Neeraj Basur is a Chartered Accountant and Company Secretary with over 2 decades of industry experience currently working with Blue Star Limited as their Chief Financial Officer. He has also undergone Accelerated General Management Program at ISB Hyderabad. Before he took on his current role with Blue Star in July 2014, Neeraj was in the role of Chief Financial Officer with Max Bupa Health Insurance since its inception in 2008 and played a crucial role in preparing Max Bupa’s strategic and financial road map as well as framing the investment framework and setting up of the systems, policies and standards for accounting and risk management as their founder team member. Prior to that, he worked for over 6 years as Senior Vice President- Corporate Finance with Max India where he was responsible for investor relations, M&A, fund raising, risk management and financial planning activities for all diverse Max group companies. In his previous stints he has worked with HCL Technologies, Spice Telecom and Escorts Ltd. Neeraj has gained rich and diverse experience in industries like manufacturing, telecom, software technology, life insurance and health insurance.
Blue Star is amongst one of the oldest listed companies in India. It has been in existence for over 70 years now. Over the past years, Blue Star has seen a major spike in its business financials as well. This long, sustained and profitable growth has been achieved on the basis of its strong value systems, focus on ethical business practices and also treating its employees and customers in a fair and professional manner.
Therefore, compliance with all applicable laws, regulations and enactments that impact Blue Star’s business is firmly embedded in the business model and conduct of business operations. With the rapid scale of changes in laws and changing compliance requirements in the Indian economic and business landscape, ensuring that the business remains updated with all contemporary compliance requirements have become even more important for the company.
As I have mentioned earlier, Blue Star board and its management team is aligned with the ethos of conducting all business activities in a fair, transparent and fully compliant manner. In the backdrop of this business context, one had to create awareness and seek a buy, in to get the assessment conducted with high level of participation, ownership and engagement. Allaying doubts pretty early on that, the assessment exercise was not meant to be an audit but a support tool for overall improvement also helped.
The biggest challenge was in terms of ensuring that we put together a right combination of people drawn from all business units who could work cohesively as part of the implementation team. Therefore, people selection was an important aspect here. Our endeavour was to present this initiative as a learning opportunity to people rather than imposing this as a task. This helped, once people saw this as a developmental initiative, there was enthusiastic participation in the overall process.
Chess Management team worked in a seamless manner with Blue Star core team and helped build awareness in an educative manner throughout the process. They are a highly process driven company, which reduces the percentage of error. They cautiously divided teams who handled various disciplines of law & they have amazing expertise in handling state and municipal laws which forms 75% of the laws applicable on any unit/ function. The knowledge enhancement for Blue star overall was overwhelming. Assessments are known to limit itself just to fault finding exercises, but Chess Management came forward with a positive approach of not only fact finding but also educating us and suggesting most feasible solutions for the same. This was well received and appreciated. Since the entire assessment happened in a very non-threatening atmosphere, the participation was authentic and well meant. The responsibility and accountability taken by the entire Chess team is an assurance to the Board of Blue Star Ltd.
Compliance with laws, regulations and enactments can be a complex subject with wide myriad of laws in force. More than the knowledge of subject matter, it is important that organisations imbibe a compliance oriented culture rather than manage the requirements on a reactive basis. Large listed organisations have a fiduciary responsibility to a large number of stakeholders and in order to do justice to all of them in a transparent and fair manner, bringing the compliance agenda high up on strategic framework is very important. Therefore, it is vital that ownership of this agenda is retained at the top most level and gets percolated through the organisation by way of education, awareness and reaffirmation. Ensuring high compliance levels and sustaining them is a journey of continuous improvement and that is how it is best achieved.
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