Hire an Independent Finance Professional
For Your Business
A fractional CFO for a few days a month, an interim finance controller through a transition, or a qualified chartered accountant embedded in your team — senior judgement at the frequency you need it, with a firm behind the individual.
Overview
What Is a Fractional CFO?
There is an awkward stage in every growing company where the bookkeeper is no longer enough and a full-time finance head is not yet affordable. Decisions about pricing, borrowing, hiring and expansion are being taken without anyone senior to test them, and the promoter is spending evenings on work that should not reach their desk at all.
A fractional CFO is a senior finance professional engaged part-time on a continuing basis — typically two to six days a month — who carries the responsibilities of a chief financial officer without the cost or permanence of a full-time appointment. The work is judgement-led: budgets, cash strategy, banking relationships, board reporting, pricing decisions and transaction support.
This is different from outsourced accounting. An accounting team processes transactions and produces statements; an independent finance professional decides what those numbers mean and what the company should do about them. Most businesses need both, and confusing the two is why some companies have perfect books and no financial direction.
An interim engagement is different again — a full-time or near-full-time placement for a defined period, usually covering a resignation, a maternity leave, a system implementation or a transaction. The intensity is higher and the horizon is fixed.
N D Savla & Associates places independent finance professionals into that gap. You buy the seniority you need at the frequency you need it, backed by the wider firm rather than dependent on one individual. It forms part of our broader Virtual CFO practice.
Choosing a Model
Which Model Fits Your Business?
Three arrangements cover almost every situation, and the right one depends on how much senior judgement you need and how continuously you need it.
| Model | How It Works | Best Suited To |
|---|---|---|
| Full-time CFO | Permanent senior hire with fixed salary and equity expectation | Companies past roughly Rs. 100 crore turnover or preparing to list |
| Fractional CFO | Two to six days a month on a continuing monthly retainer | Growing SMEs and funded startups needing judgement, not headcount |
| Interim CFO or controller | Near full-time for a fixed period, typically three to twelve months | Covering a vacancy, a transaction or a system implementation |
| Embedded chartered accountant | Qualified professional working within your team on defined tasks | Businesses with capacity gaps rather than leadership gaps |
Note: a fractional CFO is not a substitute for a bookkeeper. If your ledger is behind, the first months of any senior engagement get consumed by clean-up, which is expensive use of expensive time. Fix the base first.
Who It Is For
Who Should Hire an Independent Finance Professional?
Four situations account for most of the engagements we set up.
Growing SMEs Without a Senior Finance Function
A company between roughly ten and a hundred crore of turnover typically has an accountant, sometimes an accounts manager, and no one who can build a budget, negotiate with a bank or interpret a margin decline. A fractional CFO fills that role at a fraction of the cost, usually alongside accounting and tax compliance support so the routine work is handled separately.
Funded Startups After a Raise
Once external capital arrives, so do investor reporting obligations, board meetings, runway management and a compliance load that did not exist before. Most founders at this stage cannot justify a full-time CFO salary against the burn, but equally cannot afford to handle investor relations and cash strategy themselves. Part-time senior support is usually the right answer for the eighteen months between a seed round and Series B.
Businesses Covering a Departure or Transition
When a finance head resigns, the gap is immediate and hiring a replacement takes three to six months. An interim finance controller keeps the close running, the compliance calendar met and the banking relationships intact while the search proceeds — and can help evaluate candidates. This is often combined with off-role staffing support where a longer bridge is needed.
Foreign Companies Setting Up in India
An overseas parent establishing an Indian subsidiary needs someone locally accountable for statutory compliance, transfer pricing documentation, payroll, banking and regulatory filings long before the entity justifies a permanent finance hire. An independent professional provides that presence and a line of accountability the parent can rely on.
Context
How Has Independent Professional Engagement Evolved in India?
The idea of hiring senior finance capability by the day rather than by the year is recent in India, and it grew out of three decades of change in how professional services are bought.
The practice-and-payroll divide
Under the licence-permit framework there were essentially two options — employ a full-time accounts department, or engage a chartered accountant in practice for audit and tax. The Chartered Accountants Act, 1949 established the profession under the Institute of Chartered Accountants of India, but the practice model was built around statutory attestation rather than management support. Advisory work sat inside large corporates, not in the market.
Competition creates demand for judgement
Liberalisation exposed Indian companies to competition and to foreign investors who expected a professional finance function. Mid-sized businesses that had never needed a treasury view or a costing analysis suddenly did, but could not attract or afford the senior talent that multinationals were hiring. The gap between what companies needed and what they could employ opened up in exactly the segment where fractional arrangements later took hold.
Outsourcing, compliance and the professional market
Global capability centres and the business process outsourcing wave demonstrated that finance work could be performed remotely and by an external team without loss of quality. Simultaneously the compliance load rose sharply: the Companies Act, 2013 brought internal financial controls and stricter board reporting, and the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code, 2016 made director-level financial accountability materially more serious. Both increased demand for professional judgement rather than processing capacity.
Presence is no longer a proxy for control
GST from July 2017, faceless assessments, digital ROC filings and cloud accounting have removed most of the reasons a finance professional had to be physically present daily. Work can be reviewed remotely and evidence retrieved instantly, so continuous physical presence is no longer a proxy for control. That shift is what makes fractional and interim engagement practical rather than merely cheaper.
Our Process
How Does the Engagement Work?
We structure independent professional engagements in eight steps. Setup usually takes two to three weeks; the arrangement then runs on a monthly cycle.
Requirement Discussion
Setup
Scope and Seniority Definition
Setup
Professional Matching
Setup
Time Commitment and Rhythm
Onboarding and Baseline Review
Month one
Regular Operating Cycle
Monthly cycle
Escalation and Firm Backing
Periodic Review and Transition Planning
Every six months
Most engagements sit alongside routine delivery — monthly reporting and MIS, payroll management and compliance — so the senior professional spends their time on judgement rather than on production work.
A part-time finance professional who is only contacted when something has gone wrong will not prevent anything. The arrangement works when they are in the monthly rhythm and see the numbers before decisions are taken, not after.
By Business Type
How Does the Role Differ by Business Type?
The engagement model is consistent. What changes is what the professional spends their days on.
Manufacturing and MSME Units
Here the emphasis falls on costing accuracy, working capital management and banking. Much of the value is in the bank relationship — renewals, enhancement of limits, negotiating terms — and in the discipline around MSME supplier payment terms under Section 15 of the MSMED Act, 2006, where delayed payment interest is disallowed as a deduction. Inventory control and scrap accounting typically need attention early.
Funded Startups and Technology Businesses
The focus is runway, burn discipline, investor reporting and board packs, with unit economics reviewed monthly rather than annually. Preparation for the next round runs continuously in the background, and the professional usually carries the relationship with existing investors. Where a transaction approaches, they coordinate the due diligence support rather than leaving the founders to manage it.
Trading, Distribution and Retail Businesses
Receivables and inventory dominate. The professional spends most of their time on collections discipline, credit policy, stock ageing and channel-level margin, because in these businesses cash is consumed by working capital rather than by losses. Marketplace settlement reconciliation is frequently the first thing that turns out to have never been done properly.
Professional Firms, Healthcare and Services
People-led organisations need attention on utilisation, realisation, partner or consultant compensation structures and billing discipline. In healthcare, receivables from insurers and TPAs are usually the largest balance sheet item and the least actively managed, so collection follow-up and ageing control deliver the fastest return on the engagement.
Why Us
Why Hire Through N D Savla & Associates?
These are the five reasons clients give for engaging through a firm rather than an individual consultant.
If your professional is unavailable, the work continues. A lone consultant creates a single point of failure in the one function that cannot pause.
Transfer pricing, valuation, NCLT matters, GST litigation and audit expertise sit within the same firm, so complex questions get answered rather than deferred.
Placements are matched on the industry and the specific problem, not simply on availability, because manufacturing costing and subscription revenue require genuinely different instincts.
A fixed monthly retainer against an agreed scope, reviewed every six months, so cost stays visible and the arrangement stays useful.
When your business outgrows a fractional arrangement we say so, help define the full-time role and hand over properly rather than extending an engagement past its usefulness.
Where the role carries statutory responsibility — board reporting, annual filings, director-level compliance — we work directly from the requirements and forms published by the Ministry of Corporate Affairs at mca.gov.in, so nothing depends on assumption.
Frequently Asked Questions
Frequently Asked Questions About Hiring an Independent Professional
What is a fractional CFO and how is it different from an accountant?
When should a startup hire a CFO?
How much does a fractional CFO cost in India?
Can an independent professional work with our existing accounts team?
What is the difference between a fractional CFO and an interim CFO?
Talk to Us About Hiring an Independent Professional
Tell us what is currently landing on your desk that should not be. We will tell you what level of professional the situation actually needs and how many days it would take.
Speak to N D Savla & Associates10:00 AM – 7:00 PM
