Fund the Plan

This is the step where most growth strategy stops, and where most growth plans fail. Naming an opportunity is not the same as funding it.

Two things decide it. The first is how much is actually needed, which is rarely the capex figure. Growth consumes capital before it generates any: in receivables, in inventory, in the months between committing to capacity and filling it. The real requirement is the peak cumulative cash shortfall across the whole period, and it is routinely a multiple of the number in the board paper.

The second is sequence. Capital has a cost ladder, and most companies climb it in the wrong order, reaching for equity or a term loan before working the cheaper rungs beneath.

India offers unusual depth at the lower rungs: production-linked and technology incentives, state industrial policy, export and guarantee schemes, concessional and impact capital. Most mid-market companies use one or none. Two disciplines matter more than the list. Government money is cheap, real and slow, so it should improve the return on a project already funded rather than sit on the critical path. And the instrument must match the asset life it funds: working capital on term debt, or capex on an overdraft, surfaces as a liquidity crisis two years later.