Meet an Enthusiastic Financial Expert Formulating Top-Notch Financial Strategies- Pratibha K. Advani, Chief Financial Officer, Tata Communications

A dedicated Chartered Accountant, Pratibha K. Advani carries over two decades of varied experience ranging from financial strategy, project financing, M&A, risk management, and legal and secretarial. Currently, she holds this huge responsibility of managing strategic financial management of Tata Communications as Chief Financial Officer including corporate affairs & investor relations. Pratibha is heading this position since May, 2015.

Tata Communications is a global company with its roots in the emerging markets. Headquartered in Mumbai and Singapore, it has more than 8,000 employees across 38 countries. Over the past decade, Tata Communications has evolved from a wholesale service provider serving the Indian market to a leading provider of A New World of Communications to enterprise customers and service providers worldwide.

As a child, Pratibha was curious to study arts, but a discussion with her father made her crack the chartered accountant entrance exam. As a Chartered Accountant, Pratibha started her career with ITC Ltd. and was the Chief Financial Officer at Barclays Shared Services Pvt. Ltd. (a subsidiary of Barclays Bank Plc) and Vice President Finance & Chief Financial Officer at GE-SBI Cards. She learnt a bit from everyone-to be process driven from ITC.

Pratibha then joined NIIT Technologies Ltd. in 2010 as Chief Financial Officer where she led the Finance, Secretarial, Compliance, Regulatory, Legal, Secretarial and Investor Relations function for the group spanning across 24 subsidiaries and branches globally. When she joined NIIT’s, she had huge responsibility on her shoulders, as the entire budgeting was manual and consisted of 70 Microsoft Excel sheets. She introduced a SAP module, and collapsed the month-long process into three to four days.

A Chartered Accountant from ICAI, Pratibha has a Bachelor of Commerce (Honours) degree from Shri Ram College of Commerce. For her extraordinary knowledge and work performance she was awarded with the CNBC TV18 ‘CFO of the Year’ 2014 award under the ITSS category and has many more accolades to her credit, including the Business Today ‘Best Woman CFO Award’ 2014 and the GE Chairman’s Excellence Award for three successive years (2004-2006). Pratibha was also included in the CFO100 League of Honour 2015.