New Delhi: The Public Enterprises Selection Board (PESB) on Monday recommended Pravin Kumar for the post of Director (Finance) at Steel Authority of India Ltd (SAIL). Kumar is a general manager at SAIL. The board picked him from 10 candidates it interviewed for the Schedule A post on Monday.
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Kumar is currently General Manager and second lead for finance, costing, funds management and real estate management at the SAIL ERP (enterprise resource planning) Centre, Corporate Office, Bhilai location.
Eight of the 10 candidates, Kumar among them, came from within SAIL. The most senior was Arup Mukherjee, Executive Director, Internal Audit, at SAIL's Corporate Office. Five chief general managers (CGMs) also appeared before the board: Prajesh Chandra Mishra, CGM (Finance and Accounts) at SAIL Refractory Unit; Pramod Kumar Chokhani, CGM (Internal Audit) at Bhilai Steel Plant; Sudershan Kalra, CGM (Finance); Varadarajan Iyengar, CGM; and Hafik Kumar Say, CGM, Internal Audit. The seventh SAIL candidate besides Kumar was Vikas Shounak, General Manager (Finance and Accounts).
The other two candidates came from outside the steel PSU. Sunil Kumar Goel is Executive Director (Finance) at Indian Railway Finance Corporation Ltd (IRFC). Shubhadeep Sen is General Manager (Finance and Accounts) and Chief Financial Officer at Gujarat State Electricity Corporation Ltd (GSECL).
Kumar has more than 32 years of experience in finance and accounts, according to his professional profile. His work has covered steel manufacturing, mining, taxation, budgeting, management information systems (MIS), business planning and shared services. It has also included education administration and SAP-based enterprise resource planning.
He has been General Manager and team lead for finance, controlling and funds management at SAIL's Bokaro Steel Plant since June 2023. In this role, the profile says, he developed standard operating procedures across procurement-to-payment processes.
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Before that, Kumar was Deputy General Manager and project lead at the Bokaro plant from April 2017 to June 2023. During this period he led the plant's rollout of the Goods and Services Tax (GST), along with several finance automation and digitisation projects. He is also credited with implementing a payment gateway and online bidding for investments by the plant's provident fund trust. He also rolled out SAP's real estate management module, SAP REFx, to manage Bokaro's real estate and properties.
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