Ep. 206: Aparna Iyer – Learning and Leading at Wipro

Connect with Aparna: https://www.linkedin.com/in/aparna-iyer-7a6a135/

Full Episode Transcript:
Neha:

Welcome back to Count Me In, the podcast for management accountants making an impact in the business world. I'm Neha Lagoo Ratnakar from IMA. Today I'm speaking with Aparna Iyer, the treasurer and head of investor relations at vPro. Aparna's career. Got off to quite a promising start when she earned a gold medal for the highest score on the exams by the Institute of Chartered Accountants of India. She's gone on to hold many roles across the accounting and finance function at vPro, and along the way, she has constantly pushed herself out of a comfort zone to keep learning new skills and developing her empowering approach to leadership. We cover a lot of ground in this fascinating conversation from robotic process automation to the benefits of ambition to how we might be working in the Metaverse sooner than you think. Let's get started.

Neha:

Welcome to Count Me in, Aparna. It's such a pleasure to finally meet you for this conversation.

Aparna:

Thank you, Neha. It's an absolute pleasure, and I'm looking forward to this conversation, actually.

Neha:

Awesome. So let's start with an obvious question that's been on my mind ever since I'm knew about you. You joined vPro more than 19 years ago, and our generation is infamous for job hopping, right? Tell us more about your long and successful journey at vPro.

Aparna:

You know Neha, I'll just tell you briefly about myself. You know my father worked in a nationalized banking in India, and I in, you know, all the way up to 23 years when I joined vPro. I have not stayed in a city more than two years because we've been always hopping schools, colleges, you know, so for me, also, I'm quite taken by surprise that I actually managed to spend 20 years you know, in one place. And I think the credit actually needs to go to the organization. Because, you know, when I joined vPro, I was very impressionable, you know, rearing to go. I think what vPro really does well is, you know, it paces your career for you, right? I don't spend more than about three years in a role give or take. And every three years there is always something that's in the works for, you know, what next, how can things get better, bigger?

Aparna:

So in some sense, I've been truly you know, privileged and lucky that you know, I got an opportunity to work through multiple roles, multiple leaders, and the sector itself has evolved so much through these last you know, 20 years. So much more complexity. So much more M & A. You know, we've had you know in the last 10 years, you know, we've had so many new leaders join in. So the organization itself keeps changing. There's so much to learn and there's, it's such a growing sector that I, you know, I didn't even realize that I had spent 20 years. The other thing that we project does well, and, and is perhaps one of the bigger reasons for me staying back is in vPro finance, we really build you know, we hire people from campuses and then we build careers for them.

Aparna:

So all my peers are pretty much tenured in vPro, and we have like a shared history. So the camaraderie, the collaboration is just you know, off a very different level, which all of us thoroughly enjoy. So I would say that you know, other than what the organization puts in, it's what my peers put in both in terms of the kind of benchmark they set, how you know, enriching it is to work with them, how it is to learn from them and, you know, really contribute in the process, right? Like, work becomes fun when, you know, it's just extended family. So I would say these are, you know, two reasons why you know, it just work. And like they say, why fix something that's not broken?

Neha:

Wow. And that's been quite a journey. Thanks for sharing it with us, and I hope other companies are taking note of these excellent practices.

Aparna:

Yeah. Yeah.

Neha:

So what has been your biggest challenge in your career so far?

Aparna:

Neha? You know, I think every time you take up a new role, you feel that, oh my God, this is just so much more challenging than you know, what I've ever done. But, you know, truly I was most apprehensive about was coming back to work after I had my daughter. And that I think would have been perhaps the most challenging phase of my career, because I was just coming back from a six month long break at where I was doing something completely different, right? And somehow when I joined back, and I never thought I would feel like that. I felt very low on confidence, and I wasn't sure whether this is what I wanted to do. Is this the purpose? You know, I felt so overwhelmed you know, taking care of a young baby and coming back to something very intensive at you know, in the vPro finance, it was perhaps one of the, you know, phases where I really needed help, right?

Aparna:

From all my mentors, from the organization, from my peers, from my reports. And thankfully, you know, that that phase, you know, lasted for about nine months to a year where you know, I was just wanted to find my confidence again. And, you know, once that happened, right? And time, with time every quarter, it kept getting better. You know, all us finance professionals live quarter, quarter, say quarter, like they say, right? Three or four quarters under the belt, I was feeling a lot more confident, again. So that I think was one of the most challenging phases because, you know, I needed to find that balance and make sure, you know, I was getting it right. So that was one point where I felt you know, I really needed the support of the ecosystem. The other part was when I, you know, took on something like treasury and IR, you know, invest relations, the current role that I did, that I'm doing I took this on three years back and you know, I'd not done treasury at all in the first, you know 18 years or first 17 years of my career, knew nothing about markets, hedging investments, and, you know, we all are exposed to it as finance professionals, but I've not done it, you know, with a KRI to exceed a certain benchmark.

Aparna:

Coming in and knowing when you know that you are the person who's perhaps knows the least about that subject in the team, and yet you are the leader, I think it poses very different challenges. So, pushing myself out of the comfort zone, being okay with the fact that, you know, for another six months, I'm going to be the person who's gonna be least informed in a room, and yet I had to lead it, yet I had to bring my perspective to it, yet I had to understand and learn and, and work with people. So I think that was also another challenging phase, right? But it's only a matter of time, you know? You just need to apply yourself. So that's the other myth I busted, right? So a lot of them say they don't wanna try different things because they're just so concerned that, you know, how will they add value?

Aparna:

What I really understood about adding value is you, your, your vantage point can be so different, and the value that you bring to the team or you bring to a function can be so different. It may not always come from the tried and tested path, You know the vantage point that you'll have is very different, and you bring way different perspectives, and you can always add value no matter what you do. Cause everything else is just adjacent. So, you know, those are very good learnings for me. And it was challenging and I was very unsure and anxious many times, but I think you had to give it some time and, you know, you lace it.