Few CFOs have had the kind of experience Vijay Padmanabhan, CFO of the global digital solutions provider UST, has had in his career. He, alongside most of his executive team, has been with the same company for more than two decades. The impact he has had in scaling the business into a global enterprise is significant. Though still private, the company has grown to more than 30,000 employees worldwide and is on track to generate about $2 billion in revenue this year.
According to Padmanabhan, his experience working in different finance functions, along with other leadership positions in the organization, has enabled him to develop a comprehensive understanding of the organization’s goals and challenges. He says the company’s ability to maintain a strong culture during periods of growth is what has kept him with UST for his entire professional career.
Vijay Padmanabhan
CFO, UST
First CFO position: 2023
Previous role at UST:
- Chief corporate officer
- Chief of staff to the CEO
- VP, global head of FP&A
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
ADAM ZAKI: You and your CEO, Krishna Sudheendra, have worked together for more than two decades. How has this relationship developed over time and how important is the CFO-CEO relationship?
Vijay Padmanabhan: I have worked with Krishna for pretty much the entire duration of both of our time with the company and we’ve been able to enjoy and share the journey.
When he was the CFO from 2004 to 2018, I was heading various functions. If you look at my journey in UST, pretty much from the startup days, I’ve worked in every finance capacity at every stage of the company. When you’re a startup, like we were, you only have a couple of people in finance who are doing everything. We started processing our payrolls, accounts payable and accounts receivables. Then as we grew, I took roles in FP&A and controllership. Before Krishna was CEO, I worked as the chief of staff for the CEO in an additional role. I also worked as chief corporate officer before being CFO.
I’ve been able to see the value of a strong CFO-CEO relationship firsthand. Krishna and I have a very unique partnership here and I think it’s important for the CFO to back the CEO while also being a trusted advisor to that person. Even if there’s a disagreement between the CFO and CEO, I’ve found it’s important to be able to have an environment where we can not only bounce ideas off of one another but be able to fully express our points of view to each other and come to a conclusion based on that. I’ve learned so much from Krishna over the years and I think that relationship’s strength was and continues to be critical to our company’s success.
What has kept you at the company for so long?
Padmanabhan: I think it’s the culture and the values of the organization that have kept me around. We’ve been able to keep this consistent because we are not a hierarchical company, even with 30,000 employees across the globe today.
We have a uniquely large pool of people at this company who have been here for 20 years, including our chief operating officer and our chief delivery officer. Most of our leadership team have been working together for a large portion of our careers. Together, we built this culture in such a way that all of our people can thrive. We’ve seen it in our strong ability to retain talent throughout the organization as we’ve expanded.
“Even if there’s a disagreement between the CFO and CEO, I’ve found it’s important to be able to have an environment where we can not only bounce ideas off of one another but be able to fully express our points of view.”
Vijay Padmanabhan
CFO, UST
For me, flexibility has been a huge benefactor as well. I’ve been able to explore different areas of finance and take on new challenges, but overall I would say I’ve never worked in what some would call a back office role in my career here. I’ve always been front office, with the executives, and constantly in the decision-making process. I think that’s been a big motivating factor for me, to have had a direct influence on the business over time.
Based on your experience using different types of technology, where do you believe new technologies like AI are most valuable now?
Padmanabhan: We are a technology company so we are focused on using all kinds of technology across all of our functions. But from my perspective on the finance function, I’m focused on making sure end-to-end automation is happening. Our systems need to communicate with each other so there is a minimum amount of manual interference in those processes.
There are some areas where a manual process and human touch are still very valuable. Forecasting is a great example where you can automate certain elements of it, but you still need a qualified person to be able to look at the data, verify and make decisions off of it. It’s in cases like this where it’s important to note our automation push isn’t to reduce the sizes of our teams but to increase their efficiency.
Automation has been a very long journey for finance. It didn’t start last year with generative AI or the year before. About 10 years ago, the digital transformation push of the finance function began to catch on. But that’s not to say that we aren’t looking heavily into the aspects of GenAI-related solutions for us and our customers.
For us, we’re piloting AI products in our recruitment process. We defined a problem statement in the company where our interview process can be very people-intensive because we are a very people-oriented business and company and we want to make sure we are hiring people who align with that.
We are using AI to automate some of the processes so we can maybe cut four levels of interviews in two, and it’s saving time for our team to prepare and hire people. We can have GenAI turn up questions or analyze prompts to questions to eliminate a few rounds of interviews. There’s also value in the contract process for these technologies. That’s another area where we have saved time with attorneys and paralegals reviewing contracts, so there’s a lot of use in AI for us right now.
How do you both make yourself available to your global teams while also having a proper work-life balance?
Padmanabhan: As we’ve grown and for most companies with a global footprint, it is tough. I’ve learned to get into a rhythm to the time of my work. The hours of 6 a.m. to 10 a.m. PST are usually my busiest hours. So most of my mornings are very busy but my evenings are lighter. It gives me time to do things I need to do later in the day and I have built a schedule around that.
It’s really about time management. It can be a real challenge for leaders when a business becomes global to handle the time management portion of it. But it is important. Getting a workable schedule where you can function at a high level while also maintaining a fulfilling personal life is critical and without good time management that can be challenging.
You’ve had a very heavy hand in building the finance function of the company. If you were to have to leave your position suddenly, do you have a succession plan in place?
Padmanabhan: Yes. This has been a focus for us in recent years to develop these plans. We have worked with our HR team and we have developed succession plans for the entirety of the C-suite and some other key roles in the organization. The leadership team and our HR team have spent a significant amount of time in recent years developing and updating these plans.
We always talked about this from time to time as leaders internally but we’ve recently focused on formally practicing putting these plans in place. So no question, that if I had to step down at this time for any reason, there is a clear plan in place for my succession that the other leaders would be able to implement.
