http://mycfo.in

MyCFO offers IPO Support,

Small time entrepreneurs

or grand scale businesses

to suit all

http://mycfo.in

Are you a first generation entrepreneur wanting to

professionalize the financial systems of your start up? Or a

family business wishing to scale up to the next level?

Perhaps you represent an overseas company making an

entry into India and looking for experts to navigate the

Indian statutory labyrinth. Don’t worry! My CFO is here.

The online outsourcing revolution, which has already

embraced buying, selling, learning, working and many

other aspects of our life, is now extended to business

visualization and implementation of financial, IT and

change management goals.

MyCFO was born out of the realization of Deepak and

Venkat, its co-founders, who were working in global

corporations, that there were many gaps in the financial

and IT structures in Indian companies which had initially

grown on the energy of their family /promoters. Difficulties

faced by such companies in finding mid-level and senior

http://mycfo.in

management teams appropriate to different points of their

evolution was an opportunity aptly tapped by providing

what essentially amounts to a Finance function on call

In just 3 years My CFO has become a team of 100

professionals with clients in 6 cities and the largest and

fastest growing CFO services brand .Here are some

excerpts from their wonderful journey.

What was the motivation for setting up MyCFO? Was

there any specific market gaps that you wanted to bridge?

We started our entrepreneurial journey in late 2006

when we set up WealthTree Advisors. The idea of setting

up WealthTree was to be able to assist overseas

companies looking at a smooth ‘India landing’. My Co –

Founder Venkat was the CFO of two large Fortune 250

American companies and he was the 2nd and the 1st

employee respectively in these companies in India. He

found the setting up process to be extremely complicated

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and cumbersome and the germ of WealthTree was born. I

joined him from Ernst & Young where I was working at that

point in time.

The India FDI story was strong, Mid – sized overseas

companies ($ 50 Million – $ 1 billion) needed support to

help them in the initial phase including market feasibility,

identifying and tie ups with local Indian partners,

appointing distributors, setting up sales channels and

managing their India sales teams etc.

We met a number of mid – sized Indian companies on

behalf of the overseas companies that we represented

particularly on tie ups or distributor appointments and we

realised that while Indian companies had grown over a

period of time largely on the energy of its

founders/promoters, there were significant gaps when it

came to them having built mid/senior management teams

and Finance and IT systems invariably never kept pace

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with the growth. This was the opportunity that we decided

to grab.

Please share some milestone achievements of MyCFO.

A couple of close friends who ran their own

companies were the ones who decided to ‘test’ us out. We

did not do any kind of active business development nor

were we at that point in time too conscious about creating

a ‘brand’. One of the first companies that we worked with

was India’s largest Flavours and Fragrances companies,

over 350 Crores in size and they wanted us to step in and

provide leadership to the Finance and Accounts

department which consisted of over 40 people across 5

locations. The next 3.5 years were exciting as we did what

a CFO could have wished for –Business Plans, MIS and

Budget development, implementation of an ERP system

for one of their businesses, helping them with an overseas

acquisition, involvement on due diligence twice to help

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them raise funds from PE funds (the second one being

one of the top 3 PE funds globally). While we were on this

project, others started noticing us and we were requested

to get involved. Till early 2011, almost all our mandates

were through existing client referrals as we did not go out

and aggressively push this. We wanted to build this brick

by brick, do some good work and for our clients / market

peak for the work we did. We did not have a website till

end of December 2011, we did not call the service

‘MyCFO’ till then and obviously were focused only on

building the credibility. We now felt we had enough talking

points, we slowly started branding and marketing the

MyCFO brand. From a base of 5-6 people in 2011, we are

now a team of over 100 people (full time, on our rolls) and

service clients in 6 cities in India. We are currently the

largest and the fastest growing CFO services brand.

http://mycfo.in

Please share some failures you faced during this

undertaking. What has been your biggest takeaways from

those experiences?

The single biggest takeaway was that we realised

very early on is to be able to ‘tailor make’ our services to

every client that we worked with. While the nuances of

Finance and Accounts does not change, what changes is

the approach and the ability to work with CEO’s/

Promoters across ownership structures whether this is a

Family owned or managed business, a Private Equity or

Venture capital backed business or the ones set up by

technocrats or Indian subsidiaries of Multinationals or

companies large or small where there is a project specific

role. The solution is not a ‘one size fits all’ approach;

ultimately the client has got to be comfortable.

http://mycfo.in

In a nutshell, what services do you offer?

MyCFO assists companies in performance

measurement, budgeting, MIS, cash flow management,

profitability improvement, business process improvement,

risk management, forex management, IT/ ERP

implementation, IPO support and general ownership of the

finance function. We work with companies in an

‘Interim/Ongoing CFO/Controller role’ (companies

outsource the CFO role to us) or in a project based role to

address specific pain areas (in cases where there is a

good quality CFO already in place).

How are the services provided by MyCFO more suitable

than those offered by other consultants or own employees

who are physically available to address an issue?

MyCFO is not an advisory service. We play a highly

hands on, operational, client driven, practical

implementation service. Tangible, time bound results are

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delivered through a strong project management system

and real time visibility to Promoters, Management and the

funds that we work with. Our team members come with

several years of practical, ‘hands on’, industry work

experience. We have institutionalized the CFO function.

With a pool of several people forming a part of this firm,

client companies are able to draw down on the collective

experience of the firm rather than an individual. An

average individual CFO may work across 3-4 companies

as CFO throughout his career with an average CFOing

experience of 20-25 years, while a firm has several man-

years as experience to draw down upon, having seen

varied situations, worked across different life cycles of a

company’s growth, with companies of various sizes and

with varied ownership structures. High growth companies

also require different CFO skill sets at different points in

time during their scaling up process. Companies invariably

hire CFO’s for the needs they may have at that point in

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time. It is getting increasingly tough for companies to

accurately predict the growth rates and the situations that

they will be in at some point in the near future. This also

presents them with an issue in that the CFO hired today

may or may not have the skill sets to manage the sudden

growth. There are several other reasons, however one

thing that I must emphasize is that we provide companies/

CEO’s and promoters an option which they didn’t have – it

is not either inhouse or outsource, we also work with

CFO’s of companies in off projects. Given the shortage of

good quality finance talent and what needs to get done

across companies, there is space for all.

Is MyCFO’s remuneration for its advice given to clients

contingent upon the success of the business plan or

profitability improvement suggested? If so, please

quantify. If not, please explain how the client can be sure

of MyCFO’s engagement with the problem?

http://mycfo.in

MyCFO’s revenue model allows for anything between

15-35% contingent upon the milestones or KPI which is

agreed within 3 weeks of the beginning of an engagement.

Currently there are very few service providers (almost non

– existent) who charge any % of their fee based on

success. Our model gives CEO’s/Promoters the

confidence that we have our ‘skin’ in the game. Moreover,

the model is implementation focused (we are not an

advisory company) – no fancy reports are issued; in most

cases where we get involved we get involved in

implementing the suggestions put down in these reports.

Most companies today need us to ‘roll up our sleeves’ and

fix issues rather than only advising them. The milestones

or KPI’s that we chart are pretty extensive and granular –

these are measured every quarter and our variable fee

payouts are dependent on the success of the

implementation of the KPI’s agreed upon. Remember, the

variable fee is not on top of the fixed fee that we charge –

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this is a part of an all inclusive fee which means in case

we do not meet the client expectations, the clients can

dock all/ portion of our fee which is our profit margins. We

like to keep it that way as it keeps us on our toes and it is

a great barometer to measure client satisfaction.

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