Early in his career, Hyder Ali retained as one of his chief financial assistants a Brahmin named Khande Rao. Hyder Ali, who was illiterate, was reported to be blessed with a prodigious memory and numerical acumen.
Hyder Ali could rival or outperform expert accountants with his great arithmetic skills and worked to develop a system, with Rao, that included checks and balances so sophisticated that all manner of income, including plunder of physical goods of all types, could be accounted for with little possibility for fraud or embezzlement.
This financial management may have played a role in Hyder Ali's rise in power.