Professional record
Three years in the books.
The full CA articleship — March 2023 to March 2026 — at K C Mehta & Co LLP, Bengaluru. Six client businesses reported to a foreign parent, a grant audit run on behalf of an overseas donor, and an automation build that changed how the branch does its routine work.
Article Trainee — K C Mehta & Co LLP
Three years in the firm's Incubation Support Service team, the group that acts as the whole finance function for Indian subsidiaries of foreign companies. That means the same person prepares the books, the returns, the board pack and the audit file — so nothing can be waved through as somebody else's problem.
- Monthly reporting packs to foreign head offices, segment-wise and cost-centre-wise
- Budgets, comparatives and year-to-go forecasts two years out
- Statutory audit support, tax audit reports and income-tax returns
- GST, TDS/TCS, EPF/EPS, professional tax, FLAR, FC-GPR and ROC filings
- 3 years
- Mar 2023 — Mar 2026, one firm, one team
- 6 businesses
- Indian subsidiaries of foreign parents, run as one finance function
- ₹5 cr — ₹100 cr+
- Turnover span across the client group
- 6 sectors
- Automotive components, batteries, water, security, HVAC, precision machinery
The six businesses
Manufacturing, trading and servicesDifferent industries, different cost structures, the same monthly discipline. Reading six sets of books side by side for three years is where a feel for what a normal margin looks like actually comes from.
Automotive parts
Manufacturer, turnover above ₹100 crore. The largest and most complex of the six — multi-plant costing and segment reporting.
Automotive batteries
Trading business, turnover above ₹60 crore. Inventory-heavy, with the working-capital cycle to match.
Water solutions
Turnover above ₹5 crore. Project-based revenue recognition and long receivable cycles.
Enterprise security
Solutions provider — a services and installation mix, with revenue split across supply and maintenance.
HVAC systems
Trading and servicing. Warranty provisioning and annual-maintenance-contract accounting.
Precision machinery
Trading and servicing, with imports — customs, ICEGATE registration and foreign-currency exposure.
Reporting & analysis
The monthly pack
Financial report, business report and presentation deck to the foreign head office every month: segment-wise and cost-centre-wise analysis, budget versus actual, and period-on-period comparatives. Written for readers who had never seen the underlying ledger and were making decisions from the pack alone.
Redesigning it, unasked
The inherited business report showed profit and little else. On my own initiative I rebuilt it to carry cash-flow analysis, ratio analysis and charts, so the reader could see why the number moved rather than only that it had. Senior management kept the new format.
Budgets and forecasts
Year-to-go forecasts and two-year budgets built from the operating drivers rather than by growing last year by a percentage — volumes, realisations, headcount and fixed-cost blocks, each with its own assumption that could be argued with.
Stock audit, single-handed
Entrusted with an entire stock audit alone — planning, counting, reconciliation and the report — and brought it in to the manager's expectations. The first engagement I owned end to end.
A grant-utilisation audit, for the party whose money was at risk
A major Bengaluru university's non-profit wing received funding from an overseas donor under an agreement with conditions attached — what the money could be spent on, what had to be reported, and which local laws had to be complied with along the way. I was appointed on behalf of the donor, not the recipient, to test whether those conditions were actually being met.
- Traced grant spending back to the utilisation terms in the agreement, line by line
- Tested compliance with the legal and regulatory conditions attached to foreign funding
- Reported to the donor directly, in terms a non-accountant could act on
The university and the donor are not named here, as the engagement remains confidential.
Automating the branch's routine work
Designed and implementedMost of a small branch's hours go on the same handful of tasks: retyping documents into Tally, chasing payments, reconciling GST, and rebuilding the same MIS every month. I designed and implemented AI automation for the Bengaluru branch to take those back.
Documents straight into Tally
Email bodies, invoices and other vouchers converted directly into Tally entries instead of being read on one screen and typed into another. The retyping step is where both the hours and the typos were.
Excel systems
Purpose-built formats for payment runs, inventory tracking, and GST reconciliation between the books and the returns actually filed — the reconciliation that usually surfaces as a nasty surprise at year end.
Monthly MIS that builds itself
The management information pack now assembles from the ledger rather than being rebuilt by hand every month, which is what makes it possible to send it on the third instead of the thirteenth.
Compliance covered
Positions of responsibility
Trusted with the whole engagement
Handed a stock audit to run alone, and delivered it. Separately, redesigned a client's core management report without being asked to — and had the change adopted.
Captaincy
Captained my house football team to consecutive gold medals in the 9th and 10th, and the interdepartmental cricket team through both years of PUC.