Debasish Bhattacharjee Email and Phone Number

Leading the Finance Centre of Excellence to drive Finance Transformation in Tata Steel and its Group. Operating on top of all the functional verticals of Finance and Accounts, the role is to drive the functional transformation through digital intervention with leveraging technology and also development of functional and behavioural competency of the Finance team with appropriate talent management to match the Global Benchmark. With the various changes in Statues and Corporate Governance framework affecting the finance function, the function needs to be ready to comply with the requirements of IND AS, GST, Related Party Transactions, tracking and optimising CSR spent, Requirement of Co Act 2013 and the most complex requirement of Internal Financial Control. The deliverables are:1. Implementation of IFC framework and extend it to the areas of operating controls, entity level and process level controls, control testing and the test of operating effectiveness. Implementation of IT structure around IFC and a governance structure to maintain and review it on YOY basis. 2. Creation of Accounting Transaction Centre of Excellence (ATCE) to centralise the transaction processing in a Shared service environment to centralise all 25+ locations in India.3. Creation of Tax Centre of Excellence, a central expert advisory group to facilitate improved and uniform governance and compliance of Direct and Indirect Tax with appropriate advocacy4. Usage of Analytics for Financial and Accounting Control, Business support along with Forensic Analytics. 5. Driving the major technology improvement initiatives such as implementation of Profit Centre Accounting, System readiness for GST etc6. Driving the SAP platform upgrade to S4HANA7. To facilitate skill development, a structure of Finance Academy has been created for the development of functional and behavioural competency of the Finance team to match the Global Benchmark.

Apart from leading countrywide Finance & Accounts function of Tata Steel, as a Chief Financial Controller, my role was also to provide financial directions to the business from operations to Marketing and also provide functional support to group companies. Apart from consulting support to the group companies, ensuring standardisation of accounting policies and procedures across the group was also a major deliverable. Responsible to the Audit Committee and Board for Control and Governance in entire Finance and Accounts function of India operation which consists of 30+ locations, 125+ professionals and 400+ associates. A nominated director on Board and Chairman Audit Committee for five group companies.

As a functional Chief, I was controlling the function of Accounts Payable (AP), Accounts Receivable (AR) and Indirect Taxes (IDT) of entire India operation and three Raw Material Locations. Was leading a team size of 32 professionals including 7 Heads of Accounts and about 100 associates. A few major initiatives were as follows:1. Bench marking in process and control with Global group entities situated in UK, Netherland and in Singapore. 2. A system based framework was implemented through SAP GRC to establish the internal control over financial reporting as required under cause 49 and also rolled over to Group entities at Thailand and Singapore. 3. To review, control and provide guidance in the area of IDT with a creation of a central expert advisory group in Jamshedpur. 4. Bring centralised control and review mechanism on all legal issues relating to finance and commercial. To improve the governance, a Material Litigation Report was designed and presented to the Audit Committee for all material litigation cases with the status, amount involvement and internal / external assessment of the merit of the case.5. Lead the IFRS task force to provide guidance to prepare the first standalone IFRS compliant accounts for FY’06 and consolidated accounts for Fy’07 with all transitional adjustments. Along with conversion to IFRS accounts, the team also prepared and documented “Group Accounting Policy” and “Controllers Manual for the Group Accounting”.

During this period I had worked in various functions in Accounts Division, such as, Cost, Accounts Payable, accounts Receivable, Indirect Taxation etc. The major initiatives were as follows:1. Involved in SAP implementation as a team lead for FICO and also for Data migration. The implementation covered FI, CO, SD, FM, IM, MM, PM, PP for Jamshedpur steel plant and its Marketing setup. Later on it was rolled over to other locations and allied businesses where I was involved in the Technical review Committee2. Introduced financial evaluation of completed capital projects in the company with appropriate governance for Capital spent.3. Support the Chief of operation and the Business Heads through proactive Cost analysis4. Review of Cost Standards and Inventory Management5. Deputed to M/s Tata Davy, an engineering manufacturing company within the Group, to look after the entire import for Tata Steel during the time of its major capacity expansion – Import license, forward cover, payment / loan disbursement, customs clearance, billing on Tata Steel and also managing the loan agreement with Barclays Bank where the imports were against ECGD line of credit organised through Barclays Bank UK.