For most multinational companies, foreign exchange (FX) risk is a significant and volatile element of doing business across borders. But for Karunakar Grandhe, a seasoned product leader with over 20 years of experience in ERP systems, business intelligence and financial technology, FX risk is more than just a threat; it can be a strategic opportunity.
Karunakar’s approach to FX risk management blends his technical background with a strong understanding of financial systems and global treasury operations. With a career built across platforms like SAP Financials, SAP HANA, AWS, and analytics tools such as Power BI, Spotfire, and SAP BOBJ, he brings both breadth and depth to an area often confined to traditional risk management. At a major global pharmaceutical company, as a Product Manager and Technical Lead, he was placed at the forefront of designing and implementing end-to-end FX risk solutions.
His journey into FX risk management doesn’t only include a finance-only perspective, but also as a technologist and integrator. Recognizing that siloed data and manual processes were bottlenecks to efficient risk mitigation, Karunakar, as the IT lead for FX risk management, designed a comprehensive FX platform. These include exposure analysis, hedging strategy formulation, trade execution, and hedge accounting, all unified through integrated pipelines connecting SAP, HANA, and AWS environments.
“Too often, companies treat FX exposure as a reporting obligation rather than a strategic variable,” he explains. “But by using analytics and automation, we can bring it into the realm of business planning and performance management.”
Karunakar’s system enables real-time analysis of FX positions and provides insights to forecast risk based on expected sales in foreign currencies. By automating data collection and embedding visualization through intuitive dashboards, treasury teams are empowered to align hedging strategies with product trends and anticipated revenue fluctuations.
He also identified product trends that may have influenced the current month’s results or could impact future quarterly performance. Through his actions, he has tried to position FX risk as a strategic function and aligned technology with Treasury to protect and enhance global financial operations.
One of Karunakar’s key contributions in this area has been positioning FX risk management as a central component of the company’s broader digital transformation. Rather than isolating FX within Treasury, his initiative integrates it with cross-functional systems, bringing transparency to operational leaders, finance teams, and executive stakeholders alike. His focus is on contextualizing FX within the wider business landscape.
His approach emphasizes transparency, data-driven decision-making, and stakeholder collaboration. “I have seen firsthand how empowering Treasury teams with intuitive dashboards and predictive models not only mitigates risk but also enhances confidence in global operations”.
His work exemplifies how technology can be aligned with financial governance in practical and measurable ways. By embedding FX forecasting into day-to-day business operations and making it a shared responsibility across departments, he’s helped redefine how risk is perceived and managed at the enterprise level.
For organizations grappling with global volatility, his story is a reminder that risk, when properly understood, can become an advantage.