Asked often. Answered straight.

All three. Set Up — businesses establishing, restructuring or formalising. Step Up — businesses that have outgrown informal systems and founder-led decision-making. Scale Up — businesses preparing for expansion, capital, transactions or institutionalisation. Most clients arrive at a transition between stages; that is exactly the moment we are built for.

Usually at Step Up — when revenue is growing faster than your visibility of it: numbers arrive late, cash flow isn’t clear, and the founder still drives every financial decision. A Fractional CFO brings senior financial leadership — planning, MIS, forecasting, management reviews — without the cost or commitment of a full-time hire.

No — and we don’t try to. Your CA keeps the books and the statutory work; your auditor stays independent. Bequip takes the layer above: governance, structuring, transitions, transactions, and CFO-level decision support. Most engagements run alongside a CA the client already likes. We brief them, not around them.

Before the pressure point, not after it — when the founder is still in every decision, when the next generation is entering, when a partnership has outgrown its deed, or when a raise or transaction is 12–24 months away. Structures are cheapest to change while nothing is forcing the change.

Yes. Many engagements are a single defined transition — a corporatisation, a founder-to-management handover, a family succession, a fund-raise, an India entry. We agree the scope and the deliverable up front, and if it later grows into standing advisory, that is your call, not our assumption.

A partner leads every engagement and stays on it. We agree the question first, then the deliverable — a structuring note, a governance roadmap, a diligence report — with a date against it. Standing advisory runs on a fixed review calendar with your leadership team.

No brokerage, no product commissions, no referral arrangements. Our advice is paid for by you, which is the only way it stays yours. When another firm is better placed for a mandate, we will tell you that too.

Four to six weeks across board and committee processes, records, related-party and delegation frameworks, ownership structure and regulatory exposure. You receive a Governance Scorecard, a ranked risk assessment and a roadmap with owners and timelines — not a list of observations.

Yes — inbound and outbound. Entry routes, sectoral caps, holding structures, valuation and RBI reporting, transfer-pricing exposure. You get an India Entry Roadmap or an Investment Structuring Report before anything is committed, including what the structure costs you at exit.

Fixed fees for defined mandates, monthly retainers for standing advisory, transaction work priced on a scope agreed before we start. No hourly surprises. You will know what a deliverable costs before we begin producing it.