Website:
onepercentclub.io
Job details:
The 1% Club | Mumbai, India | Full-Time
Reports to: Founder
WHY THIS ROLE EXISTS
The 1% Club is a ₹100cr+ revenue business operating across multiple legal entities and regulatory regimes. The education business (1% Club Academy, Bombay Trading School) generates the majority of current revenue. The financial services businesses (SEBI-registered RIA, SEBI-registered Research Analyst, insurance advisory, and an in-house app with MF and FD distribution) are scaling rapidly and will become the primary revenue engine over the next 2 to 3 years.
This creates a specific financial complexity that doesn’t exist in a single-product startup:
- Multiple legal entities with intercompany transactions, each with different revenue recognition patterns and regulatory reporting obligations.
- A revenue model transitioning from one-time education payments to recurring subscription and AUM-based fees, creating deferred revenue accounting complexity.
- At least two active regulators (SEBI for RIA and RA) with a third (IRDAI) in process, each requiring specific financial reporting formats and capital adequacy maintenance.
- A potential institutional fundraise on the horizon that requires investor-grade financial reporting, data room readiness, and a credible forward-looking financial model tied to audited numbers.
Today, the finance function handles statutory compliance and bookkeeping. What’s missing is the financial architecture: consolidated reporting across entities, BU-level P&L tracking with unit economics, regulatory financial infrastructure, and the commercial partnership with BU heads that turns financial data into operating decisions.
This role doesn’t manage an existing finance function. It builds one from scratch for a multi-entity regulated financial services business that’s scaling fast.
ABOUT THE 1% CLUB
Headquarters
Mumbai, India
Team
200+ across education, financial services, technology, and content
Revenue
₹100cr ARR+ consolidated
Backed by
Gruhas (Nikhil Kamath)
Regulatory licences
SEBI RIA, SEBI RA. IRDAI Corporate Agent in process.
Entity structure
Multiple entities across education, advisory, insurance, and holding company
Business Verticals
- 1% Club Academy: 100,000+ lifetime members, 600,000+ learners across personal finance, insurance, taxation, and investing.
- Bombay Trading School: 1,200+ learners across online and offline trading programmes.
- Personal CFO: SEBI-registered investment advisory for high-net-worth individuals. 40+ advisors, ₹750cr+ AUA.
- Pillow Insurance: Independent insurance advisory. IRDAI Corporate Agent licence in process.
- 1% Club App: In-house platform for MF, FD distribution, and financial planning tools.
THE MANDATE: WHAT YOU WILL ACTUALLY DO
This is not a maintain-and-report role. You are building the financial infrastructure of a business transitioning from education to regulated financial services while preparing for institutional capital. Here is what the first year looks like, sequenced realistically.
Days 1 to 30: Map, Instrument, and Diagnose
- Map every legal entity, every bank account, every revenue stream, and every regulatory reporting obligation across the group. Produce a single-page entity structure document that the founder can hand to any investor or regulator.
- Build the consolidated chart of accounts. Today’s books are designed for statutory compliance. You redesign them for management decision-making: revenue by BU, costs by BU, intercompany eliminations, and consolidated view.
- Deliver the first real consolidated MIS showing revenue, costs, and EBITDA by business unit, by entity, and consolidated. Monthly. Automated where possible. This becomes the single source of truth for every operating review.
- Audit the current revenue recognition practices. Lifetime membership revenue should be deferred and recognised over the expected engagement period, not booked upfront. If it’s being booked upfront, you flag it, quantify the impact, and propose the correction.
Days 30 to 90: Build the Commercial Layer
- Build contribution margin tracking at BU level. Education: CAC per member, LTV by cohort, webinar conversion cost, annual renewal economics. Advisory: AUA per advisor, revenue per advisor, cost per advisor, contribution margin per advisor. Insurance: first-year commission vs trail economics, persistency tracking.
- Design the deferred revenue model for the lifetime-to-annual subscription transition. Model the cash flow impact (front-loaded collections drop, recurring collections build), the P&L impact (revenue smoothing vs current lumpiness), and the balance sheet impact (deferred revenue liability creation).
- Set up the transfer pricing framework across entities. Education leads flowing to advisory, advisory clients flowing to insurance: each of these is an intercompany transaction that needs arm’s length pricing for tax compliance and clean entity-level P&Ls.
- Establish the monthly financial review with BU heads. Actuals vs budget, variance analysis, unit economics trends, cash flow forecast. This becomes the monthly operating rhythm.
Days 90 to 180: Fundraise Readiness and Regulatory Infrastructure
- Build the investor-grade financial package: clean audited financials, entity structure, regulatory compliance certificates, tax compliance status, and a forward-looking financial model that ties to audited base-year numbers. The goal: if the founder says “we’re opening a data room next week,” you can produce it in 48 hours.
- Build the annual operating plan (AOP) model with BU heads. Not a top-down budget. A bottom-up build from unit economics: how many members, at what price, with what renewal rate, at what acquisition cost, with what team size.
- Start the IRDAI compliance financial infrastructure: client money segregation, trust accounting for premiums, and the specific financial reporting format IRDAI requires for Corporate Agent licensees.
- Begin SEBI net worth compliance monitoring for RIA (₹50L individual / ₹1cr non-individual) and RA entities. Set up quarterly compliance calendar across all regulatory obligations.
Ongoing: What the Role Looks Like at Steady State
- Own the consolidated P&L, balance sheet, and cash flow across all entities. Close books within 7 working days of month-end.
- Run monthly financial reviews with each BU head. Challenge assumptions. Flag deteriorating unit economics before they become problems.
- Own all regulatory financial reporting: SEBI (RIA and RA quarterly and annual filings), IRDAI (once licensed), GST, TDS, income tax, ROC filings across all entities.
- Manage external audit relationships. Coordinate statutory audit, tax audit, and any regulatory audit.
- Cash flow and treasury management across entities. Optimise working capital. Manage FD laddering for surplus cash.
- Support fundraise processes: financial due diligence, investor Q&A, data room maintenance, model updates.
- Build and lead the finance team. Initial hire: one senior accountant for day-to-day bookkeeping and compliance. Scale to 3 to 4 people by end of Year 1 as regulatory obligations multiply.
WHO YOU ARE Non-Negotiable
- Chartered Accountant. Not CA-Inter. Not MBA Finance without CA. The regulatory reporting complexity and multi-entity consolidation work requires the technical foundation that the CA curriculum provides. This is a hard filter.
- 3 to 6 years of post-qualification experience. You’re past the pure-audit grind but still close enough to it that getting your hands dirty is normal, not beneath you. The first 6 months of this role demand someone who will personally build the chart of accounts, personally produce the first consolidated MIS, and personally design the deferred revenue model. You’re not inheriting a team and reviewing their work. You’re building the foundation yourself and then hiring people to operate it.
- Exposure to regulated financial services. You need to know what SEBI net worth compliance looks like, what client money segregation means in practice, what a regulatory audit entails. This can come from the operating side (a finance role at a broking house, NBFC, insurance company, AMC, or SEBI-registered fintech) or from the audit side (2 to 3 years in Big 4 Financial Services audit where you audited SEBI/IRDAI-regulated entities). The gap from “I’ve audited SEBI compliance at five broking houses” to “I’m now building it at one company” is smaller than most people think. What matters is regulatory literacy, not whether you sat on the preparer’s side or the auditor’s side.
- Hands-on execution capability. If the prospect of personally reconciling intercompany balances in Month 1 makes you uncomfortable, this isn’t the role. Process and team come later. The foundation comes first, and you’re laying it yourself.
Strongly Preferred
- Startup or high-growth experience. At least one stint at a growth-stage company where you operated without established processes, moved fast, and tolerated ambiguity. This can be a short stint; it just needs to be real.
- Multi-entity consolidation experience. You’ve managed or audited books across 3+ legal entities with intercompany transactions and produced or reviewed consolidated financials.
- Revenue recognition complexity. You’ve dealt with deferred revenue, subscription accounting, or AUM-based fee recognition. Ideally under Ind AS, but exposure from the audit side counts.
What Matters More Than Resume
- Commercial instinct. The best finance people don’t just report numbers. They see what the numbers mean for the business. When advisory AUA per advisor is declining, you don’t just flag it in a report. You walk over to the advisory head and ask what’s happening with new client onboarding. We need someone who treats the P&L as a diagnostic tool, not a compliance output.
- The ability to say “no” to the founder. This business is scaling fast and the founder moves fast. You need to be the person who says “we can’t recognise that revenue this quarter” or “this intercompany transaction needs documentation” without flinching. Backbone matters more than pedigree.
- Speed without sloppiness. You’ll deliver the first MIS in 30 days and the first investor-grade package in 180 days. That’s fast for one person building from scratch. But “fast” doesn’t mean “approximate.” The numbers need to be right. If you’re the kind of person who sends a report knowing the receivables don’t tie, this isn’t the role.
WHERE WE EXPECT TO FIND YOU
These are the backgrounds most likely to produce the right person:
- Big 4 Financial Services audit (2 to 3 years) followed by a finance role at a growth-stage fintech, NBFC, or startup. You’ve audited regulated entities and know what “good” looks like from the outside. The industry stint—even if short—proves you can switch from testing controls to building them. This is the highest-signal background for the experience band and budget of this role.
- Finance team member (not necessarily lead) at a SEBI/IRDAI-regulated fintech or financial services company. You’ve lived the specific regulatory reporting requirements at close range. Maybe you were the #2 or #3 in the finance function, and you’re ready for the step-up to own the entire function. We’d test for comfort with ambiguity and builder instinct.
- CA in a controllership or FP&A role at a mid-size NBFC, insurance company, or broking house, who has gotten restless and wants to build something rather than maintain something. You have deep regulatory muscle memory. We’d test for startup speed and tolerance for chaos.
- CA with mixed experience: some audit, some industry, some startup—where the common thread is you’ve consistently punched above your weight and taken on scope that was technically above your level. We care about trajectory and demonstrated capability, not a neat linear resume.
WHAT SUCCESS LOOKS LIKE At 30 Days
- The founder has a consolidated MIS on his desk by the 7th of the month showing revenue, costs, and EBITDA by BU, by entity, and consolidated. He trusts the numbers.
- The entity structure, intercompany flows, and regulatory obligations are documented in a single place.
- Revenue recognition has been reviewed and a correction plan is in place where necessary.
At 90 Days
- Every BU head knows their contribution margin and can explain variances from budget.
- Monthly financial reviews are running with every BU head. The finance function is starting to be seen as a commercial partner, not a compliance burden.
- The deferred revenue model for the subscription transition is designed and the P&L/cash flow impact is quantified.
- Transfer pricing framework across entities is documented and in implementation.
At 6 Months
- An investor data room can be produced in 48 hours if needed.
- The AOP model is built bottom-up from unit economics and BU heads own their numbers.
- IRDAI financial infrastructure is ready for licence activation.
- SEBI net worth compliance monitoring and regulatory calendar are operational.
At 12 Months
- The business has clean, audited, Ind AS-compliant financials across all entities with a consolidated view.
- Regulatory compliance is on auto-pilot: SEBI filings, GST, TDS, income tax, ROC, all current and clean.
- A 2 to 3 person finance team is in place handling day-to-day operations while you focus on commercial partnership and strategic finance.
- The founder can articulate the business’s financial trajectory to any investor, regulator, or board member using numbers you produced and a model you built.
WHY THIS ROLE IS WORTH YOUR TIME
Honest reasons to consider this, and honest reasons to hesitate.
The Case For
- You’re building financial infrastructure for a business transitioning from education to regulated financial services. That transition—one-time revenue to recurring, unregulated to multi-regulator, single entity to multi-entity—is the most complex and interesting financial architecture challenge in Indian consumer fintech right now.
- The business is profitable and growing. You’re not managing a cash burn runway. You’re building the financial foundation for a ₹300cr+ business.
- Nikhil Kamath as investor means governance expectations are high from the start. You’re not fighting to install financial discipline. There’s a mandate for it.
- The scope you’ll own at 3 to 6 PQE is what most CAs don’t get until 10+ years in. You’ll own the entire finance function across multiple entities and regulators. If you execute, the title and comp catch up fast.
The Honest Caveats
- The finance function is being built from near-zero. The first 6 months will be messy. You’ll be closing books yourself, chasing BU heads for data, and fixing legacy accounting decisions. If you need a team and established processes to function, this isn’t the right moment.
- This is a founder-led business with 200+ people moving fast. Financial discipline is valued but not yet deeply embedded in daily operations. You’ll need to earn your credibility with BU heads through usefulness, not authority.
- Multiple regulators mean multiple compliance calendars, multiple reporting formats, and multiple audit relationships. The workload is structurally heavier than a single-entity business at the same revenue scale.
How To Apply
Send your CV and a short note (200 words or less) explaining: what’s the most complex financial problem you’ve worked on, and why does this role interest you specifically? Generic cover letters will be ignored. We’re looking for people who’ve read this JD carefully and recognise the specific challenge.
Skills: sebi regulations,nbfc,finance,irdai,revenue,ca,ra,compliance,ria,advisory,fintech,insurance,financial services
Click on Apply to know more.