Arjun Subramanian is Head Credit-NBFC Lending & Portfolio Acquisition Shriram Finance Limited, currently located at Mumbai. In a career spanning over 10 years, he has been engaged with organizations like NABFINS, Northern Arc. He has a penchant for photography and travelling to places like national parks.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/arjun-subramanian
Q. How has been your journey from IIFM so far?
A. After two invaluable years at the campus, we all had to grapple with the age-old question of “where next?” as the campus life was inadvertently a bubble allowing us to soak in essential knowledge and life skills, but I was still unsure of how that tangibly translates to jobs and making a living. I did have some fundamentals clearly laid out:
1. I need to make money and level up with what the mainstream defined as success.
2. Any work I try to do in the development sector can’t be academic.
3. Any transformative development work could only be done when you are sitting at the source from where the money flows.
I was lucky to have got campus placed with NABARD Financial Services Ltd. (NABFINS- subsidiary of the NABARD) which was their first foray into direct lending in the first set of management trainees/campus recruits. It put me in front of a strategic vision of the country’s largest and greatest development finance organization.
In retrospect, there were two invaluable lessons take away from my first job:
- There is no substitute for solid field exposure which is available in abundance in a public sector institution and
- Second, working directly with visionary leaders like Padmashri Aloysius Fernandez (Father of the Indian SHG movement) and Mr C P Mohan (Rtd. CGM NABARD), made me believe that there is light at the end of the tunnel if one was truly passionate about development finance.
After 17 months of eventful stint in NABFINS, I moved on to IFMR Capital (Now known as Northern Arc Capital) which is one of the largest wholesale lenders to Inclusive finance sector, where I was part of the Credit & Risk team for 7 years. Same Problem was solved by the private sector, which also attracted one of the best minds from prestigious campuses for ushering in financial inclusion. This stint brought in a high level of professional rigour and challenged me intellectually to ask the right questions.
Then I joined a US-based Impact Debt fund Developing World Markets and managed their debt fund worth USD 150 MM in South & Southeast Asia where I was there for 2 years based in their New Delhi office. Last year I have joined as the Head of NBFC Lending & Portfolio Acquisition with Shriram Finance Limited, which is the largest Retail NBFC in the country and moved to Mumbai.
Q. What were some of the key milestones/learning in this journey that you would like to share with us?
A. The two stints that were turning points in my career are NABFINS and IFMR Capital. NABFINS gave me a lot of responsibility at an early stage, and I was heading all of Tamil Nadu Operations and parts of neighboring Karnataka having a team of 40-50 reporting to me which also involved some senior bankers was a task in itself. It taught me the importance of dealing with people who in most cases come from diverse backgrounds, speak multiple dialects of the same language which inadvertently makes you an outsider, stakeholders not on the same page as you, may not have the same agendas and getting them to work towards an organizational objective requires a lot of conviction. At a young age handling so much responsibility was overwhelming and gratifying. Still, it leaves you with a thought of not being fully equipped to be taking all the decisions that impact the lives of so many people along with having economic implications.
My next stint at IFMR Capital was very different as it taught me taking decisions objectively relying heavily on data evidence, financial analysis, and operating within the ambit of well-defined underwriting framework. It allowed me to conduct Due Diligence/Risk monitoring across 100+ NBFCs, MFIs, and HFCs across the country seeing their field operations, meeting their end customers, meeting their founders, senior management and forming a credit view on and carrying out industry benchmark capital market transactions.
Q. What is the most satisfying part in your career?
A. My career allowed me to do what I love doing (or was it the other way around ☺ ). Financial Inclusion in the last decade or so has been about new NBFCs emerging with an addressable target segment where banks are falling short and they are leveraging on that niche to grow their balance sheet. As a lender understanding these unique models and partaking in this growth journey is the most satisfying part. A lot of travel (including remote rural) gives me a sense of having my ears to the ground which makes it even more rewarding.
Q. Has your learning at IIFM helped in shaping how you approach your professional roles?
A. As we come across more IIFM’ites in our industry and outside including colleagues, I can clearly see the common trait of tenacity and resilience, we all invariably possess. The Summer internship, exhaustive fieldwork and the course curriculum give you an edge to be more aware of the pressing needs of society around climate, development and natural resources. The ability to sharpen your expertise in a particular area is generally left to you but the ability to traverse steep learning curves comes to you naturally as the course structure is designed like that. As you figure out subjects like GIS, EIA, and Quant methods (I was relatively more confident here), one gets to know so much about research methodology which generally many have not done before; it is similar to life throwing at you many such surprises and when the going gets tough the tough get going ☺!
Staying grounded while pursuing professional success is probably another virtue IIFM instills in you. An IIFM’ite knows he/she can spot one in a crowd of successful people!
Q. Who (or what) are the biggest influences or drivers in your careers? What would be your advice to freshers and IIFM graduates who are looking to choose similar sectors/roles.
A. One draws energy from the people around so I would say there is as much to learn from a top-notch CEO/Development Banker and also from the last mile SHG women borrower who can offer you financial management lessons better than anyone in the world. My advice would be the borrowed catchall phrase “stay hungry stay foolish” – soak in your surroundings in the two years at IIFM. Keep learning new things, read a lot of books, newspapers as learning never stops. Find clarity in what you would like to do, for example: In finance there is lot of technical stuff regulations, structures, transactions which evolve constantly, try finding work which challenges you keeps you in the core of cutting edge work happening in the industry, find roles you thoroughly enjoy if you have to do this for many years to come.
And finally, it is also important to find fun time be it family, hobbies, travel anything that helps you unwind.
Q. What are your favorite memories during your IIFM days?
A. IIFM was all about the different events – be it the festival celebrations, field trips, the treks around the campus, the caves, grasslands, and neighboring Van Vihar. I was the nature club coordinator in my final year and all the events we did around photography workshops, Nature awareness programs, late-night movie screenings of documentaries, engagements we did with the Pardhi kids part of Archana Ma’ams NGO (Aranya). Another memory was being part of the Placement Committee and learning the ropes of presenting ourselves to companies and all the work involved around the same. Making sure every batchmate walked out with a job in his hand was a huge responsibility and sitting through those interview rounds and managing the entire process was rewarding despite being stressful.
Q. In hindsight, what was the biggest contribution or take away from IIFM that you think played a critical role in shaping you as an individual or professional?
A. IIFM equips you well with the bare essentials to take on challenges thrown at you; the rest lies in how you steer your career from then on maximizing on the opportunities you get.
Individuals across the industry recognize the unique talent IIFM has to offer which primarily comes from our alumni who have worked there before or these people have come across elsewhere. I still remember when I graduated it was clear that there is no well laid out path for us so we need to find our way on what we want to do vs what we are getting in the real world and then make it work. So make the most of your time at IIFM, seeking guidance from faculties, finding literature in the library all of which is available to you and also exploring additional professional certification if it is required for your choosen path.
I have had long chats with professors like CSR Sir, Ujjal Sir, Advait Sir (it’s a long list) generally on the life outside and have come back feeling more wise on how to think about the way forward. It leaves me with no doubt that life out of the classroom that IIFM offered had a much larger influence on the person I am today.
Q. The best buddies / seniors /faculty at IIFM? Some memorable tidbits that you like to share?
A. Our batch had the famous tagline quoted by our Aravind Garimella “One Batch, One Voice, Lets Roar” and we were very united in that sense. There was a whole bunch of people one would hang out with but to name a few people who I would have spent a fair share of my time would be Subhrapratim Pramanik, Komal Preet Kaur, Neelima Mishra, Satyendra Gupta, Allan Jacob, Narendra Mohan, Shitiz Chaudhry, Shivanshu Sharma, Vamsi Krishna, Ankit Singh and there are many whose names if taken would loop us back to the first sentence of this answer. Well there is one incidence where we self-invited ourselves for fiilter Coffee to CVRS Sir’s house which was initially 3-4 people and the list of students just kept going up, having said that the coffee was excellent and Sir has always been a great host 😊
Q. As an alumni, what’s your advice to freshers or those are joining IIFM to get best out of the 2 years there?
A. IIFM has a lot to offer in terms of courses, field exposure, faculty & research expertise. I have always believed the idea of an institution and course of this nature was always ahead of its time. Freshers should be patient and soak themselves in what IIFM has to offer while also looking out at what more could be added. Finding clarity on what you want to do next is a constant predicament you would face at different stages of your professional journey.
Q. What was your typical day at the work? And how does it look like while you are on a break?
A. At Shriram Finance Limited I head the Financial Institutional lending business which has very recently started and involves end to end activities from origination to portfolio management. So the day has a multitude of presumably high level stuff like commercial negotiations, structuring and business meetings to fairly operational things around legal documentation, resolving auditor & regulator queries, getting KYC compliances done both having high & low priority items.
My day would require me to step into anything that is needed for a lending business to work smoothly. There are multiple client calls/meetings lined up, active due diligence undergoing on live proposals, business development and pipeline building, management reviews, credit committee meetings and more!! As you step into the corporate world you would understand there are more than many meeting nomenclatures that a dictionary can accommodate. So I try to switch off from work once I come home and my 3 year old daughter keeps me on my toes. Keeping a young mind occupied and interested takes a fair bit of quirkiness to achieve.
Q. And how about weekends, hobbies, family and anything else you want to add?
A. I have tried to keep up with photography and travel to national parks like we recently went to the Sunderbans. My wife Dhivya also has a development sector background and we both like similar kinds of travel. We are trying to introduce our daughter Kavya to appreciating the small little things in life like birds, flowers, butterflies and the natural landscapes on this planet.
Q. Favorite Books, movies, authors?
A. I read mostly non-fiction these days with the most recent one being “Breaking The Mold” by Raghuram Rajan and Rohit Lamba. Other favourite writers being Ramchandra Guha for non-fiction and Jefferey Archer, Khalid Hosseini, Jhumpa Lahiri in fiction. Diverse set of movies/OTTs across languages with favorites being Nolan, Tarantino opus magnums to Shahrukh, Aamir, Amitabh to Rajnikanth,Kamal Haasan, Fahadh Faasil, Vijay Sethupathy movies.
Q. IIFM is driven by alumni’s passion and commitments towards its goal. How would you like to contribute to IIFM or IIFM alumni, students? Your engagement with IIFM Placement or OT/SI?
A. I am open to lot of things like taking guest lectures, mentoring (someone very senior told me this is very important though I am yet to find a mentor for myself), and Placements we could look at as our budgets expand but in my past organization have been to IIFM campus placements I guess in 2019. I must say the approach across be it the Alumni Association, external positioning and the way placements are done at IIFM has improved significantly. Happy to jump into any leg where my skillset could find use for my alma mater.
Q. What do you think is different at IIFM now vs when you studied there?
A. The worth of an institute increases as more alumni join the senior decision making levels of the real economy (workforce/businesses) and when I graduated we were not as networked as we are today (credits to technology + the efforts taken by a lot of dynamic alumni). The Director of the institute is also an alumni which could have never been envisaged in the past and has taken positive strides (maybe I am rooting for the home team). So the institute is at the precipice of transformative times and its stars are shining bright. As the country braces to reap its demographic dividend so should the IIFM of today prepare for the same.
Q. Any suggestions on who you want to get profiled/interviewed here?
A. I am not sure how many have been profiled but would like to get some senior batch people like Anshukant Taneja (ADB), Lalit Bhandari (IFC) ,Rajaram Sankaran, Sunil Rajagopal. From my senior batch, Kiran KP, Morchan Karthick, Akshat Nagar, Arun Sreekumar and my batch Narendra Mohan, Shitiz Chaudhry, Ramkrishna Atre.