EP 014 - The Graduate CFO with Akshay Sarma, CFO at Axio

We are stoked to welcome Akshay Sarma as our very special guest for this episode. Akshay is currently the Chief Financial Officer at Axio, and has been recognized as a BW CFO World 40 under 40 and a Financial Star.

With an impressive background spanning across derivatives, trading, and financial structuring, Akshay brings a wealth of experience from working in traditional and tech-enabled financial services organizations.

An alumnus of the prestigious Judge Business School, University of Cambridge, Akshay's journey in finance is nothing short of inspiring. From his early days at Deutsche Bank to leading the way at Axio, his story is a testament to his skill in management, trading, structured finance, and much more.

Today, Akshay joins us to share his insights on the evolving landscape of finance, provide a crash course on Lending businesses, and inspire with his journey in nurturing growth and innovation in the startups he's been part of and growing up the ranks to become a CFO. So, sit back, relax, and get ready to dive into the world of finance like never before.

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Quotes: 

“Learning is everything for me.” 

“Fintech was a theme.  Fintech is a way of life today.”

“How your productivity is defined is, are you doing, what you're doing, best?”

“You need lot of strokes of luck in life. You need people to back you at the right time.”

“I don't know if there is a financial (services) company that isn't a tech company today.”

“The biggest thing the trading floor gave me was the ability to multitask.”

“Modern day CFO is someone who is everybody's partner, and is probably the biggest enabler of business in the organization.”

" I believe complex things are a sum of a lot of basic things together."​​

"Just check the basics of everything first."​​

"When you are operationally sound, strategy becomes easy for you to build."​​

“Finance cannot be a brake because if finance hit the brakes, everything just stops, and the car just cannot stop, right? So, what you need finance to do is to actually act like the heart of a human body. You need to pump blood to every part of the body.”

“In the lending business, the folks who head risk and the folks who head finance are people who have to work the closest because when things shake up on the risk side, they inadvertently shake-up on the P&L.”

"The ability to raise money at a low rate drives everything... the only thing that proves, I think, a lending company's ability to stand out, is vintage."​​

“Everyone wants a retail portfolio because it's granular, the risk is easier to manage, and it's not lumpy. If one organization goes down, in wholesale lending it has a very big impact. Here you need a macro event to kind of happen for it to go down. So, it helps you manage risk a lot better.”

“There's a whole spectrum of ratings that you have to kind of keep moving up for your cost of funds to drop. And that's a journey. Even in the best of times, it'll take you three, four years.”

"Co-lending helps you maneuver this… It helps you kind of make sure you're playing in the right space. And I think the most important thing from a lender's perspective is it helps you manage leverage. I am not borrowing money directly on my balance sheet. This is money that I'm picking up, giving to an end borrower, giving back when he pays. So, there is no liability on my balance sheet to make an EMI payment every month.”

"Managing your leverage, ability to stay nimble at about two, two and a half x lever, three tops, not go to the four, five, which some of the bigger balance sheet players can do… when you're us or a smaller company, I think it's the right business model for us to grow in."​

"We're constantly thinking of how does this fit into what I'm offering already? How does this fit into what the customers want?"​​

"You want your good customers transacting, because that's low risk money that you're making."​​

"If you're not making your investments in technology, you're not going anywhere either because that's the world we’re in."​​

“It's a lot of three-way communication between the business teams, your debt raising team, and your eventual lenders to make sure that everyone's kind of singing the same tune and making sure that you're understanding you're raising the right kind of money at the right rate for the right product… you need to make sure you have the right mix that you're able to repay lenders on time when your borrowers are repaying you, which is your standard ALM.”

"What you would ideally want from your team, from their growth perspective, is for them to start off as doers and then for themselves to graduate as folks who can then extrapolate the doing to the thinking.”

"You want to spend some time getting to know the team, the processes, the books... because that's the backbone to everything else that is there."​​

"The flexibility the entrepreneur shows you is equally important for your growth."​​

"If you can go to sleep believing you achieved your potential or you're living up to your potential, I think that's a very successful career."​

"I'm a big believer in destiny... if you know you're giving it your 100% constantly, and you are working towards the opportunity when it presents itself.”

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