Financial Director

Soch Street; Chennai District; On-site; INR 3,000,000 - 4,800,000; Full time

Job summary

Soch Street is seeking an AI-first finance leader to redefine how the business plans, analyzes, and executes. You will own P&L, FP&A, cash flow, and working capital, while building a lean, automation-driven finance team. Your role will drive strategic decision support and ensure scalable, data-driven finance operations.

You will partner with the Founder and leadership to optimize margins, automate processes, and implement AI-enabled controls, reporting, and forecasting across the organization.

Qualifications

• Strong business finance and FP&A focus beyond controllership/accounting.
• Experience owning and discussing the P&L, not just preparing it.
• Ability to automate manual finance processes and drive measurable impact.

Responsibilities

• Own decision support: profitability analyses and strategic recommendations.
• Manage cash flow forecasting, working capital, and multi-currency exposures.
• Lead FP&A: annual planning, forecasting, and variance explanations.

Skills

Costing

Contribution margins

Fixed vs variable costs

Cash flow

Automation

AI tools

Lean finance

Challenge founder

P&L ownership

Forecasting

Education

Chartered Accountant

Tools

ERP systems

Data analytics

AI tools

Job description

• Decide where the company should invest money for the best returns.
• Understand which markets/businesses are profitable and which are not.
• Improve margins across the business.
• Build processes to prevent margin leakage.
• Create the overall finance strategy and build a strong finance team.

2. Decision Support

• Work closely with the Founder and business leaders.
• Help them make decisions on:
• Inventory purchases
• Discounting
• Brand spending
• Build financial models that guide these decisions.
• Identify where the company is losing money.
• Examples: cancellations, no-shows, supplier penalties, refunds, excess discounting, forex losses and uncollected commissions.
• Improve unit economics and reduce financial losses.

4. Cash, Treasury & Working Capital

• Own the 13-week cash flow forecast.
• Manage working capital, supplier payments and customer advances.
• Handle multi-currency exposure and hedging.
• Improve corporate collections and reduce receivable days.

5. FP&A

• Own annual planning and financial forecasts.
• Track actual performance vs plan.
• Explain why numbers are changing.
• Improve forecast accuracy.

6. Controllership & Compliance

• Ensure smooth monthly closing.
• Manage reconciliations across high transaction volumes.
• Oversee GST, TCS, TDS, audits and statutory compliance.

7. Build an Efficient Finance Team

• Lead the existing finance team.
• Restructure and improve the team as the business grows.
• The expectation is to increase efficiency and not keep increasing finance headcount with business growth.

How we want it done

The company wants an AI-first and automation-first finance leader.

The expectation is:

• Remove manual work instead of hiring more people.
• Automate payment matching, invoice matching, refunds, reminders, invoicing and bank reconciliations.
• Use AI/agents for complex work such as:
• Commission recovery
• Collections
• Detecting financial leakage

The ideal mindset:

If you see a manual finance process, your first instinct should be to automate it.

Who we’re Looking For

• Chartered Accountant with 9–15 years of experience
• Stronger in Business Finance and FP&A than pure controllership/accounting.
• Should have experience owning and discussing the P&L, not just preparing it.

Strong knowledge of:

• Costing
• Contribution margins
• Fixed vs variable costs
• Cash flow
• Personally experienced in managing tight cash situations.
• Has automated finance processes and can show measurable impact.
• Comfortable using modern data tools and AI.
• Has experience scaling a business while keeping the finance team lean.
• Can work with a fast-moving Founder
• Should be comfortable challenging the Founder with numbers and difficult insights.