Can't afford a full-time CTO? This startup offers tech leadership on subscription

Building a technology-driven startup requires more than a show-stopping idea; it demands technical execution, strategic architecture, and experienced leadership. However, many founders who have a deep understanding of their market often lack the technical expertise to translate vision into code.

The traditional solution, hiring a full-time chief technology officer (CTO), comes with salaries and equity stakes that early-stage ventures can't afford. For businesses where technology enables rather than defines the product, the question is clear: how do you access technical leadership without a full-time executive hire?

Shrihari Shastry, Ankit Anand, and Sonali Parate founded Profound IQ in 2025 to address this gap. Operating from Bengaluru, the startup offers fractional CTO consulting and technical due diligence for investors.

After their previous venture, Lancers Club, where they invested Rs 10 lakh, didn’t achieve product-market fit, they pivoted to leverage their technical expertise, helping non-technical founders build and scale technology. 

Shastry leads fractional CTO services with over 15 years of experience, including roles at Barclays and 5x. Anand manages growth and operations, bringing product marketing experience from B2B SaaS companies Zenduty and Xempla. Parate oversees design, with previous product and UI/UX experience at 5x and Pepper Content. 

Fractional CTO for startups and risk assessment for investors

Profound IQ’s core offering is fractional CTO services, making experienced technology leaders available on a monthly subscription rather than as full-time hires. 

"Fractional CTOs work closely with founders to understand their product vision and existing technology setup. Their role is about strategic technical leadership and roadmapping, not writing code," Anand explains.

These CTOs create technology roadmaps aligned with business goals, design scalable architectures, build and manage engineering teams, and oversee the entire development process from planning to launch.

Within these services, Profound IQ also offers contract-based, minimum viable product (MVP) development. The team develops a six-month product roadmap, identifies critical features, and builds a working product with essential functionalities. "This enables the founder to test product-market fit, approach investors, or decide on further investment," Anand says.

Beyond fractional CTO services, the startup provides technical due diligence for investors conducting audits before Series A or Series B funding rounds. The evaluation covers code quality, scalability of the tech stack, the architecture's ability to handle increased load, continuous integration and continuous deployment (CI/CD) pipeline setup, and engineering team capabilities through either detailed audits or surface-level assessments.

"Profound IQ operates primarily as a consulting firm, not a traditional IT services company. Our CTOs are responsible for business outcomes, not just deliverables," Anand says.Each fractional CTO typically manages two clients simultaneously, with engagements around Rs 3 lakh per month.

Technology and clients

Technology stack decisions are driven by each client's business use case and vision. Profound IQ commonly uses Node.js and may recommend no-code solutions for budget-constrained startups. For well-funded companies, the startup builds complete tech teams with backend/frontend developers and specialised roles.

The company conducts the first two screening rounds, profiling candidates based on role requirements and startup stage, then evaluating technical skills, problem-solving ability, and startup mindset. Clients take over for the final rounds, focusing on deep technical discussions and culture fit.

"Our clients only interview candidates who've already cleared our technical and startup-fit assessment," Anand says. "It saves them time and ensures better quality hires."

The model primarily serves non-technical founders (at the idea or early stage) who lack technical execution capabilities, helping them avoid high CTO salaries, equity dilution, and premature hiring costs. It also caters to growth-stage companies with existing tech teams that lack leadership or product-to-tech alignment, and businesses filling leadership gaps after a CTO departure.

The startup has served 25 clients. Among them, Blitzgro, a consultancy for restaurants and hotel chains, needed help building a tech product. Profound IQ validated the product idea, designed the architecture, and led development from scratch. 

Another client, Finspectors.ai, had an existing tech team but needed stronger leadership to streamline development processes for scalability. With Butter Money, which offers simplified home loans, the focus was on tech hiring, team building, and creating a technology roadmap for confident scaling.

What's next

The bootstrapped startup is shifting its geographic focus toward the US market, aiming for 70-80% of business there while maintaining a 20-30% presence in India. With Shrihari Shastry and Swarupa Vengurlekar as its current fractional CTOs, the startup is hiring a third full-time fractional CTO. Its team has 8 members and is expanding its sales team to support this expansion. 

According to the Frak Conference State of Fractional Industry Report, the number of fractional leaders grew from 60,000 in 2022 to 120,000 in 2024, with business adoption expected to reach 35% by 2025. Working in this space, the startup competes with Canadian firm NuBinary and Toptal. 

The startup also plans to broaden its service model beyond fractional CTO services to include subscription-based, specific developer roles, backend, frontend, and other specialised positions on a contract basis. 

"This plug-and-play approach addresses demand from US-based companies looking to expand their teams without hiring and training overhead, particularly by building tech teams in India at a much lower cost," Anand says.