FRACTIONAL CMO

Every significant marketing decision in your company still comes back to you.

A full-time CMO costs ₹40-80 lakhs a year and six months to find. A Fractional CMO gives you the same strategic judgment – without the salary, the hiring process, or the risk.

Monthly strategy sessions, quarterly planning, on-call decisions, and agency oversight – so marketing stops being something you have to carry personally.

Indian founder reviewing marketing strategy with a senior advisor

Monthly strategy sessions · Quarterly planning · Maximum three engagements · Direct access to Lalit

THE BOTTLENECK

Good execution without clear direction produces activity, not growth.

Your marketing team is capable. They execute – content, campaigns, performance reports, agency management. But when a real decision arrives – which agency to appoint, whether a market is worth entering, how to respond to a competitor’s pricing move – the question comes back to you. It always comes back to you, because there’s no one else with the judgment to answer it.

This isn’t a people problem. Your team is doing exactly what marketing teams do – executing within the brief they’ve been given. The problem is that the strategic brief has to come from somewhere, and right now it comes from a founder who is also running the rest of the business. At some point, that stops working.

A full-time CMO is ₹40-80 lakhs a year, six months to find, and a real risk if the fit is wrong – which it often is. A project consultant delivers a document and leaves before implementation gets complicated. Neither one stays.

THE COST OF CARRYING IT ALONE

What carrying the strategy alone is actually costing

₹40L-₹80L

Annual cost of a full-time CMO – before you even know if the relationship works

3-6 Months

Typically lost to a wrong agency appointment without senior oversight to catch it early

₹3L-₹5L/Month

Fractional CMO retainer – strategic direction, not management

The person setting the direction is still you – on top of everything else.

The difference between a marketing team that executes and one that grows is the person setting the direction. Right now, that’s you – on top of everything else you’re carrying.

PROVEN REDIRECTION

Strategic direction changes outcomes. Here is the evidence.

B2B SERVICES COMPANY, INDIA

3X

Same agency, same budget, three times the leads

Agency had been optimising for the wrong outcome for months

B2B services office representing a Fractional CMO engagement

A B2B services company had a capable marketing team and a well-funded agency – spending consistently, producing consistently average results. No one had flagged that the agency was optimising for outputs that looked good in monthly reports but had no connection to commercial outcomes. We came in as Fractional CMO, identified the misalignment in the first quarter, redirected the agency brief, and reset the measurement framework around qualified lead volume and sales cycle length. Within six months, the same agency relationship and the same budget were producing three times the qualified leads.

FUNDED STARTUP, INDIA

40%

Increase in sales conversion rate

Three people briefing the agency, no unifying strategy

Funded Indian startup office environment

A funded startup had three people making independent marketing decisions with no unifying strategic frame – the founder, the head of sales, and the marketing manager, each briefing the agency on different priorities. We introduced a single strategic brief, a defined ideal customer profile, a clear channel priority, and a monthly commercial review. Marketing stopped being reactive within four months. Within eight months, inbound enquiry quality had improved enough that the sales team’s conversion rate increased by 40% – not because of more leads, but because the right ones were arriving.

THE ENGAGEMENT

What a Fractional CMO engagement includes

A Fractional CMO is not a part-time marketing manager. We don’t attend daily stand-ups or manage your team’s weekly output. We set the direction, make the strategic calls, and hold the function accountable – every month, every quarter, and whenever something significant needs a senior decision.

01

Monthly Strategy Session

Marketing priorities, key decisions, course corrections, and what to stop doing.

02

Quarterly Plan Review

A full review and reset of the marketing plan against your actual commercial objectives.

03

On-Call Decisions

Agency appointments, new market entries, campaign launches, competitive responses – when it matters.

04

Vendor & Agency Oversight

An honest assessment of whether they’re doing the right things with your money.

05

Board-Level Reporting

Marketing reporting at the level the business actually requires.

Lalit Saraswat leads every Fractional CMO engagement personally. The strategic judgment, the vendor assessments, the calls that affect direction – those stay with him. Not an account manager.

Ready to stop carrying the strategy alone?

A 30-minute conversation tells us both whether a Fractional CMO engagement is the right response.

SELECTIVE BY DESIGN

We hold a maximum of three Fractional CMO positions at any time.

A Fractional CMO engagement is only valuable if the person providing it has enough mental space to genuinely own your strategic situation. Above three active clients, that space isn’t there. We cap at three. It isn’t a marketing position – it’s how the work stays worth having.

We currently have clients in technology services, professional consulting, and manufacturing. If you want to know whether a position is available for your situation, a conversation is the right starting point – not a form.

Indian mid-market business environment representing strategic oversight
FRACTIONAL CMO

Frequently Asked Questions

The same thing that qualifies any senior advisor to give strategic guidance – a track record of recognising patterns across many businesses, and the discipline to understand your specific situation before applying any of them. We spend the first month learning your business specifically: your customers, your competitive situation, your team’s real strengths and gaps. After that, the patterns we’ve seen across 25 years of practice become genuinely useful. If we find in that first month that we can’t add value, we tell you that directly.

A full-time hire fails for reasons a Fractional CMO engagement largely avoids. The fit risk is lower – you see how we think and work before committing to six months. The cost of a wrong decision is significantly lower. And the engagement is scoped specifically to strategic direction, not the daily operational management that often creates friction in a full-time relationship. If it isn’t working after the first month, that should be visible to both sides, and we’d address it directly rather than letting it run.

The agency manages execution. The Fractional CMO manages the agency – and everything the agency doesn’t own: the strategic brief, the ICP definition, the channel allocation, the measurement framework, and the decision about whether the agency is actually doing the right things. Most founders discover through a Fractional CMO engagement that their agency has been optimising for the wrong outcome – not from bad intention, but because no one gave them a clear enough strategic brief. The Fractional CMO provides that brief and holds the agency accountable to it.

In the first month, you’ll have a clear strategic frame: defined priorities, a corrected brief for your existing suppliers, and a list of what to stop doing that immediately frees up budget or attention. Measurable commercial results – lead quality, conversion rate, market momentum -typically become visible between months three and six. The engagement compounds: a Fractional CMO who’s been inside your business for twelve months is significantly more valuable than one who arrived last month. Minimum commitment is six months for this reason.

One monthly strategy session of two to three hours. Quarterly planning. On-call access for significant decisions – the kind where a wrong call costs more than the monthly retainer many times over. Agency oversight. Board reporting where relevant. What it doesn’t include: daily management of your team, attendance at weekly meetings, creative production, or campaign delivery. Those are operational functions. The fee covers strategic judgment and direction – the same thing a full-time CMO at ₹60 lakhs a year provides, without the salary commitment or the hiring risk.

Indian mid-market companies between ₹25 crore and ₹500 crore in revenue where the founder is currently carrying the marketing strategy, or where the senior marketing person is strong on operations but not on strategy. Also UK healthcare groups – pharmacy chains, dental groups, private health networks – that want sustained strategic oversight beyond the initial campaign setup. We’re not the right fit for early-stage companies that need execution support, or for founders who want someone to manage the marketing team’s daily work. If your situation sits somewhere in between, tell us directly and we’ll give you an honest answer.

Yes – and we’ll tell you honestly where the position stands when you do. If we have capacity, we pick up the conversation. If the three positions are filled, you go on the waitlist. What we’d ask you to sit with in the meantime: the strategic gap you’re carrying doesn’t pause while you decide. Every month without clear direction is a month of budget deployed without a coherent frame, agency relationships running without oversight, and market decisions made by whoever’s loudest in the room rather than whoever has the clearest view. A 30-minute conversation costs nothing and tells you whether this is worth pursuing now.