Srikanth Venkatachari doesn’t sleep too much on flights. The joint CFO at Reliance Industries prefers to catch up on his reading or Ilayaraja’s film compositions. Managing the country’s biggest corporate balance sheet can be a never-ending job, so time is precious.
With RIL’s borrowings in the last 12 years topping $70 billion, Venkatachari has had to make sure that the ratings didn’t slip. In between, he helped stitch together several billion-dollar equity deals with tech giants. As if this wasn’t enough, he also had to oversee a chunky `53,000-crore rights issue in a not-so-great market.
The challenges of negotiating with hundreds of bankers and pricing bonds and loans, including the recent jumbo $4-billion bond issuance, don’t seem to have overwhelmed him. Venkatachari, who spent two decades with Citibank in India learning every trick in the trade, wears his success lightly. Turning RIL into a zero-debt company wasn’t easy but a mix of asset sales, equity-raises in the consumer businesses and the parent, helped him get there ahead of time.
Indeed, managing the finances at a conglomerate with 500 subsidiaries where the volume of business has grown tenfold in the last five to six years can be taxing. The complexion of the P&L has also changed completely as more than 50% comes from consumer-oriented segments. Allocating the correct amount of capital to businesses, he says, is critical to be able to generate growth in the long term. It’s particularly important, he says, to make sure all the financing has been tied up before the big spends are made and that there is a Plan B.
As he says in any effort or initiative, one must have “the ability to toggle between being optimistic and the pessimistic”. Once that’s done, it’s important to keep a close watch on the expenditure and cash flows.
When he’s not reading about fractal geometry, Venkatachari’s playing a game or two on chess.com. Even as a school boy, he loved numbers – no surprises there — and with almost every other cousin a chartered accountant, he became one too. He’s clearly fascinated with finance and talks passionately about his days at Citi whether at forex trading desk or with the derivatives team or his stint as the head of markets.
He’s equally excited about discovering India. From tent holidays in Kashmir to drives along the Konkan coast, Venkatachari makes the most of whatever he can call his leisure time.
Venkatachari also keeps a close watch on his weight, though it’s no coincidence that all his lunch meetings are at the Vetro at the Oberoi. He confesses he’s very partial to Gujarati cuisine. But, at 56, he keeps himself fit with a strict walking and yoga regimen and a ‘controlled sweet tooth’.
