Finance & Commercial Manager
Location: Bangalore, India
Work Model: Remote
Reporting to: CFO
Employment Type: Full-time
About Knoxx
Knoxx is a growing food ingredients, innovation and value-added products business with operations connected to Australia, India and future international markets. The group includes Knoxx Foods / Knoxx Business Group in Australia and its sister companies in Australia besides the proposed / developing Indian entity to support sourcing, exports, compliance and group operations.
We are strengthening the finance function from Bangalore and are looking for a senior finance professional who can operate hands-on while also building scalable finance systems, controls, reporting cadence and commercial discipline. This is not a routine accounting role. The person must be able to build the finance operating model for a fast growing business.
Role Objective
The Finance & Commercial Manager will be responsible for building and professionalising Knoxx's finance function across group entities. The role will cover accounting, reporting, cash flow, controls, pricing governance, landed-cost and margin visibility, R&D project documentation, India entity setup support, and commercial decision support.
The person should be able to take ownership, work independently from Bangalore, collaborate with Australia based leadership and cross-functional teams, and gradually reduce founder dependency on day-to-day finance matters.
Key Responsibilities
Finance Operations and Month-End reporting
- Own and improve the month-end close process.
- Build a structured monthly finance pack for leadership.
- Review AP, AR, bank reconciliations, general ledger, accruals, prepayments, intercompany balances and statutory obligations.
- Ensure accurate and timely reporting for Knoxx Australia, Knoxx Innovations, Knoxx India and related entities as required.
- Develop reporting discipline, review calendars, reconciliations and close checklists.
- Improve reliability of existing finance data, dashboards and reports.
Cash flow and Working Capital Management
- Build and maintain a rolling 13-week cash flow model.
- Track supplier payments, customer collections, stock commitments, shipment costs, bank facilities and working capital exposure.
- Monitor AP and AR ageing with clear ownership and escalation.
- Provide weekly cash flow visibility to management.
- Support credit control, collections discipline and supplier payment planning.
Pricing Governance and Margin Control
- Own the finance control process around customer-wise and SKU-wise pricing.
- Review and strengthen the existing pricing bot, base pricing sheet and analysis dashboards.
- Build a single source of truth for customer/SKU pricing.
- Implement effective-date tracking, approval workflow, audit trail and maker-checker controls for price changes.
- Create invoice-price exception reports to detect incorrect billing before or immediately after invoicing.
- Build customer/SKU margin visibility to prevent revenue leakage and margin erosion.
Landed Cost and Commercial Finance
- Build and maintain landed-cost models covering supplier price, freight, duty, customs, FX, local transport, warehousing and other relevant costs.
- Track landed-cost movement by SKU, shipment, batch and customer where applicable.
- Create margin alerts when landed cost changes or customer margin falls below threshold.
- Support Sales and Procurement with pricing decisions, renegotiation triggers and customer profitability insights.
- Produce regular reports on product margin, customer margin, price variance, freight variance and cost movement.
R&D Finance, Project Codes and Grant Documentation
- Support Knoxx Innovations Pty Ltd in building finance discipline for R&D activities.
- Work with technical/R&D teams to create project-code discipline, timesheets, trial cost tracking and expense classification.
- Ensure R&D expenditure is properly captured, reconciled and supported with documentation.
- Help maintain audit-ready records for R&D tax incentive / grant claims, including trial logs, hypotheses, iterations, outcomes, failed trials, lab work, material usage, consultant costs and supporting evidence.
- Coordinate with external advisors where required to keep R&D claims clean, compliant and defensible.
India Entity Setup and Compliance Support
- Support the formation and operational setup of the Indian entity in coordination with external CA / CS / legal advisors.
- Help define post-incorporation finance setup, including bank account, accounting system, statutory registrations, GST/TDS, payroll, vendor/customer master, approvals and reporting calendar.
- Assist with intercompany documentation, shared-service agreements, recharge mechanisms and group reporting structure.
- Maintain compliance calendar for Indian statutory and regulatory requirements.
Systems, Dashboards and Process Improvement
- Review existing dashboards, pricing tools, reporting files and finance workflows.
- Repair, standardise or redesign broken processes where needed.
- Build dashboards for cash flow, AP/AR, customer margin, landed cost, pricing exceptions, inventory and R&D project costs.
- Reduce manual Excel dependency where possible.
- Create SOPs, approval matrices, ownership charts and audit trails.
- Use automation, Power BI / Zoho / ERP tools / Excel models / AI-assisted workflows where appropriate, while maintaining data security and human approval controls.
Cross-Functional Business Partnering
- Work closely with Sales, Procurement, Logistics, Operations, R&D and leadership.
- Educate non-finance teams on pricing discipline, margin control, documentation and process compliance.
- Challenge commercial decisions where pricing, landed cost, cashflow or margin data does not support the action.
- Build a finance review cadence with clear owners, deadlines and escalation rules.
- Support management in strategic planning, budgeting, forecasting and performance reviews.
Required Qualifications and Experience
- CA / CPA / CMA / ACCA. CA + CS would be an advantage.
- 7+ years of experience in finance, controller-ship, FP&A, commercial finance or finance leadership.
- Experience in a growing business, startup, manufacturing, FMCG, food, trading, import/export, distribution, eCommerce or inventory-heavy environment preferred.
- Strong understanding of accounting, month-end close, AP/AR, reconciliations, cash flow, working capital and statutory compliance.
- Strong commercial finance ability: pricing, margin, landed cost, product/customer profitability and cost control.
- Experience building dashboards, MIS reports, SOPs, controls and management reporting.
- Ability to work independently with senior leadership across geographies.
- Comfortable being hands-on while also building scalable systems.
- Capable of interpreting Government policies.
Technical Skills
- Advanced Excel and financial modelling.
- ERP/accounting system experience such as Xero, Zoho, NetSuite, SAP, Oracle, Tally, QuickBooks or similar.
- Dashboarding experience using Power BI, Zoho Analytics, Tableau or similar preferred.
- Strong understanding of data integrity, audit trail, approval workflow and reporting controls.
- Ability to use AI/automation tools responsibly, with confidentiality and human-review controls.
- AI adaptability
Personal Attributes
- Hands-on builder, not only reviewer.
- Commercially sharp and detail-oriented.
- Comfortable challenging Sales, Procurement and Operations where data shows risk.
- Strong ownership and follow-through.
- Able to bring structure without slowing business.
- Practical, clear and execution-focused.
- Strong communication skills with founders, senior leadership and cross-functional teams.
- High integrity and compliance mindset.
Success Measures
After six months, the person should have delivered:
- Reliable month-end reporting.
- Rolling cash flow visibility.
- Controlled customer/SKU price master.
- Pricing exception reporting.
- Landed-cost and customer margin visibility.
- Reduced pricing and invoicing errors.
- Better AP/AR discipline.
- R&D project-code and cost-tracking process.
- Clear SOPs, ownership matrix and reporting cadence.
- Improved finance confidence for leadership decision-making.
