Amazon India CFO’s journey: From spending 20 years with HUL to joining the e-commerce giant.

• Hi, I am Raghava Rao, a Computer Science Engineer who transitioned into the world of finance, eventually becoming the CFO at Amazon India.
• In an era of shifting companies every few years, I stayed with Hindustan Unilever Limited for nearly 20 years.
• I joined Amazon India in 2014, just after it launched its e-commerce business with a small core team.
• Since then, Amazon India has scaled rapidly, and I am lucky to be a part of the leadership team.

Navigating from engineering to finance   

We were a middle-class South Indian family.

My parents passed on basic middle-class values to me as a child, “Study hard, and do well academically.” This was the foundation for long-term success. In this case, success included getting a good corporate job.

Along the way, my father set a career goal for me, that I should pursue Engineering.