IIM Trichy hosted a guest lecture on "The role of a CFO in the manufacturing sector" by K. Chandrasekhar, Chief Financial Officer of Dalmia Cements. Mr. Chandrasekhar has over twenty years of corporate experience. The guest lecture was organised as part of the Insight Guest Lecture Series which aims to give students opportunities to interact with experts belonging to various industrial domains. The lecture series attempts to integrate theory and practice and heighten the business sensibilities of the students.
The session began with a series of questions from the students that set the course of the lecture. Questions relating to the performance metrics of the cement industry, methods of differentiating the product from the competition and industry consolidation were covered in the initial part of the lecture. Mr. Chandrasekhar then gave an overview of the Indian economy and the contribution of the cement industry in it. He emphasized on how in spite of being the second largest producer as well as consumer of cement in the world, there is still a lot of ground to be covered for India to reach developed economy standards with regards to its manufacturing competitiveness- the major obstacles to increase competitiveness being regulatory challenges and underdeveloped energy infrastructure. The speaker also optimistically spoke about future demand being driven healthily by growth in the housing sector and increase in the level of urbanization.
The students were unanimous in their desire to learn about the impact of GST in the overall economy as well as the cement manufacturing industry and were given enlightening insights about the country's most important reform in recent times. The short term and long term effects of GST were discussed with regards to compliance, GDP growth and decrease in operational costs.
Concluding the session, the speaker focused on the topic of project cash flows where the students were able to relate theoretical concepts with the experiences shared by the speaker.