If you’d told Lakshmi Prasanna Peddi a couple of years ago that her next role after Grant Thornton would be at Deloitte, she might have raised an eyebrow. That wasn’t the plan. It became the plan when she started seeing what financial modeling skills could actually unlock.
A qualified CA with three years of professional services experience, she enrolled in QuintEdge’s Financial Modeling course looking to sharpen a specific skill set. What she didn’t expect was how much that skill set would expand the definition of where a finance professional could go. This is her story.
The Interview
Q: Lakshmi, walk us through where you were before the Financial Modeling course — CA, three years at Grant Thornton. What was prompting you to think about what came next?
Three years in professional services teaches you a lot — audit, assurance, client management, working across industries. Grant Thornton was a genuinely strong foundation, and I’m grateful for every bit of it.
But at some point I started asking myself a harder question: what do I want the next five years to look like? I’d built strong technical accounting skills, but I was conscious that the landscape was shifting. The roles that were becoming most interesting — in strategy, in transformation, in advisory — were increasingly demanding people who could model, analyse, and communicate financial scenarios with precision and speed.
I knew I needed to add a layer to what I already had. Financial modeling felt like exactly the right layer.
Q: As a CA, you already had a strong quantitative foundation. What did you feel financial modeling would add that your existing skills didn’t cover?
CA gives you deep technical knowledge — accounting standards, taxation, audit methodology. What it doesn’t systematically train you in is the applied, dynamic side of financial analysis. Building integrated three-statement models, running scenario and sensitivity analyses, constructing valuations — these are skills that sit adjacent to CA training but aren’t really at the centre of it.
In professional services, I’d seen how consultants and advisors who could build and interpret financial models had a very different kind of influence in client conversations. They weren’t just presenting numbers — they were building tools that drove decisions. That’s the capability I wanted to develop.
I also knew that if I ever wanted to move beyond core audit and assurance roles, modeling fluency would be a differentiator that opened doors a CA qualification alone might not.
Q: How did you find QuintEdge, and why did you choose them for the Financial Modeling course?
I researched several options — there’s no shortage of financial modeling courses available online. What distinguished QuintEdge was the practitioner-grade depth of the curriculum and the quality of faculty. This wasn’t a course that would teach me to build a basic DCF in Excel and call it a day.
The course covered integrated financial modeling, valuation methodologies, scenario analysis, and investment banking applications — all with the kind of rigour that would actually hold up in a professional setting. For someone coming from a CA background, anything less would have felt like a step sideways rather than forward.
I also valued that QuintEdge had a placement support framework. At this stage of my career, I wasn’t just looking to learn — I was looking to move. That combination of serious training and career support was what made the decision straightforward.
Q: What was the learning experience actually like — coming in as a CA with three years of professional experience?
Challenging in the best way. Coming in with a CA background, I expected to find the conceptual side comfortable — and largely I did. What genuinely stretched me was the modeling execution: the discipline of building clean, auditable, fully-integrated models in Excel from scratch, where every assumption is explicit and every output is traceable.
The faculty at QuintEdge pushed a standard of model architecture and financial logic that went well beyond what most people mean when they say they “know Excel.” Circular references, dynamic scenario toggles, sensitivity tables, waterfall charts — these aren’t just technical skills, they’re a way of thinking about financial problems that I hadn’t fully developed before.
There were sessions where I genuinely had to rebuild my approach from the ground up. That discomfort was productive — it’s where the real learning happened.
Q: How did QuintEdge’s training and interview preparation factor into cracking Deloitte?
Two things made the real difference beyond the core course. First, the depth of the financial modeling training itself — by the time I was done, I could build, defend, and present models with the kind of confidence that shows up immediately in interviews. You can’t fake that fluency. Interviewers at this level can tell the difference between someone who’s read about modeling and someone who’s actually done it.
Second, QuintEdge’s 2-day interview cracking bootcamp was genuinely eye-opening. It gave me a structured framework for how to approach finance interviews — how to walk through a model under pressure, how to handle case-style questions, how to articulate your thinking clearly when the interviewer is probing. That kind of preparation is what separates candidates who know the material from candidates who can perform under scrutiny.
Going into the Deloitte interview process, I felt prepared in a way I hadn’t felt before earlier interviews. That clarity and confidence came directly from QuintEdge’s training.
Q: What was it like receiving the Deloitte offer — given that it wasn’t the path you’d originally imagined?
Honestly, it was one of those moments where you look back at the sequence of decisions and see how each one set up the next. The CA qualification, the years at Grant Thornton building real-world experience, the deliberate choice to invest in financial modeling — none of it was wasted. It all compounded.
When the Deloitte offer came through, the role felt genuinely exciting in a way that a straightforward next step in audit wouldn’t have. It was proof that the pivot was real — not just something I’d been telling myself was possible.
Nobody around me had seen it coming. Truthfully, six months earlier, neither had I.
Q: What’s your message for a CA or finance professional who’s feeling capable but slightly stuck — good at what they do, but unsure of how to move into something bigger?
The skills you’ve built as a CA are far more portable than you probably think. The problem isn’t the foundation — the foundation is excellent. What’s often missing is the applied layer that makes that foundation visible in new contexts.
Financial modeling is one of the most powerful things you can add. Not because it leads to one specific job title, but because it changes how you approach problems, how you communicate analysis, and how you’re perceived in rooms where decisions are being made.
The market is full of technically strong finance professionals. It’s far less crowded with technically strong finance professionals who can also model, advise, and drive strategic conversations. That’s the gap worth closing.
Invest in the skill. Be intentional about how you position it. And don’t assume the only roles worth having are the ones that look like a straight line from where you are now.
Inspired by Lakshmi’s story?
If you’re a finance professional looking to add financial modeling to your skill set — and open doors you didn’t know were available — QuintEdge’s Financial Modeling & Investment Banking course is built for exactly that. Talk to our counsellors today.
🌐 www.quintedge.com
