Santosh Kirve

Santosh is a trusted finance leader with 30 years’ experience across Europe, Middle East, Asia and the Pacific, combining commercial insight with hands-on execution. Originally trained as an engineer before completing his MBA and CIMA, he began his career in India and has spent the last 20 years in the UK working with listed and PE-backed businesses, helping them turn numbers into insight and strategy into action.

He is highly skilled in financial and risk management, continuous process improvement and finance transformation projects that drive growth and profitability. His expertise includes business strategy, financial modelling, pricing, cost reduction, business turnaround and managing offshore teams. Collaborative and values-driven, he enjoys mentoring people and building capability across the organisations he works with.

Santosh has held senior roles including FD of a Japanese multinational, where he led the restructuring and divestment of a business division, including a TUPE transfer. As Interim FD for a PE-backed SaaS company, he facilitated scaling-up through cross-border acquisitions and post-merger integration while maintaining profitability. More recently, he was FD of a media company, helping stabilise revenues and deliver a cost-focused turnaround (6% increase in revenue with 10% increase in contribution margin).

A British national of Indian heritage, Santosh brings strong cross-cultural communication skills and is fluent in English, Hindi and Marathi, with basic proficiency in German. He is passionate about travel and photography (having visited 25+ countries), and he contributes actively to his local community as a Parish Councillor and volunteer cricket coach. He also writes regularly on LinkedIn about leadership, self-development and effective business partnering.