In this episode, Sophie Jackson talks to Sarika Joshi, Asia Pacific CFO at Hunter Douglas. They explore Sarika's unique journey from her early years in India to her current role as CFO, exploring the pivotal roles that shaped her career and hear insights on working in the US and Asia, navigating geopolitical risk and the advent of AI.

Hello and welcome to Ask A CFO. In this podcast series, we shine a light on the different paths taken to become Chief Financial Officer and explore the personal journeys of those that have made the journey.

I'm Sophie Jackson and in today's episode, I'm joined by Sarika Joshi, Asia Pacific CFO at Hunter Douglas. Together we explore Sarika's unique journey from her early years in India to her current role as CFO.

We look at the pivotal roles that shaped her career and hear her insights on working in the US and Asia, navigating geopolitical risk, the advent of AI and much more.

Hi Sarika.

Hey, hi Sophie.

So, whenever you're ready, if you could start off just by introducing yourself and your current role.

Sure. So, I'm currently the APAC CFO at Hunter Douglas, looking after the finance function across Asia and ANZ.

And then tell me a little bit what your day-to-day looks like as a CFO?

So, of course there is the core finance side, which is the financial performance, capital allocation, governance, cash flow. But I think a large part of the role is really about helping the business make better decisions.

So, my day is spent quite a bit in connecting dots across teams and markets, understanding where growth is happening or not happening, where friction is existing, what risks are emerging. And then really what are the tough calls that we should be making as a business?

So, I would say it's quite interesting for me because the CFO role today really sits at the intersection of not just finance, but also strategy, operations, and change and transformation.

And in regional roles, you're constantly balancing this complexity, the growth, the people, the culture, systems, technology, and just trying to create a lot of clarity in the middle of all of that. So, I would say that's pretty much what would describe my role.

Amazing. I've been lucky enough to know you for quite a long time now. I think it's maybe ten years ago that I met you in Singapore and you have always stood out to me as a very unique person. So, tell me a little bit about your early life and how you think those experiences have shaped who you are today.

Yeah, sure. Yeah, it's really been good knowing you, Sophie, for a while. And you know, I come from India, so that's where I grew up, in Mumbai. And I would say Mumbai really shapes you in a specific way. It's a city that doesn't let you be passive. So, there is an energy and ambition, and I think that got into me quite early.

At home, it was quite grounded. My upbringing was focused on education, discipline and also a lot of play and having fun. And I think those early experiences shaped a lot of how I operate even today.

So, I've really believed that growth really comes from stretching yourself and taking ownership, staying disciplined, as my parents brought me up to be, and also continuously raising your bar.

And it's not for me about just a career. I think it's usually applicable to everything, right? Personal growth and just how you approach life. So, I would say that's really how my upbringing has really shaped that never can say no attitude and let's see what we can do more.

I love this and I love the way you describe Mumbai. I think as I've got older, you realise more and more the first city that you land in, whether that's where you grow up or where you move for your first job or to study, they've got such specific unique energies to them and it really does shape how you then go out into the world and the energy that you drive yourself forwards with and also the connections that you make as well.

So, tell me a little bit, after growing up in Mumbai, you made a bold move and went to study internationally, moving from India to the US which I can imagine must have been very exciting, but quite daunting. So, tell me about that decision and what it meant for you.

Sure. Look, moving to the US was probably one of the most defining experiences of my life, because at one level, it was about education opportunity, because I moved to the US to do my master's and my MBA. But I think looking back, it was also about pushing myself outside familiar environments.

Because when you move countries at that age, you suddenly have to rebuild your identity from scratch. So, you learn resilience very quickly. You become independent, adaptable and a lot more comfortable with uncertainty.

So, I think it did expose me to a very different way of thinking, both professionally and personally. I think personally it gave me a lot of confidence for me to be able to operate across cultures, environments, as you can imagine, APAC with being so diverse. I think that's been a very important lesson for me to be able to function in this region because I had that early experience in my MBA in an international environment.

And I think professionally, US does teach you to be a lot more direct and open and challenge ideas. And I think that was another piece that was very important in shaping my leadership style and being not just execution but also questioning ideas and seeing what can I do to do things better. So that I think goes to me, like I said, US was definitely a very defining moment for my upbringing and my career as well.

Yeah, I find it so interesting comparing the two because I think you know I spent a large majority of my early career in East Asia. And then now as the business has grown a lot, I spend most of my time between the US and Asia.

And I think the two together have very complementary approaches to business, to ideas. Because I think in Asia, it's more about the collective, right? And it's more about being humble and being team purpose led and also very deep relationships. Less about the individual, more about your relationships. And in the US, I think really encourages you to dream big and things just seem to move straight away. Like if you've got a great idea, it happens. Is that something that you feel too? And how have you married those two cultures?

No, absolutely. You put it spot on, right? I think in the US, systems and processes are quite mature and specialised. And so, you function in a very different way versus in Asia, especially in Singapore based roles, where you are a broader region, the complexity is a lot higher.

And there are so many different cultures, regulatory behaviours, consumer behaviours, the market is all in a different maturity. And just even the people that you work with, right?

You need to know if they are telling you something, what exactly do they mean because everybody has a different language that they speak. Even if it's English, the intent is different. And so, I think that's definitely a different muscle that you require for leadership.

You can't rely purely on process, which I think in US, what you say is what you do and that it's very transparent, open, inviting. Here, I think there is a bit of layers, judgment, adaptability, and you do need to navigate ambiguity quite a bit, I would say, without getting paralysed by it.

So, for me, it's been actually very, very fruitful because I do enjoy complexity. I think it actually allows you to open your mind, to be broad, but at the same time, you also need to get deeper into things. You can't just be at the surface level, right? So, I think it brings a very unique challenge being in this part of the world.

Amazing. And then we met in Singapore, as I mentioned at the beginning. Tell me about that move to Singapore and starting your career journey there, because you've been based there for a long time now.

Yeah, it's been, what, sixteen years now? We are in Singapore for a while. And I think what has been quite interesting for me in this journey is not just the roles, but also the different types of companies and industries that I have worked with.

So, to me, I would say that's been a really fruitful experience because fortunately, so I've been in those organisations at a time where there's been a lot of change and transformation happening.

So, I started in Singapore with Nokia, and at that point of time, they were going through this big shift of moving towards the Windows ecosystem. And when you take a step back and you see how such a critical platform decision and the speed of innovation can just upend a very strong market leader.

And then with Dell, a few months after I joined Michael Dell and Silver Lake planned to take the company private. And from a treasury perspective, that was one of the most significant leveraged buyouts in the technology industry. So, it was really interesting to be involved in supporting that transformation through mobilisation and optimisation of the APAC funds and liquidity.

So, I think it's been quite an interesting journey, and of course, moving on from there to Zalora and Kraft Heinz and now my current role. It's been definitely companies where there's a lot of change and transformation, which for me has given a very, very fruitful career in the last sixteen years in Singapore.

Yeah, absolutely. And I remember one of the things I noticed about that, as you mentioned there, you've been at these companies at very exciting moments. I remember when you joined Zalora and it was such kind of a period of epic growth for the business and seeing you adapt to an e-commerce model and all of the things that entails was very amazing to watch. Tell me what's driven you to take on such diverse opportunities and how you've approached working across such vastly different sectors.

To me, one of the great lessons has really been, if I go into first the industry and then maybe more specifically my role as well. I feel like just coming from different industries prevents you from being rigid in mindset.

So, you start really seeing patterns in the business, right? What's driving performance? What's creating friction? What's scaling? What are some of the most important decision making or inflection points in the business?

And I think when you start observing some of that across various industries, I think that gives you a lot of guidance around leadership, culture, capital allocation, adaptability. So, it starts shaping that muscle because it's not restricted to one lens. It gives you a much broader picture. And I think the same thing applies for finance.

I did start early on being a credit analyst and then treasury, and then obviously moving into more broader finance roles. And so, for me, finance was never a narrow box. I think it was something that was really important for me to be close to the business and to know that what is finance doing to solve very complex business problems and finance being at the centre of a lot of things.

You start seeing how these different functions start connecting together to create outcomes. And with finance being at such an important centric vantage point and being able to contribute to that, for me has been very exciting. I think that's been definitely one of my cherished experiences as my career has grown through different industries, but also my roles, is operating in very different environments understanding the business as a whole versus thinking of it in a narrow function of, hey, this is the only thing that finance does, right? So, I think that would be the more rewarding thing, I would say.

Amazing. And then being in such different organisations at these moments must have led you to work with a vast array of different leaders with different styles. Tell me a bit about how you've navigated those journey, how they've inspired you on the way, how you've generated trust in those relationships.

No, absolutely. So, I would say that to me, everything starts with what is the company trying to achieve and then who are the teams or the support system, whether it's your peers, whether it's the board, whether it's your team that you're building, how are they kind of coming together to solve that vision or to drive that vision for the company.

One of the big lessons I would say is that focusing really on what we are trying to achieve versus looking at it in terms of interpersonal dynamics of individuals and bringing always that lens in mind and saying, hey, this is what we're here to achieve and how do we all come together to achieve that?

And I think that language, especially when you start going across different cultures and understanding, hey, what motivates them, how do you bring this motivation into company lens, and then how do you support them in coming to outcomes is definitely something that you need to start thinking about and building as especially as you become you know a leader and you are driving large organisations right so it comes more from shared understanding and vision versus like hey this is a more approach that we need to do. I think that shift in mindset is really important in being able to drive that, especially I would say in this region.

Absolutely. And from doing this project, which is a privilege that I don't take for granted, I've been able to speak to a lot of CFOs and they've moved into the role from different previous functions. Many of them speak about the change in mindset as you move into that CFO role, which I think kind of correlates some of what you were saying there. Tell me some of the highlights and challenges as you've moved into the CFO role.

Yeah, I would say definitely the highlights would be how do you look at driving ambition and bringing it to reality, right? So, almost thinking of it from the entire end-to-end spectrum and saying, hey, this is the vision. What are the people, processes and systems that need to support this vision? And then how do you go about executing it? And I think until that entire circle is completed, I don't think the job is well done, right?

So, for me, some of the big highlights as Zalora has been an e-commerce company, they also kind of looked at monetisation of other revenue channels and growing the platform business or the B2B business from around four million to sixty million in NMB over three years was a pretty important milestone.

And this wasn't a finance watching from the sidelines. It was really something kind of coming in, building the commercial structure with the commercial team, the pricing frameworks, how should we have P&L visibility? What are the definitions that did not exist before that apply to this business because it's different from the B2C business? And then really growing that fifteen times, right?

That helps you give a huge rush in terms of what you have achieved for the company. And I think that's definitely one of the fundamentals, even today, that Zalora, the global fashion group, is working towards, right? I think Hunter Douglas, the challenge was definitely very different, it was building.

I would say a lot of rigor in a complex multi-market organisation and building the team from scratch, having the operating model, the structure, and to be able to then go into that environment and improve working capital, define the profitability metrics and what should we be doing to move them.

I did a couple of acquisitions in a very short span of time, and then a lot of cost synergies, just being that as fundamental to the business in terms of how we can do resource allocation and deploy.

I think doing all of those things came because finance was able to embed discipline across a lot of these things of pricing, cost, capital allocation. So, for me, I think this whole element of being able to connect the levers to the business outcome is what I truly enjoy.

I think that's been where I think finding the problem and solving it and understanding what piecesbring that puzzle together, I think has been super rewarding.

Amazing. As you've touched on there, so expansion and growth have been very critical for you, particularly in this role, but I mean, also at Zalora, of course. What's the role that a CFO is playing in guiding the decisions that you make as you scale a business that ensure sustainable growth, which I think is something that's often underappreciated.

So, tell me how you've approached scaling a business sustainably and what the function of the CFO is within that?

Right. So, one thing I've learned that when companies scale, complexity scales faster than the revenue scales, right?

And I think people will often underestimate. So, a CFO's role isn't just to fund the growth. It also has to help the organisation absorb the growth, right? We need to be ready for growth without losing clarity, discipline and agility. So, you want to make sure that your infrastructure is in place, your basics work so that you don't have to think about them anymore. And sometimes the bottleneck is not even capital, right?

It's really decision-making or what are the incentives or the organisational structure. I mean, a big issue for a lot of companies which don't have that architecture yet is data visibility which we are in AI and we're still talking about data visibility and these contradictions do exist even now in a lot of organisations, right?

So, I think this is where I feel like the systems mindset, you know, about what I mentioned earlier about people, process, technology, having governance, I mean, that's super important, you know, and then truly the culture, right? How do you align people to move together as organisations become bigger and larger, right?

Because as organisations become larger, cultures get divided and how do you keep that culture in towards the momentum of growth sustainably? And I think all of this becomes one of the things that CFO is uniquely positioned to connect, right?

Because finance truly does touch every part of the organisation. So, to some extent, that ability to influence so many different elements is definitely a role that a CFO can play to ensure that the growth is sustainable.

Amazing. And then at the moment, all the finance leaders I speak with across the world have two enormous things that they're grappling with at the moment, which is AI and geopolitics. Both of which I think the finance function is almost uniquely positioned to be the most affected by almost of any other role in any other space. So how have you seen these two forces shaping the CFO role?

Sure. I think both, like you said, super relevant currently. AI for me is just is going to change a lot of different things, right?

And where I see it becoming truly valuable from a CFO function or from finance function is that, yes, it brings in the automation, it brings in the productivity, it brings in the efficiency and all of that, but it also allows for a better quality and speed of decision making. And I think that is the crucial thing, right? Is how do you get to things in less reactive versus more proactive modes?

And I think that conversation shift of AI helping us do a lot more scenario building, how should we be preparing for what's next so that teams can really focus on what's important and where management attention should go to versus some of the things which were probably taking a lot of time, but we're not creating a lot of significant value in the organisation towards growth and change.

So, I think that's how I see AI's role. Obviously, there will be changes in terms of people who does what, but eventually it needs to be a lever for us to drive value for the business. And I think that's definitely what AI is positioned to do as companies start adopting it.

I think geopolitics have always existed, right? I don't think it's something that is new. I think what is new is how interconnected we are and how now we all get impacted by the events that happen in other parts of the world, right? And that's also not new.

It's happened over the last decade or so where we've all become more dependent and I think that's where again, the role of finance comes in is there is a lot of ambiguity. We call these worlds as vulnerable, things that we don't know where it would get to. And I think the muscle of then being able to understand how supply chain is happening or what tariffs are moving, how regulations are changing, where the capital flows, these cannot be stable assumptions. So, we need to start thinking about adding analytical thinking with scenario thinking.

And many companies already do. We already kind of start thinking about, hey, this is happening. What does this mean for our forecast? Six months out, and what are some of the things that we should be changing to address these levers of the business, right?

So, I think this becomes definitely a muscle that we cannot ignore anymore if companies were ignoring, and I think a lot of companies have been quite ahead in terms of catching up to it.

So, the strategic role, the forward-looking role, I think both AI and the current geopolitics situation makes it even more meaningful, I think, from a finance lens for us to be kind of thinking about it as, hey, what's next? How do we be prepared for it? And how do we protect shareholder value?

Absolutely. And then just a quick point on this, because I think it's something that's important to think about is any advice you have for how to, I guess, remain calm and focused?

Because the pace of change and the pace of unrest can be a bit dizzying sometimes, I think, for all of us in leadership roles. Do you have any advice for how you, I guess, take care of yourself at the same time or manage your energies?

Yeah, not to sound super philosophical, but I do think that when you start stepping back and breaking problems into subparts, I think they all start seeming more manageable, right?

So, for example, if you understand that there are certain geopolitical tensions happening and then you want to think through and trickle down, hey, what are the possible three or four things this will impact? And what are the three or four things I can do about it? And what are the next three or four things I need to do in the next three or four days?

I'm just trying to build that alliteration. But I think when you start simplifying the problem and thinking about, hey, what should we be doing now? I think that helps you be in the current moment.

I think then when you go closer and say, hey, what does this mean for ten years out? Because there are always two lenses to it. What can I do about it now? And second, what does this mean for the business in the long term?

I think if you're able to break that down into those distinct parts and then address them separately, I think that would be my suggestion and keeping control of the situation because otherwise you are trying to do too many things at one time.

And that's not something that is very strategic or that's not something that is very well thought out. So, I think it's really important to distil what's important now and what do we need to prepare for from a future impact perspective.

Amazing. I've just been sat here nodding very furiously to everything you're saying but thank you so much for that.

And then the final question I wanted to ask you, because obviously our audience is all those with an interest in this space, and that can be people aspiring to the CFO role who might be teenagers or those who are in just one step from it. Do you have any advice that you'd like to offer people aspiring for that next step on their career journey in finance?

Sure. I would say don't optimise for the next role but think about what are the capabilities that you are building. Because in today's world, you might be doing a lot of different things. Titles can be changing, but the capability stack that you build will always compound over decades.

So I think for me, it's not about like, hey, I need to get to this position, this title, X, Y, Z, but what am I trying to learn from this organisation, bring to this organisation, and what are the skillsets that I'm able to build for me to be impactful as I progress in my journey?

And I think that helps people really start then broadening their horizons because for me as well, thinking through, hey, what is the next challenge I can take? What are the detours that have happened in my career have been the most valuable?

So, you know, for example, the sharpest commercial instincts I've had is working in e-commerce and high growth environments, which are not finance centric, right? But I've learned so much about business in those jobs. So, I think that cross-pollination is super important.

So, focus on capability building, but be open about which path you want to be in because I had a short stint in Hunter Douglas where I was also taking interim leadership of the technology function until the CTO joined. And to me, that was eye-opening and extremely rewarding.

So, I think it's always good to be embracing new things and challenges because you're never going to be fully ready. So just build your capability stack and understand businesses, see what makes them drive and push beyond what you probably are thinking is your defined current role, that would be my advice.

Amazing, and thank you so much. I think you're one of the most determined and also compassionate corporate leaders that I've had the pleasure of getting to know. And I am so pleased that you took your time to come and speak with everyone today. So, thank you so much. I've loved speaking with you.

Thank you so much, Sophie. I appreciate the opportunity to speak with you as well. It's always a pleasure.

A very big thank you again to our pal Sarika for joining us and sharing her story. If you enjoyed this episode, please do subscribe and share and stay tuned for the next Ask A CFO episode as we continue to share the journeys of current and former CFOs across the world.