Bharat Jaswani is Finance Manager at Prodigal, where he keeps everything running smoothly.

‍Where do you live?

Mumbai. I'm originally from Durg, Chhattisgarh, but I moved here to complete my mandatory internship to become a Chartered Accountant.

Why Prodigal?

Before Prodigal, I worked at Deloitte. I've always been interested in business, and working there for four years helped me understand businesses really well.

In consulting, it's hard to get insight into all the business processes, touching all five functions, because I was only meeting finance people. I always dreamed of being at the forefront of a business and not just consulting from the shadows.

Given that Prodigal is a startup, that makes my role much broader. There are the orthodox financial things -  preparing books of accounts, reviewing contracts, ensuring that revenue is recognized, paying vendors, processing payrolls on time, paying taxes, making sure what is due is compliant and filed on time.

But I'm also responsible for building processes. If this were a large corporation, these parts of the puzzle would have been solved already. But given that we are six years old, working to shake up the incumbents in our industry, there are still processes we need to spend two hours on now to save us 20 hours later.

Finance touches every part of the business. Driving alignment is a very critical part of my job. Sometimes frustrating, because, different sides of stories come from different perspectives, so you're trying to absorb everyone's frustration as well. So it becomes central to just keep calm and keep focusing on what you want to achieve, what you want to do as a goal, and keep ensuring that you spread the culture, spread the vibe, ensure that everyone is working in a very collaborative manner.

When I’m not working, you can find me…

I'm more of an indoor person. I come across as very extroverted, socially outgoing, which I am, but surprisingly, I do not like to step out a lot.

I like house parties. I like chilling in together, watching a movie or probably playing cards or playing Jenga.

I love to watch sports. I'm huge into football [American translation: soccer] but I end up only catching the finals or the semi-finals of football.

I'm huge into cricket. I am a Virat Kohli fan. He's the biggest cricket name in the world right now. I followed him since he was like 19 years old. I fell in love with his style of cricket very early into his career and to see his journey and now dominating the world in the field of cricket, it really inspires me. He has a great work ethic, he's dedicated - that's really motivating and inspiring.

I started following him when he was 19, and now he's almost 36. To look at him, to know he still wants to pursue excellence, wants to step up every game, wants to keep evolving and still have the child inside of him, that's something I absolutely relate to.

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What would your co-workers be surprised to know about you?

I'd rather not tell them.

‍What’s your favorite Prodigal value?

"We pursue excellence" and "We are curiously optimistic."

Excellence is most in everything we do, and curious optimism is the hardest for me. It's very hard to absorb all elements of the business and still try to be optimistic in general.

In life, I've had the mom who has always said no to everything. So I have been conditioned to think of no's first. I'm really trying to come out of that phase.

Pursuing excellence is something I really like to live by. And curious optimism is where I really want to do better.

What role are you hiring for?

Assistant Manager of Finance.

This is a dream role for anyone who wants to really challenge themselves and come at the center of the business. Given we are a very lean team and we have access to everyone, every function, that means that we absorb a lot, we learn from them a lot and end up gaining a lot of insights into the business.

Anyone who wants to be challenged, but also learn a lot, who's really, really hungry to prove something and wants to achieve, this is the place to be because there are really good things happening around us. In my view, we know we can be one of the biggest companies - a unicorn or multi-billion company given the people we have.

I hardly ever feel there was a day where I didn't learn anything from someone new. And so I'm always very grateful and this role would offer anyone with that opportunity to learn from really smart, good people.