Chief Strategy Officer / India
RustomTevqesni
The acquisition paper contained a phrase I should have challenged before anyone else read it: contracted recurring revenue.
14
Strategy colleagues
Three leads within the delegated function remit
₹4.2 crore
Annual function expense
Excludes company P&L and capital-approval authority
37 years
Research and strategy career
Research analyst from July 1989; CSO from January 2020
I believe
An attractive strategic label can conceal a different kind of commitment. Repeat purchasing is not necessarily contracted revenue, partner investment does not remove our own capital needs, and deleting a product does not erase the customers who still use it. I work on the account that makes those distinctions available before the company decides.
— Rustom Tevqesni
The work
In 2020 I prepared the commercial account for a proposed ₹112 crore acquisition of Davqerzi Institutional Writing. I classified ₹42 crore of revenue from repeat customers as contracted recurring revenue. The underlying split was ₹14 crore associated with defined current agreements and ₹28 crore from discretionary reorders. I had converted an observation about past purchasing into a stronger claim about commitment. That classification was mine, not an error I discovered in somebody else's completed work. The deal team wanted to retain the original account because repeated purchasing was an important part of the proposition. I accepted its commercial relevance but could no longer accept the category. We corrected the paper, deferred the proposal and funded ₹54 lakh of commercial diligence. The delay gave up the preferred transaction timetable. It did not establish that the business was unattractive or that discretionary customers would stop buying; it established that the paper had described their relationship incorrectly. CFO Zubin Nevqesmi retained financial valuation, and qualified advisers retained interpretation of the actual agreements. Even the ₹14 crore category did not make future revenue unconditional. Periods, scope and conditions still mattered. My work was to give those specialists and the board a faithful commercial account, including uncertainty, rather than reach a new purchase price through an informal strategy calculation. The proposed acquisition did not complete in this fictional account. The ₹112 crore therefore remains a proposal, not money saved or loss prevented, and the ₹54 lakh is diligence funding rather than an achieved return. The lesson changed how I describe the source of confidence in a growth case. Habitual demand, a current agreement and a future enforceable obligation are different propositions. A senior strategist should preserve the distinction even when a shorter phrase would make the opportunity easier to present.
In 2022 we reviewed a brand licence for a proposed twenty-eight-location programme. That was an expansion proposal, not a description of Navqetri's current eighteen-showroom network. The draft commercial basis required an annual payment equal to the greater of ₹24 lakh or 8% of defined sales. At ₹2 crore sales, 8% would be ₹16 lakh, so the minimum would govern at ₹24 lakh—an effective 12% of that scenario's sales. At ₹3 crore sales, 8% becomes ₹24 lakh. That is the crossover between the two payment calculations, not a profit break-even point. Product costs, people, occupancy, marketing and other commitments remained outside this limited comparison. The expansion team favoured accepting the broad licence before a competing retailer did. I asked us to evaluate the obligation at the demand levels we could reasonably examine rather than let the familiar percentage stand for the whole agreement. We declined the broad rollout commitment and funded ₹48 lakh of proposition research at six locations under separately agreed pilot terms. Those terms were not assumed to carry the proposed annual minimum. Qualified legal and finance colleagues remained responsible for the actual contract and economics. The decision gave up a rapid branded footprint and the associated claim of scale; it bought a more bounded way to learn whether the proposition deserved a larger commitment. No completed licence rollout or profitable pilot is claimed here. The ₹48 lakh is research funding, not a saving against the rejected minimum, and the crossover arithmetic does not account for every cost. I learned to make the governing condition visible before discussing the most appealing rate. The useful board question was not whether eight percent sounded customary, but which obligation the company would actually face in each scenario and what evidence justified accepting it.
A 2023 proposal called for ten franchised locations, each with ₹90 lakh of fitout funded by its partner. The resulting ₹9 crore partner contribution supported a capital-light description. But the same model expected Navqetri to retain ₹3.2 crore inventory funding and forecast ₹76 lakh of annual support expense. The ownership of the fixtures did not settle the company's own funding or operating obligations. The commercial team preferred to announce all ten locations together, using the partner investment as evidence that expansion could move quickly. I supported examining the format but asked that the retained stock and support be brought into the main decision account. They could not be treated as incidental merely because the most visible physical asset was funded elsewhere. Finance retained the funding assessment, and qualified advisers retained the actual franchise terms. The board limited the first wave to three locations, subject to qualified terms and readiness review. It funded ₹31 lakh of preparatory work. This changed the ambition and timing of the first wave; it did not mean ten stores opened or that the three had already achieved a return. The proposal's ₹3.2 crore and ₹76 lakh figures remained a model for the ten-location arrangement rather than automatic amounts incurred by the smaller wave. My contribution was the commercial dependency account and the recommendation to narrow the first commitment. I had no delegated authority to approve the capital myself. The outcome is a sequenced decision with conditions, not a proven franchise success. Calling a model capital-light can be informative, but only if the reader can see whose capital is reduced, what remains funded by the retailer and which recurring obligations accompany the growth. Removing the fitout from our side did not remove the need for that explanation.
In 2024 five proposed initiatives each requested three specialists from the same pool of six for concurrent first-quarter work. Individually, every plan contained a plausible resource request. Taken together, they demanded fifteen assignments from six people at the same time. The portfolio presentation had made five independent-looking choices out of one shared capacity constraint. I was responsible for bringing the dependency account into the strategy discussion. The sponsors wanted to preserve all five first-quarter dates. Some proposed naming the specialists provisionally and resolving clashes during execution. I argued that a provisional name did not create another person's availability. Functional leaders retained allocation authority, but the board needed to understand that its apparent selection of five priorities also contained an unresolved choice about which work would receive the necessary expertise first. We selected two first-wave workstreams and phased the other three. A ₹1.1 crore coordination and preparation programme supported the revised sequence. The first two design stages were completed in four months. That result is narrower than delivery of five whole programmes and does not establish their financial benefits. The other three first-quarter dates were surrendered rather than quietly kept as aspirational promises. The work required sponsors to explain dependencies in a shared account and functional leaders to confirm actual assignments. Strategy did not become an unofficial line manager for the specialists. My recommendation made the collision visible and offered a sequence the authorised owners could evaluate. The lesson was less about adding a sophisticated portfolio model than about refusing to count the same scarce capacity several times. A board can choose a slower sequence consciously; it cannot make a credible timing decision from separate proposals that hide their common dependency.
In 2025 we proposed retiring six slow-selling fountain-pen models. The reviewed historical sales cohort contained 12,000 units. That number did not identify how many pens were still active, how many owners would seek repair or which future requests would arise. It did show why deleting the products from the catalogue was an incomplete account of the exit. Compatible consumables and a repair route remained part of the customer relationship. The merchandise team favoured a clean catalogue reduction and prompt release of attention for newer models. I supported reducing the range but asked for an explicit commercial support plan. A customer who had bought a durable writing instrument would experience the exit differently from a planner looking only at current sales. The company needed to decide how it would communicate and fund the continuing route without promising technical availability that had not been established. We ringfenced ₹1.2 crore as a programme budget for parts and service planning, with a commercial support horizon through March 2032. This is not an accounting provision or proof that every part will be available for seven years. Technical, merchandise and legal owners retained feasibility, actual terms and release decisions. The plan needed further assessment of compatibility, supply and service arrangements; strategy could not supply those answers by declaring the horizon. The decision accepted a continuing cost and responsibility alongside range simplification. It contains no environmental benefit claim and no forecast that all 12,000 historical units will become service requests. My role was to ensure that the strategic exit included the customer left behind by the sales decision. A product may stop earning attention in the current catalogue while still shaping trust in the business. The exit account should make that continuing relationship visible before the company treats withdrawal as complete.
Others say
Rustom makes the obligations within a proposal discussable, including the classification he had to correct in his own acquisition paper.
His commercial account helps finance see the assumption being proposed without presenting strategy as the owner of valuation or funding decisions.
Point of view
An invitation
A first outside non-executive contribution after relevant preparation and relationship review. I hold 0.6% within employee ownership, have no statutory seat and offer twenty-three provisional days. Fictional databank registration is complete; proficiency assessment remains unfinished.
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