TFS Gulf 
- Hi, we’re CA Sambhav Mehrotra and CA Sridhar S. Subramanian, founders of Startup Movers.
- From day one, we were laser-focused on helping startups with accounting, compliance, and fundraising.
- Having a separate brand from a typical CA firm really did wonders.
- In 2025, we hit $1.5 million ARR, with a team of 150+, and worked with 15,000 startups.
- Sounds impressive on paper…But it took us ten years to get here.
Why startups? The lightbulb moment
For me (Sambhav), the idea clicked while working as VP Finance at 91 Springboard, one of India’s early coworking spaces.
Watching the first 200–250 members (All startup founders) struggle with accounting, compliance, and fundraising made one thing obvious: India’s startup ecosystem was exploding, and no one was truly built for it.
Back then, most CA firms treated startups like a hobby. Very few allocated more than 5–10% of their practice to them.
But we went all-in, with:
- Separate brand.
- Clear positioning.
Sridhar came from the opposite end. He’d worked with large corporations like Coca-Cola India and Adecco.
In 2015, I pulled him in as a co-founder.
We didn’t overthink it. We just started…That’s when Startup Movers became real!
We were clear about one thing
Though we were CAs, we couldn’t look like a typical CA firm.
At the time, branding as a CA firm was almost illegal. Even now, it’s restricted, though ICAI has eased up since 2025. But back then? Forget it.
Look at the Big 4. Consulting is what you see. Compliance runs quietly in the background.
We took that cue.
If we showed up as “another CA firm,” founders would mentally switch off before the conversation even began.
Perception mattered a lot!
Services
Our tagline says it all: “Start to Scale.”
We handhold startups from incorporation through Series A and beyond.
That means the economics are not pretty in the beginning.
- Low Margin: Monthly accounting, GST, TDS, and payroll.
- Medium Margin: Secretarial services, internal reporting, and MIS.
High margin (the real money comes later):
- Fundraising and FEMA compliance
- Valuations and financial models
- Cross-border tax and US filings
- Virtual CFO and strategic work
If your revenue mix isn’t healthy, you won’t survive.
Low-margin work gets us in the door and keeps the lights on. Then you upsell and cross-sell. But you don’t get that unless you earn trust early.
Pricing is a tightrope walk
Serving our first client almost cost us more than what they were paying us.
Startups don’t always have money at the beginning. So we’re mostly betting on the founder and the idea.
Sometimes you grow with the startup
So you have clients who can’t pay. But in the future, if they make it, those relationships become gold.
You accept a margin hit today, betting that 10–20% will convert into high-margin work within the next 2–3 years.
We’ve worked with clients from day zero who are now ₹100 crore-plus, profitable, bootstrapped companies.
Sometimes the startup outgrows you
Then there’s the flip side.
You invest two years of your time and resources in a client. They scale. Then they drop you because they need in-house finance.
It stings, but you have to deal with it.
Sometimes the bet pays off. Sometimes it doesn’t. This is the reality.
But here’s a warning…There’s a thin line between being affordable and cheap.
Price yourself as the bargain option, and you’ll never climb out of that hole.
We learned that the hard way.
Also read: KPMG Partner quits and goes Boutique with high end advisory firm
Relationships with founders & VCs took years
We learned that time is the real investment early on, not money.
If you think you’ll be taking home serious cash in six months or even two years by only serving startups, I have news for you.
Unless you come with a strong corporate network, expect four to five years before you can make a profit.
Bangalore vs Delhi?
Delhi took me three years to build. Bangalore took Sridhar six months!
Revenue-wise, they’re neck-and-neck.
But the real opportunity now is tier-2 and tier-3 cities:
- Pune
- Indore
- Bhopal
- Ahmedabad
- Coimbatore
- Cochin
- Jaipur (building strong D2C brands)
30–35% of new deals are already coming from these cities.
That’s where the momentum is.
Mumbai and Pune will be operational soon.
Have you considered raising money?
In 2019, we had serious FOMO.
Everyone was raising. We even started building a pitch deck.
Then the mentors asked the uncomfortable but practical questions: Why do you need external funding? What will you do with it? What breaks if you don’t raise?
So we chose debt instead. We’ll be debt-free this year.
Should CA firms enter the startup ecosystem?
Yes. Unequivocally.
Even traditional firms should allocate a meaningful part of their practice to startups. The Big 4, BDO, GT, everyone is circling this space.
India is entering an era where 50–100 companies will go for an IPO in the next decade.
200,000+ startups are waiting to be scaled.
But again, I strongly recommend building a separate brand from your CA firm.
Also read: Unsexy Advisory, CA Firms in India are Suddenly Investor Favourites
Wrapping up…
If you have connections in the startup ecosystem (Founders, VCs, investors), you can provide high-end services from day one…fundraising, due diligence, advisory, cfo/tax srvices etc.
When we started, we had to build the network and earn trust from scratch. So we started with low-margin work, and it is financially difficult!
It has taken us 10 long years to reach our first million.
Why? This was a volume-driven business before it became margin-driven.
We held back scaling until we understood lifetime value.
We’ve glamorised the 2–3 year success story too much. In reality, it takes 10–15 years.
As Sridhar always tells me: The first million took ten years. The second will come much faster.
FAQs
Q: What are the emerging startup hubs in India for 2026 that firms should focus on?
Beyond Bengaluru and Delhi NCR, fast-growing hubs include Hyderabad, Pune, Chennai, Mumbai, Ahmedabad, and increasingly Tier-2 cities like Indore, Jaipur, and Kochi, driven by lower costs and strong founder ecosystems.
Q: What services are high-margin when serving startups?
High-margin services include Virtual CFO advisory, fundraising and financial modelling, due diligence support, ESOP structuring, valuation, and FEMA advisory for foreign investment. These command premium fees and create long-term client relationships.
