Financial Controller

Cotton & Clay Collective · Candidate-facing

Cotton & Clay Collective

Location: Chandigarh, India

Function: Finance, Control & Commercial Planning

Reporting to: Managing Director & CEO

Level: Leadership

Cotton & Clay Collective is building a digital-first fashion and lifestyle business for the Indian market. Our ambition is to create well-made, well-priced clothing that customers genuinely want to wear, supported by disciplined sourcing, strong product quality, a distinctive brand identity, technology-led operations and an exceptional digital customer experience.

We are building the business for scale from the outset. That means every leadership and specialist role is expected to operate across functions, use data intelligently, protect commercial economics and help create repeatable operating capability rather than simply execute a narrow job description.

The Finance Controller is responsible for building the financial control architecture behind Cotton & Clays growth. The role combines controllership, planning, cash and working-capital management, commercial finance, management reporting, statutory readiness and stewardship of the Money module. In a product business where inventory, marketing and cash timing can destroy otherwise attractive growth, Finance must be embedded in decisions rather than report history after the fact.

The mandate is clear: Give leadership a reliable financial truth, protect cash and control, challenge commercial assumptions, and ensure every material growth decision is understood through revenue, margin, working-capital and cash consequences.

• Establish accurate books, controls and close discipline.
• · Own chart of accounts, accounting policies, reconciliations, journals and month-end close.
• · Ensure revenue, inventory, landed cost, returns, marketing and operating expenses are recognised consistently.
• · Maintain supporting evidence for material balances and transactions.
• · Drive timely resolution of reconciling items and control exceptions.

• Maintain forward visibility of cash, not merely bank balances.
• · Build rolling cash forecasts covering inventory commitments, marketing, payroll, tax and operating expenditure.
• · Identify liquidity pressure early and propose corrective actions.
• · Govern payment controls, approval limits and banking access.
• · Optimise supplier-payment timing without damaging critical relationships.

• Treat inventory as both a commercial asset and financial exposure.
• · Track inventory investment, ageing, turns, markdown exposure and cash conversion.
• · Partner with Merchandising to challenge buy depth, reorder and clearance economics.
• · Reconcile financial inventory to operational stock records.
• · Model landed-cost and margin effects of freight, duties, FX and supplier terms.

• Translate strategy into a financially coherent plan.
• · Own annual budget, rolling forecast and scenario planning.
• · Maintain driver-based assumptions for demand, margin, marketing, returns, fulfilment and headcount.
• · Explain variance through business drivers rather than accounting labels.
• · Stress-test downside cases and funding requirements before commitments are made.

• Bring Finance into customer, product and channel decisions.
• · Evaluate category, SKU, channel, customer and campaign economics.
• · Partner with Growth on CAC, MER, contribution and payback thresholds.
• · Support pricing, promotion and markdown decisions with margin analysis.
• · Challenge revenue growth that does not create sufficient contribution or cash value.

• Provide decision-grade information to leadership.
• · Produce concise monthly packs covering P&L, balance sheet, cash, working capital and operating drivers.
• · Maintain consistent metric definitions across Finance and operating modules.
• · Highlight risks, opportunities and actions rather than numbers without interpretation.
• · Provide board and investor-ready financial information when required.

• Maintain statutory readiness as the business scales.
• · Coordinate GST, corporate tax, payroll tax and applicable filings with external advisors where necessary.
• · Maintain documentation and calendars for regulatory obligations.
• · Support audits, due diligence and banking requirements.
• · Escalate compliance risks early and track remediation.

• Strengthen discipline across third-party spend.
• · Review material contracts, purchase commitments and recurring vendor spend.
• · Maintain approval controls and budget ownership.
• · Identify duplicated, underused or poorly negotiated spend.
• · Partner with functions to improve commercial terms without compromising capability.

• Make the financial system the governed source of truth.
• · Own business rules, assumptions and finance workflows in the Money module.
• · Ensure changes to key assumptions are auditable and version-controlled.
• · Partner with Technology on finance integrations and automation.
• · Reduce spreadsheet dependency while preserving appropriate analytical flexibility.

• Build a finance function that can support growth without losing control.
• · Define future finance roles, outsource-versus-in-house decisions and segregation of duties.
• · Maintain maker-checker discipline for payments and sensitive changes.
• · Document critical processes and continuity coverage.
• · Build a culture where Finance is commercially constructive but independent in control matters.

The role will be assessed primarily on outcomes, operating quality and sustained business impact rather than activity.

Financial Reliability

• · Close timeliness and reconciliation quality
• · Forecast accuracy and variance explanation
• · Statutory filing timeliness
• · Control exceptions and remediation

Cash & Working Capital

• · Cash-runway visibility
• · Inventory turns and ageing
• · Cash conversion and supplier terms
• · Working-capital forecast accuracy

Commercial Value

• · Contribution-margin visibility
• · Budget productivity
• · Savings and term improvements
• · Quality of financial decision support

• · Finance leader who combines technical control with commercial understanding.
• · Comfortable challenging executives using evidence and economic logic.
• · Strong grasp of inventory accounting, working capital and consumer-commerce unit economics.
• · Able to design controls proportionate to a high-growth company.
• · Highly reliable with sensitive information and payment authority.
• · Strong modelling and scenario-analysis capability.
• · Clear communicator who makes finance understandable to non-finance leaders.
• · Bias toward systemised auditable processes.

• · Qualified CA, CMA, CPA or equivalent strong accounting and finance background.
• · Controller, FP&A or commercial-finance leadership in retail, D2C, consumer goods or inventory-led business.
• · Hands-on month-end close, cash forecasting and management reporting.
• · Strong understanding of GST and Indian tax/compliance environment or experience managing specialist advisors.
• · Inventory and landed-cost accounting.
• · Financial modelling and scenario planning.
• · Finance systems and controls implementation.
• · Exposure to banking, audit, fundraising or investor reporting is useful.

• · Independent — protects financial truth even when inconvenient.
• · Commercial — understands why the business makes or loses money.
• · Precise — reconciles details before conclusions.
• · Forward-looking — identifies cash consequences early.
• · Constructive — helps functions improve economics.
• · Discreet — protects sensitive financial information.
• · Systematic — creates repeatable control.
• · Accountable — owns closure of finance issues.

• Leadership has a daily and monthly view of cash, margin, inventory exposure and financial performance that can be trusted.
• Growth decisions are made with clear contribution and cash consequences rather than topline optimism.
• Month-end close, statutory obligations, payment controls and reconciliations operate predictably.
• The Money module becomes the authoritative financial operating layer, reducing manual reconciliation and assumption drift.
• Cotton & Clay Collective · Version