Business advisory

Businesses rarely stall for want of strategy. They stall on a small number of decisions nobody in the room has taken before, where the cost of being wrong is high enough that the decision keeps getting deferred.

I have spent 25 years taking those decisions. Cadbury, Bharti Airtel, Tata DOCOMO, Flipkart-Ekart, Vahan Technologies. Building distribution networks, opening markets, turning a cost centre into a business

I now do that work inside other people's companies.

What I take on

Operating model and process design. Network and supply chain choices. Commercial structure and margin. Building a business line that does not exist yet.

How I work

I design, and I prove the design in one place before it scales.

That matters more than it sounds. A recommendation that has never met an operation is a document. I will sit inside the business long enough to make the first instance work, then hand it to your team to take further. I do not hold accountability for running it. That sits with the people who own the numbers.

MAL Group

Retained

MAL is a Bangalore enterprise of more than 75 years, operating across plastic injection moulding, industrial raw material distribution, real estate, travel, plantations and education.

The work is the transition from a medium enterprise to a fully grown, corporatised one. Building and institutionalising the processes, workflows and strategies that a portfolio of this age and spread needs in order to grow rather than simply continue.

Current and recent work

Nia.one

Fractional

The first was enterprise. Nia was serving workers well but had not built the proposition that manufacturers buy. I built it.

The second was monetisation. Nia houses a large resident population in managed studios, a community with daily needs and no way to meet them where they live. I designed a revenue line around it, covering essentials, meals and other daily services, delivered through franchise and partnership arrangements rather than owned operations, so the model earns on rent and on goods sold without carrying the cost of running shops.

I built the first instance and made it work. The team took it from there.

Vedang Cellular

Project

I advised on supply chain network design and the operating model for a national installation programme.

Three shapes, depending on what the work needs.

I was asked to choose between two operating models. I recommended a third, on the argument that the network being designed was considerably more complex than the business required. The work was taken forward by the client to their principal.

Working together

Retained. Continuous involvement across a business or a group, three or four days a week, where the question is not one decision but how the organisation runs. I am not an employee and I do not carry business targets.

Fractional. Embedded for a defined period to build something specific, and to make the first instance of it work.

Project. A defined question with a defined answer, scoped and delivered.

Every engagement starts with a conversation about the problem, not the format.

This engagement is current.

The common thread is a decision with real money and real operational consequence behind it, where the internal team is capable but has not done this particular thing before.

Rivi

Consulting

Coaching leaders in transition

Contact

deepak@riviconsulting.in

+91 9845090242

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