Group Chief Financial Officer — Fleet-Operations Network

The mandate

The finance agenda here begins on the road, not in the ledger. This national fleet operator manages leased and owned vehicles for enterprise shuttles, airport mobility and contracted last-mile routes. Driver-partners receive earnings through several legacy systems, while rentals, fuel deductions, incentives and penalties are calculated on different clocks. Reconciliation failures have become a trust problem: drivers cannot always reproduce a settlement, operations teams raise manual adjustments, and finance closes the same underlying activity differently across depots.

The Group Chief Financial Officer must make the economics legible to the people who earn, operate and fund the network. The scope includes approximately ₹4,650 crore of bookings and fleet exposure, 625 employees and a dispersed base of operating partners. The company has adequate demand and useful multi-year contracts, but vehicle utilisation, residual-value assumptions and depot overheads have not been governed as one economic system. A proposed refinancing creates a natural deadline for credible asset, cash and covenant data.

The appointee will oversee controllership, treasury, tax, commercial finance, procurement governance and partner settlements. They will chair the capital committee, sponsor the settlement redesign and work with operations on fleet yield. Technology owns the applications; the CFO owns the integrity of monetary rules and their reconciliation. The board is not asking for a cosmetic reporting upgrade. It expects inconvenient facts about uneconomic contracts, impaired vehicles and incentive liabilities to be surfaced and acted upon.

Why this seat is open

The current CFO will retire after the next audited close and has agreed to provide a full succession runway. This planned replacement permits a disciplined handover of lender relationships, accounting judgements and the fleet funding model. The board nevertheless wants the successor appointed before refinancing terms are finalised, so the new executive is accountable for assumptions they will later have to deliver. External search is confidential to protect the incumbent and avoid distracting the funding process.

What you will own

• Produce one trip-to-cash model connecting customer invoices, driver settlements, vehicle costs and depot activity; unexplained reconciling items must have owners and ageing limits.
• Redesign partner statements so a driver can understand gross earnings, every deduction, tax treatment and payment timing without calling support.
• Establish vehicle-level return disciplines covering acquisition, lease-versus-buy choices, utilisation, maintenance, accident downtime and disposal proceeds.
• Lead the refinancing case, including downside liquidity, covenant headroom, security pools and lender diligence. Gross bookings cannot serve as a proxy for repayment capacity.
• Re-price or renegotiate enterprise contracts whose indexation, service credits or route density make them structurally dilutive.
• Improve close quality across depots, introduce independent review of high-risk manual journals and deliver audit evidence without a year-end reconstruction exercise.
• Build a finance team that can challenge operations constructively, distinguishing central FP&A work from regional commercial-finance decisions.
• Advise the board on capital allocation between fleet ownership, leasing, technology and geographic expansion.

The first 12 months

In the opening 90 days, reconcile a representative month from completed route to bank payment across three depots, quantify the settlement liability, review the 25 largest contracts and retest residual values on the principal vehicle classes. Meet drivers in person before approving a statement redesign. The audit and risk committee should receive a signed baseline of cash, covenant and control exposures, including disagreements with management's current view.

Months four to eight should deliver a pilot settlement engine and plain-language statement, an asset committee with disposal triggers, and revised approval thresholds for incentives and manual credits. Conclude the refinancing only after modelling a 15% demand shock and two adverse fuel-price cases. Each loss-making contract should have a dated remedy, tender exit or board-approved strategic rationale.

At year end, partner-payment queries should be 50% lower, 95% of uncontested earnings should settle on the promised date and aged reconciliation items should fall by 70%. Fleet utilisation should improve by at least five percentage points in the selected classes; close should be completed within six working days; and 12-month liquidity headroom should remain above the agreed covenant buffer under the board downside.

What the board will measure

• Trust in settlements, evidenced by accuracy sampling, query volumes and payment timeliness rather than a communications survey alone.
• Cash forecasting within a 7% monthly variance across two quarters, with vehicle purchases and partner liabilities fully represented.
• Completion of refinancing on terms compatible with the downside plan and without late lender surprises.
• Contract and vehicle returns based on consistent allocation rules, followed by visible repricing, redeployment or exit decisions.
• A clean audit outcome with no repeated high-risk control finding in partner payments, revenue or fixed assets.
• Finance bench strength, including credible successors for controllership, treasury and commercial finance.

The person

You are a Group CFO, listed-company CFO or divisional finance leader who has run an asset-intensive, transaction-heavy operation. Mobility experience is useful, but leaders from logistics, aviation services, equipment rental or distributed infrastructure may be equally relevant. You have signed accounts, negotiated material debt and personally resolved a control failure that affected suppliers or contractors.

The expected career range is 22–28 years. Your record should include direct stewardship of at least ₹2,700 crore and leadership of 450 or more employees across finance and associated operations. You can move between Indian Accounting Standards, cash mechanics and depot behaviour without losing the thread. The board will probe whether your forecasts changed decisions, whether you recognised bad news before auditors did, and how you treated counterparties when systems were wrong.

This is an onsite Gurugram role with travel to operating depots. It calls for a finance leader who is visible to partners and lenders, not one who delegates operational truth-finding to a transformation office.

Compensation and terms

The fixed range is ₹3.2–4.6 crore, supplemented by annual performance pay and long-term incentive. Measures will weight cash, control quality, partner-settlement outcomes and fleet returns. The role is permanent, onsite in Gurugram and reports to the Group Chief Executive and relevant board committee. The incumbent's orderly handover allows notice of up to six months to be considered.

Confidentiality

Identity, lender details, depot locations and transaction history will be shared with qualified candidates after a mutual confidentiality commitment. The published scale is rounded and deliberately omits combinations that could reveal the operator. Candidates must not contact likely counterparties or use the brief to test market rumours.