Fractional CFO
A CFO in the room, a few days a month.
Most companies between ₹200 and ₹1,000 crore need CFO-level judgement long before they can justify a CFO-level salary. That is the gap this fills.
Not a senior accountant
The distinction matters, because the two get confused constantly.
Your accountant tells you what happened. Accurate, necessary, and entirely about the past.
A CFO is paid for the other question: what happens next, and what to do about it. How much cash the business needs in March. Whether a customer is worth the credit terms. Whether to fund the new line with debt or wait a year. Whether the numbers you are about to put in front of a bank will survive being asked hard questions.
The work
What the role covers
Cash flow you can see coming
A 13-week rolling forecast, updated monthly. You find out about a squeeze in week three, not week twelve.
Working capital
Receivables, inventory and payables taken apart line by line, and the cash conversion cycle managed as a number somebody owns.
Budgets that mean something
Annual budget by business unit, rolling monthly forecast, and variance analysis that names causes rather than departments.
Reporting your board can use
One page the board actually reads — revenue, EBITDA, margins, cash, working capital, covenant headroom — with the detail behind it for anyone who wants it.
Which customers and products earn their keep
Profitability by product, customer, channel and business unit. Most companies find a quarter of revenue earns nothing, and one or two accounts subsidise the rest.
Raising capital
Financial model, information memorandum, data room, credit committee pack, and preparation for the questions lenders ask that founders do not expect.
Debt or equity, and how much
Debt capacity, DSCR headroom, dilution arithmetic, refinancing and covenant design. What the business can safely carry, and what it should not.
Modelling a decision before you make it
New plant, new market, an acquisition, a downside year — built as a model you can interrogate, not a spreadsheet that produces one answer.
Banks and lenders
Covenant monitoring, lender presentations and refinancing conversations. Relationships improve when the information is good, and terms follow.
Controls and governance
Delegation and approval frameworks, segregation of duties, a faster and cleaner close, and audit readiness that does not consume a quarter.
Shape of an engagement
How it runs
Engagements are retainer-based and structured for companies above ₹200 crore in turnover. The fee is set after the initial assessment, once scope and time commitment are clear.
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Weeks 1–4 — diagnostic
Read the numbers, meet the team, agree what matters most. You get a written view of the priorities and what fixing each one is worth.
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Weeks 5–12 — build
Cash-flow forecasting, the financial model, management reporting, and repair of whatever is broken underneath them.
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Month 4 onward — in the room
Monthly performance review, forecast update, and a senior finance voice in the decisions as they come up rather than after.
Fair questions
Things worth asking before you engage anyone
You are one person. What if you are unavailable?
Engagements are structured so that every model, forecast and document lives in your systems rather than in ours, and the finance team is trained on them as they are built. For work with a hard external deadline — a covenant certification, a lender submission — a named backup is agreed in the engagement letter before the work starts.
Are you working with our competitors?
Any conflict is disclosed before an engagement begins, and we decline work that creates one. A small practice can be genuinely selective about this in a way a large firm with sector teams cannot.
What happens when we hire a real CFO?
We help you find them and hand over. A fractional engagement that ends because the company has outgrown it has done its job.
Why does this cost more than the market?
Most fractional CFO providers in India serve companies below ₹25 crore, staffed by finance managers and first-time CFOs. This is a Group CFO of listed businesses turning over ₹3,000 crore, doing the work personally. They are different products for different companies.
Common questions
What is a fractional CFO?
A senior finance leader who works with your business part-time, carrying the responsibilities a full-time CFO would: forecasting, funding, capital allocation, board reporting and financial governance. The company gets CFO-level judgement without a CFO-level fixed cost, which suits businesses whose financial complexity has outgrown their finance team faster than their ability to justify the hire.
How is this different from our chartered accountant?
Your CA handles compliance, tax and audit, and looks backwards because that is what the work requires. A CFO is paid for the other question: what happens next, and what should we do about it. Most companies of this size need both, and they are not substitutes for one another.
Will you replace our finance team?
No. We work alongside them and generally make them better, because most of what is missing is method rather than effort. Where the team is genuinely short of a skill, we say so plainly and help you hire for it.
What happens when we are ready for a full-time CFO?
We help you recruit them and hand over. That is the intended end of a successful engagement, not a threat to it. Everything built during the engagement lives in your systems and your documentation, not in ours, precisely so that handover is straightforward.
How quickly would we see anything change?
Cash-flow visibility inside the first month, because a 13-week rolling forecast can be built from data you already hold. Working capital results usually land in months three to five. Anything structural, such as rebuilding management reporting or the close process, runs over a couple of quarters.
What does it cost?
Engagements are retainer-based and structured for companies above Rs 200 crore in turnover. The fee is set after the initial assessment, once the scope and time commitment are clear. For capital raising we usually structure a retainer alongside a success fee.
Talk it through
Thirty minutes, in confidence, about where your finance function is under strain and whether this is the right answer to it.