PwC India to elevate Asha Ramanathan as COO

PwC India on Friday said that Asha Ramanathan, a veteran in the firm, will be its new chief operating officer (COO) as Satyavati Berera, who has been the COO for the last seven years, retires next March.

Asha’s appointment as COO is effective from 1 October. PwC also said that Gayathri Parathasarathy, a well-known industry name, joins the firm to lead its financial services practice.

Asha is a chartered accountant and became a partner in 2009. She specialises in the pharma, industrial, consumer products and service sectors. She has also held the position of the firm’s Diversity and Inclusion Leader from 2015 to 2017 and introduced many reforms to make PwC India a better place to work, the PwC statement said.

Gayathri has over 30 years of experience in the financial sector. She has been the lead partner on strategy and transformation projects for a number of large financial institutions. Gayathri joins PwC from IBM Services, where her most recent role was of the Asia Pacific Financial Services Leader, the statement said.

Prior to that she also worked with KPMG, Accenture and Oracle among others, said the company statement.

On these appointments, Sanjeev Krishan, chairman, PwC in India said, “Very pleased that we have two very strong women leaders take on critical roles and on behalf of the firm’s leadership, I welcome them onboard.

PwC is a network of firms in 152 countries with over 328,000 people delivering quality assurance, advisory and tax services, the company said.