After more than two decades at Unilever, Kabir Ahmed Shakir made the bold decision to leave the only company he had ever known. It was 2016, he was in his early forties and, by most measures, he had reached the pinnacle of corporate success – serving as global CFO at one of the world’s largest consumer goods companies. Yet for Shakir, the decision was simple: “the learning had stopped.”
He returned to India to join Microsoft at a time when the company’s new chief executive, Satya Nadella, was spearheading a cultural transformation that was gathering momentum. Over four years, Shakir witnessed “one of the most remarkable reinventions in tech.” But, once again, his curiosity and desire for growth drove him to seek a new challenge.
When Shakir joined Tata Communications as CFO nearly five years ago, it was not for a bigger title or another corporate victory lap. His mission was to help transform the traditional telecom provider into what he calls a “com-tech company” – an enterprise that goes beyond selling bandwidth and data to deliver intelligence, value and meaningful outcomes for its customers.
“The company was at a crossroads,” Shakir says. Growth had stalled and inefficiencies were slowing the company down. The CFO’s mission was clear: restore discipline, unlock trapped cash and build the agility of a true technology company. “The goal wasn’t recovery,” he says. “It was a reinvention.” Tata is well on its way there, targeting $1bn (£759m) in revenue by 2027/28.
Leading through change
Few finance leaders have seen transformation as up close as Shakir has. His career across Unilever, Microsoft and Tata, he says, has given him a “ringside view” of reinvention at some of the world’s most influential organisations. One theme has remained constant: “transformation is never purely financial, it’s cultural and purpose-driven.”
At Microsoft, he observed how humility replaced arrogance and collaboration replaced competition under Nadella’s leadership. “This was once a company that would publicly break competitor products on stage,” Shakir recalls. “Then suddenly, it was demonstrating Windows on iPhones. That’s not a product shift – that’s a personality shift.” This, he says, was the “big cultural change” that saved Microsoft from stagnation.
Shakir believes the most enduring organisations share another common thread: a purpose larger than profit. “Unilever served everyday needs, Microsoft empowered human potential and Tata follows the philosophy that what’s good for India is good for the company,” he says.
The elusive art of resilience
The last decade has tested firms through crises, pandemics, wars and digital disruption. “Resilience is now the essential DNA that helps great companies survive”, Shakir says, but admits it’s an elusive concept. He defines it as a balance of trust, adaptability and learning: trust provides stability, adaptability drives movement and learning ensures evolution.
Leaders, Shakir adds, must also maintain “healthy paranoia” where they are constantly asking themselves if their companies are remaining relevant to their customers. “Product life-cycles are now shrinking fast. Discounted cashflows that once spanned 15 years are now modelled over three. The implication is clear: if you’re not constantly recalibrating relevance, you’re already behind.”
Asking for ROI on AI now is like asking a baby to run a marathon
Transformation also depends heavily on the finance function evolving. “Balancing books and audits is hygiene. The real value lies in insight and action, moving from explaining what happened to shaping what happens next,” Shakir says. To do that, CFOs must learn the language of business, not just numbers, he explains. “Whether that means understanding a teenage girl’s skincare concerns at Unilever, the concept of infinite computing at Microsoft or a CIO’s pain points at Tata Communications, fluency in business vocabulary is essential.”
Today, leadership demands near-constant cognitive and emotional endurance. But Shakir believes individual resilience comes from thinking differently, not working harder. He advises those in left-brain professions to adopt right-brain hobbies. “It activates a different part of the mind – the creative, sensory, intuitive space often neglected by the analytical rigors of finance and strategy. When you engage that side of your brain, you can be active for 18 hours a day and still not feel tired.”
For Shakir, that outlet is cooking – a ritual that “doubles as therapy”. No matter how long the day’s been, he comes home, rolls up his sleeves and starts cooking. ”I don’t feel tired afterward. Cooking resets me.”
Stop chasing AI ROI
When Shakir isn’t in the kitchen, he’s focused on the future of Tata. And like many businesses, that future is increasingly defined by technology, and more specifically the promise of AI-driven growth. Yet many finance leaders today face a pressing question: can AI truly deliver on its promises of growth and productivity? A recent report by MIT suggests not: 95% of organisations that have adopted generative AI say they’ve seen zero return so far. This doesn’t mean the technology lacks value or potential, but it does make it harder for CFOs to reconcile such findings with the sweeping claims surrounding AI. What’s more, US Census Bureau data from June shows that American companies have already started scaling back their use of AI, signalling frustration with early results.
But Shakir urges patience. “Asking for ROI on AI now is like asking a baby to run a marathon.” Finance leaders are applying mature expectations to an immature technology that is still in experimental phase. This is a time for exploration, not efficiency. Yet many CFOs judge it with the same lens as an ERP rollout or cloud migration, he says.
“AI is overhyped in the short-term and underestimated in the long term. If you keep asking about ROI, you’ll kill the golden goose before it lays an egg. Instead of output metrics, leaders should be asking: What are we learning? What are we creating?”
At Tata, early AI gains are personal, not corporate. “Our AI co-pilot cuts presentation prep from seven days to four hours,” Shakir says. “That’s real value but it won’t yet move the P&L.” The true enterprise payoff, he predicts, is still five years away. Now is the time to experiment, empower employees and build familiarity. “The collective learning curve will become a huge competitive advantage.”
Because of this, Shakir urges CFOs rethink how they fund and frame AI to boards, investors and analysts. “Don’t tie AI to quarterly earnings. Set an experimentation budget and protect it.”
There is another reason CFOs must keep funding AI even when the numbers look grim: survival. “If your competitors embrace AI and you don’t, you’ll fall behind. If your people use it but your systems don’t, you’ll lose talent. If your vendors are automating and your systems can’t connect, you slow the entire chain down,” Shakir stresses. “The goal isn’t to prove AI works today, it’s to make sure we still exist when it does.”
For Shakir, the lesson is clear: transformation is a mindset, not a moment and companies endure when they learn, lead with purpose and act with integrity.
After more than two decades at Unilever, Kabir Ahmed Shakir made the bold decision to leave the only company he had ever known. It was 2016, he was in his early forties and, by most measures, he had reached the pinnacle of corporate success – serving as global CFO at one of the world’s largest consumer goods companies. Yet for Shakir, the decision was simple: “the learning had stopped.”
He returned to India to join Microsoft at a time when the company’s new chief executive, Satya Nadella, was spearheading a cultural transformation that was gathering momentum. Over four years, Shakir witnessed “one of the most remarkable reinventions in tech.” But, once again, his curiosity and desire for growth drove him to seek a new challenge.
When Shakir joined Tata Communications as CFO nearly five years ago, it was not for a bigger title or another corporate victory lap. His mission was to help transform the traditional telecom provider into what he calls a “com-tech company” – an enterprise that goes beyond selling bandwidth and data to deliver intelligence, value and meaningful outcomes for its customers.
