Chief Financial Officer — Toy Commerce Inventory and Runway

The mandate

A toy-commerce venture is establishing its first full CFO seat as seasonal range commitments and paid customer acquisition begin competing for the same cash. The business operates through one Indian entity with national direct and marketplace channels. Sales growth is encouraging, but the board cannot yet see whether new ranges repay their inventory and launch expenditure before the next buying cycle. This open-ended appointment begins with an eighteen-month agenda to build reliable growth economics and capital discipline, followed by continuing responsibility for the venture's finance organisation.

You will connect SKU purchasing commitments, demand scenarios and fulfilment outcomes rather than forecast cash from revenue alone. Some toy ranges sell strongly during a narrow gifting window; others require patient replenishment but can support repeat purchases. Supplier minimums, defects, returns and marketplace deductions change the funding requirement. The finance office must distinguish inventory that can be redeployed across channels from stock whose value depends on a missed seasonal opportunity. Quality owners determine saleability and product obligations; finance uses those approved facts when recommending provisions or further buying.

Nine colleagues cover finance, inventory control and planning. You own the cash forecast, reporting standards and financial concurrence for range and acquisition-spend proposals. The chief executive retains assortment and commercial strategy. Within approved limits, the CFO may prioritise payments and stop commitments unsupported by the cash plan; borrowing, equity issuance and material strategic concessions require board approval. External accounting and tax specialists retain their professional roles. Fundraising materials must reconcile to operating records and distinguish an intended capital raise from financing already available to meet committed obligations.

After the first season, directors should see range contribution after acquisition, fulfilment and returns, alongside cash recovered from the inventory bought to earn it. The next cycle should use that evidence to stage purchases and fund growth without relying on a single optimistic sell-through assumption. Bengaluru is the working base, with planned warehouse and supplier exposure. The enduring CFO seat includes building a dependable controller and an investor-reporting rhythm. Success is a venture that can finance its chosen growth and explain the risks, not one that only looks viable while the next fundraising round remains on schedule.

What you will own

• Establish range-level cash contribution using purchasing, acquisition spend and realised fulfilment evidence, showing which products recover their committed funding before the next seasonal or replenishment decision.
• Decide financial concurrence for new range commitments through staged demand scenarios and supplier minimums, requiring an explicit downside stock response before an attractive launch case becomes an irreversible purchase.
• Build the venture runway model from contracted obligations, inventory recovery and financing status, separating accessible funds from an intended raise that remains subject to investor decisions.
• Set marketplace and direct-channel margin bridges that retain deductions, returns and promotional costs, preventing apparently profitable revenue growth from concealing delayed cash or unsupported receivable recovery.
• Recommend inventory provisions and purchase changes using quality-approved saleability and realistic channel alternatives, distinguishing recoverable slow stock from products whose commercial window or acceptable condition has passed.
• Prepare board and investor capital papers with reconciled operating measures, downside choices and clear reserved decisions, preserving consistency between the internal cash plan and externally shared growth assumptions.
• Develop the finance and inventory-control bench through weekly commitment reviews, delegating routine evidence decisions while retaining senior judgement over material funding, valuation and launch uncertainty.

Candidate qualifications

• Describe a consumer or D2C inventory decision whose cash requirement was understated by the revenue forecast. Explain the purchasing, channel and recovery evidence you used and the commitment you changed. The required proof is personally accountable venture-finance judgement, including an alternative you made actionable, rather than only a model that identified the funding gap after the inventory had already been ordered.
• Bring 12–18 years in finance with substantial head-of-finance, fractional CFO or comparable responsibility in a growing consumer or technology-enabled business. Strong accounting and analytical grounding through ACCA, recognised finance education or equivalent applied expertise is expected. Demonstrate financial reporting that reconciled operating records to board decisions, with effective coordination of accounting, tax and audit specialists as the venture's complexity increased.
• Demonstrate fundraising and board communication grounded in operating facts. Explain how you separated recurring customer value from launch performance, tested a delayed financing scenario and avoided treating uncommitted investor interest as cash. Experience should include constructive challenge of founders and commercial leaders while preserving their strategic choices and making the financial consequences of those choices explicit before approval.
• Evidence leadership of a lean finance team through scaling, including the development of a controller or capable deputy. You should understand inventory, returns and channel-settlement complexity in enough depth to test the records directly. Planned supplier and warehouse engagement, secure investor-information handling and practical judgement about equity-plan communication are important to an enduring CFO institution that remains useful beyond one financing event.

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 15 October 2026. Mandate reference CVU-PER-2026-IND-144.