As Riveron strengthens its global footprint, India has emerged as a strategic pillar in the company’s innovation and delivery ecosystem. Following the acquisition of Yantra, Riveron has accelerated its technology-led transformation capabilities, establishing a global delivery centre in Pune and expanding its ability to support clients around the clock. In a detailed conversation with Tech Achieve Media, Rajesh Pawar, Managing Director, Riveron discusses key milestones since entering India, the evolution of the local talent landscape, India’s rising role in global AI infrastructure, and how CFOs and CIOs can navigate the next three to five years of transformation with clarity and confidence.
TAM: What milestones or achievements mark Riveron’s journey since entering the Indian market?
Rajesh Pawar: Riveron acquired Yantra in July last year. If you look at our growth journey, Riveron has been in business since 2006. We began by serving the office of the CFO, providing a range of services including accounting advisory, transaction services, interim management, and related strategic support.
As our offerings expanded, we recognised that organisations, whether enterprise or mid-market, rely heavily on various applications, both enterprise-grade and bespoke. Ultimately, the outputs of these applications flow into the CFO’s office, where teams work with financial data, performance metrics, and operational insights. This made it clear that enhancing our advisory services with technology capabilities would be a natural and necessary progression.
With this in mind, we began to strengthen our technology practice, starting with enterprise application implementations and then expanding into managed services. One of the key steps in scaling this part of our business was the acquisition of Yantra, which significantly accelerated our technology enablement capabilities.
This acquisition helped us in two major ways: first, by expanding our technology talent base, and second, by extending our presence beyond the Americas. Until 2024, we operated around ten offices across major US cities. With the addition of Yantra, we now have a global delivery centre in India as well. This allows us to broaden our offerings and provide clients with 24/7 support.
At Riveron, we firmly believe that successful transformation is built on three pillars: strategy, technology, and people. Transformation is a sustained mindset and not a one-time project. Our mission is to help clients unlock long-term value by combining strategic insight with technological innovation. We have always delivered strong strategic advisory, and with this expanded technology capability, we can now support clients end-to-end across their transformation journey.
TAM: Riveron serves the office of CFOs and CIOs in enhancing companies’ digital transformation journeys. What are some of the common challenges that they come to you with?
Rajesh Pawar: If we look at the full spectrum of services that Riveron offers, it begins with our core focus on the office of the CFO. This includes accounting advisory and transaction services, where we help clients design and optimise their internal processes. Whether they are navigating mergers and acquisitions or seeking to streamline existing operations, we provide the structure and guidance needed for effective financial and operational management.
The next pillar is business performance, where business intelligence (BI) and technology play a central role. Here, we support clients in their lean transformation journeys—redesigning business processes, identifying areas for improvement or innovation, and determining where technology can be an enabler. A key part of this effort is helping clients select the right tools. In many cases, organizations invest in sophisticated solutions they are not fully prepared to adopt, leading to implementation challenges. As a trusted advisor, our role is to guide them toward solutions that align with the scale of their current operations and their five-year growth plans.
We also help define clear implementation phases. While every organization aspires to transform, change must be executed thoughtfully to deliver meaningful results. If transformation is rushed or misaligned with organisational readiness, the outcomes often fall short of expectations.
Therefore, we consider the full context: the current operating environment, user readiness, process maturity, and long-term sustainability. Transformation requires deliberate planning and execution. People, processes, and operational metrics all play a critical role in ensuring that change is effective and lasting.
TAM: What makes Pune an attractive technology hub for Riveron compared to other Indian cities?
Rajesh Pawar: There are several reasons behind this choice. First, Pune has significantly evolved in terms of infrastructure over the past 15 years. The city offers exceptional educational institutions, which provide access to a strong and diverse talent pool. Alongside this, Pune has seen the establishment of large IT hubs, both along the Hinjawadi and Western Corridor as well as on the Eastern Corridor, creating a mature and thriving technology ecosystem.
Because of this combination, we benefit from world-class educational talent and a well-established IT landscape. In addition, Pune has seen a noticeable rise in entrepreneurial activity and startup energy. Traditionally, Bangalore was seen as the technology hub and Gurgaon as the financial services hub, but today Pune is rapidly emerging with its own strong identity across these sectors.
These factors together make Pune an attractive location for establishing a Global Capability Center (GCC). Moreover, Pune is not a Tier-1 metro, which provides a cost advantage from an arbitrage standpoint, which is an important consideration for such setups. What further strengthens Pune’s position is the shift in focus among companies. Earlier, GCCs were largely back-office operations. Today, however, we see advanced engineering work, analytics, cloud transformation, and IoT initiatives being driven from Pune, across startups, mid-sized firms, and large enterprises. It is no longer just a .NET or Java backend support centre for a global client; it is a hub for core, high-value technology work. All of this makes Pune a significantly more attractive and strategic destination.
TAM: What talent trends are you observing within India’s digital transformation workforce?
Rajesh Pawar: When I first started my career, talent development depended heavily on the training programmes organisations offered, primarily because the education system had not yet caught up with emerging technologies and industry trends. However, the education ecosystem has evolved rapidly. No one could have imagined that universities would one day offer degrees in prompt engineering, artificial intelligence, or data analytics. For instance, my own children studied data analytics at the undergraduate level, something that was unheard of during my time.
This shift has progressed at remarkable speed. In addition to academic advancements, professionals today also have access to a wide range of online learning platforms that offer self-paced courses and certifications. Earlier, enterprises needed to be certified partners of technology companies like IBM or Microsoft in order to provide official training to employees. Now, those barriers are gone. Independent platforms can proctor certifications, and many OEMs offer open access learning portals. As a result, talent today benefits from three strong sources of capability-building:
First, educational institutions now offer new-age, industry-relevant programmes.
Second, organisations like ours have matured our internal training frameworks, aligning them with both business-domain and technology requirements.
Third, independent platforms, whether LinkedIn Learning, Simplilearn, or direct certification portals from OEMs like Oracle or Salesforce, provide flexible and accessible upskilling pathways.
Together, these developments have significantly improved the quality of skills that professionals bring from day one, creating a much stronger and more agile talent pipeline.
TAM: How do you view India’s role in global AI and cloud infrastructure development, especially in the context of GCC evolution?
Rajesh Pawar: Today, India is contributing significantly to global AI engineering, data, and development efforts. We have moved well beyond the traditional perception of being a back-office or support development centre. What used to be called the “India Development Centre” has now evolved into the “India Innovation and Development Centre,” reflecting the high-value engineering and innovation work happening here.
A growing number of product companies in the AI space are emerging from India, driven by access to an exceptional talent pool. We are able to generate AI talent and outputs at a pace that matches, and in many cases exceeds, global standards, while maintaining high quality and offering a substantial cost advantage. AI is the new infrastructure, and India is playing a pivotal role in building it.
Government-led initiatives at the central level, and their effective adoption across both the public and private sectors, have further accelerated this progress. At Riveron, our teams in India are developing truly scalable AI systems that support critical decision-making for businesses around the world. We work across customer processes as well as standalone products, ensuring that all solutions are designed to be scalable, ethical, and responsible. Our priority is to operate within clear guardrails that protect client interests, safeguarding data, ensuring privacy, and preventing misuse. These principles underpin every AI solution we build.
TAM: How does Riveron differentiate itself from other global transformation or advisory firms working with CFO and CIO offices?
Rajesh Pawar: One of our greatest strengths is our deep heritage in serving the office of the CFO. Because our roots lie in core finance functions, we have a nuanced understanding of what the business requires. A significant portion of our accounting advisory team consists of former CFOs and controllers. They have faced real-world challenges firsthand, and they know what it takes to resolve them. Now, from the consulting side of the table, this experience allows us to recognise a client’s problem statement and offer practical, tested, and multiple pathways for resolution.
In many cases, we see that industry peers tend to offer fragmented solutions, addressing only portions of the problem, often distributing responsibilities across different teams or ecosystems. This can sometimes create gaps or inefficiencies.
Our approach, however, is holistic. We start by understanding the full problem statement and defining the desired financial outcome. From there, our Business Process Improvement (BPI) and engineering team outlines the operational and process changes required to achieve that outcome. Next, our technology enablement team steps in to identify the right technology interventions, implement these solutions, and establish a robust and scalable system. They also help manage the system post-implementation to ensure continuity and success. The goal is to serve as an extension of the client’s team, taking on the heavy lifting so that they can focus on their core business. By offering a seamless, end-to-end transformation journey, we eliminate fragmentation and deliver a unified, outcome-driven solution.
TAM: With increasing adoption of AI and automation, what shifts do you foresee in the role of CFOs and CIOs in the next 3–5 years?
Rajesh Pawar: For us, AI is not about technology for the sake of technology. Instead, it is about making intelligence actionable. I began my career on the other side of the table, working in manufacturing and service operations, facing real business problems and seeking guidance from consultants on how to address them. Today, I sit on the consulting side, hearing the same challenges and helping organizations leverage the most relevant and effective tools available to them.
The reality is that data is no longer the limitation. Ten years ago, organizations struggled with the absence of data; the past decade has centred around consolidating it. Twenty years ago, systems were flat and lacked depth. Later, companies implemented specialised vertical systems that operated in silos. Today, integration layers have become robust, enabling organisations to benefit from best-in-class systems across processes and a unifying layer that can convert all that information into actionable intelligence.
This is the biggest shift I see when speaking with CFOs. Earlier, the challenge was a lack of visibility. Now, visibility exists. The next challenge, and opportunity, is determining how efficiently and intelligently organisations can use this data to not only solve current problems but also anticipate what’s coming in the next two to three years, given the trajectory of their business.
No one today is asking for basic reports from systems, that’s a given. If you are working with a stable, modern platform and a capable technology partner, these fundamentals are automatically delivered. The real question is: What can I do with my data? Can I enrich it with external benchmarks? Can I apply best practices to uncover insights I couldn’t see before?
For example, many of the AI platforms we use allow you to upload a financial statement of a publicly listed company from the open domain, and the system can instantly compare growth drivers, highlight similarities, and even suggest potential changes that could improve performance. This is the kind of forward-looking, intelligence-driven decision-making that organisations are increasingly expecting, and that is where AI is making the most meaningful impact.
TAM: What message would you like to convey to Indian enterprises preparing for the next big digital shift?
Rajesh Pawar: What I consistently hear from customers and industry peers is that India is no longer just a growth market; it is a growth partner. This represents an important shift in mindset and aligns closely with Riveron’s belief in India’s potential to influence the future of global enterprise transformation.
Of course, nothing transformative happens overnight. Technology is evolving at a far faster pace than the processes that depend on it. So whenever someone approaches me about undertaking a transformation programme, my first question is whether they have clearly defined their long-term, medium-term, and short-term goals. Not everything can be short-term. Experienced leaders who have been through multiple transformation cycles understand the importance of breaking down the journey into manageable phases.
This approach serves two key purposes:
First, it delivers quicker wins, which helps build confidence.
Second, those early successes accelerate organisational acceptance of change and create a strong foundation on which long-term objectives can be achieved.
My advice is always to have a clear strategy, break it into phases, and begin with smaller, manageable initiatives. These early steps help test the vision, validate assumptions, and, importantly, allow organisations to replicate sustainable change. Replication is what ultimately reveals whether a process is durable. And the first phase, even if it fails, provides valuable direction. Failure at an early stage is often far more beneficial than realising misalignment after investing heavily in a full-scale programme.
