Client Speaker

Suresh Sundararajan

President & Group Head, Strategic Investments and Shared Services, Olam

Suresh Sundararajan is currently President & Group Head, Strategic Investments, and Shared Services, Olam International Limited, responsible for Strategic Investments, Digital, Information Technology, Global Business Service, Legal and Tax functions. Suresh is based in Olam’s HQ in Singapore.

Suresh has been responsible for Olam’s IT and technology journey over the years. Over the years, Suresh has established a global IT services footprint in the regions, transformed and transitioned multiple ERPs into a streamlined single ERP function with a global template and set up shared services for IT as well as the finance function.

Digital is part of the next core areas of growth for Olam and Suresh set up a dedicated digital practice for Olam in November 2016 and created a Task Force supported by a core team of part time managers. The Digital Task Force was formed with a mandate to carve out an end to end digital strategy for Olam to move Olam to the forefront of the Digital transformation and make it a leader in this field. Over the last two years he built this Digital Task Force into a strong product team of managers spread across the globe, assembled a technical team of 100 over people in Chennai, India, created a strong road map for the organization and built strategic alliances with vendors who are leaders in the field. Olam is currently pursuing quite a few disruptive ideas and several transformational initiatives including digitization, automation, analytics and block chain to establish leadership positions across the agricultural supply chain.

He joined Olam in March 1996 as the Finance Manager for a cluster of countries in Sub-Saharan Africa based out of Cameroon. In May 1998, he was transferred to Singapore to lead global financial and management reporting. He was appointed as General Manager, Head of Corporate Affairs in 2001 and was in charge of Management Reporting, Financial Consolidation, Tax, Legal & Secretarial, Board communications and Statutory Audit for the Group. He was subsequently promoted to Senior Vice President and continued to lead Corporate Affairs till 2008. During this period, he was closely involved in capital market transactions including raising private equity capital, public listing of Olam in SGX, the issue of CBs and new equity placements. He set up Investor Relations post listing in 2005 and ran it for three years. He was also involved in a comprehensive strategy formulation exercise for Olam and was head of Capital Investment Review Committee for a few years. He is a member of Olam’s Operating Committee and Management Committee.

Prior to joining Olam Suresh was the Deputy Manager (Accounts) at Tube Investments of India from September 1995 to February 1996 and prior to that, he was the Deputy Manager (Management Accounts) at T I Diamond Chain Limited in India from July 1994 to August 1995.

He obtained a Bachelor of Commerce from the University of Madras, India in 1990, a Degree in Cost Accountancy in 1990 from The Institute of Cost and Works Accountants of India, and became a qualified company secretary in 1993 with The Institute of Company Secretaries of India.