Watch this exciting conversation where Krishna Kumar Sarda explains his entire journey, from being a CA aspirant in Kolkata to one of the youngest CFOs for Landmark Group’s Lifestyle business in GCC As we navigate through his journey, we understand phases like developing a deep love for Indirect Taxation during his articleship days and then shifting to Corporate Banking in ICICI Bank, how he grabbed a job at Vedanta Jharsugda at ICAI Campus to go home and say ‘ maa mujhe naukri mil gayi’ , advantages of working as a bachelor in a remote town and learning so much , then shifting to Wipro Bangalore and being in the thick of things , thoroughly enjoying a stint in Controllership and then how he decided to shift out of India and earn tax free dollars in Dubai and his experience at Landmark The amazing part is that he attributes a lot of this success to Luck and Divinity , he also explains two special non-work parts of his life -Art of Living where he has become a Teacher for their Happiness program and Toastmasters
Q1. Have you been a topper throughout your academic life?
Ans: My academic excellence journey started from class 4. Since then to class 12 I was a class topper, but there is an interesting story behind it. I actually failed once in K.G. or class 1, I scored 9 out of 100 in Maths, 11 out of 100 in English, and that’s when my mom decided to take the matter in her hands. She was the one who really invested a lot of time and energy into me, academically she was a big pillar behind my journey being very mediocre to actually becoming a class topper. After all the hard work that she put in, I actually started enjoying my learning and studies, and that’s how I transformed into a totally new person, to a so-called “good student”.
Q2. What was your motivation for CA?
Ans: In my family, from my maternal side, I have a lot of CAs. I have a cousin sister who became a CA after having a kid, so she was a big influence to all of us. One of my eldest cousins in the family, was one of the first cousins from my batch who actually made it big in the corporate world. Siddharth, my maternal cousin brother, who was one year ahead of me, when he joined CA it was an inspiration again. It’s a combination of all of them and also my own dream of pursuing something concrete in commerce, that made me a CA today. When I was in school, there was a lot of buzz about MBA, CFA, etc. but I found all of them a little flaky. I personally felt that unless I am not very confident about the B-school I am going into, MBA wouldn’t be worth it, and CFA at that time might not give me that kind of scope and exposure in India. I also wanted to be a general management aspirant and not a pure number crunching guy, so I felt CA gave me that kind of a platform, where I can completely deepen my technical skills but also hold myself on general management skills because I think CA is a course that really broadens our scope of understanding of business. It’s a lot of associated stuff around finance which helps us drive strategy later on in the career.
Q3. If you loved taxation so much, then why didn’t you choose a career in taxation per se?
Ans: A lot of my friends suggested me to choose a career in taxation. Until GST had come, indirect tax was a very big field in India, it still is but because of service tax, excise, customs, central and local VAT, there was so much of complication, in the indirect tax field that it could have become a very lucrative commune. But as I told earlier, my dream was to become a CXO and I personally felt that if I choose a career in only one aspect of finance, it would limit my growth as a CXO. That was the clarity I had, I wanted to try different roles and flavors of finance. I think that has been one of the key success factors for me so far in the last 12–13 years of my career. The fact that I have seen so many roles has allowed me to really understand business as a whole and not just become a finance guide.
Q4. Then you got into ICICI Bank in a corporate banking group?
Ans: We were in the last corporate banking group. That role again a very unique role, dealing with corporates, meeting them, understanding their requirement, whether it’s trade finance, non-trade finance; it was a transition for me from being in a CA firm to being in a hardcore corporate environment. Every company runs on liquidity, it’s the bloodline of the business, how do companies manage liquidity, and their leverage, all those finer aspects of finance was what I learnt in a very early age during my articleship.
Q5. You joined Vedanta after that which was in Jharsuguda, quite a remote location. What were your thoughts on that?
Ans: There is an interesting story again behind it. In my campus interview, I was selected my ITC, TATA group, L&T, and I had not applied for Vedanta. Then I was rejected by ITC on the first day, next day I had the interview with L&T and TATAs and L&T had selected me but they were offering me a location in Baroda and the profile was VAT. As I said earlier I was not too keen in doing another stint in taxation, and I had exhausted all my options by the end of day 2 and I was looking at all my friends going home with an offer letter and I was standing there disappointed with not a single offer letter in my hand and then somebody told me that Vedanta’s interviews are still going on. So with 10% hope I gatecrashed the party and there was a coordinator there whom I begged, borrowed and stole and requested him with all humility to at least allow me to appear for an interview. He told me to fill up the form and he checked with the interview whether or not they had the time to accommodate another person’s interview.so I was waiting in the waiting room and right towards the end my name was called. I entered the interview and these two interviewers were tired at the end of such a long day and they opened my CV and started speaking to me. I told them about my journey with indirect taxation with ICICI Bank and they asked me to step out of the room after 20 minutes, and after sometime the coordinator comes and tells me “Here’s your offer letter Krishna”, and honestly at that time I did not even bother about the location or the profile. I just wanted to go home and tell my parents “Maa, mujhe Naukri mil gayi hai!”
Now that I look back, it’s such a big thing that when you surrender yourself to the divine, it complies. At that time I was helpless, I had no one to fall back on so I think it landed in my lap. It was a remote location but the fact that it was a pure manufacturing unit with a lot of imports and exports, I think that experience for me was absolutely invaluable. At times I spent all 7 days in office, all 10–15 of us bachelor guys were going to office together, staying in same house 3 to 4 of us, those one and a half years were really formative for me.
Q6. Did you have the temptation on weekends to take the train and rush back home?
Ans: Almost every month, sometimes twice in a month. I would take the Saturday night train, land up in Howrah station, take the cab to me place, and Sunday night at around 10.30 pm I would take the train back to Jharsuguda. That one day with my family used to feel like a 10-day vacation to me.
Q7. I remember you wanted to go closer to Guruji to Bangalore and then WIPRO happened, so was that also a major thing?
Ans: That’s another story, my life is full of such beautiful, miraculous stories. I honestly feel nothing much had happened because of my own effort; a lot of these things were given to me by the divine and am really thankful for that. After having spent about 2 years in Vedanta, I kind of felt that it was time for me to get into the ocean, and experience the city life. Because of my role as a treasury in Vedanta, there was an opening for treasury in WIPRO. At that time and even today, hedge accounting is a very niche thing, very few people get that profile and I was lucky to be doing that in Vedanta. WIPRO had an opening for the same profile and as my cousin Siddharth used to work there, he forwarded my CV and as luck would have it, I actually ended up having that job. WIPRO is one of those companies where you really learn what commitment is. I had some rough edges when I left Vedanta and WIPRO kind of polished those edges. WIPRO had a lot of compliance that many of the companies don’t have, and because WIPRO’s exposure in foreign currencies are so high, the amount of regulation that we had to comply was also very high. So those 2 years when I was in controllership, WIPRO had just come out of a major fraud. At that time WIPRO had gone through a major fraud investigation and that investigation was happening right from FBI. There were people flying down from US for these investigations, and I was in the middle of the same profile where this whole thing had originated from. So for me, from a comfortable life I was thrown into the thick of things. That for me was like somebody was waking me up with cold water on my face. I think at that time even India was transitioning from Indian accounting standards to US gap to IFRS and we had to make all those statements in those different standards. Just because I was a CA, I couldn’t claim to be excellent in Accountants, because my experience and expertise was in taxation and treasury. In those 2 years in WIPRO because I was in controllership, I learnt technical and finer aspects of accounting. I think the responsibilities that we have as chartered accountants today is far more than what we had when we graduated.
Q8. Then in 2012 you got tired of paying taxes in India and flew to Dubai, and became an NRI technically right?
Ans: Yes in terms of tax status I am an NRI. I think in 2012 I was looking to try my luck abroad in Australia, Singapore or Dubai. I just felt my calling was somewhere outside the boundaries of our country. As luck would have it, I got a call from Landmark. Landmark is the parent company for Lifestyle in India. Landmark was looking for somebody in corporate finance and I was actually looking to change my profile as well. I had spent 2 years in treasury in Vedanta, and almost 2 and a half years in WIPRO. When Landmark told me they would offer me corporate finance, I immediately said yes even before they could tell me what they are paying. I thought that would be the right time as I had already spent about 5 years in the corporate world in India. Corporate finance for Landmark was a mixture of 3–4 things. One was transfer pricing, and it’s a cash rich company but it’s highly leverage firm. The other thing was cash flow and this whole thing structured around FPNA. The profile was a mix of everything, so that was one of the best stints I had in my career.
Q9. How did Dubai treat you as a city?
Ans: Initially so many people told me that Dubai is the country of B-company and a lot of smuggling happens, lot of underworlds, etc. But when I landed in Dubai, I got to see it’s a different world altogether. It’s actually a Europe closer to India. Again, a lot of people think that if you work in Dubai, the laws are totally different, you will not get a chance to come back to India, but one thing I got sure of is that the level of complication we have in India is definitely not here in Dubai. India has so many regulatory bodies so you have to expose yourself to a lot of scrutiny which is not there in the Middle-east, but that doesn’t mean the internal controls are not there. I would say in Dubai one of the best things is that scrutiny from outside is not so much. The management relies on the internal scrutiny a lot. So finance in Middle-east companies play a very critical role.
Q10. Give me a sense of how large is Landmark, who owns landmark, the kind of salaries that they offer, at what level do they recruit?
Ans: We keep having these fun events with ICAI, and they also keep organizing these healthy discussions on any of the important accounting or taxation changes. I think all Indians feel very proud in Dubai that in most companies the finance role is mainly handled by Indians.
Landmark is about 5.5 billion dollar company, has some very popular renowned brands like Splash home centre, Lifestyle, Max, all of these are also in India. Landmark is also into retail and hospitality, so they also have hotel chains, they are into different retail markets like footwear, furniture, cosmetics and beauty, electronics, etc. We have about 200 people in finance team and in terms of recruitment we do recruit a lot from India, freshers we used to recruit at one point of time but over time the level of complexities have gone up, so now we recruit people who have at least 2 years of prior experience, and then we might take them into controllership and then they go through couple of different profiles before finally being placed in a permanent role.
Q11. Siddharth who you always followed opted for a 1 year stint from ISB. Did that thought also come into your mind?
Ans: Yes it did but I think it’s good fortune that I got the right career moves without actually asking for them. I had a role in corporate finance for about 4–5 years, I moved to supply chain finance, I became the head for supply chain finance, so I did not actually get the time to think outside of my career at that time. When I was getting such important and critical roles to fulfill, I honestly felt that I would be doing injustice to myself and to my career if I take any break at that time. All these roles became like my MBA so I did not feel that pressing need to go for an MBA.
Q12. What was the role of Jai Gurudev all about?
Ans: Jayesh Gupta’s tuition ended somewhere in July, and he had gone for a 10 days leave, and exactly during that time this course was happening called ‘Yes+’. We had our CA final examination in November and I was just 4 months away from it and I was feeling jittery and sweaty hands and was very nervous to the extent that I felt I have to give up and that’s when my cousin sister Nidhi recommended this course to me. She said this course can help you in getting your concentration, focus levels up and can help you build up your confidence and communication skills, so I trusted her and joined it. I actually went there to learn about concentration and focus only but what I got back was much more. I think getting the matured understanding of life is also very important because when you step into the corporate world, honestly your honeymoon period is very limited. People expect you to become Sachin Tendulkar since day 1 and that does not just require technical skills, it requires, but also a lot of soft skills. People management skills does not mean managing people below you, it also means managing people belonging to cross-functional departments, because day in and day out you have to get your work through them, you are getting to work with people who are far more senior compared to you and you have to sometimes have tough conversations with them but still need to get your work done, that is what is known as soft skills or life skills. That, no school or college teaches you; how to handle your own emotions and people, how to build your confidence, how to be more expressive. Either you are born with it, or you have to work on it. I think ‘Art of Living’ gave me that stability in my mind, that groundedness which I think for me at that time allowed me to not just become a fresh, excited, exuberant chartered accountant, but also allowed me to mould myself into a more finessed product. We are okay with observation and perception, but when it comes to expression, I think a lot of chartered accountants stumble there. So all these skills are very important and I think ‘Art of Living’ kind of allowed me to balance all these three skills. So yes in 2007 I did my Yes+ course and thought that I have got everything and in 2016 I decided that I got so much from it so I should give back to society whatever I learnt from there. I became an Art of Living teacher and I am very happy that I take about 5–6 courses every year. I have taught about 25 courses so far, I have taken sessions for some of the local corporates, I have taken sessions in Landmark and people know me as the “Art of Living” guy in Landmark. Back in college we had learnt about Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs and the last need was self-actualization, which was quite an abstract and vague term back at that time, but having this streak with the Art of Living in my life has actually turned that vague concept into a living reality for me. So it’s a theory I am living each and every day of my life. Art of living is about pursuing excellence in life. Even if you have to be a recluse, be the best recluse in the world.
Q13. What was the pressing need to join Toastmasters?
Ans: I was a decent speaker but I felt that there was something which was missing. There is a different skill when you speak to your wife, different skill when you speak to your boss, different skill when you speak to someone who is reporting to you and a different skill when you address the public. Toastmasters is about public speaking. A lot of us are great at one to one communication, but if you are asked to address the audience, it could be 50 or 500 people, either you will be struggling to put your thoughts into words or you might tend to feel nervous. You will be surprised to know that public speaking fear is the deadliest fear in the world. What I realised was that the higher I am growing in my career, the more I need to address larger audiences because then I was making presentations and I felt that if I need to grow further what I need to do is to build that ability to address large crowds. Thanks to my boss, Banadi Subramaniam, I had joined Landmark under him and he was also a very senior Toastmaster and he is an excellent orator and he is one of my role models. He actually put it in my KPI that you have to join Toastmasters and have to give 3 or 4 speeches. I was very reluctant and signed the form with a heavy heart, but after 6 months I actually thanked him that if he had not pushed me into it, I wouldn’t even have thought about it. When I look back into my last 8 years in Dubai and 7 years of being a Toastmaster, honestly it’s been a sea change in my public speaking skills. I would recommend all chartered accountants to join some form of public speaking classes. I would recommend both Toastmasters and Art of Living to people who will come across this interview.
Q14. Who were the emotional pillars of your life?
Ans: So many people. Of course mom is foremost. She has not just been the emotional pillar, but she has been the foundation, and whatever little I learnt about wisdom and maturity in life, it’s from my mom and dad. There was a time when my father used to earn 5000 Rs per month. We had a very big business, but had to come out of it, with that income he brought up me and my sister, never let us feel that we have a lack in life, gave us the kind of values which really made us what we are today. If not for my mom and my dad, I would be a very different person. I cannot be thankful enough to them. My sister has been a big pillar of strength to me. She was like a safety net for me so whenever I had to ask my parents for something and I couldn’t get my way around them, I would tell my sister to talk to them. Siddharth has been a big bouncing board for me, he has been a friend and a guide. Sneha, my wife has been a great pillar for me. Friends like you, Abhishek, Surekha, I feel so proud that I have such amazing friends. It’s very important to be inspired from friends. We get inspired from Steve Jobs and Ratan Tata, people who are larger than life, but to be inspired from people who are just like you and me, I think that is what makes a huge difference.
Q15. Final words of advice that you will leave here for the youngsters.
Ans: Steve Jobs had once said, “Stay hungry and stay foolish”. There is a movie called “The Pursuit of Happyness”, which had a lasting impression on my mind. There is one scene where Will Smith tells his son that don’t let anyone tell you that you cannot do it. The world out there is there to pull you down, it has a lot of good people but situations, events, will create a lot of doubts in your mind, you will start doubting your abilities but I would say doubt the doubts and not yourself.
