When Kabir Ahmed Shakir joined Tata Communications as CFO in 2020, he found the company mired in what he called “satisfactory underperformance.” The Tata Group, a massive Indian conglomerate, had bought the telecommunications company from the Indian government in 2002, and it was still largely stuck in slow-growth mode. But Shakir and CEO Amur Lakshminarayanan jump-started the company with a bold new strategy.

A hard reset: In 2020, Tata Communications was mired in a phase of “low- to mid-, sometimes mid- to high-single digit growth, low profitability, low ROIC,” Shakir told CFO Brew. “For donkey’s years, this company had negative net worth.”

Shakir and Lakshminarayanan, who started as CEO in 2019, determined that the organization needed a reset.

“We said, ‘Okay, the only way out of this is to grow,’” Shakir recalled. They launched a new strategy which revolved around “moving away from selling products to selling platforms and solutions,” he said. The plan also included improving financial fitness and making the organization more agile while adopting a go-to-market strategy that involved going “deeper with fewer” customers.

Click here to continue reading how Tata Communications is approaching growth.—CV

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We can’t imagine it’s ever an easy time to be a finance executive in the entertainment industry. But if we had to make an educated guess, it really isn’t smooth sailing right now.

With two back-to-back billion dollar cable network write-downs from media behemoths Paramount and Warner Bros., it’s clear that the transition to a fully blown, profitable streaming era may be rockier than anticipated.

Amid this tumultuous moment, CFO Brew spoke with Jason Cherubini, co-founder and CFO of Dawn’s Light Media and executive in residence at Loyola University Maryland, to understand what’s going on with streaming profitability.

For some time now, all eyes have been on streaming profitability, as analysts wait for companies to actually make money off their nascent streaming platforms, despite their popularity and ubiquity. Now, though, as customers complain about streamflation, some companies may have to rethink how they charge for and bundle subscription streaming services, while still aiming for that ever-elusive profitability.

That’s something we’re seeing in other industries, but it’s just easier to spot in streaming, Cherubini noted, citing things like AMC+’s Shudder, a streaming service exclusively catering to horror and thriller fans. CFOs in different industries should take note, though, he says, because there’s a valuable lesson in all of this.

For more on building niche revenue streams, click here.—NP

With the help of its “unhinged” green owl mascot, Duolingo has become the world’s most popular language learning app. Matt Skaruppa, Duolingo’s CFO, recently appeared on Morning Brew’s After Earnings podcast to discuss the company’s formula for growing its user base and how it’s using AI to improve language learning.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

When you look at some of the Street research on you, folks…are not completely there yet in terms of your monetization strategy. What would you say to them?

In our first shareholder letter [this year], we said that our growth for monetization was going to come from…continuing to innovate and expand on our core mechanics to drive free-to-pay conversion. We think there’s tons of room to do that. You grow users, which are growing nicely, and then you convert more of them to paid. To do that, we’ve added two really exciting vectors. The first one is the family plan. Now up to 20% of our subscribers are on a family plan. And then the [other] thing is an AI tier called Duolingo Max. We’ve just now started rolling it out more broadly around the world, so we will have more data for investors and for analysts over the coming six to 12 months.

Keep reading here.—CV

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