How this Small City Boy took risky bets & made it Big in the world of Finance | Amitesh Sinha
AMITESH SINHA:
How this Small City Boy took risky bets & made it Big in the world of Finance | Amitesh Sinha CA|CS | CPA|KPMG |Nvidia |GE |Greenlight | LinkedIn| SIMA Funds
Q1. Could you tell us about your formative years in Ranchi?
Ans: I really fancy telling this to people the school I come from is the same school our former Indian Captain, MS Dhoni came in. he was 6 years senior to me but we had a privilege interacting with him, I was in the same house with him. That’s a little on the schooling side, it’s called DAV Shyamali. Then I did my graduation also from Ranchi St. Xavier’s College. Coming to my family, my father was a small businessman, now he’s retires, and my siblings, all of them studied from the same school. One is into a law profession, he was a partner with Khaitan, recently his own venture, my sister completed her law graduation but she is getting into some sort of a fashion industry. Now the value proposition which I get from my family is: 1) From my father I learnt a lot about how business works seeing that from early days, 2) From my brother, since he has worked with large corporates, so I used to live with him when I was in Mumbai and doing my CA finals, and learnt a lot about he used to deal and tackle lot of the large problems, we used to discuss of course keeping things in confidentiality, some of the bills he was working on but I learnt a lot from him about the corporate world even before getting into the corporate. That’s pretty much about my family background.
Now I am married, my wife works for a bank; she’s a banker and I have a 4-year old daughter. I love spending time with her on weekends and with this whole lockdown, now we get to spend a lot of time together in the evenings as well.
Q2. When did you shift to Mumbai? Did you start CA after shifting to Mumbai and was it like a default choice as a commerce student? And at that time did you have any inkling that you have come so far?
Ans: From the beginning I was not a commerce student, I was a science student until class 12 and I had an inclination towards doing engineering, and I did appear for IT screening, AIEEE, I got a decent rank in AIEEE and I was being counseled at BIT Mesra and I was not getting my right stream. I always wanted to do computer science or something in Electronics because that is the time when these things were very popular and I always wanted to go into that field. I can easily say that CA was an accident because one of my other friends who also appeared for these entrance exams, he didn’t get that much rank so he could not be called for counselling from some of these engineering college, and I happened to be at his home in one of those evenings when all of these things were going on and there was a lot of moving parts, and I saw on his coffee table that there was a CA prospectus. I knew about what CA is but not at a very high level, I only knew is that they sign some finance stuff and then I asked him what is this and what are the prospects and there was no accessibility of what we have right now of internet and google at that point of time, and I am talking roughly about 2001 or 2002 when all of this was happening and there was no much of accessibility on Google, etc. so I went to the CA institute, bought that prospectus, read through it and then I could try connecting with some of the neighborhood people who had commerce background, and that’s how I got into this commerce background because I didn’t get my stream in engineering and I just got accidentally got into CA and it just has been so pleasant journey so far and I cleared CA in all first attempts. One of the very obvious choice once you clear your CA is to start working with a Big Four and then things just followed. When I joined before within six months I realised this is not the place for me to keep on doing audit all my life and I wanted to explore other things and then other part of my journey started following after my stint at Big Four.
Q3. At that point you never thought of once completing CA and then going for an MBA?
Ans: Actually I didn’t get time, because once you are in Big Four, I always wanted to do an MBA for a fact and I still sometimes believe that I could do some sort of a executive MBA from some of the premium institutes either in India or abroad. I always fancy doing an MBA but once I got into Big Four we had very long working hours so there is no scope of even thinking of doing something on the MBA front and then the journey went along well, I got into industry into controllership roles and then I saw CPA could be helpful for me and then it just followed with several stints I had with some of the companies like GE, Nvidia and then Green Light and it just followed on and I thought that I will always do it but it never happened. I was so busy learning within the organisation itself and I had good mentors and things just followed on so that’s about my journey of how I didn’t do MBA.
Q4. Could you shed some more light on your experience with LinkedIn India?
Ans: Let me first talk about the product first. I have been using it since 2008 and I have been a great admirer of that product and I have several stories of how I have transacted big deals which has come through connections from LinkedIn. Some of the deals which I did like deals for Green Light and some of the other transactions which I do has come up with a connection at LinkedIn, so LinkedIn is a great platform, it’s a great product so when I got an opportunity to work with them, I was very excited about it because I had heard lot of good things in terms of them being one of the best employers in the world and when I got this opportunity, I was excited and I jumped into it and they are having a humongous learning in this past 18 months that’s my stint with LinkedIn. There is a lot of learning because of the way they operate and they are flexible in terms of giving an opportunity for people to learn several things so in short, I can tell that in LinkedIn, if you are capable and willing to learn, they don’t restrict you. it was my first stint with a tech company of this sort in terms of social media so there is a lot of things which I learned and which were not part of my finance domain. I could only do that because something interests me and they never restrict you, and that’s the best part of any employer being so flexible and having so much benefits to the employees not only in terms of monetary or other flexi benefits or having a great office for to give what they offer you is a real learning platform for their employees and I think that’s a great opportunity for anyone. I could have stayed longer, it was going on great but SIMA opportunity came in and I could reflect back what I did at Greenlight and that’s how I landed up with SIMA, but of course LinkedIn was a great learning.
Q5. What exactly do you do in SIMA in terms of impact investment? How is it different from a normal investment? Do you fund only NGOs or non-profit or even the profitable investments? If they are impact investment, can they still make money?
Ans: Let me first start with the philosophy which we come in this impact space and our CEO Asad is very passionate about it and the philosophy is this — never shy away from profits even though if you are trying to solve a social problem, because what you do is from that profit it gives you a scalability option. If you shy away from profits, you will be always looking out for funding or you will always be looking out for some sort of a cash in to support or scale us your business, but if you make even a social entrepreneurship into a for-profit business that allows you to pump in that profit and cash which you generate back into that social nation which will help you scale even larger. At SIMA we believe in that too and all our portfolio companies are for-profit because this is a huge space we are getting into and let me start with some of the sectors which we invest in — one of the biggest is off-grid solar, we are getting bigger in the micro-finance space, we have some investment in education, and we are also on our way to start investing in low-cost housing and there are many other funds which we are discussing right now but these are primarily the four things which we are doing right now. All of these sectors, be it off-grid solar or micro-finance, unless they build up their operation and a business model in a way that they start generating operational cash for them to grow is virtually impossible. So be it an off-grid solar where they are selling portable lamps either on up front or they are doing some sort of financing, they need to start generating cash because unless they do that they won’t be sustainable. Overall this whole impact financing is a mix of commercial finance plus you also need to have an acumen of the problems these social entrepreneurships and social organisations are serving because most of these are serving people who are at the bottom of the pyramid and you need to understand their operating model because let me give you an example of off-grid solar company where our portfolio companies are deeply invested in sub-Saharan Africa region which is I can easily say 70% of people are living below the poverty line and to sell these financing products, to sell these customers become very difficult because there have been a lot of questions around how you collect this money, how do you make sure you keep your asset quality intact of what you have committed to your investor, so it becomes even more important as a social impact investor to learn about their business and help them grow. There will be instances where you face a portfolio company not doing so good, then you actually try and get into their operating model and try and support them with our learnings in this space just to make them successful. So I think one of the philosophy we work in is we want our portfolio companies to be successful and we do support them. Now we are going through this COVID crisis and we do get request on restructuring some of our dead funding and things like that and we do support them as much as we can and what is within our powers to do it and I think being an impact investor the most important thing is to see what kind of value proposition you are creating for your customers and what kind of a value proposition you are creating for the community in large. So you have to have the acumen, and an understanding of the impact which is going to make or what it is making already. That’s a bit mix of a commercial funding plus this impact funding. So you need to have the acumen of understanding the problem solving methods these companies are doing. Right now we are a shy of 100 million dollars and most of the investments are in sub-Saharan Africa, some of them is in Indian sub-continent including India, Pakistan. We are evaluating other south-east Asian countries now, we are also working on two large funds incoming next 9–12 months. Things were going really fast but now as you can imagine with the COVID situation things are a bit slow but that’s the overall size of the business we are and what’s in the pipeline.
Q6. Do you spare time out of your weekends as a visiting faculty as a conscious choice that you want to give back to the students in MDI Murshidabad, and IIM Kashipur?
Ans: I think it is connected with my not doing MBA. Now I can go to an IIM and say that I went to an IIM though on a different page. Of course I do it as a personal interest because I always believe teaching is a two-way learning. When I do these lectures, now I am doing it virtually which is again a new experience, I actually tend to get some of the most difficult questions which are even harder so that is a different kind of learning and every lecture of mine has got one or two questions which have come up which has been a learning for me, where I went back and researched I could have answered it at a very high level but it has taught me to do more research into that particular topic and what I have done is when you interact with students, some of them are still connected with me even though I have done one or two lectures at their colleges but they are still connected with me and they keep on asking me some of the questions which they feel is relevant and I also did some research paper with some of the students with one or two colleges where I went. In some of the topics, I was also trying to learn, for example structured finance. How millennial behave in this new environment when it comes to employment and talent. That’s the overall background and I can say I didn’t do MBA but this is more or less like an MBA for me where I am learning with the students and there was one gentleman who was very favourite personality to me, Ram Jethmalani, I followed him a lot, I read his articles and one interview he was asked this question, till the age he dies he went to colleges and he was a teacher and he was asked, “How do you keep yourself young Mr. Jethmalani?” and he answered “if you live among the young, you will be young”, so if you live among the people who are learning, you will tend to learn. I think these are some of the philosophy which I liked and which actually excites me to do this.
Q7. In terms of your career journey, are there career mistakes that you have made? Which was the riskiest career transition?
Ans: I don’t know if this was a mistake but it could be as close to as a mistake. When I left Big Four and KPMG was a very very big brand and so it has grown even bigger and when I see some of my friends and colleagues still working there I always thought that I could become a partner at KPMG, wear that suit, have a Mobla pen with me and have that trolley bag with wheels because that’s how we saw all our partners coming in. One thing I miss is wearing the daily suit which I always aspired when I saw my partner, so I could say that part is something which I still miss, not being a Big Four but that was a conscious decision so that could come as close to as a mistake you can say.
Some of the risky things I did with my career is when I left General Electric, it was a great role of managing India controllership for one of the division for General Electric at that point of time was a great role and I got that role early in my career and I was learning a lot because there was a lot of coordination with India Forbes, US Forbes. I was in US for sometime for a project, things were going very smooth at General Electric, but I got this opportunity to work at Greenlight and I took it up. It was a risk coming from a very stable organisation, 330 employees going to a startup kind of an environment. Second is, that happened again at Greenlight that within a one-year stint, they offered me to do CFO role and I joined them as a controller, I was in a very comfortable zone because controllership is what I have done all my life till then and then when they offered me the CFO role I didn’t have experience in many aspects of what does a CFO do including fundraising and that was the need at Greenlight. So I had not done fundraising before, I had supported my earlier CFO but never led it and I thought that was a very big risk for me moving from a very comfortable role to a role which is risky and I could have lost my job easily if I hadn’t delivered of what I was required and all the startups go into these cash burn scenarios and they need back to back financing. So that was one of the riskiest moves that I think I did but higher risks come with higher rewards and that’s how I got into the CFO role and I did that for almost 4 years and I enjoyed it and learnt a lot.
Q8. What do you do for fun and fitness?
Ans: Before this lockdown, I was playing badminton at least 3–4 days a week. For me, fun is travelling and I have been fortunate enough for working in companies who have allowed me to travel extensively, Greenlight was extensive travel and I travelled to some of the parts of the world which I could have never imagined I will go, some very rural areas in Kenya, Tanzania, Kilimanjaro area which I never thought I would go there. There’s a lot of learning from those travels but I would say for fun I like travelling, but let’s see how this whole situation shapes up, probably we will have to modify my fun part as well when it comes to travelling and for fitness, I don’t do much but let’s see.
Q9. What is your final word of advice to the youngsters?
Ans: I think two things — never shy away from taking risks and take them early in your life, because there are two philosophies how you take these risks, one is, I will go back to the Greenlight part where I took up that CFO role, I discussed that with a lot of my friends and mentors. They gave me two advice — either you take that job and learn it through, or you learn it and then take that job. So the second option wasn’t available. There was no way I could tell my founders that give me 6 months, I will learn it and then take this job, so I chose the first one and it paid off and why it paid off is just be focused and always be dedicated of what you have signed up for. Signing up for gym membership and nowadays bulk membership is so very easy but maintaining and doing it at least 3 or 4 times a week is important, so I think be focused all through that time is important. The second tip is I think very basic one, never shy away from learning anything, read anything. I think the more you learn whether it is academics, or you learn about something what’s happening in the world or you learn about any art, any instrument, anything of that sort. It opens up your gray matter, it helps you a lot in terms of developing new skillsets which you can apply in day-to-day work lives. I know some of my mentors who read till 10 and you can imagine they can learn from that. So any new thing opens up doors for learning so never shy away and one of the philosophy I also follow is never shy away learning even when it comes from your juniors and I have done that many times with my different stints. If somebody who is junior to you but has those skillsets which you think is useful for you, go ahead and ask for help and they will be more than happy to do that because it’s coming from somebody who is higher in the hierarchy and that helps a lot.
