Varun Athi
Verified Expert in Management Consulting
Management Consulting Expert
Paramus, NJ, United States
Toptal member since February 22, 2018
Varun has helped technology startups raise over $50 million in funding and built pricing models to win more than $1 billion in contracted revenue at Cognizant, a Fortune 500 firm. He has worked with management teams to build financial models, create strategic plans and improve their execution of operating margin and cash management. As a freelancer, he enjoys helping companies raise capital and build scale.
Career Highlights
Education Highlights
Case Studies
Three Statement Model with DCF Valuation
Comparative Economics of Power Plants
Startup Operating Model
Financial Benchmarking for Investor Relations
Industry Expertise
- Accounting Services
- Venture Capital & Private Equity
- Financial Modeling
- Startups
- Information Technology
- Information Technology Enabled Services (ITES)
Other Expertise
- Financial Modeling
- Financial Planning & Analysis (FP&A)
- Financial Systems
- Mergers & Acquisitions (M&A)
- Sales Operations
- Startup Growth Strategy Development
Work Experience
Head of Financial Planning and Analysis (FP&A)
Vidyo, Inc.
- Built the business case and financial model to raise over $50 million in equity and debt capital from existing and new investors.
- Built the pricing model for SaaS (Software as a Service) and PaaS (Platform as a Service) business offerings that scaled to $10+ million in recurring revenue within two years.
- Created a framework to create and measure financial and non-financial KPIs across the organization; resulted in a decision to pivot into platform model and move away from plain vanilla conferencing solutions.
- Created a new sales incentive framework, and implemented a sales incentive tool (Xactly) to execute the plan, which increased sales to strategic customer base by ~60% and reduced the commission payout time lag by more than 30 days.
- Implemented Salesforce CPQ (Configure Price Quote) module and FinancialForce to transform the billing and financial operations and to enable real-time visibility of key metrics.
Finance Business Partner
Cognizant Technology Solutions
- Built the 3-year plan for the business unit to scale from ~$100 million to over $250 million in revenues.
- Reduced quarterly days sales outstanding (DSO) by 22 days by re-engineering the accounts receivable process.
- Negotiated contract language and pricing for multi-million dollar engagements and played a key role in winning over $40 million in contracted revenue.
- Delivered $1.1 million in savings and improved margins by ~1% through optimization initiatives.
- Set up budgeting, forecasting and margin review processes and cadence; drove financial acumen in the Business Unit.
Corporate FP&A Manager
Cognizant Technology Solutions
- Built and maintained the 'Forecast P&L’ Excel model for the CFO; defined and managed key assumptions with cost and revenue centers across the $12 billion firm.
- Worked with the executive team to develop key discussion points on firm performance for quarterly earnings call and 10-Q/10-K filings.
- Conceptualized and built a statistical revenue forecast model for the company that had a prediction error of less than 1%; this was used along with bottom-up forecasts as a primary input in the annual planning process.
- Spearheaded the implementation of SAP BPC. This was among SAP’s largest implementations of the SAP BPC tool and was featured on the SAP website.
- Analyzed the chargeback costs for infrastructure, vetted takeover targets, and designed processes to push down currency hedging costs into business unit P&L’s.
- Executed the annual budgeting process and anchored the budget presentation deck for the board of directors.
Financial Analyst
Cognizant Technology Solutions
- Built a pricing model with scenario analysis and pro forma P&L to bid and win a $700+ million deal; partnered with the business team to obtain management sign-off on the contract terms.
- Built financial models and participated in the due diligence of a $400 million acquisition target for the business unit.
- Prepared and presented monthly revenue and profitability analysis package to business unit leadership team.
Equity Research Associate
Credit Suisse
- Built financial models for companies under coverage, which were utilized as a core part of investment decision-making process.
- Authored industry-specific research reports for solar photovoltaic (PV) and biofuel companies that were instrumental in informing potential investors about the state of the industry and constructing investment thesis.
- Created investment theme decks that generated significant interest in alternative energy from existing investor base.
- Interviewed CEOs and CFOs across semiconductor capital equipment and solar PV industries as well as their supply chains as part of industry research and value chain analysis.
Education
Program for Leadership Development (PLD) in Leadership
Harvard Business School - Boston
Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) in Investment Analysis
CFA Institute - United States
Certification in Financial Risk Management (FRM)
Global Association for Risk Professionals (GARP) - New York
Certified MBA (CMBA) Degree in Finance and Strategy
Bharathidasan Institute of Management, Trichy - India
Bachelor's Degree in Electrical and Electronics Engineering
Madras University - India
Skills
Finance
Financial Modeling, Valuation, Three-statement Modeling, Financial Systems, Financial Planning & Analysis (FP&A), Budget Controls, Fundraising, Mergers & Acquisitions (M&A), Cash Flow Modeling, Revenue Modeling, M&A Modeling, Reasonable Compensation Calculation, Cost Management, Debt Raises, Operational Finance, Zero-based Budgeting, Pricing Strategy, Controller, Accounting, Profitability Optimization, Cost Reduction & Optimization (Cost-down), Budgeting, Financial System Implementation, Corporate Finance, Hedging, Price Analysis, Equity Research, Investment Thesis, DCF Valuation, Financial Benchmarking, Capital Budgeting, Cash Management, Capital Structure Analysis, Cost Estimation, Profit & Loss (P&L)
Industry Expertise
Technology, Information Technology Enabled Services (ITES), Venture Capital
Geographic Expertise
India, United States
Data & Analysis Software
Oracle ERP, Thomson Reuters, Capital IQ, Bloomberg, Salesforce, Microsoft Dynamics CRM
Other
Enterprise SaaS, Pricing Models, RFP Pricing, Budget Modeling, Startup Growth Strategy Development, Sales Operations, Annual Operating Plans, Startups, IT, Request for Proposal (RFP), Financial Closing, Operations Management, FinancialForce, Business Planning, Sales, Analytics, Sales Compensation Structuring, Monthly Close Process, Investor Relations, Treasury & Liquidity Management, Forex, Industry Analysis, Investor Presentations, NPV Calculation, IRR, Market Entry, Growth Strategy, Sales Growth, Integrated Sales & Operational Planning, Competitor Analysis & Profiling, Communication Strategy, Sensitivity Analysis, Microsoft 365
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