I learnt to judge a system by the answer a colleague could give

I joined Arunvaya Stores as a programmer and store-systems analyst in July 1992, just after completing my computer science degree at Kavelin Institute. The work was close to the counter: item records, store applications and the context colleagues needed when a shopper asked a question. I belonged to a seven-person technical team and had no direct reports or personal budget. I quickly learnt that a screen could be technically correct and still be unhelpful. It might show a record without explaining what the store colleague was allowed to do next.

During those years I spent time listening to store teams describe the gap between an application step and a customer conversation. A missing link could mean several different things, and an apparently complete record could still require a decision. I learnt to document the question in the colleague's terms before translating it into a technical change. By the final period of my Arunvaya appointment, the company had forty-five stores, 1,900 employees and ₹610 crore revenue. Those are company figures at that time, not a remit I personally managed. I left in December 2000 for a role with broader responsibility for store technology.

At Varneli Retail, which I joined in January 2001, I became store technology manager. I led thirty-two colleagues through four reports and held ₹6.4 crore annual authority by the end of the role. Varneli then had forty-two stores, 2,100 employees and ₹780 crore revenue. Continuing support became as important to me as implementation. I had to explain how a change would reach a store, how colleagues would learn it and where an unresolved question would go during a busy trading period. An installation could be finished while the support arrangement remained unclear, and the customer would encounter that uncertainty before an executive report did.

I moved into channel integration in April 2008. The role eventually covered sixty-eight employees and ₹19 crore annual authority. Stores and direct online activity were increasingly connected, but the same word could carry different meanings in their systems. Available might mean counted in a location, free to reserve or ready for a shopper to collect. I became interested in those transitions and the responsibility behind each status. The company had seventy-eight stores, 3,600 employees and ₹1,620 crore revenue by the end of my appointment. I learnt that a joined-up experience depended on more than a successful interface; it needed agreement about the promise the interface was carrying.

Enterprise technology became my remit in July 2014. I led 116 people through five direct reports with ₹51 crore annual authority in the final period. The private-equity investor joined in 2018 with a 35% stake, leaving the promoter family with 65%. By the end of 2019, Varneli had 121 stores, 5,400 employees and ₹2,960 crore revenue. My work connected store applications, customer records and service processes to a more explicit investment account. I wanted proposals to describe the customer or colleague problem, the authority needed to resolve it and the continuing cost, rather than begin with a preferred product and search for a justification afterwards.

I became CIO in January 2020. Today Varneli operates 148 apparel and footwear stores across twenty Indian cities alongside direct online sales. It employs 6,800 people and recorded ₹4,180 crore revenue for the year ended March 2026. I lead 162 technology employees through five direct reports, with forty-five contractors separately. My FY2026–27 authority is ₹96 crore, divided between ₹62 crore operations and ₹34 crore change. I report to Devansh Karmelkar and work with Malvika Tervade on the practical service consequences of our systems. I do not set every merchandising or customer-policy decision merely because technology implements part of it.

The work I am proudest to discuss is often a correction to an attractive but incomplete account. We stopped treating returned stock awaiting inspection as immediately promiseable. We gave unresolved return lookups an explicit service route instead of making the customer repeat the problem. We reported a large improvement in lookup speed alongside a much smaller observed queue change. We kept ambiguous customer records separate while reviewing their linkage. Those decisions did not remove every difficulty. They made the remaining question easier for the responsible person to recognise and answer, which is a useful foundation for further improvement.

I present technology matters to Varneli's directors but hold no board seat. As I consider a possible external contribution, I am interested in enterprises where directors need to understand the relationship between digital promises and service delivery. I could bring thirty-four years of retail systems experience, while learning the wider financial and governance responsibilities of a seat. My proposed twenty-two days annually would require consent and a realistic calendar. I want the next chapter to retain the practical perspective that began at the counter: what does this decision make easier or harder for the person who must explain it to a customer?