It is no surprise that the profession of a chartered accountant is one of the most secure professions. To understand in depth, The Pioneer interacted with Jitendra Mohananey, an associate CPA, a chartered accountant, and a corporate secretary, talking about the profession, how he reached the CXO level on a fast track, and more.
What can you call him? An associate CPA, or a chartered accountant, or a corporate secretary. If not, a law graduate! So many names at once. Just this made us interview Jitendra Mohananey, who is also a strategist, result oriented key decision maker, a finance executive building a corporate culture. It was salient too to inspect some more about one of the distinguished professions of our country.
The team player opens our eyes, “Traditionally, chartered accountancy has been one of the most stable, rewarding and secure professions. We are perfect business managers, who make high-level strategic decisions, aimed at driving business, improving profit margins, wealth maximization and increasing market share for our clients and employers. Contrary to the misconception that chartered accountancy is all about books of account or numbers — once given the opportunity and groomed well, even chartered accountants can turn out to be better business managers as compared to others! Today globally, many of the chartered accountants who are CFO’s have been elevated as CEO’s to manage the entire gamut of business.”
With strong leadership skills and a hands-on working approach, he is moving fluidly between the board of directors and senior level executives, statutory bodies and investors. Possess extensive experience in service as well as manufacturing environments with multinational conglomerates!
He continued, “Learning, which is beautiful and a lifelong process, is the whole of life from the moment you are born to the moment you die. Whenever I take a step further in my career, I evaluate the opportunity from this perspective. Nothing in life is permanent than change. You have to bring improvements, and one must do that before he has to. It is always wise to change your mind. Adaptability to change is the key requirement for growth in the career. Brings diversity in life and career. More you diversify, the less chances of your failure. In fact, diversification is a very critical tool of risk management also. One who has diverse experience across various industries carries with him the best practices and grows faster. I have focused on all these three which enabled me to reach CXO level on a fast track.”
Also a guest faculty with a number of B-schools, he has presented papers in various international conclaves and also has been judged as the best CFO.
He further said, “There were a number of moments which left me nervous. Financial and job stress are the primary examples. During the time when I was CFO of Inox Wind Limited, there was an abrupt stoppage in the business due to paradigm shift from feed in tariff to auction based tariff in the wind sector. The transition was very painful and continued for a couple of years. The kind of uncertainty during the transition period resulted in nervousness in the entire system.”
The tightness didn’t stop there because when the pandemic hit Jitendra, regrettably he was taken to the intensive care unit.
“Still, in the journey of my career, I have worked with United States and Japanese MNCs — both listed and unlisted. I have worked in varied sectors including clean and renewable energy, power, information technology, telecom, oil & gas, food & beverages. Learnt best practices of these sectors! Taking a company to an IPO is really interesting. Indraprastha Gas Limited was the first company whom I took for an IPO. The second one was Inox Green Energy Services Ltd. If we talk about the current scenario there is a whole lot of volatility which has taken place in the financial markets in the last two years. Factors like aftermath of COVID, geopolitical situations like the Ukraine-Russia war, high inflation, interest rate hike, unemployment and recent failures of silicon valley bank or signature bank in the United States. They have been the major contributing factors. Globally in order to control inflation, central banks have made persistent attempts to increase interest rates. While the interest rate hike is a time tested technique to control the inflation, however historically, such forceful rate increases by central banks are often followed by stresses that expose fault lines in the financial system.”
He believes that by and large India will be the least affected by the global financial crisis, though till now, the financial market in India has been moving by and large in tandem with global. Certain reports about one of the business houses in India has further added fuel to the volatility. Now that he has established himself, this certified accountant is among the year’s most prosperous professionals.
