DSIJ Interview with,Saurabh Mittal CFO, S Chand & Company
Saurabh Mittal
CFO, S Chand & Company
"CFOs are not deprived of any limelight and are already the face of companies in India"
As a CFO, can you please elaborate on your top three key priorities during next three years?
The top three key priorities are to maximize capital efficiency, optimize cost and ensure business is adequately funded with a right mix of debt and equity.
Can you highlight a strategic initiative which paid off well for your company during your tenure as a CFO with the present company?
How did it help the company and investors who have parked their money in your company's stocks? The company framed a strategy to allocate more resources and focus on the K-12 content segment in FY2011-12 and embarked on an inorganic path to increase its presence in this vertical. This strategy has played out largely as per plans and resultedin the company growing at above 30% CAGR in the last six years. Our initial investor Everstone Capital backed us on this strategy right from the start and made healthy returns with a part exit from our IPO in 2017.
As a CFO what are the key challenges faced by you in achieving the company's objectives? How did you overcome them?
The key challenges include balancing allocation of capital and other resources to new ventures which will pave the path for future growth without impacting the existing business and ensuring margins are not diluted. The company must be disciplined enough to allocate resources knowing that some venture would work and some may not. The company has over the years invested into digital and service businesses, both inhouse and outside, after understanding internal capabilities to spread the risk and improve the probability of success in each of the ventures.
We keep hearing about CEOs more through media and other such modes of communication. CFOs apparently live behind the curtain but play a very crucial role when it comes to wealth creation of the individual investors. Do you feel deprived of limelight at times? How about CFOs being faces of the companies in India in future?
This is no longer true, at least not for S Chand. The CFO is the face of the company at various places including banks, financial institutions, credit rating agencies, taxation authorities, other regulatory authorities, investors and even large customers and vendors. All of these correspond first with the CFO and then with the CEO. As far as public listed companies and companies where there is private equity or a foreign partner, the CFOsare not deprived of any limelight and they are already the face of companies in India.
Numbers are the primary things that you play with at work. People in the outside world have a feel that CFOs are a set of people who only understand numbers and kind of away from other aspects of life. How much is this true? What further needs to be done to ensure CFOs in India get their dues?
With the changing regulatory environment, corporate governance and information technology available today, the role of the CFO is much more than numbers. The CFO has to be an integral part of any decision-making process, be it new product development, new line of business, marketing strategies, new production units, hiring of talent, mergers and acquisitions etc. Every aspect of the business has a financial impact and there must be a buy in with the CFO for the same.