BONUS | Kavya Ramesh - CMAs Making a Difference

Count Me In®

Contact Kavya Ramesh: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kavyavramesh/

IMA Life: Earn What You Deserve, by Kavya Ramesh: https://sfmagazine.com/post-entry/february-2020-ima-life-earn-what-you-deserve/

IMA Launches Global Ad Campaign to Highlight How CMAs Make a Difference in Business:

https://www.imanet.org/about-ima/news-and-media-relations/press-releases/2020/9/14/ima-launches-global-ad-campaign-to-highlight-how-cmas-make-a-difference-in-business

Watch IMA’s “The CMA makes all the difference” television commercials on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q9TUx2zNJuk&list=PL_PvlGddtOgFQUwJV7pWyXJoBox5f33Or&index=1

FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
Mitch: (00:05)
Welcome back to Count Me In, IMA's podcast about all things affecting the accounting and finance world. I'm your host Mitch Roshong, and today I'm going to bring you a bonus episode of our series. In this episode, we're featuring one of our CMAs Making a Difference. The CMA is Making a Difference campaign is a part of a worldwide initiative at IMA its goal is to showcase the many ways that earning IMA's Certified Management Accountant certification can set your career on an incredible new path, giving accounting and finance professionals access to exciting career and leadership opportunities. The campaign also tells stories of CMAs who are truly making an impact within their organizations, and in some cases around the world. Today, we're speaking with Kavya Ramesh, a CMA who is the co-founder and Chief Operating Officer of Techno Grow Analytics, LLP Techno Grow provides technology consulting services to the hospitality industry. Kavya is based in Bangalore, and she speaks with my co-host Adam about earning her CMA and the various opportunities it has presented. So now let's head over to the conversation and hear how this CMA is Making a Difference.
Adam: (01:19)
So can you share something specific that the CMA has enabled you to do?
Kavya: (01:24)
All right, so this might come off as a bit unusual, but for me it wasn't just the accounting part of the course, but actually the non-accounting part of the CMA that gave me an incredible edge. It was strategic planning, decision analysis, risk management, investment decision-making, and to an extent, even the technology and analytics part that, helped me to broaden my horizon and to look for continued innovation and everything I did. So soon after graduating and passing my CMA exams, this is an interesting story, right? So I joined this company, as an associate consultant, and I was a part of their projects division. So I was involved in budgeting and financing projects from scratch. This firm operates in the hospitality sector, and while working here, I got the opportunity to explore a lot of operational aspects of the industry. So the above-mentioned concepts, right, that I learned from the US CMA, they drove a spirit of innovation if I could say. And I realized that I could bring a sort of change in the setup of the form.A new extort process, if you will, that could bring in a lot of change in the way the company operates. So while we were delving into this, I actually got struck by an idea that could in the very near future change the way the entire industry operated. So as a result of that, we have formed a startup today that is called Techno and Analytics, LLP, and I'm one of their co-founding partners. So our startup is basically in the process of free thinking and reinventing the role of technology in the hospitality industry. So we currently have a very diverse team working on our applications, and we're now ready to launch in the market. In fact, as I mentioned earlier, this is brought in our new marketing team and we're working on, how we can strategize our market entry. So all said and done, whatever the case may be, the ability to develop and conceptualize a new idea and to lead a team and to see it grow to this extent, all of this came to me, thanks to the CMA.
Adam: (03:36)
So I think it's amazing that you're part of a startup so early in your career. So what's that like being part of a startup?
Kavya: (03:41)
So I always knew I wanted to do something by myself that I could really connect to and I could make an impact with, right. So when we had this idea of, we jumped right into forming a team and all the process, every step, every day was a learning curve. Seeing that my day starts by working with 50 year olds, people who have seen generations together before I was born and seeing people my age step in and take the lead on the forefront of operations. It's been a great mix of people that I could learn so much from. And technology and analytics was something new to me. So while working towards the startup and these, the applications that we working on, I in fact, got to do a lot of up-skilling or cross skilling for that matter. So I took up some coding lessons. I took a few, designing because we worked on most of this from scratch. So it's like, it's like seeing a baby grow up, you know, infancy to say a toddlers is so far. It's been great every day, I wake up with a drive to, to see, you know, what this day holds for me.
Adam: (04:57)
That's amazing. So looking at that beautiful story that you just told, where do you kind of envision yourself in 5to 10 years?
Kavya: (05:05)
In the next 5-10 years, I envisioned myself as a happy leader who is devoted to serving causes that empower people around me. I see myself as the head of my startup that's on itself, great trust and confidence from the industry. I also see myself as a loving individual doing the best I can for everyone around me. On a personal note, I see myself devoting a lot more time of my day and teaching yoga. So a lesson on fact about me is that I'm a certified yoga instructor. So there's nothing better than seeing my students leave the class with a smile. So that's the way I love to begin my day. And I'd like to see myself doing more of that five years down the line. I think in the next 10 years, I'd have gained a lot more volunteering experience too, and what opportunities IMA would have for me then are only imaginable. And so I really can't wait to give back my most of this institution that has so wonderfully shaped my career. So my goal in the next five to 10 years is basically channeled all that I have learned so far into giving back.
Adam: (06:08)
What's one goal that you want to accomplish in your career?
Kavya: (06:12)
Alright, so my goal in courier and also in life is to have harmony. I believe that for all of us, there are three aspects of life, that make and break who we are and how we living. So these three aspects for me are health, wealth, and love. I would see my career as a successful one. If every day, all my actions are bringing harmony in these three facets of life, health, wealth, and love. I've given this quite a lot of thought since I started at university with the rights and CRT competence and motivation, excellence would follow. But what is that? What truly matters, right? For me, it isn't just the materialistic success it's and that's why my goal is to succeed in all these three aspects, have great health, create wealth and create love. And this isn't something that I look to achieve one day, the goal is to keep accomplishing this e...