CFO — Confidential Search
Chief Financial Officer · Mumbai · Reports to the MD & CEO
The mandate
Our client is a large, listed Indian building materials company with a multi-decade brand, a national retail footprint, and manufacturing across Gujarat and Maharashtra. The business is scaling on several fronts at once — plant capacity, a franchise retail format, new product categories, and adjacent ventures — and the finance function needs to scale with it. This role exists to build institutional-grade financial rigor across a business that has historically run lean: consistent MIS across plants, retail, and franchise channels; tighter working capital discipline; and controls that hold up as the company adds complexity rather than buckling under it. The right person will not just report the numbers — they will own the systems that produce them, and be trusted by the board and the MD & CEO as the person who knows exactly where the business stands at any given moment.
What you will own
- Build and institutionalise a single source of financial truth — consolidated MIS spanning manufacturing plants, retail stores, the franchise network, and dealer channels, replacing fragmented or manual reporting.
- Drive working capital discipline across the business — receivables, inventory, and payables — with visibility down to the channel and franchisee level.
- Own statutory and board-level financial reporting for a listed entity: quarterly results, audit committee interface, SEBI compliance, and investor communication in partnership with the MD & CEO.
- Design and enforce financial controls that scale with the business as it adds plants, stores, and new ventures, without adding bureaucratic drag to day-to-day operations.
- Build out FP&A capability — budgeting, variance analysis, and forward-looking financial modelling — as a genuine planning tool for the leadership team, not a backward-looking report.
- Act as the financial partner on new-venture and expansion decisions — franchise unit economics, capital allocation across growth bets, and deal-level financial structuring where relevant.
- Build and lead a finance team capable of operating at this level, with clear ownership across accounting, FP&A, treasury, and compliance.
What you bring
Must have
- Minimum 15 years in finance leadership, including at least 5 years as CFO, deputy CFO, or head of finance for a business with revenue of comparable scale.
- Demonstrated experience building or overhauling MIS and financial controls across a multi-location or multi-channel business (plants, stores, franchise, or distribution).
- Hands-on working capital management experience — can point to a specific before/after on receivables or inventory days they personally drove.
- Experience with statutory reporting and board/audit committee interface; comfortable being the finance face of the business to external stakeholders.
- Chartered Accountant (or equivalent — CPA, CMA) with a strong technical accounting foundation.
Strongly preferred
- Experience in a business with physical, asset-heavy operations (manufacturing, retail, or franchise), rather than a purely services or digital P&L.
- Prior exposure to franchise or multi-entity financial structuring.
- Experience working directly with a founder-led or promoter-led leadership team.
What we look for beyond the CV
- Comfortable being hands-on — this is a build role, not a steady-state maintenance role, and the CFO will personally get into the detail of systems and processes, not only direct others to.
- Able to report to and work closely with a founder-style principal, translating financial rigor into decisions the business can act on quickly.
- Retains accountability while delegating execution — builds a team capable of running the mechanics while staying personally on top of the numbers that matter.
- Works fluently across a business with multiple, sometimes very different, P&Ls — manufacturing, retail, franchise, and newer ventures — without forcing one-size-fits-all reporting on all of them.
Reporting and structure
Reports to the MD & CEO. Leads the finance function end to end — accounting, FP&A, treasury, and compliance — with direct reports across these areas. Key internal interfaces: plant heads, retail and franchise operations leadership, brand and business-development teams, and the board/audit committee.
Compensation
- Commensurate with experience.
