Future proofing Finance Strategies for Thriving Era of Digital Disruption
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good morning good afternoon good evening
uh every everyone welcome to power of
knowing forums LinkedIn live podcast
today we are streaming this sessions
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while we are live on LinkedIn today we
have the honor of having Mr sambasivam
CFO from tataa play limited sasim S has
about 35 years of experience in in the
industry including senior roles in
finance and general management brings in
a wealth of knowledge on the expertise
of Finance domain today s sir will be
sharing his insights on future proofing
Finance strategies for thriving in Era
of digital destructions we are excited
to have s on this expertise and engaging
audience discussion so without further
Ado please please join M SAS welcoming
SAS to The
Forum sir uh good evening Welcome to our
show sir uh thank you for being here
thank you thank you very much prum it’s
an honor to be uh part of this session
and and I really look forward to
discussing with you whatever little uh I
have I have gained over the last say 35
years yes sir what are the emerging
technology you see having the greatest
potential to disrup the finance industry
in the next decade because yeah
government technology is growing too
much on and how banks are adapting or
the finance sector is adopting is what
we want to understand
yeah so I have as as PR said I have got
about 35 years of experience mostly in
finance and in operations so the kind of
uh changes what we have seen in the
first 30 years versus The Last 5 Years
particularly after covid is unbelievably
uh hard to Define uh because the Quantum
of change it’s it’s like a Quantum Leap
right like uh the kind of what you can
say the Microsoft teams or the way in
which the digital technology is being
adopted and the way in which people are
able to work from their respective
locations and how cyber security has
moved how gdpr has moved how various
kind of technological advancements have
helped people to survive and thrive post
covid so in my mind the the biggest leap
happened in the last 5 years versus the
previous say 30 years so the main
changes as I see like in 20 2017 I
remember in the company where I’m
working today we had RPA as a starting
point right so we put a lot of insights
around robotic process Automation and we
uh we went to one company called
automation anywhere and we got some BS
from there and we got one of the big
four coming and implementing lot of
robotic processes we we got some payback
period of 18 months and 24 months and we
have got a lot of bots working in our
company in 2024 but after 2021 22 last 3
years
there is a flurry of activity or flurry
of projects which we are doing around
this topic called animal Cod
AI which is artificial intelligence
which is a very large subject so it
started with AI then we got into a
subset of it which is called ml then it
has got a further subset of which is
called Deep learning okay then it got
another angle to it called generative Ai
and within that there is a subset of
chat GPT there’s a lot of things which
are happening around this AI animal so
what is happening is there’s a what you
can say convergence of data and
analytics and Technology they are
converging at a very fast pace right so
these are all the areas where we are
currently at least our organization is
currently focusing more on how to do
more analytics how to get more insights
ultimately how to take faster and
databased decisions rather than hunch
based decisions and that to at a very
double quick speed that’s how these
Technologies are helping us today
yeah hope I have uh answer your question
yeah you covered lot of technologies
that are disrupting the market which is
a ML and stuff right uh sir how can
traditional financial institutions adopt
the fastpaced challenges brought through
this
digitals yeah so when I say traditional
because I think as we speak all these
traditional institutions or the
traditional companies so to say I
believe that almost 70 80% of the are
already in the Journey of transforming
themselves I can’t imagine a company
which has not yet gone into this
bandwagon of uh digital transformation
or AI Journey or ml Journey or something
I think every company is already
starting to do that maybe the pace of
change would be different for different
companies right so the fundamental need
I would say how do we start is it’s it
start from the top you need a mindset
change you need a cult Cal shift first
of all and then there should be
conversations at the leadership level
and basically there should be some time
sharing in the sense that if there are 8
hours in a day we should be talking
about or we should be doing something on
or we should be running some projects on
these new technologies at least for say
maybe 1 hour in a day is what I have
told myself and in our team uh we are
ensuring that everybody is spending at
least one hour in a day on some form of
activity whether it is a learning
activity whether it’s a doing activity
whether it’s a conversing activity
whether it’s a best practice sharing
activity so that is very important and
you have to continuously upskill right
so it’s it’s a what you can say virtual
virtual cycle you learn you implement
you share then you again learn you
implement you share it’s it’s a it’s a
continuous cycle I think uh everything
starts from the mindset change you have
to believe that this is something which
is important and then it will all fit in
place yeah hope I had have answered yeah
sir I think you’ve covered again on
continuous learning is what you are
covering on stuff and this this has been
the trend the last five six years at
least because you don’t find the same
thing that is there as on yesterday and
there is something which is new coming
again and the trend is changing the new
Adoption J I was told last year by
Gartner or anybody did not predict even
J be going to be that kind of Market
even Gartner could not predict it last
when they started in Jan 2023 is what I
understand so with the rapid changes
coming in I think now chat GPT 5 is what
is coming up is what I understand so I
I’m not sure the advancements but it is
going to be much much bigger than chat
jpt 4 is what I understand sir sir what
role do you envision of artificial
intelligence machine learning shaping
the future of Finance sector in
particular sir yeah in finance I would I
would tell you that see the biggest fear
of AI in any sector in financial sector
non-fan sector every sector is that
there is going to be a loss of job yeah
that’s the main I would say the fear of
AI taking away a lot of jobs but I would
like to say it slightly differently AI
per se will not take jobs from from
people the people who learn and
understand and Implement AI will take
the job away from people who do not
learn and do not understand and do not
spend time on
AI right so it’s it’s a very important
it’s a nuan statement I’m making but
it’s a very important Nuance which means
that there is hope for all human
beings there is no choice but to learn
learn as long as you continuously learn
Ai and Implement AI you are
safe the moment you stop learning and
continue to say okay this AI is fearful
I don’t I don’t want to know okay it is
like a Frankenstein monster I don’t know
how it will work I don’t want to
understand
AI then for
sure uh it’s difficult for you to
continue wherever you are working
because there will be other people which
I’m sure will take a positive note of AI
and you will learn more about it and
becoming more efficient and when they do
the opal at the end of the year you will
always find that the people who are
using
AI are far far more
productive than the people who are not
so what do you do then you do the
performance
apprisal the person who uses technology
wins yeah in the long run the Gap
widens so that’s the I think uh the
point here and also I would add here
that in our company we have a four
pronged statement as a finance strategy
right so I will tell you how AI fits in
our overall strategy
statement we have a statement which says
our finance strategy statement which is
not changed for the last few years I
would say last five years at that time
that this statement does not have the
word AI right but I’ll tell you how it
indirectly has AI first statement is
that the purpose of Finance is to become
a better business partner that is point
number one better business partner
by using latest
Technologies and become good at data
analytics and
insights and become good at
storytelling so storytelling data
analytics insights technology and
business
partner this is what I believe is the
comprehensive or slightly broader Ro
role of Finance as a function in any
organization if it is not it should be
it is just no more a controllership
function yeah controllership is a very
relatively small portion of the finance
job while it used to be a very large
portion say 30 40 years back when I
started my career Finance job was more
as a controller’s job and the compliance
job but now that is taken for
granted now it is how much you are
adding value to the business how much
you are helping the strategy how you are
improving the cost how you are improving
the process how you are supporting the
growth these are the things which CFOs
are asked to
deliver therefore AI is an important
tool which is in the current technology
bucket the second point which I
mentioned out of the four pillars so we
have to continuously upskill ourselves
on the current
Technologies sir I was uh reading
somewhere on the one of the police dep
Department in the US had given one
person a desk job his job was to collect
data okay and he collected data for most
of the department this one and he was
only processing the data saying that
what is the pattern what is the kind of
this one and he kept up on the crime
related stuff to a stage when something
happened and there something major
happened and you used to curse that job
I’m doing a just D job this job but
while he did the an analysis he was able
to predict because he had the data in
hand rest of the people did not have
data in so what I understood from you is
AI and ml will work if you are able to
make it work you know how to make it
work and you make yourself available for
that kind of a work right sir correct
absolutely see you are absolutely right
when we say that the data is the new oil
and all those things those are all gone
now see what we used to do in finance is
that we used to present data to the
senior leadership and say and we put
that numbers and say numbers will speak
for itself now that is not the case now
the numbers will not speak for itself we
have to find out the numbers that speak
and the way they speak and we will have
to put it in such a way that they will
tell a story the numbers have to tell a
story that is where the data analytics
come in that is where the artificial
intelligence and the pattern finding and
everything comes out so that it it
extracts the critical pieces of
information from the mass of data and
from that mass of data then you come out
with those insights which are typically
not
known from the human eye point of view
many a Time the kind of insights which I
get from the data using AI is something
which is already hidden and suddenly I
find oh I never noticed this that’s the
power of AI it has got the ability
to look at billions or millions of
transactions and find out what is the
peculiarity or what’s the pattern which
is emerging which for a human ey to come
and find out it’ll take months to get to
that kind of inside you may or may not
get that you may not you may stumble
upon it but AI has the knock of finding
those kind of patterns that’s the beauty
of
AI sir how Finance Prof professionals
best leverage data analytics to drive
Innovation and strategic decision
making yeah so what we do now in our
company we we continuously uh uh kind of
uh a recruit people who have got
analytic skills for example in my team
there are quite a few Engineers quite a
few data analyst data scientists quite a
few of them not small number double
digit number okay so that is one so
you’ll have to ingest the people with
such training and knowledge and that is
not enough
what happens to the existing people so
we upskill them it could be through
sabatical they go to IM they go for some
courses where we sponsor some 50% of the
cost some identify people and they go
for those training they do one year
courses all these things we do so over a
period of time what happens is that the
organization at least within our
function they become much more
knowledgeable the other thing what we do
is that we spend a lot of time for
people for the kind of data analytics
knowledge we have at least a goal of 10
mandates of training for every
individual in the function every year if
a person has been in the company for say
10 years he would have gone through 100
days of
training so which is a lot of training
and this is over and above what the
person trains using his own money and
his own courses and all those things
that corser and other things are outside
of this right for example I have spent
say 18 weeks going through a python
course or a machine learning course of
MIT which I proudly put in my LinkedIn
profile right so that is not included in
this right so so we encourage every
human being to learn in our company and
there are lot of python coders lot of
people they can extract data they can
analyze data they can do things very
comfortably sir what are some challenges
that Finance organizations when uh face
when adopting to digital Technologies
and how we can overcome this yeah I can
give a personal example here so 10 years
back or 11 years back when I joined this
company we are not like what we are
today okay we had a team of nearly say
80 90 people the entire Finance function
I’m including we have supply chain we
have got revenue insurance we got also
strategy payroll lot of functions are
included within Finance so we got about
say 80 85 people uh within that we had
say handful of Chartered account only
and we had zero m
BS at that point in time now clock turns
11 years later I was counting the other
day out of the about 93 people I got
14 mbas from Premier institutes when I
say premier of Premium I im a BC kind of
thing I got 14 of them and I got I think
some 15 or 16 Chartered Accountants oh
okay and some Engineers some data
scientist and other things so the the
the
quality of the
Manpower you can actually change over a
period of time by proper Recruitment and
by replacement with some high skilled I
would not call Labor High skilled set of
people so that is one challenge One
Challenge is that people fear of their
job see what we use are are the my
Mantra is very simple AI or any
technology is meant to be easing your
life and not taking your
job I’m repeating any technology is
meant to be easing your life and not
taking your job this is
fundamental people will not believe you
day one day two day three but if you
consistently do this for say one year 2
year 3 years and they start believing in
it over a period of time people start
believing in what we are saying because
they see the actions around this
they see that their life has changed in
terms of amount spent or the time number
of hours spent in the office versus
number of hours spent with the
family I’ll give you one small example
one small data point 11 years back our
Employee Engagement score of the finance
team was
52 out of 100 the company was
71 and ours was the our fun was the
lowest rating there were reasons behind
that because lot of things people were
highly pressurized and lot of work was
there and month end was a pain and you
have to work for late hours so those are
the things which are quite normal and it
is taken as part of job
right now come
2024 our current score from
52 and the company rate was 71 company
has moved from 71 to 77 which is a good
thing I’m saying
but
Finance is also moved to
91 oh okay and this coupled with the
another data
point that the average
length of a finance team member today
within our company is nearing 10
years
versus the average length of the company
employees which will be around
roughly 6 years just giving you some
little bit of data points uh but uh
these are even six years is a good data
point I think for a company which is
very new 6 years is very very decent yes
sir very very decent I would say for a a
new company a new age company like ours
we are a new age company right we
started only some 17 years back right we
are a very young company so to say we
are a teenager we’ve not started 18th
one yet 18 years is not completed yeah
18 18 actually I think 18 by by this
August we’ll be completing 18 we are in
the 18th so for for a company this is a
very decent one and uh for a company to
have a 10 year kind of a life of an
average employee is something which we
believe is a good thing because the
engage the engagement is good longevity
is good people are staying and they are
contributing so what more do you
need this is what we I think is future
proofing
okay sir in your opinion what are the
most significant regulatory
considerations for finance comp
companies navigating digital space
digital disruption or digital space
yeah so
disruption is is the order of the day
right so so there will always be
disruption and there is always
regulation right I can I can think of
Regulation from two aspects one is
regulation from the aspect of cyber
security right
second is the regulation because we are
a b2c company regulation from the aspect
of data
privacy these are in a way interl but at
the same time they are covered by
different sets of rules and
regulations the cyber security
regulations are different and the
gdpr laws are
different so these two things I think we
have to be at least for a b2c company
these become very very important because
we cannot afford
to lose our data so people say dark web
people say ethical people say hacking
and we are hearing lot of horendous
news that data of companies are just
floating around everywhere and there are
cases where there’s ransomware threats
which are happening these are the things
which I am really worried about so to
say both and there are regulations
around it and these are things which we
and with proliferation of AI these
threats are actually becoming even more
grave so to say because these are going
to matter a lot more because like
companies are learning about AI the
people who are also hacking they are
also learning faster than us right yes
in fact there always one step or two
steps or sometimes three steps ahead of
us what I was told was looking with the
new technologies the Cyber attackers or
the criminals are more advanced to three
times then what we try to deploy and
they are already having the equipment
and it is a kind of funding that gets
into them to see how they can infiltrate
right so how they can hack and see what
are the test cases also that can be
looked at while we look at Cyber threats
there’s kind of simulation that also
these organizations which we do right
absolutely we we keep uh working on what
are the actions which we can take and we
have a team of very strong it experts in
our teams not in finance in the it
function uh there are technical experts
and we we get lot of tests done we go
through what you can say test cases then
we see how many attacks are happening we
try to look at simulate those attacks
and see there is something called red
hat and all those things there’s host of
things but I still feel that whatever we
are doing it may not be fully sufficient
right so we have to keep read inventing
keep inventing inventing inventing
because something new will happen every
single day so so this is a this is like
a catchup we are always playing a
catchup game in the Cyber area is what I
feel hello hope I have answered yeah
yeah
yeah s
uh how can Finance leaders forecast a
culture of innovation and continuous
learning with in their
organization yeah it is it is important
that we should foster a culture of
learning we should for foster a culture
of innovation right so it is it is
extremely important this is a I would
say this is a pet project of mine uh we
we
actually every year what we do the
beginning of the year uh there’s a
standard process for the last 5 years we
have been doing we uh congregate into
one room or have a brainstorming session
for say 2 3 days
okay and we discuss okay what are the
next level of innovation which Finance
can deliver in the next say one year two
year 3 years so we come out with say
assume that we come out with say some 20
30 40 ideas then we go through each one
of them and say okay some of them are
important and Urgent some of them are
yes nice to have so we divide that into
two buckets uh the first one we call as
projects which are must to do projects
and the second we what we call as good
to do projects which are nice to have
right so so typically we would have both
put together somewhere around 20 to 25
projects every year so which means that
in the last six years we would have
delivered about 150 plus
projects so which is a large number yeah
it is a very large so all these projects
are nothing have nothing to do with the
ba when I say ba business as usual they
are not maintenance activities these are
taking to the next level some of them
again we bucket them into five groups
one group we call it as a automation
bucket there will be some projects which
are focused on automation the second
bucket what we call as process
Improvement there are some projects we
work on process improvements third one
we call as people
enrichment fourth one we call it as
collaboration where cross functional
collaboration comes into play the last
but not the least which is a pet subject
is cost
control so these are the five buckets
where we group each of these projects
and we keep uh working on new new ideas
so and uh once you do it one year 2 year
3 year four years 5 years and uh it
becomes a culture right and when we go
and update to our senior leadership like
I have to go and update my MD saying
that okay what we have done because it’s
not enough that we have told you okay we
are doing but we have to keep on
updating once every four months or five
months go and say okay what’s happening
so that’s a what you can call a project
management culture which also Fosters
this Innovation
culture so this is what we have been
doing at least in finance yeah now that
you have said we have done about 150
projects that you have done what are
some potential risks associated with
digital transformation in finance and
how they can be
mitigated see the biggest risk as I see
is uh around the data piece right and
the data security so that is I think the
biggest risk see it falling into the
wrong hands or it falling into the
General Public public
unknowingly is the biggest risk of
digital we touched upon it earlier right
the cyber security is the one where I
believe the biggest risk for any company
now is more around cyber security than
around any otheris I think it is now for
me it is the topmost
risk within the company I feel that
cyber risk is the top most risk because
we have a risk management profile there
is something called ERM Enterprise risk
management which we do we identify
critical risk medium risk low risk and
we update the board every year and I
happen to be the head of the at least
the responsible the person responsible
for handling the of the
company so it is my job to go and uh at
least update the board regularly on what
are the risks of the company and how we
are mitigating it for me now the top
risk in my mind is cyber
risk okay so that is something once and
it’s it’s a never- Ending game right
it’s never going to
end so now the more and more AI you do
there will be more and more such risk
which are keeping on cing and gdpr again
these two are the critical risk the
other risks are around what you can say
sometimes what happens is that when uh
we think that AI we overestimate the
power of AI yeah that’s another risk we
think that AI is like Aladin in the lab
that somebody says gomba and some
solution comes
no you should not think AI is
the Sol solver of all
problems it can only do that much and we
should know how to use a and what it can
deliver it’s very it’s very easy to
overestimate the power of AI and it’s
also very easy to underestimate the
power of
AI both people go wrong both ways
because it’s very difficult to exactly
estimate what this animal can do that’s
where the challenge is which we are also
grappling with the same
challenge
okay sir how do you foresee blockchain
technology revolutionizing Financial
Services in the coming years see
blockchain I’m not an expert in
blockchain whatever little I have read
and I’ve had a couple of conversations
with the Gartner folks uh we we
subscribed to Gartner for the last 7
eight years we are a regular subscriber
so I keep talking to those folks maybe
even today I had one chat with a
gner expert so to say in the morning so
so that’s a regular activity of mine and
uh many of our projects what we talked
about we use some of those ideas which
come from Gartner right and the material
which they give so according to them
blockchain while it started off with
much much big
Fanfare but they are not at least there
is not too many success cases like the
way say chat GPD has become a success
let us say or or J has become a success
nobody expected it to proliferate as
much as it is become
today but
blockchain has not grown that much but
yes there are use cases because the
problem at least I see is that there’s
an ecosystem you need to develop okay
till that ecosystem is
developed we cannot actually get the
full benefit of blockchain because it is
like it has to be built one on top of
the other right what is blockchain it is
making sure that nobody can tamper with
whatever you are
saying so everybody in the ecosystem
should be in blockchain for us to get
the benefit even if there is one link
which is not uh updated then you have a
loophole there right then the blockchain
won’t work the chain breaks yeah it’s a
extended ledger so that so the chain has
to be there so and today I don’t think
it is that much comprehensively or wider
the wi wider usage is required
yeah that’s my limited I’m not a
technical expert I’m just going by
whatever I have read and whatever I have
heard this is a this is not based on my
personal learning all the other whatever
I have told is based on my personal
experience blockchain you take it with a
pinch of salt because it’s only here sa
for
me yeah okay okay got it sir sir what
are some strategies you would recommend
finance department professionals to stay
updated with the latest trends advanc
Technologies I keep telling my team be
curious be curious okay so you have to
block your calendar every every day at
least I would I would mandate if if you
really want to be on top of the game you
should spend you should time time box
there’s a word called time
box where you say that okay this one
hour I will not do anything but learn
about something it could be blockchain
it could be nft it could be AI it could
be ml it could be python it could be
anything so unless you time box it and
you do it consistently for about a year
or two you are not going to learn
anything therefore I suggest that we
start somewhere you should start uh big
and the learning there are n number of
way there are books there are podcast
there are videos there are uh Google
search engines there is so many TED
Talks uh and there are courses all free
courses every University conducts free
courses
so information and knowledge is
abundantly available it’s very very
cheap today the biggest transformation
is that education has become extremely
extremely accessible and high quality
education is coming to you free of cost
the problem with that is that you can’t
understand that there is high quality
education because it is coming free of
cost you do not attach much value to
it people don’t give a value when it is
coming free but half I think 70% of the
knowledge that is available is available
free only and there’s really some high
quality knowledge which is available
fore really high quality
so I was looking for privacy operations
some about a year back when I was keen
on looking at gdpr and in last August
when our Indian government started dpdp
act I wanted to understand how
technology and stuff but the amount of
information people have put on the
internet and the kind of videos that we
get we have abundance of knowledge but
people don’t know to search it is what I
think and people don’t want to follow it
because it is free as you right yeah
yeah that’s the main thing in fact if
you go to my LinkedIn post I keep on
forwarding lot of these courses somebody
is putting in I don’t create any post by
myself I am only forwarding I only
forwarding in the hope that somebody
will use
it so coming back here what are the St
uh how can Finance organization balance
the need of innovation with maintaining
robust cyber security
measures so as I said no we have uh
cyber security is is a very important
topic in fact I have got a couple of
people in my team who are uh kind of I
would say 50 60% of the time they are
working on cyber security okay uh so
they they they are very hardcore
supporters for the it function okay and
there is a cyber Excellence program
which our Tata group has so we are going
to learn from that cyber Excellence
program there is a set of of what you
can say guidance notes which are
available as a group uh we take cyber
security very very seriously and every
company is encouraged to improve their
knowledge and implementation of cyber uh
anti-cyber threat
measures and we get a lot of support
from the group and there are experts who
can come and give us SE lectures there
are uh materials available there’s a
4050 page document
available uh and uh other group
companies we can go and talk to them and
they say okay what implemented we can
Implement there are best practices
available in the standard portal which
we have so there is enough as you
rightly said even within our group also
we got enough and more knowledge on what
to do on cyber
security so we we have started doing
something but we are at very very early
stage in the company maybe in the next
two years time we would have matured a
little bit but it’s as I said it’s it’s
a journey and it’s a catchup journey and
you rightly made a point saying that
learning has to be there once you learn
the place to implement also has to be
there and that is evolving as new
threats come in the people are trying to
attack you in a different forms and you
are supposed to look at what are the new
ways that they have come in and
penetrated that also you’ll have to look
at and keep yourself updated with the
latest trends made a very valid point
there sir so happing and doing learning
and doing it’s a cycle it’s a continuous
cycle you rightly said sir it is a
continuous learning continuous
deployment stuff where you have
something to be learned and that becomes
old as on today yesterday’s news is here
it’s about a years old news now if you
really look with the technology coming
in lot of advancements so coming back
here again how important is finance
professionals to develop strong digital
literacy and how can they enhance their
these skills efficiency because you
touch that point on a brief point where
knowledge is available freely and all
the stuff but but still there always
seems to be somebody saying sir I went
to this course I did not get value to it
and this is where I need something else
that kind of situation you would have
faced but if you really look at 70 60%
or 70% is available freely but whatever
they look at is as we started discussing
in the starting of the discussion
there’s a lot of data available Google
gives you a lot of data now chat GPT
gives you a lot of data what to believe
what not to believe is one other
challenge that people are having and
they want to look it as a format of
a a class or an online session how do
you look at this as growth opportunity
for the finance department so there are
two things I will again talk from my
personal experience there are two things
which we have done which one is what we
have done one what we’ll be doing right
one we we see uh we started about a year
back a concept called reverse
mentoring okay when you say reverse
mentoring you know the term reverse
mentoring I assume that uh uh the new
kids who who come from the uh management
institutes they come with a lot of uh
Advanced knowledge about technology they
can understand technology for example my
kids understand technology because they
have grown with those Technologies right
so the way I understand technology and
the way it is like natural for them so I
have started this for myself and my
direct reports we have identified some
young kids and uh they are actually and
I’m spending time with them last one
year every month I spend about an hour
or two trying to understand about
various Technologies what are the AI
tools available specifically focusing on
AI so I have at least been exposed to at
least some 20 25 tools in the last one
year okay lot of AI tools right so then
what we did after doing that then we put
it all together and we have now started
sharing with the other functions and
they are finding it very useful uh so
some of them they started using it also
so we started using some of them for our
uh business uh problem Solutions and
some are being used by other functions
also and this is an ongoing Journey
right because if you had not done this I
would never have come to know about this
2025
tools I would never have even heard
about many of haen what is hen I’ll
think okay he generation or something
like but the hen is a tool it’s a very
interesting tool I’m saying so like that
there are so many things which are
available today like Sora you would not
have heard Sora yeah Sora
or
jini every day there are at least there
are 200 300 tools which are available
which are big
tools I was part of a conference with
Microsoft about a month back where they
were discussing about copilot right yes
copilot copilot is Big very big very big
and they have two versions one is free
version and the pro version so what what
that they demonstrated in the co-pilot
was the look at how productive you can
be while you reply to mails or what is
that you’ll have to look because in the
leadership you become so busy with those
meetings and stuff you don’t look at
your mails or your followups or your
approvals or stuff what I saw while they
brought co-pilot was to look at how this
all can be automated and given you a
brief saying that these are the five
Mals that you are supposed to reply
which are on Priority One these are the
things that this is a kind of demo that
they showed us and again I was part of
Microsoft alone again for one more on uh
I met one lady called radika she says
she they have developed a human kind of
an interface where you give your uh
documents and it scan those documents
and reference it for you saying that
this is mentioned in this document right
so you give that kind of a document
knowledge to that uh a assistant and
that gives you the whole uh brief of all
the documents where you don’t need to go
and fetch for which document it was
mentioned so I found it was very
interesting so I me talks with her to
see how I can take some leverage on that
so on the other thoughts your thoughts
on the future digital currency sir and
how it might impact the traditional
banking system so digital currencies I
was quite
uh interested say 3 four years back uh
when all these Bitcoins were going
through the roof the valuation of
Bitcoins went up but somewhere along the
line I currently feel that uh it is now
gone to the other side in the sense that
at least in our country unless unless
there is a full 100% support and
blessing of the government which is when
I say government it is
RBI uh this will not uh flourish is my
personal View and I don’t I’m not sure
whether our government is now looking at
it like a is like a positive growth
engine I’m not sure because what I at
least whatever I have read maybe six
months back I don’t know recently how it
has changed that uh they were not very
keen
on making this uh digital currency very
uh ubiquitous one is what I read
somewhere but I don’t know the latest on
that whether the thinking has changed or
not I have no idea but this is what I
read I think some six months back okay
so I have not kept a tab on it so I feel
that uh it is now dormant so to say
maybe it’s ideas every idea know there
has to be a time for an idea maybe it’s
time up not time it will come later
maybe is what I feel so it’s not it’s
not your time is what I feel at least as
of now for the
country okay sir in your experience what
are the key qualities or characteristics
that enable Finance professionals to
thrive in the year of digital
destruction huh see there’s a book
written by my boss called adapt Thrive
just not survive his name is harit nakol
he’s written a book called Thrive just
not adapt is is talking about what are
the things one has to do how to survive
in today’s world right it’s a very
recent book released in
2024 um so you need to have that
resilience in your self right for any
any disruption you need to be resilient
first
thing and that fear of the unknown is
always there right you should at least
it’s very difficult to remove the fear I
know uh but somehow we should get out of
the fear of the
unknown and at least I encourage my team
to
embrace new learnings to embrace new
technologies to embrace new ideas be
open to something coming as fresh and
don’t feel threatened so that don’t feel
threatened will come once you know about
something because since you do not know
about AI you think it’s a it’s it’s a
bad thing but the moment you understand
how to tame that animal then you are no
more afraid of it I think many companies
or many people have this fear of the
unknown so that’s where the learning
becomes essential once you understand
something know that fear goes away
people think that okay I can’t do
mathematics many people say they don’t
even touch maths somewhere in their
brain there is a hardcoded statement
that I will not know mathematics or I
cannot learn
mathematics even though they may have
the capabilities which I believe
everyone has got the same brain and same
capability that fear of the unknown and
the fear that okay I cannot learn is
something which is a which is a barrier
to growth I don’t know whether I’m
making myself clear
but this is something see once you
remove that fear then everything becomes
easy sir it is it’s the fear that does
not allow you to do many of the things
you’re right on that because if fear
it’s not about doing it is the fear
after you fail something and people view
how you as a person is what more
prevailing than they say I in our
company we celebrate failures by the way
you in our company we we we have the
concept which is again my managing
director his own word CEO culture
collaboration experimentation and
ownership e is experimentation which
means that you have to experiment new
things and if you fail it’s fine but
don’t fail again second time but you
fail you can fail once you can fail once
and you can then get up and do something
else because we believe that if there
are 10 ideas we experiment one day one
or two will
succeed so but you have to keep on
experimenting those 10 things you have
to invest on those 10 things we have to
spend money on those 10 things not
knowing which one will
succeed okay sir uh with this I have
done with my thought process that I
wanted to discuss with you there are few
questions which have come on to this one
so one is this Carlos Mario says this is
great and we have one more question from
uh one person how Finance strategies can
be adopted in digital effectively
ensuring resilience agility in the rapid
evolving business landscape first
question and what are what key
consideration should Finance leaders
prioritize future proof their strategies
I this is this these questions is what
exactly we answered in the last 45
minutes I think at various points these
questions are answered is what I feel
yes sir we did answer yeah uh uh
mahapatro if I’m spelling it right uh we
have the session uh streamed live on to
YouTube and Facebook and Twitter as well
this recording is there already on this
one we’ve covered a lot of ground
related to these strategies and Sir has
spoken in-depth on that request you to
have a view of this and you’ll get the
answers is what I say because we running
short of time now with this I think uh
uh we had a great thing I would like to
summarize here sir we talked about uh
adoptability we talked about continuous
learning and we talked about various
ways of how the finance industry is
leveraging Technologies how AI machine
learning Bots are playing a role in
helping uh the finance sector to take
some of the jobs which can be uh
automated that’s what we discussed and
some of the key pointers is that uh
blockchain is one topic which we said
can be a game changer but it has to be
supported by the government or the RBA
that’s what we discussed also then we
not blockchain blockchain is not that I
talk about Bitcoin Bitcoin is where
government support blockchain there is
government support blockchain the
ecosystem is not there sorry yeah sorry
to yeah blockchain is the ecosystem and
Bitcoin and the nft and those kind of
things are government support government
yeah yeah then uh finally we talked
about digital currency and how it is
getting evoled so that’s what we
discussed lot of insights lot of thought
process around the finance industry and
how industry is looking at cyber
security how the laws are being played
thank you very much sir great having you
on the show any last more words that you
want to talk around and give a sense
poin out to the audience So yeah thank
you thank you PR thanks a lot it was a
nice
interaction uh my only I would say uh
request or submission is that uh uh
please try and uh learn more about Ai
and Technology I think uh if you can
take one message from today’s meeting is
that I always believe that we should
learn something new every day that is my
personal Moto as well so that’s what I
keep talking about every day thank you
thank you sir with this we will conclude
the show uh you can watch us again on
YouTube Facebook LinkedIn and Twitter we
have this recorded stream
we are Lively streamed with all the four
platforms at once please have a look at
it thank you sir good day sir thank you
Power of Knowing Forum & Executive Excellence Forum Presents
The Theme of the discussion is “Future-proofing Finance: Strategies for Thriving in an Era of Digital Disruption”.
Speakers: Sambasivan G, CFO Tata Play Limited
Moderated By Vijay Anandhan TD and Prem Kumar A S
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Disclaimer: Personal Views: –
|The views expressed during this program, including those of the speakers, are purely personal and do not represent the official stance, opinions, or endorsements of any organization, company, or entity associated with the program. | The speakers share their perspectives based on personal experiences, expertise, and insigh