Flexing It is a freelance consulting marketplace that connects freelancers and independent consultants with organisations seeking independent talent.
Flexing It has partnered with Our Client, an Indian conglomerate, is seeking an interim CFO for one of their luxury retail businesses. The professional will lead the complete financial agenda of the business, driving governance, profitability, compliance, and strategic growth.
This role requires strong experience in managing finance for premium or luxury consumer brands, handling investor reporting, and building scalable systems in an entrepreneurial but rapidly formalizing environment.
Key Responsibilities:
1. Financial Strategy & Planning:
- Lead annual budgeting, rolling forecasts, and long-term financial planning.
- Establish financial governance aligned with the conglomerate’s reporting standards.
- Drive capital deployment, cashflow planning, and funding requirements for expansion (new ateliers, stores, international markets).
2. Business Finance & Commercial Excellence:
- Build rigorous cost controls, SKU-level profitability, sourcing efficiencies, and margin optimization.
- Partner with design, merchandising, and retail teams to drive pricing strategy, discount policies, and inventory control.
- Analyse sales performance across bridal, couture, diffusion lines, online channels, and exhibitions.
3. Financial Operations:
- Oversee accounting, payables, receivables, treasury, and monthly MIS closure.
- Implement robust internal controls, SOPs, and process automation (ERP, POS integration, production costing systems).
- Strengthen stock audits, vendor management, and supply chain finance.
4. Stakeholder Management:
- Manage consolidated reporting to the investing conglomerate: MIS, dashboards, compliance packs, variance analysis.
- Ensure transparency, discipline, and alignment with group finance policies.
5. Compliance, Risk & Governance:
- Ensure compliance with GST, TDS, company law, transfer pricing (if global sourcing), labour & retail laws.
- Oversee statutory audits, internal audits, and risk management.
- Strengthen financial governance for high-value celebrity/bridal custom orders.
6. Strategic Projects:
- Support scalability: new factory/atelier setup, retail footprint expansion, global foray (Middle East, UK/US bridal markets).
- Lead profitability improvement projects: cost rationalisation, outsourcing decisions, vendor consolidation.
- Build dashboards for design-to-delivery cycle time, production costing, and wastage control.
Skills Required
- Strong commercial acumen & good understanding of fashion/luxury business economics.
- Ability to operate in a founder-led creative environment while bringing structured governance. Hands-on with ERP, POS systems, and analytics tools.
- High integrity, confidentiality, and stakeholder management.
- Strategic thinking with ability to execute at detail-level.
Qualifications & Experience:
- CA / CPA / MBA Finance from a reputed institution.
- 10–15 years of experience; strong preference for consumer/retail/luxury/fashion/e-commerce backgrounds.
- Proven track record of managing finance for a brand or multi-unit retail business.
- Experience in investor-backed or PE/strategic-invested businesses is an advantage.
