An Empowering Partner for a Startup CFO

Monisha Khushalani spent 20+ years as a finance professional and leader at several large Beauty and CPG companies, including Coty, Unilever, and Nestle. Although she gained invaluable experience from seeing a holistic view of successful businesses, Monisha was eager to have a more influential role in decision-making. In 2016, Sir Kensington’s (Sir K’s), a condiment company, brought her on as their first CFO. Within the first 48 hours, she had already made a decision to spend $1M dollars on a capital expenditure project expecting to recoup the entire $1M in the first year and yield ongoing cost reduction to benefit gross margin.

Propeller, which had supported Sir K’s CEO Mark Ramadan since 2013, was an invaluable resource. Over the next two years, Propeller helped her streamline month-end reporting, implement inventory management processes and prepare financials as the company closed a deal with Unilever.

After the Sir K’s acquisition, Monisha stayed in the startup CPG world by moving to Good Culture, a gut-friendly cultured dairy company (and a fellow Propeller client). Together, they built a financial model that would extend their cash runway without sacrificing equity.

Monisha’s next big move happened when Mark Ramadan asked her to rejoin him as CFO at Hu, a chocolate and snacking company.

As a more mature business, she again turned to Propeller, though in a new capacity. Together, they worked on reporting and accurate inventory accounting within Netsuite, and Propeller provided much-needed transactional accounting services in advance of Hu’s acquisition by Mondelez International, Inc. Propeller continued to support Monisha during her time at Hu and has once again has joined forces when she became CFO for OLIPOP, another Propeller client.