cfo Profile now as Joint Executive President, Finance & Commercial at UltraTech Cement, part of the same AV Birla empire. Over the next decade, Mr Podaar worked and lived across India as his wife and child travelled with him. First came the posting in Kolkata as Regional Commercial Head (1997) and then in July 1999 he moved to Bangalore as the Zonal Commercial Head for the entire southern region. “By this time though I wanted a change in job role. Luckily, around 1999 the AV Birla group underwent a restructuring exercise. A new cement business unit was carved out and the cement divisions of both India Rayon and Grasim came under one roof. Suddenly my responsibilities doubled,” he recalls. Still, the ambitious and restless spirit of this boy from Muzaffarpur refused to give in. He wanted a bigger share of the pie, a larger responsibility and job role. So in 2004, he moved to Delhi as the Zonal Commercial Head of the much larger Northern Zone. “Around this time we acquired the cement business of L&T and I suppose my experience across different zones made me a top contender for a bigger role,” he laughs. Sure enough in December 2004 Podaar became the All India Commercial Head, Marketing for UltraTech Cement and moved to the company’s headquarters in Mumbai. The gypsy life had finally ended and he had reached his destination — India’s financial capital, the Maximum City. “Mumbai has been home since 2005. In 2007, I briefly moved to the ready-mix business of the company since it was at the take-off stage and I was given the task of systemising and managing the commercial side of growing the RMC business,” he says, the pride unmistakable in his voice. His success at achieving this near-impossible task along with his team, was rewarded when he became the National Commercial Head (Marketing) of the cement business of AV Birla group in 2009 with a designation that read: “Joint Executive President, Finance & Commercial, UltraTech Cement.” Life since then has been challenging to say the least, but more often than not, under his commercial management, UltraTech seems to have come up on top. “The last year in particular has been challenging with increasing focus on customer satisfaction in a tough market. The cement industry as a whole is going through rough times,” he says. 32
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january 2012
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a practising ca, Podaar’s career saw a steep upward climb after he moved out of muzaffarpur to work in the corporate sector
Yet, he feels that UltraTech’s decision to focus on customer service has paid rich dividends. “A recent survey of cement dealers revealed that we are not just way above the industry average but better than all our rivals when it comes to matters such as issuing credit notes, timely solution of queries, invoicing and accounting practices. I consider this a genuinely noteworthy achievement in a tough year,” he says. That UltraTech’s bad debts and outstanding too are now firmly under control (for the 2011-12 period), is a measure of how good this year has been for the organisation. Podaar thanks “a robust credit management