Chief Financial Officer – eCommerce KPB Consultants

The Corporate Institute; Bengaluru; On-site; INR 4,000,000 - 9,000,000; Full time

Job summary

The Corporate Institute is seeking a hands-on CFO to build and lead a scalable financial function in a high-growth, rural doorstep commerce environment. You will partner with the Founder and CBO to fortify accounting, treasury, compliance, audits and diligence readiness, while actively engaging in investor relations and board governance.

You will drive capital allocation, ensure robust financial systems, and shape strategic finance and fundraising as the company scales across six stages.

Qualifications

• Deep experience across controllership, audit, compliance, treasury, investor relations, corporate finance, fundraising and business finance.
• Experience building finance systems and teams from the ground up.
• Ability to operate at Board level and ledger level with investors and auditors.

Responsibilities

• Own the complete financial architecture and act as a co-pilot to the Founder and CBO.
• Build and scale a reliable, audit-ready finance function including accounting hygiene, tax, cash management, treasury, working capital and controls.
• Lead investor governance, monthly MIS, reporting, and board material preparation with the Company Secretary.
• Act as equal custodian of topline, margins, cash efficiency and overall business performance.
• Drive fundraising across six stages, prepare narratives and data decks, and support term-sheet negotiations.
• Shape strategic finance, capital allocation and growth versus profitability discussions.

Skills

Controllership

Audit

Compliance

Treasury

Investor relations

Corporate finance

Fundraising

Business finance

Job description

About Us:

We are building a rural doorstep commerce platform for Bharat. Unlike typical e-commerce models where customers order on an app and the platform delivers, we take products physically to rural households every day through electric carts.

Role Purpose:

– The CFO will own our complete financial architecture and act as a high-intensity business co-pilot to the Founder and CBO. The role has a deliberately dichotomous expectation. On one hand, the incoming CFO must personally build and strengthen the companys operating financial spine. Our current finance team is junior, and the CFO cannot operate only at the level of strategy, delegation, or review.

– The person must be willing and able to go deep into books, controls, cash, treasury, compliance, audit and diligence readiness, and build the team and systems required for a scaled company. On the other hand, this is not a glorified controllership or reporting role.

– The CFO must also be a strong strategic-finance and corporate-finance leader who can act as the Founders right hand in running the business. The CFO must participate actively in business delivery, challenge decisions, drive capital allocation and help shape the future of the company.

What the CFO will own:

1. Build our operating financial spine:

The CFO will establish a reliable, scalable and audit-ready finance function covering accounting hygiene, statutory compliance, tax, cash management, treasury, working capital, audits, controls, financial closure and diligence readiness.

– This is table stakes for the role.

– The CFO must be comfortable getting into the details personally, identifying gaps in the current system, upgrading the team, building a strong controller layer and converting dependence on individual effort into repeatable financial processes.

2. Investor and Board governance:

– The CFO will own day-to-day governance with our existing equity and debt investors, with a clear expectation of zero avoidable escalations.

– This includes timely monthly MIS sharing, materially upgrading the quality of investor narratives, leading monthly investor reviews, explaining periods of underperformance credibly, providing forward-looking estimates and handling periodic and one-off investor requirements relating to compliances, consents, declarations, ESG and other governance matters.

– The CFO will also coordinate and participate actively in Board meetings, working closely with the Company Secretary to manage agendas, materials, approvals, minutes, action items and overall meeting execution.

3. Be an equal custodian of business performance:

– The CFO must not be a person who merely reports what happened after the fact. The person must be an active custodian of the companys topline, contribution margins, cash efficiency and overall business performance.

– The CBO will own business execution and P&L delivery, but the CFO must be equally invested in whether the company delivers its commitments. This includes proactively challenging plans, pressure-testing assumptions, ensuring business-finance rigour, conducting weekly or fortnightly performance check-ins with the CBO and actively surfacing risks before they become misses.

– In monthly business reviews, the CFO is not expected to sit on the Founders side of the table and question the CBO from a distance. The CFO must take shared ownership of the outcome and be accountable for whether the organisation had the right financial insight, operating visibility, forecasts and corrective actions in place.

4. New investor relationships and fundraising:

The CFO will own the fundraising engine alongside the Founder across six stages:

– Fundraising architecture: Lead the business plan and capital-needs assessment, including when capital should be raised, how much is required and the appropriate mix between debt and equity. The CFO should carry approximately 80% of this work.

– Pre-trigger investor engagement: Maintain an active investor funnel before a formal raise begins, identify relevant investors, initiate outreach, prepare the Founder for conversations and ensure we can enter the market from a position of readiness. The CFO should carry approximately 60% of this work.

– Narrative and materials: Work closely with the Founder to shape the fundraising story, understand what the market is likely to respond to and create differentiated decks, materials and data narratives for different investor types. The Founder will shape the core story; the CFO must carry the operational and analytical build.

– Pitching: The Founder will lead most investor pitches, while the CFO supports preparation, joins discussions where useful and carries financial and diligence depth.

– Pitch to term sheet: Lead pre-term-sheet diligence, data sharing, management of field visits, alignment between the story and underlying business reality, and support negotiations on valuation and terms. The CFO should carry approximately 70% of this work, with final negotiations escalating to the Founder where required.

– Term sheet to closure: Carry end-to-end, the execution load across full diligence, legal documentation, external advisers, lawyers, Company Secretary, investor coordination and closing mechanics. Only material commercial or governance decisions should elevate to the Founder.

5. Strategic finance and capital allocation:

The CFO must evolve into a true strategic co-pilot to the Founder. This means moving beyond finance reporting and actively helping shape decisions about how we deploy capital and creates enterprise value.

– The CFO will build capital-allocation frameworks and proactively bring forward discussions around growth versus profitability, organic growth versus geographic expansion, investment in new capabilities, debt versus equity, working-capital intensity, asset ownership models, payback periods and the sequencing of strategic bets.

– The expectation is not merely that the CFO responds when asked for an analysis. The person must independently identify financial implications, challenge assumptions, integrate operating truth with financial truth and elevate the quality of strategic debate across the company.

What success looks like in 6 – 12 months:

– Our finance function becomes materially stronger, more predictable and less founder-dependent. Books, audits, cash, treasury, compliance, investor governance and diligence readiness become reliable. Existing investors experience sharper communication and substantially better narrative quality.

– The fundraising engine remains warm and market-ready rather than being activated only when capital is urgently required. Most importantly, the CFO becomes an active participant in running the business.

– The CBO and CFO operate as complementary leaders: the CBO drives the business, while the CFO ensures that growth, economics, capital and execution remain aligned. The Founder should experience a meaningful reduction in the need to personally carry financial integration, investor coordination, capital planning and performance governance.

Ideal Candidate Profile:

– The ideal candidate will have deep experience across controllership, audit, compliance, treasury, investor relations, corporate finance, fundraising and business finance, preferably in a high-growth, operationally complex business.

– The candidate must have personally built finance systems and teams from the ground up, rather than only inheriting mature organisations.

– The person should be capable of operating at both Board level and ledger level, and should be equally comfortable discussing capital allocation with investors, reviewing business performance with the CBO, handling auditors and solving a broken operating process with a junior finance team.

– The role requires high analytical ability, commercial instinct, strong communication, investor credibility, low ego, high ownership and the confidence to challenge both the Founder and the CBO.

– The person must be able to work at speed, handle ambiguity and remain effective in an intense, high-accountability environment.

Non-negotiable traits:

– Builder before delegator: personally fixes foundations before building a larger team.

– Business owner, not scorekeeper: cares whether we deliver, not merely whether the numbers are reported correctly.

– Capital instinct: treats every rupee as scarce company capital and actively improves its allocation.

– High governance bar: creates trust with investors, the Board and external stakeholders.

– Strategic depth with operating humility: can think at enterprise level without becoming removed from execution.

– Founder and CBO integration: able to challenge directly, collaborate deeply and carry difficult conversations without politics.

– High intensity and ownership: does not wait for issues to escalation before acting.