Anam Dhila

Complete Ownership of the Finance Department of multiple upGrad business. Enterprise valuation of 2.25 billion US$

Business Partnering & Strategy:

• Owning the reporting of the Profit & Loss statement & KPI document to the Board of Directors & the Investors & defending / justifying the numbers therein;
• Providing financial insights to encourage growth across geographies, courses, universities and distribution network;
• Product pricing and category-wise profitability tracking and sharing actionable insights;
• Developing financial models to analyze business performance, profitability, and cost efficiencies
• Constant review of entire marketing and sales funnel and real-time discussions with management for decision making
• Executing actions & identifying the impact coming out of these finance-led business actions.

University (Supply-side) stakeholder management:

• This involves negotiating revenue share, discount / scholarship campaigns, program launch discussion, legal contracts and courses / program go-live.
• Being the confidant to registrar, director and CFO of the universities and drive multiple business initiatives ensuring least bureaucracy resistance.
• Tracking PL at a per university and per course level to identify which courses / universities are value additive and where there is need for better efficiency.

Financial Planning & Forecasting:

• Leading the yearly AOP exercise by aligning multiple stakeholders & sharing historical trends & metrices for conscious target setting.
• Tracking the actuals against the AOP and undertaking regular forecasting to predict the trajectory of the business & the organization.
• Corrective actions to be implemented to ensure minimal deviation from the reported AOP numbers for Revenue and Profits.

AI-led automation in finance process & reporting:

• Using generative-AI to automate reports using linkages to source database. Optimizing the work force efficiency in the process, insights identification by comparing past reports and tracking trends, sensitivity analysis based on stress-testing important sales levers.
• Web-hook based auto-updation of live data providing complete visibility to the universities for academic, administration and finance team data requirements.
• Auto-flagging of the marketing campaigns which are not generating adequate ROI
• Robotic process automation (RPA) to handle scale and volume without increasing the finance team-size

Affordability & accessibility for higher education programs:

• Owning and managing the payment gateways (Stripe, Adyen, Paypal) and consumer financing / BNPL (Buy Now Pay Later) solutions (Affirm, Klarna, Splitit, Zip) to ensure GSP& upGrad’s programs are accessible and affordable to our target audience.

Setting up upGrad’s business in international locations:

• Creating entities and business eco-system readiness for Middle East, SE Asia, US & UK covering corporate structure, inter-company protocols, supply side partners (ie universities, payment gateways, learner financing solutions, etc), product pricing, break-even milestones and then implementing management reporting framework and periodic business trackers.
• Playing a critical role in the acquisition of a PEI company in Singapore to facilitate expedited expansion through government funded courses for working professionals
• Transaction advisory and structuring on pooling money into entities which need it versus creating a cash lock in the ones which has surplus while ensuring tax efficiencies and complete compliance adherence.

Reporting & Compliance:

• Preparing and presenting financial reports, including MOM and YOY P&L analysis and variance reports
• Ensuring adherence to Australian accounting standards, GST regulations, and internal financial controls.
• Vetting legal agreements from commercial perspective
• Liaise with external auditors, tax advisors and regulatory authorities as needed

I led the Finance and Legal domains of the business with a heavy tilt towards Strategy. The detailed aspects of the role are as follows –

• Leading the fund raise exercise for the pre–Series A and Series A round of Private Equity investment to get growth capital and achieve substantial scale for the business.
• Active role in product go live for multiple commercial partnerships and various distribution partnerships
• Responsible for pricing decisions i.e. setting prices for different SKUs, different channels and different clients.
• Undertaking cost optimization efforts during the COVID – 19 pandemic in the best interest of employees and the company ensuring alignment with multiple stakeholders including the board and the investors
• Making multi-year Business Plan to ensure there are objective and quantifiable targets and focus for the company and thereby individual Business Unit heads. Tracking Budgets vs Actuals thereafter
• Decision on investment of surplus money within the risk profile of the company.
• Automating Procure-to-Pay cycle by implementing relevant software and providing complete transparency to the different departments and vendors.
• Finalizing the books of accounts and signing off the MIS (i.e. Profit and Loss account, Balance Sheet, Cash flows) on a monthly basis to be shared with investors and Board of Directors.
• Responsible for all statutory compliances including direct and indirect taxes, labour laws, audits, Companies Act.

Being the Finance-Business Partner / Finance Controller of client companies –

• Budgeting, analytics and cost benchmarking.
• Undertaking business valuations using different models (i.e. Net Asset Value, Discounted Cash flow (DCF), Competitor analysis, Industry benchmark of revenue or EBITDA multiple)
• Prepare monthly management reports for all operating companies and its international subsidiaries including KPI tracking and ratio analysis.
• Setting up Standard Operating Procedures for Procure to Pay, Invoice to Collection, Supply Chain and other finance procedures.
• Sounding board of the management to facilitate achieving top line and bottom line targets, process automation and cost optimisation
• Creating ESOP policy and managing the ESOP scheme including vesting, issuing grant letters, tax implications and regulatory formalities.
• Decoding term sheet and stockholder agreements for fund raises (Equity and Debt)
• Transfer pricing advice in situations where there are multiple related companies in different countries and voluminous transactions being conducted across those companies.

• Evaluating the loan proposals for HNI clients in conjunction with their Wealth Portfolio
• Preparing the credit report for onward approval by the Asia-Pacific cluster head.
• Undertaking financial statement analysis, net worth valuations, collateral strength, haircut workings, calculating bank's sectoral exposure were the key functional part of the profile to evaluate the amount that can be advanced as loan to the borrower.
• Monitoring the ‘collateral to loan advanced’ ratio to be within the acceptable range and if not then ensuring the borrower provides the deficit collateral.