Senior Manager — Finance, Ashish Pathak reveals the three core values that drive Meesho’s success and the various facets of Finance in a dynamic startup culture
By: Mangala Dilip
Tags: Meesho, Startup, Finance, Ownership, Culture

Senior Manager — Finance, Ashish Pathak reveals the three core values that drive Meesho’s success and the various facets of Finance in a dynamic startup culture Mangala Dilip Follow Sep 18, 2020 · 5 min read

Ashish Pathak, who grew up in the town of Dhanbad in Jharkhand, moved to Kolkata in 2007 to pursue B.Com from St. Xavier’s college while simultaneously also pursuing Chartered Accountancy (CA) and Company Secretary (CS). He successfully completed all three and moved to Mumbai to join pharmaceutical company Cipla in Mumbai. While his next job at Puma brought him to Bangalore, it wasn’t until October 2018 that Ashish ended up joining Meesho as a Senior Manager in the Business Finance team.

When he joined, the Finance team used to be at its budding stage with seven members and did not have processes in place. This meant that everyone was multitasking. “I was doing everything from finance operations to vendor negotiations,” says Ashish, adding how he feels proud about “being a part of a dynamic and constantly evolving team. We are not only larger in number but also have well-defined and actionable goals within the umbrella of Finance at Meesho.”

Learning on the job

Ashish realised soon enough that there would many new skills that he would need to learn while working at Meesho, starting with how he accessed information. He elaborates, “Meesho is the first startup I was working at and I remember running from one analyst to another seeking their help in the beginning. Having worked at corporates such as Cipla, Puma, and Essilor, handling financial planning and analysis, commercial finance, and controllership, I was used to a certain way of doing things. However, over time I learned how to write queries and extract data from Meesho’s database, and that made my life so much easier.”

Over the past two years that Ashish has been working with Meesho, he has worked the most with the Fulfilment & Experience org. In the initial months, he would partner with the Business org as well and report monthly Management Information System (MIS) to the management and the investors. Having moved to the Finance Controllership team in April this year, his responsibilities changed to the controllership role for Meesho — which essentially means managing end-to-end financial operations, accounting, books closing, and getting audits done — and overlooking the New Initiatives that Meesho undertakes such as Farmiso.

Everything finance

“While the arena of where I function has changed, my priorities are still the same, which includes identifying cost-saving opportunities with regards to logistics, deep diving and eliminating leakages and wastages, etc,” says Ashish, adding, “Controllership is an exciting place to be, and I feel privileged about getting the opportunity to explore a different avenue of finance.”

Ashish credits his success at Meesho to three core values of the company:

Act with integrity

“Act with integrity has been a motivating factor for me from the very first day at Meesho because it encourages all of us to be transparent and accountable. It also gives me the confidence to perform my job in the best way possible, especially since this value drives everyone at Meesho, especially the leadership — we even know what the OKRs of the leadership is and in our weekly All Hands they share their success and failure stories very transparently.”

Deep Dive and Solve Problems

“Another core value that drives my work ethic is Deep Dive and Solve Problems, especially since every day at Meesho is like a new day altogether that brings with it a new set of problems and challenges. What really excites me is that here at Meesho I get to Take Ownership of my work, and tackle whatever problems come in the way. This is only possible if I am willing to deep dive and solve those problems for myself.”

Making Entrepreneurs Successful

“Meesho entrepreneurs are the heart and soul of our business and Making Entrepreneurs Successful really empowers and motivates me to work harder at Meesho. Listening to their stories, especially at a large-scale event like Mission Rise that exists to celebrate them, reminds me yet again that my work is having a positive impact on the society.”

Social commerce is the future

Ashish, who read up and learned everything he could about Meesho as soon as he got the interview call, knew that this is a startup he wanted to be a part of. “I realised that the company is spearheading social commerce in India and I have always been and still wholeheartedly believe that social commerce will be the source of livelihood for millions of women entrepreneurs. So, it was a no-brainer for me to get on board, especially since it was also evident how quickly Meesho was growing.”

Once he got on board, Ashish realised the secrets behind Meesho’s growth — the interactions and collaborations between bright minds that work in the company day in and day out. This is one of the reasons he misses going to the office during the lockdown too. This music aficionado, whose taste ranges from Classic, Hard, and Alternative Rock to Classical Indian Music, however, is choosing to focus on the silver linings, and for him, the silver lining has been that he gets to now focus on gardening. He has a lovely balcony garden at home and he is excited to groom it and grow it during this period.

Meet Meesho entrepreneur Vichitra Rahul, who is making women financially independent

Learn all about Meesho’s work culture from CEO and Co-Founder Vidit Aatrey

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