Keswani Traders
Website:
pratapplastics.com
Job details:
About us
Homeline Products manufactures back-to-school and houseware articles under the Pratap brand — pencil and compass boxes, lunch boxes, kids’ water bottles, storage containers and stainless steel. We have manufactured from our own certified facility at Daman since 1999, hold Mattel character licences for Barbie and Hot Wheels, and are ISO 9001:2015, SEDEX and BIS certified.
We supply seven national modern trade chains led by D-Mart, Vishal Mega Mart and Reliance Retail, sell through distributors, quick commerce platforms and government tender, and export to retailers in over 23 countries. We are a partnership firm turning over approximately ₹45 crore, with a five-year plan to grow that substantially.
Why this role exists
We manufacture several hundred SKUs across injection moulding, assembly and packing, sell them through five different channels at five different margin structures, and invest in new moulds every year. Today we do not have a standard costing methodology, a documented product cost build-up, or a consistent view of profitability by product, channel and customer.
That is what this role is for. You will build the costing framework from the ground up, then use it to inform pricing, new product decisions, mould investment and the monthly commercial review. This is a greenfield build, not the maintenance of someone else’s spreadsheet.
It is deliberately designed for someone who has built costing models and now wants to move beyond producing numbers into influencing decisions. If you want to spend the next three years in cost audit compliance, this is not the role. If you want to be in the room when we decide what to make, what to charge and where to invest, it is.
What you will own
Standard costing
• Design, document and implement a standard costing methodology across all live SKUs — material, machine hour rate, conversion, labour, packing and overhead absorption
• Establish and maintain the machine hour rate model: cycle times, cavitation, machine tonnage, power, manpower and depreciation
• Set standards annually, hold a documented basis for every assumption, and manage the annual standards revision
• Report standard versus actual variance monthly — material usage, scrap and rejection, absorption and yield — and explain the movements to operations and commercial
• Own the bill of materials and routing accuracy in the system, working with the plant to keep it live
New product and investment decisions
• Cost every new product proposal before it goes to a customer, including tooling amortisation, packaging and expected volumes
• Meet a three working day turnaround on costed proposals for private label and OEM enquiries, which is a commitment we make to customers
• Build the investment case for every new mould: capital cost, payback, IRR, break-even volume, sensitivity to price and volume, and the downside case
• Track realised performance against the original investment case for moulds commissioned in prior years, and report honestly where we were wrong
• Support make-versus-buy analysis on sourced and third-party ranges
Profitability and commercial analysis
• Build and publish the contribution margin waterfall — CM1, CM2 and CM3 — by product, channel and customer
• Produce the account profit and loss to net realisation for each modern trade customer: gross price through scheme, listing, visibility spend, damages, freight and cash discount
• Analyse promotional return on investment before and after the event, and challenge spend that does not earn its keep
• Maintain the trade spend accrual and claims register, and reconcile accruals to settled claims
• Analyse profitability of export orders including incoterms, freight, duty drawback and RoDTEP, and forex exposure
Pricing
• Own the price list as a controlled document, with a defined process for revisions and approvals
• Track polymer and input cost movements against a published index, and flag when a price revision is required rather than waiting to be asked
• Model the margin impact of proposed price changes, trade terms and channel discounts before they are agreed
• Set floor prices for tender and institutional business, and check that no channel is being quoted below the floor
Reporting and MIS
• Publish the monthly sales and performance pack by working day three: revenue and margin against plan by product, channel and customer, with variance explained
• Build repeatable, automated data pipelines out of Tally rather than rebuilding reports by hand each month
• Track forecast accuracy and support the rolling three-month sales and operations planning cycle
• Report capacity utilisation, absorption and the cost consequence of running below capacity
• Support the annual operating plan and budget, and the quarterly reforecast
Working capital
• Report inventory ageing, slow-moving and obsolete stock, and the provisioning required
• Analyse the seasonal working capital cycle — our pre-season inventory build and the collection profile that follows it
• Track debtor days by customer and support the commercial team on overdue accounts with the underlying analysis
Business partnering
• Sit in the monthly commercial review as a full participant, not as a reporter of numbers, working directly with the Chief Commercial Officer on the commercial agenda
• Challenge commercial proposals on the analysis, including when the answer is inconvenient
• Make the numbers usable by people who are not accountants, and teach the commercial team to read their own P&L
• Take on ad hoc analysis as the business requires it — this is a small firm and the questions will not always be tidy
What success looks like in the first twelve months
Standard costing methodology - Documented, signed off and in use across all live SKUs
Standard versus actual variance - Reported monthly with variances explained, not merely presented
Channel Level Sales Reporting - Reported monthly with variances explained
Product costing turnaround - Costed proposal within 2 working days of a brief
Channel and customer profitability - CM1 to CM3 published monthly, to net realisation
Mould investment appraisals - Every capital proposal supported by payback, IRR and a downside case
Monthly performance pack - Published by working day three, without rework
Price list governance - A single controlled price list with a documented revision process
What we are looking for
Essential
• 3–6 years in costing, cost accounting or commercial finance within a manufacturing business — plastics, packaging, auto components, consumer durables or FMCG
• You have built a costing model yourself, from a blank sheet. Be ready to describe its structure, its assumptions and where it was weak
• Working understanding of a production floor — you can tell us what drives cost in a moulding, assembly or packing operation, and you are comfortable standing next to a machine to find out
• Advanced Excel: you build models that other people can audit and use, not spreadsheets only you understand
• Hands-on experience of an ERP, and the ability to get clean data out of it. We run Tally
• You can explain a variance to someone who does not have a finance background, and hold your position when challenged
Qualification
• CMA (qualified or inter) is the natural fit for this role. CA, MBA Finance or B.Com with strong relevant experience will be considered equally
• We care considerably more about what you have built than about which letters follow your name
Preferred
• Exposure to modern trade or organised retail commercial mechanics — trade terms, claims, debit notes and promotional accounting
• Capital investment appraisal experience, particularly tooling or plant
• Power Query, Power BI or a similar tool, and an instinct to automate what you have done twice
• Export costing, incoterms and export incentive schemes
• Experience in a founder-led or mid-sized business where you set up the process rather than inherited it
How you work
• You are more interested in whether a number is right than in whether it is welcome
• You go and look. When the standard says one thing and the floor says another, you go to the floor
• You would rather build the process once, properly, than produce the report manually twelve times
• You are comfortable being the only finance person in a commercial room
What we offer
• A genuinely greenfield build: the costing framework, the pricing process and the reporting architecture are all yours to design
• A dotted line to the Chief Commercial Officer and a seat in the monthly commercial review, with a short path from analysis to decision
• A business with certified manufacturing, licensed products, national retail listings and significant unused capacity — the analysis you do will change what we make and what we charge
• A clear route into a broader commercial finance business partnering remit as the business grows
To apply
Send your CV to dhaval@pratapplastics.com with the subject line “Costing and Commercial Finance Analyst”. In the body, in no more than ten lines, describe one costing model you built — what it covered, what assumptions it rested on, and one thing the business did differently as a result of it.
Applications without that paragraph will not be reviewed.
Click on Apply to know more.
