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Kompella Technologies

India · Chennai · Bangalore · Mumbai · ₹6L–₹16L/month

A family office CTO for Indian families

India went from roughly 45 family offices in 2018 to more than 300 today, at around $30 billion. Almost none of them have a technologist, and most are running the family's financial life on spreadsheets that one person understands.

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A family office CTO in India owns consolidated reporting across custodians, PMS providers and AIF statements, the data governance that decides who can see which entity, and the technology separation when an office is carved out of the family's operating business. Fractional coverage runs ₹6L to ₹16L per month, roughly $8,000 to $20,000. Below about $500M AUM a full-time hire rarely has enough work to justify the seat.

What Is Different Here

Six problems that are specific to India.

The generic family-office technology playbook is written for US and European offices. These are the parts of the job that do not transfer.

Indian custodians and PMS platforms do not reconcile themselves

Positions sit across bank custodians, PMS providers, AIF capital-account statements and demat accounts, each on its own schedule and format. PMS reporting in particular arrives in a shape designed for a regulator rather than for consolidation, and private-market positions still turn up as a PDF that nobody can parse. The work is building one view that survives all of it, and keeping it correct when a provider changes their export.

GIFT City structures add a second reporting reality

A family with an IFSC vehicle at GIFT City is running two regimes at once: domestic holdings under one set of rules and the IFSC entity under another. Consolidating them into a single balance-sheet view is a real data-modelling problem, not a formatting one, and it is usually the point at which the family spreadsheet stops working.

Cross-border consolidation, in both directions

Most Indian family offices of any size hold assets outside India, and many have family members who are tax-resident elsewhere. The technology question is which entity owns which position, in which currency, on which valuation date, and how to produce a consolidated statement without hand-editing anything.

SEBI and FEMA adjacent data handling

This is a data-governance problem before it is a compliance one. Know who can see which entity's holdings, keep an audit trail of who accessed what, and be able to produce records on request. Most family offices at this size have no access model at all: everyone with the shared drive link sees everything.

The family-business-to-family-office transition

In India the office is usually carved out of an operating business, so it inherits that company's IT, its finance team, and often its ERP. That works until the family's assets outgrow the business's systems and nobody notices the day it happens. Separating the two cleanly, without a migration that stalls at sixty percent, is the single most common engagement here.

AI adoption without leaking the family's documents

Every family office in India is being pitched AI tooling. Very few have decided what may be pasted into a chatbot, which vendors may retain documents, or where the line sits between useful automation and an irreversible confidentiality breach. Deciding that before the tools arrive is cheaper than deciding it afterwards.

The role itself, independent of geography, is covered on the family office CTO page.

Coverage

Three cities, three different conversations.

Chennai

Where our actual advisory relationships are. The Chennai family-office community is closely held and mostly first-generation-institutionalised: an operating business, a growing investment portfolio, and a finance team that inherited the technology by accident. We describe these engagements by type only and never name a family.

Bangalore

The newest money and the most technically literate principals, frequently founders who exited and now run their own office. They usually do not need convincing that technology matters; they need someone who will make the platform decision and own it rather than adding another opinion.

Mumbai

The deepest pool and the most institutional, with more multi-family offices and more in-house investment staff. Engagements here look closer to a small institution than to a family: more entities, more managers, and more pressure on consolidated reporting cycle time.

Pricing

In rupees and dollars.

Published, because a family office asking what this costs should not have to sit through a discovery call to find out.

Advisory

₹6L – ₹8L / month

$8,000 – $10,000

Two days a month. Platform selection, vendor evaluation, an access and data-governance model, and a second opinion when the CFO is being sold something.

Fractional

₹10L – ₹13L / month

$13,000 – $16,000

Roughly one day a week. Owns the consolidation project end to end, manages the implementation partner, and is accountable for the reporting cycle actually shortening.

Embedded

₹14L – ₹16L / month

$18,000 – $20,000

Two days a week during a transition: carving the office out of the operating business, a custodian migration, or standing up an IFSC entity's reporting from scratch.

FAQ

What Indian families ask.

India went from roughly 45 family offices in 2018 to more than 300 today, managing on the order of $30 billion, according to PwC. The growth is real but the institutional depth has not caught up: most of these offices run with fewer than five people, and the technology that holds the family's financial life is usually a set of spreadsheets that one person understands.
Advisory engagements run ₹6L to ₹8L per month (about $8,000 to $10,000) for two days a month. Fractional coverage at roughly one day a week runs ₹10L to ₹13L (about $13,000 to $16,000). Embedded work during a transition runs ₹14L to ₹16L (about $18,000 to $20,000). A full-time hire with genuine seniority is materially more expensive and, below roughly $500M AUM, usually does not have enough work to justify the seat.
Yes. The existing advisory relationships are in Chennai, and Bangalore and Mumbai are both straightforward to serve. Most of the work is remote by nature — it is data modelling, platform selection and vendor management — with on-site time concentrated at the start of an engagement and around a migration cutover.
This is the most common situation in India and it needs a deliberate separation rather than a gradual drift. The office typically inherits the operating company's IT, finance team and often its ERP, which works until the family's assets outgrow those systems. The engagement is usually to define the boundary, move the investment reporting onto something built for it, and leave the operating business's systems alone rather than attempting both at once.
It depends on the entity count and how much of the portfolio is in private markets, and the honest answer is sometimes that none of the international platforms fits well enough to justify the cost. Addepar, Asora, Eton Solutions, Masttro and Canoe all solve real problems, but Indian custodian and PMS feeds are frequently the constraint rather than the platform's capability. A thin consolidation layer over existing tools is sometimes both cheaper and more likely to survive contact with reality.
Yes to both, and working through the existing finance team is the normal arrangement rather than the exception. The CFO usually knows exactly what is broken and has not had the technical bandwidth to fix it. The engagement adds technical ownership rather than replacing anyone, and confidentiality is the baseline expectation in this work: we describe engagements by type and mandate and never name a family.

Reporting cycle taking too long?

Thirty minutes, no pitch. We will talk through the entities, the custodians and where the consolidation actually breaks, and you will get three recommendations whether or not we work together.

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