Sharesight appoints Prashant Mohan as CMO

We are excited to announce that Prashant Mohan has joined Sharesight in the role of Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) to drive the next stage of our growth. Formerly with Australian fintech startup Prospa, Prashant is the latest addition to the Sharesight team. I sat down with Prashant to find out more:

Can you tell us a bit about yourself?

My career has been a non-linear one that has included experiences from technology (Infosys, Google), consumer product (Philips) and finance organisations (Westpac, Smartgroup, Prospa). I’ve also not grown up in marketing. I’ve been a software developer, a technical product manager, a business consultant and sales strategy manager before finding my way into marketing. What I love about marketing is that I get to use both sides of my brain - the rational as well as the emotional side. I believe my key strengths come from a mix of data analysis, intuition, adaptability and collaboration.

I grew up in an academic family - both my parents were academic professors in Pondicherry in India. That grounding instilled my strong beliefs and personal values. My mother encouraged me to be adventurous and my father taught me to have rational and emotional logic to deal with the various uncertainties of life.

Diversity of experiences in both my professional and personal life has given me a gift to understand people from all walks of life.

Why did you join Sharesight and what excites you most?

Being an investor myself, I had been a user of Sharesight for nearly 3 years. So, I was already convinced about the product and the need to use Sharesight to educate myself as an investor.

I used Sharesight to track the return on my small portfolio of investments and I was blown away by how insightful the learnings were. As someone who believes that financial literacy and factfulness should be part of every adult’s life, I thought I would be able to genuinely touch and influence people’s lives and their relationship with their investments.

Seeing beyond clickbait headlines and sweeping generalisations that are rampant in our society, I see Sharesight playing a key role in helping people experience factfulness.

Ultimately, it’s a nerdy mix of finance, technology, product and marketing and that resonated deep inside my soul.

You’ve worked for companies big and small. What are some of the differences working for a fintech?

I value my experiences from both sides of the divide. Large organisations are very structured and give you frameworks for strategic thinking and developing a long-term strategy. What large organisations struggle with is execution. And again, there are exceptions to every rule. For example, when I worked at Westpac, one of my roles was to roll-out sales and operations strategy in regional banking. The environment was absolutely entrepreneurial and it provided experiences in small towns from Byron Bay in the north to Merimbulla in the south and Dubbo and Nyngan in the west.

Smaller nimble organisations, on the other hand, are fantastic at execution, but can get carried away and excited by the prospect of “new sources of revenue”. So the strategic focus can be missing at times.

I personally love working in smaller fintechs, you are able to continually listen to your customers to influence the product and organisation direction.

What do you enjoy doing when you’re not at Sharesight?

I have 2 young kids and both are boys - so life is quite physical. I love playing basketball with friends and the kids as well. As a family, we are all into cycling. I detox my brain by enjoying the great outdoors. We are lucky to be in Sydney with our great weather. We love getting into the mountains, bush and the amazing beaches we have here.

I love reading books. I was an only child and so my parents encouraged me to read books. I read both fiction and non-fiction. One of my all time favourite books is Victor Frankl’s “Man’s Search for Meaning”. It made such a deep impact in my grasp of what life is about and how one can deal with it under the most trying of circumstances.

Tell us something most people don’t know about yourself

I am a failed theater actor. I love theater - being on stage and living a different character is one of the most thrilling parts of theater. I say failed because I just can’t justify giving it time though I love it so much.

FURTHER READING

• Sharesight.com - About Us
• Blog - Q&A with Sharesight co-founder and CTO Scott Ryburn on 10 years of Sharesight
• Blog - Sharesight appoints Andrew Bird as Aus Exec Director
• Blog - Congratulations to Doug and Scott, Sharesight CEO & CTO