Our Conversation With Sathya

Sathya Seelan - Proving time and again that degrees do not matter!

Intro

Sathya is a Commerce Graduate who climbed the corporate ladder to become a finance leader!

Career

• Sathya started his career as an AP Executive with TCS

• After working in  TCS for 3 years, he felt that a startup best suited his personality & learning requirements. So he got into FreshWorks as an AP & Procurement Specialist.

• After another 3 year stint at Freshworks, Sathya moved to Ally, a Microsoft company where he got first-hand experience on end to end finance.

• He finally landed at Kula, which has it's presence in India, US and Singapore.

Wherever Sathya goes, he ensures he comes out of it with flying colours.He was first involved in the IPO of Freshworks and in his next job at Ally, he was actively involved in the acquisition by Microsoft.

He's at the right place at the right time.

About Kula

Kula is a recruitment automation platform that lets users proactively reach out and engage with the top talent everywhere

How finance is managed

Sathya is the only finance guy in Kula. Yes you heard that right!

He literally analyses bank statements, credit card statements, accounts etc on a daily basis. This way, he ensures that his month-end is light & quick.

He is supported by consultants in India & the US

When should a startup have a finance team?

Sathya says this is totally based on the founders’ perspectives.

Take for example - Kula - It started a company in August 2021. But immediately Jan 2022 they had a person (Sathya himself) to oversee the finance & compliance function along with the external consultant.

This was because the founders had no bandwidth to manage finance & compliance by themselves. More importantly, coordinating with the consultant was something that the founders never enjoy.

Sathya believes that the earlier a startup has a person overseeing finance & compliance, the better it is because that simply frees up a lot of founder bandwidth. Also, finance is not just raising invoices, making payments & making some compliance. It is much more.

As soon as there is an investor onboard, most of them ask about the performance tracker. It’s better to spend some money on the finance person rather than having to pay double that (or more) on penalties or resolving due diligence concerns.

Problems within Finance & Compliance [Outsourced]

• Lack of single-point-of-contact. So apparently, Sathya built a good rapport with the POC from the consultant’s office but he goes on exam leaves every 6 months and then you are assigned another POC for that month. Then the entire communication takes a backseat

• At times, the consultants pass some back-dated entries that make it difficult for the finance in charge to perform the reporting function diligently

• Mismatch in the consultant’s vision vis a vis company vision. The consultants, at times, fail to meet the expectations wrt timelines, quality, formats etc.

• Consultants are more reactive than proactive and nothing much moves without follow-ups. In fact, Sathya shared a story of how one of the earlier startups he worked with - entrusted their consultant with all compliances, only to later realise that certain basic things like share certificates were not even in place.

Need for Finance Community

Sathya strongly feels a need for a community wherein seasoned experts in the domain can be reachable and approachable by newbies. Mutual learning is inevitable in this dynamic space. Right now, Sathya has to ask friends, seniors etc abruptly and is still not sure if the queries are properly resolved.

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