Management, HR, business advisory, or sector-specific consulting. The highest-margin, lowest-capital venture in the catalogue. For senior professionals with deep functional or sector experience.
Professional services consultancy is the lowest-capital, highest-margin venture in the Zundara catalogue. The product is your knowledge. The fixed costs are minimal. The market is enormous — every UK SME, mid-market business, and public sector body buys consultancy of some kind, and they generally buy from individuals and small firms they trust over large agencies they don't.
The constraint isn't market access — it's positioning, packaging, and pricing. Most experienced professionals who try to consult either undercharge (because they're pricing as a freelancer, not as expertise), can't articulate what they actually sell (because they describe what they do, not what they fix), or fail to build a delivery rhythm that keeps clients renewing.
The Zundara professional services venture solves all three. You bring the expertise — typically 10+ years in a function or sector. We provide the chassis: registered company, positioning framework for your specialisation, proposal templates, MSA and SOW pack, project management approach, recurring engagement models, and the operational systems to run it without drowning in admin.
Why now: SME confidence in large consultancies has been declining for a decade. Mid-market and SME buyers actively prefer specialist boutiques and senior independents. Post-Brexit and post-pandemic complexity has expanded the addressable market for advisory work in HR, regulatory, finance, change, and sector-specific consulting.
All figures indicative. Full editable financial model available on operator request post fit conversation.
You need 10+ years of senior experience in a function (HR, finance, operations, change, marketing, technology) or a specific sector (care, construction, healthcare, education, professional services). The threshold is real: clients pay consultancy fees because they're buying judgement that comes from depth, not from competence at process.
The strongest operators are former senior employees who have led teams, owned P&L, navigated boards, and built credibility with peers — typically late-30s through 50s. Many take this venture during or after a redundancy, restructure, or after stepping out of a corporate role to take more control of their time.
Helpful traits: comfort selling expertise (not features), discipline around scope (consultants who don't write tight scopes lose money on every project), and willingness to charge what you're worth. Many operators take 6–12 months to fully reset their pricing intuition from employed-salary thinking to consulting-value thinking.
Funding application support is included in your Zundara service agreement, though most operators in this venture won't need external finance.
Anita spent 18 years in HR, the last six as HR Director for a 400-person professional services firm. The business was acquired and she was made redundant in the post-deal restructure. She didn't want another in-house role and decided to consult — but knew most independent HR consultants undercharge and end up doing project-by-project work without retention.
She takes the Zundara professional services venture, positions as a fractional HR Director for service-sector SMEs (50–200 employees) in the South East. Pricing model: retained engagement at £4,500/month, 4 days/month, 6-month minimum.
Month 3: first retained client. Year 1: 4 retained clients averaging £4,200/month = £201,600 revenue. Year 2: 6 retained clients + 4 short-term project engagements = £278,000 revenue, £162,000 net profit. She works 14–16 days/month. She keeps 90% of the company.
Illustrative scenario. Real consulting economics depend heavily on positioning, network depth, and willingness to qualify clients hard.
After the 12-month minimum, the partnership continues monthly until cancelled. The retained equity stake remains in place independently of the service agreement. See the Partnership terms.
Apply for partnership. We'll come back within 5 working days with a fit conversation. If it's not a match, we'll tell you that too — straight, no waffle.
Apply for Partnership
