Ankita Saraf

As the CoS (member of core team consisting of Founders and CBO and myself), I functioned as the trusted extension of CEO, facilitating daily decision-making processes and providing support across all teams, totaling over 250 individuals. Initially assuming the role of Head of Finance and Investor Relations (member of 20 people leadership team), I played a pivotal role in advancing the organization's financial and strategic objectives, evidenced by the following achievements:

• Built and oversaw a cross-functional team of 20+ professionals across Finance, Legal, Compliance, Fin-Ops, and Admin to manage operations spanning three companies.
• Successfully orchestrated a $25 Mn Series A funding round from renowned VCs like Bessemer Venture Partners and Tiger Global.
• Managed a P&L exceeding $250 million GMV across three business lines, ensuring alignment with growth targets and sustained profitability.
• Spearheaded a comprehensive overhaul of the business model to accommodate exponential 10x MoM growth and ensure full compliance with digital lending regulations. This involved leading a 30-member task force across product, customer success, engineering, operations, and support functions to standardize corporate and commercial arrangements, define blueprints, PRD, and implement automation, following Agile methodologies like Scrum.
• Led end-to-end compliance initiatives to ensure strict adherence to evolving fintech and lending regulations, obtaining essential licenses and managing relationships with various government authorities.
• Formulated and executed a robust investor relations strategy, fostering transparent and mutually beneficial relationships with investors.

Continuing in my role as CoS, I drove strategic initiatives and operational excellence, achieving notable milestones:

• Orchestrated the go-to-market strategy for the Payments product. This entailed leading a 20-person task force from Product, Business, and Engineering domains to delineate the product roadmap and MVP, culminating in a successful beta launch
• Oversaw operations teams, managing ~30k top-of-the-funnel leads and ~150k monthly transactions. Implemented workflow automation and CRM systems to bolster efficiency, adhering to Agile principles.
• Fostered robust relationships with lenders, securing access to $100 million in capital and negotiating favorable terms to ensure seamless operations.
• Spearheaded the development, implementation, and monitoring of revenue strategies, budgeting, cost optimization initiatives, and annual operating plan (AOP) for all business verticals, ensuring alignment with growth objectives and sustainable profitability.
• Led Talent Acquisition efforts, overseeing the scaling of the team from 50 to over 250+ members while upholding high morale and defined OKRs, incorporating Agile methodologies for rapid team expansion.

Through proactive leadership and adept stakeholder management, I consistently propelled significant growth and operational excellence while adeptly navigating complex regulatory landscapes.

At Artery, I co-founded a digital health company focused on building a channel manager to streamline backend infrastructure for healthcare organizations. In this role, I engaged with users, spearheaded product development, and led team building efforts. Scaling our team to 7 members, we established a beta user list comprising 70+ health practitioners while conducting diverse Product Market Fit experiments.

• Business reorganization scheme, due diligence of targets, structuring of various acquisition deals and undertaking business in India.
• Business remodeling strategy for various e-commerce, direct selling marketing, FinTech and CRS clients.
• Facilitated inflow of foreign capital in various sectors through regulatory compliant and tax efficient mechanisms.
• Advisory services on various regulatory issues faced by clients including FEMA, PCMC Act, corporate law.
• End-to-end services including compliances and dispute resolution before CBDT, HC, SC, RBI, DoT.
• Assisted in building capacity and enhanced efficiency of teams through needs assessment and end-to-end deployment of SaaS applications across finance analytics.
• Managing sales cycle from lead generation, deal closure to servicing.

• Providing in-depth income tax consultancy including assessing tax risks, modeling taxable income, withholding and advance tax compliance and advisory matters.
• Preparing Income tax assessment and appeal documents.
• Representing clients before revenue authorities.
• Facilitating strategic decisions, resource planning through financial modeling and scenario analysis.
• Created investment proposals, financial projections, forecast, budgets, etc for various clients.
• Performing tax audit, statutory audit, internal audit and bank audit.
• Assisted clients in formation of companies, LLPs, trusts, etc and undertaking subsequent ROC compliance.

• Assisted clients in setting up business in India.
• Liasioning with various government organizations like CBDT, MCA, RBI, FIPB, etc.
• Helped set-up systems and processes across finance verticals.
• Working with management in understanding their business processes, helping them upgrade to next level of finance automation.
• Preparation of business proposals and engaging with clients for business development.
• Preparation of Income tax assessment and appeal documents.
• Preparation and filing of corporate tax returns and wealth tax returns.

• Assisted in preparation of opinions on interpretations of the provisions of Double Taxation Avoidance Agreements (DTAAs) on issues like Permanent Establishment exposure.
• Performed diagnostic review to ascertain conformity with relevant tax and regulatory provisions.
• Assisted in preparation of corporate tax returns.