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Virtual CFO

Strategic finance leadership without a full-time CFO hire. Monthly MIS, cash flow management, fundraise prep, board reporting, and business-decision support, all from a dedicated chartered accountant who knows your numbers.

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The Engagement Rhythm.

Predictable engagement cadence. Monthly close and MIS, quarterly business review, annual planning and fundraise prep. Ad-hoc availability for major decisions in between.

Monthly
Close, MIS & cash flow
Monthly books closed by the 7th. P&L, balance sheet, cash flow statement, and a CFO commentary prepared. Runway, burn rate, AR/AP ageing, and KPI tracker updated. Delivered by the 10th.
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Monthly
CFO call & decisions
60-minute monthly call with the founder / management. Walk through MIS, discuss decisions on hiring, pricing, capex, vendor terms. Action items agreed and documented for next month.
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Quarterly
Business review
Quarterly deep dive. Variance vs budget, plan refresh for the next quarter, cohort and unit economics analysis, vendor and pricing review. Board pack and investor update prepared if applicable.
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Annually
Plan & fundraise prep
Annual budget and operating plan built bottom-up. Long-term forecast model. Fundraise-readiness review: data room, KPI deck, cap table, model walkthrough. Audit support handed off to the audit team.
↺ Same dedicated CFO across all cadences. Ad-hoc availability between cycles for fundraise calls, vendor negotiations, and decision support.

What Is a Virtual CFO?

A Virtual CFO (vCFO) is a senior finance professional who handles your CFO-level responsibilities on a part-time, fractional basis. Same scope as a full-time Chief Financial Officer, monthly MIS, cash flow management, budgeting and forecasting, fundraise preparation, board reporting, vendor and pricing decisions, strategic finance, but engaged for the bandwidth you actually need, typically 10-25 hours per month.

For Indian startups and SMEs in the ₹1 crore to ₹50 crore revenue range, a Virtual CFO sits between a senior accountant and a full-time CFO. The accountant handles transactions; the full-time CFO is ₹60-120 lakh per annum. The Virtual CFO handles everything between, at a fraction of the cost, with the seniority to engage with your board, investors, and lenders.

What a Virtual CFO actually does

Three buckets of work. Reporting and visibility: monthly MIS, cash flow management, KPI tracker, board pack preparation. Decision support: pricing reviews, vendor negotiations, hiring plans, capex evaluation, scenario modelling. Strategic and capital work: annual budgeting, fundraise prep, due diligence support, ESOP and equity structuring, banker and investor relationships. A Virtual CFO does not write code on Tally, file GST returns, or run payroll, those are bookkeeping and compliance roles, separate from CFO scope.

When to engage vs when to skip

Engage when your business has reached the point where finance decisions are recurring and consequential, typically ₹1 crore+ revenue, a team of 10+, monthly burn that matters, or an upcoming fundraise. Skip if you're pre-revenue with limited transactions, or if you have a competent in-house finance lead who just needs review support (a part-time advisor or our audit team is enough). The most common signal to engage: you're making major decisions on gut feel because your numbers aren't reliable or comprehensible.

What Gets Done Each Cycle.

Six deliverables across three cadences. Monthly reporting and decisions, quarterly review, annual planning. Same dedicated CFO across all.

MIS & financial reporting
Monthly
P&L, balance sheet, cash flow statement, and CFO commentary by the 10th of next month. Variance analysis vs budget. KPI tracker maintained: revenue, burn, runway, gross margin, CAC/LTV where applicable.
Cash flow & runway management
Monthly
13-week cash flow forecast updated weekly during tight runway. Accounts receivable ageing and collection priorities. Vendor payment scheduling. Banker conversations on working capital and overdraft facilities.
Budgeting & forecasting
Quarterly
Annual budget built bottom-up at the start of the year. Quarterly re-forecast based on actuals and pipeline. Department-wise breakdowns: revenue plan, hiring plan, marketing spend, capex schedule.
Board & investor reporting
Quarterly
Board pack with financial summary, KPI dashboard, variance commentary, and forward-looking metrics. Investor update drafted in their preferred format. Direct participation in board calls when needed.
Fundraise & DD support
As needed
Data room preparation, financial model building, KPI deck, cap table modelling, investor Q&A response. Coordination with audit team on due diligence requests. Negotiation support on term sheets and SHAs.
Strategic finance projects
As needed
Pricing strategy analysis. Unit economics deep dives. Vendor renegotiation. ESOP design and pool sizing. M&A evaluation. Capital structure decisions. Specific projects scoped and delivered between cadences.

When You Need Us to Handle This.

Engaging a Virtual CFO is a strategic decision, not a compliance one. Here's when it pays back and when it doesn't.

Engage if
  • You're raising or planning to raise funds in 3-6 months. Fundraise readiness needs a data room, financial model, KPI deck, and clean numbers, work that takes 60-90 days before the first investor call. Starting late costs valuation and timing.
  • You're making decisions on gut feel because your numbers aren't trustworthy. Pricing changes, hiring decisions, vendor commitments without clean unit economics: each one compounds into the wrong path. A vCFO replaces gut feel with month-by-month visibility.
  • You have a board / investors expecting regular updates. Drafting board packs and investor updates is a CFO-level skill, not a CEO's best use of time. Professional reporting also signals operating maturity to your existing and prospective investors.
  • Your runway is tight and you're making cash flow decisions weekly. 13-week rolling cash flow, collection prioritisation, vendor payment scheduling, working capital options, these are vCFO bread and butter. Founders running tight runway alone burn out.
  • You're scaling past ₹5 crore revenue without a finance leader. Around ₹5-50 crore revenue is the gap, too small for a ₹60-120 lakh full-time CFO, too big to run without senior finance. Virtual CFO is built for this gap.
Skip if
  • You're pre-revenue or sub-₹1 crore revenue. At this stage, transactions are few and decisions are mostly product/founder-driven. A vCFO is overkill, bookkeeping plus periodic advisor calls is usually enough.
  • You already have a full-time CFO or senior finance head. No additional vCFO needed in this case. We can still support specific projects (fundraise prep, M&A, audit support) but the recurring vCFO engagement is redundant.
  • You're past ₹100 crore revenue. At this scale, hire full-time. The board will expect it, regulators will scrutinise it, and the bandwidth requirement crosses what fractional engagement can deliver.
  • You just need clean books, not strategy. If the core gap is reconciliation and reporting hygiene, our Bookkeeping engagement solves it at a much lower cost. Add Virtual CFO only when strategic finance work is the bottleneck.

How We Work.

Six commitments. Same dedicated CA, every month, with response times you can plan around.

Dedicated CA on your account
Not a ticket queue. The same chartered accountant handles your filings every month. Personal accountability, not a hand-off chain.
WhatsApp & email access
Business-hours response. Urgent issues escalated within 2 hours. No more chasing emails into a void.
Monthly MIS by the 10th
Closed books, P&L, balance sheet, cash flow, KPI tracker, and CFO commentary delivered by the 10th of the next month. CFO call scheduled within 5 working days of MIS delivery.
Document upload via portal or Drive
Pick your tool. We adapt to your workflow, not the other way around. CSV, Tally exports, Excel, all supported.
Ad-hoc decisions answered within 24 hrs
Quick decision-support requests (vendor terms, hiring approval, pricing changes, cash flow approvals) answered within 24 hours. Larger analyses scoped and delivered in agreed timelines.
One CFO across all cadences
Same dedicated CA owns your account from monthly MIS to fundraise prep. No handoffs between cadences, no learning curve every quarter. Continuity is the engagement.

Cost of Not Having a CFO.

There are no statutory penalties for not having a CFO. The cost shows up elsewhere, in decisions, valuations, and time. Here's where.

Without a CFO, you risk
Typical cost
How it shows up
Fundraise delays
3-6 month slip
Late data room, weak model, diligence rework
Valuation haircuts
10-25% lower
Sloppy numbers signal operational immaturity
Cash flow surprises
Runway shock
Discovering 4-month runway when you thought 9
Pricing mistakes
Margin leak
Pricing changes without unit economics analysis
Over-hiring / wrong hiring
3-6 months' opex
Headcount decisions without budget linkage
Vendor and contract overpayment
5-15% of opex
No senior eye on vendor renewals and contracts
Founder time on finance
20-40 hrs/month
CEO doing CFO work, neglecting product / GTM
Board / investor friction
Trust drag
Late, inconsistent, or amateur reporting
Quantified costs are illustrative ranges across our client base. Engagement cost is typically a small fraction of any one of these line items realised even once.

Frequently Asked Questions.

Scope is identical: monthly MIS, cash flow management, budgeting, fundraise prep, board reporting, strategic finance. Bandwidth is the difference. A full-time CFO is 160-180 hours/month and costs ₹60-120 lakh per annum + ESOPs. A Virtual CFO is 10-25 hours/month, scoped to what your business actually needs at its current stage, with the option to scale up around fundraises or M&A. The seniority and quality of judgement is the same; we right-size the bandwidth.
Three signals: (1) revenue past ₹75-100 crore where the breadth of finance work crosses 25 hours/week; (2) operations across multiple countries or business units requiring on-ground presence; (3) scale of capital decisions (large M&A, IPO prep, complex debt structures) where the role needs full ownership beyond what fractional can deliver. We help with the transition, including helping you hire the right full-time CFO if you want.
Bookkeeping handles transactions: every invoice posted, every reconciliation done, monthly close, P&L and balance sheet produced. Virtual CFO sits one layer above: interpreting those numbers, making decisions based on them, managing cash flow forward, presenting them to stakeholders. Most Virtual CFO engagements require clean bookkeeping as a prerequisite, you can either use ours or bring your own.
Yes, this is one of the most common engagement triggers. Typical scope: data room preparation (24-36 months of clean books, KPI history, contracts, cap table); financial model (3-year operating model with scenarios); KPI deck (metrics that matter to investors in your category); investor Q&A response (diligence questions answered with consistency); term sheet negotiation support. We don't replace your founder-led storytelling, but we make sure the numbers behind it are bulletproof.
Pricing typically depends on revenue scale, bandwidth needed, and whether fundraise / M&A is in scope. Early-stage engagements (under ₹5 crore revenue) start lower; growth-stage businesses with quarterly board reporting and fundraise prep are higher. Reach out and we'll give a clear quote based on your situation. The benchmark is usually 10-20% of what a full-time CFO would cost you all-in.
A named Chartered Accountant with senior business experience (typically 10+ years post-qualification including industry / finance roles, not pure practice). Same person owns your account end-to-end across monthly MIS, board calls, fundraise sprints, and ad-hoc decisions. No rotation, no handoffs to junior staff. The continuity is most of the value.
Typical month: bookkeeping closes books by the 7th; the vCFO reviews close, drafts MIS and CFO commentary by the 10th; we have a 60-minute call by the 15th to walk through numbers and decisions; action items documented; ad-hoc availability between calls for time-sensitive decisions. Quarterly: deeper review with board pack. Annually: budget build, fundraise prep, audit handoff.
Yes, when it adds value. The vCFO joins as the finance presenter, walking the board through the pack, taking questions, and committing to follow-ups. For very early-stage boards, this signals operating maturity to investors. For later-stage boards, it gives the founder a co-presenter and reduces founder workload. Frequency is negotiated up-front, usually one board meeting per quarter.
Yes for India-domiciled businesses raising from international investors (most common). We handle USD-INR modelling, term sheet review against Indian regulations (FEMA, FDI), and capital structure decisions for SAFEs, convertibles, and equity rounds. For genuinely global operations with overseas subsidiaries, we coordinate with local advisors in those geographies but our scope stays anchored to India.
Yes, this is the core advantage over full-time. Most clients are on a steady-state engagement with quarterly review of scope. During fundraises, M&A, or audit-heavy periods, we scope up temporarily. During quieter operational stretches, we can scope down. We don't lock you into a multi-year contract; engagements are typically 6-month renewable terms.
We tell you. Some situations (regulatory crises, large fraud investigations, fast-scaling international operations) need full-time finance leadership. We say so up-front rather than stretch the engagement past what fractional can deliver well. Where appropriate, we help you find and hire the right full-time CFO, and stay engaged on specific projects (audit support, M&A) post-transition if helpful.
Yes, by default at engagement start. We hold MCA-registered firms' professional confidentiality obligations regardless of NDA, but most clients prefer a signed agreement. We can sign your standard form or use ours. Data handling, document sharing, and access controls are documented as part of the engagement.

You Might Also Need.

Bookkeeping Income Tax Returns GST Return Filing TDS Returns ROC Annual Filings ESI & PF

Talk to a Virtual CFO.

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