Customer Value Enhancement through Internal Excellence

Rohit Agarwal: Hi, Jay. Welcome to the show. Thanks for making the time and glad to have you.

Jay Sahal: Thank you. Honored to be here talking to you on some interesting topics.

Finding finance#

Rohit Agarwal: Perfect. So let’s dive in straight with a little bit of background on you. So tell me, how did you make your way into this amazing world of Finance and became the CFO of Yellow.ai.

Jay Sahal: Yeah, so interesting. Born and brought up in Calcutta and when we were in eight or nine class, you have to select a topic elective subject. It can be math, it can be accounting, it can be bio, etcetera and all. And for some reason I selected accounting to be additional subject and there it started the interest in accounting and numbers. Although I was really good at math. I used to get many times 100 like great and all. So there was always a back of mind interest to pursue science and engineering, et cetera.

Jay Sahal: And also it was both going along this additional subject added to some interest in accounts and balance sheet and debit credit and all. It was not so bad. And when we moved to PUP University and all, a lot of my schoolmates et cetera, they were like not talking about doing an MBA, CA and all. So, I just went along actually naturally the fact that I was doing I had an exposure to accounting in class earlier.

Jay Sahal: And then I think a lot of my friends were doing et cetera. And also, and I was, I was not bad at accounting, numbers and all that. So I think, I would say that there was an attachment to numbers right from day one. And then, it led to me getting into the world of Finance and crunching numbers and helping companies like, in whatever way they can.

Rohit Agarwal: Very cool, very cool. So early years growing up all in Calcutta in West Bengal. And then I think after CA then you moved to Bangalore.

Jay Sahal: Yes, I finished my CA from Calcutta and then moved to actually Hyderabad for a couple of years, was working in Satyam computers and then from there on, moved to Jamshedpur. Very interesting, working in Tara Steel for 2.5 years and since then, I’m in Bangalore, I think from late 2004 based in Bangalore.

Rohit Agarwal: Very cool. So Satyam again. I think interesting name that different people remember for different reasons, maybe, touch upon as your first job. How do you look back on the two years at Satyam?

Jay Sahal: Yeah. And I know it’s an interesting name but for me, it was a great setup actually. I had a privilege to work with the senior people there, right from day one, they were doing NYSE listing a little bit of work here and there in that direction, was working with the CFO to manage some of the FP&A work, some of the setting up of review process, et cetera.

Jay Sahal: And I found I mean, later I worked in IT industry in a couple of companies and I found Satyam that time to be, you know, ahead of his time in terms of its automation structuring and the discipline keeping aside what happened later. But at a grassroot level, it was a very strong processes there.

Jay Sahal: And I made a lot of good friends like I remember we’ve got five folks CA freshers join on same day and we decided to stay at the same place and it created a very, very long term lifelong bonding between us. We are all across the place in Globe now, but like very, very attached. So and there were more around. So I think I’ve got 10 to 15 great friends in Satyam and good foundation for me, at least. Obviously I didn’t go through till 2009. And also for me, it was a sweet memories of learning the ABC of Finance and growing from there.

Rohit Agarwal: Curious to understand how does the move from Wipro to Yellow happened.

Jay Sahal: My last role in Wipro, I was managing healthcare and life science unit. It was a large business and then managing as the CFO and I was getting very good exposure in terms of large deals, managing some of the acquired companies and working with the BU head for growth, et cetera and parallelly working how we can automate the processes, et cetera and all.

Jay Sahal: So, in that journey, I think given that India’s start up environment and what is happening in captives. And I know a lot of companies owned by private equity people started approaching for me to whether I wanted to do something different than what I was doing 15 years in Wipro while it was doing great and I appreciate, admire Wipro as a company a lot. But yeah, some of them could excite me in what else I can do in life. Can I create a different value? Some of them were like, you will have an opportunity to create a India based product Company. Some of them like, you can do so in cloud, et cetera.

Jay Sahal: And also it was a matter of time before I got convinced, like, I may be wanting to be part of a story where we can create a large value. So this one excited me a lot. There were a lot of it services companies based in India, Wipro, Infosys, TCS, et cetera. Cognizant has a large base here, et cetera. And not many product software companies. And when I see Adobe and then Oracle… and Microsoft et cetera, I said, used to think like, why not those kind of companies in India?

Jay Sahal: And this opportunity came where like there is a start of a start up bloom in India where a lot of entrepreneurs are wanting to create SaaS start ups in software area, et cetera and all. And I say, why not? Let me use my software services experience and experience to build. I’ve seen VIP Pro growing from $800 million to a $10 billion Company. How do you create that Company?

Jay Sahal: Use my experience to help those entrepreneurs create a large companies, software product companies based out of India. And then that was a pretty, an exciting story. So I like the story and I now convinced my CFO Jatin in Wipro to let me move on and start doing something else. While it was going great in Wipro. And like, I had still a journey to play in Wipro.

Jay Sahal: So happy to be part of Yellow here. We are working very hard to create a product software company. Conversational AI is a very hot area. And then all enterprises are trying to automate their processes to bring in more productivity and give better user experience, customer experience and all and you know, this Company can do great in that direction. So I like the story and then decided to make a move.

Rohit Agarwal: Awesome. Awesome, pretty good, I guess for the benefit of our listeners, maybe if you could introduce Yellow in a 30 seconds, I think that would be great.

Jay Sahal: Yeah. So Yellow.ai earlier, it was called Yellow Messenger. It’s a B2B start up in a conversational AI area. We help large, small and medium enterprises automate there various processes, be it giving a customer experience or an employee experience or any other stakeholder experience and it is across multiple channels be it voice, which is an IVR call, et cetera, SMS, WhatsApp, all kind of channels where enterprises interact with their stakeholders for customer support, for transaction processing, for queries, et cetera and all or for any other use cases.

Jay Sahal: Yellow fits into give enterprises a solution which helps enterprises give a great experience to its stakeholders by having an automation layer apart from a human layer. And it’s a global Company. We’ve got customers in 25 plus countries, employees in 15 plus countries and are growing very fast.

Rohit Agarwal: Very cool. Awesome. Seems like certainly a Company ahead of its time in terms of all the AI hype that we see today. Let’s move on and maybe talk a little bit about the modern CFO.

The evolving role of the CFO#

Rohit Agarwal: I think the role of CFO has evolved quite a lot over the last couple of decades and is continuously going to shape up in a very different direction over the next couple. So just maybe want to give your take on, in your view who is a modern CFO? And perhaps, you know, how do you define your role in that context?

Jay Sahal: Yeah. I fully agree with you. I mean, all along CFOs has been contributing a lot. But if you go back earlier, the emphasis was more on taking care of your accounting, audits, your cash management, your various Finance related processes, a little bit of risk management, et cetera, et cetera.

Jay Sahal: But now in the modern world where the risk framework has changed totally, the new business models have come up and industries are changing fundamentally, the requirement for a CFO is a little different now, and there is a modern CFO is somebody who is able to walk the path along with other management team in an enterprises’ journey, be it part of a growth journey, be it part of some kind of like, you know, an IPO or say some kind of buy-out et cetera, right? It can be like a large enterprise, successful business model but like processes are not very strong and the new CFO can play a part, not in Finance, but across in its automation journey. Some enterprises are exposed to risks in a different way, be it a Fintech or banking and all CFO can play a large role in managing the risks in many a different profound way, right?, rather than from a sideline. So it depends on the enterprise.

Jay Sahal: I would talk like from the framework of a start up. The role of a modern CFO is like, they just can’t be an accountant or just taking care of the basic Finance function. They are all over the place.

Jay Sahal: Most of them are managing various portfolios like legal, procurement, maybe operations or automation. Somewhere CIOs are reporting to them. So it’s a mix of different kind of work they are able to do. So, a lot of founders are based in US Europe, etcetera to leverage the market presence there. And the CFOs are able to fit in to their shoes in the home market. Like if they’re based in India and all where the large headcount presence is there to fill the gap of a leadership presence, not being physically there, to take all day-to-day decisions or at least help take all day-to-day decisions and even support CHRO to manage all the policies, et cetera.

Jay Sahal: So it’s like really, really different play at least in the start up market and obviously in a large enterprises also CFOs are playing a totally different role, certainly much closer to CEOs in driving the businesses, much closer to the business while managing the risk, et cetera, you have seen recently what is happening with Silicon Valley and all that events and you know, it was very profound way, it is coming out that how you manage risk in terms of like here, the risk came from where the money was invested. And whether there was a play of no, a CFO having a 10 year view of how the interest rate market can be and accordingly de-risk their balance sheet. So huge play for a modern CFO.

Rohit Agarwal: Very interesting. Maybe, can you contrast a little bit given your experience in large enterprises as well as sort of start ups, how the role may differ between the large enterprises versus a start up.

Jay Sahal: So a big difference is in a large enterprises and in a start up as compared to large enterprise, the decision is very closer to you, right? In large enterprise, there is a, there is a framework, there is a structure, there’s a chain of command, et cetera and all that, right? So you will be able to influence our decision in a way in certain areas, in certain areas, you are an observer, maybe you can give your guidance. But in, in a smaller enterprise, it’s a small core team where you’ve got your founders who might be CEO, CTO, CPO, et cetera.

Jay Sahal: You are the CFO managing certain functions. You’ve got CHRO, maybe CRO for sales and certain other functions, chief of strategy, et cetera. So those four or five people are taking everyday decisions on how do you continue to grow the enterprise, how to continue to bring inefficiencies, improve cash flows and margins, et cetera. So ability to make a difference is very high and very near to you as compared to a large enterprise where there is a lag between what you do and what you see as a result. While some of the large enterprises are very agile, but still it takes time for you to make a difference. In a medium term, Yes. But here if you are growing with a like, I have a large experience in the IT services industry. Mostly a good Company growing between 20-25%. But I have seen growth anywhere between 5 to 15% et cetera.

Jay Sahal: Whereas start ups are growing like 100-200-300%. So it’s like whatever you are doing, you are trying to change tire of a fast moving car and you need that kind of agility and that kind of thinking process to do that. You can’t stop the car and change the tire. You’ll have to just somehow make sure that the car keeps running and then you change the tire or whatever you have to do. So you should be able to manage dynamic environment, more better way. I should be able to make quick decisions. You should be able to do course corrections very fast, et cetera.

Rohit Agarwal: Interesting. How do you see this role evolving further into the next sort of 10 to 15 years? Do you see the current trend kind of that, that you talked about, kind of, that’s where the CFO role is going to stay over the next decade or so, or you think that it’s in a certain direction where it’s going to evolve even further?

Jay Sahal: I think it will, it will continue to evolve. Certainly right now CFOs are a business partner. CFOs are people who are trying to drive enterprise automation journey. CFOs are people who are trying to manage risks for an enterprise end-to-end, et cetera in a proactive way. I think going forward given that more and more automation is coming and what an enterprise can give value to customer will be linked to how they are operating internally. And CFO will play a bigger role in driving that journey, how an enterprise is able to respond faster to the market, right?

Jay Sahal: So, I feel that CFO will have a greater role in that area where they are able to make an enterprise more agile. The businesses are going to face a lot of changing environment going forward and we are seeing it for last 5 to 10 years. And no longer, you can be a passive viewer; that is gone. But here they will have to play a more and more active role in business is what I would say. Earlier, they were passive, now more and more they are actively involved and that activism will continue to increase and more closely working with the business.

Jay Sahal: So their involvement will increase. I don’t know whether the nature of work will change but how much they are involved in business, how much they are involved in custom facing environment, et cetera that will continue to evolve and will be, will play a bigger, bigger role. Obviously, there is a industry nuances, what a CFO can do for an insurance Company, for a bank, for a tech start up, for a large services in the industry. It’s a different games they play. But yeah, fundamentally, they will be an important stakeholder also.

Rohit Agarwal: Makes, makes a ton of sense that at least and as we think about it, moniker CFO will continue to evolve into more like a Chief Future Officer, looking more ahead of the time and being more active as you said. So it makes a ton of sense. So, yeah, you know, COVID-19 was something that was a global event that literally impacted perhaps every single you know, living being on this earth. A lot of roles have shaped up differently because of that. So curious to understand has COVID-19 had a certain impact on the role of the CFO or the Finance departments and how they are designed and, and is that sort of continue to evolve in a certain direction going into the future?

Jay Sahal: Yes, certainly. It was a Black Swan event and impacted every process and everybody, every enterprise. So, yes, CFO also had to realign and readjust, the way Finance department works and how it adds value to the business overall.

Jay Sahal: So some of the things like when you are doing your quarterly or yearly audits done, we used to be physically present in office, the entire team for like days and weeks and months. Now, I think how do you do it when people are remote? And we had to create innovative ways to manage it, conduct audit committee meetings or say board meetings, etcetera, online, et cetera. Everything moved to online. People are working from tier three, tier four cities. Are they able to contribute in this environment? So, readjustment required in everything. And I think all the CFOs successfully could rework their processes to make sure that no, in the new hybrid or remote environment functions work smoothly. And I was surprised to see how the world adjusted to it. And no, nothing fell down and it shows how enterprises are so strong.

Jay Sahal: So very happy to see that in this new world as this continues, function is giving more productivity. Obviously, there are so many SaaS tools available. So a lot of work which were done manually are getting automated and people are able to contribute more actually while they are working remotely. I’m not saying that when they are working more hours, but their ability to be on top of issues, et cetera certainly has increased. Obviously, offline working has its own play and slowly enterprises have brought everybody hybrid, but it is a new environment. I think the Finance function has been able to evolve itself to contribute.

Jay Sahal: To the second point, how they are able to contribute to the business. I think every enterprise, the way they contribute to their customers, their pitch has changed, right? A little bit. And how do you, how do a CFO right now, CFO a team help the businesses as a little bit of a change.

Jay Sahal: A lot of emphasis on ROI and a lot of emphasis on how you increase your customers revenue, et cetera. So I see that a lot of them are working very closely with their CROs et cetera to help them create those pitches and sometimes even going in front of customers because what you’re doing internally, a lot of productivity increase steps, you can sell it to your customers also and you demonstrate it to them. And at least for Yellow’s perspective, what we do internally to increase productivity, automations, et cetera, all of that we can go and sell to our customers.

Jay Sahal: And if I am using in Finance some automation tools, I should be able to go and sell the same to customer CFOs be it in a collection automation, be it a bank reconciliation automation, et cetera. Be it. How do you increase productivity of your cloud infra spend? Right? All of it has a play in it and what what you are able to do in a good, profound way, you should be able to go and sell to your customers. So it has taken a lot of initiatives and it’s a new environment post COVID and I’m sure all the CFOs have been able to adjust to it and are looking forward to play a greater role in business growth.

Automation in finance#

Rohit Agarwal: Makes a ton of sense. I think I will certainly touch upon the automation side of Finance department. Seems like it’s a golden era for this particular sort of horizontal play but continuing sort of this this theme a little bit. I think we have seen COVID-19, a certain kind of you know, interest rate environments, a certain kind of, you know, flooding of money, at least in the start up ecosystem. And then what has happened recently over the last 12 months? It’s seen a complete reversal of that interest rates have been rising, inflation have been increasing quite a lot and you know, thereby also the funding has sort of dried up and it seems like VCs have been quite selective in terms of putting you know, money into specific companies.

Rohit Agarwal: I’m sure, you know, you have seen sort of your fair share of challenges in terms of going through, you know, cash conservation and making sure you have enough of a runway to continue to keep up the growth or high growth that Yellow has experienced. So maybe can you talk a little bit about, you know, your personal experiences around this funding winter and how, how you guys have managed your cash in these times?

Jay Sahal: For sure. I think interesting times. We have seen the bull run of funding in starting from 2020 then COVID fueled it because people were looking at more tech way to do things and then the money flowed into technology and there was a peak time in 2021. So I think we also did a fundraise et cetera in particular time in all. So so is all start ups and then we are seeing for the last 6 to 9 months of a journey where like no because of the macroeconomic environment, huge inflation and then to respond to that all the reserve banks are increasing interest rates and hence there is a drop in tech multiples and demand environment. Certainly. So yes, there is a funding winter, not the kind of fundraise happened in 21, is not happening, did not happen in 22 and is not happening in 23. So there’s some time before like no things settle down and it comes back. It has impacted all start ups. One good thing is like everybody did a good rounds of funding in 21. So they had some runway.

Jay Sahal: It depends on what kind of stage companies in terms of their growth journey and what kind of a burn they have. So we also had to evaluate our standing and we did that and two ways we are trying to react to it. One is how do we treat this as an opportunity, right? So we are an automation company. We are trying to help our enterprise customers improve their automation journeys. How do they, what kind of a customer experience they give, what kind of productivity improvement experiences they give to their customers? And we play a role where we can, we can try to increase our customers revenues, right?

Jay Sahal: So we are trying to pitch our service offerings in a way that we can help our bank and insurance and eCommerce companies increase their revenue. If they are pitching to customers, if there is a campaign happening, how do you increase the efficiency of that campaign so that you are getting more sale? And that is one way to do it. Second way is in certain ways, we try to reduce the cost of our enterprise customers maybe by reducing the number of calls going to call center agent. Can you automate it? Right. And that’s a cost play. And we as a CFO community trying to help create those pitches and help sales guys do that. So that is one way, take care of and take advantage of this opportunity.

Jay Sahal: Second way, how do you manage your balance sheet, your cash, et cetera and all that. So certainly there was a, there was a X cash in the balance sheet and you are spending Y per quarter and it’s a simple math, how much the cash will last, right? And we all embarked on a journey to make it more efficient.

Jay Sahal: So a lot of ways we have transformed the way our enterprise is working. It requires some team restructuring. If 15 people are doing a work, can five people can, can do the same work, et cetera, kind of a thing by automating it by changing the way we contract, by changing the way we offer certain things to customers, right? So that is one way to restructure your cost and reduce your burn. And second how do you make more cash available? So we also did some capital planning restructuring, raise some venture debts to make sure that Company has a long runway. And obviously, the investors, the market is expecting very, very highly productive engine, right? All cost, all functions need to be much more productive than what is happening in 2020-21. And the same way we are doing it, trying to make everything more productive.

Jay Sahal: For a typical SaaS company the times have changed now, they have to worry about how much cash flow the operation is generating, how you are moving towards maybe a break-even or positive EBITDA, et cetera. Everybody is working on that direction. And similarly, we have created certain actions to make sure that we also move in that journey.

Jay Sahal: So certainly, yes, A. you are trying to change your pitch to be more productive and take advantage of it. Second, you increase your runway by reducing your burn, reducing your cash, increasing your cash flow, and C. make more capital available to the business for growth by more efficient capital planning, more efficient cash flow management, et cetera. So, yeah, interesting times. And I would say we have been able to take a lot of positive actions in that direction and feel very confident that Yellow and across the industry, all the start ups will be able to come out very strongly from this phase.

Rohit Agarwal: It seems like it’s you know, flight back to fundamentals in some ways. So, so I’m curious to understand as you, as you thought about restructuring of teams, as you thought about maybe changing a few processes, as companies continue to scale, there is always that tension between agility versus processes, right? Even one step addition of a process, maybe an approval may just challenge the inertia that people have been working with. Was that something that you guys felt internally? And how did you guys communicate and dealt with it?

Jay Sahal: So it’s always a balance while enterprise grows, it has to put across its processes, it’s approval metrics, etcetera, right? So that all functions work together and each transaction is taken care not in a unique way but in a standard way, right? And then suddenly the customer facing team, team on the field are wanting to be very fast reaction from the back end, they want to be very agile, et cetera and which is rightly so, right, our customers need lightning response and we should be able to do that. So that that’s a delicate balance. And I think the CFO plays a very big role in doing it and automation play a big role in it.

Jay Sahal: If if the processes are manual, then it will take more time. How can you make it more automated? So for example, a simple pricing creation to order cycle, right? How do you automate the whole process? And there are tools available in the market. Obviously, certain tools are costly, certain tools are cheap, et cetera, you create a balance. So I think based on our experiences, we are trying to create those balances between speed and process at the end, between cost and output, etcetera and all that. And no, we do it on daily basis and take those decisions.

Jay Sahal: But the focus is always how do you help companies growth? I think that’s the most profound you know, area as well, which we keep in mind while doing anything by taking any decision that how do you improve Company’s growth? Certainly, the second most important factor now is you have to do it in a most cash efficient way and in a way where you improve Company’s margin, be gross margin, EBITDA, free cash flow, et cetera and all that. And Finance play a big role in it, in terms of like no keeping keeping the whole chain together, making data available at the right time, so that decisions can be taken in a profound way and making sure that every transaction is done in an efficient way, makes sense.

Rohit Agarwal: You spoke a minute back about kind of how CFOs are now helping CROs, you know, or sales teams in terms of aiding in their pitches on productivity or what value or RoI can the customers generate with your products? Is it safe to assume that sort of sales team, is your favorite team to work with? Or is it, is it someone else as an example for me, as much as I work with sales and marketing, I had a lot of fun working with my CHRO. So just curious to know for you, what is the favorite department that you really like working with at Yellow?

Jay Sahal: So I will not respond specifically for Yellow. I would like to know going back to my 21 year experience about working across four or five organizations. And yes, I would say that CHRO has been always has been a great partner and along with that, the business unit head or the CEO et cetera, I think at least I would say 7-8 roles which I have done, just keeping aside the initial few roles, where I played a part either as a division CFO or a Company CFO, I think most closely I’ve worked with CEO, CHRO, then comes, certainly there’s always a hot and cold relationship between CFO and CRO in terms of whether you should go with certain discount or not, whether a large deal can be up at a lower margin or, can we lower our bar for certain compliances in terms of et cetera? So, it’s an interesting relationship. I always enjoyed working with them and I know, always tried to, I’m more a business oriented, guy. So always thinking in innovative ways to make sure that we don’t lose any particular deal or any business opportunity or an opportunity to improve in a geo et cetera and all that. So I like to work with sales a lot. But yeah, in terms of partnerships, always enjoyed working with CEOs, CHROs.

Jay Sahal: Now in a, in a start up world, you’ve got CTO, CPO et cetera, which you are not closely working in a large enterprise, at least in my roles. But now all the team actually even marketing also, there’s a huge in my currently Yellow role working with the CMO, CTO, CPO who are the founders. CEO is the founder and CHRO. It’s a very close knit team and we support each other and every decision is being taken together, we try to not delay any decision. It’s very quick. So it’s, it’s a great working here actually and enjoying this stint, working in a start up, working with this kind of teams. Yeah.

The CEO-CFO relationship#

Rohit Agarwal: Yeah, you touched upon a very great point. The CEO-CFO relationship is perhaps the most interesting or most sort of, you know, core relationship in any Company. Curious to know. Do you do anything specific to strengthen that relationship on an ongoing basis? You know, it kind of every relationship needs some fueling on a regular basis. So, just curious if you have certain tips on that front.

Jay Sahal: Not any specific this thing, but I I try to keep challenging certain outputs and I keep getting this feedback even in my earlier roles also that there is an interesting CFO and then he keeps us honest. This is a comment, not honest in terms of dishonesty and all that honest means honest towards numbers. I don’t mince any word or hide any bad metrics. And before highlighting any good part, I tend to first highlight where things are wrong, where we need to improve et cetera. So some part of the team and may see this as a negative way of working. But I keep this feedback a lot that you keep us honest towards numbers.

Jay Sahal: So my endeavor always have been that you are reporting data in such a way that you are always highlighting risk ahead in advance. You are always highlighting weaknesses, in very well there is a weakness in business in terms of numbers highlight it at right time so that actions can be taken at right time. And I believe that’s a very key role a CFO plays by keeping business honest to numbers, honest to the state of where the business is. And if there are any risks which business is facing highlighted at right time, so I try to do that and I think that works well always because there are always, typically other functions, they would, I’m not saying as a it’s happening everywhere, but sometimes people would want to highlight achievements and little bit not more talk about certain things which are an issues, right?

Jay Sahal: And a CFO plays a role in highlighting issues that needs to be taken care of, doing more dirty work than any other CXO in terms of obviously working with the head of HR and making sure that the house is clean and no business can just focus on business growth while you make sure that the back-end is strong be it your balance sheet strength, be it your processes, be it your compliances, risk management, automation, very important. All of these things.

Rohit Agarwal: Make sense. I think talking about risk management, what has happened over the last 10 odd days. You know, at Silicon Valley Bank has really, I’m sure made every CFO rethink about their cash management about their cash investment strategies and so on. Curious to know, did you have any exposure to SVB? And if you did, how did you manage that over the last 10 days? I’m sure it has been some sleepless nights for you as well as trying to navigate that part.

Jay Sahal: We do not have exposure to Silicon Valley Bank, but we were aware that it is not about just one bank. If there is a run on one regional bank, there can be a run on another region bank also. So we did have an exposure of other. First of all, we had already diversified our portfolio. We had a relationship with a large bank and a regional bank. Thankfully, so, but we still had funds with the regional bank. And then no, we reached out to them and spoke to them and then we got a very good response. So and we are able to diversify our cash management and spread it across and also move certain funds to more secure government securities, et cetera and all.

Jay Sahal: But yes, time has changed. Certainly, you cannot keep all your eggs in one basket. That strategy you’ll have to work on. You will have to spread your cash management policy so that your risks are spread and you are not exposed to failure of one bank or a certain kind of banks, that is one. Second is in terms of equity and debt, that balance what you need to create. You have to make sure that even if you’re an exposure for debt from one bank, there’s time to rethink, I think because the kind of fundamental changes happening in the banking industry, you cannot be a passive observer. And you have to play an active role. So I think we, we have recently reached out to our board. We had we changed our cash management policy, we already had diversified relationship with banks and we would make sure that it is the risk is spread and we are able to make cash available to business whenever they need and we’ll have to run the operations accordingly. So, yeah, it’s, it’s a different different environment now and we were not negatively impacted, but we are conscious about it and make sure that in case any, any new event happen in in future, we are ready for that.

Rohit Agarwal: Awesome. That’s great. It seems like, you know, it’s no joke that the role of CFO is quite demanding and perhaps quite draining on a day to day basis as well. I always, you know, thought of it as a clockwork. You know, you start of the month, you do something, middle of the month, you do something end of the month, you do something and those are the things that you have to do no matter what, right? So just curious, you know what motivates you to continue going.

Jay Sahal: I think two things. One is now that I’m talking about start up world as I started with, I have came in a mission to create something new to create a enterprise as India based product Company, which is global, which grows to a scale which is material, right? So the journey towards that particular goal to create a large value towards that direction, it motivates me a lot. Every step which we are taking every customer, we are winning every customer appreciation we get, right? It’s a new thing because you have created this, this Company is a category creator, right? Not many large companies are there. And so one is you are moving towards your goal of creating that value. Keep me motivated. That is one.

Jay Sahal: Second is we have a team, right? You’ve got a certain number of people in Finance and other functions and sales and entire Company, right? And everybody is highly motivated to work towards that goal. So engaging them, making everybody a success is also a great sense of achievement. So I really feel great by getting into a now that it’s a hybrid work environment, either I’m in a meeting or in a zoom call to have a discussion on certain issues. And we all arrive at a conclusion, you find a solution and then you go and implement it and do it on daily basis. Couple of issues every day, every week, maybe four or five issues and every month, 10 issues, et cetera. So it’s like the whole chain is moving towards one direction. So that whole growth story, a ability to achieve, ability to make other people success, et cetera. Like no, keeps me motivated.

Rohit Agarwal: Very cool, Jay, you, you come across as a very calm person, I’m sure, you know, over the long tenure, there has been multiple situations like, you know, shit hit the fan kind of situations. Intrigued to understand, how do you keep your calm, especially in those situations.

Jay Sahal: So two things are there one is I feel it is, you are made like that. It’s a DNA. You, you can change a little bit but you are born, either you are a hyper a person whose hyperventilates when issue happens or you are a calm person. You are born with those things, you can acquire it a little bit but you can’t you know, 100% change it. So I think I’ve been fortunate to be born with these qualities where I tend to not lose my cool a lot. I do, like nobody is perfect that way, but less number of times and no the panic button is really little far away from no my hands. So I don’t press it very often. So for one is that you are made like that.

Jay Sahal: And second is based on my experience in the industry, like a long term working in a, a Company called Wipro for 15 years, we have seen that if you are working in right direction, things move positively. We have seen so many crises. We saw 2000, I mean, we saw 2008, we have seen and who would have thought that COVID will come and go and world will, you know, change the way they work. But we all have figured it out, right? So the kind of sense of being working in the right direction will lead you to a success, is there in my mind and whenever any crisis happens, even in last week itself, when, although we didn’t have an exposure to Silicon Valley Bank, but calls came then to other banks will fall. What do we do, et cetera and all that. So you set up calls with the bank internally, you know, give send reassurance messages to the stakeholders, etcetera and all, if you’re doing one step at a time in the right direction, I think it works out. So obviously, sometimes you have to push the panic button and I do whenever there is a need. But yeah, I mean, try to try to manage it in a way where like, no, it’s not it’s not bad.

Rohit Agarwal: Interesting, very cool. So Jay, we have talked about the impact of technology automation in Finance departments. And it seems like it is an intriguing time in terms of how many newer companies are coming in and trying to enhance the processes, bring in more productivity, efficiency and so on. Curious to know sort of from your perspective if you have already embarked on that journey of financial automation, as you have mentioned, post COVID, you know, anything specific that you have done over the past couple of years and anything that you intend to do over the next couple of years in terms of really shaping up the tech stack for Finance department.

Jay Sahal: You know, for sure. Even not even in Finance, since I have joined, we have been working to automate the entire order to cash, procure to pay, hire to retire, record to report journeys. Implemented many tools. Right now, we are in the process of moving ERP like Quickbook is moving out of India. So we are moving from Quickbook to Oracle Netsuite. We and some of them, we fail also like no, we were trying to implement a billing tool last year. It didn’t work out. We scrapped it after going through that, it’s not gonna work and we moved to a different billing tool and we are in the middle of implementation so that we can automate our billing and billing related reporting environment.

Jay Sahal: So it’s a very important journey and I would suggest that all CFOs et cetera, at least in start ups, you’ll have to drive it very strongly. It should be part of, part of your KRA, et cetera and all that because once you are able to automate the entire processes, et cetera, A. you have become more agile as we spoke earlier in the question, responses are faster and you are able to provide data in a way where it is timely and it is useful to the management for a quick decision and correct decision making, right? So for example, for a SaaS Company and there are so many metrics we follow at a company level, geo level, customer level and unit level, right? Be it like CARR, ARR growth, net retention ratio, gross margin and CAC, CAC pay back, et cetera and all that right? Are you able to provide those matrices at a base unit level and at earliest time possible so that you are able to drive efficiency and focus, right?

Jay Sahal: And it applies to any industry like when I was in IT services industry earlier. Are you able to provide profitability metrics or on a project basis maybe second or third day after the month closer? Are you able to do that? That’ll make a big difference. If you’re doing it, let’s say one month later or two months later, it doesn’t help because it becomes past data. So are you able to provide real time data? You are able to provide more analytics in a timely way, is very, very critical. And I want to believe that CFO should be working towards bringing most of the data online when I mean online. Yes.

Jay Sahal: Typically online in terms of having a dashboard, online in terms of timing where like no, there’s not a much lag between an event happened and when it is reported. So can you close your books and MIS as fast as possible? Maybe on first day after the month is over or a quarter is over. Obviously, enterprises are not there all the enterprises in journey, but you have to walk that path or bring that in. And we are driving towards making sure that we are able to do even, although we are a private Company, can we are we able to close our books on the first or second of the day of the after the month is over or quarter is over and are able to provide all the relevant data to management for the decision making. So yes, we are working on that path. We have done a lot but yeah, a lot needs to be done and the entire team is very focused towards moving on that journey, Jay.

Rohit Agarwal: This is an intriguing conversation. I think we can continue to talk about these things for the next 10 hours. But you know, due to the time constraints, we have to now move to a lightning round. It should be fun. So I’m going to ask you simple questions and basically, I need immediate responses from you. Are you all set?

Jay Sahal: Yes.

Rohit Agarwal: All right. So let’s start, start with something simpler. Sweet or Savory?

Jay Sahal: Sweet.

Rohit Agarwal: Books or Podcasts?

Jay Sahal: Books.

Rohit Agarwal: Thinker or Doer?

Jay Sahal: Doer.

Rohit Agarwal: Movies or Web series?

Jay Sahal: Web series.

Rohit Agarwal: Linkedin or Twitter?

Jay Sahal: Linkedin.

Rohit Agarwal: Scotch or Whiskey?

Jay Sahal: Scotch.

Rohit Agarwal: Money or Happiness?

Jay Sahal: Certainly happiness.

Rohit Agarwal: Introvert or Extrovert?

Jay Sahal: Introvert, if it has to define myself.

Rohit Agarwal: Yes. All right. Mountains or Beaches?

Jay Sahal: Beaches.

Rohit Agarwal: Growth or Profitability?

Jay Sahal: That’s an interesting question. I would say both, growth with profitability.

Rohit Agarwal: Diplomatic answer. I guess I’m gonna, I’m gonna get that, I guess every single time now.

Rohit Agarwal: Cricket or soccer.

Jay Sahal: I used to love cricket earlier, but now I’m a soccer man.

Rohit Agarwal: All right. What is your one hidden talent?

Jay Sahal: I can run. I mean, I can run a marathon. I know it. I just have to bring that out.

Rohit Agarwal: Very cool, ideal place to retire?

Jay Sahal: I guess, on a beach.

Rohit Agarwal: Number one thing on your bucket list right now.

Jay Sahal: Yeah. I mean, taking my kids to all kinds of places be it the mountains, Himalayas and like roam the world with them, with my family, two boys are there eight and 12 and then no, right time for them to explore world et cetera.

Rohit Agarwal: So I think I’m supremely active, supremely active as well as boys have a lot of energy.

Jay Sahal: Take care of, take part in adventure and all that. So we love to travel and then would like just every month if given an opportunity to go somewhere or other with them, with my wife and like, you know, maybe some time with friends and family. But yeah, explore the world.

Rohit Agarwal: Very cool. Who is your role model? Maybe personally or professionally?

Jay Sahal: I think role model would not use the word. But I, I admire a few people. Like, I used to work in Wipro. So I admire Azim Premji a lot, the kind of value he has created and the kind of value created in terms of creating Wipro, but also in society, what he’s trying to do. I think it is something which like one in billion kind of a person. So admire him a lot in that direction. Obviously, he’s driving a lot.

Rohit Agarwal: Certainly. I guess last one on the lightning side. One thing that can make you 10 times more productive could be anything?

Jay Sahal: If I’m able to discipline myself. Like anybody, I also want to do 10 things, but I do only five. So if I’m able to, do what I ask myself to do on a, like when I get up or when I start my week or a month. So I think more discipline in mind will make me more productive. And it applies to anything, like no things you don’t want to eat, number of times you want to go for a gym or a run, I mean, and number of that kind of time you want to spend with your family. I think everything can be optimized. And I think I would want a little bit of a more mental discipline from myself and I think I’ll be more productive. I have to listen to myself first.

Rohit Agarwal: Makes makes a lot of sense. I think, I think you did pretty well Jay on the lightning side, just a couple more questions to sort of wrap up our conversation here. Curious to understand, where are you focusing your energies in this year, 2023? If there are sort of some top three priorities for, you know, Yellow at large or you as a CFO?

Jay Sahal: Yeah, so the first is in response to this changing environment, we are trying to pivot the Company into become a sought after partner for conversational AI, for enterprise automation, et cetera and all that, right? So would love to contribute a lot in that direction, working with the business team and even I would expect my core Finance team also to do that. How we can help the business do their job better, how we can help business to keep our customers happier, and they give more business to us. So business growth. That is 1st.

Jay Sahal: 2nd is we are walking a journey to improve our profitability. We are going to make our balance sheet more stronger by going towards a positive EBITDA, better metrices, etcetera and all that. So just keep focused on that and continue to execute. Execution is the key.

Jay Sahal: And third is that we are working on an automation journey to improve our processes to automate a lot of systems. As I said, I have told you that I would love to close my books on first and give the MIS on first, but we are not doing that. So just make sure that we execute those and are able to provide real-time data, close our books earlier, just automate what can be automated and make sure that everybody is just working on a value-added task, something which is going towards customer making our customers winners and just be everybody becomes very, very highly customer centric and whatever Finance team can help in that direction, we Finance, legal and other functions, we would want to do that.

Rohit Agarwal: Very cool. So I’m sure you know, as companies tend to scale, there is, certainly need for more hands to take care of the, you know, certain things and, even if you’re automating things at times, you can’t really replace a human. So curious if you are hiring for certain roles right now. And, what are maybe some of the qualities that you look for when you hire individuals in your teams?

Jay Sahal: So, right now at large at the Company, we are not hiring a lot. Obviously, there are replacements, et cetera. A few key strategic hires, et cetera continues to happen. So very few open positions in Finance, in FP&A and in AR et cetera kind of an area, where FP&A to improve how we can, how faster we can make MIS available to management and in a more structured way, in a more detailed way, in a way where they are able to take actions. So that is one and second highly focused on improving the cash flows, et cetera. So, and go towards no less than 30 days, DSO and in that direction, like some head count to like work with customers on how we can improve our cash efficiency.

Jay Sahal: So the kind of qualities we need when we hire, I think one is like, we need the people with right attitude. Like we are, we are ready to work with them to improve anybody’s skill gap. Right. First of all, basic skills could be there but like I don’t expect everybody to be superman. We understand that. If you team of 50 people, I don’t think you can hire 50 Supermans, you will have maybe 5 to 10, highly productive, highly super intelligent people. And then they’ll be around 40 people who, who are good, who need some help in improving their skills, their communication skill, their ability to execute, et cetera and all that.

Jay Sahal: So I believe it’s a pyramid of excellence and always continue to work on improving the skills of the next level. But your attitude should be right. You should be hard working person. You should be able to collaborate. Collaboration is a key skill I seek in people. Are you able to work with others? If two people are aligned, they are able to do five people’s work, I believe. If they are not aligned, I think, they both put together will not even do half people’s work.

Rohit Agarwal: And create more for others, I guess.

Jay Sahal: Yeah. So are you collaborative? Are you having right attitude. Are you able to see the big picture et cetera? Those kind of skills I certainly need. Obviously, if you’re hiring for certain specific function, you need to have relevant experience, relevant skills. So that goes without saying, but more than that look for right attitude and an ability to collaborate and with team being a team worker and also inquisitive. Are you trying to create something new and like, not wanting to just being satisfied with like, what is there today in hand? You should be seeking more in terms of like trying to do things in a more better way, trying to find different ways to solve same problem and asking questions, always. So that kind of inquisitive and energy. So those are the few key skills I look for.

Rohit Agarwal: Makes a lot of sense. Quite interesting, I guess the penultimate question and maybe a few of the characteristics we might have already covered on this one. But what advice would you have for emerging professionals in Finance who aspire to be CFOs or you know, head of departments?

Jay Sahal: Yeah. So I would say 3-4 things. One is like no work on your energy level. You should not sign up for something which you achieve very easily and then you feel happy about it. You should be having very stretch goals for yourself and continue to look for growth. It should come more frequently. I’m not saying growth in terms of promotion, but what value and you are able to know give to the organization. Obviously you can ask return back in terms of what organization can do for you. But the first comes, what are you doing for the organization? So put a stretch goals for yourself. Work on your energy, I would say be very collaborative, work with other functions and businesses very closely.

Jay Sahal: You should not close yourself in just a loop of like just Finance team or your team, et cetera. You should be, you should be collaborating, you should be networking, et cetera. So that’s a very key. Now, world is all connected. So you should be connected with the entire organization. You should always align to the Company’s goal and see what you can do for it, right? Be even if you’re a junior person, if you’re not able to relate to a Company, like what it is trying to do, what problem the start up is trying to solve and you are not able to think in that direction, I think it won’t work out in the long run. So you should be able to understand what the start up is trying to solve the problem for. Are you able to think in that direction? How you can help the Company in that direction, et cetera? So look for a big picture and how you can play a role in it.

Jay Sahal: So once you are guided towards this direction, I think it will be very helpful. Last but not the least, in your core areas, I think you should look for improvement every week, every month, every year. If you did a certain task in a certain way, three months back, should not be doing in the same way. There has to be some improvement, some automation, some new way to doing it, et cetera. So always continue to improve and go to the next step in terms of better output, better process, a better experience, et cetera and all that.

Jay Sahal: So one step at a time, every day you make a difference and you can break a mountain with small steps. So small steps of efficiency, small steps towards better experience, better output, better way to work. I think you will be able to transform the organization.

Rohit Agarwal: Awesome. I guess the, the last one. Describe yourself in three words.

Jay Sahal: I would describe myself as a hard-working bee who loves to, who loves to continue to create beehives, which creates a lot of value add to the whole bee community and the society. So would love to continue to create something like that.

Rohit Agarwal: All right, we’ll take that Jay. This has been a great show. Thanks for taking the time.

Jay Sahal: Thank you, Rohit.

Rohit Agarwal: That brings us to the end of this episode. We hope you will find at least one nugget that is beneficial to you. As always, thanks for listening to Strategy Of Finance podcast. If you enjoy our show, please rate and review us on Apple Podcasts. Your comments will make us better and be sure to tune in next week for another engaging conversation. Until then, this is Rohit Agarwal and remember to learn, grow and inspire.

Rohit Agarwal: ***