DSIJ Interview With RK Gupta Director Finance Bata India Ltd.

"We hope to achieve continuous volume and profit growth"

RK Gupta Director Finance Bata India Ltd.

What are your top focus areas as a CFO? 

1. Business partnering and growth strategy for organic/inorganic business growth
2. Digitisation and scalable automation
3. Working capital management
4. People development and succession planning

How is digitisation and technology influencing your company's operations?

Digitisation has helped us transform the customer experience and engagement massively. Definitely our operational and business processes have improved owing to digitisation. The best part of using technology and being digitised is that it helps improve the decision making and that is an invaluable asset.

What are the key risks facing Indian economy in your view?

Clearly the consumption is slowing down even as GDP growth is forecasted to drop from 7.1% to 6.9%. Also the lack of liquidity is slowing down the investment cycle due to deteriorating Asset Quality of PSBs and NBFCs.

What are the key growth challenges facing your company?

There could many aspects at any given point of time that may impact the growth of the company. However the fact that customers have a tendency of moving to multi-channel buying experience can seriously impact our growth going forward. Also, slowdown resulting in restrictions on discretionary spending by consumers can hamper growth of BATA India.

What are the key growth drivers/ levers of your company?

By adopting below mentioned strategies we are able to deliver on growth

1. Enhanced customer experience through new sales channels - in-store digital sales (omni channel)
2. Product innovation and premiumisation
3. Cost saving initiatives to protect bottom-line
4. Enhancing product reach with 500 franchisee stores by end of 2022 to tap the tier-2-3 markets
5. Impactful marketing campaigns to build brand image

What skill-sets are a must to be a successful CFO of a company?

CFO must be a proactive business partner and a steward. He should be able to balance the responsibilities of stewardship with business partnership. Often it is not easy. A CFO should be a strategic thinker. he should be able to not only ascertain potential risks but should be able to identify the areas of value. It requires intelligence and deeper insight of how the company and the industry works. A CFO should at all times display leadership qualities. The leadership skills need to be exercised not only in finance function but also in areas like tax, IT and HR. Last but not least a CFO should be able to act as the integrator and navigator for the organisation.

What is the single most challenging aspect of being a CFO?

Embracing Evolution - Transform finance productivity, retool and retain talent and becoming a data-driven organisation and, lastly, being agile. How has the role of a CFO evolved over the years? Evolutions like being an account-centric to business-centric, descriptive to predictive, accounting skills to analytical skills. Previously, the area was more or less restricted to finance and allied functions, which has now moved to businesses/operations.

What is the growth outlook for your company?

We are planning to open 70-80 stores every year, keeping an eye on cash-drain stores. We hope to achieve continuous volume and profit growth so as to have a handsome cash flow and increase in market share as well.