I learned to question the setting the specification had taken for granted.

I entered packaging-development analysis at Tervanil Therapeutics in July 1994 after mechanical engineering studies at the fictional Mervathin College. The work began with the relationship between a physical specification and the task it was supposed to support. I belonged to a ten-person group without management or spending delegation. A drawing could describe a package accurately while leaving questions about how a person recognised its orientation, opened it or passed it to the next stage of work.

Product management followed in July 2001. By FY 2006–07 I led twenty-one colleagues through three direct reports with ₹3.2 crore annual function expense. Tervanil’s ₹620 crore revenue and 1900 employees described the employer, not the scope of my personal budget. Quality and regulatory colleagues retained their authority. My role was to choose the product approach and make the user’s task sufficiently clear for the relevant specialists to evaluate it.

I owned a poor choice in a 2005 outer-carton prototype. I preferred a symmetric appearance that made the opening direction less clear. In a study involving 120 dummy cartons and thirty-six packroom staff, fourteen participants were confused at the initial opening. Rohan Kelvarne challenged the appearance-led choice. ₹68 lakh supported an asymmetric opening cue, but five of thirty participants still showed confusion in the later test. We retained further review rather than describe the revised prototype as resolved. No medicine, dose or clinical outcome was involved in the fictional exercise.

In April 2008 I joined Pravellen Devices as product director. The new setting involved laboratory and healthcare workflow equipment, where physical space and surrounding tasks could determine whether a specification became useful. The director title was an executive appointment. I had no statutory seat. I wanted to understand the workplace before assuming that the model with the most extensive feature list would be the right product for every customer.

I became vice-president of healthcare-workflow products in July 2015. A storage-cabinet programme made the difference tangible. Twenty-nine of sixty-four audited sites needed room for bulky sealed packs that the proposed fixed compartments did not accommodate. We selected a mixed arrangement with twelve fixed and twelve adjustable compartments. Thirteen of eighteen pilot sites accepted it; five needed oversized storage. That was evidence about fit in the observed settings, not a claim about sterility, infection control or clinical benefit.

The CPO appointment began in July 2021. I now lead ninety-six product colleagues through six direct reports with ₹31 crore delegated FY 2026–27 expense. Company revenue of ₹1260 crore and 2600 current employees provide separate institutional context. Engineering, clinical assessment, quality and regulatory work, manufacturing, service, sales and finance retain their respective responsibilities. I present product questions to the board as an executive, without claiming statutory service or authority to make specialist assessments through the product title alone.

An accessory review also changed how I described a complete range. We selected a twelve-part core with explicit options instead of including all thirty-six parts by default. Fifty-eight pilot sites chose the core and thirty-eight added options. The work accepted a more careful configuration conversation, with compatibility assessment still required, rather than assume that catalogue breadth made the same package useful everywhere.

In 2023, research at forty-two laboratories found that thirty-one had available bench depth of six hundred millimetres or less. A proposed workstation measured 750 millimetres deep. We selected a 580-millimetre design for further evaluation, while retaining clearance and other site requirements. Eleven of sixteen site-fit reviews accepted it and five needed another configuration. The narrower dimension did not establish universal fit, performance or regulatory clearance. The decision made a workplace constraint part of the product definition before the catalogue description was finalised.

I also want the offer to distinguish equipment delivered from equipment ready for use in its intended workflow. In a later installation programme, seventy-two of 240 planned sites had not confirmed prerequisites. A staged pilot ended with seventy-three of ninety units installed and seventeen pending. Those remaining units stay in the story, as do customers who need a different storage arrangement or accessory selection. Every organisation and event here is invented. My possible first-board contribution would concern the practical obligations inside a product offer, supported by preparation and a proper assessment of relationships and time rather than an assumption that senior product experience completes that assessment.