The Thinking Behind the Interview: Srinath Kondapally on Reverse-Engineering Financial Structure
Ahead of a recent SpeedBiz interview, I spent time working through how I actually wanted to talk about Striking Figures, what genuinely separates a strategic finance leader from an accountant, and why. What follows is that thinking, organised around the questions I expected to be asked.
You are an excellent accountant and also a business strategist. Talk to me about this.
That is generous, though I would actually draw a line between the two, because the distinction is really the whole story. An accountant tells a client what has already happened. My role, as a Virtual and Fractional CFO delivering strategic finance advisory, is to tell a client what to do next.
I think about a business the way an engineer thinks about a structure, and the way a clinician thinks about a diagnosis. An engineer does not add something new on top of a building that is not performing; the engineer strips it back to the load-bearing elements and finds exactly where the structure is losing integrity. A clinician does not treat the symptom in front of them; the clinician finds the underlying condition, because treating the symptom without finding the cause means it simply comes back. I do both with a business. Most organisations do not actually have a finance problem. They have a structural condition that shows up as a finance problem, and the only way to find it is to take the thing apart, not add another strategy on top of it. The objective determines the solution, not the other way around.
Where conventional thinking takes bigger risk for bigger profit, Striking Figures calibrates risk for better outcomes and returns, better sitting between good and best, not a fixed point but a direction one can keep proving with numbers. Smart is a story. Better is measurable.
Where does that instinct actually come from?
From thirty years inside health system leadership, not consulting to it from the outside. I have sat in the seat when an organisation was in deficit and the board wanted an answer by Friday. The obvious move under that kind of pressure is to cut something visible, headcount, a programme, anything that shows movement fast. That is treating the symptom, not the condition. One learns, because there is no choice, the deficit is one's own to fix, not someone else's to advise on, that the real question is always structural: what in this organisation's financial design is actually causing the leak. That instinct does not come from a textbook. It comes from having to be right, under real pressure, with real consequences if one were not.
Can you give me an example of that calibrated risk idea in practice?
I have taken organisations that others considered beyond recovery back to sustainability, without gutting their ability to actually deliver their service. The instinct under pressure is always to slash everything visible. The better question is which single structural piece is actually leaking value, fix that specific point, and the rest often stabilises on its own.
This matters to a board specifically, not only to me as a practitioner. Governance failures are almost always invisible until they have already happened, the way nobody notices a load-bearing wall until it gives way. Regulators are increasingly holding boards directly accountable for exactly this, financial performance, risk oversight, public reporting, particularly in sectors such as aged care today. That is not a compliance checkbox. That is personal accountability sitting with the people in the room. I hold FCPA and GAICD credentials specifically because advising a board on this requires someone who understands directors' duties from both sides of the table, not only the finance side. Across every major public sector engagement I have been part of, that has meant a clean audit record, every time. That is not luck. That is the structural work holding.
Who do you want to work with? Who is this actually for?
The organisations I work with show the same pattern, whatever their size: revenue has grown faster than financial leadership has. That shows up three ways. There is no senior finance presence in the room when real decisions get made, so growth is happening without anyone actually steering it. Oversight is unpredictable, with the board finding out about a problem after it is already a problem, not before. And there is no clear pathway from where the organisation is to where it is trying to go, financially. Recognising even one of those three is enough to be the organisation Striking Figures is built for.
If a rough sense of scale is useful, it is usually organisations that have outgrown what a bookkeeper and a general accountant can cover, but are not yet at the size where a full-time CFO is the obvious next hire, roughly two million to a hundred million in revenue, though I would rather someone self-identify by the pattern than by a number. The number is a rough signpost. The three symptoms are the actual diagnosis.
For a business owner or board member watching this, what is the one thing they should take away?
Stop asking whether a decision sounds smart. Ask whether it is measurable. I am not judging whether a plan sounds clever; I am reverse-engineering the structure to find where efficiency is being lost, the way an engineer would, and diagnosing the underlying condition, not just the symptom, the way a clinician would. Once one can see the structure clearly, risk stops being a gamble. One calibrates it.
So here is what I actually want anyone watching to take away: smart is a story one tells afterward, when it happens to work. Better is a number one can prove, before, during, and after. That is the standard behind every Striking Figures engagement: financial clarity, control, and confidence within 90 days.
Striking Figures is a CPA-accredited Virtual and Fractional CFO and strategic finance advisory practice serving health and aged care, not-for-profit and community services, SME and commercial, and life sciences and start-up / scale-up organisations across Australia. FCPA | GAICD. Professional indemnity insured.
