Independent Director Candidate · Pune
A chartered accountant who made a listed specialty-chemicals company's first sustainability report ready for assurance, and now brings that discipline to CSR and Audit Committees.
If a board would never sign off revenue without a control behind it, it should not publish a water figure or a safety number without one either.
I have spent eighteen years making numbers hold up under scrutiny: first in the audit file, then in a listed company's accounts, and most recently in its sustainability report.
I qualified as a chartered accountant in 2008 and began in statutory and tax audit with a chartered accountancy firm in Pune, working through mid-sized manufacturing and trading companies across western Maharashtra. Three years later I moved into industry, to financial reporting at a listed auto-components manufacturer, and in 2016 to corporate finance at a listed specialty-chemicals company in Mumbai, where I owned the quarterly close and the internal financial controls programme.
In 2021 the same company asked me to lead Sustainability & ESG Reporting across its four manufacturing sites in Maharashtra and Gujarat. The brief was its first Business Responsibility and Sustainability Report. I treated it as a reporting system: one set of definitions for every plant, controls around the data, and an evidence trail an external assurer could test. Along the way I reported to the CSR Committee, the Audit Committee and the Risk Management Committee.
I am now seeking my first independent directorship, with a listed or large unlisted company in chemicals, pharmaceuticals, manufacturing, consumer goods or infrastructure, where the board wants its sustainability disclosures held to the standard of its financial statements.
At an auto-components manufacturer I built the monthly reporting pack the CFO and the Audit Committee worked from, and helped move the accounts from Indian GAAP to Ind AS. I learned what a committee member can absorb in one evening, and what slips past.
I ran the Ind AS quarterly close and the internal financial controls testing programme for a listed chemicals company, and tracked every exception to closure. I was the statutory auditors' working contact on significant estimates and related party disclosures.
For the company's first BRSR, I found four sites measuring water drawn, hazardous waste and safety incidents four different ways. We agreed one set of definitions, wrote the controls around them, and prepared the core indicators for external assurance before the report reached the board.
Wrote the reporting manual and plant-level controls for energy, water, effluent, hazardous waste and safety data across four sites, prepared the BRSR core indicators for external assurance, and managed the assurance provider.
Eighteen years as a chartered accountant across statutory audit, Ind AS closes and internal financial controls testing, including five years as the auditors' working contact on estimates and related party disclosures.
Reported to all three committees. Built the ESG risk register for process safety, effluent, water stress and regulatory change inside the enterprise risk framework, and designed the CSR monitoring framework the committee approved.
Designed the CSR monitoring framework: outcome indicators for each project, checks on implementing agencies, and the annual action plan format the committee approved.
Eighteen years in audit, Ind AS reporting and internal financial controls, five of them running the close and controls testing for a listed company.
Built the ESG risk register for process safety, effluent, water stress and regulatory change, mapped into the enterprise risk framework the committee reviewed.
I keep current on sustainability assurance practice, SEBI's disclosure requirements for listed companies and changes to CSR rules under the Companies Act.
I am glad to share a board CV, references and a note on independence ahead of a first conversation.