Available for fractional & project work

Strategy that ends
in execution.

I work with founders and leadership teams on the problems that decide whether a business moves forward — strategy, fundraising, and the follow-through that usually goes missing. Three years inside Founder's Offices, now available on a fractional and project basis.

praveenaviswarajan@gmail.com +91 88792 69581 Mumbai · Remote worldwide
₹5 Cr+
Cost impact
₹7 Cr+
Growth identified
20+
Board decks
4+
Fundraises supported
01

What I Do

For founders who need a strategic operator but not a full-time hire. I take ownership of the priorities that keep slipping — governance rhythms, cross-functional follow-through, board preparation, and the special projects nobody has time to own.

Weekly operating cadenceBoard & investor reporting OKR design & trackingProgramme management Decision memos

Structured answers to open-ended business questions. Should we build this? Which market first? Where is margin leaking? I run the research, build the model, and land a recommendation you can act on — not a deck that sits in a folder.

Market entry analysisBusiness cases Competitive benchmarkingUnit economics & pricing Operating model designGo-to-market strategy

The narrative, the numbers, and the slides. I have built investor materials that went into rooms and closed rounds — covering the story arc, financial exhibits, market sizing, and the diligence questions that follow.

Pitch deck narrativeFinancial exhibits Market sizing & TAMData room preparation Diligence supportInvestor updates
02

Selected Work

Life Sciences

Build-Operate-Transfer model for a pharmacovigilance function

How I got there
1
Question the premise
Renewal was treated as the only option. Asked whether anyone had modelled the alternative.
2
Map current state
Traced the FSO model across ICSR, PADER and MICC. Interviewed quality, IT and finance.
3
Build the economics
Headcount, systems, transition cost, steady-state run rate — stress-tested against renewal.
4
Challenge & land it
Raised the logic flaw with senior stakeholders mid-discussion. Approach was revised.
Problem
A client was preparing to renew a Functional Service Organisation contract for their pharmacovigilance operations. The assumption in the room was that building in-house was too complex to be worth modelling. Nobody had tested it.
Outcome
The model became the blueprint for the client's insourcing decision — reshaping how they ran a core compliance function.
₹1.5 Cr in operational savings identified  ·  Adopted as the client's transformation blueprint
Post-Demerger

IT operations insourcing, end to end

How I got there
1
Claim the orphan
Spotted a compounding risk sitting outside everyone's remit. Took it on without a mandate.
2
Map dependencies
Traced every system tie to the parent entity and the risk points in unwinding each one.
3
Make the case
Built the in-house model economics and took it to leadership with a clear recommendation.
4
Sequence the cutover
Ran execution across tech, finance and ops — ordered to protect continuity throughout.
Problem
Following a corporate demerger, IT infrastructure remained tied to the parent entity with no owner assigned to the transition.
Outcome
Transition completed with zero business interruption and a materially lower run rate.
₹3 Cr annualised savings  ·  Zero business disruption
Enterprise

Centralised KPI infrastructure across five functions

How I got there
1
Find the disagreement
Same metric, five definitions. Traced why functions never reconciled to one number.
2
Define one framework
Agreed a single KPI set across strategy, finance, ops, product and technology.
3
Automate the pull
Built dashboards that refreshed themselves — removing the manual assembly entirely.
4
Wire in escalation
Set the review cadence and thresholds so gaps surfaced before they became problems.
Problem
Leadership was making decisions on numbers assembled manually, arriving late, and rarely agreeing with each other across functions.
Outcome
Manual reporting effort cut substantially and leadership gained a live view of performance against plan.
~35% reduction in manual reporting effort  ·  Real-time leadership visibility
Commercial

Growth opportunity identification across service lines

How I got there
1
Audit the capability
Catalogued what the business could already deliver but wasn't commercialising.
2
Landscape the market
Benchmarked competitors across regulatory, quality and technology segments.
3
Size each bet
Modelled opportunity value and defined the ideal customer profile for each service line.
4
Sequence by value
Ordered the roadmap by opportunity size — not by what was easiest to build first.
Problem
The business had capability it was not commercialising. The question was which adjacent service lines were worth building, and in what order.
Outcome
Five business cases delivered to leadership with a prioritised view of where to invest first.
₹7 Cr+ in growth opportunities identified and sequenced
03

Capabilities

→
Business case development
Investment cases, feasibility studies, financial justification for leadership decisions
→
Market research
Primary interviews, secondary research, industry landscaping and trend analysis
→
Competitive intelligence
Benchmarking, positioning maps, white-space identification
→
Opportunity sizing
TAM/SAM modelling, revenue potential, prioritisation frameworks
→
First-principles problem structuring
Breaking ambiguous questions into testable, answerable components
→
Pitch deck narrative
Story arc, problem framing, and the argument that makes an investor lean in
→
Financial exhibits
Projections, unit economics, cohort views and scenario analysis
→
Data room preparation
Structure, document readiness and diligence anticipation
→
Diligence response
Fast, accurate answers to investor questions without derailing the team
→
Investor updates
Recurring reporting that keeps existing backers close and informed
→
Target operating model design
Future-state process, structure, governance and service levels
→
Shared services & GCC setup
Build-Operate-Transfer modelling, location and capability assessment
→
Process redesign
As-is mapping, root-cause analysis, bottleneck removal
→
SOP development
Documentation that actually gets used, not written and filed
→
Governance frameworks
Steering committees, review cadence, escalation mechanisms
→
OKR design & tracking
Objectives that translate strategy into something measurable
→
Milestone & risk management
Dependency mapping, early warning, mitigation planning
→
Execution without authority
Driving delivery across functions where nobody reports to you
→
Executive dashboards
Power BI and Excel views built for decisions, not decoration
→
KPI frameworks
One definition per metric, agreed across every function
→
Board reporting
Decision-ready packs that respect a director's attention span
→
Financial modelling
Budgets, forecasts, cost structures and scenario testing
→
Research acceleration
ChatGPT, Claude and Perplexity built into the research workflow — with the checking that keeps it honest
→
Reporting automation
Zapier and AI-assisted pipelines that remove recurring manual work
→
Document & deck generation
Faster first drafts so the time goes into thinking, not formatting
04

Journey

Jun 2026 — Present
Associate, Strategy & Project Management
PivotPath — demerged entity of Arcolab
Director's office. Transformation, governance and commercial strategy.
Jun 2023 — May 2026
Associate, Strategy & Operations
Arcolab Private Limited
CXO office. Business cases, fundraising support and cross-functional programmes.
2023
PGDM — Finance & Operations
St. Joseph's Institute of Management, Bangalore
Apr — Jun 2022
Strategy & Operations Intern
Hindalco Industries — Aditya Birla Group
2021
BE — Information Technology
SIES Graduate School of Technology, Mumbai
Alongside
Performing
Bharatanatyam Dancer
Classical Indian dance — trained and performing
Years of discipline in structure, timing and holding an audience.
Performing
Carnatic Vocalist
Classical Indian music
In progress
Nattuvangam & Carnatic Violin
Currently training
Still a student. The habit of learning something hard, slowly, hasn't left.

Working Together

Most engagements start with a short call to understand the problem
before I propose scope, timeline and price.

Start a conversation
or reach me at praveenaviswarajan@gmail.com