I was having coffee with the COO of a fairly large infrastructure company. He runs a Rs 3,000 crore order book across eight states. He could not tell me what was sitting in his own project stores.
This is not unusual. It is closer to the norm.
The unspoken pattern
Most infrastructure companies of a certain scale carry a structural blind spot: nobody at the top can answer, with confidence, what materials are at which site, in what quantity, at what value, and whether it is being consumed against the project it was procured for.
Stores registers exist. ERP modules exist. Physical verification exercises happen — usually once a year, close to audit. But the leadership rarely trusts the number that comes out the other side. They know the reconciliation was forced.
Why it stays hidden
Three reasons.
First, admitting the gap threatens the balance sheet. A Rs 40–80 crore write-off across dispersed sites is not a rounding error for most contractors. It is a bad conversation with lenders, promoters, and rating agencies.
Second, the people who would surface it — project directors, site controllers, internal audit — are the same people whose performance metrics depend on the number staying quiet. Nobody volunteers.
Third, the industry has normalised it. "Wastage happens in construction" is repeated so often it stops being examined.
What the number actually is
In engagements I have run, the delta between book stock and verified physical stock at a typical dispersed-site infrastructure company runs between 4% and 11% of the total materials purchased for a project cycle. On a Rs 500 crore project with Rs 180 crore of materials, that is Rs 7–20 crore of leakage per project. Compounded across the order book, it is the difference between a healthy PAT and a distress call.
The fix is not more software
Every company I have walked into has an ERP. Most have three overlapping systems. The problem is not tools. The problem is that the governance layer — the policy that says how material enters a site, who signs for it, how it moves, who is accountable when it disappears, and what happens when the answer is unsatisfactory — is either absent or advisory.
Absent governance cannot be fixed by another module.
This is the work Zentra does. It is unglamorous, and it is where the money is.
If any of the above is uncomfortably familiar, the 5-minute [Stores Governance Health Check](/health-check) will tell you where your organisation sits.