About
A small firm that still writes the code.
Directing Business Consulting & Advisory is a founder-led practice in Hyderabad, working globally. Strategy where the decision is genuinely a decision; engineering where something has to run.
From the principal
Why I still write the code.
I spent twenty-five years running operations before I wrote a line of this. COO of a digital cinema company. Chief-Digital at a broadcast group. Enough board reviews to know what a dashboard is really for, and enough failed rollouts to know why most of them don't survive the second quarter.
I don't think you can advise credibly on systems you've never had to make work on a Tuesday night.
So I build them. Smriti runs in a real building, on real money, and I hardened its database handle myself after deciding a prompt instruction wasn't a control. That's not a marketing story — it's the reason I'll tell you honestly when something isn't worth building, and why that answer is worth what you'd pay for the opposite one.
The firm has grown past me, which is the point. But the judgment you're buying at the start of an engagement is mine, and I'd rather you knew whose it was.
Lakshmi Narayana U
Founder & Principal Consultant · Directing Business Consulting & Advisory
Background
- COO — Cinematica Digitals, digital cinema subsidiary of Geetha Arts
- Chief-Digital — Rachana Television (NTV, Bhakthi TV, Vanitha TV)
- Tech Mahindra — earlier career
- 25+ years across internet, media and entertainment, with an entrepreneurial streak kept intact throughout
- 243+ essays published on LLMs, agents and the business of AI
Directing Business (2022)
Movies and Management Lessons for Dreamers. Management lessons from extraordinary movies around the globe — the book that named the practice.
The cinema lens
It isn't a gimmick, and it isn't decoration. Films are case studies in decision-making under pressure with the reasoning left visible — which is exactly what a business case study usually removes. Reading a system like a screenplay means asking who wants what, what's in the way, and what the character does when the plan fails. That's also how you review an architecture.
Directing Business — the book
Movies and Management Lessons for Dreamers. A practical collection of management lessons drawn from extraordinary movies around the globe.
Movisvami
The cinema brand the book grew into — management and leadership quotes from film and television, published across five platforms. Now run by an agent that will not publish a quote a script hasn't verified.
Director's Cut
The weekly digest — what shipped in AI, what we read, what we built, and the film that framed it. One email, one sitting.
What people said about the book
“The use of dialogue from movies is a very unique touch — don't recollect seeing it in this depth before… the book makes for a breezy read and a fun addition to your library.”
Dr. Sai Praveen HaranathApollo Hospitals, Jubilee Hills, Hyderabad
Start a conversation
Tell us what's actually breaking.
Not what you think the AI solution is — that part is usually wrong, including when we guess it. Describe the problem and you'll get an honest read on whether it's worth building.
First conversations are with Lakshmi Narayana U, Founder & Principal Consultant.