Who I Am

I started my career at LIC — the Life Insurance Corporation of India — in 1994. Not in a corner office, but at a branch counter in Chennai, learning how institutions work from the inside out. How people make decisions. How systems either serve people or fail them.

Over the next three decades, I moved from LIC to Reliance Life, Wipro, HCL, and finally Tata Consultancy Services — where I spent 14 years as a Senior Consultant leading large-scale insurance transformation programs across Europe, North America, India, and APAC. I led teams of 40+ consultants, built product rationalization frameworks, mentored 75+ professionals, and helped global insurers transition from legacy platforms to digital ecosystems.

Along the way, I distilled three decades of consulting experience into a book — “The Missing Manual to Thinking Clearly” — a practical, framework-driven guide on decision-making, cognitive biases, structured analysis, and strategic thinking. Writing it taught me something important: the same tools that make a great consultant make a great analyst. And analysis, I was beginning to realise, was where my next chapter lay.

But through all of it, one passion never left me: Tamil Nadu politics.

I grew up in a middle class family in Chennai. Politics wasn’t abstract to me — it was the force that shaped our schools, our streets, our opportunities. I watched how decisions made in distant corridors changed lives at the ground level. I wanted to be part of changing that. But first, I had responsibilities — a family to stabilise, a child to educate. So I chose the longer road.

My understanding of Tamil Nadu politics was shaped by its giants — DMK and AIADMK, the two forces that have defined this state’s political DNA for over five decades. Congress and BJP taught me how national politics intersects with regional identity. And a new generation of political leaders — Vijay’s TVK bringing mass mobilisation energy, Annamalai’s WeTheLeaders bringing a different kind of organisational discipline — has shown me that Tamil Nadu’s political landscape is neither settled nor predictable. It is alive, contested, and fascinating.

Now, after 30 years, I’m ready for the next chapter. I’m pursuing a Master’s in Political Science. I’m studying Tamil Nadu’s electoral landscape with the same rigour I brought to insurance transformation. And I’ve launched ‘The Maatram’ — because Maatram means change. And change is what I’ve spent my entire life enabling.