Chief Financial Officer / India
The obligation survived the attractive number
- Enterprise revenue
- ₹134 crore
- FY2025–26; animation and finishing services
- Finance team
- 28 colleagues
- Four heads reporting within the CFO remit
- Recorded career
- 32 years
- Project accounts through animation-company finance leadership
Decisions & consequences
01Replacing the margin I had accepted with a cost-to-complete account
In 2019 I accepted a management estimate showing ₹1.8 crore expected cost against a ₹2.4 crore animation fee. The resulting ₹60 lakh subtotal before central costs appeared adequate for the selected commission. We had incurred ₹1.1 crore, but I had not required a sufficiently explicit account of the remaining production stages. Iqbal challenged the assumption and put the unfinished work in front of the finance review.
His revised estimate required ₹1.2 crore to complete the agreed brief. Added to the ₹1.1 crore already incurred, that gave ₹2.3 crore expected cost, leaving ₹10 lakh before central costs. The ₹50 lakh change came from the revised estimate, not an unexplained accounting adjustment. Some colleagues wanted to preserve the earlier margin until the work was finished, arguing that production might still find efficiencies. I rejected that as a reason to present a forecast we could no longer support.
We corrected the management paper and committed a separate ₹17 lakh over eight weeks to rebuilding the estimation process. That review expense was not included in the selected project’s ₹10 lakh subtotal, and it was not reported as a saving. Creative and contractual owners retained the decisions about the brief and client discussions. Qualified accounting colleagues retained the reporting treatment. My responsibility was to make the revised production forecast visible before management relied on the earlier result again.
The trade-off was an immediate reduction in the expected project contribution and additional review expense, without a compensating claim about improved future margins. The bounded result was a corrected cost-to-complete account and a changed review process. I had to acknowledge that finance’s precision about historical spending had concealed a weaker question about the work ahead. The lesson was to invite production challenge while the estimate could still influence a decision, rather than wait for a completed project to prove that the earlier paper had been optimistic.
Deferring discretionary work after separating the advance-funded delivery account
In 2023 management was considering a ₹7 crore discretionary programme against an ₹18 crore cash balance. The balance was real, but it did not describe the obligations surrounding the proposed spending. Twelve crore came from customer advances for commissioned work. Production’s current forecast attached ₹9 crore future delivery outflow to that work, before other ordinary obligations were considered.
The programme sponsor wanted to proceed with the full proposal because the bank balance exceeded its cost. Nandita asked finance to explain why the apparent headroom did not settle the decision. I brought the advance-funded production account into the review with Iqbal. We needed to preserve the distinction between holding the receipt and having completed the work it supported. The analysis did not decide when revenue should be recognised or classify the money as legally restricted; those were separate professional questions.
We used ₹21 lakh over six weeks to reconstruct the delivery-cash forecast and the timing assumptions behind the discretionary proposal. Management deferred ₹3 crore and retained ₹4 crore for separate approval after considering the wider obligations. Subtracting ₹9 crore from the ₹18 crore balance did not create ₹9 crore automatically available to spend. Other commitments still mattered, and the retained proposal was not itself an executed investment or a claim of financial return.
The immediate trade-off was a smaller discretionary programme and a longer decision process. The bounded outcome was a revised proposal whose funding discussion included the commissioned work still to be delivered. I wanted directors to see why a customer receipt could create apparent capacity before the enterprise had discharged the commercial promise beside it. The company could then decide what to defer without pretending that a cash balance was equivalent to profit, unrestricted resources or permission to make another commitment. A finance paper should make that distinction usable before the attractive programme has acquired momentum of its own.
Withdrawing an outsourcing saving claim that retained most internal cost
In 2025 an external finishing proposal quoted ₹1.6 crore for a defined package. The internal comparison showed ₹1.4 crore, and the discussion suggested that shifting work outside would simplify the cost base enough to make the proposal attractive. I asked which elements of the internal account would actually disappear after the move, rather than accept the allocation as a cash saving.
The review found ₹1 crore of internal costs would remain and ₹40 lakh could be avoided. On that stated basis, buying the external package added ₹1.2 crore before transition effects. The production sponsor argued that the supplier could still provide useful specialist capacity. I agreed that capability and scheduling could justify a choice, but wanted those benefits assessed without a saving claim the financial comparison did not establish.
We spent ₹26 lakh over ten weeks examining the account and withdrew the saving claim from the recommendation. The retained costs remained in the enterprise plan. Procurement, contractual and qualified production owners kept their respective decisions; finance did not select a supplier by declaring every qualitative benefit immaterial. The revised paper separated the incremental expenditure from the capability argument and identified the transition assumptions that still needed work.
The trade-off was losing a convenient cost-reduction story for a proposal some colleagues favoured. The result was a more honest comparison, not proof that all outsourced work would be more expensive or that internal delivery was always preferable. We did not claim realised savings, improved quality or a completed supplier transition. I wanted the board and executives to understand what they would be paying for if they chose the external option. The case reinforced a discipline learned in project costing: an amount assigned to an activity is not necessarily an amount the enterprise can stop spending when that activity changes hands.