Open's powerhouse, Deena Jacob

Four years later, Open is a market leader and counts 1.3 million small businesses as their clients. The company processes annualised transactions of around $20 billion. The platform provides a dashboard, both on desktop and mobile, where users—mostly small and medium enterprises—can monitor their expenses, seek loans, collect payments, and manage their financial operations, thereby automating book-keeping.

“Deena is Open’s powerhouse of knowledge on everything in finance, from fundraising to futuristic financial planning. It is commendable what she has achieved over the years as an entrepreneur, leader, and one of the most sought-after women in finance in the country,” says Mabel Chacko, co-founder and COO, Open. In October 2021, the startup raised $100 million in a funding round led by Singapore’s sovereign wealth fund Temasek, along with participation from other new investors like tech major Google, card operator Visa and Japan’s SBI Investment.

Though Jacob is a CA and turning a CFO would have meant a logical progression in her career, there is a big difference between CA-turned-CFOs for traditional companies versus those of startups. Though having a finance background has an added advantage, she says, “with new-age businesses, traditional views often don’t work”. For instance, she explains, “if a CFO with a conservative mindset were to look at the P&L of a startup, the bottom line would spook him or her, since they are so used to looking at profitability”. She believes it is necessary to be flexible and prefers to have a good mix of fresh blood and experience in her team.

As a “new-age” CFO, the key lies in balance. “One can’t go overboard in terms of spending capital in expansion, but at the same time, you have to be willing to experiment too—some of these might work, some might fail,” she says. Over her career, Jacob has raised over $300 million for various startups in India. She has worked on multiple mergers and acquisition deals, including one of the earliest and largest deals for a digital native business—Ola acquiring its smaller rival TaxiForSure for $200 million in March 2015.

In her 20-year career, she has always preferred working with startups that have a “people first” approach and aren’t in a rush to grow. Though the startup universe is full of ups and downs, “I have been fortunate to have been a part of startups that are built with their heart and human touch,” she says.

Evidently, Jacob is one of the few successful women in the field of finance, a landscape that’s male-dominated not just in India, but globally. Jacob considers herself lucky. “I have never faced anything that is alarming from a gender perspective. Rarely has someone told me they wouldn’t talk to me and would prefer having a conversation with a male colleague instead.”

 The 42-year-old feels it could be because she has been very choosy in deciding who to work with—and throughout her career, most preferred focussing on individuals over gender. Jacob has never found the need to ask for special treatment as a woman either. “Once you stop seeing yourself through a gender screen, you will always have the confidence in being able to do anything you want.”