I coach the people who run companies — the way a sports coach trains an athlete.

In 1994, in my mid-twenties, I joined pharma as a Medical Representative. The role is widely misunderstood. A Medical Rep — in 1990s India, before Google, before searchable online medical journals, before a phone in every doctor's pocket — was the way working doctors stayed current. We sat with surgeons and physicians between their cases, explaining new drug-delivery systems, new treatment protocols, the latest clinical-trial outcomes. The doctor was too busy to read every paper or attend every CME programme. We did the reading, and brought the summary into their chamber. Education first. Everything else followed.

By 1997 I was promoted to Area Manager. By 2000, Area Business Manager — running the combined Andhra territory. There I launched a new pharma division called Eidikos — building Lactodex (infant milk formula) along with paediatric and gynaecology brands — and we ended that year as All India No. 1. In 2004, I was promoted to Zonal Business Manager, taking on Tamil Nadu and Kerala. Across that whole zone I cut attrition from 27% to 15% — not by lecturing the team, but by coaching them. Without knowing it then, that was the first time I did what I do today.

Then I changed industries. I joined IQVIA — the global healthcare data firm — to learn how to read the data instead of just selling against it. I lifted operational accuracy from 62% to 89% and launched the first Nursing Home Census in India. Two years later I crossed into Knowledge Process Outsourcing at PharmaForce, set up an operation from scratch, and won the first project inside thirty days.

In 2009, Tata Consultancy Services brought me in for a very specific reason. The Wolters Kluwer account — a $25 million engagement — was on the verge of being pulled back. Eleven simultaneous tracks. 125 people. Five managers reporting in. I had six months to stabilise it. I lifted the gross margin from 25% to 65%. I reported directly to Abid Ali Z. Neemuchwala, then CEO of TCS BPO.

Once Wolters Kluwer was steady, TCS moved me to Pune to take on the Microsoft account. It was an $80,000 account when I arrived. By the time I left TCS in 2016, it was $30 million, and the team had grown from 15 people to 125. Somewhere in the middle of all that I won TCS's Best AI Project of the Year, 2014.

From there I joined Course5i as Senior Director, running a $10 million-plus profit-and-loss across the US, the UK and India for digital analytics — Microsoft, GE, Walmart, HUL, MetLife, Lenovo, the Sun Pharma kind of names.

And then, in January 2017, I quietly walked away from all of it.

Because somewhere inside twenty-three years of selling, scaling, rescuing and turning around, I had come to a quiet conclusion. The real problem a senior leader faces is almost never strategy. It is almost never scale. It is the unspoken thing.

That is the room I sit in now. Since 2017, as Founder of Nirvedha Executive Coaching Solutions — Nirvedha is a Sanskrit word that means deeper thoughts and insights — I have worked one-to-one with 180+ senior leaders. Helping them cross the ceiling they couldn't name. Helping them settle into the version of themselves the promotion was actually asking for.