Fractional COO & Embedded Operator
That's me, Rakhee Dodhia.
I work one day a week inside your business as part of your leadership team, not as an adviser looking in from the outside. I am embedded in it and accountable for outcomes, building the infrastructure that lets the business perform without depending on any one person.
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I take accountability for outcomes rather than handing over advice and stepping back. That is the standard I have worked to for over a decade inside founder-led businesses, as a strategic and commercial operator rather than an external adviser.
Most recently, I served as General Manager of a professional services consultancy, where I led a full operational transformation that let the founder step away from day-to-day operations for six months while the business continued to perform without them.
Before that, I spent six years as GM of a diversity tech start-up. I grew it from inception to profitability, took it into ANZ, Asia, the US, and Europe, and managed its full acquisition process through to completion in 2024.
I am based on the Northern Beaches of Sydney and work with founders across Australia.
AI is reshaping how work gets done across every sector, and the economic assumptions that underpinned how many growing businesses were built are now under real pressure. The businesses that navigate this well will not simply be the ones that move fastest. They will be the ones with strong operational foundations: clear accountability, systems that work, teams that can execute without one person holding it all together, and commercial discipline that does not depend on a single relationship.
Most growing businesses do not have that yet, not because their founders are not capable, but because building it requires a different kind of leadership to the one that built the business in the first place. That is the gap I close.
I start by understanding the business as it actually operates, not as it appears on paper, identifying what is breaking, where the pressure sits, and what is holding growth back.
Working with you, I build the right structure for where the business is now, covering systems, accountability, and commercial framework. It is specific to this business, not a template dropped in from somewhere else.
I do not hand over a plan and leave. I work through it, because the difference between a strategy that sits in a document and one that actually changes the business is implementation, and that is where I spend my time.
The goal of every engagement is to make myself unnecessary. I step back once the business can hold its own. The embedded model scales to the size of the gap: a typical engagement runs three months to a year, with time on the ground adjusted to what the business needs.
From a two-year embedded engagement as GM/COO of a founder-led professional services firm. Results are not attributed solely to one individual.
These figures are from the most recent and fully documented engagement. The underlying work spans more than a decade, including a prior six-year GM engagement with a tech start-up that grew to profitability and was acquired in 2024.
This works for a founder-led business, typically in services or professional services, where growth has outpaced the operational structure behind it. The founder is usually carrying too much, or the business lacks the leadership layer to scale cleanly, or both, and the gap is operational and commercial leadership rather than technical knowledge.
It is the right fit if you are ready to bring in someone who builds from the inside, not a coach and not a consultant with a deck. Because the engagement needs to deliver a clear return, it works best for businesses with a minimum of $500k profit.
"If you stepped away from your business for three months, what would happen?"
If the answer makes you uncomfortable, that's worth a conversation.
rakhee@imaraco.com.au