Fractional CMO · Marketing Consultant · India · UAE · UK · US

A FRACTIONAL CMO WHO HAS ACTUALLY SPENT THE BUDGET

A fractional CMO is a senior marketing leader who owns your growth part-time — the plan, the budget math, the vendors, the number — without joining your payroll. This one has managed ₹50Cr+ in ad spend across 280+ brands since 2020, and runs an AI-augmented execution engine behind the advice.

₹50Cr+ ad spend managed · 280+ brands since 2020 · Led by Aman Rai — see the work in public at @amanrai.official

The offer in one paragraph: ADSWORM's fractional CMO engagement gives ₹1–10Cr Indian brands and international founders a growth head on a part-time retainer: a monthly growth plan with channel mix and real budget math, a weekly steering call, oversight of every vendor and agency you pay, a funnel and tracking audit, and hiring guidance when it's time to build in-house. Plans start at ₹50,000/month (≈ AED 2,200 / $600). It's not a full-time hire, and it's not another single-channel vendor — it's the person who decides where the money goes.

Here's my opinion, and I'll stand behind it: most fractional CMOs and marketing consultants in India are career advisors. They've sat in strategy meetings for a decade, but they haven't personally burned a lakh on a bad creative and watched the CPL double by Thursday. The advice that survives contact with a live ad account is different from the advice that survives a boardroom. I've spent the budget — ₹50Cr+ of it, across 280+ brands — and that's the entire pitch. If you want the framework for judging anyone in this seat, including me, read how to choose a growth partner in India.

What This Engagement Is — And Isn't

EVERYTHING THE ENGAGEMENT COVERS

Six standing deliverables. The mix shifts by tier, but the shape stays the same: one person owns the growth number, and everything below feeds it.

Monthly Growth Plan

Channel mix, budget allocation, targets with actual arithmetic behind them — what goes where, why, and what it must return.

Weekly Steering Call

One call where the week's decisions get made: what's working, what gets cut, what ships next. No status theatre.

Vendor & Agency Oversight

We audit what your agencies and freelancers deliver, hold them to the plan's numbers, and tell you when to replace one.

Funnel & Tracking Audit

GA4, pixels, attribution, lead routing — repaired until the dashboard tells the truth. Decisions on bad data are just guesses.

AI-Augmented Execution

20–40 ad creative variants a month and done-for-you founder content through an AI clone — the leadership comes with a production engine attached.

Hiring Guidance

When to make your first marketing hire, what the role should be, JDs, interview questions, and honest reads on candidates.

WHO IT FITS — AND WHO IT DOESN'T

Straight answer, because a retainer that fits badly wastes both sides' quarters.

Good fitBad fit
₹1–10Cr Indian brands where the founder is still the de-facto marketing headEnterprises that need a full-time CMO in the building — go hire one
Brands paying 2–3 vendors with nobody owning the combined numberTeams that want a yes-man to bless decisions already made
International founders (UAE, UK, US) who want a remote growth lead across marketsAnyone shopping for a single-channel vendor — that's a different page
Funded or profitable companies about to scale spend and afraid of wasting itPre-revenue ideas with no marketing budget to steer yet

PRICING: THREE TIERS, THREE CURRENCIES

Numbers up front, because "price on request" usually means "more than you'd agree to." Exact scope gets confirmed on the call — team size, channel count and meeting cadence move the number.

TierMonthlyWhat you get
Advisory₹50,000
≈ AED 2,200 / $600
Monthly growth plan + weekly steering call, funnel and tracking review, async access for decisions between calls
Growth Lead₹75,000
≈ AED 3,300 / $900
Everything in Advisory + vendor and agency oversight, monthly reporting you can trust, hiring guidance, quarterly budget resets
Full Fractional CMO₹1,25,000+
≈ AED 5,500+ / $1,500+
Everything above + AI-augmented execution: 20–40 creative variants/month, AI clone founder content, campaign oversight across every channel you run

THE PROOF: AN OPERATOR, NOT A DECK

Behind the title is Aman Rai, founder of ADSWORM. The numbers that qualify him for this seat are the ones already published on this site: Perfect 5 Clinic scaled from 1 to 11 branches at 4x ROAS. Derma Skin & Hair hit an 8.4x peak ROAS across 3 locations. Nach Fashion ran at 7x ROAS with a 61% CAC cut. HOABL's Goa real-estate campaigns returned 5.8x on HNI leads. Those aren't consulting case studies — they're accounts we operated, with budgets we were answerable for.

One anecdote that explains why operating experience matters: Atulyam Group, a Noida commercial real-estate developer, came to us after a prior agency spent ₹6 lakh over four months and produced zero closings. The strategy deck they'd been given wasn't wrong on paper — the execution had no one owning the number. We rebuilt the funnel, ran it ourselves, and got the cost per booked site visit to ₹14,800 at 5.6x ROAS on ₹2–15Cr tickets. That gap — between a plan that reads well and a plan someone is accountable for — is the whole reason fractional CMOs exist.

Strategy without a number attached is just a well-formatted opinion. The weekly call exists so the number gets an owner.

The AI-native part isn't a buzzword bolted on either. ADSWORM runs its own founder's AI clone in public, ships 20–40 creative variants a month for ad accounts, and wrote the playbook we use in AI performance marketing in India. Your fractional CMO shouldn't just recommend AI-augmented content — he should be publishing with it.

THE FIRST 30 DAYS

Four weeks, four outcomes. You'll know by day 30 whether this was worth it — that's deliberate.

  1. Week 1 — Audit. Ad accounts, funnel, tracking, past spend, unit economics. We find where money leaks before we suggest where it should go.
  2. Week 2 — Plan. The monthly growth plan lands: channel mix, budget allocation, targets with arithmetic you can check.
  3. Week 3 — Fixes. Broken tracking repaired, wasted spend cut, the two or three quick wins shipped while the bigger plan spins up.
  4. Week 4 — Rhythm. The weekly steering call locks in, reporting format agreed, vendor responsibilities assigned. From here it compounds.
Honest note: we won't parade named "fractional CMO clients" at you — this engagement model is a new front door to work ADSWORM has done since 2020. The proof is the operating record above: real accounts, real budgets, documented results. If the audit in week 1 says your money is better spent without us, the plan will say so. A guarantee-backed version of our execution work exists too — see the 5x ROAS guarantee.

QUESTIONS FOUNDERS ASK BEFORE THEY START

What does a fractional CMO actually do?

Owns your growth part-time: the monthly plan with channel mix and budget math, the weekly steering call, oversight of your agencies and freelancers, a funnel and tracking audit, and hiring guidance. CMO-level direction without the ₹8,00,000+ monthly cost of a full-time hire.

How much does a fractional CMO cost in India?

Our tiers run ₹50,000/month (≈ AED 2,200 / $600) for Advisory, ₹75,000/month (≈ AED 3,300 / $900) for Growth Lead, and ₹1,25,000+/month (≈ AED 5,500+ / $1,500+) for the full engagement with AI-augmented execution. Scope gets confirmed on the scoping call.

How is this different from hiring a marketing agency?

An agency executes a channel and naturally argues for more of it. A fractional CMO sits on your side of the table — deciding which channels deserve budget and holding every vendor, including agencies like ours, to the numbers. In this engagement the leadership role comes first.

Do you work with companies outside India?

Yes — the whole engagement runs remotely over video and shared dashboards. We work with founders in the UAE, the UK and the US alongside Indian brands, and pricing works in ₹, AED, $ or £.

How much of your time do we actually get?

Fewer hours than a full-time hire, more decisions per hour. Every tier includes the weekly call and the monthly plan; higher tiers add vendor reviews, tracking ownership, hiring support and creative production. You're buying an owner for the number, not hours at a desk.

What happens in the first 30 days?

Week 1: full audit of accounts, funnel, tracking and spend. Week 2: the growth plan with budget math. Week 3: tracking fixes and quick wins shipped. Week 4: the weekly operating rhythm locks in. By day 30 you can judge the engagement on its own output.

WANT A GROWTH HEAD WITHOUT THE PAYROLL?

Message us on WhatsApp and we'll scope your channels, team and tier on one call. If the fit isn't there, we'll say so on that call — not after three invoices.

Start on WhatsApp Meet the Operator Prefer email? Write to contact@adsworm.com

REQUEST A SCOPING CALL

Thirty minutes. You bring the numbers you have; we tell you plainly whether a fractional CMO makes sense for your stage - and what we would fix first.

Related: How we work: The ADSWORM Method (our 5-stage system)