Owing to the significant change of circumstances at present, we are currently envisaging the arrival of many proficient females in finance who have taken the industry into storm with their professional expertise. One such persona is Priya Dodal who has managed to introduce revolutionary ideologies across the finance sector through her brainchild MyAkountant. Under her guidance, MyAkountant has emerged as a one-stop solution for users preparing account reconciliation, adding journal lines, executing tasks, running reports or getting expert advice. Being the only company in India that brings the right mix of cloud technology and automation, every component of the finance function is integrated across MyAkountant platform & services.

Joining the Women Entrepreneur magazine for an exclusive interaction, Priya Dodal highlights the distinctive details of her journey as a successful financial leader of the country.

What Opportunities Does The Industry Hold Currently And How Is Myakountant Placed In The Space Currently?

Accounting and financial process management is arguably the most stressful area for any organization irrespective of their industry verticals. Instead of focusing on core finance function teams are constantly bogged down while dealing with time-consuming and tedious manual work. Having said that, cloud capabilities have truly been a game-changer for today’s organizations in overcoming these challenges through the digitization of processes. Enabling accurate, real-time reporting and analysis of financial performance, they are responsible for significantly increasing the productivity and efficiency of one’s organization. As one of the leading finance brands, MyAkountant delivers consistency and reliability while enabling accounting teams to focus on process improvement and best practices. This has clearly set it apart from the other organizations that provide similar solutions in the current market.

Tell Us About The Various Finance And Accounting Services And Products Provided By MyAkountant. Which Of These Services Is Your Flagship Offering?

Apart from offering various cloud-based finance and compliance management services to its customers, MyAkountant also provides services like Accounts & Bookkeeping, Tax compliance, Statutory Compliance, Audit Support, Payroll, Financial reporting as per IND-AS, virtual CFO and consulting. One of the important aspects of our services is that we enable completely cloud-based service offerings on our proprietary platform to enable automation as far as possible. Our Cloud accounting service automates financial closures up to 70% with connected banking functionality. All our services are automation enabled with a person-independent process and delivered on the cloud. All these features make us a unique brand across the domain.

What Are The Different Kinds Of Clients That Your Firm Caters To? In Your Opinion What Factors Differentiate MyAkountant From Its Contemporaries In The Industry?

We provide services to SMEs and large enterprises with multi-regional offices that wish to automate their process and are still stuck with traditional accounting methods. What differentiates us from other traditional service providers is that we are financial transformation enablers that automate key financial processes. Our services are delivered on the finance flo cloud platform, where the implementation comes pre-packaged for all finance transformation needs for any enterprise. Our customers get complete financial and real-time control over their business performance using our services that enable quick decision-making.

How Has Your Professional Growth Journey Been So Far? What Are Some Of The Most Critical Lessons You Have Learn On The Way As Finance Professional And An Entrepreneur?

My professional journey has been a great learning experience for me. The most important aspect for me is the fact that we have evolved to be a great financial economy in the world. However, unfortunately, we still are very much primitive in our approach towards financing as a whole. For example, most of the companies still use desktops for their accounting purposes and I don't undermine its importance. The system transformations are quite expensive and the Big 4 in our sector do the same to the large global corporations. After witnessing an opportunity here, I came up with a vision of serving SMEs throughout India with advanced cloud-based financial solutions and services. The transformation of the financial sector is inevitable and we want to be at the forefront of leading this transformation.

“We are committed to delivering innovative solutions and services to empower accounting and finance leaders around the world to achieve digital finance”

What Are The Different Facets Of Your Personality That Have Helped You Drive Growth For Your Company? How Do You Keep Yourself Aligned With Changes In The Indian Financial Sector?

I personally believe that 'Change is only constant' and I have been a person who likes to take challenges heads on. I saw that the AI is going to change the financial market big time in coming 5-10 years and organisations in Indian Market still operating on old methods of accounting/financing. That's where I consider this as a challenge to change the mindset of the people to envisage the drastic changes in the upcoming years and being prepared for it. I am happy that we are getting a good response for our products and services.

The recent example would be the Notification of MCA for maintenance of audit trail. Most of the companies were not ready for it and demanded extension to Govt whereas we were ready and made no change in implementation for our clients.

What Is The Roadmap Ahead For Your Professional Journey? Are You Looking To Focus On Any Specific Areas Or Niche Capabilities In The Days To Come?

The company is looking forward to expand its capabilities to integrate with a host of new platforms, automate finance functionalities and implement new technologies like Blockchain. We are also working with Audit & CS firms to come up with a Financial Audit & Compliance program management tool on our platform to give better financial insights and management for all audits & Compliance undertaken under them. We will be expanding our solution outreach to European and Middle East organizations in a few years.

Priya Dodal, Director, MyAkountant

Having prolific experience in working with MNCs as Senior Audit assistant, Priya Dodal co-founded MyAkountant in 2014 with a mission to modernize the financial function of the industry. Till now, she has consulted more than 200+ organizations in automating finance to close process via company's finance control & automation platform. With the help of financial acumen and technology ingenuity as combined skills, she has executed hundreds of accountancy project efficiently. Ensuring low stress of internal audit and providing the CFOs with extraordinary visibility into their organizations’ business performance, Priya Dodal has been exercising smarter decisions to enhance competitive standing.