Finance support, in the same city as you.

Almost all finance work can be done remotely now, and most of it is. Books live in the cloud, calls replace meetings, and a good adviser in Chennai can serve a founder in Chandigarh perfectly well. So it's worth being honest about what proximity actually buys.

It buys the conversations that don't fit into a scheduled call. The hour before a board meeting when you want to test how to explain a bad quarter. The morning after a term sheet arrives. The session where three people argue about pricing with a whiteboard, and nobody wants to do that over a video link. Sitting in your office also shows things a call never will: how the sales team really tracks pipeline, who actually approves payments, what your operations lead is worried about.

Simplify is based in Bengaluru. That means in-person meetings in the city when they're useful, and calls when they aren't. There's no walk-in office, so meetings happen at your office or somewhere convenient to it.

The city's mix shapes the questions. Software companies selling abroad, IT services firms and agencies billing global clients, healthcare and healthtech businesses, and food service brands scaling across neighbourhoods. The stage is usually post-seed to Series A, with revenue somewhere between a couple of crore and twenty.

Dollar revenue, rupee costs

Companies selling software or services to customers abroad, where margin moves with the exchange rate and nobody can say by how much. The fix is one reporting currency, a stated rate, and exchange movement shown separately from growth.

Hiring ahead of revenue

Bengaluru salaries for senior engineering and sales roles are among the highest in the country, and a hiring plan built on salary rather than fully loaded cost understates burn by a meaningful margin every month.

A round that's closer than the numbers are

Investor density here means conversations start early. Founders often get meetings before their metrics can survive a data request, which turns a warm introduction into a stalled process.

Grants alongside equity

Karnataka's startup programmes offer non-dilutive money, which is genuinely valuable and behaves nothing like a funding round in a cash forecast.

Most finance advice online, and a good deal of it written in India, stops at the national rules. A few things here are state-specific, and they're the ones a payroll provider in another state sometimes gets wrong.

• ·Professional tax. Karnataka charges ₹200 a month for employees with gross monthly pay at or above ₹25,000, with no tax below that, and a maximum of ₹2,400 a year. Employers register for a certificate within 30 days of becoming liable, and deducted tax is generally paid by the 20th of the following month through the state's online portal. The tax is deducted from the employee, so it doesn't add to employer cost, but the employer carries the compliance.
• ·Shops and establishments registration under Karnataka's rules, which most office-based startups need, along with the records and displays that come with it.
• ·Labour code implementation, which is national but administered by the state, so timing and process details can differ from what a founder hears from peers elsewhere.
• ·Commercial leases in the city, which commonly ask for large deposits and carry lock-in periods. Both belong in the cash plan long before the fit-out quote does.

None of this is complicated. It's just easier when whoever builds your plan already knows the calendar, rather than discovering it in month three. Filings themselves sit with your CA or payroll provider; Simplify works alongside them.

Four cost lines behave differently here than in most Indian cities, and each one shows up in plans as a smaller number than it turns out to be.

• ·Senior salaries. Engineering and sales leadership compete with well-funded companies and global capability centres, so a role budgeted at last year's market rate is often under by the time an offer is accepted. Budget at fully loaded cost, and allow for a counter-offer.
• ·Attrition and replacement. Losing a senior person costs the notice period overlap, the recruitment fee, and the months before a replacement is productive. In a team of twenty, one departure a quarter is a real line in the plan.
• ·Office space. Commercial rent, maintenance charges and a deposit that can run to several months, plus a lock-in that makes the decision hard to reverse. GST on rent is a cost for any business that can't claim it back, such as an exempt healthcare service.
• ·ESOP expectations. Candidates here compare option grants as readily as salaries, which means the pool gets used faster than founders expect, and the dilution needs modelling before offers go out rather than after.

None of these argues against hiring or growing. They argue for a plan built on what things actually cost in this city, which is what a local adviser should bring that a template can't.

Most Bengaluru startups already have a CA firm handling books, GST and TDS, and often a payroll provider as well. Simplify doesn't replace either, and doesn't want to. Your CA answers what happened and whether it's recorded and filed correctly. Simplify answers what the numbers mean and what to do next.

In practice the arrangement works best when the accountant closes the books to a fixed date each month, the payroll provider handles PF, ESIC and professional tax, and Simplify builds the reporting, the plan and the decision support on top of what they produce. Where their output isn't reliable enough to build on, you'll hear that early, with specifics.

The four things Simplify does don't change by city. What changes is how quickly a question can be settled in person.

• ·Financial Clarity: a review of what's actually happening in the numbers, and which decisions the answer changes.
• ·Finance Systems: the monthly close, investor MIS, cash forecasting and the annual operating plan, set up so your team can run them.
• ·Strategic Finance: senior finance thinking in the decisions each month, without a full-time CFO's cost.
• ·Investment Readiness: getting the financials, metrics and documentation ready before investor scrutiny starts.

A first conversation is usually 30 to 45 minutes, in person if you're in the city and it suits you, otherwise a call. It starts with what's happening in the business, not with a service. If the honest answer is that you need an accountant, a payroll provider or a full-time hire rather than fractional support, you'll hear that.

Fractional finance support is worth money when decisions are getting expensive. Below that point, a good accountant and a disciplined founder are enough, and paying for advice you won't act on is a waste.

Signs it's too early: revenue is small enough that the founder can hold the whole picture in their head, there's no team beyond a handful of people, and no decision on the table that would cost more than a few lakh to get wrong. Signs it's about time: a hiring plan that meaningfully changes burn, a second location or product, a fundraise inside the next year, or a founder spending several evenings a month rebuilding spreadsheets.