The charisma of cricket in India is so magnanimous, that the sport is often referred to as a religion. The world stood in admiration as it envisaged the perfect amalgamation of money, status, and sportsmanship with the introduction of the Indian Premier League - a professional men's Twenty20 cricket league, contested by ten teams based out of eight Indian cities, in 2007. Founded in 2008 as one of the initial eight IPL franchises, Rajasthan Royals is a popular cricket team based out of Jaipur, Rajasthan. As the team to win the first-ever IPL finale, Rajasthan Royals is known for its valorous attitude that it has put forth in every match so far and carries the repute of excavating high potential cricket talents within the country as well abroad. As one of the premium executive leaders of the elite cricket enterprise, Harvinder Kaur Sahni has been playing an extraordinary inning in contributing towards the overall success of the team as a CFO. Joining the organization in 2008, Harvinder took the responsibility of setting up the finance team, along with the financial systems and the accounting system, and played a pragmatic role in designing the entire departmental framework of finance for Rajasthan Royals. Not only does her prodigious journey of 14 years help in catapulting the repute of Rajasthan Royals from a simple cricket franchise to an exponentially growing phenomenon but with a notion to give back to society, Harvinder is involved in mentoring the young and budding professionals to prepare them for bigger challenges across various spheres of life.

Harvinder engages in an exclusive interaction with the Women Entrepreneur Magazine.

Share a glimpse of your professional journey so far. How does your prior industry experience help you in your current role at Rajasthan Royals?

As a teenager, I was clear I wanted to be a Chartered Accountant. And whilst I was on my goal to become a chartered accountant alongside B. Com, I did my article ship with a CA firm, where I got the opportunity to convert my book knowledge into practical deliverables. After completing my CA, I took my first job in a logistics company, which had 40 branch presence across India. I streamlined and automated the accounts of 40 branches to bring in digitalization and set up the internal controls and framework for monitoring massive cash transactions. Although back in those days, it was believed to be quite a difficult task for women to enter and succeed in the logistics industry, I succeeded and proved all such assumptions wrong with my success and progression. Soon, I found myself working for a UK-based BPO firm, which gave me a fantastic opportunity to connect with UK parent company, understand different culture and mindset, and integrate the Indian reporting styles with requirement of another country. The expertise garnered from these professional engagements helped me a lot with my third job at Rajasthan Royals and gave me the confidence to perform as well as succeed in this male-centric industry back then.

Reflect on the varied expertise you possess, especially as a sports finance expert.

As finance professional, strong analytical skills, budget planning and variance analysis, risk management, business / financial modelling, technically dated on latest tools to implement and ability to work with different stakeholders, conflict management, corporate governance, are few key expertise that come handy.

However, when it comes particularly to the sports industry, it's very important to understand the revenue model of the sports business and its nuances. Sports is an absolutely dynamic domain, there could be some unique challenges/risk for a sporting business such as player injury or unavailability, postponement of the sporting event and such others that could disturb the business performance as well as the P&L. The ability to present the impact of the dynamics on P&L, managing risks & supporting expansion into new ventures has helped the business. Revenue maximization and cost optimization are core to this domain.

“To be successful in sports domain, understanding the entire framework of the business and being able to translate it into P&L is vital for a sports finance expert.”

As a sports finance person specifically in IPL industry, important to be well versed with the changes, strategic thinking and focused on holistic compliance. The ability to understand the framework and being able to translate it into P&L as well as being able to provide relevant info for robust decision making by stakeholders is super important as sports finance expert.

Throw some light on the various roles and responsibilities that you shoulder at Rajasthan Royals.

As the CFO, I am the gatekeeper of investors’ assets and to monetise the assets thereby generating maximum returns. They rely on my transparency and integrity and through reporting on all aspects of the business I honour my primary fiduciary responsibility. I'm responsible for broader corporate financial strategy which includes revenue maximization, cost optimization, corporate governance, companywide compliances that includes everything from direct tax, indirect tax, corporate law, FEMA & labor laws, delivering risk management and mitigation plan, budgeting and reporting variances, funding and debt strategy, cash flow management, financial model for existing as well as new businesses, setting strong controls and evolving financial frameworks to adapt to global changes. Being commercial decision-maker, I have to keep a sharp eye on all the commercial contracts and input on critical clauses. Resource planning and assessing the talent gap in the finance department and filling that is an obvious extension. With changing technologies, digitization and automation have become very important elements to be added to our operational strategies.

What are the most pressing challenges that you face while undertaking those responsibilities and how do you overcome them?

In terms of challenges, I think prioritization and staying updated are the largest challenges. Keeping a list of deliverables and categorizing them on level of priority say High, Medium, Low helps in day-to-day planning when facing pressing timelines. Time management and delegation skills come handy to overcome.

Subscribing to relevant newsletters, reading, having mentors from diverse domains and learning new skills through online material / courses fuel hunger for knowledge and helps staying updated.

Harvinder Kaur Sahni, CFO, Rajasthan Royals

A chartered accountant by profession, Harvinder holds a prolific expertise in finance as well as in Human Resources domain. Her association with Rajasthan Royals as a financial strategist eventually led her to hone her skills as a revenue model expert and a business transformation guru.