RTIH retailer interview: Vineta Bajaj, Chief Financial Officer at e-grocery firm Rohlik Group
Twenty years ago at the age of 16, Vineta Bajaj, now group CFO at European e-commerce grocery delivery service Rohlik Group and former Group Finance Director at Ocado, had left school and was taking a business degree at university.
But finance wasn’t her original ambition.
“I actually never wanted to be an accountant,” she laughs. “I always wanted to be a doctor.”
The lure of the esteemed Limerick University, only a 20-minute walk from her door for the young Bajaj however, meant that she chose to do a four-year business degree instead.
Her interest in financial services came after she began investing in the stock market using money she’d earned a diploma in teaching piano while at University.
She then began investing for others too.
“I enjoyed my side hustle playing the stock market and making money for people like my dad for whom I said I could grow his money by 4% a month. I was doing that for him and making my own little mini hedge fund. It was quite entertaining,” she laughs.
After completing her degree she worked at KPMG on audits for large corporate clients before her move into industry to Irish food and beverage leader Kerry Group. It was the perfect move for her.
“I knew I wanted a public company and the right infrastructure for me to grow. It was a great experience. I learned what mature markets look like and learnt lots of interesting things about coordinating worldwide audits, large businesses and investor relations and so on.”
A year later, however, she was on the move, looking for a role where she could have a more hands-on involvement.
“I realised that being in an environment where I could have my voice heard was important to me.”
Bajaj ended up with three job offers on the table – a bank in Dublin, a private food business and Ocado.
“People always say ‘Why Ocado?’ but when I was interviewed Ocado didn’t exist in Ireland, and I’d never heard of them,” she says.
However, the metrics interested her and sharing their view about the likely growth of online grocery retail she joined the company as a senior financial reporting accountant in June 2013.
“The key point about Ocado was that it was the right environment for a personality like me. I joined and I was one of twenty people in the finance team and one of two in the reporting team.”
“My role was mainly weekly KPIs, year-end audits and the classic group stuff but I was also the only tax qualified person in the group at the time, so I started managing our tax relationships with advisors and HMRC.”
Within three years she became Ocado’s Group Financial Controller, group head of tax and group treasurer and was now a key cog in the Ocado machine which was growing fast. Three years on again she became Group Finance Director in 2019.
As well as her day job, she was also responsible for several other initiatives at Ocado.
“I had the autonomy, freedom, trust and was in an environment where if I wanted to do something that was value add I went off and did it. It was the perfect environment for a personality like me so I might be setting up the graduate recruitment programme, talking to investors or writing results announcements. It was a very unique situation.”
Energetic and inquisitive
By her own admission, Bujeja isn’t one to sit idle.
“I love learning and adding value and if I find a problem I don’t walk away from it, she says.
“I’ll pick it up and I’ll go ‘right let me try and solve it or let me try and find out who needs to solve it’.”
She’s also stubborn. “No-one can ever tell me I can’t do something. It wakes me up in the morning. If you say I can’t do it I’ll show you I can.”
Vineta admits she’s always been full of energy, even as a child.
“You would hear me before you saw me,” she laughs. “My drive comes from wanting to find new intellectual and interesting challenges. Money doesn’t motivate me at all. I have a quite insatiable thirst for pushing myself in different ways,” she says.
“You either acknowledge that you are different, or you treat it like a superpower and own it.”
While at Ocado this inquisitiveness led to her looking to how she could help other smaller businesses grow and initially getting involved in Hitmarker, a video games industry job platform since she is also a big gaming fan.
“I was helping them develop their strategy and I went ‘Wow I really like this’ and so then I started finding and advising more companies looking for businesses where I can offer my time to help them grow.”
Today it means she’s an advisor for a handful of companies as well as an investor in several more.
She was also asked by the University of Cambridge to join the business school which she says was a huge personal accolade as she thrives on helping others develop. “I’m more limited on timing now but I find it a great way of relaxing because it gives me something completely different to look at and think about.”
Leading European online grocery retail
At the start of 2023, after nearly a decade at Ocado which saw her help to evolve the company from a pureplay online retailer to a grocery disrupter, Bujeja moved to Rohlik Group to help in the company’s ambition of becoming the definitive European online grocery company. “I wanted to do the growth story again. I really enjoyed the ten-year journey at Ocado,” she says.
The familiarity of the business, which is essentially a European version of Ocado as a pureplay online grocery retailer present in five European markets, meant an easy adjustment.
“I felt like I was coming home again. The P&L was very familiar, and I get to bring a lot to the table. I understand the unit economics of the business and can contribute to business decisions”
And she’s loving the challenge. “I joined because I wanted to do it again and it’s been absolutely amazing to date.”
She says she’s thrilled to have achieved the CFO position she dreamt of with her move to Rohlik.
“I wanted the number one role. It’s been really good and it’s been amazing working alongside Tomas Cupr, a pioneer in online grocery. It’s a very rewarding, very challenging, very essential role and it’s a position where you can really add value to business strategies and company culture every day.”
With her energy and motivation, as well as her track record, there’s little doubt Bajaj will continue doing just that.
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