Kavita Madani

Institutional finance

Kavita trained in audit at S. R. Batliboi and Co. (a member firm of Ernst and Young in India), leading engagements and audit relationships for foreign and Indian private-sector banks, among them Citibank, Barclays, ABN Amro, Yes Bank, ING Vysya and DCB. She audited under Indian and international standards across treasury, loans and derivatives, presented to audit committees, and, on secondment, supported EY's London practice.

At Citibank she held senior finance leadership across geographies. She led US regulatory and management reporting for the India franchise and, as Senior Vice President, owned tax accounting and reporting for all Citi India entities. She steered the India go-live of a new global finance reporting system, working across US and Indian GAAP, regulatory and management reporting, tax, and risk and control, including controls over financial reporting under the Sarbanes-Oxley Act.

A signature engagement

When Citibank consolidated its US regulatory and management reporting into a regional hub in Manila, Kavita was handpicked to lead the assignment, building and running an accounting team of more than fifty and standing up the reporting for the region. It was a significant vote of confidence, entrusting a global reporting function to her leadership, and she delivered it, establishing the team and the process on which the region relied.

Finance advisory

This is the depth Kavita now brings to Retinue's clients: accounting and reporting, financial management, taxation, and risk and control, drawn on within a wider engagement when a decision, a transaction or a compliance question calls for it, rather than as a standalone service. Her instinct is the same one that ran through her institutional work: understand the problem fully, then find the simplest, soundest and most sustainable way through it.

Elevare: people development

Alongside finance, Kavita built Elevare, Retinue's People Development practice, and it is hers to lead and deliver. A Certified FaciliTraining Practitioner and a Certified Soft Skills Trainer and Image Consultant, she trains corporate teams and coaches individuals on the skills, presence and confidence that help people rise.

She is an empanelled trainer with the Institute of Chartered Accountants of India, delivering soft-skills training to its students, and has served as a chapter president of the Image Management Professionals Association. It is work she moved into deliberately, out of a conviction that growing people deserves the same rigour and care as getting the numbers right.