Prem
Menon

I started my corporate career on the front line — as a Sales Executive at Usha International. That ground-level beginning shaped everything that followed. I learned early that real business insight comes from being where the customer is, not from a head office.

Over the next three decades, I moved through some of India’s most demanding industries — consumer durables, automotive, telecom, and SaaS. I handled sales and distribution, marketing, product, growth, call center operations, customer retention, and customer management — and carried full responsibility for both the top line and bottom line of the P&L across large geographies. I built and led large teams — and learned that a well-aligned team is often the difference between a good strategy and one that actually works.

That journey took me from Sales Executive all the way to Chief Operating Officer of Kerala Circle at Tata Docomo — one of India’s most competitive telecom markets. At Tata Docomo, I also took on the additional responsibility of serving as an Ethics Counselor, a role that cemented my belief that the best business decisions are always values-led. You build trust before you build market share.

At 50, I made a deliberate choice to step off the corporate track and onto the entrepreneurial one. I co-founded Vi-Works Ventures, then headed product and growth at Neoffice Software — a SaaS startup where I learned firsthand what it takes to build from near-zero with limited resources and unlimited ambition.

That experience changed how I see business problems. When you’ve worked inside large organisations with deep resources and inside startups with none, you develop a very clear sense of what actually moves the needle — and what just looks like progress.

Simpleworks Consulting — an independent management consulting firm — is the natural outcome of that entire journey — and my answer to a question many Indian MSME founders and family business owners ask: where do I find a management consultant in India — not a large firm, but an independent business growth consultant — who actually understands my business? It exists for founders and business leaders who know their business has more potential, but can’t quite find the lever that unlocks the next stage.