Director — Fintech Strategic Finance and Cohort Capital Economics

The mandate

A fintech platform needs product investment decisions that distinguish genuine customer value from the temporary appearance of growth created by acquisition subsidies and favourable funding assumptions. Its strategic-finance director will connect cohort performance with cash requirements, operating capacity and the annual plan. The remit includes customer acquisition, repeat activity, service costs and approved risk-cost assumptions, with product heads accountable for the underlying commercial actions. The director must make clear which conclusions are observable, which depend on immature cohorts and which remain sensitive to assumptions supplied by risk or treasury.

The first eighteen months concentrate on a reconciled product-economics baseline, rolling capital runway and investment gates for three product families. Employment is open-ended, with continuing accountability for strategic planning and finance challenge as the portfolio changes. Acquisition spending will not be judged through blended lifetime-value claims alone: the team must compare seasoning, repeat behaviour, servicing demand and cash recovery across comparable cohorts. Forecast changes should show whether the effect comes from an actual customer pattern, a revised assumption or a different allocation of shared operating costs.

Twelve finance professionals report through this director, combining product partners with central planning analysts. The seat sets financial methods, approves finance assumptions within policy and recommends reallocations to the CFO-led investment forum. Product launches, risk appetite, funding arrangements and material capital commitments remain with their designated executive or board authorities. Risk teams own credit and fraud assumptions; treasury supplies approved funding curves. This division matters because a coherent forecast is not permission for finance to substitute its own underwriting views or disguise a disputed operating assumption as an agreed number.

Bengaluru is the working base, with hybrid attendance and planned Mumbai meetings. Quarterly investor materials must trace product performance to the approved plan and cash forecast without revealing customer-level information outside controlled channels. A successful director will build an analytical team that can defend the logic behind a recommendation, then revise it when evidence changes. The continuing job includes challenging optimistic product narratives, translating capital constraints into choices and ensuring management sees the consequences of slowing acquisition, adjusting service intensity or postponing a feature before those choices become emergency cash measures.

What you will own

• Establish cohort contribution models that reconcile to booked revenue and cash movement, separating acquisition subsidy, servicing costs and approved risk assumptions before product economics are used to justify further growth spending.
• Set the rolling runway process across product forecasts and central liquidity planning, identifying the decisions required when slower customer recovery or changed funding inputs threaten previously approved expansion capacity.
• Challenge product investment proposals with comparable cohort evidence and explicit uncertainty, recommending staged spending or narrower pilots when maturity, attribution or operating-cost assumptions cannot support a full commitment.
• Lead the twelve-person strategic-finance team through monthly performance reviews, building the ability to explain customer behaviour and forecast revisions rather than rewarding analysts for producing increasingly elaborate presentation packs.
• Recommend portfolio resource reallocations to the CFO investment forum, showing the financial effects of alternative acquisition, servicing and product priorities while preserving risk and treasury ownership of their specialist inputs.
• Prepare investor-facing financial narratives with reconciled evidence and controlled disclosure, distinguishing observed performance from forecast expectations so confidence in the business is not purchased through selective cohort presentation.

Candidate qualifications

• Demonstrate strategic finance or FP&A leadership in fintech, digital commerce or another transaction-led platform where customer acquisition, repeat usage and operating support materially affect cash economics. Walk through a cohort comparison that changed an investment decision, including the maturity differences you controlled and the costs you reconciled. Evidence of personally challenging an attractive but misleading growth metric is more valuable than an unexplained lifetime-value dashboard.
• Bring twelve to eighteen years in finance with a Chartered Accountancy foundation and substantial responsibility for operating plans, forecasts and senior stakeholder reporting. You must connect management analysis to accounting and cash records, recognise where product profitability relies on specialist risk inputs and build a defensible bridge when forecast assumptions move without the underlying commercial activity changing.
• Show leadership of product-finance partners and analytical teams, including an occasion when commercial leaders disagreed with your proposed capital allocation. Explain how you separated disputed facts from preferences, brought the decision to the proper forum and maintained a useful working relationship afterwards. The seat requires accountable recommendation and disciplined follow-through, not unilateral control over product or risk policy.
• Evidence board or investor reporting that remained understandable under adverse performance. You should have exposed sensitivity, corrected a prior assumption and protected customer information while retaining sufficient detail to explain the financial consequence. Experience with diligence or capital-readiness work is useful when it demonstrates consistency between the operating model, approved plan and external narrative rather than transaction participation alone.

Application

Applications for this mandate are received in one way only: through the India Board Terminal's application process. It is automated end to end. Your Executive Passport travels to the mandate holder in its confidential form, your answers to the three questions below are read before anything else in your file, and every stage that follows is recorded on your applications page.

There is no address to write to and no intermediary to call. The mandate holder reads what the Terminal delivers and nothing else, which is what keeps the process the same for every applicant and keeps your name out of it until you release it. Applications close on 11 October 2026. Mandate reference CVU-PER-2026-IND-036.