakh in segregation and inspection expense without treating it as the value of customer inventory.
• Kept customer ownership and decision authority separate from the provider’s physical receipt and custody.

Decisions in context

This role brought the continuing customer relationship into the centre of my operating work. A warehouse could complete a physical task while a commercial instruction remained unresolved. The returns programme made that distinction concrete: receipt, inspection and authorised disposition could not be collapsed into one convenient completion status. I had to recognise the site team’s work while keeping the customer’s remaining decisions visible. The appointment also widened my responsibility for explaining cost. Segregation and inspection expense was an operating item, not evidence that we owned the goods or had booked their write-off. Director of contract logistics was a functional employment title rather than a statutory board seat. The progression towards COO came from connecting those separate responsibilities across contracts, not from claiming that every decision affecting stock or property belonged to my function. It prepared me to examine the assumptions beneath a broader service undertaking.

Reason for the move

Promoted to COO as the company’s contract estate and operating remit expanded.

Mandate

Coordinate site performance while preserving the different work profiles and responsibilities within customer programmes.

Outcomes

• Took responsibility for the 2011 slotting proposal that underweighted replenishment interference at eighteen locations.
• Disclosed ₹26 lakh in rework and operating adjustment after the 720-SKU layout review.
• Brought replenishment evidence into the revised account rather than attributing the whole problem to execution.

Decisions in context

Joining Tervashan moved my work from a single depot into a regional account. I needed a way to compare sites without pretending that their customer programmes involved identical work. The slotting decision in 2011 showed how easily I could lose that distinction even within one warehouse. I supported the placement of eighty fast movers near dispatch and gave too much weight to the picking journey. Replenishment interference at eighteen locations had not been represented sufficiently. The correction cost ₹26 lakh, and I retained my responsibility for the earlier endorsement. Qualified colleagues assessed the revised arrangement; I did not claim that my commercial preference determined design or safety. This appointment developed my ability to ask what a performance comparison had omitted. It also gave me a specific failure to carry into later reviews, rather than a general claim that experience had made every decision more balanced.

Reason for the move

Promoted to responsibility for contract logistics across a wider customer estate.

Mandate

Make receiving, storage and dispatch responsibilities workable within the depot’s agreed customer service.

Outcomes

• Connected local movement records with the next operational responsibility across shifts.
• Kept customer instructions distinct from the depot’s authority to handle goods.
• Developed a site-level account of work that did not treat one completed movement as the whole customer undertaking.

Decisions in context

The depot appointment gave me direct responsibility for colleagues, expense and the coordination of a working site. I had to understand how receiving, storage and dispatch could compete for attention while each team met its own immediate task. My earlier records experience helped me follow the obligation beyond a movement entry, but managing the depot required a more practical account of people and time. I could not assume that a clear instruction on paper meant the next shift had everything needed to carry it out. The company’s revenue was service revenue, not the value of goods passing through the premises. My budget covered the depot’s operating work and did not give me ownership of customer inventory. This role prepared me for a wider remit by making the limits of a single-site measure visible before I had authority to compare several sites.

Reason for the move

Joined Tervashan to take responsibility across several warehouse sites.

Mandate

Maintain movement records and follow discrepancies into the next responsible action.

Outcomes

• Learned to connect a stock entry with goods another colleague could locate and explain.
• Distinguished physical movement from the customer instruction required for the next use.
• Developed an interest in the work that continued after a record was marked complete.

Decisions in context

I joined after completing commerce in June 1993. The work was an early-career responsibility inside a twelve-person records team, not a management appointment. I maintained movement entries, followed discrepancies and helped the next colleague understand what remained unresolved. Working beside the floor team made the consequences of an inaccurate or incomplete account visible. A received unit could be present without being available for dispatch, and a customer instruction might still be required after handling finished. I did not decide those commercial questions or hold a spending budget. The value of this appointment in my chronology is the practical foundation it gave later operating work. It should not be enlarged retrospectively by the scale of the company I eventually joined or by decisions I made decades later. A credible leadership record can allow its first role to remain small and still show why it mattered.

Reason for the move

Promoted into depot operations after nearly seven years in warehouse records.