IMA Insights

Valuations are shaped by perception as much as performance. Rather than a scorecard of historical performance, they a referendum on the future. For CFOs, this demands mastery of strategy as much as numbers, storytelling as much as stewardship, and judgement as much as analysis. At a recent India CFO Forum session in Pune, Amit Agarwal, Group CFO of DCM Shriram, offered a candid view of what truly moves the valuation needle: from strategic clarity and capital discipline to investor confidence ...

A detailed conclusion paper from the recent IMA session with Rashmi Pradeep will follow in a couple of days, but in the meantime your columnist offers this brief assessment of the four new labour codes and what they mean for business. The podcast explains the core changes, the shift towards simpler wage definitions, greater flexibility in hiring, wider social security and a more streamlined compliance regime. It also notes the practical challenges that firms will face as they adjust po...

With technology, geopolitics and supply-chain fragility converging to redefine national competitiveness, semiconductors have moved from a behind-the-scenes enabler to a strategic priority for governments and enterprises alike. This ~$600 bn industry is poised to breach the trillion-dollar mark by 2030, driven by an explosion of data, compute intensity and AI-led workloads. At a recent India CEO Forum session in Bangalore, Anand Ramamoorthy, Managing Director of Micron Technology Operations In...

As a younger man, your columnist once wandered through the vast courtyards of the Meenakshi Temple in Madurai, awed by its towering gopurams and the hum of quiet devotion. What struck him most, though, was how seamlessly faith and enterprise coexisted. The temple was as much a monument to piety as it was to accounting. This week’s podcast episode revisits that dual legacy through the story of the Pandya dynasty, whose ports thrummed with trade from Rome to Southeast Asia. Their p...

In a fast-changing business environment, leaders are expected to deliver growth, innovation and impact all at once. A recent session of the IMA India CEO Forum featured B Santhanam, Former CEO of Saint-Gobain Asia Pacific and India Region, who reflected on his 25-year journey of building a purpose-led enterprise. His narrative offered a rare inside view of how organisations evolve across decades, how leaders navigate contradictions and how purpose often emerges not through design but accumula...