EP 012 - The Eliminator CFO with Arjun Mehta, CFO at Revolut India

Today, we're thrilled to have with us — Arjun Mehta, an experienced operator in the finance industry with an impressive career spanning over two decades across some of the world's most renowned corporations.  Arjun currently spearheads the financial strategies of Revolut India as their Chief Financial Officer.

Arjun’s journey through the finance world is as diverse as it is impressive. Before joining Revolut, he played a critical role as Senior Vice President, Head of Strategy at Max Life Insurance. Here, he wasn't just a strategist; he was a visionary, identifying groundbreaking growth initiatives and driving digital agendas, all while keeping his finger on the pulse of market trends and insights.

And who can overlook his nearly five-year tenure at Apple? As the Commercial Controller, Arjun was instrumental in structuring deals that significantly expanded Apple's footprint in India, taking on end-to-end responsibility for business planning and driving transformation across various channels.

He has also spent ten years at American Express, where Arjun ascended to the role of CFO for their Indian operations. From enhancing profitability to negotiating deals and managing investments, he was a force behind countless strategic decisions that shaped the company’s success.

Arjun's foundations in finance were laid at KPMG, and he further honed his skills at HT Media Ltd. His academic background is just as sterling, with credentials like an MBA from the prestigious Indian School of Business and a Chartered Accountant designation from the Institute of Chartered Accountants of India.

Throughout his career, Arjun hasn't just been a finance professional; he's been a strategist, a transformation leader, and above all, a visionary capable of steering multimillion-dollar companies through uncharted waters with his acute financial acumen and strategic foresight.

Let's welcome Arjun Mehta!

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Quotes:

“The greatest job of a modern-day CFO is to help the organization and people prioritize their jobs.”

“The leadership team doesn't do things. They get things done, and they're supposed to be the guideposts.”

“The greatest similarity across all three businesses (Amex, Apple, and Max Life) is a maniacal focus on margins, cash flows, and profitability.”

Traits to be successful in India?  “Patience, deep pockets, and speed to market, in that order.”

“It starts with being curious about everything and asking questions.”

“India is different. So to that extent, I think the rope or the slack that the global companies need to cut India, actually, and this is my personal view, determines the success or the presence in terms of scale that the company is able to get in India. So, yeah, culturally, even at a product customization level, etc., even tiered distribution because India being a fragmented market and consumer segment densities are not the same as other large markets, those adjustments need to be made, and they reflect in our way of functioning. They reflect in the processes and policies they deploy in the India market. So yeah, that's where the differences come in.”

“There's nothing called as the Indian consumer. The Indian consumer is at a point in time relative to the market offering and relative to the psychological economic climate in the country, and what I just called out changes every six months.”

“I very simplistically take it as three pillars, which the CFO needs to address – the shareholder pillar, the customer pillar, and the employee pillar.”

“I don't have eight hours in a day. If I have a six-member team, I have 48. And how am I utilizing those 48 hours? And at the end of the day, is the team feeling fulfilled, or it's a whole lot of nothing at the end of the day for them to say, you know what, I did six hours of meetings today, or I did 10 hours of work, but I don't have much to show up for it. And for me, that is the reflection of how effective I am as a leader.”

“In the last 15 years, I think the CFOs are expected to collapse the boundaries and look beyond financial statements, reporting data, compliances to kind of become the proxy CXO. So, it's kind of, there is COO, and the mirror reflection of that is the CFO for me on the numbers side, because that's one way you quantify the actions, but the only way you can quantify the actions is to know what the actions mean and what they're translating into.”

“As a finance person, specifically, the two things that I tell finance folks repeatedly is to spend a lot of time on the field, understanding the customer journeys, understanding how the products or services are sold, maybe listening to some customer calls to understand what kind of queries are coming back and experience the supply chain.”

“I like to look for specific traits and qualities in founders. Of course, there needs to be a business model proven to some extent with some unit economics and some cash flows. I mean, I would not invest in a paper company.”

Define a successful career:  “The most important thing for success for me is this whole concept of the freedom of time and being able to do what I want, when I want… Freedom of time, diversity of experience, exploiting my potential, those three.”

“The one way to test out if you're doing well professionally and if you're on the path of becoming a leader is how many people come to you for advice on a day to day basis? How many meetings are you being made of part of or how many brainstorms are you being made a part of where there isn't a direct deliverable or ask from you? So kind of is your opinion thoughts information valued and are they being sought?”

“Getting started is always the challenge, right? So if I can just find a way to get started sooner or more often, then it could make me a lot more productive because the doing and the experience then becomes easier.”

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