Financial Controller

Key purpose of the role:

• End to end controllership of the finance and accounting function of the Biomass/Biofuel B2B Marketplace within the BFC group
• To ensure accuracy and timeliness of financial reporting for accurate, timely and faster decision-making within the finance function and overall organization
• Helping the senior leadership team in strategic decision making across all aspects of the business

What Key Tasks will be involved?

Revenue Recognition & Marketplace Accounting

• Principal vs. Agent determination — does the marketplace record full transaction value (GMV) as revenue with cost of goods, or only the net commission/margin as revenue (Ind AS 115 / ASC 606)? This decision affects the P&L materially and needs to be applied consistently across every buyer-seller contract structure
• Subscription revenue recognition — deferred revenue schedules, recognizing SaaS/access fees over the subscription period, handling upgrades/downgrades/cancellations and refund policies ·
• Transaction fee/commission revenue — accurate recognition tied to matching/delivery completion, not just order placement, to avoid revenue recognized before performance obligations are met
• Clear unbundling of revenue streams in the P&L -subscription revenue, transaction/commission revenue, and delivery/logistics revenue (if charged separately) — each with its own margin visibility

Platform Unit Economics & MIS ·

• GMV (Gross Merchandise Value) tracking by supplier category, buyer category, and region
• Take rate analysis — commission/subscription revenue as a % of GMV, tracked over time and by customer cohort
• Contribution margin per transaction — after payment gateway fees, delivery cost, and platform support cost
• Customer (both buyer and supplier side) unit economics — CAC vs. LTV for subscription customers, churn tracking
• Cohort-based MIS: repeat transaction rate, supplier/buyer retention, subscription renewal rates

Receivables, Payables & Intermediary Cash Flow Management

• Managing the payment flow structure — whether the marketplace collects from buyer and pays supplier (creating working capital exposure and float), or whether it merely facilitates direct payment and collects a fee separately
• Buyer-side credit risk management — credit limits, aging analysis, provisioning for doubtful receivables from buyers, especially if the marketplace guarantees payment to suppliers ahead of buyer collection
• Supplier payment cycle management — ensuring suppliers are paid per agreed SLA even if buyer payment is delayed, and building the working capital buffer for this
• Reconciliation between order value, payment gateway settlement, and supplier payout — a common leakage/error point in marketplace models

Regulatory & Tax Compliance Specific to Marketplace/E-commerce Operations

Onboarding, Fraud Risk & Financial Controls

• Financial due diligence inputs into supplier/buyer onboarding — bank account verification, GST registration checks, credit checks on buyers before extending payment terms
• Controls to prevent fake supplier/buyer accounts being used to inflate GMV or divert payouts·
• Monitoring for collusion risk (e.g., a "buyer" and "seller" account controlled by the same entity to generate fake transaction volume for subscription tier benefits or investor metrics)
• Dispute and refund handling — clear financial workflows for order cancellations, quality disputes, and delivery failures, and how these net against revenue

Delivery & Fulfillment Cost Accounting

• Tracking third-party logistics/transporter costs against each order and ensuring these are correctly allocated (cost of revenue vs. opex, depending on whether delivery is bundled into the platform fee or charged separately)
• Delivery SLA-linked penalty/refund accounting ·
• Working with operations to build a per-tonne/per-order delivered cost benchmark, since this determines whether the "last mile" service is margin-accretive or a loss leader for the platform

Budgeting, Forecasting & Investor/Board Reporting

• Building the marketplace-specific financial model — GMV growth assumptions, take rate evolution, subscription attach rate, and path to profitability (many marketplaces run at negative contribution margin early on to drive GMV; the controller needs to model this transition credibly)
• Board and investor MIS with SaaS/marketplace metrics: MRR/ARR from subscriptions, GMV growth, net revenue retention, CAC payback period
• Scenario planning — impact of take-rate changes, subscription pricing changes, or buyer/supplier concentration risk on the financials

Statutory Audit, Internal Audit & Governance (BIG 4 EXP MANDATORY)

• Ensuring auditors are comfortable with the principal-vs-agent revenue treatment (this is often an area of audit scrutiny and needs strong documentation/contract support)
• Internal audit of the payment reconciliation process between order value, gateway settlement, and payouts
• Related-party transaction monitoring if any suppliers/buyers are group entities

Systems & Technology Finance Interface

• Working closely with the tech/product team to ensure the platform's order and billing engine feeds clean, reconcilable data into the accounting system (a major practical challenge — marketplace transaction volume is usually too high for manual reconciliation)
• Automating subscription billing, dunning, and revenue recognition schedules through the right tools (e.g., a subscription billing engine integrated with the ERP)

Ideal Candidate Profile:

• 10 to 12 years of post-qualification experience (after completion of CA degree) is a MUST
• Exposure and handled audit processes carried out by big 6 firms (worked with a big 6 ALONG with corporate experience is an added advantage), but working in a company set up which has big 6 as auditors is a MUST
• Exposure to various ERPs and implementation of the same will be a HUGE PLUS AI certification, if any, makes him/her a PRIME CANDIDATE
• NO KPO/BPO/ITES EXPERENC
• MANDATORY PRIOR EXPERIENCE in handling controllership function of a B2B PORTAL/MARKETPLACE business AND/OR Prior experience in agri-commodity, bulk material, or cash-intensive procurement businesses — biomass, cotton, grain trading, sugar, dairy procurement, mining, or scrap/recycling, OR, capex heavy businesses such as infrastructure, manufacturing, logistics companies
• Exposure to multi-location/multi-yard or plant-level finance — has this person actually reconciled numbers coming from 10–15 decentralized collection points, or only worked with a single corporate office feeding clean data?
• Familiarity with seasonal business cycles and the working capital stress that comes with harvest-linked procure
• Ability to make presentations to leadership teams and if needed to board members as well