The dawn of 1997 found Harsh not on a factory floor or a construction site, but in the serene, soundproofed quiet of his study. The fireworks of the previous night were a distant memory, replaced by the soft glow of a single lamp and the crisp pages of a new, leather-bound ledger. This was not for Bharat Electronics or Patel Holdings. This was his personal grimoire, a book of grand strategy for the year ahead.
The success of the "Digital Dharma" had been a triumph of execution, but it had also been a massive diversion of focus and capital. The Patel Group's balance sheets were strong, but they were stretched. The relentless pace of the national project had forced the postponement of other vital initiatives. The "Sanskrit-2" project was behind schedule. Patel Retail's expansion into Southern India was on hold. The empire was powerful, but it was also straining at the seams.
Harsh understood that a sovereign could not run his kingdom from the front lines of a single war, no matter how important. He needed to return to the strategic view, to the calculus that had built the empire in the first place.
He opened the ledger. On the first page, he wrote a single question: "What is the Patel Group in 1997?"
He spent the next hours dissecting his own creation.
· Bharat Electronics was the technological spearhead and cash cow, but its R&D was now almost entirely subsumed by the "India Digital" mandate.
· Patel Holdings was the logistical backbone, but its identity was split between supporting the national project and its own commercial ambitions.
· The New Ventures (Agri, Infra, Retail) were successful but resource-starved, unable to reach their full potential.
· The Aethelred Trust was a dormant giant, a pool of immense capital that was largely passive, its venture arm only dabbling at the edges of the Indian startup scene.
The empire was suffering from a lack of centralized, strategic direction. He had been so focused on building the digital highway that he had taken his hands off the steering wheel of the larger vehicle.
A new plan began to form in his mind, cold, clear, and systematic. It was time for a great re-ordering.
Phase 1: Consolidation and Delegation.
He would formally restructure the Patel Group into a true holding company with clear,autonomous divisions, each with its own CEO, P&L, and strategic mandate. Deepak would become CEO of "Bharat Tech," encompassing both the consumer electronics business and the high-stakes "Sanskrit" project. Vikram would lead "Patel Logistics & Infra." Sanjay would helm "Patel Consumer Ventures," overseeing Agri, Retail, and any future consumer-facing businesses. They were ready. He had to trust them to run their domains.
Phase 2: Strategic Capital Allocation.
The Aethelred Trust would be awakened.Its primary role would shift from global speculation to being the strategic investment arm of the Patel Group. It would provide the massive, patient capital needed for the "Sanskrit-2" and for the next wave of infrastructure projects. It would also make controlling investments in the most promising of the Indian tech startups its venture arm had identified, formally bringing them into the Patel ecosystem.
Phase 3: The Next National Mission.
The"Digital Dharma" was about connectivity. The next mission, he decided, would be about intelligence. He would propose a new public-private partnership to the PMO: "Project Disha" (Direction). The goal would be to develop a national-scale, AI-driven platform for optimizing India's logistics, energy grid, and agricultural supply chains using the data now flowing through "Bharat-Net." It was an even more audacious goal, one that would fuse his Group's expertise in hardware, software, logistics, and data.
As the first light of 1997 filtered through the window, Harsh closed the ledger. The path was clear. The year would not be about fighting more battles, but about building a more sophisticated, more decentralized, and more intelligent war machine. The architect was returning to the drawing board. The sovereign was re-establishing his command over the entire empire, not through micromanagement, but through a new, more powerful calculus of vision, trust, and strategic capital. The dawn had broken, and with it, a new chapter of structured, deliberate conquest had begun.