Optimizing the financial processes of a primary health clinic chain

Stride had proven that demand existed, but the pace of expansion was starting to expose weaknesses in the financial foundation. Month-end reporting was slow, financial data across entities in two countries did not tie out cleanly, and investor updates often created more questions than clarity. Decisions on pricing, hiring, and expansion were being made without a dependable view of runway.

The founders initially engaged Alehar to oversee the finance team, improve the speed and quality of reporting, and track progress against investor milestones. Once we began the work, it became clear that the issues were broader. Pricing had not kept pace with rising costs, and separate country-level reporting was obscuring the group’s true cash position. With founder alignment, the work expanded to include repricing and full consolidation.

1. Rebuilding the financial foundation

We redesigned the chart of accounts, cleaned the data flows from clinic systems into accounting, and introduced a tighter month-end process. Within one cycle, the close moved from several weeks after month-end to around ten business days. This created a more consistent and reliable view of performance at both group and clinic level.

We also reconciled the financials across entities and built a clearer consolidated view of the business. That gave management a stronger basis for decision-making and reduced the risk of relying on incomplete or inconsistent country-level numbers.

2. Building a real runway view

As runway became the central management question, we built and maintained a set of scenario-based models and kept updating them as operating conditions changed. This included multiple management cases under different performance assumptions, a dedicated runway calculation, and consolidated P&L views under different average order value assumptions while also tracking GMV and NMV in the same framework.

This gave leadership a clearer view of how long cash would last under different scenarios and made it easier to test decisions such as pricing changes, marketing spend, and expansion pace against their impact on runway. It also created one current and defensible set of numbers for investor discussions.

3. Strengthening investor reporting and cash discipline

We rebuilt the monthly investor package so it started with the key metrics, then moved into the detailed schedules investors cared about, and ended with a live Q&A log. The result was clearer and more consistent reporting that helped rebuild confidence and reduce the time lost in repeated follow-up questions.

As the business entered a tougher phase, we also created a formal burn reduction plan focused on immediate, high-impact actions. We reviewed expenses across categories including marketing, legal, and capex, and proposed specific cuts and deferrals such as reducing low-return ad spend, freezing non-critical hiring, and delaying non-essential capex. This work extended runway without shutting down core operations and made the trade-offs more explicit so management could act faster.

4. Improving operating visibility and supporting funding discussions

We maintained a dedicated utilisation model to track and forecast capacity usage across all clinic locations. This helped show which clinics were under-utilised, where targets needed to change, and how operational performance linked to profitability rather than revenue alone. It became an important part of the weekly and monthly review process as the company tried to balance expansion with tighter cash.

With cleaner numbers and a clearer runway view in place, the founder re-engaged existing investors to discuss additional funding. As the runway tightened, we supported the founder through these discussions and helped manage the process during a difficult period. The immediate goal was to keep the business funded long enough to complete the next phase of rollout, reduce uncertainty for the team and suppliers, and avoid rushed decisions driven entirely by short-term cash pressure.