The 75th anniversary of India’s first cost and management accounting firm, R. Nanabhoy and Company was celebrated at the Willingdon Sports Club on February 20, 2025. Established in 1948 by Ruttonshaw Nanabhoy, on his return to India after qualifying in the United Kingdom, the firm is to date the country’s leading cost and management accounting firm, notes his son Limji in an email sent to Parsiana. Limji later helmed the firm.
Top: Limji Nanabhoy and sister Piroja Mehta; above: Ruttonshaw Nanabhoy
Born on June 1, 1917, Ruttonshaw was a posthumous child, a fact that caused him much trauma as he was deemed inauspicious by family and relatives. His mother, widowed young, with two children and no financial means, moved in with her brothers and their families. Though always grateful for this, Ruttonshaw said he and his mother were made to feel indebted to them. At an early age he was determined to take care of his family financially, notes the email.
At the age of 14, alongside his studies, Ruttonshaw worked for Fram Petit, doing odd jobs. He would proudly recount that he used to go to the Willingdon Sports Club and Royal Western Turf Club to pay Petit’s bills and was determined that one day he would become a member in his own right, which he did. Whenever he visited the Fasli Agiary, he and his family would bow before Petit’s portrait.
Ruttonshaw studied at Bharda School and St Xavier’s College, mathematics being his favorite subject. He was keen to qualify as a chartered accountant (CA), but in those days one had to pay to join a CA firm as an articled clerk, which he could not afford. During World War II he worked for the Royal Navy as a petty/accounts officer. His English boss, one Mr Harris, knowing his circumstances, invited him to the UK after the War ended in 1944, to qualify in a new profession called Cost Accountancy. He could work and study at the same time, which he did. On qualifying, he worked in the UK, Sweden and war-torn Europe. Once India became independent in 1947 he was determined to return and be part of the nation-building process. Cost accountancy being unknown in India when Ruttonshaw started, he is the acknowledged father of the profession in the country.
Cost accountancy came into prominence because of the rapid industrialization under India’s first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru. India had to provide its population with food, basic care and employment. There was an acute paucity of financial and forex resources. To ensure that resources were used to the optimum, cost accounting and cost control gained prominence.
Ruttonshaw was appointed to the Tariff Commission set up by Nehru to determine the cost of industrial products. Government would buy products on a cost-plus-reasonable profit margin for the producer to curtail monopolistic profits and conserve resources. Ruttonshaw was instrumental in founding the Institute of Cost and Management Accountants in India. He also served on parliamentary committees that drafted the Cost Accounting Records Rules for Indian Industry, the email concludes. S. V.