Your first ₹2 crore came from you. The next ₹20 crore can’t.
One-to-one work with founders building a sales organisation that runs without them. Post-product-fit, pre-scale. No cohorts, no templates — 39 years of building distribution, most of it on the ground rather than in a boardroom.
Sales trainee in 1987. Chief Operating Officer of Tata Docomo’s Kerala Circle, carrying full P&L, by the time the industry had reinvented itself twice. In between — dealer networks at MRF and Apollo Tyres, the Bharti Airtel years, and the Tata Docomo Karnataka launch that became the country’s largest circle.
Then, at 50, I went the other way. Co-founded Viworks Ventures, ran product and growth at Neoffice AI. Small teams, tight cash, nothing to delegate. I have been inside a startup, not beside one.
The Problem
Most advisors teach. You need someone who has done.
Bengaluru’s startup ecosystem is exceptional at early-stage support. Accelerators, angel networks, cohort programmes, demo days — there is more help available for getting from zero to first revenue than almost anywhere else in the country.
Then it thins out. Past roughly ₹2 crore ARR the questions change shape. They stop being about whether the idea works and start being about whether the business can run without you in every conversation. That is a harder problem, and the people qualified to help with it are mostly employed running someone else’s company.
What is left is advice from people who have studied the stage rather than lived in it — frameworks, benchmarks, and the confident opinions of someone who has never had to make payroll while a sales plan was failing.
Your GTM was founder-led. Now you need a team and a system to replace you.
You’ve raised a round. Now investors expect quarterly accountability you haven’t built.
The product works. Execution — across teams, processes, and priorities — is breaking down.
You’re making decisions with consequences larger than anything you’ve decided before, and no one senior enough in the room to pressure-test them.
Advisors give frameworks. You need someone who has held the P&L when it mattered.
“The hardest stage isn’t the idea or the first crore. It’s the stretch between early traction and real scale — where gut instinct stops being enough and systems haven’t been built yet.”
— Premraj Menon, Operating Advisor · Bengaluru
Who I Work With
You are in the right place if this sounds familiar.
Revenue is real, but every significant deal still closes through you.
You have hired salespeople and they have not produced what you expected.
Your pipeline lives in your head, or in a CRM nobody updates.
You are about to make your first senior sales hire and you know what getting it wrong costs.
Growth is capped by your calendar, not by demand.
Worth Being Direct
This engagement isn’t for everyone.
I work with very few founders at a time. If any of these describe you, we’re probably not the right fit — and I’ll tell you so in the first call.
Pre-revenue or idea-stage founders. Accelerators and incubators serve this stage far better than I can.
Founders who want someone to validate their existing thinking rather than challenge it.
Those looking for a one-session advisory sprint. Meaningful change takes quarters, not hours.
Founders unwilling to do the hard implementation work between sessions. I don’t do the work for you.
What I Bring
39 years of operating. Not advising — operating.
First Sales Leader Hire
Helping founders define the right profile, structure the interview, and set up accountability architecture — so the hire doesn’t fail in six months.
GTM Architecture
Designing go-to-market engines that don’t depend on the founder to close every deal. Channel strategy, sales team structure, pricing, and revenue accountability — built for scale.
Execution & OKR Systems
Most startups have vision. Few have the operating rhythm to execute it. I build OKR frameworks and review cadences that create accountability without bureaucracy.
Strategic Thinking Partner
A thinking partner with no equity, no agenda, and no reason to tell you what you want to hear. Board-level strategic clarity, without the board dynamics.
Operational Scaling
Consumer Durables. Automotive. Telecom. SaaS. 39 years of building operating systems inside Indian businesses — applied to your specific growth bottleneck.
Investor-Grade Discipline
Numbers you can defend, reviews that actually happen on schedule, and an operating rhythm that holds between rounds instead of being assembled the week before a board meeting.
The Operator
Premraj Menon
Operating Advisor · Bengaluru
39 years of management experience rising to COO-level roles across Consumer Durables, Automotive, Telecom, and SaaS. Independent management consultant since founding Simpleworks Consulting Consulting — working exclusively one-to-one with founders who need a senior operator in their corner.
At 50, I co-founded Viworks Ventures, then headed product and growth at Neoffice AI — a SaaS startup where I learned firsthand what it takes to build from near-zero with limited resources and unlimited ambition. I’ve been inside a startup, not just beside one. That changes what I look for, what I challenge, and how I think about your constraints.
→EGMP, IIM Bengaluru
→Advanced Management Programme, Ross School of Business (via TMTC Pune)
→Senior Management Experience across 6 industries
→Bengaluru-based. In-person preferred.
The Process
Simple. One-to-one. No cohorts.
Most mentorship programmes put you in a room with eleven other founders. This isn’t that.
Step 01
Discovery Call
A 30-minute call where I understand your stage, your challenge, and whether I’m the right fit. No sales pitch. Honest assessment on both sides.
Step 02
Diagnostic Session
A structured 2-hour working session to map your business — strategy, GTM, execution, team. I identify the actual constraint, not the presenting problem.
Step 03
Mentorship Engagement
Regular one-to-one sessions — fortnightly or monthly. In-person in Bengaluru wherever possible. Deep engagement on your specific priorities.
Step 04
Accountability & Review
We track outcomes, not outputs. OKRs, decisions, and actions are reviewed every session. The work must move the business — not just the conversation.
What a Diagnostic Session actually covers
Your current growth rate vs. capacity — where the ceiling actually is
GTM audit: how customers are acquired and what breaks at scale
Team structure: who owns what, where accountability is missing
One priority that, if addressed, unlocks everything downstream
How Engagements Work
Structured for real outcomes.
Not per-session billing. Not a retainer that drifts. A defined engagement with clear accountability — structured so the business moves, not just the conversation.
Engagement length
6–12 months
Most meaningful change in business systems takes time. Shorter engagements are available for focused diagnostic work only.
Session cadence
Fortnightly or monthly
Regular enough to maintain momentum. Spaced to give you time to do the work between sessions.
Fee structure
Monthly engagement fee
Not per-session. Not hourly. A monthly retainer that reflects an ongoing relationship, not a transactional advisory.
Equity
Zero
Pure advisory fee basis. No equity. The relationship stays clean — my only incentive is the quality of my advice, not your cap table.
Location
Bengaluru-first
In-person preferred for the primary relationship. Virtual works well for ongoing sessions and founders outside Bengaluru.
Capacity
Very few founders
I work with a small number at a time. This is deliberate — depth requires focus. When I’m at capacity, I’ll tell you.
Outcomes
What founders leave with differently.
Not frameworks in a slide deck. Working systems inside the business.
Clarity on the Real Bottleneck
Most founders are solving the wrong problem. After a diagnostic session, you know exactly where the constraint is — and what to do about it first.
A GTM System You Can Delegate
A go-to-market motion that doesn’t require you to close every deal — with team structure, accountability, and metrics built in.
OKR-Based Execution Rhythm
A quarterly review cadence and OKR structure that your team actually runs — not a spreadsheet that gets updated once and forgotten.
Operating Discipline That Holds
A management operating rhythm your team runs without you chasing it — numbers that are current, reviews that happen, and decisions that are recorded.
Decisions with Senior Perspective
A thinking partner who has held the P&L, managed the team, and faced the board — so your biggest decisions get tested before they’re made.
A Relationship, Not a Transaction
I work with very few founders at a time. The engagement is ongoing, not one-off. You get someone who knows your business as well as you do.
Common Questions
What founders ask first.
Because the problem is not the product — it is the selling system, and I have been building those for 39 years. At MRF and Apollo Tyres I ran dealer networks. At Tata Docomo I carried a circle P&L across hundreds of distribution partners. In every case the job was the one you have now: making revenue predictable when it can no longer depend on one person’s relationships. What I do not bring is product strategy, fundraising, or engineering. If that is what you need, I will say so on the first call.
Accelerators run programmes for cohorts of 10–20 startups simultaneously. I work with a small number of founders at a time, one-to-one, with no fixed curriculum. The engagement is built entirely around your specific business and challenge — not a generalised programme.
Post-product-market fit — you have paying customers and repeat revenue, and the constraint has shifted from whether anyone will buy to whether anyone but you can sell it. In practice that is usually ₹2 crore ARR and above. Earlier than that, an accelerator will serve you better than I will.
I work on a pure advisory fee basis. I do not take equity. This keeps the relationship clean — my only incentive is the quality of my advice, not your cap table.
I prefer in-person for the primary relationship — I’m based in Bengaluru. For founders outside Bengaluru, or for ongoing sessions, virtual works well. The first diagnostic session is always in-person where possible.
Most engagements run for 6–12 months. Meaningful change in business systems takes time — and a strong mentor relationship compounds over quarters, not weeks. I don’t offer one-session advisory sprints.
Deliberately few. The depth I can offer is proportional to the attention I can give each engagement. When I’m at capacity, the wait is worth knowing about early — reach out and I’ll be direct about timelines.
