Published on June 01, 2023
On 19th and 20th May 2023, Titan hosted the Tata Group Treasury Forum meeting in Bengaluru. The event witnessed a congregation of CFO’s, Treasury Heads, and senior treasury practitioners from twenty-five group companies. In this two-day event, the participants gained insights from Titan, Tata Business Hub, Tata Motors, Tata Electronics, Tata Power, Tata Communications, PwC, Infosys, WIPRO, and BOSCH.
Day 1 of the event began with a welcome note by Ashok Sonthalia, CFO Titan. In his talk, Mr Sonthalia spoke about the need for digitisation and urged the treasury teams to become agile by implementing the latest tools and techniques. He emphasised upon the need for a disciplined approach to hedging i.e. 80% rule based and 20% on view based.
Thereafter, the Titan Treasury team comprising of Vinay Bhutra - Head Treasurer; Rahul Singh, Manager and Themma Reddy, Manager - Corporate Treasury, provided insights pertaining to treasury operations automation through the tool Liquidice. The team showcased the use of BOT (developed in-house) for treasury collection and accounting automation.
This was followed by a brief overview of the Tata Electronics business by Sakshi Sharma, Senior Manager, Treasury and Finance at Tata Electronics Limited. Thereafter, Amit Singh, Mohit Gupta, and Rahul Shukla - Enterprise Business Partners from Tata Business Hub showcased their account payable financing tool – “Early Pay”.
In the next session, Aditee Thatte - DGM and Naveen Sharma- Sr. Manager, Tata Motors Limited (TML) presented the treasury structure and the deep dive analysis presented by their team to the Risk Management Committee on a quarterly basis. They also presented a glimpse of the monthly slides presented by their team to the Group CFO. TML presented the borrowing and liquidity slides where they covered market updates, group borrowings, interest variance, vendor financing programmes, covenants, and bank guarantee tracking. This was followed by details on forex, commodity, and investment, where they also covered market updates, treasury P&L, hedge book, hedge vs unhedged analysis and return vs benchmark.
Post lunch, Barnita DasGupta, Group Head, Corporate Treasury and Prashant Jain, Head Forex Management from Tata Power, presented a story of treasury transformation. Tata Power initiated this journey by benchmarking its existing processes. Thereafter, the team created a restructured operating model with clearer segregation of duties and responsibilities amongst various stakeholders. They noted how revised processes and automation tools provide real time information dashboards for quick decision making.
Thereafter, a group of experts specialising in treasury risk consulting and solution implementation and leaders responsible for Tata Group relationship, from PwC India presented on treasury transformation journeys where PwC teams have supported Tata group companies. Saurabh Batra - Partner, Treasury Risk Consulting, PwC India, presented use cases around treasury risk analytics and digital collections. Irwin Melford, Director, PwC, Dubai showcased outcomes of PwC Global Survey and Treasury Priorities. Sweta Kabra, MD, Treasury - Technology Consulting presented the latest trends in the treasury space and SAP related solutions from PwC. Nishith Agarwal, VP - Treasury, Insurance & Credit Control, Tata Communications also came in to present a case study. The team from PwC was also supported by Sanjit Acharya - Executive Director, Vidhatrae K - Partner, Prateek Sinha - Partner and a group of treasury experts - Ankit Tulsyan -Director and Leo Rego - Director.
The highlight of the day was a panel discussion by Sachin Chougle, AVP Finance - Treasurer, Infosys Limited, Ramana Kumar CSV, General Manager, Corporate Treasury, Wipro Limited and Rishit Samrani, Treasurer and Sustainability officer, BOSCH India. The panellists stressed on the importance of ‘continuous learning’ for budding treasurers and threw light on the role of treasurers in the future, considering the impact of new age technologies.
Post that, Ansul Garg, DGM summarised the learnings of the day, recognised speakers and emphasised on the importance of implementation of learnings from these sessions. TBExG recognised the Tata Play Treasury team for the implementation of learnings from the past sessions. Chirag Kotak - AGM Treasury, Tata Play gave an overview of learnings implemented on managing cash and debt, from the past sessions.
On day 2, participants got to experience jewellery and watch manufacturing facilities at Hosur, Tamil Nadu. This visit helped the participants to better appreciate the nuances of the Titan business and the associated role of Treasury function.
The participants termed these 2-days of learning and sharing as an “enriching and unforgettable experience”. The Tata Treasury Forum will convene again in Q2, 2023. In the meantime, the participant companies will explore the feasibility of improving their existing processes with the learnings received during the sessions.
Participant Speak
The Treasury forum presentations and interactions were excellent, and the knowledge and practices sharing were very helpful. The visit to Titan watch factory and Jewelry factory was impressive and thank you to the teams who took us around. Overall, the whole program, including factory visits, were very well coordinated.
— K. Venkataramanan, ED-Finance/CFO, Tata Coffee Ltd, Bangalore