He came to do one job but finds himself doing another. He came to work with a certain set of people and finds himself working with quite another.
That's the piquant situation in which Ramki Sundaram, the 38-year-old officiating chief executive officer of SimpliFly Deccan finds himself today.
Sundaram came back from London after a two-year stint with Investec Bank to join Air Deccan this February as its chief financial officer, with G R Gopinath, the airline's then managing director, at the helm of affairs. His foremost task was to raise money for the airline and then to help manage that money more efficiently.
A part of that task was already done, when UB chairman Vijay Mallya bought a 26 per cent stake in the carrier for Rs 550 crore (Rs 5.50 billion) within four months of Sundaram's joining. "I still have to make sure that the money is properly used and the company is out of the woods," he says, adding that the one term that best describes his experience so far is "roller coaster".
He concedes that things have been different from what he anticipated but not that different either. "I think the writing was on the wall.
Whether it was a strategic or a financial investor, Air Deccan did need an investor. I may not have anticipated the kind of consolidation that took place in the industry but that consolidation would happen was evident," he says.
Today, he, along with a small team of members, is leading the infusion of red in the airline's total brand makeover following the buyout by Mallya, even as they try to steer it out of the red financially. He says that may happen only next year but adds that as Deccan begins to "digest" the growth it witnessed, happen it will.
Airlines is pretty familiar territory for Sundaram. He's worked with various Indian carriers like Jet and Sahara on deals that involved raising finance. This was during his stint with ANZ Investment Bank in Mumbai where he spent over seven years.
He leveraged his expertise in finance to raise $500 million for Reliance Petroleum during the same period. He moved with the bank to London, looking after the aviation portfolio across various regions including Europe, Africa, parts of Asia and India.
It was at his next assignment with Investec Bank that he met Gopinath. The bank helped structure a $100 million deal for Air Deccan in September 2006. The two became friends and the relationship was cemented with Gopinath convincing Sundaram to come back and join his beleaguered airline.
For Sundaram, coming back to India where the "action really was" was both a challenge and an opportunity. He'd been doing a lot of India-related business out of London. Why not be in India and do India business, he considered?
Not what you'd call the traditional old world CFO (typically, an audit-oriented chartered accountant), Sundaram, according to industry sources, brings with him a certain business sense and realism. With his banking background and experience with raising money for deals, he knows how critical it is for a proposal, business or company to be bankable. "There is no line like the bottomline" is usually the mantra for his breed.
An ex-IIT and XLRI product, Sundaram started his career with ICICI Securities in 1995, at a time when ICICI Securities was one of the hottest places to join. There he used to advise companies on drafting, executing and implementing financial plans for projects. With his present assignment, he's pretty much going to need all the expertise he imparted.
