Fractional CFO
Phonon | Vadodara
The Mandate
Phonon is looking to engage a Fractional CFO to work closely with the Founder & Managing Director and provide senior leadership and oversight to the existing Finance & Accounts function across both our companies, PCPL and PDPL.
Founder & MD -> Fractional CFO -> Finance & Accounts Team
This is a hands-on fractional leadership role, with regular on-site presence at our Fatehgunj, Vadodara office.
The objective is to strengthen our internal finance capability, improve financial visibility, controls, compliance and strategic decision-making, and make the Finance & Accounts function progressively more efficient and self-sufficient.
Routine execution should continue through the internal team wherever reasonably possible.
Scope
1. Finance Leadership, Controls & Efficiency
- Review Finance & Accounts organisation, responsibilities, processes, systems and controls across both companies.
- Strengthen monthly closure, MIS, budgeting, forecasting, cash-flow planning and entity/group-level reporting.
- Develop customer, product and business-level costing, margins and profitability reporting.
- Improve invoicing, collections, reconciliations, controls and management dashboards.
- Identify duplication and manual effort and drive simplification, standardisation and automation.
- Improve departmental capability and productivity without proportionately increasing headcount.
2. Business Strategy & Commercial Finance
- Build 3-5 year business plans, financial models and growth scenarios.
- Analyse pricing, revenue models, cost structures, unit economics, margins, cash requirements and scalability.
- Evaluate new products, partnerships, investments and business opportunities.
- Support capital allocation and prioritisation decisions.
- Challenge assumptions and translate business ideas into evidence-backed financial and commercial plans.
- Support strategic and financial planning for 22North, Communicator and Phonon Venture Foundry.
3. Treasury, Capital Allocation & Fundraising
- Review treasury and cash management across PCPL and PDPL.
- Assess operating, contingency and growth-capital requirements.
- Identify surplus/deployable capital and review investments for returns, liquidity and risk.
- Determine capital requirements, funding structures, use of funds and valuation scenarios for new ventures.
- Prepare/review financial models, investor decks, investment memoranda and data rooms.
- Support investor identification, due diligence and fundraising.
4. Corporate & Promoter Capital Planning
A significant portion of profits generated by the businesses has historically been retained within PCPL and PDPL and deployed towards business requirements, investments and reserves.
The Fractional CFO should help develop a long-term framework covering business and growth capital, liquidity/reserves, deployment of surplus corporate funds, shareholder distributions, taxation and structural implications, diversification of promoter wealth and succession considerations.
Where specialist tax, legal, estate-planning or investment advice is genuinely required, the Fractional CFO should be able to provide or syndicate such a service.
5. Taxation, Regulatory & Compliance
- Review GST, TDS, income-tax and applicable DoT/telecom returns, filings and positions.
- Maintain oversight of statutory and regulatory compliance.
- Identify accounting, taxation or compliance exposures and recommend corrective action.
- Identify legitimate tax, GST, working-capital and financial efficiencies.
- Review inter-company transactions, balances and arrangements for appropriate documentation and treatment.
- Ensure both entities remain prepared for audits, assessments and regulatory reviews.
6. Regulatory Notices & First Response
The Fractional CFO will act as the first senior responder to notices and queries from GST, Income Tax, DoT/telecom and other financial/regulatory authorities - assessing exposure, determining response strategy, guiding documentation, drafting/reviewing submissions and ensuring follow-up through closure.
Our preference is to handle matters internally wherever reasonably possible. External specialists should be engaged only where specialist opinion, statutory certification or tribunal/court representation is genuinely required.
7. Contracts & Commercial Governance
- Review and strengthen standard customer, vendor, partner, NDA and other commercial templates.
- Review material contracts and deviations from approved templates.
- Review key commercial provisions including pricing, taxation, payment terms, liability, indemnity, penalties, SLAs and termination.
- Act as the first commercial/financial review layer before matters are referred to external legal counsel.
Initial 60-90 Day Outcomes
We expect the initial review to provide:
- Entity-wise and consolidated assessment of PCPL and PDPL.
- Review of Finance & Accounts organisation, processes, systems and controls.
- Review of taxation, DoT, key compliances, contracts and inter-company arrangements.
- Assessment of MIS, budgeting, cash flow, costing, profitability, treasury and investments.
- Identification of automation, productivity, taxation, working-capital and capital-allocation opportunities.
- Assessment of investor/due-diligence readiness.
- A prioritised Finance Transformation, Capital Allocation & Risk Roadmap.
What We Value
We are looking for a CA firm or senior finance professional combining strong financial judgement with hands-on execution and commercial understanding.
We value ownership, responsiveness, practical problem-solving and the ability to simplify rather than complicate. The Fractional CFO should be comfortable challenging assumptions, driving automation and efficiencies, and building capability within our existing team.
The engagement should feel like an extension of our leadership team, not another external advisory layer.
Engagement Philosophy
Our objective is to build internal capability rather than increase dependence on external professionals.
The monthly retainer should cover the advisory, review, strategy, finance-transformation and first-response responsibilities above, including routine regulatory correspondence/notices and contract/template reviews.
Additional fees should arise only for exceptional matters requiring specialist external counsel, statutory certification outside the agreed scope, tribunal/court representation or other specialist services that cannot reasonably be handled internally. Any such engagement should require prior approval from Phonon.
How to Apply / Express Interest
Interested CA firms or senior finance professionals may write in confidence to md@phonon.io with the subject "Fractional CFO - Phonon".
Please share:
- Brief firm/profile credentials and relevant experience.
- Profile of the senior professional who will personally lead the engagement.
- Proposed on-site presence at our Fatehgunj, Vadodara office.
- Relevant technology, telecom or growth-business experience.
- Budgetary estimate for the monthly retainer.
- Services, if any, proposed outside the retainer and the basis for additional professional fees.
I would use this as the LinkedIn version. The line "profile of the senior professional who will personally lead the engagement" is important for a CA firm - otherwise you risk being sold the partner and serviced by junior associates.
