Management consulting and fractional COO for growth-stage companies preparing to scale.
Vikram Vatsalan, formerly of McKinsey and Morgan Stanley, works with executive teams at Series A–C technology and fintech companies (generally a few years past launch, already generating revenue, and raising outside capital) to identify what is blocking scale and build the plan to fix it.
Growth exposes what was never built to scale.
The call usually comes at a specific moment. A raise is on the calendar and the diligence documents are not ready. A new leader has joined and roles are unclear. Or the company has grown past the processes that got it here.
Scoped engagement, or embedded operator.
Project-Based Management Consulting
A scoped engagement focused on a specific roadblock to scale: a funding round, an org redesign, a data and AI architecture plan. Defined start, defined output.
Fractional COO
Embedded, ongoing operating leadership for companies that need COO-level judgment and execution capacity before they're ready to hire one full-time.
Four places the roadblocks usually live.
Funding Readiness
Capital raising strategy and financial analysis, plus the deal room: the organized diligence documents investors expect, with the gaps behind it closed.
Organization & People
Two org charts, one functional and one supervisory, set the roles the business needs against the people filling them, exposing gaps and shaping the hiring roadmap.
Technology & Data
Maps processes, data flows, and tools to find the gaps, then delivers what the work calls for: a data architecture roadmap, a vendor evaluation framework, or a governance policy.
Risk
Finds where growth creates exposure, from liquidity and contracts to compliance and cybersecurity, as a full assessment or a single scoped review such as a liquidity review or contracts audit.
Every engagement moves through four stages.
Assess
Strategy and risk are assessed across the four areas, through documents and leadership interviews.
Diagnose
Roadblocks to scale are named and translated into discrete, scoped projects.
Focus
The two or three themes that matter most now become a focused portfolio of work.
Execute
The portfolio is delivered with the C-suite, then handed to the team to run.
“The roadblock is rarely where it first appears.”
A CEO could not set a vision or make an informed decision: no reliable sales projections, no clear view of revenue, expenses, or cash flow. It looked like a leadership problem. It was data architecture. The CRM, the accounting software, the bank accounts, and the product platform shared nothing coherently, and the fix touched sales, finance, and product at once.
Preparing for a Capital Raise
Five early risks: financial, legal, market, team, and operational, and the early actions that address each before it costs time and money.
If your company is scaling and something is not keeping pace, that is the conversation worth having.
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