Chalo - Finance Controller - CA

Chalo - Finance Controller

Overview:

The Finance Controller plays a pivotal role in achieving Chalo's financial goals by overseeing robust accounting practices, providing strategic financial advice to CXOs, and maintaining control over all financial and compliance-related matters, including payments and receipts.

Responsibilities:

- Build and operate an effective and efficient finance function, with a focus on automation, ensuring that daily, weekly, and monthly reports are delivered on time, and accounts are reconciled accurately (aim for 90% on-time delivery).

- Act as a strategic business partner to internal teams, providing weekly and monthly financial insights to CXOs and offering guidance on key financial transactions.

- Collaborate with the CFO to execute Chalo's financial strategy, ensuring alignment with organizational goals and objectives.

- Identify, implement, and maintain key financial flows, processes, reporting, and compliance measures, including Accounts Payable (AP), Accounts Receivable (AR), Treasury, Tax compliance, and payroll.

Qualifications :

- Must be a CA

- Must possess at least 10 years of experience

- Startup experience is preferred

About us:

Chalo is India's #1 bus transport technology company built with the core purpose of making travel better. With operations in 51 cities and powering over 5 million daily bus rides, Chalo is solving a real-world problem that affects crores of Indians. And we are building India's largest mobility company along the way!

How large is the problem?

Buses are the single-largest mode of transport. They account for 48% of all public transport trips in India and more in other countries. Compare this with 8% of trips on taxis, and just about 2% on metros. People in our country spend $20 billion on bus tickets annually. However, each bus commuter spends the equivalent of 8 days a year waiting for a bus, and bus operators have losses running into hundreds of millions of dollars annually.

What are we solving?

We aim to make travel better for everyone. Today we do so by improving the experience of taking city buses. Chalo users wait 30 minutes less each day, travel safer with contactless digital tickets, and even save money with Chalo Super Saver plans. By adding reliability and convenience to the city bus system, we kick start a virtuous circle, where happier commuters mean more rides which in turn means more revenue for our bus operator partners, which means better services for commuters. Our most important KPI is the revenue uplift achieved. We have demonstrated an increase of up to 70% in bus ridership in Chalo cities, enabling some operators to be profitable for maybe the first time in this business.

How we do it?

- We work in partnership with bus operators to deploy our proprietary technology - GPS, Electronic ticketing devices, the Chalo App, the Chalo Card, and the entire back-end tech platform to support all this. By deploying an end-to-end solution, we are able to power a unique experience. Over time we have understood the value of expanding our scope of work as well as leveraging the power of the data generated by our platform to help operators with operations such as route optimization, crew management, and revenue maximization.

- We have developed expertise for not just the issuance of mobile tickets and closed-loop cards, but also for accepting payments. Our team has also worked on developing Electronic Ticketing machines that could work in low/no internet connections and have instructions in multiple languages. Our operations are wise, deep, and intensive - buses run 24/7 and that means so do we. We process more than 80 million unique data points daily. We count among our staff, experienced software developers, operations and supply chain experts, transport specialists and also GPS technicians, and bus conductors. We told you it was complicated!

What's in store for 2024 and beyond?

We love buses and believe that they run better on technology, rather than fuel. Armed with India's #1 bus tracking app, and India's #1 bus travel card, we are going to do a lot more of what we currently do.

We are taking Chalo to even more Indian cities and expanding our tech offering. We are currently implementing pilot projects that enable passengers to tap or scan themselves into and out of buses, just like in London, Hong Kong, Singapore, etc. We have also recently launched India's largest implementation of NCMC cards in buses, and this is coming to more cities. With our acquisition of Shuttl, we have also expanded our presence in the premium bus market in Mumbai. Branded as the Chalo Bus, the fleet of comfortable premium buses in Mumbai is addressing an entirely new audience segment and redefining office and airport commutes. With the acquisition of Vogo, we are moving closer to realising our goal of integrated mobility and seamless end-to-end commute in cities. We have also begun operations in 3 international cities and are expanding our global presence.

Still more?

The benefits of providing a great mobility solution goes beyond time and money. A bus can take 30 cars off the road, reduce hundreds of tonnes of emissions, improve safety, increase household savings, and lead to a significant improvement in quality of life. The opportunity to build a company comes rarely, the opportunity to build a company that can so dramatically impact the lives of millions, comes once in several lifetimes. If that opportunity does come knocking, you better be prepared to grab it with both hands and then give all of yourself to it.

We will be frank, we are still very young as a company and if you were to join us, lots of things will still be work-in-progress, but that's exactly why we are looking for individuals to take up challenging roles across the company to not just run, but solve, build, and grow Chalo.

Hop onto the ride if you want to be a part of the digital transformation of bus transport in India.