How to Achieve Financial Readiness

What we talked about.

In this follow-up conversation, Sunny Ray welcomes back Shoma, founder of Vicara, a consulting practice that helps companies modernize their finance infrastructure through automation, smarter technology, and scalable processes. Shoma explains why finance is the lifeblood of a business, comparing it to blood flow in the human body, and describes how she built Vicara after establishing the finance function at Alkira. She traces her path from training as a chartered accountant in India to working inside banks like ICICI and IDBI, and how that macro and micro view shaped her approach. The discussion covers what breaks in growing finance teams, why technology adoption fails without real change management, and how trust in data comes from a defensible audit trail. Shoma shares a story about walking away from a client unwilling to sponsor change, outlines her three year vision for Vicara expanding into fighting financial crime, and offers practical advice for founders on fixing fragmented data. The episode closes with details on how listeners can connect with her and Vicara directly.

Vicara founder Shoma explains why trusted data, not just faster tools, is the real foundation of financial readiness.

The questions, and the answers.

What is Vicara.net?

Vicara is a consulting practice I built where we help companies build their finance infrastructure. In simpler words, we modernize financial systems through automation, smarter technology, and scalable process so companies can achieve financial and operational readiness.

Why finance out of everything you could have built?

Think of blood flowing to the body. It carries oxygen, and if it doesn't flow to a body part, your health is at danger. Finance is exactly like that. It carries information across units and connects businesses, and if that information isn't timely or trusted, it can hinder an organization from moving forward.

What did the finance team pay outside people to fix that nobody inside could?

I was Alkira's first finance person and established the financial systems there before starting my own venture. Finance is always a lean function, so you have accounting, FP&A, maybe a CFO, but no dedicated finance IT spot. That's what we do, we bring technology to the finance team and the broader company by being the finance IT.

What did you have to unlearn from your corporate years before running your own firm?

My corporate years were cemented by enterprise financial institutions, so I had processes, structure, a title, and a clear path. I had to unlearn that completely, because in the entrepreneur world you first jump into chaos and then try to move toward structure.

What's usually broken in the finance function of a growing company?

Generally it's processes. When a company starts, a process gets set, but as the company grows from half a million to 25 million, people keep following that same process. Process re-engineering isn't consciously built, people get emotionally bound to it, and that's the major reason finance functions fail.

Where does technology adoption in finance usually fail, the tool or the people?

It's change management. Habits don't change because you got a tool, they change because you inculcate them. Change management is the glue that brings people, process, and technology together, and it has to be continuous because what works today won't work tomorrow in a growing business.

How do you actually measure trust in data?

Trusted data is something you can defend. What are your assumptions, is there support, how did it come in? You don't make assumptions out of nothing, you make them from business use cases. A complete audit trail, with every transaction backed by approval and support, is what makes data trusted and defendable.

Have you ever walked away from a client because they wanted the tool but not the change?

Yes. A CFO wanted us to sponsor fighting his team's emotional resistance rather than sponsoring us as a change agent. We're an external, neutral party pushing for best practices, we can't sponsor emotional battles. I walked away, and I learned both parties have to be equally invested to make change happen.