"Vision gets you to the range. Precision is what hits the bullseye."
BACKSTORY
I came up inside Indian distribution—the unglamorous machinery of loading docks, kirana relationships, and the choreography of moving goods through a country that doesn't fit in a spreadsheet. You learn to read people quickly in that world. A handshake on a warehouse floor tells you more than most term sheets ever will.
I tried building things of my own early on. Some found footing, others taught me what I didn't yet know. Later, moving two million cases a month at United Breweries and scaling Pantaloons nationally, I started noticing which operators had instinct for the last mile and which were just managing dashboards.
The inflection came at Snapdeal and Ananta Capital. I sat across from D2C founders who had built beautiful brands online but went quiet when the conversation turned to fill rates and shelf velocity. Then, occasionally, someone walked in who understood both—the digital aesthetic and the Tier-3 depot. Those conversations stayed with me. You could tell within twenty minutes.
That's when my filter clarified. I'm not drawn to the loudest pitch in the room. I'm drawn to the founder who knows their freight cost per unit and still lights up describing their customer. The spiky ones—operationally honest, allergic to vanity metrics.
My focus is on proximity, not distance. I embed myself in the build process, asking the necessary, often "boring" questions early on. I back founders who view distribution as a craft to be honed, rather than just a chore to be completed.