In today's world, accountancy, auditing, and compliances are very essential to any business and they require a very focused approach. EF & Co, an accountancy firm established in 1999, Malta, is helping businesses by providing aforesaid mentioned services, and under the leadership of Gayathri Mohanraj, it is providing a wide range of professional accounting services to a vast range of clients from various sectors from India (2019). Gayathri has completed her graduation from the University of Madras and she is a certified CPA and Association of Chartered Certified Accountants (ACCA) in Accounting and Finance. She started her career at a staff level and today she is the Director of EF& Co which is an accountancy firm based in Malta from the year 2019.

Gayathri engaged in an exclusive interaction with Women Entrepreneur Magazine, here's the highlight.

Define EF & Co and tell us about the major unique features of the company?

EF & Co is a Malta-based company that provides tax accounting, compliance, and consultancy services to companies that want to target day-to-day activities and not the tax and audit function. I started working with EF & Co in the year 2017 in Malta but after two years in 2019, I decided to go back to India and that is when the founder of the company decided to open EF Support in Tamil Nadu, India, and made me the director of the company. In the first year, we provided external audit services to clients based in Malta but after 2020 we started thinking of adding accounting to our service list and our next step is to foray into the tax department.

Take us through your early educational journey and prior industry experience?

I completed my schooling in a town in Tamil Nadu called Namakkal and did my B.com from the University of Madras. After my graduation, I started looking after my father's business and in the year 2012, I went to the UK to study ACCA and after completing my study, I got hired by Ernst & Young as an audit staff. After working for some years, I was sent to Boston by EY India to start an audit branch there I led the team and my work was well appreciated by the partners. Later on, in 2017, I started working with EF&Co Malta, and during that time I completed CPA Canada Professional certificate as well.

"Transparency is the key factor in becoming a successful business leader"

Tell us about the roles and responsibilities you shoulder including the challenges you face at your position and how do you overcome those challenges?

Every day, I have to play a different role and my responsibilities change or it gets amended quite frequently. Not with standing, along with sharing my knowledge with all my employees, my key role and responsibility are to receive audits from my head office and get the work done by assigning it to the most suitable and eligible employee in my firm.

The key business challenge me and my teams in India and Malta are facing right now is that recently we took over an auditing company and over the night we got more than 100 clients where we have to accommodate time and follow a different approach. We hired additional staff, both trained and freshers and we worked on weekends and did overtime to overcome the challenge.

What are some of the key business strategies that you leverage to ensure organizational success? What has been your most remarkable achievement so far and what is the driving force behind your success?

Strategy for me is something like work while you work and play while you play and that is what I encourage my employees to take up. I ask my employees to be efficient, be timely, and to win in a business certain discipline is very essential, so these are the business strategies I follow. I encourage them to utilize their early morning time because they are the most productive hours and fortunately all my employees cooperate with that which has elevated the organization's structure and success.

Proving to my partners that I am capable enough to start and run a company and then actually start the company in India is one of the greatest milestones I have achieved so far. The encouraging words from my family before starting the company and round-the-clock support from my partners (Edward, Richard and AnnMarie)in Malta are the biggest driving force behind my success.

How do you foresee the Indian Finance Industry evolving and what steps do you take to keep yourself aligned with these evolutions? What would your advice be to young women who also aspire to become an entrepreneur?

Today, I foresee that Indian Accounting Standards which were very Indianized before are now welcoming International Finance Standards. Also, the young crowd, the millennials are now focussing on both Indian as well as international standards and to keep myself aligned with this evolution, I talk to local CAs, Banks, and other companies to update myself on the financial standards.

The advice which I would give is that there is no one key factor to become successful. Instead, you have to work every day with lots of motivation and focus on being ready for what is going to come next. The world is big so go around and see people and try to learn from them and always keep trying with the never give up attitude.

Gayathri Mohanraj, Director, EF & CO

Gayathri is a certified Chartered Professional Accountant and Association of Chartered Certified Accountants in Accounting and Finance and possesses an experience of more than seven years in the Auditing field.