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Financial Modelling
1 course
Building Your First Financial Model in Excel
Financial modelling is one of the most in-demand skills for finance freshers, but most people learn it by copying templates without understanding why they work. This course starts from zero: what a model actually is, the Excel habits that separate a clean model from a broken one, and how the three financial statements fit together. By the end, you will have the foundation to build and audit your own models with confidence.
- What a financial model is actually used for in real finance roles
- Modelling conventions: colour coding, structure and auditability
- The Excel functions and habits every modeller relies on
Corporate Finance
73 courses
Advanced Investor Relations: Managing Institutional Shareholder Expectations
Once a company is listed, its share price is set at the margin by a few dozen institutions: FPIs, domestic mutual funds, insurers and pension money. This advanced course is for CFOs, finance leaders, late-stage founders and corporate development teams who have to manage what those institutions expect. It covers who owns India Inc and why, how to read and shape a shareholder register, how consensus forms and how to guide without breaching SEBI LODR, how stewardship codes and proxy advisors drive votes on related party transactions and special resolutions, how to handle activists and short sellers, and how to run and measure a serious institutional IR programme. Educational content only, built on real Indian cases.
- How promoter, FPI, DII and retail ownership of Indian companies has shifted and what each holder type wants
- How to read a shareholder register and target the investors who fit your stock
- How free float, block deals, OFS and QIPs reshape your institutional base
Advanced Treasury Strategy: Liquidity Management Across Multiple Entities
Built for CFOs, group treasurers, finance controllers, late-stage founders and corp dev teams who run more than one legal entity. A group with ten companies and forty bank accounts can be cash rich on a consolidated basis and still miss a payroll in one subsidiary. This course shows how to get group-wide cash visibility, forecast liquidity entity by entity, and move money inside the group using the tools Indian law actually allows: inter-corporate loans under Sections 185 and 186 of the Companies Act, related party approvals, arm's length pricing, physical sweeps and in-house banking. It covers the tax traps (deemed dividend, TDS on interest, Section 94B thin capitalisation, GST on corporate guarantees), cross-border liquidity through FEMA and GIFT City treasury centres, a group investment policy for surplus cash, holdco versus opco borrowing, and liquidity stress testing, closing with lessons from IL&FS and DHFL and a full treasury blueprint for a five-entity Indian group.
- How to map a group's cash, find trapped liquidity and choose between centralised, decentralised and hybrid treasury models
- How to build a group-wide 13-week rolling cash forecast and measure its accuracy
- How to move cash between group entities legally using Sections 185, 186 and 188 and arm's length pricing
Building a Corporate Bond Issuance Cost Comparison Model
A hands-on build for treasury teams, growth-stage founders and corporate strategy professionals who need to decide how to raise debt in India. The coupon is only the headline: arranger fees, credit ratings, stamp duty, debenture trustee and listing charges, the recovery expense fund, GST and ongoing surveillance costs all move the real number. This course maps every cost line for a listed NCD issue on the NSE and BSE EBP platforms, then builds an Excel model from scratch that turns those costs into an all-in pre-tax and post-tax cost using IRR and XIRR. It then adds term loans, commercial paper and ECBs with hedging, compares them side by side, stress-tests the answer across rating, tenor and issue size, and closes with a full case study and a board-ready recommendation.
- Why the coupon understates the true cost of a bond and how to calculate the all-in cost
- Every upfront and ongoing cost line in an Indian NCD issue, from arranger fees to the recovery expense fund
- How to build a bond cash flow schedule and compute all-in cost with IRR and XIRR in Excel
Building a Foreign Exchange Hedging Tracker in Excel
A hands-on build for treasury and finance teams, growth-stage founders with import or export exposure, and strategy teams who need to see what a rupee move does to the plan. Starts with how FX risk actually hits an Indian company's P&L, the three types of exposure, the hedging instruments available onshore, and the RBI framework that governs who can hedge what. Then builds a working Excel tracker from a blank workbook: an exposure register, a forward contract hedge book, and reference rates from FBIL and forward premium data. From there it covers mark-to-market valuation, hedge ratios, currency options and NSE/BSE currency futures, and realised versus unrealised gains on settlement, before closing with a treasury dashboard, rupee stress scenarios, Ind AS 109 hedge accounting basics, and the controls that keep the tracker audit-ready.
- How transaction, translation and economic FX exposure show up in an Indian company's numbers
- Which hedging instruments Indian businesses can use and the RBI rules that govern them
- How to build an exposure register and forward contract hedge book in Excel from scratch
Building a Simple Cap Table Using Excel or Carta
A hands-on walkthrough for anyone who has been handed cap table ownership without a finance background: HR and L&D teams issuing ESOPs, treasury and finance-adjacent staff maintaining ownership records, and startup founders tracking their own equity. Starts with what a cap table actually is and the terms that trip people up (authorized vs issued vs outstanding vs fully diluted), then builds one from scratch in Excel, layering in founder equity, an ESOP pool with vesting, and convertible instruments like CCPS and SAFEs. From there it covers how a priced funding round changes the numbers and how to model dilution across rounds, before closing with when and how to move the whole thing into Carta and keep it audit-ready.
- What a cap table is and the ownership terms every stakeholder should know
- How to build a cap table from scratch in Excel, step by step
- How to model an ESOP pool, vesting schedules, and convertible instruments like CCPS and SAFEs
Building a Term Sheet Negotiation Checklist and Tracker
A hands-on course for the people who actually sit across the table when an Indian company raises money or takes a strategic investment: growth-stage founders, CFOs and treasury teams, and corporate strategy and BD teams. Starts by breaking an Indian term sheet into its economic, control and regulatory terms, including CCPS structures, FEMA pricing rules and the clauses that survive into the shareholders' agreement. Then builds two working tools in Google Sheets or Excel: a negotiation checklist that records the market standard, your position and your walk-away point for every clause, and a tracker that logs redlines, owners, status and conditions precedent across every draft. Closes with how to sequence concessions, manage multiple investors, carry the tracker through the SHA and SSA, and turn it into a post-closing compliance calendar.
- How to read an Indian term sheet clause by clause and separate economic terms from control terms
- How to build a negotiation checklist with market standard, target position and walk-away point for every clause
- How to model liquidation preference and anti-dilution outcomes in a spreadsheet before you agree to them
Building an FP&A Dashboard Using Excel and Power BI
A hands-on, India-specific course for finance and treasury professionals, growth-stage founders and strategy teams who need a monthly management dashboard that people actually use. Start by choosing the right FP&A KPIs and designing the dashboard on paper. Pull ledger data out of Tally, Zoho Books or an ERP, map it to a clean chart of accounts, and shape it with Power Query while handling the April to March financial year and lakhs and crores formatting. Build budget vs actual variance analysis, driver-based rolling forecasts and a one-page Excel dashboard. Then move to Power BI: model finance data as a star schema, build a fiscal-year date table, and write the DAX measures FP&A needs, from YTD and prior-year comparisons to budget variances. Finish by designing P&L, cash and working capital pages, adding drill-through and bookmarks for management reviews, publishing with scheduled refresh and row-level security, and building a full monthly FP&A pack for an Indian D2C brand.
Case Study: A Corporate's FX Hedging Strategy During Rupee Volatility
A decision-by-decision case study built for CFOs and treasury teams, growth-stage founders with dollar revenue or dollar costs, and corporate strategy and BD teams who need to understand what currency risk does to a plan. We follow an illustrative Indian mid-sized manufacturer that exports in dollars, imports raw material in dollars and carries a foreign currency loan, through a period of sharp rupee depreciation. Start by mapping its transaction, translation and economic exposure and seeing exactly how a rupee move flows into margins, covenants and cash. Then build the board-approved hedging policy, price a forward from interest rate parity, compare bank forwards, NSE currency futures, options and cross-currency swaps, and work through the RBI rules that govern who can hedge what. Walk through the volatility episode one decision point at a time, then close with Ind AS 109 hedge accounting, a hedged versus unhedged scorecard, the mistakes Indian corporates have made with exotic structures, and a playbook your own treasury can adopt.
- How to map a company's transaction, translation and economic FX exposure and net it before hedging anything
- How to write a hedging policy with clear objectives, hedge ratio bands, tenor limits, approved instruments and counterparty limits
- How to price a USD/INR forward from interest rate parity and read the forward premium as a cost or a gain
Case Study: How Zomato Structured Its Series G Round Before IPO
A deal-structuring case study built around Zomato's September 2015 Series G, the $60 million round led by Temasek with existing investor Vy Capital. Start with why a restaurant discovery app burning cash across more than 20 countries needed late-stage capital, then open up the term sheet: why foreign investors in India take compulsorily convertible preference shares instead of plain equity, how liquidation preferences and anti-dilution clauses protect them, and how pre-money, post-money and the ESOP pool shape the fully diluted cap table. Trace how those protections behaved through the valuation markdowns of 2016 and 2017, the pivot to food delivery, the Ant Financial rounds, the share-swap acquisition of Uber Eats India and the Tiger Global era rounds of 2020 and 2021. Then watch the clean-up: conversion to a public company, the bonus issue, CCPS conversion under SEBI ICDR rules, listing with no identified promoter, and the ESOP rework. Close by working out the multiple each round earned at the IPO price and building a pre-IPO structuring playbook. Written for corporate finance and treasury professionals, growth-stage founders and corporate strategy teams.
- Explain why late-stage foreign investors in Indian startups hold CCPS rather than equity shares, and what FEMA pricing rules require
- Model how a liquidation preference and a weighted average anti-dilution clause change payouts and share counts
- Build a fully diluted cap table across pre-money, post-money and ESOP pool changes
Case Study: How a Company Restructured Debt During a Downturn
Most companies do not die from losses. They die when debt falls due and there is no cash to pay it. Suzlon Energy is the clearest Indian example of a company that hit that wall, twice, and survived. This case study follows the Pune wind turbine maker from its debt-funded global expansion through the downturn that followed, the 2012 foreign currency convertible bond default, the Corporate Debt Restructuring package, the sale of its German crown jewel, a second restructuring under RBI's prudential framework, and finally the rights issue, QIP and refinancing that made it net debt free. Along the way you learn the full restructuring toolkit: maturity extension, repricing, moratoriums, debt to equity conversion, asset sales, fresh equity and refinancing, plus the early warning signals that tell a finance team when to act. Built for corporate finance and treasury professionals, growth-stage founders and strategy teams who want to understand how debt stress actually gets resolved in India, not just how it is described in a textbook.
- Tell the difference between a liquidity problem and a solvency problem, and why the fix for each is different
- Trace how an acquisition-led, debt-funded expansion turned into a crisis once the wind energy cycle turned
- Read the stress signals in financial statements: interest cover, debt to EBITDA, working capital days and refinancing walls
Case Study: How a Growth Stage Startup Built Its First FP&A Function
Most Indian startups hit Series B with a good accountant, a CA firm for compliance and no one whose job is to look forward. This case study follows a composite Bengaluru D2C home brand, roughly ₹120 crore in revenue, from the board meeting where its cash runway turned out to be months shorter than anyone thought, to a working FP&A function eighteen months later. You will see how the founders defined what FP&A should and should not do, when and whom they hired, how they fixed a messy chart of accounts and month-end close in Tally and Zoho Books, and which unit economics they chose to track. Then you will walk through the core models they built: a driver-based operating model, a 13-week cash flow forecast and scenario-based runway planning. Finally you will see the operating rhythm that made it stick, from the first annual operating plan to monthly business reviews, variance analysis and the board pack, and finish with the mistakes, trade-offs and a playbook you can apply to your own company.
- What FP&A does in a growth stage company and how it differs from accounting and compliance
- When to hire the first FP&A person, what profile to look for and where the role should report
- How to fix the data foundations: chart of accounts, month-end close and a single source of truth
Case Study: How a Startup Valued Its ESOP Pool Before a Funding Round
Almost every Indian Series A term sheet carries one line that quietly moves crores of value: the ESOP pool clause. Investors ask for a larger pool, created before their money comes in, and the founders pay for it. This case study follows Neelgiri Labs, an illustrative Bengaluru B2B SaaS startup built from real Indian market practice, through the six weeks between receiving its term sheet and closing the round. You size the pool from a real hiring plan, benchmark it against disclosed Indian startup pools, and work through the option pool shuffle to find the effective pre-money valuation the founders actually got. Then you put a number on the options themselves: fair market value under Rule 11UA and a registered valuer report, a Black-Scholes value with defensible inputs for an unlisted company, and the total pool cost that flows into the P&L under Ind AS 102. The course closes with exercise pricing, perquisite tax, Companies Act approvals, the post-round cap table and the mistakes founders and CFOs make most often. Built for corporate finance and treasury professionals, growth-stage founders and strategy teams who sit on either side of that negotiation.
- Explain why investors ask for the ESOP pool to be created pre-money, and who really bears that dilution
- Size an ESOP pool bottom-up from a 24-month hiring plan and sanity-check it against Indian startup benchmarks
- Calculate the effective pre-money valuation after the option pool shuffle and negotiate it with numbers, not adjectives
Case Study: Investor Relations Lessons From a Company's IPO Roadshow
Investor relations does not start on listing day. It starts months earlier, when a company first has to explain to strangers why its business deserves their money at a particular price. This case study follows a composite Gujarat-based specialty chemicals manufacturer, roughly ₹1,800 crore in revenue and backed by a private equity fund, through a ₹1,500 crore IPO combining a fresh issue and an offer for sale. You will see how the company and its book running lead managers turned a DRHP into an equity story, chose the KPIs and peer set it would be judged against, stayed within SEBI's publicity rules, ran early-look and pre-deal investor education, and then took the story on the road through anchor, QIB and one-on-one meetings in Mumbai, Singapore, London and New York. You will follow the price band decision, the anchor book, the subscription data and listing day, and compare the outcome with public examples such as Paytm and Nykaa. Finally you will see how the same discipline carries into life as a listed company: the first earnings call, disclosure obligations under SEBI's LODR Regulations, anchor lock-in expiry and building a permanent IR function. Built for corporate finance and treasury professionals, growth-stage founders and strategy teams who will one day sit across the table from institutional investors.
- Explain what an IPO roadshow is, who runs it and why investor relations begins well before listing
- Turn a DRHP into a clear equity story backed by KPIs and a defensible peer set
- Build an investor presentation and stay inside SEBI's rules on publicity and forward-looking statements
Case Study: Transfer Pricing Dispute Between an Indian Subsidiary and Its Parent
Follow an illustrative Indian subsidiary of a foreign parent through a full transfer pricing dispute, from the pricing decisions that started it to the audit, the adjustment, the appeals and the settlement. Along the way, learn India's arm's length rules under Sections 92 to 92F of the Income-tax Act, how Form 3CEB and TP documentation work, how a Transfer Pricing Officer benchmarks your margins against comparables, and why royalty, management fees, marketing spend and share issues to the parent are the most fought-over items. The case is anchored in real Indian rulings including Maruti Suzuki, LG Electronics, Sony Ericsson, Vodafone India and Shell India, and ends with a practical playbook covering APAs, safe harbour and documentation discipline for CFOs and founders.
- Explain the arm's length principle and when India's transfer pricing rules apply to a subsidiary
- Read a Form 3CEB and understand what TP documentation must prove
- Follow how a Transfer Pricing Officer selects comparables and computes an adjustment
Introduction to Corporate Fundraising: Equity vs Debt
A plain-language, India-specific introduction to how companies raise money, built for founders, treasury teams, HR and L&D professionals, and employees outside finance who want to understand the funding decisions shaping their company. Learn why companies raise capital, what it really means to sell ownership versus borrow, and where each kind of money comes from in India: angels, VCs, PE funds, IPOs, QIPs and rights issues on one side; banks, NBFCs, venture debt and corporate bonds on the other. Understand covenants, collateral, credit ratings and what happens under the IBC when repayment fails. Compare the true cost of equity and debt, see how leverage magnifies both returns and risk, meet the hybrids in between, and finish with a practical decision framework, a walkthrough of reading any listed company's funding mix on screener.in, and a case study of two Indian companies that funded growth in opposite ways.
Introduction to Corporate Governance for Growing Companies
A practical, India-specific guide to corporate governance for founders, CFOs, treasury teams, and strategy and BD professionals at companies that are scaling fast. Learn what governance really means beyond compliance checklists, why it breaks down at scale through cases like Byju's, BharatPe, and GoMechanic, and how the Companies Act 2013 and SEBI LODR shape your obligations as you grow. Build a board that actually oversees, set up audit and other committees, understand independent directors, internal financial controls, and auditors, and navigate shareholder rights, investor protections in term sheets, dual-class structures, and related party transactions. Cover disclosure, insider trading rules, whistleblower mechanisms, and risk management, then finish with a stage-by-stage governance roadmap from seed to IPO readiness.
Introduction to Corporate Restructuring and Its Triggers
An India-specific guide to why companies change their shape and how they do it, built for corporate finance and treasury professionals, growth-stage founders, and strategy and business development teams. Learn the four families of restructuring (portfolio, financial, organisational and operational) and the triggers behind each: conglomerate discounts, leverage and liquidity crunches, regulatory and tax changes, technology disruption, and promoter succession. Spot the early warning signs in financial statements, rating actions, auditor remarks and exchange filings. Then walk through the Indian toolkit: mergers, demergers, slump sales, buybacks and capital reduction, and debt restructuring from one-time settlements to the IBC, along with the Companies Act, NCLT and SEBI road map every listed deal must follow. Finish by weighing who wins and who loses, why restructurings fail, and a trigger-to-toolkit framework you can apply to your own company. Uses real NSE and BSE cases like the Tata Motors demerger, Vodafone Idea's debt-to-equity conversion, Essar Steel's insolvency resolution and ITC Hotels, with screener.in and exchange filings throughout.
Introduction to Corporate Treasury Functions
Every company, from a funded startup to a Nifty 50 conglomerate, needs someone who knows how much cash it has today, where the next crore will come from and what could go wrong with the money in between. That is corporate treasury. This course explains the treasury function in plain language for non-finance employees, founders and new treasury hires: how treasury differs from accounting and FP&A, how cash is positioned and forecast, how Indian companies fund short and long gaps through bank lines, commercial paper, TReDS, term loans, bonds and ECBs, where surplus cash is parked, how foreign exchange, interest rate and commodity risks are hedged, and the controls and policies that keep treasury safe. Indian examples throughout, no jargon left unexplained.
- What corporate treasury is responsible for and how it differs from accounting and FP&A
- Why treasury puts liquidity first, safety second and yield last
- How treasurers position daily cash and build short-term and annual cash forecasts
Introduction to Employee Stock Options (ESOPs) Explained
A plain-language, India-specific guide to employee stock options, built for employees outside finance, HR and L&D teams, treasury professionals and startup founders. Learn why companies share ownership with employees, how ESOPs differ from RSUs, SARs and sweat equity, and what grant, vesting, cliff, exercise price and expiry really mean. Follow an option from the grant letter to the day you sell the shares, including what happens when you resign, get let go or your company is acquired. Understand what your options are actually worth, why listed and unlisted company ESOPs are very different things, and how buybacks and secondary sales turn paper wealth into cash. Get the tax picture right, from perquisite tax at exercise to capital gains at sale and the deferral available to eligible startups, and see the rules that govern ESOPs under SEBI and the Companies Act. Finish by looking at ESOPs from the company's side, covering pool design, accounting cost and dilution, and a case study of real Indian ESOP outcomes.
Introduction to Financial Planning and Analysis (FP&A) as a Function
Every listed Indian company gives earnings guidance, sets an annual operating plan and explains its quarterly misses to analysts. The team behind all of that is Financial Planning and Analysis. This course explains FP&A as a function: where it sits next to accounting, controllership and treasury, what it produces, and how its work drives real decisions. You follow the full planning cycle as it runs in India, from the April to March financial year and the annual operating plan to rolling forecasts and the monthly business review. You learn the core outputs every FP&A team owns: budgets built from driver-based models, variance analysis that explains the gap between plan and actual, and the KPIs and unit economics that leadership watches. Then you move beyond the numbers to business partnering, scenario planning, capital allocation and the tools Indian FP&A teams actually use, before closing with how the function is structured from startup to conglomerate and how to build a career in it. Built for corporate finance and treasury professionals, growth-stage founders and strategy and business development teams who need to plan, measure and explain performance.
- Explain what FP&A does and how it differs from financial accounting, controllership and treasury in an Indian company
- Walk through the Indian planning calendar, from the annual operating plan to the monthly business review and quarterly results
- Build a budget from business drivers instead of last year's numbers plus a percentage
Introduction to Financial Statements for Non Finance Managers
A plain-language, India-specific introduction to financial statements, built for managers outside finance, treasury teams, HR and L&D professionals, and founders who sit in review meetings where revenue, EBITDA, working capital and cash flow decide budgets and bonuses. Learn where to find the numbers in an Indian company's annual report, the accounting basics that shape them, and how to read a profit and loss statement, balance sheet and cash flow statement line by line. See which lines your own department creates, from employee costs and overheads to receivables, inventory and payables, and why reported profit is not money in the bank. Connect the three statements through a single transaction, use a handful of ratios that matter to managers, read variance reports and MIS with confidence, build a business case finance will take seriously, spot red flags, and finish by working through a real Indian company's annual report the way a manager should.
Introduction to Foreign Exchange Risk Management for Corporates
A practical, India-specific introduction to foreign exchange risk for treasury and finance teams, growth-stage founders, and strategy and business development professionals. Learn how the USD/INR market actually works, how banks price the rates you are quoted, and why a rupee move shows up in margins, covenants and valuations. Identify and measure transaction, translation and economic exposure, build a currency exposure map, and size the risk with sensitivity and scenario analysis. Start with hedges that cost nothing, like natural hedging, invoicing currency choices, netting and EEFC accounts, then move to forwards, NSE and BSE currency futures and options, OTC options and collars, and cross-currency swaps on foreign currency borrowings. Understand the RBI rules on what corporates can hedge, how Ind AS 109 hedge accounting keeps hedge noise out of profit and loss, and how to write a board-approved hedging policy. Finish with hedging playbooks by business type, the mistakes that have cost Indian companies crores, and a full exporter case study.
- Explain how the USD/INR market works and decode a bank's FX quote, including the margin hidden in it
- Separate transaction, translation and economic exposure and build a currency exposure map for a business
- Measure FX risk with sensitivity analysis, scenario tests and cash flow at risk
Introduction to Series B and Growth Stage Fundraising
An India-specific guide to raising money after product-market fit, built for growth stage founders, corporate finance and treasury professionals, and strategy and business development teams who sit across the table from growth investors. Learn what actually changes between Series A and Series B, why the bar shifts from promise to proof, and who writes growth cheques in India: growth VCs, crossover funds, sovereign and pension funds, private equity and corporate strategic investors. Master the growth stage scorecard of revenue quality, net revenue retention, cohorts, contribution margin, CAC payback, burn multiple and the Rule of 40, and build the data room and financial model that survives diligence. See how growth valuations are set using revenue multiples and listed comparables on NSE and BSE, how primary and secondary components split the money, how down rounds and structured deals work, and when venture debt helps or hurts. Read growth term sheets with stacked liquidation preferences, ratchets and investor rights, understand syndicate dynamics and pro rata, and navigate the Indian regulatory layer for large rounds: FDI routes, pricing guidelines, Press Note 3 and CCI approval. Finish with deploying growth capital, the road to Series C and an IPO, and a case study following one Indian SaaS company from Series B to Series C.
Introduction to Startup Fundraising: Seed to Series A
A practical, India-specific walkthrough of how startups actually raise money from their first cheque to a Series A, built for founders, treasury and finance teams, HR and L&D professionals, and employees who want to understand the funding rounds shaping their company. Learn why startups raise and when they should not, how the funding ladder runs from bootstrapping and friends and family to pre-seed, seed and Series A, and who writes the cheques in India: angels, angel networks, micro VCs, institutional VCs and government schemes. Understand what investors look for at each stage, the traction and unit economics metrics that matter, how to build a pitch deck and get the legal house in order. See how pre-money, post-money, dilution, ESOP pools and instruments like CCPS, CCDs and iSAFEs work, how a fundraise is run, how to read a term sheet, and what due diligence, definitive agreements and the Indian compliance layer involve. Finish with life after the round, how startups bridge the gap from seed to Series A, and a case study following one Indian startup through both rounds.
Masterclass: Building a Family Business Succession and Governance Framework
Most of India Inc is promoter led, and the single largest governance risk in a family controlled company is the handover. This masterclass is for CFOs, corporate development heads, senior finance and strategy leaders, and founders before or after an IPO who have to design that handover from inside the company. It treats succession as a corporate finance problem: how promoter control, holding structures and related party flows affect valuation, how to build a board that can actually govern a family firm under SEBI LODR, how to choose and retain the next CEO, how dividend policy, buybacks, IPOs and stake sales can fund family liquidity without starving the business, and how to value a family member's exit. It closes with a board ready succession and governance charter and an eighteen month implementation roadmap, anchored in real Indian cases including Tata Sons, Godrej, Bajaj, Kirloskar, Raymond and Infosys. Educational content only.
- Explain where family control creates value in Indian listed companies and where it shows up as a governance discount in the share price
- Map promoter group holding structures, cross holdings and pledges, and quantify a holding company discount
- Use family settlements, demergers and SAST inter se transfer exemptions to reorganise ownership without triggering an open offer
Masterclass: Leading a Company Through an IPO, A CFO's Perspective
An IPO is the single largest test of a finance function. The CFO has to make the numbers listing-grade, hold the deal team to a timeline, negotiate with promoters and private equity investors over the offer, defend the valuation in front of institutions and then live with every promise made in the DRHP. This masterclass is for CFOs, corporate development heads, founders preparing to list and senior finance leaders. It covers whether and when to list, how to design the offer, how to build a finance function that survives SEBI and investor scrutiny, how to run bankers, lawyers and auditors, how the DRHP and SEBI review actually work, how pricing and the anchor book are decided, and how to manage the first year after listing under SEBI LODR. Built on real Indian IPOs. Educational content only, not investment or legal advice.
- How to decide whether an IPO beats a strategic sale, PE secondary or staying private
- How to time the listing window and design the mix of fresh issue and offer for sale
- How to build restated financials, KPIs and internal controls that hold up in the DRHP and after listing
Masterclass: Managing Institutional Investor Relationships at Scale
A company with 30 institutional holders can be managed from the CFO's phone. A company with 300 holders, 25 covering analysts and investors in Mumbai, Singapore, London and New York cannot. This masterclass is for CFOs, heads of corporate development, pre and post IPO founders and senior finance leaders who must turn investor relations into an operating system. It covers how to tier the institutional universe and design the IR team, how to build the investor CRM and ownership intelligence that tells you who is buying and selling, how to plan global roadshows and decide which investors get which format, how to keep one consistent equity story across hundreds of meetings without breaching SEBI LODR or insider trading rules, how to manage relationships through QIPs, block trades, index events and lock-in expiries, and how to measure the programme and report it to the board. Educational content only, built on Indian market practice.
- Why investor relations breaks as a shareholder base grows and how to tier holders, targets and influencers
- How to design the IR team, its reporting lines, budget and relationship ownership across senior management
- How to build an investor CRM and ownership intelligence from BENPOS, fund disclosures and flow data
Masterclass: Strategic Capital Allocation Frameworks Used by Top Indian Conglomerates
Over a decade, what a group does with its capital matters more than any single operating decision. This masterclass is for CFOs, corporate development heads, senior finance and strategy leaders, and founders before or after an IPO who sit in the room where those decisions are made. It starts with the arithmetic of value creation (return on capital against cost of capital) and how the market prices Indian business groups, then opens up group architecture: holding companies, listed subsidiaries, internal capital markets and group leverage. It studies the frameworks real Indian conglomerates have used, including Mahindra's return hurdles and exits, Reliance's stake sales to fund Jio and Retail, Tata Sons' pruning and consolidation, and the contrasting cash policies of Bajaj and ITC. It then covers capex gating, acquisitions against organic build, demergers and divestments, dividends and buybacks under current Indian tax rules, and the funding mix. It closes with a capital allocation policy, a portfolio scoring matrix and a five year group capital plan you can take to your own board. Educational content only.
- Measure value creation as the spread between return on capital and cost of capital, and apply it at business unit and group level
- Explain why Indian business groups trade at a conglomerate or holding company discount and what narrows it
- Map how cash moves through a group's holding company, listed subsidiaries and internal capital market, and where group leverage creates contagion risk
Masterclass: The CFO's Playbook for Long Term Value Creation
A company creates value only when it earns more on its capital than that capital costs, and keeps doing so as it grows. Making that happen year after year is the CFO's real job. This masterclass is for CFOs, corporate development heads, founders before and after listing, and senior finance and strategy leaders. It covers the value equation of growth, ROIC and cost of capital, how to find the segments, customers and processes that create or destroy value, how to run capital allocation as an operating discipline, how to build a balance sheet that survives the cycle, how to align planning, KPIs and executive pay with long term value, and how to communicate with investors so the share price reflects it. Built on real Indian companies listed on NSE and BSE. Educational content only, not investment advice.
- How growth, ROIC and the cost of capital combine to create or destroy value, and how to estimate WACC for an Indian company honestly
- How to build a value driver tree and find the segments, customers and products that quietly destroy value
- How to run capital allocation as a discipline: capex hurdles, acquisitions, deleveraging and payout policy under Indian rules
Practice Drills: Building a Basic Startup Cap Table
A hands-on drill course for startup founders, HR and L&D teams running ESOPs, treasury staff and anyone who has been handed a cap table to maintain. Working on one sample Bengaluru startup from its incorporation to its seed round, you will lay out a cap table in Excel or Google Sheets, issue founder shares, apply vesting and a co-founder exit, create and grant an ESOP pool, price a seed round, top up the pool before the round closes, convert an angel note at its valuation cap, reconcile everything against MCA filings, and run a simple exit waterfall. Every drill has a worked answer so you can check your numbers line by line.
- How to lay out a cap table in Excel or Google Sheets that stays correct as new rows and rounds are added
- How to issue founder shares, check face value and paid-up capital, and apply vesting and a leaver clause
- How to create an ESOP pool, record grants and lapses, and calculate fully diluted ownership
Practice Drills: Building a Board Level Capital Allocation Presentation
A hands-on drill course for CFOs, finance controllers, corporate development teams, and late-stage founders who have to take a capital allocation plan to a board and get it approved. Working with one sample NSE-listed manufacturer, you will size the five-year deployable cash envelope, estimate the hurdle rate, stress-test the plan against covenants and a downturn, then rank the competing uses on a common basis: capex projects, an acquisition, dividends, a buyback, and debt reduction. You will then turn the numbers into a board deck with a single clear recommendation, the approvals it needs under the Companies Act and SEBI rules, and a risk section that tells directors what would change the answer. The course closes with an independent-director Q&A drill and a complete board pack.
- How to size a five-year deployable cash envelope from free cash flow, balance sheet cash, and debt capacity
- How to estimate a defensible hurdle rate for an Indian listed company and adjust it for project risk
- How to stress-test an allocation plan against lender covenants and a downturn scenario
Practice Drills: Building a Debt Restructuring Scenario Model
A practice-first course for anyone who has to sit across the table from lenders when the numbers stop working. You will build a debt restructuring scenario model in Excel or Google Sheets from a blank sheet: a tranche-by-tranche debt schedule, a cash flow and DSCR engine, and a set of levers covering tenor extension, principal moratorium, interest rate resets, funded interest, one-time settlements, haircuts and debt-to-equity conversion. Then you will stress it, size sustainable debt from cash flow capacity, compare lender recovery against the IBC alternative, and track what each plan does to the promoter's stake. Every drill uses Indian context: RBI's Prudential Framework for stressed assets, inter-creditor agreements, NCLT timelines and INR numbers. Built for treasury and corporate finance professionals, growth-stage founders carrying term or venture debt, and strategy and BD teams evaluating distressed opportunities.
- Lay out a multi-tranche debt schedule with repayments, interest and covenants that recalculates from a few inputs
- Build a base case cash flow and track DSCR and net debt to EBITDA year by year
- Model tenor extension, principal moratorium, rate resets and funded interest term loans as switchable levers
Practice Drills: Building a Foreign Exchange Exposure Assessment
A practice-first course for treasury teams, founders and strategy professionals who need to answer one question with numbers: how much does a move in the rupee actually cost this business? You will work through Indian annual reports, Ind AS 21 and Ind AS 107 disclosures, and realistic exporter and importer books to build a currency-wise exposure register, net natural hedges, bucket exposures by maturity, run rupee sensitivity and stress scenarios, and separate transaction, translation and economic exposure. The course closes with full drills on an IT services exporter and an importer carrying foreign currency debt, and a one-page exposure assessment you can put in front of a CFO or board. Educational content only, not investment or hedging advice.
- Locate foreign currency risk disclosures in an Indian annual report and read the unhedged exposure table correctly
- Build a currency-wise, maturity-bucketed exposure register from receivables, payables, orders and loans
- Net natural hedges across exports, imports and foreign currency debt without double counting
Practice Drills: Building a Simple Cash Flow Forecast
A hands-on drill course for startup founders, treasury teams, HR and L&D professionals, and employees outside finance who need to know where the company's cash will be next month. You take one illustrative small Indian business and build its 13-week cash flow forecast from scratch in Google Sheets or Excel: turn open invoices into expected receipts, schedule supplier payments with the MSME 45-day rule in mind, place payroll, PF, ESI, GST, TDS and advance tax on the calendar, roll the balance week by week, find the shortfall week, stress test it, close the gap, and keep the forecast alive with a weekly forecast-versus-actual review.
- How to set up a clean 13-week cash forecast template with a direct receipts-and-payments layout
- How to turn open invoices and the sales pipeline into week-by-week expected receipts using real customer payment behaviour
- How to schedule supplier payments, payroll, PF, ESI, rent, EMIs and one-off payments into the right weeks
Practice Drills: Building a Two Decade Capital Allocation Case Presentation
A hands-on drill course for CFOs, corporate development heads, pre and post IPO founders, and senior finance and strategy leaders. Working on one illustrative Indian listed company across FY2006 to FY2025, you will turn twenty years of annual reports into a consistent dataset, build a sources and uses ledger for every rupee generated and raised, split maintenance from growth capex, measure ROCE, ROIC and incremental returns by era against a cost of capital that moved with rates, post-audit acquisitions, expansions and payout decisions, and turn the whole analysis into a storyline and exhibit set that stands up to a board and to institutional investors.
- How to turn twenty years of annual reports into one consistent dataset across Indian GAAP, the Ind AS transition, demergers and restatements
- How to build a sources and uses ledger showing where every rupee of operating cash, debt and equity went over two decades
- How to separate maintenance capex from growth capex and measure incremental return on capital for each five year era
Practice Drills: Building an FP&A Variance Analysis Report
A practice-first course for corporate finance and treasury professionals, growth-stage founders and strategy teams who own the monthly budget vs actual conversation. You already know what a budget is; this course makes you explain why the numbers missed it. Working with sample data from Indian businesses, from a D2C brand selling on its own site, Amazon and Flipkart to a mid-sized manufacturer, you will structure budget and actual data for a clean comparison, split revenue variances into price, volume and mix, drill material, employee cost and opex variances, flex the budget to separate volume effects from true overspends, and build gross margin, EBITDA and cash bridges. Then you write the report itself: set materiality thresholds, draft commentary that names causes and owners, build a one-page summary with a waterfall chart, and turn variances into reforecast actions. Three full drills close the course, including reviewing and fixing a flawed variance report.
- Structure budget and actual data so every line compares like with like, across the April to March financial year
- Apply a consistent favourable and adverse sign convention across revenue and cost lines
- Split revenue variance into price, volume and mix effects, by product, channel and region
Practice Drills: Building an IPO Readiness Gap Analysis
A hands-on drill course for CFOs, finance controllers, corporate development teams, and founders of late-stage companies weighing an NSE or BSE mainboard listing. You will work through a single illustrative Indian private company and build its IPO readiness gap analysis from scratch: testing it against SEBI ICDR eligibility, stress-testing its financials, board, cap table, controls, and disclosure practices against what a DRHP and SEBI LODR will demand, then scoring, costing, and sequencing every gap into a listing roadmap you can present to a board.
- How to structure an IPO readiness gap analysis workbook with workstreams, RAG ratings, owners, and evidence
- How to test a company against SEBI ICDR mainboard eligibility and choose between the profitability and QIB routes
- How to find the financial reporting gaps a DRHP will expose, from restated Ind AS financials to audited KPIs
Practice Drills: Calculating ESOP Dilution Across Funding Rounds
A practice-first course built around one sample Indian startup and one sample employee grant, followed round by round. You start by reading a cap table properly: issued versus fully diluted shares, where the ESOP pool sits, and how pre-money, post-money and price per share tie together. Then you dilute the cap table yourself through a Seed round, a Series A and a Series B, using the one formula that explains every dilution calculation. You work through the option pool shuffle (why a pool top-up created before the round comes out of existing holders, not the new investor), size a pool refresh to hit a target, and fold a CCPS or iSAFE conversion into a round. The final chapter turns percentages into rupees: why a shrinking stake can still be worth more, what a down round does to option holders, and a capstone where you build the full four-round cap table end to end. Built for employees holding ESOPs, HR and L&D teams explaining grants, treasury and finance teams maintaining the cap table, and founders planning their next raise.
- Read a startup cap table and separate issued shares from the fully diluted count
- Tie pre-money valuation, post-money valuation, round size and price per share together in one calculation
- Dilute a cap table through Seed, Series A and Series B using the round-by-round ownership formula
Practice Drills: Comparing Corporate Bond vs Bank Loan Financing Costs
A practice-first course for treasury teams, growth-stage founders, and corporate strategy professionals who have to answer one recurring question: should we borrow from the bank or issue bonds? The headline rate on a sanction letter and the coupon on an NCD term sheet are never the real cost. You will drill every layer that sits between them and the number that matters: MCLR, EBLR and T-Bill linked resets, processing fees, prepayment charges, margin money and collateral, arranger and rating fees, stamp duty, trustee and listing costs, rating-driven spreads over G-Secs, and the EBP platform route for private placements. Then you will bring both options onto one footing with XIRR, post-tax cost, cash flow profile and refinancing risk, and weigh the non-price costs such as covenants and flexibility. Every drill uses Indian instruments, rupee figures, and the documents an Indian finance team actually works from.
- Build a single all-in cost worksheet that works for both a bank loan and a bond issue
- Convert MCLR, EBLR and T-Bill linked loan pricing into an effective annual rate, including fees and resets
- Put a rupee cost on collateral, margin money, and prepayment penalties
Practice Drills: Comparing Equity vs Debt Financing Scenarios
A hands-on drill course for non-finance team members, corporate treasury staff, HR and L&D teams, and startup founders. Working on one sample Indian manufacturer that needs INR 40 crore for a new plant, you will calculate the real post-tax cost of a bank loan and of fresh equity, compare what each option does to EPS, return on equity and interest coverage, find the break-even profit level between the two plans, measure promoter dilution, and stress test both plans in a bad year. You then run the same drills on a bootstrapped startup weighing venture debt against a seed round and on a listed mid-cap choosing between a QIP, a rights issue and NCDs, and finish by writing a one-page financing recommendation for a board.
- How to calculate the true post-tax cost of a bank loan or NCD, including processing fees
- How to estimate the cost of equity with a simple CAPM build using Indian inputs
- How to compare EPS and return on equity under an all-equity plan and a debt-funded plan
Practice Drills: Drafting an Investor Update Email for a Growth Stage Company
A practice-first course on the one document that decides how your investors feel about you between funding rounds. You will draft investor updates section by section for Indian growth stage companies: picking the metrics that matter, writing an opening summary a partner reads in thirty seconds, reporting revenue, burn and runway in INR without spin, showing unit economics and cohorts behind the headline, and writing asks that get real help. Then you drill the hard ones: a missed quarter, layoffs, a pivot or a down round, plus what should never go into an email at all. Built for growth stage founders, finance and treasury teams who prepare the monthly MIS, and strategy teams who own investor communication.
- Structure a monthly or quarterly investor update that a busy partner can read in under two minutes
- Choose and present the six core metrics a growth stage investor expects, with consistent definitions month to month
- Report revenue, gross margin, burn and runway in INR without flattering the numbers
Practice Drills: Mock Institutional Investor Relationship Review Post IPO
A masterclass drill course for CFOs, corporate development heads, founders who have just listed and senior finance leaders who now own the investor relationship. You work on one sample company, a consumer brand that listed on NSE and BSE a year ago, and run the full annual review its board should ask for. You rebuild the shareholder register from allotment to today, track every lock-in expiry, score guidance against delivery, audit four earnings calls and every investor meeting against SEBI LODR, sit through mock meetings with a mutual fund, an FPI and a hedge fund with a short thesis, handle a proxy advisor's against recommendation, run a perception study, build the IR scorecard and finish by presenting the review and next year's plan to the board. All company numbers are illustrative.
- Rebuild a listed company's shareholder register from its IPO allotment and quarterly shareholding pattern filings
- Map anchor, pre-IPO and promoter lock-in expiries against price and delivery volume
- Score a year of guidance against what the company actually delivered
Practice Drills: Modeling a Multi Entity Liquidity Stress Scenario
A hands-on drill course for CFOs, finance controllers, group treasurers, late-stage founders and corp dev teams who answer for liquidity across more than one legal entity. You take one illustrative five-entity Indian group (a listed holdco, a manufacturing opco funded by working capital lines and commercial paper, a lender ring-fenced infrastructure SPV, a distribution subsidiary and a GIFT City entity with a USD loan) and build its liquidity stress model in a spreadsheet. You forecast 13 weeks of cash entity by entity, define what really counts as available liquidity, eliminate intercompany flows, then design a combined shock drawn from IL&FS 2018 and COVID 2020: a key buyer default, a CP rollover failure and rating downgrade, and a rupee and market shock. You run it through every entity, find the first breach week, test covenants and cross-default contagion, separate cash that can move from cash that is trapped under Sections 185 and 186, FEMA and lender ring-fences, rank the response levers, size the buffer with a reverse stress test, and finish with a one-page board report and a quarterly contingency funding plan.
- How to lay out a multi-entity liquidity stress model with entity sheets, an intercompany elimination layer and a consolidated view
- How to build a 13-week base-case cash forecast for each entity and define available liquidity with sensible haircuts
- How to design a plausible combined stress scenario from real Indian episodes like IL&FS 2018 and COVID 2020
Practice Drills: Preparing a One Page Financial Summary for Leadership
A hands-on drill course for non-finance team members, corporate treasury staff, HR and L&D teams, and startup founders who are asked to 'send leadership a one-pager'. Working on one sample Indian consumer company's quarterly profit and loss, balance sheet and cash flow, you will pick the handful of numbers that matter, add cash and working capital so profit does not mislead, compare against budget and last year, explain every variance in one line, format figures in crore and lakh without errors, write a headline summary leaders read first, and lay out the page with a KPI strip, one table and one chart. You then run the same drills for a startup founder's monthly board update, an HR team's people-cost summary and a treasury liquidity snapshot, and finish by building and checking a full one-page summary before you hit send.
- How to pull revenue, gross margin, EBITDA and profit from a full P&L and ignore the noise
- How to choose the five KPIs a leadership team actually uses to make decisions
- How to add cash flow and working capital so a profitable quarter does not hide a cash problem
Practice Drills: Preparing a Transfer Pricing Documentation Summary
A practice-first course for finance and treasury teams, founders and strategy professionals who have to produce, review or sign off on an Indian entity's transfer pricing documentation. You will map a group's international and specified domestic transactions, write a functional, asset and risk (FAR) analysis, characterise the Indian entity, pick the most appropriate method under Rule 10B, run a comparables search with accept-reject filters, and compute the arm's length range under Rule 10CA. Dedicated drills cover royalty and management fees, intercompany loans and guarantees, and safe harbour eligibility. The course closes with full documentation summaries for an IT services captive and a brand distributor, reconciled against Form 3CEB and the Master File. Educational content only, not tax or legal advice.
- Identify which transactions need transfer pricing documentation and which thresholds apply
- Write a FAR analysis and characterise an Indian entity in a way that survives TPO scrutiny
- Choose and defend the most appropriate method from the six recognised under Indian rules
Practice Drills: Preparing an ESG Disclosure Summary for Board Review
A hands-on drill course for CFOs, financial controllers, senior finance leaders, pre-IPO founders and corporate development teams who own the ESG number that goes to the board. You will work through one illustrative Indian listed manufacturer's sustainability data from raw plant-level inputs to a finished board summary: scoping under SEBI's BRSR and BRSR Core, building a materiality matrix, normalising energy, water, waste and GHG numbers, reconciling ESG figures to the audited financial statements, reading workforce and governance metrics, and handling value chain data gaps. The course ends with you assembling a full board ESG pack and rehearsing the questions independent directors and the audit committee will ask before they sign off.
- What a board and audit committee actually need from an ESG disclosure summary, and what they do not
- How SEBI's BRSR, BRSR Core, value chain disclosures and the reasonable assurance glide path shape what finance must sign off
- How to build a materiality matrix and map each material issue to the right BRSR principle and KPI
Practice Drills: Reading a Company Balance Sheet Line by Line
A hands-on drill course for non-finance employees, treasury teams, HR and L&D professionals, and startup founders who need to read a balance sheet from the inside. You will work through one illustrative Indian manufacturer's two-year Schedule III balance sheet, line by line and note by note: fixed assets and capital work-in-progress, inventories and receivables, cash and investments, share capital and reserves, borrowings, payables and provisions. Every drill ends with the question a CFO, lender or board member would ask about that line, and the course closes with you reading a real listed company's balance sheet from its BSE filing on your own.
- How a Schedule III balance sheet is laid out and where to find a listed company's filing on BSE, NSE and screener.in
- What each asset line means in operating terms, from capital work-in-progress to trade receivables and other current assets
- How to read share capital, other equity, ESOP reserves and retained earnings without confusing reserves with cash
Practice Drills: Responding to a Simulated Activist Investor Letter
A hands-on drill course for CFOs, finance controllers, corporate development teams, and late-stage founders who may one day open a letter from an activist shareholder. You work through one simulated case end to end: a sample NSE-listed company with a large cash pile, a low-return subsidiary, and a history of related party contracts receives a public letter from a fund holding just over 5 percent. You will read the letter the way a board should, rebuild the activist's valuation math, map the shareholder register to see who actually decides the vote, handle the first 72 hours of disclosure and insider trading controls, and stress-test each demand on its merits. You will then choose a stance, draft the board's reply and investor presentation, prepare for an EGM requisition under the Companies Act, and negotiate a settlement. The course closes with a complete activist response pack.
- How to read an activist letter and separate its demands, its evidence, and its implied threats
- How to rebuild and test an activist's sum of the parts and value gap calculations
- How the SEBI Takeover Code, LODR, and Companies Act sections on requisitions and director removal shape an Indian activist campaign
Practice Drills: Structuring a Convertible Debt Term Sheet
A practice-first course for CFOs, finance controllers, corporate development teams and pre-IPO founders who have to structure convertible debt from the issuer's side of the table. Working from a sample late-growth Indian company raising INR 300 crore from a private equity investor, you will choose between compulsorily convertible debentures, optionally convertible debentures, FCCBs and NCDs with warrants, check the route under the Companies Act, FEMA and SEBI rules, then build the term sheet clause by clause: issue size, coupon, conversion price and premium, IPO-linked floors and ratchets, maturity, redemption premium and investor yield, anti-dilution, security, covenants, puts, calls and governance rights. Every economic term is tested in rupees against conversion and exit scenarios, including the dilution and EPS hit, the Ind AS 32 liability and equity split, and withholding tax and stamp duty. The course closes with three full end-to-end drills and a before-you-sign scorecard. Educational content only, not legal, tax or investment advice.
- Choose between CCDs, OCDs, FCCBs and NCDs with warrants for a specific issuer and defend the choice to a board
- Check the Companies Act, FEMA, ECB and SEBI route for a convertible issue before drafting a word
- Set the coupon, conversion price, conversion premium and IPO-linked floors and ratchets, and prove in rupees what each costs the promoters
Practice Drills: Structuring a Simple Business Budget
A hands-on drill course for startup founders, treasury teams, HR and L&D professionals, and employees outside finance who are asked to build or own a budget. You take one illustrative small Indian business and build its FY budget from scratch in Google Sheets or Excel: pull last year's actuals into a clean template, build revenue from volume and price drivers, phase it across the months around festive and seasonal swings, budget direct costs, payroll with PF and ESI, operating expenses and capex, assemble the monthly budgeted P&L and break-even point, convert it into a cash budget that respects GST and credit terms, test base, downside and upside cases, and then run a monthly budget vs actual review and present the whole thing on one page.
- How to turn last year's actuals into a clean budget template with a separate assumptions sheet
- How to build revenue from volume and price drivers and phase it month by month around Indian seasonality
- How to budget direct costs, payroll including PF, ESI and increments, operating expenses and capex
Practice Drills: Structuring a Term Sheet Redline and Negotiation Response
A practice-first companion to Building a Term Sheet Negotiation Checklist and Tracker. You already know what liquidation preference, anti-dilution, reserved matters and CCPS are; this course makes you redline them. Working from sample Indian term sheets, you will triage an incoming draft, build a position sheet before touching the document, then drill the markup of every clause that matters: valuation and the ESOP pool, liquidation preference, anti-dilution, exit rights and put options under FEMA, reserved matters, board composition, founder vesting, exclusivity and conditions precedent. Then you drill the response itself: the cover note, the concession ladder, the investor's second turn and a strategic investor's term sheet from the corporate BD side. Built for growth-stage founders, CFOs and treasury teams, and corporate strategy and BD teams who have to produce the redline, not just read it.
- Triage an incoming term sheet in 30 minutes and rank which clauses deserve your negotiating capital
- Build a redline position sheet with an opening ask, a target and a walk-away for every clause before you mark up the draft
- Redline valuation, ESOP pool, liquidation preference and anti-dilution clauses and quantify what each change is worth in rupees
Practice Drills: Valuing a Sample ESOP Grant Using Black-Scholes
A practice-first course built around one sample ESOP grant that you value from scratch. You start with the grant letter itself: grant date, exercise price, vesting schedule and expiry, and why the option sitting inside it behaves like a call option with a few important differences. Then you build each of the six Black-Scholes inputs the way an Indian finance team actually does: share price for listed and unlisted companies, expected term, volatility from NSE price history or a peer set, and the risk-free rate from the G-Sec curve. You run the formula by hand, value a graded vesting grant tranche by tranche, stress test the inputs, and finish by turning fair value into the Ind AS 102 expense schedule, including forfeitures and true-ups. Built for corporate finance and treasury teams, growth stage founders managing an ESOP pool, and strategy teams who need to read an ESOP valuation report critically.
- Read an ESOP grant letter and extract every term that affects its fair value
- Explain why an ESOP is valued as a call option and where that analogy needs adjustment
- Build all six Black-Scholes inputs for a listed or unlisted Indian company and defend each one
Understanding Advanced Capital Allocation Strategy for CFOs
Over ten years, the way a company allocates its capital decides its share price more than any single quarter's results. This advanced concept course is for CFOs, finance controllers, senior corporate finance leaders, corporate development teams and late-stage founders who own that decision inside one company. It starts with the economics of value creation (ROIC against WACC, and incremental returns on new capital), then shows how to set risk-adjusted hurdle rates and size a realistic capital envelope from free cash flow and debt capacity. It covers organic investment under uncertainty, including the biases that distort capital budgeting and the real options that justify staged bets, then acquisitions and exits through Indian deals such as Tata Steel and Corus, Hindalco and Novelis, and recent demergers. It closes with dividends, buybacks and cash policy under current Indian tax rules, leverage as an allocation choice, incentive design, investor communication, and a capital allocation scorecard you can apply to your own company. Educational content only, not investment advice.
- How to measure value creation with ROIC, WACC, economic profit and incremental return on invested capital
- How to set divisional and project hurdle rates for an Indian company without double counting risk
- How to size a multi-year capital envelope from free cash flow, balance sheet cash and debt capacity at a target rating
Understanding Budgeting and Forecasting Basics
Sooner or later, almost everyone in a company is handed a budget: a sales head with a revenue target, an HR manager with a headcount plan, an L&D lead with a training spend, a founder with eighteen months of runway. Very few are ever taught what the numbers mean. This course fixes that, without assuming any finance background. You learn what a budget is and how it differs from a forecast, a plan and a target. You learn the building blocks every budget is made of: revenue, fixed and variable costs, capex and opex, and why profit and cash are not the same thing. You then follow how Indian companies actually build budgets across the April to March financial year, from top-down and bottom-up approaches to zero-based budgeting, drivers, assumptions and monthly phasing around Diwali and year-end. The second half covers forecasting: simple methods like run rate and moving averages, rolling forecasts and a first look at cash forecasting. You finish by learning to read a budget vs actual report, manage your own department's numbers, budget for people and spot the budget games that quietly destroy trust.
- Explain the difference between a budget, a forecast, a plan and a target in plain language
- Read a simple budget and understand how revenue, costs, profit and cash connect
- Separate fixed, variable and semi-variable costs, and capex from opex
Understanding Cap Tables and Equity Dilution for Founders
A plain-language, India-specific guide to the cap table from the founder's side of the table, built for startup founders, treasury teams, HR and L&D professionals, and employees who want to understand how ownership in their company is divided and why it keeps changing. Learn what a cap table records, how authorised capital, issued shares and face value work under the Companies Act, and why fully diluted ownership is the only number that matters. Split equity among co-founders without wrecking the partnership, protect the company with founder vesting and leaver clauses, and hand out equity to early hires and advisors sensibly. See exactly how each fundraise dilutes you, why the ESOP pool is negotiated before the round, and how CCDs and iSAFEs land on the cap table. Go beyond percentages to understand control, board seats, liquidation preference, anti-dilution and secondary sales, then learn to keep a clean, compliant cap table through allotments, transfers and MCA filings. Finish with the mistakes that break due diligence and a case study following one founder's stake from incorporation to Series C.
Understanding Cash Flow Management for Businesses
A practical, India-specific introduction to managing cash inside a business, built for founders, treasury teams, HR and L&D professionals, and employees outside finance whose decisions quietly move the company's bank balance. Understand why profitable companies still run out of money, how the cash conversion cycle works, and how Indian businesses manage receivables, payables and inventory, including TReDS and the MSME 45-day payment rule. Learn to build a simple 13-week cash forecast, plan burn and runway, choose between cash credit, overdraft and bill discounting, schedule GST, TDS and advance tax outflows, and park surplus cash sensibly. Finish by seeing how every department affects cash, spotting the early warning signs of a cash crunch, and working through a real-world style cash crisis case study.
Understanding Complex Debt Instruments: Convertibles, Mezzanine, and Structured Debt
An India-focused, advanced course on the financing instruments that sit between plain vanilla debt and common equity, built for CFOs, finance controllers, corporate development teams and late-stage founders. Map where hybrids sit in the capital stack and learn the Indian toolkit: NCDs, CCDs, OCDs, CCPS, FCCBs and warrants. Take a convertible apart into conversion price, ratio, premium and parity, value it as a bond plus a call option, and see how Ind AS 32 split accounting and diluted EPS change the reported numbers. Study the FCCB boom and bust through the Suzlon experience, and how CCDs and CCPS are used in pre-IPO and strategic deals. Price mezzanine finance through cash coupons, PIK interest and equity kickers, understand promoter and holdco funding from Indian AIFs and NBFCs, and see what subordination and intercreditor terms mean for recovery under the IBC. Work through securitisation with PTCs and direct assignment, market-linked debentures after the 2023 tax change, covenants, escrows and cash waterfalls, and SO and CE rated obligations. Finish with a framework for matching the instrument to the situation, the term sheet clauses that quietly move value, and two case studies: an illustrative comparison of three ways to fund a ₹500 crore acquisition, and the role of convertibles in Tata Steel's acquisition of Corus.
Understanding Corporate Bond Issuance and Debt Markets
A clear, practical guide to how corporate bonds actually get issued in India, written for treasury teams, growth-stage founders and corporate strategy professionals. Starting from why a company would borrow from the bond market instead of a bank, it walks through the anatomy of an NCD, the SEBI rulebook, private placements versus public issues, credit ratings, arrangers and price discovery on the NSE and BSE Electronic Book Provider platforms. It then explains how a bond is priced against the G-Sec curve, what drives the credit spread, how bonds trade and fail after issue, and where commercial paper, market-linked debentures, green bonds and masala bonds fit. It closes with a step-by-step plan for a company's first bond issue.
- Why companies choose bonds over bank loans and what an NCD term sheet actually contains
- Who buys Indian corporate bonds and what each investor class looks for
- How SEBI's NCS Regulations shape private placements and public issues
Understanding Corporate Capital Structure Decisions
An India-focused, intermediate course on how companies decide the mix of debt and equity that funds them, built for treasury and corporate finance professionals, growth-stage founders and strategy teams. Measure leverage the way lenders and rating agencies do, then work through the theory that drives real boardroom decisions: Modigliani-Miller, the tax shield, trade-off theory, pecking order, signalling and agency costs. Estimate the cost of equity and debt for an Indian company, build a WACC, re-lever beta and see why an optimal capital structure is a range rather than a point. Study the Indian reality of financial distress, from promoter pledging and holding company debt to lease liabilities under Ind AS 116 and the collapses of IL&FS, DHFL and Jet Airways. Understand how dividends, buybacks, rights issues and asset sales reshape the balance sheet, and finish with a practical framework for setting target leverage, a walkthrough of reading capital structure choices on screener.in and in annual reports, and a case study of two Indian companies with opposite philosophies of leverage.
Understanding Corporate Credit Ratings From an Issuer's Perspective
Built for CFOs, finance controllers, senior corporate finance leaders, pre-IPO founders and corp dev teams who sit on the other side of the rating table. Most material on credit ratings is written for investors reading a rating. This course is written for the company being rated. It covers how CRISIL, ICRA, CARE and India Ratings assess business and financial risk, what goes into the information pack and the management meeting, how to read and respond to a rating committee outcome, and how to manage surveillance, outlook changes and non-cooperation flags. It then turns the rating into a planning tool: building a shadow rating model, testing capex, acquisitions and dividends against agency thresholds, handling rating triggers in loan and bond documents, and translating rating notches into spreads on bonds, bank loans and commercial paper. It closes with downgrades, the strict Indian default definitions, and lessons from IL&FS.
- How Indian rating agencies are regulated by SEBI and what each symbol, outlook and watch actually signals
- How agencies score business risk, financial risk, management quality and group support, and where notching comes from
- How to choose an agency, prepare the information pack and run the management meeting with the rating committee
Understanding Corporate Taxation Basics for Business Owners
A plain-language, India-specific introduction to how businesses are taxed, built for founders, treasury teams, HR and L&D professionals, and employees outside finance who want to understand the tax decisions shaping their company. Learn how your business structure changes your tax bill, how accounting profit becomes taxable income, and what the Income-tax Act, 2025 changed. Understand corporate tax rates, surcharge and cess, the concessional 22% regime, MAT, and how to read a listed company's effective tax rate on screener.in. See how advance tax, TDS, TCS, tax audits and ITR filing work through the year, get a working grasp of GST and input tax credit, and learn what salary, dividends, buybacks and ESOPs really cost the company and its people. Finish with startup tax benefits, the line between tax planning and evasion, and a case study tracing one Indian SME's tax year from profit to paid.
Understanding Cross Border Tax Structuring for Multinational Operations
Every rupee a multinational earns crosses at least two tax systems on its way to shareholders, and the structure of the group decides how much of it arrives. This course is for CFOs, finance controllers, corporate development and M&A teams, and founders preparing for scale or listing. It covers residence, source and permanent establishment, how DTAAs actually work, outbound structuring under India's FEMA overseas investment rules, inbound entry vehicles and funding, royalties and service fees, indirect transfers, transfer pricing for operating models, intangibles and financing, GAAR and the principal purpose test, the Tiger Global ruling, Pillar Two and digital taxes, startup flips and reverse flips, and how to govern tax risk at board level. Built on real Indian cases and companies. Educational content only, not tax, legal or investment advice.
- How residence, source and permanent establishment rules decide which country taxes which profit, and how DTAAs relieve double taxation
- How Indian groups set up overseas subsidiaries under FEMA rules, choose a holding jurisdiction and bring profits home efficiently
- How foreign groups choose an Indian entry vehicle, fund it with debt or equity and charge royalties and service fees without inviting disputes
Understanding ESG Reporting Requirements for Large Corporates
For India's top 1,000 listed companies, ESG reporting is no longer a glossy annual brochure. It is a SEBI-mandated filing, increasingly subject to external assurance, read by lenders, rating agencies, global customers and foreign investors. This advanced concept course is for CFOs, finance controllers, senior corporate finance leaders, corporate development teams and pre-IPO founders who own that filing. It walks through the Business Responsibility and Sustainability Report (BRSR) section by section, then BRSR Core, the assurance glide path and value chain disclosures. It covers the hard numbers (Scope 1, 2 and 3 emissions, energy, water, waste and workforce metrics), maps BRSR to ISSB, GRI, TCFD, CDP and the EU's CSRD and CBAM, and shows how to build ESG data controls, board oversight and greenwashing safeguards. It closes with ESG disclosure in IPOs and M&A diligence, peer benchmarking using real Indian BRSRs, and a 12 month implementation roadmap. Educational content only, not investment advice.
- Which Indian companies must file a BRSR, when, and what SEBI's applicability rules actually say
- How to read and prepare every section of the BRSR, including essential and leadership indicators across the nine NGRBC principles
- What BRSR Core requires, how assessment and assurance differ, and how the phased glide path applies to your company
Understanding Financial Markets: A Primer for Non Finance Employees
A plain-language, India-specific primer on how financial markets work, built for employees outside finance, treasury teams, HR and L&D professionals, and founders who keep hearing about markets in board updates, news headlines and salary conversations. Understand how money flows from savers to businesses, who the key players and regulators are, and how the equity, debt, currency and commodity markets actually operate on NSE, BSE and beyond. Learn how companies raise money through IPOs, QIPs, bonds and commercial paper, why an RBI repo rate change moves your company's borrowing costs, what credit ratings signal, and how businesses hedge rupee and input cost risk. Finish by connecting inflation, GDP and FII flows to market moves, understanding insider trading rules and trading windows at listed employers, seeing where your ESOPs, EPF, NPS and SIPs meet the markets, and tracing one RBI rate decision all the way to a company and its employees.
Understanding Investor Relations for Growth Stage Companies
A practical guide to investor relations for Indian growth-stage companies, written for founders, CFO and treasury teams, and corporate strategy professionals. It starts with what IR actually does and who the audiences are, then follows a company through its lifecycle: investor updates and board packs while private, building the equity story and KPI set before an IPO, and the SEBI rulebook that governs every word a listed company says. It then covers the quarterly earnings machine, the guidance question, analyst coverage and consensus, communicating bad news, lock-in expiries and shareholder base management, and closes with how to build and measure an IR function, using real examples from India's new-age listings.
- What investor relations does and why it matters more for growth companies than mature ones
- Who the investor audiences are in India and what each one wants from management
- How to report to private investors and build an equity story before an IPO
Understanding Pre IPO Readiness: Financial and Governance Requirements
A concept course for CFOs, finance controllers, corporate development teams and founders of late-stage Indian companies who need to know what IPO readiness actually requires before the bankers arrive. It covers the financial, controls, governance and capital structure requirements, from SEBI ICDR eligibility and restated Ind AS financials to SEBI LODR board composition, related party transactions, promoter contribution and cap table clean up. Each lesson explains why the requirement exists and where Indian companies typically fall short, so you can judge how far your company is from a fileable DRHP.
- What IPO readiness means as an operating state, and why it takes 18 to 24 months to reach
- How SEBI ICDR mainboard eligibility works under the profitability test and the QIB route, and when the SME platform fits better
- What restated financials, Ind AS policies, audit quality and KPI disclosures a DRHP will demand
Understanding Related Party Transaction Governance at Scale
In a promoter-led Indian business group, related party transactions are not an occasional exception. They run through every month's books: shared brands, intra-group loans, common suppliers, cross-guarantees, management fees and asset transfers between dozens of entities. Most governance failures that have destroyed shareholder value in India, from Fortis to Coffee Day, ran through exactly these channels. This advanced concept course is for CFOs, finance controllers, senior corporate finance leaders, corporate development teams and pre-IPO founders who have to make related party governance work across a large group, not just on paper. It covers who counts as a related party under the Companies Act, SEBI LODR and Ind AS 24, how approval thresholds and materiality actually work, what the audit committee must see and test, how to benchmark arm's length pricing, and how to build a group policy, ERP controls and continuous monitoring that hold up at thousands of transactions a year. It closes with disclosure, shareholder votes, auditor scrutiny and the special situations (royalties, intra-group funding, IPOs and restructurings) where related party risk is highest. Educational content only, not investment or legal advice.
- Why related party transactions are the main channel through which value leaks from listed Indian companies, and how to recognise each leakage pattern
- How the Companies Act, SEBI LODR and Ind AS 24 each define a related party, and how to map the full related party universe of a large group
- How board, audit committee and shareholder approval thresholds work, including materiality, omnibus approvals and material modifications
Understanding Shareholder Activism and How Companies Respond
A concept course for CFOs, finance controllers, corporate development teams, and late-stage founders who want to understand shareholder activism before they ever face it. In India, promoters often hold large stakes, so activism rarely looks like a Wall Street proxy fight. It works through institutional votes, proxy advisor recommendations, EGM requisitions, majority of minority approvals on related party transactions, and public pressure. You will learn what activists want and how they pick targets, the Companies Act, SEBI LODR, and Takeover Code provisions that set the rules of engagement, how proxy advisors and mutual fund stewardship codes shape voting, and how boards should prepare, respond, and decide whether to engage, settle, or resist. The course closes with Indian cases where shareholders changed the outcome, and a readiness plan you can apply to your own company.
- What shareholder activists want and how activism in promoter-controlled Indian companies differs from activism in widely held markets
- Which voting thresholds, EGM requisition rights, and director removal powers shareholders have under the Companies Act, 2013
- How SEBI's Takeover Code, LODR, and insider trading rules shape the way a stake is built and a campaign is run
Understanding Term Sheets: Key Clauses Founders Must Know
A clause-by-clause, India-specific guide to the venture capital term sheet, built for growth-stage founders, corporate finance and treasury professionals, and strategy and BD teams who sit across the table from investors. Learn what a term sheet binds you to and what it does not, and how it maps onto the SSA, SHA and Articles of Association that Indian deals actually run on. Decode the economic terms that decide who gets paid: pre-money valuation and the fully diluted trap, the option pool clause, why Indian VCs invest through CCPS, liquidation preference and anti-dilution. Then work through the control terms that decide who runs the company: board seats, affirmative voting rights, information rights, founder vesting and non-competes. Understand transfer and exit mechanics including ROFR, tag-along, drag-along, pre-emptive rights and the exit clauses that FEMA quietly reshapes. Finish with the regulatory overlay under FEMA and the Companies Act, the clauses worth fighting for, the red flags to walk away from, and a full case study redlining a Series A term sheet.
Understanding Transfer Pricing Basics for Multi Entity Businesses
The moment a business has two entities under common control, every invoice between them becomes a tax question. A holding company charging its operating subsidiary a brand fee, an Indian captive billing its US parent for software development, a promoter's trading firm buying raw material for the listed company: all of these are transfer pricing transactions, and the Income Tax Department will test each one against what unrelated parties would have agreed. This course teaches the mechanics from the ground up. You will learn who counts as an associated enterprise, what the arm's length principle actually requires, how the six prescribed methods work with worked Indian numbers, how the common intercompany transactions (services, royalties, loans, guarantees, captive service centres) are priced, and what compliance looks like in practice: Form 3CEB, the master file and local file, safe harbour rules, advance pricing agreements and what happens when the Transfer Pricing Officer disagrees. Built for CFOs and treasury teams, growth-stage founders setting up overseas or group entities, and corporate strategy and BD teams structuring intra-group deals.
- Identify when two entities are associated enterprises and which of their transactions fall under Indian transfer pricing rules
- Explain the arm's length principle and why tax authorities use it to stop profit shifting
- Apply CUP, resale price, cost plus and TNMM to simple Indian examples and pick the most appropriate method
Understanding Working Capital Management for Businesses
A practical, India-specific introduction to working capital, built for founders, treasury teams, HR and L&D professionals, and employees outside finance whose everyday decisions lock up or release a company's money. Learn to read the working capital lines on a balance sheet, tell gross, net and operating working capital apart, and calculate liquidity ratios and the working capital cycle step by step. See why FMCG, retail, capital goods, pharma and IT companies look so different, and track real trends on screener.in. Understand working capital policy, permanent vs temporary needs, and how to estimate requirement. Get hands-on with credit policy, receivables ageing, EOQ and ABC analysis, supplier terms and the MSME 45-day payment rule. Learn how Indian banks set drawing power, how cash credit, WCDL, commercial paper, factoring and TReDS compare, and finish by linking working capital to growth and valuation, spotting red flags, and fixing a working capital crunch in a case study.
Understanding Working Capital Optimization at Scale
Built for treasury and corporate finance professionals, growth-stage founders and corporate strategy teams who already know what working capital is and now need to move it. Learn to run the cash conversion cycle as a management KPI, translate days saved into cash released, ROCE and valuation, and benchmark against Indian leaders such as HUL, Asian Paints and Titan. Break working capital down by business unit, channel, SKU and customer to separate structural days from process leakage. Then work through the three big levers: order-to-cash (credit segmentation, dispute control, collections automation, dealer finance), procure-to-pay (term harmonisation under the MSME 45-day rule and Section 43B(h), reverse factoring, dynamic discounting, consignment stock and gold metal loans) and inventory (safety stock, SKU rationalisation, S&OP). Finish with treasury structures, 13-week cash forecasting, the funding mix at scale, negative working capital business models, governance and incentives, the line between optimization and window dressing, and a full 90-day programme case study.
- How to measure the cash conversion cycle the way a treasury team does and convert days saved into cash, ROCE and valuation impact
- How to benchmark working capital against Indian peers and decompose it by business unit, channel, SKU and customer
- Practical order-to-cash levers: credit segmentation, dispute reduction, collections automation and dealer finance programmes
Using Carta or Similar Platforms for Cap Table and Equity Management at Scale
For growth-stage founders, corporate finance and treasury professionals, and strategy and BD teams who have outgrown the spreadsheet cap table. Learn to recognise the breaking point, understand what equity management platforms like Carta, Qapita, EquityList and Trica Equity actually do, and pick one with a structured scorecard. Migrate cleanly by reconciling your spreadsheet against the statutory registers, and set up equity, CCPS, CCDs, warrants and iSAFEs correctly. Run ESOPs at scale: grants under Section 62(1)(b), vesting and leaver treatment, exercise and perquisite tax withholding, and buyback programs. Model priced rounds, conversions and exit waterfalls on the platform, then keep everything in sync with MCA filings, FEMA reporting, demat requirements and Ind AS 102. Close with pre-IPO clean-up under SEBI SBEB rules and a full case study of equity operations from Series A to pre-IPO.
- How to tell when a spreadsheet cap table has become a liability, and what a platform fixes
- How to evaluate and migrate to Carta or an Indian alternative without breaking your records
- How to run ESOP grants, vesting, exercises, tax withholding and buybacks at scale
M&A & Valuation
10 courses
Advanced M&A Integration Strategy Post Deal Close
A strategy-level course on post-merger integration for CFOs and finance controllers, senior corporate finance leaders, corp dev and M&A teams, and late-stage founders preparing to buy or be bought. Go beyond the first 100 days: choose the right integration model for the deal, write an integration thesis, design the combined operating model, organisation and decision rights, and run a synergy ledger that tracks value for three years, not three months. Work through the Indian layer that only shows up after close: post-acquisition mergers under Sections 230 to 233 of the Companies Act, Section 72A loss carry-forward, stamp duty and GST continuity, purchase price allocation and goodwill impairment under Ind AS 103 and Ind AS 36, and the SEBI rules that bind a listed target. Then study real Indian integrations, LTI and Mindtree, Air India and Vistara, and Zomato and Blinkit, and leave with a reusable integration playbook.
- Pick between absorption, preservation, symbiosis and holding models based on what the deal thesis actually needs
- Turn a deal model into an integration thesis and a value creation plan with named owners
- Design the combined operating model, leadership structure and decision rights, including for a listed or partly owned target
Case Study: Negotiating a Term Sheet, A Founder's Real Experience
A composite case study of an Indian founder raising a ₹40 crore Series A, built from typical Indian venture deal terms. Follow a Pune B2B SaaS company from its first term sheet to the final close, and learn what every clause actually costs. Work through pre-money and post-money valuation, the ESOP pool shuffle, liquidation preferences and anti-dilution, then the control terms: board seats, reserved matters, founder vesting, ROFR, tag-along and drag-along. Understand the Indian legal layer that shapes every deal here, from CCPS and FEMA pricing rules to valuation reports and how terms get rewritten in the SHA and SSA. Finish by modelling the exit waterfall yourself and walking away with a negotiation checklist you can use on a real deal.
- Read an Indian Series A term sheet and separate the economic terms from the control terms
- Calculate pre-money, post-money and founder dilution, including the effect of a pre-money ESOP pool
- Model how liquidation preferences and anti-dilution change payouts across different exit outcomes
Introduction to Business Valuation for Founders and Managers
A plain-language, India-specific introduction to how businesses are valued, built for founders, managers, treasury teams and HR professionals who deal with valuation without being finance specialists. Understand the difference between price, value and worth, and where valuation shows up in real work: fundraises, ESOP grants, acquisitions, buybacks and share transfers. Learn which numbers actually drive value, how multiples like P/E and EV/EBITDA work, how to bridge enterprise value to equity value, and how to build a simple DCF without drowning in jargon. Finish with the Indian rulebook on registered valuers, Rule 11UA, FEMA and SEBI pricing, the everyday management decisions that move your company's valuation, and a case study valuing one Indian private company three different ways.
Introduction to Mergers and Acquisitions From a Corporate Perspective
An India-specific, inside-the-company view of mergers and acquisitions, built for corporate finance and treasury teams, strategy and business development professionals, and growth-stage founders. Learn the vocabulary of mergers, amalgamations and demergers, why companies buy and why most deals disappoint, and how to decide between building, buying and partnering. Value a target the way an acquirer does: standalone value, honestly sized synergies, control premiums and EPS accretion or dilution. Understand how deals are paid for and structured, from cash and stock to slump sales, schemes of arrangement, earn-outs and escrows. Walk through the deal process and due diligence, the Indian rulebook of the Companies Act, NCLT, CCI, the SEBI Takeover Code and FEMA, and the integration work that decides whether a deal succeeds. Finish with the HDFC and HDFC Bank merger traced from announcement to completion.
- Tell mergers, acquisitions, amalgamations and demergers apart and know why companies pursue each
- Decide when buying a business beats building or partnering, and screen targets systematically
- Separate a target's standalone value from the price paid, size synergies honestly and test EPS accretion or dilution
Masterclass: Building and Leading a Corporate Development Function
A masterclass for CFOs, corporate development heads, founders around an IPO and senior finance and strategy leaders who need to build, run or oversee a corporate development function in an Indian company. Learn what corp dev actually owns across M&A, partnerships, minority stakes and divestitures, where it should report, and how its shape differs across promoter groups, professionally run companies and new-age tech. Build the team and manage bankers, lawyers and Big Four advisors. Turn strategy into an M&A thesis and a proprietary pipeline, run an investment committee with real stage gates, and handle board approvals, related party transactions and UPSI under SEBI rules. Hold the line on walk-away prices, hand deals cleanly to integration, and measure corp dev by the returns its deals earn. Finish with divestitures and demergers, UltraTech's cement acquisitions, and Zomato's acquisition of Blinkit.
- Define the scope, mandate and reporting line of a corporate development function that fits your company
- Decide when to make the first corp dev hire, build the right skills mix and manage external advisors and their fees
- Translate corporate strategy into an M&A thesis and run a proprietary deal pipeline, including CVC and minority stakes
Masterclass: Navigating a Hostile Takeover Attempt as a Leadership Team
A leadership masterclass for CFOs, corporate development heads, founders of listed and pre-IPO companies, and senior finance and strategy leaders. Hostile bids in India have been rare because promoters usually hold control, but rising institutional ownership, diluted founders, and new-age listed companies with low promoter stakes are changing that. This course covers the leadership side of a hostile approach: who decides what under the Companies Act and the SEBI Takeover Code, how management handles its own conflicts of interest, how to audit vulnerability and close the value gap before a bidder does, how to lead the first weeks after a bid lands, and how to choose between fighting, negotiating, and selling. Case studies from Indian and global contests show what boards got right and wrong, and the final lesson covers leading the company after the outcome, whichever way it goes.
- Why hostile bids have been rare in India, and which listed companies are now genuinely exposed
- How fiduciary duties split between the board, independent directors, and management once a bid is live
- How to recognise and manage your own conflicts of interest so a defense never turns into entrenchment
Practice Drills: Structuring a Hostile Takeover Defense Response Plan
A hands-on drill course for CFOs, corporate development heads, founders of listed and pre-IPO companies, and senior strategy leaders. You work through a live scenario: an unsolicited bid crosses the SEBI Takeover Code trigger on a listed Indian mid-cap. Drill by drill, you map the shareholder register and vote math, stand up a defense committee, handle disclosure under LODR and the insider trading rules, build a standalone value case against the offer price, test which defense levers actually work under Indian law, write the independent directors' recommendation, and assemble a one-page response plan and decision tree.
- How the SEBI Takeover Code triggers, offer timelines, and Regulation 26 limit what a target board can do once a bid is live
- How to map a shareholder register into realistic vote and tender math for promoters, institutions, and retail holders
- How to set up a defense committee, choose advisors, and keep disclosures compliant with LODR and the PIT Regulations
Practice Drills: Structuring an M&A Integration Plan for the First 100 Days
A hands-on drill course for CFOs, corp dev and M&A teams, senior corporate finance leaders, and late-stage founders. You will work one illustrative Indian deal, a listed acquirer buying a promoter-run private company, through its first 100 days: turning the deal thesis into an integration charter, standing up the Integration Management Office, clearing Day 1 legal, regulatory, and SEBI disclosure requirements, retaining key people, protecting customers and working capital, building and phasing a synergy tracking model, budgeting one-time integration costs, and presenting a Day 100 review to the board.
- How to convert an acquisition's deal thesis into a one-page integration charter with measurable value drivers
- How to design an Integration Management Office, workstreams, and a governance cadence that a board can hold to account
- How to build a Day 1 checklist covering CCI, SEBI LODR disclosures, MCA filings, GST, banking, and payroll continuity
Understanding ESOP Valuation: Black-Scholes and Binomial Models for Employee Options
A practical, India-specific guide to putting a number on employee stock options, built for finance and treasury professionals, growth-stage founders and strategy teams. Learn why Ind AS 102 treats every ESOP grant as a real cost, why an out-of-the-money option still has fair value, and what the six valuation inputs are. Work through Black-Scholes in plain terms, estimate volatility for listed and unlisted companies, and pick defensible inputs for expected term, risk-free rate and dividend yield. Build a binomial tree step by step, model vesting, early exercise and employee exits, and learn when each model is the right tool. Then follow the fair value into the P&L: expense over the vesting period, forfeitures, repricing, performance and market conditions, and the difference between accounting fair value and tax FMV. Finish with sensitivity analysis and a case study reading ESOP cost disclosures in the annual reports of India's new-age listed companies.
- Why Ind AS 102 requires ESOPs to be expensed at grant-date fair value
- How to value an employee option with Black-Scholes and pick defensible inputs
- How to build a binomial lattice that handles vesting, early exercise and exits
Understanding Spin Offs, Demergers, and Corporate Restructuring at Scale
An advanced, India-specific guide to separating a large business from the inside, built for CFOs and finance controllers, senior corporate finance leaders, late-stage founders and corporate development teams. Start with the strategic case: when a split creates value, how to choose between a demerger, spin-off, carve-out IPO, slump sale or trade sale, and how to measure stranded costs and dis-synergies before the board commits. Then design the transaction: the perimeter, the split of debt, cash and net worth, the entitlement ratio, and the appointed, effective and record dates. Work through the tax conditions for a tax-neutral demerger under Section 2(19AA), the slump sale alternative, and the Ind AS accounting. Follow the full regulatory road map from board approval and the stock exchange observation letter to the NCLT order and the listing of the resulting company. Finish with execution at scale: the separation office, transition service agreements, people, systems, ratings and the investor story, anchored in real NSE and BSE cases including Reliance and Jio Financial Services, ITC and ITC Hotels, the Tata Motors split and Vedanta's multi-way demerger.
Forensic Accounting & Compliance
60 courses
Introduction to Forensic Accounting: What It Is and Why It Matters
The starting point for anyone curious about how financial fraud is found, proven and prevented, no accounting degree needed. Learn what a forensic accountant actually does and how that differs from a statutory audit, then see why the discipline moved to the centre of Indian markets through Satyam, IL&FS, DHFL and the bank fraud cases that followed. Understand the fraud triangle and the three families of occupational fraud, walk through the common ways numbers get manipulated, and get a first look at the forensic toolkit: tracing money and related parties, analytical tests like Benford's Law, evidence and interviews, and how to read a forensic audit report. Finish with a map of who polices fraud in India (SEBI, NFRA, SFIO, ED, RBI), the legal provisions that matter, the career paths and certifications open to you, and a ten-minute red flag check you can run on any listed company. Written for commerce and finance students, compliance career aspirants, and investors who want to spot trouble before it shows up in the share price.
Understanding Common Types of Accounting Fraud
A field guide to how accounting fraud actually works, scheme by scheme. Start by drawing the line between honest error, aggressive accounting and fraud, and learn why every manipulation leaves a trail between profit and cash. Then work through the main families one at a time: fake and premature revenue, round-tripping, capitalised expenses, invented cash, cookie jar reserves, inflated inventory and receivables, hidden debt, related-party siphoning and promoter-level fund diversion, plus the inside jobs of skimming, billing schemes, payroll ghosts and kickbacks. Every scheme is tied to a real Indian case, from Satyam and DHFL to Fortis, Cox and Kings and Manpasand, and to the specific red flags it leaves in an annual report. Finish by matching fraud types to warning signs and diagnosing a scheme from the numbers alone. Written for commerce and finance students, compliance career aspirants, and investors who want to recognise a fraud pattern before the market does.
Understanding Earnings Management vs Outright Fraud
Every reported profit is a set of judgement calls. This course maps the full spectrum, from conservative accounting through legitimate earnings management and aggressive choices to outright fraud, and shows exactly where the line is crossed. Learn the accrual levers Ind AS leaves in management's hands (provisions, useful lives, impairment, revenue timing), the real-activity games that change the business to hit a quarter, and the legal test that turns a choice into a crime under the Companies Act, SEBI's PFUTP Regulations and LODR. Then learn to tell them apart in the numbers: accrual quality, suspiciously small beats, estimate revisions in the notes and what auditors flag under SA 240. Built around Indian cases from bank NPA divergence to Satyam. Written for aspiring forensic auditors, compliance officers at banks and NBFCs, and risk and compliance professionals.
Introduction to Whistleblower Mechanisms in Corporate Governance
Most corporate frauds are not caught by auditors or regulators. They are caught because someone on the inside spoke up. This course explains how whistleblower mechanisms work in Indian corporate governance, starting with why tips matter and the Indian cases where a single email or letter changed the course of events, from Satyam to Infosys and ICICI Bank. Learn exactly what the law requires: the vigil mechanism under Section 177 of the Companies Act, SEBI LODR rules for listed companies, SEBI's informant reward scheme for insider trading, auditor fraud reporting, and the public sector channels. Then see how a well-designed policy actually runs, from intake and protection against retaliation to investigation and audit committee oversight, why so many mechanisms exist only on paper, and how India compares with the US, UK and EU. Finish by learning to read whistleblower disclosures in annual reports and exchange filings, to judge how markets react to allegations, and to raise a concern safely yourself. Written for commerce and finance students, compliance career aspirants, and investors who want to judge governance quality before it shows up in the share price.
Advanced AML Program Design for Financial Institutions
A concept course for chief compliance officers, senior forensic auditors and financial crime investigators who already know the basics of KYC and suspicious transaction reporting and now need to design the program itself. It treats an AML program as a system rather than a binder of policies: a risk assessment that drives every downstream decision, a governance model with clear accountability for the Designated Director and Principal Officer, customer due diligence that scales across digital onboarding, and a detection architecture of monitoring scenarios, screening and case management that is calibrated with data instead of vendor defaults. You work through the Indian architecture of the PMLA, the PML (Maintenance of Records) Rules, FIU-IND and the RBI, SEBI and IRDAI requirements, what India's 2024 FATF mutual evaluation means for program design, and how to measure effectiveness, manage model risk, prepare for independent testing and learn from Indian enforcement actions. The course closes with the threats the next generation of programs must handle: mule account networks, virtual digital asset service providers and AI-driven monitoring.
- Diagnose why AML programs fail inspections even when every required policy exists
- Design an enterprise-wide ML and TF risk assessment and a customer risk rating model that actually drive controls
- Set clear accountability for the board, the Designated Director, the Principal Officer and the three lines of defence
Advanced Corporate Governance Failures: Board Level Complicity in Fraud
Most large Indian frauds were not hidden from the board. They were presented to it, minuted, and approved. This course studies board level failure as a spectrum, from passive oversight through wilful blindness to active collusion, and maps each stage to the liability tests in the Companies Act, 2013 and SEBI's LODR and PFUTP regulations. It works through Satyam, IL&FS, PMC Bank, Yes Bank, DHFL, ICICI Bank and Videocon, Fortis and Gensol Engineering from the boardroom's point of view, then builds the investigator's toolkit: forensic reading of board and committee minutes, director network mapping from MCA21 and exchange filings, resignation and auditor exit signals, and assembling a knowledge and consent evidence file. It closes with audit committee design and an escalation playbook for compliance officers when the board itself is the problem. Written for senior forensic auditors, chief compliance officers and financial crime investigation professionals.
- Place a board's conduct on the complicity spectrum and match it to the legal liability test that applies
- Read the Satyam, IL&FS, PMC Bank, Yes Bank, DHFL, ICICI Videocon, Fortis and Gensol failures from inside the boardroom
- Analyse board and committee minutes, attendance and dissent records for evidence of knowledge or consent
Advanced Financial Statement Fraud Detection: Beneish M-Score and Altman Z-Score
A concept course on the Beneish M-Score and the Altman Z-Score for senior forensic auditors, chief compliance officers and financial crime investigators. Most practitioners can plug numbers into both formulas; far fewer can explain where the coefficients came from, why the cutoffs sit where they do, what error rates they carry, or why a company can pass one test and fail the other. This course goes underneath both models: Beneish's probit study of earnings manipulators, Altman's discriminant analysis of failed manufacturers, the economic story each variable tells, and how Ind AS and Schedule III reporting changes the inputs for NSE and BSE listed companies. You will then use the two scores together through a manipulation-distress matrix, see how fabricated profits push a Z-Score into the safe zone, work through Satyam and Ricoh India, learn where both models break (banks, NBFCs, holding companies, young companies) and how manipulators stay under the cutoffs, and finish by designing a screening and escalation programme whose evidence holds up before an audit committee.
- Explain how Beneish and Altman built their models, what each coefficient means and what the original studies did and did not prove
- Read every M-Score and Z-Score variable as an economic signal, not just a ratio
- Choose cutoffs and model variants deliberately, based on error costs and the type of company
Advanced Regulatory Investigation Processes: SFIO, ED, and CBI Roles Explained
A practitioner's guide to how financial crime is investigated in India. You learn the legal basis, powers and process of the Serious Fraud Investigation Office under the Companies Act 2013, the Directorate of Enforcement under PMLA, FEMA and the Fugitive Economic Offenders Act, and the Central Bureau of Investigation under the DSPE Act and the Prevention of Corruption Act. The course traces how a case reaches each agency, how predicate offences chain one agency's case into another's, and how SEBI, the Income Tax Department and the agencies run parallel proceedings on the same facts. Real Indian cases anchor every chapter: IL&FS, DHFL, ABG Shipyard, PNB and Nirav Modi, and Satyam. The course closes with a practitioner's playbook: responding to a summons or search, preserving documents, running an internal investigation alongside an agency probe, and making a forensic audit report stand up as evidence. Educational content only, not legal advice. Built for senior forensic auditors, chief compliance officers and financial crime investigation professionals.
- Map which agency investigates which offence and the statute that gives it power
- Explain how SFIO is assigned a case under Section 212 and what Section 447 fraud requires
- Follow an ED case from ECIR through attachment, adjudication, arrest and bail under PMLA
Advanced Techniques in Off Balance Sheet Fraud Detection
The most damaging Indian frauds of the last decade were not hidden in the revenue line. They sat outside the balance sheet: shell companies that were never consolidated, guarantees and letters of comfort that never reached the contingent liabilities note, supplier credit dressed up as trade payables, loans to promoter vehicles routed through inter-corporate deposits, and evergreening through structures built to look like investments. DHFL, IL&FS, Coffee Day, Fortis and the Essel group all ran through these channels. This advanced concept course is for senior forensic auditors, chief compliance officers and financial crime investigators who need to find what the financial statements deliberately leave out. It covers where Ind AS draws the consolidation and derecognition boundary and how that boundary is gamed, how to map a group's real perimeter using MCA21, AOC-1 and director networks, how to read guarantees, contingent liabilities and hidden debt in operating lines, how siphoning works through the periphery of a group, and how to prove it using implied interest tests, charge registers, credit rating rationales and network analysis, to an evidence standard that holds up under RBI and SEBI processes. Educational content only, not investment or legal advice.
- Why off balance sheet structures are the preferred hiding place for debt, losses and diverted cash in Indian promoter-led groups
- How Ind AS 110, Ind AS 109, Ind AS 116 and Ind AS 37 draw the accounting boundary, and the specific judgements fraudsters exploit to stay outside it
- How to map a group's true perimeter using MCA21 filings, Form AOC-1, director networks and shared addresses
Case Study: A Bank's STR Filing Process During a Suspicious Transaction Investigation
A narrative case study of how a suspicious transaction investigation actually unfolds inside an Indian bank. You follow a single current account at a fictional mid-sized private sector bank as three monitoring alerts fire, a cyber crime complaint lands on the same account, and the AML team has to decide what it is looking at. Watch the Level 1 analyst triage the alerts, the investigation team pull the statement apart and trace money through a network of linked accounts, enhanced due diligence test the customer's story against GST records and a site visit, and the relationship manager push back on commercial grounds. Then sit in on the Principal Officer's decision meeting, read the grounds of suspicion as written, and follow the filing to FIU-IND. The case closes with what happens after: restricting the account without tipping off the customer, law enforcement requests and freezes, an RBI inspection that tests the whole STR trail, and a post-mortem of what the bank did well and badly. The bank, customer, people and figures are fictional and for training only; the law, regulators and processes are real. Built for compliance officers at banks and NBFCs, risk and compliance professionals, and aspiring forensic auditors.
- Trace how an AML function is organised inside an Indian bank and who owns each step of an STR
- Read a customer onboarding file critically and spot what KYC captured and what it missed
- Follow alert triage and escalation the way a Level 1 analyst records it
Case Study: A Basic Introduction to the Punjab National Bank Fraud Case
A ground-up walkthrough of India's biggest banking fraud, the roughly 14,000 crore rupee Punjab National Bank scam uncovered in 2018. Meet the people involved, Nirav Modi, Mehul Choksi and the PNB branch officials who enabled them, and understand the two banking tools at the centre of it, Letters of Undertaking and the SWIFT messaging system, and how they were misused for years without showing up in the bank's own core systems. Walk through how the fraud was finally discovered, what RBI, the CBI and the ED did afterwards, and what the case teaches about internal controls, reconciliation and compliance culture in Indian banking.
Case Study: A Cross Border Shell Company Network Investigation
An advanced case study that follows one cross-border shell company investigation from the first red flag to the enforcement fallout. A composite NSE-listed mid-cap reports a growth story that its cash flows do not support. An auditor's qualification and a bank's cross-border alert open the file. You scope the mandate, then map the domestic shell layer through MCA21 filings, common directors, shared addresses and related party transactions, and build the first network graph. You trace the money out through bank statements, SWIFT messages, import advances and an overseas subsidiary in a free zone, and back in as FDI and opaque FPI holdings that supported the share price. You then work the foreign layer: secrecy jurisdictions, nominee structures, open-source registry research abroad, and the official channels for evidence from other countries. The case closes with the forensic report, the split of threads between ED, SEBI, SFIO, DRI and the Income Tax Department, the fallout for the listed company and its investors, asset tracing, the control failures at banks, auditors and boards, and a reusable investigator's playbook. The company, its people and its numbers are an illustrative composite built from patterns in public Indian cases; the laws, systems and procedures are real.
- Scope a cross-border shell network investigation with a clear mandate, hypotheses and an evidence plan
- Map a domestic shell layer from MCA21 filings, director and address overlaps, and related party disclosures into a network graph
- Reconstruct outbound and inbound fund flows from bank statements, SWIFT messages, import advance records and overseas investment filings
Case Study: A Digital Payment Fraud Ring and How It Was Detected
A forensic case study of a digital payment fraud ring, reconstructed as a composite from the patterns in public Indian enforcement actions, I4C advisories and RBI and FIU-IND guidance. The ring ran a fake stock tips and trading app scheme: WhatsApp and Telegram groups, a fake institutional trading app showing paper profits, and a network of rented mule accounts that moved victims' money through UPI and IMPS layers to cash and crypto within hours. The course follows the money stage by stage, then switches sides and shows how it was caught: 1930 helpline complaints on the NCRP portal, a bank's transaction monitoring rules for velocity and pass-through behaviour, device and KYC linkages across unrelated accounts, and a network graph that tied victims to cash-out points. It then covers the response, from lien marking and account freezes to STRs, FIRs and victim refunds, and ends with the control failures that let the ring in and a reusable detection playbook for bank, NBFC and fintech compliance teams. All transaction figures are illustrative.
- Explain how a modern Indian investment scam ring is organised, recruited and financed
- Trace victim money through mule accounts, UPI and IMPS layers and cash-out channels
- Identify the complaint, transaction, device and KYC signals that expose a mule network
Case Study: Adani Group Stock Volatility and Governance Concerns
A ground up case study on the Adani Group Hindenburg episode, covering promoter holding, share pledging, related party transactions, short selling mechanics, circuit limits, index concentration risk, SEBI's investigation, and a practical governance checklist every Indian retail investor can run on screener.in.
- Trace the Adani Group's story before the Hindenburg report
- Understand the crash and the governance concerns it raised
- Apply these lessons to your own investing decisions
Case Study: Board Level Complicity in the Satyam Fraud Revisited
A forensic case study of Satyam Computer Services, India's fourth largest IT services company, whose chairman confessed in January 2009 to a balance sheet inflated by more than ₹7,000 crore, most of it cash that did not exist. Built for senior forensic auditors, chief compliance officers and financial crime investigators, it revisits the fraud through the record that emerged after 2009: the CBI chargesheets and the 2015 special court judgment, SEBI's orders, the SFIO findings and the SEC and PCAOB actions against the auditors. The focus is the board. You examine how a board of globally credentialed independent directors approved the Maytas related party acquisition in December 2008, what the audit committee did and did not ask about years of idle cash, how the statutory auditor relied on bank confirmations routed through management, and where the line runs between complicity, negligence and capture. The course traces the aftermath from government supersession and the Tech Mahindra rescue to the Companies Act 2013 reforms it triggered, and closes with a board complicity diagnostic you can apply to any listed Indian company using exchange filings, annual reports and Screener.in.
- Reconstruct how the Satyam fraud worked, from fabricated bank statements and fixed deposit receipts to fake invoices generated outside the normal billing system
- Analyse the 16 December 2008 Maytas board meeting and identify the questions independent directors failed to ask about a related party deal
- Distinguish complicity, negligence and capture when assessing the conduct of independent directors, the audit committee and the statutory auditor
Corporate Governance: Evaluating Management Quality
A practical course on judging the people running the companies you own. Learn to read promoter holding and pledges, board and auditor disclosures, related party transactions, capital allocation records, and SEBI and exchange filings for Indian listed companies, then turn it all into a repeatable governance scorecard using annual reports, BSE/NSE filings, and screener.in.
- Why governance quality drives long-term returns and valuation multiples in Indian markets
- How to read promoter holding, pledged shares, and group structures for warning signs
- How to evaluate board independence, auditor remarks, and managerial remuneration
Deep Dive into Financial Statement Fraud and Forensic Red Flags
A forensic course for investors who already read financial statements and now want to catch the ones that lie. Learn how Indian listed companies inflate revenue, hide expenses, fake cash, and dress up balance sheets, and how to detect it using annual report notes, auditor reports, BSE/NSE filings, screener.in data, and quantitative screens like the Beneish M-Score. Built on real Indian cases: Satyam, Manpasand Beverages, Brightcom, Gitanjali Gems, CG Power, DHFL, Ricoh India, and more.
- Why companies commit accounting fraud and where the pressure points sit in Indian promoter-led firms
- How revenue gets inflated through channel stuffing, round-tripping, and fake customers, and how to test it against receivables and cash
- How expenses get parked in the balance sheet through capitalisation, inventory games, and related party structures
Introduction to Anti Money Laundering (AML): Concepts and Terminology
A ground-up introduction to anti money laundering for Indian students, investors and anyone considering a compliance career. Learn what money laundering actually is, the three stages of placement, layering and integration, and the predicate offences that generate dirty money in the first place. Walk through the common laundering methods seen in India, from cash structuring and benami accounts to shell companies, trade-based laundering, hawala and crypto. Then map India's AML framework: the Prevention of Money Laundering Act 2002, the roles of FIU-IND, the Enforcement Directorate, RBI, SEBI and IRDAI, and how FATF shapes it all. Finally, master the core terminology, KYC, CDD, EDD, beneficial ownership, PEPs, STRs and CTRs, red flags and transaction monitoring, and see how it all shows up in practice at your broker, your bank and in real Indian enforcement cases.
- Explain what money laundering is and walk through placement, layering and integration with Indian examples
- Recognise the common laundering methods, from structuring and money mules to shell companies, trade-based laundering and hawala
- Describe the PMLA 2002 and the roles of FIU-IND, the Enforcement Directorate, RBI, SEBI, IRDAI and FATF
Introduction to Forensic Audit Methodology
A concept course on the method behind a forensic audit: what makes it different from a statutory or internal audit, who commissions one in India and why, and the standards that govern the work. You will follow the full lifecycle, from predication and scoping to hypothesis-led planning, evidence gathering, analytics, interviews, fund flow tracing, loss quantification and the final report. Along the way you will learn how evidence must be handled to stand up under the Bharatiya Sakshya Adhiniyam, where ICAI's Forensic Accounting and Investigation Standards fit, what reporting duties arise under Section 143(12) of the Companies Act, SEBI LODR and the RBI Master Directions on Fraud Risk Management, and what Indian courts have said about forensic audit reports. Built for aspiring forensic auditors, compliance officers at banks and NBFCs, and finance professionals in risk and compliance roles. Pair it with the practice drills course on conducting a basic forensic audit walkthrough to apply each step.
- Distinguish a forensic audit from statutory audit, internal audit and a regulatory investigation
- Explain who commissions forensic audits in India, including lenders, SEBI, boards and insolvency professionals
- Move from predication to a scoped engagement and a hypothesis-led work plan
Introduction to KYC: Know Your Customer Frameworks
A concept-first introduction to Know Your Customer, the process that sits in front of every bank account, demat account, mutual fund folio and insurance policy in India. You start with the problem KYC was built to solve: money laundering, terror financing and fraud that depend on accounts nobody can trace to a real person. You then learn the legal backbone (the Prevention of Money Laundering Act 2002 and the PML Rules), who writes the detailed rules (RBI, SEBI, IRDAI, PFRDA and FIU-IND) and how the global FATF standards shape them. The middle of the course covers the building blocks every KYC framework shares: customer identification with PAN, Officially Valid Documents and Aadhaar, the three levels of due diligence, beneficial ownership and risk categorisation. You then see India's KYC infrastructure in action: the CKYC registry, KYC Registration Agencies, eKYC, Video KYC and periodic updation. The course closes with how KYC differs across a bank, a stockbroker such as Zerodha and an insurer, what Indian enforcement actions reveal when KYC fails, and what KYC means for you as an investor or a future compliance professional.
- Explain what KYC is, why it exists and how it connects to money laundering and fraud prevention
- Map the Indian KYC framework from the PMLA and PML Rules to the RBI, SEBI, IRDAI and PFRDA rulebooks
- Describe how FATF standards and India's mutual evaluation influence domestic KYC rules
Introduction to Revenue Recognition Manipulation Tactics
A concept-first foundation course on the line in the income statement that gets manipulated more than any other: revenue. You start with why revenue is the favourite target, how Ind AS 115 says revenue should be recognised, and why accrual accounting opens a gap between booking a sale and collecting the cash. Then you learn the two families of tactics. Timing tactics book real revenue too early: channel stuffing, bill-and-hold, aggressive percentage of completion and cut-off games. Amount tactics make revenue look bigger than it is: gross versus net, fictitious customers, round-tripping through related parties and other income passed off as operations. Next you learn what an outsider can actually see, using receivables and DSO, the gap between profit and operating cash flow, the revenue policy note and the auditor's report. The course closes with Indian case files and a revenue red flag checklist you can run on any listed company using its annual report and Screener.in. Built for commerce and finance students heading into forensic work, compliance career aspirants, and investors who want to recognise inflated revenue before the market does.
- Explain why revenue is the most manipulated number in an income statement and who gains from inflating it
- Describe the Ind AS 115 five-step model and when revenue can legitimately be booked
- Recognise timing tactics: channel stuffing, bill-and-hold, percentage of completion games and cut-off manipulation
Introduction to Sanctions Screening and Politically Exposed Persons (PEPs)
A concept course on the two screening controls every regulated financial institution in India runs on its customers: sanctions screening and politically exposed person (PEP) screening. You start with what each control is for and the Indian legal base behind it, from the PMLA and PML Rules to Section 51A of the UAPA and Section 12A of the WMD Act. You then map the sanctions landscape: UN Security Council lists and how India implements them, domestic designations, and why OFAC, EU and UK regimes still matter to an Indian firm. The PEP chapters cover who counts as a PEP under FATF, the PML Rules and the RBI KYC Master Direction, how family members, close associates and beneficial owners extend the net, and why a PEP is a higher-risk customer rather than a prohibited one. The practice chapters explain screening points across the customer lifecycle, name matching and false positives, how alerts are investigated and dispositioned, and what happens after a confirmed sanctions match or a confirmed PEP. The course closes with record keeping, enforcement lessons and a screening framework for a small Indian broker or NBFC. Educational content only, not legal or regulatory advice.
- Explain what sanctions screening and PEP screening each protect against and why the outcomes of a hit are different
- Trace the Indian legal base for screening: PMLA, PML Rules, UAPA Section 51A, WMD Act Section 12A and RBI and SEBI directions
- Identify the lists that matter, from UN Security Council and MHA designations to OFAC, EU and UK regimes
Introduction to Suspicious Transaction Reports (STRs) and Their Filing Process
How India's suspicious transaction reporting regime actually works, from the law to the filing portal. Start with why STRs exist and where they sit in the PMLA framework, who counts as a reporting entity, and how an STR differs from cash, counterfeit currency, non-profit and cross-border wire reports. Learn the legal definition of a suspicious transaction clause by clause, the red flag indicators regulators expect you to know across banking, securities markets and insurance, and the misconceptions that cause missed filings. Then follow the full process: alert generation, investigation, the Principal Officer's decision, the reporting clock and submission to FIU-IND. Finish with tipping-off rules, the Section 14 safe harbour, real FIU-IND penalty orders, what happens to an STR after it is filed, and what separates a useful report from a defensive one. Written for compliance officers at banks and NBFCs, risk and compliance professionals, and aspiring forensic auditors.
Masterclass: Building and Leading a Forensic Audit Practice
A masterclass for people who already know how to run a forensic engagement and now have to build and lead the practice that runs dozens of them. It covers where forensic demand in India comes from and who pays for it, the legal and professional perimeter (Companies Act, RBI Master Directions on Fraud Risk Management, SEBI LODR, PMLA and the ICAI Forensic Accounting and Investigation Standards), and the business of the practice itself: practice models, team leverage, the technology stack, pricing and utilisation. It then moves to running investigations at scale, with quality control, evidence management, senior management interviews and working alongside lawyers and regulators, before turning to reports that survive courts, NCLT and regulators, expert testimony and lender forensic audits. The final chapters deal with professional liability, data protection under the DPDP Act, ethics under promoter pressure, and how to hire, retain and build recurring revenue. The course closes with a capstone five-year plan for your own practice. Built for forensic practice leaders, chief compliance officers and senior financial crime investigators.
- Map the demand for forensic work in India and choose the service lines worth building
- Work inside the legal and professional perimeter set by the Companies Act, RBI, SEBI, PMLA and ICAI standards
- Design a practice model, team pyramid and technology stack that fit your market
Masterclass: How Chief Compliance Officers Structure Enterprise Wide AML Programs
A masterclass for chief compliance officers, forensic practice leaders and senior financial crime investigators and regulators who already understand how a single institution's AML program is built and now need to see it from the top of a financial group. A typical Indian group today holds a bank or NBFC, a stockbroker, an asset management company, an insurer, a payments business and often a GIFT IFSC unit or overseas branch. Each is a separate reporting entity under the PMLA with its own Principal Officer and its own regulator, yet customers, money and risk move freely between them. This course is about the decisions that only the group-level CCO makes: choosing a centralised, federated or hybrid operating model, writing a policy hierarchy that works across RBI, SEBI, IRDAI and IFSCA rules, sharing information inside the group within the limits of the PMLA and the Digital Personal Data Protection Act, setting a board-approved financial crime risk appetite, building a single customer view, running overseas operations under the stricter-standard principle, funding and defending the technology stack, reporting to the board, managing several regulators at once, integrating acquisitions and leading the institution through an enforcement action and a multi-year remediation. All institutions and figures in worked examples are illustrative unless a public source is named; rules are stated as at the date of last review.
- Map a financial group's entities, regulators and PMLA reporting obligations and see where enterprise-wide risk hides between them
- Choose and defend a centralised, federated or hybrid financial crime operating model
- Write a group AML policy hierarchy and design intra-group information sharing that stays within the PMLA and DPDP Act
Masterclass: Lessons From India's Landmark Financial Fraud Investigations
A masterclass that studies India's landmark financial frauds from the investigator's chair. Instead of retelling the stories, each lesson asks how the fraud was detected, how the evidence trail was rebuilt, which agencies acted and in what order, where the investigation stalled, and what changed in regulation afterwards. You will work through market manipulation cases (Harshad Mehta, Ketan Parekh, NSEL, NSE co-location), corporate accounting frauds (Satyam, Ricoh India, Cox and Kings, Cafe Coffee Day), banking and lending frauds (PNB and Nirav Modi, DHFL, Yes Bank, PMC Bank, Kingfisher) and systemic cases (IL&FS, Sahara, Saradha, Karvy, Adani and Hindenburg, strictly on the public record). The final chapter distils three decades of cases into recurring red flags, investigation failure modes and an early-warning programme. Built for chief compliance officers, forensic practice leaders and senior financial crime investigators and regulators.
- Deconstruct any fraud investigation into detection, evidence, enforcement and recovery stages
- Explain how investigators rebuilt the evidence trail in India's landmark market, corporate and banking frauds
- Identify the red flags that were visible before each fraud surfaced, and who missed them
Masterclass: Navigating Regulatory Relationships as a Senior Compliance Leader
A masterclass for chief compliance officers, forensic practice leaders and senior financial crime investigators and regulators on the relationship that decides how an institution is treated when something goes wrong: the one with its regulators. Indian financial institutions answer to SEBI, RBI, IRDAI, IFSCA, FIU-IND and front-line bodies such as NSE, BSE and the depositories, each with its own supervisory style, tools and escalation path. This course covers the work of the person who owns that relationship: mapping regulators and how they supervise, setting up a single point of contact, writing correspondence that builds trust, engaging on consultation papers and informal guidance, deciding when and how to self-report, preparing for and running an inspection, closing findings, reading the path from an observation to a show cause notice, replying and appearing at a personal hearing, deciding whether to settle, managing a live appeal before the Securities Appellate Tribunal, understanding the compliance officer's personal exposure, holding the line against business pressure, reporting the relationship to the board, and handling multi-regulator issues, crises and overseas regulators. All institutions and figures in worked examples are illustrative unless a public source is named; rules are stated as at the date of last review.
- Map every regulator and front-line body your institution answers to and how each one actually supervises
- Design a single point of contact and write regulatory correspondence that builds credibility instead of eroding it
- Decide when and how to self-report a breach, and engage constructively on consultation papers and informal guidance
Practice Drills: Applying the Fraud Triangle to a Sample Case
A practice-first course built around one detailed sample case: a fictional listed Indian mid-cap with a lender exposure, a promoter under strain and a finance function that has quietly grown too powerful. You will work the case the way a forensic auditor, internal auditor or bank and NBFC compliance officer would. First you build an evidence worksheet. Then you drill each side of the fraud triangle in turn: pressure from covenants, pledged promoter shares, guidance and incentive pay; opportunity from control gaps in the revenue and cash cycle, weak audit committees, related party flows and lending-side weaknesses such as evergreening; and rationalisation from management language, internal emails and culture signals. You then score the case, extend it to the fraud diamond, and convert the findings into specific audit procedures under SA 240 and an escalation memo that respects Section 143(12) of the Companies Act and the RBI Master Directions on Fraud Risk Management. The course ends with a blind second case and an honest look at where the triangle fails, using Satyam and PNB as hindsight tests.
- Use the fraud triangle as a structured evidence worksheet rather than a theory diagram
- Identify and grade financial, market and personal pressure from filings, pledges, covenants and pay structures
- Map control gaps in revenue, cash, procurement and related party flows that create opportunity
Practice Drills: Calculating Altman Z-Score on a Distressed Company
A practice-first companion to Deep Dive into Financial Statement Fraud and Forensic Red Flags. You already know what the Altman Z-Score is; this course makes you calculate it properly on distressed Indian companies, where the textbook inputs rarely sit cleanly on the face of the balance sheet. Working from Ind AS annual reports on NSE and BSE, Screener.in exports and the notes to accounts, you will rebuild all five ratios by hand, strip securities premium out of retained earnings, catch current maturities of long-term debt hiding outside short-term borrowings, normalise EBIT for exceptional items, and price equity through pledges and circuit-filter collapses. You will then pick the right model for manufacturers, service companies and private subsidiaries, stress the score for lease liabilities, contingent liabilities and corporate guarantees, learn exactly where the Z-Score breaks (NBFCs, banks, holding companies, manipulated books) and finish by writing a defensible Z-Score memo. Built for senior forensic auditors, chief compliance officers and financial crime investigators who need a distress score that survives cross-examination.
- Choose correctly between the original Z, Z-prime and Z-double-prime models and apply the right zone cut-offs to each
- Map Ind AS balance sheet and P&L line items to all five Altman ratios without the common Screener.in shortcuts that distort them
- Rebuild retained earnings, working capital and EBIT from the notes to accounts, net of securities premium, revaluation reserves, exceptional items and current debt maturities
Practice Drills: Calculating Beneish M-Score on a Real Company's Financials
A calculation-first drill course on the Beneish M-Score, built for forensic auditors, compliance heads and financial crime investigators who need a score they can defend in a review meeting, not one copied off a screener. You will pull two or more years of inputs from Ind AS annual reports filed on NSE and BSE, map Schedule III's by-nature statements to Beneish's US-style lines, compute all eight variables by hand and in a spreadsheet, and then run the full model across five years for a listed Indian company, a company that later collapsed, and a group where standalone and consolidated scores diverge. The final chapter is about judgement: decomposing which variable moved the score, recognising false positives from acquisitions, sector quirks and genuine high growth, and writing the forensic note that turns a number into an escalation decision.
- Extract every Beneish input from an Ind AS annual report and reconcile it to Screener data
- Map Schedule III by-nature expense lines to COGS and SG&A proxies and apply them consistently
- Compute DSRI, GMI, AQI, SGI, DEPI, SGAI, LVGI and TATA by hand and explain what moves each one
Practice Drills: Conducting a Basic Forensic Audit Walkthrough
A practice-first course that walks you through one complete forensic audit engagement on a fictional listed Indian small-cap, from the day the mandate letter lands to the day the report goes to the audit committee. Every lesson is a drill that produces a working paper: the scope and work plan, the document request list and evidence log, a public records pull from MCA21 and exchange filings, a process walkthrough, ledger analytics with Benford analysis and duplicate tests, a revenue trace from invoice to bank credit, a vendor master test for shell suppliers, a related party fund flow map, interview notes, a loss quantification and the final report. You will also learn where a forensic engagement sits next to the statutory audit, how evidence must be handled so it survives scrutiny, and what reporting duties apply under Section 143(12) of the Companies Act, SEBI LODR and the RBI Master Directions on Fraud Risk Management. The course closes with a second, shorter case you run end to end on your own. Built for aspiring forensic auditors, compliance officers at banks and NBFCs, and finance professionals in risk and compliance roles.
- Scope a forensic engagement from an allegation and turn it into a hypothesis-led work plan
- Build a document request list and an evidence log with a clean chain of custody
- Pull and cross-check public records from MCA21, NSE and BSE filings and annual reports
Practice Drills: Designing an AML Program Framework for a Mock Institution
A practice-first course built around one mock institution: a fictional mid-sized NBFC in the RBI Middle Layer that runs gold loans, MSME loans and digital personal loans through lending service providers, and has outgrown the AML program it started with. You play the newly hired Principal Officer and build its program from the ground up. First you map every obligation under the PMLA, the PML (Maintenance of Records) Rules and the RBI KYC Directions into a requirements register. Then you run the institution-wide ML and TF risk assessment, build a customer risk rating model and assess new products and lending partners before launch. You define the Designated Director and Principal Officer mandates, draft the policy skeleton and the escalation paths, design due diligence tiers, beneficial ownership and PEP procedures and periodic KYC updation, and write the first transaction monitoring rule set, sanctions and UAPA Section 51A screening, the FIU-IND reporting calendar and the record retention design. The course closes with role-based training, the independent AML audit and program KPIs, a full AML Program Document for board approval and a response to an RBI inspection finding.
- Translate PMLA, the PML Rules and the RBI KYC Directions into a requirements register with an owner for every obligation
- Run an institution-wide ML and TF risk assessment and turn it into a working customer risk rating model
- Assess new products, digital channels and lending service providers for money laundering risk before launch
Practice Drills: Designing an Enterprise Wide Financial Crime Risk Framework
A practice-first masterclass for senior compliance, forensic and investigation professionals. You work one detailed sample case: a fictional Indian financial group with an NBFC, a SEBI-registered stock broker and a prepaid payment instrument issuer, each under a different regulator and each running its own financial crime controls in a silo. Your job is to design one enterprise-wide framework for it. You map the regulatory perimeter under the PMLA, RBI, SEBI and the Prevention of Corruption Act, build a financial crime risk taxonomy, score inherent risk by customer, product, channel and geography, test controls and derive residual risk, and write a risk appetite the board can actually use. You then design the governance model and management information, calibrate customer due diligence, transaction monitoring and screening, build an alert-to-case investigation workflow with correct reporting to FIU-IND, RBI and SEBI, and set up independent testing. The course closes with a board presentation and a stress test of your framework against real Indian enforcement patterns.
- Treat money laundering, fraud, sanctions, bribery and market abuse as one enterprise risk with shared data and governance
- Map the Indian regulatory perimeter for a multi-entity financial group across PMLA, RBI, SEBI and anti-corruption law
- Build an enterprise-wide risk assessment that scores inherent risk, control effectiveness and residual risk defensibly
Practice Drills: Drafting a Sample Suspicious Transaction Report
A practice-first course that walks you through drafting a Suspicious Transaction Report (STR) the way a Principal Officer's team at an Indian bank actually does it. You start with a transaction monitoring alert on a fictional customer and work it through every stage: triage, KYC file review, red flag mapping against FIU-IND indicators, fund flow tracing across accounts, the file or close decision, the grounds of suspicion narrative, the structured report fields, and a quality check before submission on FINnet. Along the way you learn the framework behind every step: the Prevention of Money Laundering Act, 2002, the PML (Maintenance of Records) Rules, 2005, the RBI and SEBI KYC directions, reporting timelines, the tipping-off prohibition and record retention. The course closes with a securities market variation for stock brokers and a second case you draft end to end on your own. All cases, names and figures are fictional and for training only. Built for aspiring forensic auditors, compliance officers at banks and NBFCs, and finance professionals in risk and compliance roles.
- Explain what an STR is, who must file one and how it differs from CTRs and other FIU-IND reports
- Triage a transaction monitoring alert and decide whether it deserves a full review
- Review a KYC file against actual account behaviour and spot profile mismatches
Practice Drills: Filling Out a Basic KYC Verification Checklist
A practice-first course for anyone who wants to do KYC, not just define it. You build one working KYC verification checklist and then fill it out, file after file, the way an onboarding analyst at a bank, NBFC or stockbroker such as Zerodha or a KRA-linked depository participant would. Each drill hands you a sample customer file with documents, declarations and verification records, and asks you to tick, flag or reject. You start with identity and address: PAN validation and Form 60 cases, Officially Valid Documents, Aadhaar offline verification and masking, and the name, date of birth and address mismatches that cause most rejections. You then check verification channels (in-person verification, Video KYC under V-CIP, CKYC and KRA records), record occupation, income and source of funds, screen for PEPs and sanctions lists, assign a risk category, and complete FATCA and CRS self-certification. Later drills cover partnership firms, LLPs, private limited companies, HUFs and trusts, including identifying the beneficial owner. The course ends with three full capstone files: a demat account opening, a rejected file that needs a discrepancy note, and a periodic re-KYC review. Every rule is tied back to the PMLA, the RBI KYC Master Direction and SEBI's KYC norms.
- Build and use a structured KYC verification checklist instead of relying on memory
- Verify PAN, Officially Valid Documents and Aadhaar-based records correctly, including when Form 60 applies
- Catch name, date of birth, address and signature mismatches before they become rejected files
Practice Drills: Identifying Corporate Governance Red Flags
A practice-first companion to Corporate Governance: Evaluating Management Quality. You already know what good governance is supposed to look like; this course makes you find the bad kind in real filings. Working with shareholding patterns, related party disclosures, board and auditor announcements, SEBI orders and exchange filings on NSE, BSE and Screener.in, you will build a governance red flag scorecard and drill it flag by flag: pledging and creeping dilution, money moving to group companies, weak boards, auditor exits, and management churn. The course closes with full drills that score companies side by side, replay the signals ahead of real Indian governance failures, and decide what to do when the flags show up in a stock you already own. Built for experienced retail investors, mutual fund investors and salaried professionals who want a repeatable governance check before they buy, or before they trust a fund that does.
- Locate every governance disclosure that matters in NSE and BSE filings, annual reports and Screener.in
- Build and apply a weighted governance red flag scorecard to any listed company
- Read shareholding patterns for pledging, promoter selling, warrants and creeping dilution
Practice Drills: Identifying Layering Patterns in Sample Transaction Data
A practice-first course on the hardest stage of money laundering to see: layering, where illicit funds are moved through accounts, channels and entities until the trail goes cold. You work on a fictional sample ledger from an Indian bank, with UPI, IMPS, NEFT, RTGS and cash entries, and drill one pattern at a time: rapid pass-through, structuring below reporting thresholds, fan-out and fan-in, circular flows and round-tripping, mule accounts and multi-hop chains. You then look at layering through payment aggregator wallets, trade invoices and shell companies, and securities and demat accounts, and learn to separate genuine suspicion from normal business activity. The course closes with a simple rule-based scoring model, a findings write-up for the investigation file, and a full end-to-end drill on a fresh dataset. Grounded in the Prevention of Money Laundering Act, 2002, FIU-IND red flag indicators and RBI and SEBI KYC requirements. All names, accounts and figures are fictional and for training only. Built for aspiring forensic auditors, compliance officers at banks and NBFCs, and finance professionals in risk and compliance roles.
- Explain what layering is and how it differs from placement and integration
- Read a raw transaction ledger and build a baseline for each account
- Spot pass-through, structuring, fan-out, fan-in and circular flow patterns in sample data
Practice Drills: Identifying Red Flags in a Sample Annual Report
A practice-first foundation course built around one complete sample annual report: a fictional listed Indian consumer durables company whose FY26 report looks healthy on the cover and gets less healthy with every page you turn. You read it the way a forensic analyst or compliance reviewer would, in a fixed order. You start with the chairman's letter and management discussion, then the directors' report and corporate governance report, then the balance sheet, profit and loss and cash flow statement, then the notes to accounts, related party disclosures and the auditor's report with CARO remarks. Every lesson is a drill: you get an excerpt, you log the flags you find on a scorecard, and then you check your answers against a worked solution. The course ends with a timed blind drill on a second sample report and a simple framework for turning a flag count into an avoid, watch or dig-deeper call. Built for commerce and finance students heading into forensic work, compliance career aspirants, and investors who want to spot fraud before it shows up in the share price.
- Read an annual report in a forensic order instead of front to back
- Spot where the chairman's letter and MD&A tell a story the numbers do not support
- Catch governance warning signs in the directors' report, board changes, auditor resignations and promoter pledges
Practice Drills: Investigating a Simulated Trade Based Money Laundering Case
A practice-first course built around one simulated trade-based money laundering investigation. A bank's transaction monitoring flags the trade finance account of a fictional mid-size Indian exporter, and you run the investigation from that alert to the final report. Every lesson is a drill that produces a working paper: a document reconciliation across invoice, shipping bill, bill of lading and bank realisation; a unit price test against market benchmarks; a shipment verification; an EDPMS match of export proceeds; a counterparty network map across the UAE, Hong Kong and Singapore; a round-tripping trace; a GST export refund test; an evidence timeline; a quantification of the value moved through mispricing; interview notes; and a draft Suspicious Transaction Report for FIU-IND. Along the way you learn the five core TBML typologies, how the Indian trade and foreign exchange framework under FEMA, the RBI Master Directions and PMLA creates both the paper trail and the reporting duties, and where an investigator's judgement ends and a regulator's begins. The course closes with a second, shorter case you work end to end on your own. All companies, people and figures in the case are fictional. Built for senior forensic auditors, chief compliance officers and financial crime investigation professionals.
- Recognise the five core TBML typologies and the red flags each one leaves in trade documents
- Reconcile an invoice, shipping bill, bill of lading and bank realisation and isolate the breaks
- Test declared unit prices against market benchmarks and size the implied value transfer
Practice Drills: Leading a Mock Large Scale Fraud Investigation Debrief
A leadership drill course for chief compliance officers, forensic practice leaders and senior financial crime investigators who have to stand up in front of a board, a regulator or a lenders' consortium and explain what went wrong in a large fraud. The investigation is already done. Your job is the debrief. You work on one mock case throughout: a fictional listed Indian NBFC where loans were routed through shell borrowers back to promoter entities, a multi-thousand-crore hole that the forensic team has spent months documenting. Every lesson is a drill that produces a piece of the debrief: an audience map, a findings hierarchy built from a long forensic report, an evidence-strength grading for each finding, a loss quantification walk, a board-ready fund flow map, a minute-by-minute audit committee run sheet, scripted responses to pushback, responsibility findings that respect natural justice, separate debrief packs for SEBI, RBI and SFIO, a lenders' consortium briefing under the RBI fraud risk framework, a privilege and LODR disclosure plan, a root cause and control failure map, a remediation tracker and an internal lessons-learned review. The course closes with a full capstone debrief you run end to end and score against a senior panel's rubric. The case, company and every number in it are fictional and illustrative.
- Map every audience of a fraud debrief and decide what each one needs, may see and must not see
- Compress a long forensic report into a findings hierarchy that a board can act on in one sitting
- Grade the evidence behind each finding and say plainly what is proven, probable or unresolved
Practice Drills: Reviewing a Sample Related Party Transaction Disclosure
Related party transactions are where money most often leaves a listed Indian company quietly: a royalty to the promoter's private firm, a loan to a group company that never comes back, purchases from a supplier owned by a director's relative. All of it has to be disclosed, but the disclosures are spread across the annual report, Form AOC-2, the half-yearly filing on NSE and BSE, and AGM notices, and most readers skip them. This foundation drill course hands you one fictional listed mid-cap's complete set of related party disclosures and teaches you to review them the way a forensic analyst, compliance professional or careful investor would. You will list who the related parties are, read and size every transaction, check that the right approvals were taken, run simple arm's length tests, cross-check the annual report against exchange filings, grade what you find, and write a one-page review note. No prior forensic experience is needed, only basic comfort with financial statements. Educational content only, not investment or legal advice.
- Find every place a listed Indian company discloses related party transactions and know what each document is meant to show
- Build a related party map from the disclosure and spot relationships that are missing or vaguely described
- Read the transactions table, closing balances and guarantees, and size each item against revenue, net worth and materiality thresholds
Practice Drills: Screening a Sample Client Against a PEP List
A practice-first course on politically exposed person (PEP) screening. You build one screening worksheet and one fictional client file, then work them drill by drill the way an onboarding or AML analyst at an Indian bank, NBFC or stockbroker does. You start with who counts as a PEP under the PML Rules, the RBI KYC Master Direction and SEBI's AML guidelines, and how PEP screening differs from sanctions screening. You then work the matching problems that cause most bad decisions: exact, partial and fuzzy name hits, transliteration, initials and Indian naming conventions, and using date of birth, nationality and address to separate a true match from a false positive. Next come the relationship drills: family members, close associates, and a PEP sitting behind a company or trust as beneficial owner. The decision drills cover dispositioning an alert, enhanced due diligence and source of wealth, senior management approval and writing a screening rationale that survives an audit. The course closes with rescreening an existing book when a list changes and two full capstone files. All clients, names and figures are fictional and for training only.
- Apply the PML Rules, RBI and SEBI definitions to decide who counts as a PEP, a family member or a close associate
- Tell PEP screening apart from sanctions screening and adverse media checks, and know what each one triggers
- Work exact, partial and fuzzy name hits, including transliteration, initials and Indian naming conventions
Practice Drills: Spotting Forensic Red Flags in Financial Statements
A practice-first companion to Deep Dive into Financial Statement Fraud and Forensic Red Flags. You already know the theory of revenue games, capitalised costs, hidden debt and accrual manipulation; this course makes you find them yourself. Every lesson is a drill built on Indian filings: Screener.in data, annual reports and exchange disclosures on NSE and BSE, auditor reports and CARO remarks, and the notes to accounts where problems are usually disclosed in plain sight. You will rebuild ten-year forensic worksheets, reconcile profit to cash, test capitalisation and depreciation choices, dig out contingent liabilities and standalone versus consolidated gaps, compute the Beneish M-Score and Sloan accruals by hand, and finish with blind full-company drills that end in a position decision. Built for experienced retail investors, active traders and HNI investors who want a repeatable forensic routine rather than a list of scandals.
- Build a ten-year forensic worksheet for any listed Indian company from Screener.in and BSE/NSE filings
- Test whether reported revenue and margins are confirmed by cash collections, input costs and peers
- Catch capitalised expenses, stuck CWIP, depreciation policy changes and deferred impairments
Practice Drills: Spotting Revenue Recognition Red Flags in Sample Financials
A practice-first foundation course on the single most manipulated line in any income statement: revenue. You start with how Ind AS 115 says revenue should be recognised, in plain words, and a small toolkit of ratios you can compute from Screener.in and an annual report. Then you work through sample financials of three fictional listed Indian companies, each hiding a different revenue problem. Every lesson is a drill: you get an excerpt of the numbers or notes, you log the flags you find, and you check your answers against a worked solution. You will catch receivables that outrun sales, fourth-quarter spikes and channel stuffing, bill-and-hold sales, swelling unbilled revenue, gross-versus-net games, related party sales, other income passed off as operations, and revenue that GST returns and cash collections do not confirm. The course ends with a timed blind drill and a simple framework for turning a flag count into an avoid, watch or dig-deeper call. Built for commerce and finance students heading into forensic work, compliance career aspirants, and investors who want to spot inflated revenue before the market does.
- Explain the Ind AS 115 five-step model and when revenue can actually be booked
- Compute the five core revenue red flag ratios from Screener.in data and annual report notes
- Spot timing games: receivables outrunning sales, fourth-quarter spikes, bill-and-hold and swelling unbilled revenue
Practice Drills: Tracing a Layered Transaction Network on Sample Data
An advanced, practice-first course on tracing layered funds through a network of accounts, the work a forensic auditor or financial crime investigator does after the alert fires. You start with a fictional case file: a victim complaint, statements from several Indian banks, wallet and payment aggregator records, and KYC data. You resolve accounts into real-world entities, turn the ledger into an edge list, draw the network and use centrality and community detection to find hubs, brokers and collector accounts. You then follow the money hop by hop and allocate tainted funds using FIFO, LIFO, pro-rata and the lowest intermediate balance rule, and handle cash withdrawals, splits and dead ends. Further drills take the trace through wallets, trade invoices and cross-border remittances, and crypto exchanges. The course closes with an evidence-grade fund flow chart, a proceeds-of-crime and freeze schedule, a trace report for FIU-IND, law enforcement or the board, and a full end-to-end trace on a fresh dataset. Grounded in the Prevention of Money Laundering Act, 2002, FIU-IND reporting, RBI KYC Directions and the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita, 2023. All names, accounts and figures are fictional and for training only. Built for senior forensic auditors, chief compliance officers and financial crime investigation professionals.
- Resolve accounts across banks into real-world entities using PAN, mobile, device and address links
- Convert a raw transaction ledger into an edge list and a fund flow network graph
- Use centrality and community detection to find hubs, brokers, collectors and hidden clusters
Understanding Complex Layering and Trade Based Money Laundering
An advanced concept course on the layering stage of money laundering and on trade based money laundering (TBML). You learn why layering is the hardest stage to detect, the techniques used to build complex layering chains in India (shell companies, accommodation entries, mule accounts, securities market schemes, hawala and crypto), and the role professional enablers play. The course then breaks down TBML: over and under invoicing, multiple invoicing, phantom shipments, misdescribed goods and services invoicing, and how each maps onto India's trade finance and foreign exchange plumbing, GST invoicing and high-risk commodities such as gold and diamonds. Real Indian cases anchor the material. The final chapter covers detection: red flag indicators, unit price benchmarking, network analysis and building a defensible suspicious transaction report for FIU-IND. Educational content only, not legal advice. Built for senior forensic auditors, chief compliance officers and financial crime investigation professionals.
- Explain why layering is the hardest stage of money laundering to detect and what makes a layering scheme complex
- Recognise the main layering techniques used in India, from shell companies and accommodation entries to mule accounts and bogus LTCG schemes
- Break down the core TBML techniques and calculate the value moved by over and under invoicing
Understanding Cross Border Money Laundering Through Shell Structures
A concept course for senior forensic auditors, chief compliance officers and financial crime investigators who need to understand shell structures from the inside. It takes apart the corporate vehicles that launderers use, from shell and front companies to nominee directors, trusts and layered holding chains in conduit jurisdictions, and shows how money actually crosses India's border through round tripping on the FDI and overseas investment routes, trade mispricing, hawala and back-to-back credit arrangements. You then work through the Indian legal net of the PMLA, FEMA, the Black Money Act and the Benami law, the beneficial ownership and layering rules under the Companies Act, and what the government and SEBI shell company crackdowns revealed. The second half is investigative: mapping ownership chains with public data, tracing fund flows across jurisdictions, reading related party disclosures for red flags and obtaining evidence from abroad. It closes with Indian case files and the detection controls an institution needs against shell structure risk.
- Distinguish shell, shelf, front and conduit companies and explain why each appeals to launderers
- Map the placement, layering and integration stages onto specific offshore vehicles, trusts and holding chains
- Trace how illicit money crosses India's border through round tripping, trade mispricing, hawala and back-to-back credit
Understanding Cryptocurrency and Its Use in Money Laundering Schemes
A practitioner's guide to cryptocurrency as a money laundering channel, written for the Indian regulatory setting. You start with what an investigator must understand about blockchains, wallets, stablecoins and exchanges, then work through India's framework: virtual digital assets under PMLA since March 2023, FIU-IND registration for offshore and domestic exchanges, Section 115BBH tax and 1 percent TDS as an investigative trail, and FATF Recommendation 15 with the Travel Rule. The core of the course maps the laundering typologies in use today, from mixers, privacy coins and chain hopping to DeFi bridges, NFT wash trading, P2P mule networks and crypto-hawala rails. You then learn how blockchain tracing works, what analytics tools can and cannot prove, and how to spot crypto exposure in bank and exchange data. Indian cases anchor the theory: the ED's instant loan app probe, the GainBitcoin Ponzi and the 2024 WazirX hack. The course closes with an investigation and risk framework playbook. Educational content only, not legal or investment advice. Built for senior forensic auditors, chief compliance officers and financial crime investigation professionals.
- Read a blockchain transaction and explain what it does and does not reveal about the parties
- Explain how virtual digital asset service providers came under PMLA and what FIU-IND registration requires
- Use the VDA tax and TDS trail as a source of investigative evidence
Understanding Cyber Fraud and Digital Payment Frauds in India
India runs the world's largest real-time payments system, and fraudsters have built an industry on top of it. This course takes digital payment fraud apart the way a forensic auditor or a bank's fraud risk team would. Start with the payment rails themselves, UPI, IMPS, NEFT, cards, wallets and AePS, and the four-stage path every fraud follows from first contact to cash-out. Then work through the schemes one family at a time: fake KYC calls and phishing, UPI collect and QR code tricks, digital arrest scams, fake trading apps and task frauds, SIM swaps, card and AePS frauds, and remote access takeovers. Follow the money through mule account networks and learn the transaction patterns that give them away. Finish with the rulebook, RBI's fraud risk Master Directions, the customer liability framework, the 1930 helpline and I4C machinery, and the IT Act, BNS and PMLA, then the controls, response playbooks and investigation steps an institution actually uses. Written for bank and NBFC compliance officers, aspiring forensic auditors and risk professionals.
- Map how each major Indian payment rail (UPI, IMPS, NEFT, cards, wallets, AePS) is exploited and where its weak points sit
- Recognise the mechanics of social engineering frauds, from fake KYC calls to digital arrest scams and fake trading apps
- Explain technical frauds such as SIM swaps, card-not-present fraud, AePS biometric cloning and remote access takeovers
Understanding FATF Guidelines and Global AML Standards
A concept course for compliance officers at banks and NBFCs, aspiring forensic auditors and risk professionals who know the basics of KYC and suspicious transaction reporting and now need to understand the global system those rules come from. It explains what the Financial Action Task Force is and how a body with no treaty and no fines gets every country to comply, then decodes the 40 Recommendations group by group: the risk-based approach, preventive measures for financial institutions, beneficial ownership transparency, the powers of FIUs and law enforcement, and the special regime for terrorist and proliferation financing. You learn how mutual evaluations grade countries on technical compliance and the 11 Immediate Outcomes, how the grey and black lists work and what grey listing has cost countries like Pakistan and the UAE. The course then turns to India: what the 2024 mutual evaluation found, how FATF standards shaped the PMLA amendments and RBI, SEBI and IRDAI rules, and what all this means for Indian investors and cross-border money. It closes with virtual assets and the travel rule, the wider ecosystem of EU, US, Wolfsberg, Basel and Egmont standards, and where global AML rules are heading.
- Explain what FATF is, how its network of member countries and regional bodies works, and why its standards bind countries without a treaty
- Navigate the 40 Recommendations and explain the risk-based approach, preventive measures and beneficial ownership rules they set
- Describe the FATF regime for terrorist financing, proliferation financing, targeted financial sanctions and non-profit organisations
Understanding Financial Statement Fraud: The Fraud Triangle Framework
Financial statement fraud is rarely the work of a career criminal. It is usually committed by senior people at real companies who were under pressure, saw a gap in the controls and told themselves a story that made it acceptable. This course teaches the fraud triangle, the framework Donald Cressey built from interviews with convicted embezzlers, as the lens auditors, compliance officers and investigators use to explain and anticipate that behaviour. You will separate error and aggressive accounting from fraud, then study each side of the triangle in depth with Indian evidence: covenant breaches, promoter pledges and guidance pressure; weak controls, captured audit committees and related party complexity; and the language of rationalisation in letters, earnings calls and annual reports. Satyam, IL&FS, DHFL and Gensol Engineering are read through the framework. The course then covers its extensions (the fraud diamond, pentagon and fraud scale), its honest limitations, and how it is embedded in Indian practice through SA 240 and the RBI Master Directions on Fraud Risk Management. Written for aspiring forensic auditors, compliance officers at banks and NBFCs, and finance professionals in risk and compliance roles.
- Distinguish honest error, aggressive accounting and financial statement fraud using intent and materiality
- Explain where the fraud triangle came from and what Cressey's research actually found
- Identify financial, market and personal pressure from public filings, pledge data and pay structures
Understanding Insolvency Fraud and Asset Stripping Before Bankruptcy
By the time a company is admitted into insolvency, the most valuable assets have often already left the building. Brands move to promoter entities, cash leaves as advances to suppliers that never deliver, the parent's debts get secured on the subsidiary's land, and friendly creditors appear on the claims list. The Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code gives resolution professionals and lenders the tools to reverse this: preferential, undervalued, fraudulent and extortionate transactions under Sections 43 to 51, and personal liability for fraudulent and wrongful trading under Section 66. This advanced concept course is for senior forensic auditors, chief compliance officers and financial crime investigators. It covers the asset stripping playbook used in Indian promoter-led groups, the legal tests and look-back periods for each avoidance transaction, how the CoC process itself gets manipulated, how a forensic transaction audit is scoped and run under the CIRP Regulations, and what happens to avoidance recoveries and parallel ED, CBI and SFIO proceedings after a resolution plan is approved, with Jaypee Infratech, DHFL, Bhushan Power and Steel and other Indian cases throughout. Educational content only, not investment or legal advice.
- Why the months before insolvency are when value is most often stripped from a company, and the warning signs that show up in filings first
- How to distinguish preferential, undervalued, fraudulent and extortionate transactions under Sections 43, 45, 49 and 50 of the IBC, including look-back periods and defences
- The asset stripping playbook in Indian promoter groups: slump sales, brand and IP transfers, supplier advances, inter-corporate deposits and collateral shifting
Understanding International Cooperation in Financial Crime Investigation
Financial crime crosses borders in seconds. Investigations cross them in years. This course explains the machinery that closes that gap: mutual legal assistance treaties, letters rogatory, FIU-to-FIU exchange through the Egmont Group, SEBI's use of the IOSCO multilateral MoU, tax information exchange under DTAAs, CRS and FATCA, Interpol notices, extradition and cross-border asset recovery. You learn who India's central authorities are, how a request is drafted and routed, why requests stall on dual criminality, specialty and foreign data protection rules, and how foreign evidence is made admissible in an Indian court. Real cases anchor every chapter: the HSBC Geneva list, the Panama and Pandora Papers, Vijay Mallya, Nirav Modi, Mehul Choksi and 1MDB. The course closes with the practitioner's side: building a cross-border evidence pack that agencies can actually use and handling foreign requests that land on an Indian institution. Educational content only, not legal advice. Built for senior forensic auditors, chief compliance officers and financial crime investigation professionals.
- Explain why sovereignty creates an evidence gap and which treaties and standards bridge it
- Identify India's central authorities for MLA, extradition, FIU exchange, securities and tax requests
- Follow an MLAT request and a letter rogatory from drafting to execution abroad
Understanding Related Party Transaction Red Flags
A foundation concept course for investors who want to catch governance trouble early, commerce and finance students heading into forensic work, and compliance aspirants. Related party transactions are deals between a listed company and people or entities close to its promoters, and in India they are the single most common channel through which minority shareholders lose value. The course explains who counts as a related party, why most related party deals are perfectly normal, and how the Companies Act, SEBI LODR and Ind AS 24 control them through audit committee approval, materiality thresholds and shareholder votes. It then walks through the classic red flags one by one: loans and advances to promoter entities, royalties and brand fees, odd-priced purchases and sales with group companies, asset transfers, guarantees, and undisclosed or shell related parties. Real Indian cases, from Satyam and Maytas to DHFL, Fortis and Zee, show how each pattern played out. You finish with simple sizing ratios, a guide to reading shareholder votes and auditor remarks, and a ten minute red flag check you can run on any NSE or BSE listed company.
- Explain what a related party transaction is and identify who counts as a related party of an Indian listed company
- Tell routine, arm's length related party deals apart from ones that move value away from minority shareholders
- Summarise how the Companies Act, SEBI LODR and Ind AS 24 require related party transactions to be approved and disclosed
Understanding SEBI and RBI's Roles in Financial Crime Prevention
A ground-up guide to how India's two main financial regulators prevent, detect and punish financial crime. Start with the map: what counts as financial crime, why SEBI and RBI have very different mandates, and where agencies such as the ED, FIU-IND, SFIO and CBI fit in. Then go inside SEBI's fight against market crime: insider trading, manipulation and front running under the PIT and PFUTP Regulations, how exchange surveillance flags suspicious trades, and the orders, penalties and settlements SEBI uses once it finds them. Next, go inside RBI's rulebook for banking crime: how banks must classify and report frauds, early warning signals and red-flagged accounts, wilful defaulters, KYC obligations and the rules on digital payment fraud and customer liability. See both regulators at work in real Indian cases, then learn how to verify an entity's registration, where to report fraud, and what compliance and investigation careers look like.
- Explain which kinds of financial crime fall under SEBI, which under RBI, and which go to other agencies
- Describe what SEBI's insider trading and PFUTP rules prohibit, with Indian examples of each
- Understand how surveillance flags suspicious trades and what SEBI can do once it finds wrongdoing
Understanding Shell Companies and Layering Techniques
An intermediate course on the single most common vehicle for laundering money in India: the shell company. Learn what legally counts as a shell, how one is incorporated and kept alive on paper, and why dummy directors, accommodation entries and share premium make them so useful to launderers and tax evaders. Then work through the layering techniques that move money through them: circular transactions, round tripping, bogus share capital and unsecured loans, fake GST invoices, penny stock LTCG schemes and multi-layer holding structures. Map the Indian legal net, from the Companies Act layering limits and significant beneficial owner rules to PMLA, the Benami Act and the 2017 shell company crackdown, and finish by learning how to spot shells using MCA data, financial statements and bank statements, with real Indian cases throughout.
- Define a shell company and separate it from legitimate holding, dormant and special purpose companies
- Explain how entry operators use dummy directors and paper companies to sell accommodation entries
- Trace the main layering techniques: circular flows, bogus share capital, unsecured loans, fake GST invoices and penny stock LTCG schemes
Understanding Transaction Monitoring Systems in Banks
A concept course for compliance officers at banks and NBFCs, aspiring forensic auditors and risk professionals who want to understand the machine at the centre of every bank's AML programme. It explains why Indian banks must monitor transactions under the PMLA and RBI's KYC Directions, where monitoring sits between KYC, screening and reporting to FIU-IND, and how real-time payment monitoring differs from overnight batch scans. You then open up the engine: the data it consumes from core banking and channel systems, how customer risk rating and segmentation shape what it looks for, and why poor data quality quietly breaks most systems. The course decodes detection scenarios, from structuring and rapid movement of funds to dormant account reactivation and UPI mule networks, and follows an alert through triage, investigation and case management to a filed STR. It closes with the hard problems: false positives, threshold tuning, performance metrics and model validation, the shift to machine learning and network analytics, and what regulators in India and abroad have done to banks whose monitoring failed.
- Explain what a transaction monitoring system does and the legal obligations under the PMLA and RBI rules that require Indian banks to run one
- Place monitoring correctly alongside KYC, sanctions screening and FIU-IND reporting, and distinguish real-time from post-event monitoring
- Describe the data a monitoring system needs and how customer risk rating and segmentation drive what it detects
Understanding the Basics of Financial Statement Auditing
A concept course on the financial statement audit as it works in India. You will learn what an audit does and does not promise, how reasonable assurance and materiality shape the work, and who is responsible for what between management, the auditor and the audit committee. You will see the rules that govern a statutory audit under the Companies Act, 2013, the Standards on Auditing issued by ICAI, and the oversight role of NFRA, along with auditor independence and rotation. You will then follow the audit itself, from planning and risk assessment through controls testing, substantive procedures, evidence, sampling and going concern. Finally you will learn to read an Indian auditor's report section by section, tell the four opinion types apart, use Key Audit Matters and CARO 2020 remarks, and spot the auditor red flags that preceded failures like Satyam and IL&FS. Built for commerce and finance students, compliance career aspirants, and investors who want to know what the audit report on a listed company is really telling them.
- Explain what a financial statement audit does, and what reasonable assurance and materiality really mean
- Separate the responsibilities of management, the statutory auditor and the audit committee
- Describe how the Companies Act, 2013, ICAI's Standards on Auditing and NFRA govern audits in India
Understanding the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) in India
A plain-language guide to India's Prevention of Money Laundering Act, 2002 for students, investors and anyone heading into a compliance career. Learn how Section 3 defines the offence, why the PMLA was enacted, and how scheduled offences act as the gateway to every case. Walk through the reporting machinery that binds banks, brokers and other reporting entities, from the PML Rules and record keeping to the CTRs and STRs filed with FIU-IND. Then follow a case from the Enforcement Directorate's ECIR through search, arrest, Section 50 statements and provisional attachment, on to the Adjudicating Authority, Special Courts, the twin conditions for bail and confiscation. Finally, read the PMLA through the Supreme Court's lens, from Vijay Madanlal Choudhary to later rulings that set limits on ED power, and see what the law means in practice for investors, your broker account and compliance professionals.
- Explain what Section 3 of the PMLA makes an offence and how scheduled offences trigger the law
- Describe the obligations of reporting entities under the PML Rules, including KYC, record keeping and reporting to FIU-IND
- Tell CTRs, STRs and other FIU-IND reports apart and know when each is filed
Understanding the Role of a Compliance Officer in Financial Institutions
A practical course on the compliance function inside Indian financial institutions, written for aspiring forensic auditors, compliance staff at banks and NBFCs, and finance professionals moving into risk and compliance roles. It explains where compliance sits next to risk management, internal audit and legal, how RBI, SEBI, IRDAI, PFRDA, IFSCA and FIU-IND each define the compliance officer's role, and what the PMLA roles of principal officer and designated director add. It then walks through the working programme: the compliance policy, the obligations register, compliance risk assessment, monitoring and testing, and sign-off on new products and new circulars. Day-to-day areas covered include KYC and AML, insider trading controls, conduct and customer protection, and regulatory reporting. The final chapters cover independence and reporting lines, board reporting, personal accountability, handling breaches, inspections and enforcement, whistleblower channels, and how to build a career in compliance. All institutions and figures in worked examples are illustrative unless a public source is named; rules are stated as at the date of last review.
- Explain what a compliance officer does and how the role differs from risk management, internal audit and legal
- Map which regulator governs which institution and how RBI, SEBI and IRDAI each define the compliance officer's role
- Understand the PMLA roles of principal officer and designated director and how they sit alongside the compliance officer