A startup founder, backed by decent funding, stares at a flattened sales graph. The brand’s social feeds are abuzz with activity; the marketing team is fluent in the language of clicks and conversions. But enduring, scalable brand-building? That’s a different ball game altogether.
What could help the business is senior marketing leadership — someone with both the brand vision and the battle scars. But most founders aren’t quite ready to commit to a full-time CMO.
Enter the fractional CMO: A global, fast-rising, part-time leadership model now starting to influence India’s marketing hierarchy.
Marketing has become unrecognisably complex — multiple new consumer channels, shifting behaviour and expanding martech stacks have made strategic guidance a necessity. But that doesn’t necessarily have to come from a fulltime hire.
The rise of fractional CMOs is being driven by startups in India. Legacy companies, though still cautious, may not be far behind, looking to tap a marketplace that rewards nimbleness over permanence.
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Steering from the outside
The trend is also rooted in the past decade’s surge in venture capital and private equity funding, which has encouraged startups to bring in seasoned practitioners for guidance.
S Srinivas, an independent brand consultant and fractional CMO, has been a ‘quasi-insider from the outside’ guiding over 60 brands over the past decade, including Indian Terrain, Mahindra Retail, BabyOye, ShadowFax, Traya, Revolt, etc. He notes that many Indian businesses are beginning to follow the lead of global giants like Unilever, which distinguishes between brand building (long-term vision) and growth marketing (short-term objectives) .
More Indian companies are understanding the value of this approach, where you need to align this long-term asset creation with your urgent business goals, he adds.
“However, startups that tend to focus more on growth marketing often lack the organisational structure and training infrastructure to support this dual approach, and fractional CMOs are stepping in to bridge the gap,” Srinivas explains.
‘OTP for ATM’
Meghana Bhat, co-founder of Early Partners, shares that fractional roles gained prominence after the Covid-19 pandemic, particularly post the wave of layoffs in big tech and senior roles across industries. “By 2023, there were around 80,000 people on LinkedIn with ‘fractional’ in their job title in India,” she points out.
Travel company Pickyourtrail, for instance, worked with Bhat on a full repositioning exercise. Acting as fractional CMO, she and her team built their annual marketing plan and now work closely with the company to operationalise that strategy .
Having someone who’s been there, done that, and can guide you is crucial, says Hari Ganapathy, cofounder at PickYourTrail. “A fractional CMO speaks the language of a CEO or founder: They understand ROI, balance long-term and short-term goals and give perspective on how things will play out in year one, two and three,” he says.
“Meta and Google are great to test the waters but when you want to scale and distribute more widely, you need broader reach. The platforms are built for self-serve flows: Load up a wallet, spend some money and see inputs. Branding doesn’t work like that,” Ganapathy explains, adding that any meaningful investment needs more time for results to show.
Manu Prasad, former CMO at fintech brand ScripBox and now a fractional CMO, recalls how this landscape has evolved from a handful of LinkedIn profiles to a flood in just a couple of years. “Keyword search volumes have also spiked, signalling strong momentum,” he adds.
A common refrain he hears from founders and CEOs: They need someone who takes accountability. “At the risk of sounding facetious, I call it OTP for ATM — Own The Problem for All Things Marketing,” he laughs.
This desire for accountability, Prasad adds, often stems from resource constraints, uncertainty about the required skill sets, or the fear of culture mismatches when hiring a full-time CMO.
The advantage is that you get the leadership without the overheads. “You’re only paying for what is needed — strategy, optimisation, scaling and not the time a professiona l spends upskilling at work, unnecessary meetings and a lot of the operations,” says
Saurabh Parmar, an FMCO and consultant who’s worked with clients across Asia and the US.
Consultant value
In India, Parmar says, such roles are common in early-stage startups — mainly seed to series A. But they often get morphed into a “quasiagency” setup, with “one person bringing in freelancers to fill the gaps, rather than functioning as a true part-time CMO”.
Vivek Sharma, founder at Altyvyst Advisors and a former CMO at Pidilite and Philips India, has spent the past three years on consulting projects — ranging from nine months to almost three years. Yet, he prefers the consulting route, saying it’s more strategic and long-term. “A consultant is seen as a business partner — someone with a stake in the long game. There’s continuity of revenue, a deeper commitment and more skin in the game,” he shares.
Ultimately, it’s about the value one brings. “You can’t throw away decades of experience for a penny,” he says. “I’ve walked away from a client over commercials, only to have them return later. What you want isn’t arbitrary; it reflects your background, the brands you’ve built and the industries you’ve navigated.”
Terminology aside, Parmar notes that the choice often comes down to numbers. “An FMCO is ideal for companies with a CMO budget of ?25–50 lakh annually,” he says. “It avoids the cost of hiring a full-time CMO at over ?1 crore plus ESOPs and benefits or promoting senior managers who lack the skills — all of which takes more time and risks creating marketing debt.”
Legacy caution
Legacy companies, however, remain cautious, favouring traditional, permanent, in-person, day-to-day leadership. Yet even among these giants, the appetite for fresh thinking is growing.
At FMCG major ITC, where Sharma has been mentoring a marketing training programme, a company spokesperson says, “Legacy companies like ours, with decades of in-house marketing, have benefited from bringing in external consultants with strong industry experience. These offer fresh perspectives and help develop strategic thinking.”
Regional, family-owned brands — especially those seeking to expand beyond their local markets — are also warming up to the idea. Well-established in their home markets but lacking marketing infrastructureto scale up, many are increasingly open to outside help.
Sharma highlights instances of companies like Sheela Foam and Pune-based Suhana Masale. With the former, he helped rejuvenate Sleepwell through a new positioning campaign and product launches, followed by the full relaunch of Kurlon, including augmenting their marketing with structure, processes, talent hires, training and agency onboarding .
With Suhana Masale, Sharma crafted expansion strategies, including a Gujarat relaunch, featuring a new product range and a full multimedia campaign.
Deep impact
In marketing, intellectual property — especially creative campaigns — is often contested. So, how much trust do external practitioners command inside company walls? A fair bit. Most sign NDAs and sometimes, even non-compete clauses.
“Strategic frameworks for planning, the critical thinking and mental models are my toolkit, but the actual practice of it, and the ideas therein belong to the client. That’s the IP I co-create and I consider it their property,” says Prasad.
Fractional CMOs can be truly effective only if there’s access to all the data and information that a fulltime CMO would have, says Bhat. “The relationship is different from that of an agency. To truly move the needle, a fractional CMO needs to integrate fully with the organisation.
Similarly, a brand can trust them if there is transparency in terms of external vendor pricing and recommendations,” she says.
Helping hands
In cases where a company already has a CMO who is juggling multiple brands, an extra pair of hands can be a relief, especially in areas like digital or performance marketing or when D2C brands come on-board through acquisitions.
At times, an outsider’s perspective offering a neutral voice is welcome. “Full-time CMOs are fine with this arrangement by virtue of the incremental value offered by the consultant,” says Sharma.
And with clear boundaries, the collaboration can be symbiotic.
In today’s fragmented, fast-moving market where AI is rewriting the brand and marketing playbook, the CMO’s role faces much scrutiny. Experts expect the demand for fractional roles to keep rising, as companies chase efficiency and re-evaluate payrolls, encouraging senior leaders to take up high paid gig work.
Hiring a part-time CMO with the full span of skills, rather than a full-time one with gaps, isn’t just practical, but a marker of operational maturity . “The ability to be on the same wavelength as the leadership while also helping shape brand strategy — that is the most important lever fractional CMOs bring,” reminds Ganapathy.