Five-star career

The Radisson Blu Hotel & Convention Centre is an especially complex hospitality business since it is one of the largest convention centres in East Africa and has a big focus on meetings. Boasting over 291 bedrooms, the five-star venue has hosted some major events, including the 2022 Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting – and even the 2019 ACCA Africa Members Convention.

Supporting role

The finance team supports the overall performance of the hotel through various initiatives such as benchmarking how much it is paying for contract services and credit card commissions, for example. ‘It’s all part of making the hotel more financially efficient and increasing the bottom line,’ Rajani says.

He combines his responsibilities at the hotel with being the Radisson Hotel Group’s district financial controller for East Africa. This involves overseeing the financial operations of six other hotels – a second one in Rwanda, plus three in Kenya, one in Ethiopia and one in South Sudan.

‘With the dual role, I get to see how other properties are performing because I have access to all the financials,’ he says. ‘I see how the revenue patterns change by country, the different challenges they face, the practices that are working well in one property that can be replicated in Kigali and at other properties.’

While he embraces the visibility that his dual role gives him, Rajani admits that his regional responsibilities also pose some professional challenges. ‘When I’m following up with the other properties in East Africa, I often feel like it would be much faster and easier if I were physically there,’ he says. ‘But these days we are heavily dependent on technology, such as Teams calls and emails, to catch up and fix issues.’

Unlocking opportunities

Rajani may be based in Rwanda now, but he has previously lived and worked in several African countries. Born in Karachi, in southern Pakistan, he moved to Nairobi when he was nine years old. His father, who ran an import-export company, wanted to capitalise on the business opportunities in Kenya. After he finished school, Rajani decided to pursue a career in finance, partly because he had always enjoyed studying maths and partly because his older brother had studied to become an accountant with ACCA.

After doing some research, Rajani decided that he, too, would study for the ACCA qualification. Initially, he liked the fact it was internationally recognised and that he could study part-time while accumulating practical work experience. Later, he discovered it was also an invaluable asset in the employment market since it is often a minimum requirement in job specifications.

‘It helps you to unlock opportunities,’ he explains. ‘If you don’t have ACCA, you can be as good as you want to be, but if you don’t meet the minimum requirement, you will not even get shortlisted for certain positions.’

Rajani started out working for Nalin Shah & Co, a Nairobi-based auditing firm, thinking it would be the best way for him to apply the knowledge he’d gained from his ACCA studies. But after he became frustrated at seeing accounting done incorrectly, he decided to move into industry. ‘For me, it’s more enjoyable to do it right from inside a corporate than to review someone’s work and pick up mistakes as a practitioner,’ he says.

After a stint as a chief accountant for an insurance firm, he moved on to furniture business Newline, which also had its own travel agency. By 2011, however, he was ready for a change of scenery. He also wanted to have the ‘maximum potential career growth’. So, with his ACCA qualification (completed in 2010) under his belt, he decided to accept an assistant financial controller role with Polana Serena Hotel in Mozambique’s scenic coastal capital Maputo.

This was the dawn of a career in the hospitality sector that has now lasted more than a decade. After two years in Maputo, Rajani joined the Radisson Hotel Group, first serving as financial controller at its four-star Park Inn hotel in Tete, in west-central Mozambique. Subsequently, he held the same role at the group’s five-star Radisson Blu hotel in the Zambian capital of Lusaka. He has very happy memories of living and working in Lusaka, saying: ‘It has everything I’m looking for in a city. It’s in an English-speaking country, it’s easy-going and it’s straightforward for an expat to settle in.’ Since January 2020, he has been based in Kigali – a city that he describes simply as ‘very clean and green’.

Enablement and empowerment

As a leader, Rajani believes strongly in developing both himself and his team. ‘I’ve always had this desire to keep doing more, to keep growing,’ he says. Therefore, he invests in training and takes a very personalised approach to setting performance objectives, looking at how he can also help his team members to grow. ‘If you, as their manager, do not think of their growth, who will?’ he argues. ‘You have to enable them; you have to empower them.’

Thinking about the next steps on his career journey, Rajani would like to progress to become a CFO, whether that’s in hospitality or another industry. ‘That’s something I love about finance,’ he says. ‘You’re not tied to any industry. The nature of the costs and revenues change from industry to industry, but the accounting and finance is the same.’

While he forges ahead professionally, he also plans to keep indulging his personal passions: travel and supporting Arsenal Football Club in the English Premier League. ‘I follow my team very closely,’ he says. ‘I make sure I’m on top of all the games.’