You’ve found product-market fit and some traction. Now your marketing needs to sell the story and scale the business.

 

Hello!
I am Manu Prasad

a Fractional CMO for startups

  • 21+ years of experience in companies such as Myntra, Urban Ladder & Scripbox 
  • Led diverse teams across brand, digital marketing, growth, social media, content and PR
  • Coach at Accel’s Founderstack program (2020-23)
  • Fractional CMO for startups since 2024, in diverse domains – foodtech, mobility etc
SAY HELLO
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Wonderful, but what does a Fractional CMO for startups actually do?

  • Define positioning, brand story, and go-to-market plans.
  • Bridge the gap between marketing activity and business outcomes.
  • Create integrated marketing strategies across channels.
  • Build repeatable acquisition and retention loops.
  • Align marketing with metrics that matter.
  • Mentor internal teams, manage external teams, and set scalable processes.

Brand

Align your brand strategy to the business model - define sharp positioning, clear value propositions, and consistent messaging that drives growth.

Communication

Translate brand strategy into creative effectiveness - build a communication system that delivers the right story, to the right audience, across digital and offline touchpoints.

Growth

Design efficient acquisition and retention loops - optimise paid and organic channels, improve CAC/LTV ratios, and make marketing spend predictable and profitable.

Analytics

Set up brand and performance dashboards and operating cadence - measure what matters, surface insights early, and build decisions around real data instead of intuition.

Stakeholder Management

Align leadership, product, marketing, and external partners - ensuring every campaign, agency, and spend ladders up to business outcomes.

Hiring & Mentoring

Build and coach the marketing team your startup actually needs - establish processes, clarify roles, and develop execution discipline that scales.

Get. Set. Grow?

LET'S TALK

How does it work in real life?

Discovery call

Understand your stage, traction, and growth challenges

Customised Proposal

Scope, pricing,  and deliverables aligned to your needs.

Engagement

Quick assessment of funnel, channels, and messaging

Execution Oversight

Aligning campaigns, partners, and budgets to your strategy.

Measurable Outcomes

Set up dashboards and review cadence – track progress, learn fast, and double down on what scales.

Handover

Build the foundation for sustained growth — hire or upskill your team, hand over systems, and transition smoothly.

tl; dr version

Why me?

Diverse domain experience

I’ve built and scaled brands across startups in multiple domains - from digital startups to established enterprises - giving me the ability to recognise patterns and adapt fast to your context.

Business-first approach

I focus on revenue, retention, and ROI — not jargon or vanity metrics.

Strategic and Practical

I create clear marketing roadmaps and help you find the right people, tools, and partners to execute them.

Transparent

If it’s not working, I’d be the first to tell you. If you don’t see value, we won’t bother about termination timelines. Questions asked will only for my understanding.

We've not come this far to only come this far

Let’s connect to understand your needs, and find a way to work together.

SAY HELLO

Frequently Asked Questions

What does a Fractional CMO do for a startup?

A Fractional CMO gives a startup senior marketing leadership without requiring a full-time CMO. The role can cover positioning, brand, GTM, growth, marketing priorities, team structure and agency management. Story, structure, scale. The focus changes with the startup’s stage: establishing a coherent marketing system early on, then creating the structure and leadership needed to scale it.

When should a startup hire a Fractional CMO?

A startup should consider a Fractional CMO once it has some evidence of product-market fit or early traction and marketing has become too important or complex for the founder to manage alone. Common signs include scattered marketing across agencies or junior hires, inconsistent results despite increasing spend, a team that needs senior direction, or a founder spending too much time troubleshooting marketing.

Does my startup need a Fractional CMO?

Not necessarily. A startup may not need a Fractional CMO if it is still searching for product-market fit, has a very simple marketing model, or primarily needs more execution capacity. A Fractional CMO becomes more useful when the challenge is deciding what marketing should do, creating a coherent system around it, and providing senior leadership to the people executing it.

Should a startup hire a Fractional CMO or a marketing agency?

If the startup knows what it needs to execute but lacks the people or capabilities to execute it, an agency may be the better choice. If the startup is unsure what to prioritise, has several agencies or channels operating independently, or needs someone to lead the marketing function, a Fractional CMO is more appropriate. The two can also work together: the Fractional CMO provides direction and leadership while agencies provide specialist execution.

How is a Fractional CMO different from a marketing consultant?

A consultant typically provides expertise or recommendations around a specific problem. A Fractional CMO takes an ongoing leadership role, working with the founder and team to set priorities, make decisions, establish processes and oversee execution. For a startup, the distinction is less about hours worked and more about whether the person is helping the business make and implement marketing decisions.

A Fractional CMO doesn’t just advise, they own the marketing function. They build systems, lead teams, and drive accountability across execution.

How does a Fractional CMO engagement work for a startup?

The engagement is typically part-time and focused on a defined period of growth or a specific marketing challenge. Manu generally works with startups for an initial six-month period, establishing priorities, strategy and processes, aligning the team or external partners, and overseeing execution. The engagement can continue if the startup still needs senior marketing leadership.

What stage of startup benefits most from a Fractional CMO?

The strongest fit is usually a growth-stage startup that has moved beyond MVP and has evidence of demand, but has not yet built a mature marketing leadership function. The exact stage matters less than the underlying problem: the business is ready to grow, but marketing lacks the structure, senior direction or operating discipline to support that growth.

When is a Fractional CMO not the right choice?

A Fractional CMO may not be the right choice if the business primarily needs additional execution capacity, has not yet established product-market fit, already has strong senior marketing leadership, or needs a permanent CMO who can build and lead the function full-time.

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