Manager - Strategic Finance, Ventures & Fund Raising

Phonon Digital is defining and building its next phase of growth across three significant opportunities:

• 22North Revenue: Helping airlines generate more revenue from every departure through yield maximisation, spoilage reduction, upgrades and ancillary sales.
• 22North Passenger Operations: Helping airlines manage departures, disruptions, passenger recovery and digital self-service.
• Phonon 3.0: Building an international AI-native customer-interaction platform combining AI agents, human agents, voice, messaging and enterprise workflows.

We are looking for a commercially minded finance professional who combines strong financial fundamentals with strategic thinking, analytical depth and an ability to build systems and processes.

Working closely with the Founder & Managing Director and the existing Finance & Accounts team, the person will help strengthen financial decision-making across the company while developing new opportunities into well-defined, scalable and investible businesses.

This is not primarily an accounting, taxation or compliance role. The mandate combines strategic finance, business planning, finance transformation, venture development and fundraising.

• Work closely with the Founder and business leaders to translate business opportunities into financial and commercial plans.
• Build detailed three-to-five-year business plans and financial models.
• Develop product, customer and business-level revenue forecasts, cost structures and profitability models.
• Analyse pricing, gross margins, unit economics, cash requirements and scalability.
• Develop alternative growth scenarios and identify financial and operating milestones.
• Build budgeting, forecasting and cash-flow planning frameworks.
• Evaluate new businesses, partnerships and investment opportunities.
• Help management prioritise capital and resources across businesses.
• Challenge assumptions and convert ideas and financial data into evidence-backed business decisions.

• Work with the existing Finance & Accounts team to strengthen financial controls, management reporting and decision-support systems.
• Review existing finance processes and identify opportunities for simplification, standardisation and automation.
• Improve customer and product-level costing, margin and profitability visibility.
• Build management dashboards and MIS that provide timely visibility into business performance.
• Improve the quality, structure and accessibility of financial information across the organisation.
• Strengthen financial and systems readiness for audits, due diligence, fundraising and future growth.
• Drive automation of repetitive accounting, reconciliation, invoicing, reporting and other finance processes.
• Work across Finance, business and technology teams to implement better financial systems and workflows.

• Develop investment theses for Phonon, 22North and potential new ventures.
• Determine capital requirements, use of funds, funding milestones and valuation scenarios.
• Support treasury planning, cash management and evaluation of company investments.
• Evaluate whether opportunities should be funded internally, independently or through strategic partnerships.
• Prepare investor presentations, financial models, investment memoranda and other fundraising materials.
• Build and maintain an investor-ready data room.
• Research and map relevant venture capital funds, strategic investors, family offices and growth investors in India and internationally.
• Identify suitable investors and potential warm-introduction routes.
• Initiate appropriate investor outreach and develop relationships ahead of and during funding rounds.
• Maintain a structured investor pipeline and fundraising CRM.
• Coordinate investor meetings, information requests, follow-ups and due-diligence activities.
• Participate in investor discussions and help refine business and investment propositions based on market feedback.

Over the first 6-12 months, we would expect the person to help us achieve:

• Stronger financial planning, budgeting, forecasting and management reporting.
• Clear customer, product and business-level profitability and unit economics.
• Greater automation and efficiency across finance processes.
• Better financial controls, systems and decision-support information.
• Clearly defined business and investment theses for new opportunities.
• Robust financial models and growth scenarios for Phonon and 22North businesses.
• Improved treasury and cash-management frameworks.
• Investor-ready decks, financial models, investment memoranda and data rooms.
• A qualified Indian and international investor pipeline.
• Improved organisational readiness for investment, due diligence and future scale.

Preferably a qualified Chartered Accountant with approximately 4-8 years of relevant experience.

Experience across a combination of the following would be particularly valuable:

• Strategic Finance / FP&A
• Commercial finance
• Financial modelling and valuation
• Finance transformation and automation
• Management reporting and financial controls
• Transaction advisory
• Investment banking
• Venture capital or private equity
• Startup finance
• Due diligence
• Fundraising or corporate development

The ideal candidate should have:

• Strong grounding in accounting, financial reporting and controls, even though these will not be the primary day-to-day responsibilities of the role.
• Ability to understand how numbers are generated, question their accuracy and improve the underlying processes.
• Strong financial modelling, analytical and commercial skills.
• Ability to understand and evaluate business models - not merely prepare financial statements.
• Ability to develop customer and product-level costing, margins, pricing and profitability.
• Strong understanding of budgeting, cash-flow planning, MIS and management reporting.
• An interest in using technology and automation to improve finance processes.
• Excellent presentation and business-writing skills.
• Interest in SaaS, artificial intelligence, enterprise technology, aviation and international business.
• Ability to work directly with a founder, bring structure to evolving ideas and constructively challenge assumptions.
• High ownership, intellectual curiosity and execution discipline.

An existing investor network would be valuable but is not mandatory. The ability to systematically research, qualify, approach and manage an investor pipeline is important.

• Work directly with the Founder on company-defining financial and strategic decisions.
• Get exposure beyond a traditional Finance & Accounts role - across strategy, systems, commercial finance, ventures and capital.
• Help build the financial architecture required to scale an established technology business and its new ventures.
• Shape enterprise technology businesses from business thesis through commercialisation and capital raise.
• Gain exposure to international SaaS, AI and aviation markets.
• Participate directly in investment strategy, investor engagement and fundraising.
• Opportunity to progressively take on broader leadership responsibilities as the company and its businesses grow.