Influential Woman · Fintech

Shruthi Sathyanarayanan

Manager, Uniqus Consultech Inc.

San Jose, CA

Certifications · Degrees · Memberships

Degree Indian Chartered Accountant qualification Cert Indian Chartered Accountant Cert US CPA Member ICAISFO Community (Indian Chartered Accountants in San Francisco)

Her Story

About Shruthi

I'm an Indian chartered accountant and a US CPA, a hardcore accounting auditing professional with a Big Four background. I started my journey with KPMG India in 2015, then moved to Grant Thornton to do valuations for a short stint, and then moved to EY with Accounting Advisory Services. That was where I was introduced to digital tools, building digital tools as an accountant to help improve productivity in terms of creating financial statements. That's where all of that automation journey started with Tableau visualization and Power BI visualization. Once I got my work authorization, I moved to the US and started my work with Unicus. At Unicus, we not only do consulting, accounting consulting, technical accounting consulting for 606-842, but we also have our own AI lab where we build proprietary tools for companies in terms of financial statement generation, accounting memo generation, and good stuff like that. Five months back, I gave birth to a baby boy, and right now I'm working as a founding strategist at Maximore.ai. At Maximore.ai, I am responsible for ideating and building the revenue module of the platform. We agentically automate all the five steps of ASC 606, the revenue guidance, so that the user has to do really minimal work. We take all your contracts with customers and do all the steps in between, in terms of contract parsing, POB mapping, SSP calculation, revenue and effort, revenue waterfall generation, creation of journal entries. The journal entries will be ready for the user to just review, approve, and post, and it's integrated to your ERP both ways. We also have several other modules like the Close module, a module that works on cash flows, and a module that works on different sub-ledger generation, so everything is agentically automated, helping redefine the CFO function.

Her Interview

Ten minutes with Shruthi

01What do you attribute your success to?

I think right from childhood, I had the greatest support system in both my parents. I was allowed to go explore anything I'd like, so that sort of gave me the confidence to be bold and fearless and say, okay, it's okay if I fail, I'll try again. That kind of attitude carried on as we moved along the journey. Even when it was literally starting from ground zero when I moved to the US, things that I said to myself was, hey, it's okay, it's just a matter of studying for another course. We've done this before, we'll do it again.

02What advice would you give to young women entering your industry?

My one piece of advice, or several pieces of advice, would be definitely don't lose hope, that's one. And two, apart from focusing on your technical foundation, yes, that is very, very important for you to be able to build your career in the long term, focus on the technical accounting topics, but also be very, very mindful of the automation landscape around you. What is happening currently? Who are the companies who are building top-class tools? What do you feel that you may be in? Not just accounting. If you're in FP&A, what are the several tools that are there in the FP&A hemisphere? If you are in, let's say, internal audit, what are the various SOX automation tools that are in place? If you're in audit, what are the audit-related tools that are in the market? So I think it's very, very important for us as accounting and finance professionals to keep up with the tech trend as well, and to know what is out there as the bare minimum. If you can get your hands on it, you know, in today's world and era, cloud code is so easily accessible. Anyone can just go in there, jump in, and build tools and whatever is there in your mind. You can automate a workflow. So if you can get your hands on that, apart from doing your technical accounting, or technical auditing, or anything technical, I think that'll go a long way.

03What values are most important to you in your work and personal life?

I think being structured is one of them. Early morning, I have the habit of writing my to-do lists, both personal and professional, and end of the day, I'd like to see a good number of them ticked off. That is just a habit that I have. So being structured really helps me be super productive. It takes work, right? You've got to be truthful and honest with what you're doing. There is no shortcut to climbing up the ladder, or there is no shortcut to success in general. You've got to be really, really truthful and really, really honest in giving your 100% every day. When I say 100% is just giving your best every day, consistently over the years. I think that's worked. When I say 100%, I'm not quantifying anything, but I'm just saying, giving your best every day as you wake up is definitely my motto, in whatever I do, whether it's my hobby, my work, my day-to-day, taking care of my son, everything.

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