Your records already know what to do next.
A civil contractor asks: is any retention money still owed to us?
Contracts file: 4 defect-liability periods endedTally: retention received on 3
Due ₹2.51 crore · Received ₹1.11 crore.
₹1.4 crore still owedContract 7, liability period ended Aug 2025, retention not yet claimed.
Illustrative
Accounts, payroll and attendance, stock and production, site registers, maintenance logs, contracts, WhatsApp and the GST portal. I join what's scattered across them and show you plainly what's owed, what's at risk, what's slowing you down, and what to decide next.
For founders and owners of traditional and family businesses.
NDA first. You decide what I see.
If any of these sound like you
- 1
We've used Tally for fifteen years. The answers must be in there somewhere.
- 2
We're busy and profitable on paper, and still short of cash.
- 3
Overtime keeps going up, and I can't tell whether we're short of people or short of planning.
- 4
Every site, plant or branch keeps its own register. I see the whole picture only when the bank asks.
- 5
It's the 20th before I know last month's numbers.
- 6
My son wants dashboards. I want to know what's actually going on.
What I do
- GatherGather what you already have.Whatever the business runs on: Tally or Busy, Excel, the ERP, attendance and payroll, production and maintenance logs, site and stock registers, scanned contracts, WhatsApp exports, your GST returns. No new software, and no data entry for your team.
- JoinJoin the records that should agree.Work billed against work done. Attendance against output. Machine hours against diesel and repairs. One customer across three companies. Where two records disagree, there's usually something worth knowing.
- ShowShow it plainly.A short written answer, with the record behind every point, ranked by what to do first.
- Due
- ₹0
- Received
- ₹0
- Gap
- ₹0
Illustrative A civil contractor asks: is any retention money still owed to us?
What usually turns up
- What you're owed or entitled to.
Retention due for release, claims never made, credits and refunds sitting unclaimed.
- What's building up.
A compliance deadline nobody is tracking, a machine heading for failure, a customer drifting away, one person everything depends on.
- What's slower than it needs to be.
Books that close on the 20th, approvals stuck in WhatsApp, the same figures typed into three systems.
What no single record shows.Overtime that follows breakdowns. A big customer who costs more than he pays. The same supplier under three names.
How we work together
- 30–45 minutes1A free callWhat you're trying to decide, and what records exist.CostFree
- 2–3 weeks2Records DiagnosticI read and join the records you choose to share and give you a written answer: what's there, ranked by impact, with the source of each finding.CostFixed fee, agreed before we start. Credited if you go ahead within 60 days.
- 4–8 weeks3Fix sprintOne problem, solved. For example: retention released, a maintenance plan built from your logbooks, a collections list, a monthly report that no longer takes a week.CostFixed fee per sprint
- Scoped after the diagnostic4Build and hand overThe report, tracker or system your team runs from your own records, handed over with training.CostFixed fee
- Monthly5Ongoing advisoryA monthly review with you, and your CA or plant head if you like, of what the records say and what to decide.CostMonthly fee
It's the order I'd use for anything new: one area by hand, then one fix, then something your team runs without me.
Most owners start with the diagnostic. You get a written answer either way, even if the answer is that things are in good shape.
Five examples
These are worked examples of the method, not clients. Each states its assumptions and the public sources behind its benchmarks.
Real case · A business I run (GPOS was built for Gourmet Planet)
I built this for my own business first.
Gourmet Planet's memory was spread across workbooks, a community, old app databases, scanned contracts, videos and its founder's recollection. I directed the build of GPOS, a system that turns those fragments into answers. Every record is labelled as a fact, a metric, a pattern, a hypothesis, an action, an unknown or a conflict. Every answer shows its sources, and the system refuses rather than guesses.
- fact
- metric
- pattern
- hypothesis
- action
- unknown
- conflict
In February 2016 Gourmet Planet curated THE GIG – The Great Indian Golchakkar: three days of food, music and crafts at Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium, New Delhi. I was its partner and show runner. Ten years on, our own files held almost nothing of it. GPOS rebuilt it from what had survived elsewhere: a photographed sponsorship deck, six archived pages of the festival's website, an unlabelled video file, fourteen press items and twenty-one videos posted by people who were there. The result is one sourced record: 15 acts across three days, 45 food listings, 10 regional crafts and 4 design labels.
Real record · what survived, by source, and the date each gives
- Sponsorship deck14 photographed pages5–7 Feb 2016
- Official website6 archived pages5–7 Feb 2016 (2 pages)
- Facebook page334 screenshotsno date given
- Video files3 files5–7 Feb 2016 (trailer, ANI report)
- Press14 items5–7 Feb 2016 (4 items) · January (2 items)
- Public videos21 videosposted 5 Feb – 9 Mar 2016
- A design studio's portfolio1 page13 Jan 2016
Eight sources agree on 5–7 February 2016. Three printed January and are logged as a conflict; one was a wire preview that another paper ran correctly the next day.
Of the 21 public videos, 18 are of the music.
GPOS was built for Gourmet Planet, and its record is still growing. For you, I apply the same method to your records; you don't buy GPOS.
Every family business keeps its books its own way.
Some things are in Tally, some in a register, some only in someone's memory, and some are private. I'm not an auditor, a tax officer or a judge.
You decide what I see.
Where something is outside the scope, I leave it out and work with the rest. Where a gap limits an answer, I tell you plainly, without judgement.
Your records stay yours
- An NDA before I see anything.
- You decide what I see and why. I work only on your instructions.
- Where possible, the work runs on your computer or a workspace you control.
- Personal details, such as employees' PAN, phone numbers and bank accounts, are masked in my working copies.
- Nothing is used to train AI, for another client, or in a case study without your written permission.
When we finish, my copies are deleted, and I confirm it in writing. Your books stay with you and your CA.
Ambar Walia
I trained as a mathematician at Imperial College London and a theoretical physicist at ANU.
I come from a fourth-generation infrastructure family and have worked on highway projects.
I've run a theatre company in Delhi and London, directed ad films and worked as a data scientist. Today I run Gourmet Planet, NB by Ritu Walia and BASALT, and advise founders independently.
I start where the obvious answer stopped working. Everything else I've done is evidence of one habit: connecting things that don't look connected.
Questions owners ask
Do I need new software?
No. I work with what you have.
You don't know my industry. Does that matter?
Less than you'd think. You know your trade; I bring the method. The first questions are the same in every trade: how much is recorded, how much of it is right, and where it breaks first. I recently helped a developer automate complex architectural drawings (plumbing, electrical and the rest) in a field neither of us knew, without thousands of labelled examples to learn from. Three questions in, the trouble wasn't the field. It was one weak step, and trying every kind of drawing at once. My advice: get one kind right by hand, the next with checkpoints, and only then let the third run on its own. It took him a few tries and a change of tools, but it worked. So I don't need to know your trade as well as you do. I need to know how to make your records answer.
Not everything in our business is in the books. Is that a problem?
No. Family money and business money often overlap, and some things live only in a register or in someone's memory. You decide what I see. I work with what you share and tell you where a gap limits an answer. I'm not an auditor, and I don't judge.
My records are messy, and some are on paper.
That's normal, and it's where I start. Printed records can be read reliably. Handwritten registers need a person to check them, and I'll tell you how reliable each source is.
Is this only about money?
No. Money is often the first thing that shows, but the same method works on people, machines, sites, systems and deadlines.
Will my CA or plant head be involved?
If you want. They know their part of the business; I join it with everything else.
What does it cost?
The diagnostic is a fixed fee, agreed before we start, and credited if you go ahead within 60 days.
How long does it take?
The diagnostic takes two to three weeks, depending on how many records and sites there are.
What if you find nothing worth acting on?
You still get a written answer: what's in order, what isn't, and what it would take to know more.
Is this AI?
Partly. AI reads documents and suggests matches. Every point is checked against your records, by arithmetic and by me. No answer goes out without a source.
Who sees my data?
Only me, and anyone you approve.
Bring me the problem.
Tell me what you're trying to decide. We'll start with a free 30–45-minute call.
Message me on WhatsApp+91 98185 76350
NDA first. You decide what I see. Your records stay yours.