CFO Chats with Mrinal Kapoor, Head of Finance for APAC at Nutanix

Can you please tell us about yourself and your role at Nutanix?

I lead the finance function for the Asia Pacific region at Nutanix, a cloud software company. I basically look after anything to do with financial reporting, topics, investment decisions, and so on.

How did you first get into the finance industry, and what has been your career journey to becoming a CFO? 

I didn’t study finance at all; I studied engineering. After that, I didn’t really pursue a career in engineering. I joined a bank right after college, and that’s how my finance journey started. Then, I worked at a hedge fund for about three years. I’ve always been drawn to finance somehow; it’s just that I didn’t have any formal education in the field.

The financial landscape is constantly evolving. What challenges are you currently facing, and how are you addressing them? 

For us, as a company, the biggest challenge is more on the talent side, just attracting the right kind of talent for the software we’re selling. From a financial perspective, we’re doing quite well, luckily.

What’s the biggest financial mistake you see companies make, and how can they avoid it?

The biggest mistake many companies make is when the economic environment is good. They tend to spend a lot of money and overhire, which always comes back to bite them because the cycle will always turn. At some point, the cycle will turn, and you will have no choice but to reduce resources. The challenge is really to be prudent even when times are good. So, be careful about spending even if the external environment looks favourable. That’s key for any finance function.

What trends or technologies do you believe will have the biggest impact on financial strategy and decision-making?

AI, of course, is the biggest possibility right now. It will have a huge impact not just in terms of resources and how we think about them, because, obviously, one of the biggest expenses I manage is human resource expense or salaries, for example. If AI becomes more prevalent over time, we might be in a situation where we don’t need as many human resources because we can do a lot of things without actually hiring people. That will have a huge impact. Something more pressing for finance could be simply the tools we’re using for our day-to-day work, which could become a lot more efficient and, again, good and bad, would make us a lot more productive. On that side, many people in the finance function might not be employed anymore.

How do you balance the need for financial innovation with the demand for risk management and compliance?

That’s where you need to work closely with other functions in your organisation and ensure that whatever innovations or investments you’re looking to make align with and don’t breach any compliance requirements. For example, we make it a point to stress to everyone in our organisation dealing with external parties to ensure that just because they have the budget to spend on clients doesn’t mean they do it in a way that’s not compliant with local regulations or could be perceived as bribes. It is tricky, but you just have to put the right controls in place and make sure you’re working with other departments.

What’s one question all CFOs should be asking themselves today?

It would be in terms of what the future looks like and how that’s going to change finance as a function going forward, whether it’s AI or any other trends we’re seeing right now. It’s, ‘Are we making investments right now that might end up being absolutely useless?’ Or, are we not investing enough in certain resources like tools and software that could make us more productive and therefore give us more returns? It’s a very interesting crossroads everyone faces when figuring out where to invest right now.

Lastly, how do you approach developing the next generation of finance leaders within your organisation?

It’s something we have to keep in mind at all times because it’s easy to neglect, simply because it doesn’t have a bearing on your day-to-day work. However, ultimately, over the longer term, it does have an impact. Unless you’re grooming the next set of leaders for your organisation or for the finance function, you’re going to end up in a situation where you’d be forced to make many changes or forced to hire externally, for example, but that can really affect the culture and morale of any organisation. 

What we do in our organisation is to first ensure we hire with the long term in mind. Even if someone is right for a job they’re interviewing for, we don’t just think about it from that perspective; we look at it from a future career trajectory perspective. So, when you’re hiring someone, you want to make sure that not only will they be able to do the job they’ll be doing on day one, but also that two or five years down the line, they’ll still be able to contribute to the organisation in a different capacity. Also, on a regular basis, we ensure that the leadership team and any managers or senior managers are all engaging with their direct reports and making sure they’re supporting their growth and development on an ongoing basis instead of relying on either external sources or completely neglecting it.