The executive roundtable at Le Méridien, Gurgaon was designed as a structured evening of themed discussions across multiple tables. What actually happened was more interesting: timed conversations turned into extended, animated exchanges — a clear sign that the challenges being discussed are real, urgent, and shared.
What was planned as a roundtable became a room-wide dialogue. And the table focused on Accelerating Finance Transformation with AI & Automation stood out for its depth and candor.
Four Themes, One Core Problem
The evening explored four intersecting themes across the room:
- Chaos to Clarity — extracting smart insights from unstructured data
- Finance Transformation — automating reconciliation, approvals, and reporting
- Low-Code/No-Code Agility — empowering teams beyond IT
- Governance at Scale — balancing trust and speed in AI-led operations
Despite coming from very different industries, nearly every table circled back to the same core problem: we've got the data, but not the flow. And that's what's holding back transformation.
Common Threads Across the Room
A few patterns emerged consistently, regardless of industry or company size:
- Too many documents living in silos — making it hard to find, verify, or report information when it matters
- Manual, repetitive tasks still eating up time in finance, HR, legal, and operations
- Legacy systems without APIs slowing down progress — especially where integration feels out of reach
- Teams relying on IT for even the simplest automation ideas
- A clear need for secure, audit-friendly workflows that don't get in the way of speed
These aren't abstract technology problems. They're operational bottlenecks that cost real time and real money every day.
At the Finance Table: Where the Conversation Got Specific
The finance-focused table brought together leaders navigating remarkably different organizations — but facing strikingly similar constraints.
DreamFolks shared insights on building a new industry category led by technology innovation. The discussion explored growth prospects alongside operational realities — particularly the reconciliation pain caused by asynchronous bank data and the operational risk of critical processes depending on a single person managing everything via Excel.
IRFC (Indian Railway Finance Corporation), represented by Sunil Goel, described how a Navratna company is evolving its business model and competing with NBFCs at arm's length. The conversation covered long cycle times in invoicing and the manpower constraints involved in reviewing commercial project applications.
THDC India, with Sipan Garg at the table, highlighted how public sector undertakings are playing a pivotal role in realizing the Viksit Bharat 2047 mission — securing clean energy transition through hydro power projects. But the fast pace of growth creates its own challenges: fragmentation across seven parallel finance systems and the manual workload involved in handling hundreds of thousands of invoices monthly.
FnShift Solutions (Atul Pratap) and DocQ (Rui) brought the technology and implementation perspective — illustrating use cases that range from automating AP workflows to applying AI for risk scoring and prioritization. The emphasis was on practical, deployable solutions rather than theoretical capabilities.
Where DocQ Fits
The discussion naturally led to what an automation platform needs to deliver for finance teams operating at this scale:
- AI that reads, understands, and organizes documents — scans, emails, PDFs, the lot
- Workflow building — approvals, reconciliations, verifications — without a single line of code
- Integration that bridges the gap even when ERP systems are old or disconnected
- Full audit trails, smart access control, and compliance readiness baked in from day one
The goal isn't to replace existing systems. It's to make automation feel natural — not like another IT project.
What Made This Table Different
Finance transformation discussions often stay at the strategic level. This one went deeper because the people at the table were the ones living with the operational reality. They could describe exactly where invoices get stuck, which reconciliation steps depend on one person's institutional knowledge, and why a seven-system finance stack creates blind spots that no dashboard can fix.
That specificity is what makes roundtable conversations more valuable than conference panels. When a leader from THDC India describes managing hundreds of thousands of invoices across seven systems, it resonates differently than a slide about "digital transformation."
Continuing the Conversation
The evening confirmed something we've believed for a while: the appetite for AI-driven finance automation in India is enormous, and the leaders driving it want practical conversations with peers who understand the constraints — not vendor pitches.
We'd love to continue the conversation and explore how your team could turn these challenges into quick wins. If you're navigating similar finance transformation challenges, reach out to us.
This roundtable recap covers the "Accelerating Finance Transformation with AI & Automation" table at the Next-Gen Operations executive roundtable, held May 15, 2025 at Le Méridien, Sector 26, Gurgaon. Organized by DocQ in cooperation with FnShift Solutions.
