Shefali Goradia is chairperson of Deloitte South Asia, and the first woman to chair a Big Four firm in India
Shefali Goradia, Chairperson, Deloitte South Asia
Image: Mexy Xavier
Shefali Goradia’s gold medal when she qualified as a chartered accountant meant an open invitation to interview with the top accounting firms. She joined Arthur Andersen, then one of the Big Five, and considering it coincided with economic liberalisation in India in 1991, went on to carve out a niche in international taxation. Three years later she joined law firm Nishith Desai Associates, which also focussed on cross-border advisory, and where she built credibility and clientele ground up without the calling card of a big firm. Her next stop was a boutique tax firm that went on to be acquired by Deloitte in 2017, bringing her back to the world of the Big Four.
But Goradia, part of the senior leadership, didn’t stop there. When the opportunity to become chairperson of Deloitte South Asia presented itself in 2023, she took it up. “I have generally been more of a problem solver; the more complex a problem, the more interested I am, because it gives you a new kick once you’ve solved it. Besides, this was something different and new for me, so I had an open slate in terms of how I wanted to run it, how I could combine my prior advisory experience with what it takes to run a boardroom,” she says.
It was a big leap, but she seems to have put herself into it with the same passion as she did when she was building her practice at the smaller firms. “Deloitte is a large organisation, and has over 37,000 people in South Asia. It took a while to understand the whole organisation and appreciate the intricacies of each business on its own, and the whole collaborative spirit.”
Her experience and skills of building and grooming teams came handy, while she learnt anew the governance part, like how to demarcate the operations of the management from the oversight, how to run meetings, ask questions, set agendas, and manage boardroom dynamics.
(This story appears in the 18 April, 2025 issue of Forbes India. To visit our Archives, click here.)