I started in a tool room in Ludhiana and stayed close to the metal — forging lines, CNC cells, NPD desks. Today I carry the marketing desk and a portfolio of key accounts: I win the enquiry, hold the relationship and keep the business running. My team builds the cost sheet; I make sure it can be defended in front of the customer.
An account is not won at the quotation and it is not finished at the award. Here is roughly how a week across my customers actually splits — and what I own in each part. Pick a line.
Marketing and key account management for a portfolio of OEM and Tier-1 customers: developing enquiries, holding the relationship, negotiating and closing, then keeping the account healthy through schedules, revisions and payments. My costing team builds the cost sheets; I brief them, challenge them and defend the offer in front of the customer.
Seven years of concept to ramp-up — APQP and PPAP, capacity planning, tooling development, supplier coordination — and the customer side of every new program: RFQ handling, feasibility replies and commercial inputs at project evaluation. This is where I learned to sit on both sides of the table and translate between them.
Manufacturing proper: layouts and tooling concepts, machines bought, installed and commissioned, yield and quality pushed upward, teams of twenty-five kept on schedule. Six years learning what a process actually costs in minutes and scrap — the grounding that makes a customer promise credible.
Four things I've come to believe after fifteen years of looking after customers.
An account is a relationship, not a purchase order.
The customers who stay are the ones who hear from me when there is nothing to sell.
Value engineering beats discounting.
One operation removed is worth ten rounds of haggling — and both sides keep it.
A number I cannot explain is a number I should not send.
My team owns the cost sheet; I own every line of it the moment it reaches the customer.
Promise the plant you have.
Optimism about capacity is the most expensive thing a marketing man can sell.
Table tennis in the evening, cricket on in the background, and a long list of records.
Most weekends involve a match of some sort and an hour of reading whatever's worth reading. Music is the constant — the genre depends entirely on how the week went.
Whether it is a new enquiry, a supplier search or a program that needs a commercial partner who understands the shop floor — I am glad to have the conversation.