Presented to the Board or a committee
Kanchanpeth Finance
IT strategy committee of the board
April 2022–present
Presents the product roadmap, digital lending changes and customer-data practices twice a year; attends by invitation, not as a member.
Nikhil Pethapara · Chief Product Officer · India
What a gold-loan product chief would ask a board
My contribution to a board
I would bring a product leader's view of the customer to a board that may otherwise see that customer only as revenue, complaints and market share. Many companies serve people who complete a purchase, a claim or an application with help from a counter, an agent or a relative. Directors rarely see what that help involves or where it can fail. I have spent twenty years building for those moments, first as a programmer at cooperative bank counters and now for 6.1 lakh gold-loan borrowers. I can help a board ask whether customers understood what they signed, whether a fast channel has created a scam route and whether a notice in the wrong language is quietly producing losses. I am financially literate rather than an accounting expert, so I would join an audit committee as a member and leave its financial reporting depth to a qualified chair. I would be most useful on the risk management and stakeholders relationship committees. I would also bring the habit of stating what a customer protection costs, so that directors can revisit it with evidence.
Board and committee exposure
Reported to a committee
Kanchanpeth Finance
Risk management committee and audit committee
November 2024–March 2025
Reported on the app top-up scam: complaint analysis, the hold and call-back design and monthly results after the change.
Member of a committee
Kanchanpeth Finance
Executive product approval committee (management, not a board committee)
April 2022–present
One of six executive members who approve new products and material changes before any that require board approval are escalated.
Committee contribution
| Capacity | Committees |
|---|---|
| Ready to join | Risk management · Stakeholders relationship · Audit, as a financially literate member · Technology or IT strategy oversight, where the company has one |
Capacity and preferences
- Time available
- 22 days per year
- Current directorships
- 0
- Sectors
- Pharmacy and diagnostics chains · Farm inputs and rural retail · Insurance distribution · Consumer services with assisted channels
- Company type
- Listed or listing-ready Indian company, family-promoted or professionally managed, outside lending
- Company stage
- Growing its customer base in smaller towns, or moving an assisted service onto digital channels
The seat I am pursuing
I am seeking one independent directorship, not a portfolio. My preference is a listed or listing-ready company with a large assisted customer base outside lending, where a board would value questions about customer understanding, scams and notices. I would expect to join the risk management and stakeholders relationship committees and possibly the audit committee as a member. I am not ready to chair a committee and would say so to a nomination committee. With one board and a full-time role, I would be well inside the directorship limits in the Companies Act and SEBI LODR, but time is my real constraint, and I would decline a board that needs more than 22 days a year.
Judgement in practice
Weighing scam losses against a faster channel
When our app top-up was turned against borrowers, the growth team proposed a scoring model and the technology head proposed device checks. Both were reasonable, and neither stopped a fluent caller from persuading a borrower to read out a password. I recommended holds and call-backs that cost us about ₹17 crore of monthly top-up value at first. The decision belonged to the managing director, after the risk management committee had seen both effects. As a director, I would ask the same question of any fast channel: what could someone persuade a customer to do here, and how would we know? I would also ask management to report the cost of their protections, so that directors can judge whether the trade-off is still right a year later.
Letting a trial lengthen recovery, with an end date
Our pre-auction notice trial cut auctions by about 3,500 accounts a year but lengthened resolution by 19 days and raised overdue loans. Collections were right to worry that borrowers might wait. The committee approved it because every extension had a written end date and monthly overdue figures were reported. On another board, I would look for the same structure when management proposes a customer-friendly change with a financial cost: a defined trial, a measure of the cost, a point at which the change stops if the cost grows and a named executive who reports both sides. The committee also asked me to estimate how much of the fall came from borrowers who would have paid anyway, a question I would ask in turn. I would not support an open-ended concession that nobody could later evaluate.
My first year on a board
I would spend the first three months understanding how the company earns money and where its customers need help. I would ask to visit stores, service desks or field teams with a manager present, read a sample of complaints in the original language and sit with the company secretary on how papers reach the board. For the first two meetings I would mostly ask questions. By the second quarter I would hope to agree with the committee chair one area where my experience is useful, such as complaint trends, scam exposure or the clarity of customer notices, and propose how management might report it without creating a new burden. I would review my own contribution with the chair after twelve months, including where I had misjudged the business because it was not a lender. I would also read the last two years of complaint analysis and any regulator correspondence the board has seen, so that my questions begin from what directors already know.
Conflicts and their management
My employer lends against gold to households across four states, and that shapes what I could not do. I would not sit on the board of another gold lender, a microfinance or consumer lender competing for the same borrowers, a jeweller whose customers pledge with us or any vendor whose contract I influence. A pharmacy chain or an insurance distributor might still have a link through payments, branch premises or a shared software supplier, so I would ask our company secretary to search our vendor and counterparty lists before any meeting with a prospective chair. Kanchanpeth's own policy requires the managing director's written consent for an outside directorship, and I would seek it before accepting. If a conflict arose later, I would declare it, leave the discussion and resign if it became recurring. I would also ask whether the company borrows from Kanchanpeth's own lenders, a link a careful chair would want disclosed even where the law is silent.
My independence statement
I am a full-time executive of a lender, so independence for me is a set of checks rather than a description. Before accepting, I would work through the criteria in s.149(6) of the Companies Act with the company secretary, including whether Kanchanpeth, its promoters, my relatives or I have any business with the company, its promoters or its group, and I would decline if the answer is uncertain.
Governance learning and readiness
IICA Independent Directors’ Databank: Proficiency assessment passed
I registered with the IICA Independent Directors' Databank in January 2025 and passed the online proficiency self-assessment test in June 2025. I do not qualify for an exemption from the test, so I took it. Passing it shows familiarity with company law, securities rules and governance basics; it does not show that I am suitable for any particular board.
- Completed the IICA databank registration and proficiency self-assessment in 2025.
- Attended a three-day programme on audit committee practice for first-time directors at Pragnyavan Institute of Management in 2025.
- Studying the Companies Act provisions on independent directors, Schedule IV and SEBI LODR committee requirements, with notes reviewed by our company secretary.