Category Archives: Blog

Introduction to Fund Raising Process

Our firm Magistral Consulting has helped in raising funds for more than a hundred companies, start-ups, Private Equity, Venture Capital, and Real Estate funds in the past. We have done it for firms based out of the US, UK, Europe, and Australia. In the process of doing so, we have acquired immense knowledge about the process of fund-raising.

This article will focus on the process that we follow for Start-ups and established companies looking to raise funds primarily through selling equity. Options of debt financing are also explored during the fund-raising negotiations with investors. Although each firm’s situation is unique, here are the common steps that all firms follow in their journey of fund-raising. We undertake this process end-to-end for the firms looking to raise money

Steps to Raise Funds for Startups and Other Firms

Fund Raising for Start-ups and Companies

Fund Raising Process for Start-ups and Other Firms

Step 1: Deal Documentation for Fund Raising

Before the fund-raising process could kick-off, all deal documents need to be prepared. There are three documents that we find an absolute must for a smooth process. Confidential Investment Memo could be made closer to the fundraising process. These documents are:

Teaser Document: It is also known as 1 pager. It’s a brief introduction about the opportunity and usually the first document that is sent across to the investors. For a firm, it will carry an introduction to its products or services, past financial performance, future projections of revenue and profitability, returns that an investor could make in a 3 to 5-year period, and some information on the founding team. It’s ideal to have this information presented in a concise manner with almost overuse of infographics to convey the message. In no case, this document goes over 1 page in length

Pitch Deck: This document is sent after the teaser document if the investor shows interest in the opportunity. This is typically a 5 to 10 pager document carrying all the details about the firm. The details are on similar lines as in the teaser document but more detailed. Major sections include, about the firm, about business, competition, business model, financials, valuations, plans, strategy, team, usage of funds, patents, etc. not necessarily in that order.

Financial Model: Models also vary in terms of details that they capture. A start-up with just an idea can have a very basic valuation model, whereas a firm with multiple lines of established businesses may have a detailed model running into multiple sheets. The purpose of the model is to value the company and show returns to investors which are adjusted for the risk. This is the document usually required in fundraising negotiations.

Investment Memorandum: This is prepared closer to the fund-raising process. While pitch deck maybe a Marketing document, Investment Memo can be seen more as a factual document that highlights the risks clearly in the investment. This may have legal, compliance, and regulatory consequences.

The documents are customized a great deal depending on the nature of the deal like raising a seed round, Series A, Series B, Series C or further growth capital

Once all the documents are in ship-shape and all stakeholders buy into the content in these documents, it is decided to proceed with investors’ reach out.

Step 2: Target and List Generation

This step could take place in parallel with Step 1.  It is about finding the investors who may be interested in the investment opportunity that the firm presents.

Here are the ways to find out the investment firms that may be interested in the opportunity:

Funds required: For smaller fund sizes say lower than $ 5 million, a Venture Capital firm or smaller Private Equity firms will be more suitable. For larger amounts, Private Equity or Family Offices will be more appropriate

Competitive Intelligence: These are the firms that invested in a similar opportunity with the competition. For example, if you are an app that supplies drivers on-demand, which are the investors, that invested in similar apps in the recent past. The way to find that out is either through industry databases or through extensive research in news and events portals

Industry Specialization: These are the firms that specialize in the given space. If the firm is in SaaS space, it makes sense to look for investors who socializes in SaaS and has made investments in the industry

Geographical Specialization: These are the firms that specialize in investing in a specific country or region. There are global investors as well.

ESG and other considerations: Some investors specifically look for sustainable investments like Green technology etc. Other specializations are around companies founded by say women or other minorities and disadvantaged groups. Impact investing is another important category under which a company could fall.

Once the firms are identified, we proceed with the identification of individuals within those firms, who may be in a decision-making capacity to invest in your firm

The information required here is the name of the individual in each firm, their profile, email IDs, phone numbers, and office address.

Step 3: Reach-out and Meetings Set-up

A reach out is performed by mailing to all suitable investors. The email is suitably customized to the needs of each investor and conveys the salient features of the deal. Reach-out over the phone is done for investors, which is very relevant. After the initial communique, a reasonable number of follow-ups are done to make sure there are no stone unturned

On every 100 firms’ reach-out, it is expected to have 5 good quality meetings related to fund-raise. Meetings are coordinated between investors and the entrepreneur.

Step 4: Negotiations

Negotiations go in all sorts of complications on valuations. Here the Financial Model is tested out with all its assumptions. Finally, if everything is fine, a term sheet is issued by the investor. Term sheets need to be studied closely for all sorts of caveats, liabilities, and terms

Why it makes sense to Outsource the Fund-Raising Support?

Running and growing a company in itself is a challenging job. Making all arrangements to raise funds on top of that is cumbersome and takes the focus of the entrepreneur off growing his enterprise. The whole process of fund-raising could be really confusing for a first-timer. It may take a long time for someone to learn the process on his own. It might take anywhere between a couple of months to a year for a company to raise funds depending on its specific situation. This job requires specialization, network, and focus. An outsourcing firm like Magistral provides that and still gives the control back to you at the most crucial stage of fundraising like negotiations.

Our pricing

Our pricing is a mix of upfront retainer fees plus a success-fee that is a percentage of the overall fund raised due to our efforts. This is paid out to us as a consulting or a finder fee. Here Magistral is not a dealer broker and needs no license to operate in international markets. For certain situations where broker-dealer licenses or any other similar licenses are required in any geography, we have pacts with our representatives in the US, UK, and Australia.

 

There is a huge discussion on the upfront retainer fee for our services with prospective clients. The firms suggest all fees be variable and absolutely no upfront retainer. One discussion I remember where a person suggested that everyone asking for upfront fees for fund-raising is a scam. These are the same people who are paying upfront fees to their lawyers, accountants, and everyone else for their services. If they think it is not a good idea to spend even a few thousand dollars behind their venture to raise funds, why on earth will we spend our efforts behind his fund-raising efforts. It talks to us loud and clear. They are not confident about their venture and may not have resources to even survive for the period that goes into raising funds. As you see, in earlier steps, we spend a considerable effort towards fund-raising, we would not do it for anyone who is just playing around and does not mind giving a higher share of success fees at the expense of the future investors. At some level, this whole exercise needs to be seen as the effort and related pay. That is where an upfront retainer comes into play.

Negotiations are complicated. What if an investor quashes your valuations and proposes something that cuts your valuation to half? Will you take the deal? If not, how is it our fault in facilitating the deal? It’s not fair to expect from us to keep coming up with a pipeline of meetings that are suitable to all your requirements, just because our payments are tied up with the raising funds. That is another case for having some portion of payment tied to the effort and not all of it to the success. If you think your start-up has funds to hire a specialist who will look into fund-raising support full time, drop an inquiry here

Typical Results

Reaching out to 100 investors should yield a small round of financing for a business that has some sort of presence on the ground and has made some money in the past. Things get difficult for mere ideas a bit if they don’t come from someone who has not founded or run any company before. If reaching out to 1000 investors does not yield any meaningful conversations, it is possibly the end of the road for the firm looking to raise money. Growth capital in the form of Series B and beyond see a warmer response than a seed round. One should take into consideration a period of at least a couple of months on the lower side to a year on the higher side for closing the next round. If you are a venture-backed start-up it makes sense to keep working on populating the pipeline all the time for the next round.

Fund-Raising for Private Equity, Venture Capital and Real Estate Funds

Although the process of fund-raising for General Partners follows the same process, the people looking to raise funds here are more sophisticated. Also, larger amounts of fund-raise are involved here. The United States requires a broker-dealer license to arrange funds on a brokerage fee basis. We deal with funds looking to raise money by helping them reach-out to Limited Partners, purely on fixed cost and fixed effort basis. Our ideal client is one who is looking to hire an analyst for reaching out to Limited Partners and not the one who is looking to hire a Private Placement player. If that makes sense to you please drop an inquiry here

If you are in any stage of your fund-raising journey and are looking for some direction, we can get in touch for a free consulting session, drop an inquiry with all details at www.magistralconsulting.com/contact

About Magistral

Magistral is an outsourcing firm that has helped multiple start-ups and companies in raising funds. It has also helped multiple General Partners like Private Equity, Venture Capital, and Real Estate funds in raising money. For more details please visit www.magistralconsulting.com

About the Author

The author, Prabhash Choudhary is the CEO of Magistral Consulting and can be reached at Prabhash.choudhary@magistralconsulting.com for any queries of business inquiries.

Activities under Back and Middle Offices and their Potential for Outsourcing

Back Office Outsourcing has been around for over a decade and picked up the pace since the financial meltdown of 2008. Middle Office Outsourcing is something that is picking up now and is expected to gather pace after the Corona pandemic. So, what is Back and Middle Office outsourcing, and does it make sense for financial services firms like Investment Banks, Private Equity, Venture Capital, and Hedge Fund firms to outsource these activities?

 

What is a Back Office?

There are not many definitions that clearly demarcate back-office activities from middle-office. A front office at an Investment Bank or a Private Equity firm is the one that interacts with the clients. It comprises people who are in touch with the market like traders, deal makers, Investor relations, and rainmakers. On similar lines, back-office functions are ones that never interact with clients, like fund administration, accounting, record keeping, etc. Back Office has now long been designated as the right candidate for outsourcing to reduce operational costs.

What is Middle Office?

Middle Office are the functions that coordinate between the front and back office. Similar functions in similar financial institutions can often be categorized as Middle Office, back office, or even Front Office. So, there are lots of blurry lines between Middle and Back Office definitions. Also, an activity that will form a Back Office activity at an investment bank can be categorized as a Middle Office activity at a Hedge Fund. Technology is now getting all the more important than it was ever before. Biggest of Investment Banks now have more than 30% of their employees working in technology-related functions. Technology and Risk Management functions are commonly being categorized as Middle Office functions across financial institutions like Investment Banks, Hedge Funds, Private Equity, and Venture Capital firms.

Potential of Back Office Outsourcing

Back Office needs to be outsourced is a forgone conclusion. It was probably a matter of discussion a decade back. Almost all big Investment Banks have outsourced their back office. Private Equity, Venture Capital and Hedge Funds are playing catch-up when it comes to back-office outsourcing. The reason for them lagging behind is that their teams are comparatively smaller to start with, which leads to limited cost advantages of outsourcing for them. Hedge funds have rather taken the technology way to reduce costs with developments like AI, ML, and Automation. Traders on most trading floors have been replaced by robots now. The conclusion here is that if your firm has a well-demarcated back office, it needs to be outsourced, big, or small. As the industry has started to rely on back-office outsourcing defacto, it will be difficult to compete in the market for those who decide to keep it in-house.

Potential of Middle Office Outsourcing

Middle Office Outsourcing is a hot topic now. It is gaining ground with investment banks who were pioneers even in the back office outsourcing space. Increased capabilities of vendors, further pressure to reduce costs and improve bottom-lines, and competitive pressures are the major trends that are aiding the phenomenon. It’s not right to suggest that all functions of the Middle Office could be outsourced right away. It depends on the processes, culture, and cost structure of the financial institution in question.  In conclusion, Middle Office Outsourcing is something that is still taking shape. Though a lot of it could be outsourced, the moot subject is what and how much.

Outsourcing for smaller firms

If an Investment Bank, Private Equity firm, Hedge Fund or a venture capital firm is around 20 people or less, they are continuously caught up in the dilemma to outsource or not. A big firm with hundreds and hundreds of traders would save millions of dollars by outsourcing, the same could not be said about the smaller firms. Smaller firms operate in a niche and fear losing the competitive edge if they go for outsourcing. The low-quality perception of outsourcing does not help give them confidence either. It was so far so good. Some smaller players did survive the last financial meltdown on the back of their superlative services and the network of loyal clients. It’s debatable if they will survive the current pandemic too. In the changed scenario, it is almost imperative for a smaller firm to outsource both the back office and middle office if they need a worthwhile shot at survival. When we talk about the back office and middle office of a smaller financial services firm, it’s pretty much all of their analyst capacities. Thousands of one-man shops are thriving on the formula of outsourcing when the deal is there and conserving the cash when it is not.

Middle Office and Back Office Outsourcing Trends

Multiple trends are evident in the market. Some of the prominent ones are:

Back Offices at bigger financial institutions have been outsourced. A mode could be different in a way having owned captives in a low-cost country or giving a big contract to a leading vendor, but the fact remains, that the physical location of the back office now is a low-cost country.

Middle Office Outsourcing is in a transitional phase: A middle office is being planned to be outsourced. Some players have outsourced the junior positions with mid-level and senior positions in-house. Some are toying with outsourcing the simpler functions over the complex ones

Outsourcing is catching up with Private Equity, Venture Capital and Hedge Funds: Investment Banks definitely took a lead in outsourcing but now even typically smaller financial institutions like Private Equity, Venture Capital, Family Office, Hedge Funds, Real Estate, and Asset Management firms have also started to experiment with varying degrees of exposure to outsourcing

It’s not only about costs: Outsourcing has come a long way from being a lever of only saving costs. Vendors have developed advanced skills and now are in a better position to enhance the skill of the in-house team. It is possible because the vendor is working across geographies, financial institutions, and investment philosophies. A vendor can now bring a fresh eyes’ perspective to the operations and help the financial institution up its game

Pandemic will relay the rules: If outsourcing was just an option before the pandemic, it may not be so afterward. Financial institutions are expected to face cost-related headwinds that will force them to outsource to survive

Increasingly complicated assignments being outsourced: Assignments like Financial Modeling, Investment Research, Outsourced CFO, Fund Administration Process, Hedge Fund Analytics, Pitch Decks, Portfolio Management, etc. are increasingly being outsourced by Investment Banks, Private Equity, Venture Capital and Hedge Fund firms.

Overall back office and middle office outsourcing are at different stages of maturity across the financial institutions. While large investment banks are pared to the bone when it comes to taking advantage of outsourcing, the mid-sized and smaller investment banks have only started recently experimenting with the trend. While Investment Banks, in general, are more mature and warm towards outsourcing, firms like Private Equity, Venture Capital, Hedge Funds, Family Offices, Real Estate, and Asset Management are now opening more and more to the idea. What large institutions identified as a tool to maintain their profit margins, smaller institutions are finding that tool to be the key to survival and profitable growth.

Service Offerings of Magistral Consulting

Here are the service offerings that Magistral provides:

-Daily/Weekly/Monthly Review of NAVs

-Reconciling Cash Trades and Portfolios

-Monitor Trades and Corporate Actions

-Maintain Investment Book of Records

-Independently price the portfolio

-Performing Investor Allocations

-Reporting Profit and Loss

-Client reporting for funds

-Reviewing and preparing all financial statements

-Managing relationships with service providers

-Providing tools to monitor systems and processes

Magistral Consulting (www.magistralconsulting.com) is a premier outsourcing firm that has helped multiple firms like Investment Banks, Private Equity, Venture Capital, Hedge Funds, Asset Managers, Real Estate, and Family Offices in outsourcing their back and middle office. To schedule a free discussion without any commitment, drop a line at   https://magistralconsulting.com/contact/

 

The Author Prabhash Choudhary is the CEO of Magistral Consulting and can be reached at Prabhash.choudhary@magistralconsulting.com for any queries on the article of business inquiries in general

 

Financial Modeling Outsourcing is fast catching up, this article focuses on the steps required to prepare a Financial Model that will attract the attention of investors. It also argues as to why it is all the more important to outsource financial modeling to bring in an expert’s point of view.

Financial Modeling Definition

Financial Modeling is an inseparable part of Investment Analysis. A financial model prepared on an excel sheet is used to analyze almost all investment decisions.

Financial Modeling is considered to be a quantitative exercise plainly dealing with numbers and formulas. Sometimes on excel and sometimes on software like R, VB, Python, etc. However, regular practitioners understand that this is more of an art than science. It doesn’t only need to be correct in terms of formulas and assumptions, it needs to sell as well to the client.

In the article we will also talk about Financial Modeling Outsourcing, that is fast catching up as a trend to ensure the quality of the Financial Model

Types of Financial Models

The investment community uses multiple types of Financial Models. Following are the broad types of Financial Model:

Financial Model for Private Companies: Private Equity, Venture Capital, and Investment Banking firms use this to find out the valuation of an asset. Financial Modeling and Valuations go hand-in-hand. Investment Banks also do it day in and day out for their clients. It’s for situations where a private company, a start-up, or otherwise is looking to raise funds from debt or equity or is looking for the opportunities of Mergers and Acquisition. This type of financial model has all the sections that are important for investing like P&L, Balance Sheet, Cash-flows, Working Capital, Cap Table, RoI calculations, exchange rates, Resource utilization metrics, and other relevant details.

The way assumptions are made for the future forecast of revenue is the heart of the financial model. All other numbers just follow these broad numbers. If assumptions on revenue and cost are wrong, a financial model can either give undervalued or lofty valuations, both of which have the potential to kill the deal, either from the buy or sell side.

Financial Model for Stocks: Investors in equity stocks, usually Hedge Funds or Investment Banks use these models for themselves or their clients. They arrive at buy, sell, or hold recommendations based on these financial models. A Discounted Cash Flow Model of the publicly listed stocks is at the heart of each recommendation. It has future financial projections built-in and is updated continuously based on the developments related to that company or industry. Formulas on the model are the same and still, different brokerages come to different recommendations for the same stock. Ever wondered why? It is all in the assumptions and assessment of development. A development or news can be seen as highly negative by a brokerage and hence a huge negative impact on future projections, whereas the same news could be assessed neutral by another broking house.

The key to a great financial model in this situation is to understand the culture of your client/investor. Are they conservative or high-risk takers? Depending on the culture, you can make appropriate assumptions and hence the recommendations that suit your clients. Comparables and peer analysis is also used along with the DCF modeling

M&A Models: Most M&A models build further on financial models for start-ups and companies. It carries specific sections around financing and payback, synergies, Leveraged Buyout details to assess if the proposed M&A is going to create value for everyone involved. The most commonly used models here are Merger Modeling and Precedent Transaction Analysis.  Again assumptions are more important than the Formulas, as that can make or break the deal.

Other Models: A financial model is present usually before any sort of investment or fund-raising decision regarding any form of asset, whether we are talking about Real Estate, REITs, or a portfolio of crypto assets. Financial Model for Real Estate is in principle same as a Private Equity investment in a company but takes into account situations related to the concerning Real Estate.

Real Estate can be acquired and used differently, leading to different financial outcomes. A Real Estate financial model objectively analyses these scenarios and their financial outcomes. Say a land bank bought in the city center of a megacity could be kept vacant for capital appreciation. It could also be developed as an old-age hostel or a hotel. The second scenario will lead to rental income but at the same time will also require capital investments.

All this needs to be evaluated objectively to conclude if the proposed investment makes sense for the investors. Similar models are made to track the performance of REITs, or rent rolls coming from multiple commercial properties. There are multiple ways a Real Estate could give returns and all this leads to a hugely customized financial model specific to the situation. Real Estate Financial Modeling Outsourcing is catching up in a big way.

Steps to prepare a Financial Model- Financial Modeling Best Practices

The steps would change as per the financial model under preparation. Following are the generalized steps that are valid for usually all types of Financial Models:

Understanding the business and business situation:  This is the very first step before putting in a single number in Excel, R, Python, VB, or any other software that you plan to use for Financial Modeling. More thorough is your understanding of the business, more reasonable are the assumptions and more chances of it flying with the client or investors.

Usually, a pitch deck is prepared before the financial model so that all stakeholders are clear about the business strategy. This is all the more important in the case of start-ups that are raising Series A with no previous revenue track record. An experienced practitioner asks lots of questions in this stage about the strategy, finance, human resources, market, geographies, products, patents, industry, people, and everything else related to the business.

A robust financial model demands an eye for details. If it is related to specific investing situations, questions should be asked around returns, risks, similar business models around, management team, etc. The financial modeling technique to be used in this specific business situation should also be finalized.

Preparing Assumptions: This is one of the most critical steps while preparing financial models. If Assumptions made does not make sense, it renders the whole financial model useless. Other than making reasonable and well-researched assumptions, the experienced practitioners also make sure assumptions could be changed in the model. Multiple stakeholders play around the model to finalize the contours of the deal. The standard aspect of deal-making is changing assumptions in the model. A well-made model is flexible in changing assumptions.

Preparing the model: Preparing financial models on Excel is most common however, models can also be created on R, VB, Macros, Python, etc. There are many off the shelf financial modeling tools that are available. Financial Model Templates are usually available at this stage. Standardization is the major part of the model in this stage. For example, any private company valuation model would comprise, P&L, Balance Sheet, Cash Flow, etc. These statements will have standardized headers and formulas too. The parts dependent on the nature of business are customized. A SaaS business for example will be very different from Steel business in terms of how they acquire customers and project revenue.

Bringing intuition and data together: This is the task of the most experienced operator in the field of financial modeling. It not only requires the knowledge of the formulas in the financial model but also a thorough understanding of business, its competition, and the industry as a whole. When that experienced operator looks at the valuation that the model throws, he instinctively knows if that is correct or not. The assumptions are played around with if the valuation is not in the expected ballpark. A valuation level that makes sense to both Buy-Side and Sell-Side is achieved by this exercise.

 

In the end, we see Financial Modeling is more of an art than the exact science.

The rationale behind outsourcing financial modeling

An expert at Financial Modeling has worked with multiple start-ups, Investment Banks, Private Equity, Venture Capital, and other Financial advisors multiple times before.  They have templates available readily with them and know the right questions to ask. All this leads to a Financial Model that is in tune with what the investor ecosystem demands. If you are looking for Financial Modeling Outsourcing, Magistral Consulting (www.magistralconsulting.com) can help in multiple ways.

 

Magistral Consulting (www.magistralconsulting.com) is a leading player in the Financial Modeling Outsourcing space. It provides Financial Modeling Services. Magistral has specialization in preparing Financial Models for Private Equity, Financial Models for venture Capital, Financial Models for Real Estate, Financial Model for Investments Banks, Financial Models for Hedge Funds, Start-up Financial Modeling, apart from several other highly customized Financial Models. It has delivered Financial Modeling Projects globally to clients in the US, UK, Europe, and South-East Asia. For a business inquiry, you can drop a line at https://magistralconsulting.com/contact/

 

The Author, Prabhash Choudhary is the CEO of Magistral Consulting and can be reached at Prabhash.choudhary@magistralconsulting.com, in case of queries.

 

 

 

Investment Research Outsourcing

Multiple Investment Services firms like Investment Banks, Private Equity, Venture Capital, Hedge Funds, Family Offices, and Asset Management firms are looking to outsource investment research in the post-Covid 19 pandemic era. The article describes the concept of Investment Research and the ways to go about outsourcing the process.

What is Investment Research? Investment Research Definition

Investment Research and Analysis or Investment Analytics combines multiple activities related to investments in Equity of companies (both public and private) and other financial instruments.

The major activities related to securities research are equity research, Fixed Income and Credit Research, Index and Quantitative Research, and Macroeconomic Research.

Another important aspect of Investment research is the support services towards Corporate Finance and Valuations. It includes activities like Investment banking support, Valuation support, business information services, and Private Equity and Venture Capital support.

Investment research also comprise of data governance-related activities like outsourced CFO.

Is Outsourcing a Good Idea?

Investment Research Outsourcing is fast catching up. Here are the trends that are leading to expending the concept of Investment Research Outsourcing

The pressure to lower costs: Investment Banking is not what it used to be. The digital world has shrunk the opportunities to make big dollars brokering big deals or IPOs. This has also led to pressure on costs. This leads to outsourcing non-critical jobs to low-cost countries like India.

Diversification on investment types: An Investment manager has way too many asset classes to handle today. It’s not only limited to public equity but now has diversified into private equity, real estate, cryptocurrencies, commodities, REITs, Index-linked instruments, and many other asset classes. If the investment team is small, it’s difficult to have a combination of skillsets to provide a holistic solution to their clients. As outsourcing vendors understand Investment Research dynamics well, Outsourcing helps in bridging the skill gap. Outsourcing vendors also have access to multiple investment research tools.

Information Sources and Databases: With the proliferation in investment type, also gone up is the requirement of multiple databases for varied data points. It’s a costly affair to maintain access to multiple databases in-house. Investment research tools are also used to fine-tune the data and information.

Confidentiality: There is pressure to keep all information confidential. An outsourced team doing due diligence is perfect, as it leaves no trace of who the client maybe, that is doing the due diligence. An analyst can talk to potential target with or without introducing the client.

Quality: Outsourced players have better quality than the in-house team. The outsourced team typically is bigger and has done similar tasks multiple times before. In the process, they usually create an information bank or templates that are ready to use. They also sit on the hoard of best practices for multiple situations. If the outsourced player has its knowledge process well documented, they are in a better position to offer work quality.

Effective Supervision: When internal teams are working on an analytical project, it’s difficult for a partner to take time out to get into the details of data, information, and analytics therein. But with an experienced outsourcing player, there are multiple levels of supervision, governance structures, and quality control processes to establish an error-free work every time.

Variable Costs: Outsourcing agreement can be changed to pay for hours consumed or assignment outsourced other than hiring a virtual investment analyst. This brings immense flexibility in terms of costs. An investment firm can hire only for the assignment and then go back to the original structure, once the job is done. This is very useful for smaller investment teams and firms with partners only, who need an on-demand investment research analyst. An investment research team can come together ad-hoc and then could be dismantled when the job is done.

What jobs can be performed with Outsourced Investment Research? Outsourced Investment Research Activities

There are multiple elements of the Investment Research Process, that could be potentially outsourced:

Equity Research: Equity Research is the most voluminous work as Investment Banks usually outsource quantitative investment research. Equity research typically revolves around the fundamental analysis of the set of stocks that are tracked regularly. A report carrying all the developments and valuation-related matrices is published once a quarter for every stock covered. These Investment Research Reports are updated periodically. The format of these reports is customized and can be changed as per the client’s preferences. Outsourcing this activity allows the in-house team to cover more stocks than it would have covered otherwise. Also, this task could be broken into multiple streams before outsourcing, say preparing the DCF model, updating the model periodically or analyzing the investor calls from the company’s management. Investment Research Analysts work as an extended offshore team to the in-house team. Investment research software aids the in-house tech capability.

Due Diligence of Private and Public Companies: Due diligence is time-consuming and requires huge efforts. Sometimes the due diligence can last even for a year analyzing tons of data and information. A support team that takes up the requests and delivers as promised increases the efficiency and makes sure that due diligence is completed in prescribed time limits and suitable valuations. It also makes sure that the asset generates the intended value for the investors after the investment.

Fund Administration and Investor Relations: There are multiple activities of fund administration and investor relations that could be outsourced like Newsletters, MISs, Expense Tracking, Accounting, Company Registration, and multiple other similar activities. Investment Research management software or Investment Research Platforms are used to coordinate multiple related activities.

Outsourced CFO/ Outsourced CMO/ Outsourced CPO for portfolio companies: This is very relevant for Venture Capital and Private Equity firms that go into the nitty-gritty of operations for portfolio companies. Rather than hiring a full-time Chief Financial Officer, Chief Marketing Officer, or Chief Procurement Officer, one can just outsource these activities and pay for the services when needed. Some activities related to lead generation in sales and business development could be outsourced as well. Outsourced CFO is the most popular option.

Research and Strategy: Research and Strategy projects are generally run parallel to the main operations. There are instances of hyperactivity followed by the lull in terms of number of the projects and initiatives. Outsourcing these keep the focus of operations’ team on the day to day operations and an unbiased view of the strategic potential from someone who has a fresh eyes perspective on things.

Financial Modeling: Financial modeling is more of an art than science. Asking the right questions and then capturing the details is a skill that is honed over time. Most internal teams are not skilled in these activities as it may be one-off activity once in a while. An outsourcing entity has ready templates and has done these over time to know the exact pain points and the right questions for the perfect financial model. Investment Banking Research Analysts are well versed with multiple aspects of financial modeling.

Deal Origination: Deal pipeline should be continually populated for a Private Equity or a Venture Capital firm to run like well-oiled machinery. Most activities related to deal origination can be outsourced effectively. It can again be broken into sub-activities before outsourcing and then outsourcing the non-critical jobs. Decision making related to investments can be kept in-house but company profiling, list generation, initial due diligence can be outsourced. Once the investment decision has been taken parts of detailed due diligence could be outsourced as well.

How to Go About Outsourcing Investment Research?

There are multiple investment research companies and investment research firms which assist in outsourcing investment research services by offering virtual investment research analyst. They are varied in size and geographical presence. There are multiple investment research firms in India, that offer low-cost advantages.  You can make a list of suitable vendors either from Google search, references or when a sales leader reaches out to you. The very first step towards establishing suitability is to ask for past work samples. Once you have had a look at the work samples and they appear good quality, ask for a proposal for a pilot project. A pilot is a smaller project that is undertaken before outsourcing the bigger chunk of the operations.

A pilot project should ideally last from a week to a quarter. This should give you ample time to experience the vendor’s capability and skills. Once the pilot is successfully completed, a bigger engagement should be negotiated. Also, make sure the price that the vendor offers is competitive for the quality of services offered.

Magistral Consulting has helped dozens of buy-sides and sell-side firms in outsourcing their investment research operations. It is one of the leading Investment Research companies in India with the capability of performing global investment research. It is a one-stop-shop for all requirements of investment research and analysis. It has delivery centers in India that give it a cost advantage with sales offices in all the major cities across the world. To drop a business inquiry with Magistral, click, https://magistralconsulting.com/contact/

The author, Prabhash Choudhary is the CEO of Magistral Consulting and can be reached at Prabhash.choudhary@magistralconsulting.com for any queries. For further details on Magistral and its services, visit www.magistralconsulting.com

 

 

 

 

The Trend of Outsourcing is Finally Observed in the Private Equity Sector

Traditionally Investment Banks have been at the forefront of operations outsourcing. Almost all the biggest investment banks either have captives or have vendor arrangements in low-cost countries like India. Private Equity in comparison is the new kid on the block. Venture Capital is even newer. As the traditional model of a fixed management fee of the AUM comes under strain, Private Equity firms must look for alternatives to bring down the costs. Also for funds, that just invest along the bandwagon, with minimum analysis and fewer analysts to support operations, have started giving an impression to Limited Partners, that they possibly could do it themselves and save on the unnecessary fund management fee. Hence Private Equity needs to expand operations and expand it cheaply. That is where Private Equity Outsourcing becomes increasingly important.

Why Private Equity Outsourcing or Venture Capital Outsourcing is business-critical now?

Private Equity Outsourcing is also referred to as Private Equity Back Office Outsourcing, Private Equity Fund Administration Outsourcing, Private Equity Research Outsourcing, Private Equity Business Process Outsourcing, or Private Equity Fund Outsourcing. On the Venture Capital side, the names that are used are Venture Capital Outsourcing, Venture Capital Fund Outsourcing, Venture Capital Business Process Outsourcing, etc.

Outsourcing has produced long-lasting benefits as Investment Banks have been enjoying it for over a decade now. Here are the major ones:

Cost Savings: It brings in cost savings in the tune of 30-70% depending on the location of the fund operations. This means a higher percentage of management fees can be booked as the fund profits or more returns to limited partners.

Skill Advantages: Private Equity operations are usually performed by small teams. Venture Capital teams are even smaller. All that leads to quick decision making and lower costs, but also results in a lack of business-critical skills. Outsourcing gives access to those skills for smaller Private Equity and Venture Capital teams

Extended Team: Outsourced team acts as an extended team that works on plug and play model. You ramp up when required and dismantle when not required. Just before an acquisition, have a higher number of analysts and after the investment, when work-load lessens, have a lower number of analysts. That leads to costs optimized as per the work-load

Time Zone Advantages: The work moves at double the pace. Teams when they leave work in evenings in the United States, United Kingdom, and parts of Europe, drop a message to the teams based out of India to carry on further work. Similarly, the team based out of India drops the work in the evening their times to be found by their client teams in their mornings to further work on. Hence critical jobs move at effectively double the pace, day and night literally!!

Confidential: A due diligence does not always happen with the target knowing about it. Sometimes it is quick and confidentiality is required. It is difficult to perform due diligence discretely by the in-house teams. It can be done by an outsourced player without the name of the interested party getting out.

So what all could be outsourced under Private Equity outsourcing?

Private Equity Outsourcing trends or Venture Capital outsourcing trends could be divided under one of the following functional specializations being outsourced.

Private Equity Outsourcing or Venture Capital Outsourcing practically works across the operational value chain of the fund operations and management.

Here are the elements that could be outsourced without any problems in quality or productivity:

Fund Raising and Investor Relations: All operational aspects of fund-raising and investor relations could be outsourced. This includes pitch decks for funds and the portfolio companies, Investor reach-out programs, confidential information memorandums or Private Placement Memorandums, CRM data management, and Newsletters

Investment Operations: This is where the maximum potential of outsourcing is. Almost all aspects of investing can be outsourced effectively like industry reports and analysis, country reports and analysis, target company profiles, target company due-diligence, financial modeling, valuations, and other ongoing or ad-hoc assignments related to investment analysis. Private Equity research outsourcing or Venture Capital research outsourcing is one of the fastest-growing areas here

Portfolio Management: If it is for Private Equity or Venture Capital firm that gets involved hands-on in the operations of its portfolio companies, it makes all the sense to establish a ‘Centre of Excellence’ for all the work related to Strategy, Research, Data Analytics, Procurement, and Digital Marketing to be aggregated at one place for all the portfolio companies. If that place is in a low-cost country, it brings in massive cost savings as compared to having similar functions separately in all portfolio companies. Also, assignments can be prioritized as per board meetings. Any project that worked in a given portfolio company can be quickly initiated for another portfolio company as the team is centralized.

Fund Administration: Private Equity Fund Administration or Venture Capital Fund Administration is something that has caught the fancy of limited partners recently. It makes sense to keep the financial reporting of a fund with a third party. This ensures financial risk is reduced. It also leads to best practices of fund management being followed along with unbiased financial reporting to the investors. This is one element that is advisable to be outsourced as a best practice. Multiple elements of Private Equity Back Office Outsourcing or Private Equity Business Process Outsourcing like accounting and expenses form a part of this. This is quite similar in the case of Venture Capital Business Process Outsourcing or Venture Capital Back Office Outsourcing.

Other aspects of fund management that are usually outsourced are Strategy, Research, and Analytics

About Magistral Consulting

Magistral Consulting (www.magistralconsulting.com) has helped dozens of Private Equity and Venture Capital firms in outsourcing their operations. With delivery centers based out of India, it has sales offices in New York, San Francisco, London, Oslo, and Singapore. To drop a business inquiry,  visit https://magistralconsulting.com/contact/

About the Author

Prabhash Choudhary is the CEO of Magistral Consulting and can be reached at Prabhash.choudhary@magistralconsulting.com for any queries or clarifications.

 

What is Outsourced CFO?

Outsourced CFO (Chief Financial Officer) is an arrangement of having all the services of a qualified CFO, without hiring one full-time. It is known as various other names too like “Fractional CFO”, “Interim CFO Services” or “Online CFO”. It is specifically important for start-ups, who due to budget constraints may not afford a full-time CFO, but still need quality CFO services for activities like fund-raising, financial system design, M&A, and IPO opportunities for an exit, cash flow management and securing further working capital financing rounds. CFO services for startups are the most talked about, but outsourced CFO is equally important for Hedge Funds and Private Equity.

It also finds an application in Private Equity and Hedge Funds commonly known as Hedge Fund Outsourced CFO and Private Equity Outsourced CFO

How does an Outsourced CFO work?

It’s natural to ask as to how exactly a virtual CFO performs its functions and what is outsourced CFO duties and responsibilities.

It works like any other outsourced function. A virtual CFO takes the tasks over the mails, chats, or video calls. His team understands the work that is required to be delivered. As a competent outsourced CFO is working with multiple start-ups and he may also suggest the best financial strategy for your company’s size, industry, or situation.

How much Outsourced CFO services cost? 

Pricing of these services varies from company to company and from country to country. Best outsourced CFO companies offer multiple outsourced CFO solutions. They work with the exact estimates in terms of hours required for the job before the job starts. This is done so that there is no confusion as to what will you be paying for the services at the end of the specific task. Sometimes there are monthly billing models for a dedicated person. If the services are based out of a low-cost country like India, costs can turn out to be competitive for the quality of services. An hourly rate of $ 30-100 is currently acceptable. Tasks like accounting are at the lower end of the price spectrum, whereas tasks like financial modeling and strategy are at the higher levels of the price spectrum.

 

Why outsource CFO? Advantages of Outsourcing

There are multiple advantages to this. The best services are about producing business results. Some of the major ones are:

Cost Reduction: Comparing Outsourced CFO vs. the in-house permanent CFO, there are unmistakable advantages in terms of costs. The outsourced option, who is based out of a low-cost country like India can bring down the cost in the tune of 30-70%, depending on the location where you are based.

Team Skill Enhancement: When a company is small, it has got very little resources to have all the skills onboard. A start-up finance team should be well versed with fund-raising, preparing pitch decks, establishing financial systems, and accounting. All of this is difficult to get in a single or a few people. The solution here is to outsource this so that you can take advantage of the skill and team of the outsourced vendor

Variable Cost: When you outsource there are no contractual exit barriers. If a start-up needs to conserve cash, it can defer the outsourcing engagement. Also if it needs hyperactivity regarding finance and would want to quickly add the outsourced team members. Payment is based on pay per use which gives immense flexibility to the start-up

Ramp up and Ramp Down: Multiple functions of Corporate Finance are not permanent. For example, preparing financial management systems is a one-time activity. Once it’s done, it would not be done again until there is a major overhaul required in the financial system. Similarly, a pitch deck will only be needed in case of fund-raising. Hence the demand for corporate finance function is un-even. For meeting those un-even demands, it’s not possible to hire specialists every time. What instead makes sense is to have an outsourced team that can be ramped up or down depending on the work requirements.

Third-Party View: As an outsourced entity is a third party that is managing CFO functions for multiple start-ups, Private Equity Funds, and Hedge Funds, it has limited motivation to be part of financial irregularities. It comforts investors. Investors prefer to invest in a hedge fund or a private equity fund that has outsourced the fund administration process. Outsourced hedge Fund Operations are generally considered a plus for the fund looking for investors

What are the tasks performed by the outsourced CFO? 

Activities Performed by an Outsourced CFO

Activities Performed by an Outsourced CFO

The roles operate at multiple levels like Strategic, Tactical, and Daily Tasks. There are multiple CFO functions along with the CFO for startups Here are the major tasks performed

Strategic Tasks: Fund-raising, Fund-raising documentation, Financial Strategy, M&A facilitation, Finalizing KPIs for Business Verticals in line with the Strategy, Investment Strategy, Strategic CFO services, Business Advisory Services, Consulting

Tactical Activities: Design of Financial Systems, Renegotiating Contracts for Cost Reduction, Structuring and Finalizing Cash Flow Positions, Financial Reporting, Budgeting, Forecasting, Implementing the Best Accounting Practice, Fractional CFO for Startups, Contract CFO

Daily Management: Accounting services for startups, Daily/Weekly/Monthly Dashboards, Data Collection, and Reporting, Reporting KPIs for all Business Verticals, Dashboards and Management Information Systems, Accounting CFO Services

 

How to finalize an outsourced CFO?

There are many outsourced CFO firms in India and elsewhere. Here is a stepwise approach to finalizing an outsourced CFO

Step 1: Prepare the list of outsourced CFO companies in India and elsewhere.

Step 2: Get in touch with the companies and ask for a meeting and CFO services brochure

Step 3: If the meeting was impressive, and you are satisfied with the capability of the vendor ask for work samples and client references

Step 4: Check the work samples and reference and shortlist the vendor for Outsourced CFO engagement letter after reviewing the CFO services proposal,

Step 5: Select the engagement model that is most flexible and responsive to your business needs

 

About Magistral Consulting

Magistral Consulting (www.magistralconsulting.com) is a Research, Analytics, and Consulting agency helping start-ups, hedge funds, private equity funds, real estate funds, and other companies in outsourcing CFOs. It also offers startup accounting services

About the Author

Prabhash Choudhary is the CEO of Magistral Consulting and can be reached at Prabhash.choudhary@magistralconsulting.com for any observations or queries related to the article. If you want to outsource your CFO raise an inquiry at https://magistralconsulting.com/contact/

 

Introduction

For the majority of Private Equity and Real Estate firms, the fund administration process is largely in-house. There is an increasing trend of outsourcing fund administration processes by General Partners like Hedge Funds, Private Equity, Real Estate, and Venture Capital funds. The outsourcing of the fund administration process has several advantages. At the same time, however, keeping the process of fund administration in-house has several disadvantages. Some of these are:

High Costs

 Hiring specialist professionals with expertise in Fund Administration is a costly affair. Managing a team on-site is even costlier. Outsourcing some of the mundane functions can save up to 30-50% of costs related to the fund administration process

Lack of expertise

There are multiple complications involved in structuring a fund and then reporting the development afterward like new investments made, valuation of the portfolio assets, and exiting the assets. It’s difficult to get professionals who know it all and even if they are there, its overly expensive

Primitive Investor Relations Process

Mostly when the fund administration process is kept in-house it lacks innovation. There is no automated tool to report the fund performance to LPs. Systems of reporting are archaic with excel sheets and newsletters still being used excessively

Further financing rounds

LPs increasingly are preferring GPs who rely on third parties for fund administration process as that brings in an unbiased view of operations to them

Dilution of focus from the core objectives

A PE firms’ focus should ideally be looking into the operations of portfolio companies, streamlining them and finding out buyers for them and certainly not getting mired with day to day reimbursements, accounting, rental follow-ups, and valuations

Scalability

As the in-house team is fixed, there are scalability issues. There are lots of documents that are to be studied during an investment and exit whereas the workload tapers in normal day to day operations. It can’t be scaled up or down as per the project or fund requirements

Lack of automation opportunities

A specialist outsourcing player brings in lots of automation opportunities as that firm is working with multiple other Private Equity or Real Estate firms on similar issues. Automation is not possible in-house as there is a lack of automation know-how in-house.

Regulatory compliances change much often

Depending on the countries where the fund is listed and the countries where the investments are made, there are a plethora of regulatory compliances that need to be followed. It is a cumbersome and time-consuming task and is prone to faults. This impacts the speed at which the fund should move

Magistral’s Service Offerings Related to Fund Administration and Accounting

Magistral's Fund Administration Services

Service Categories for Fund Administration and Accounting for Funds like Private Equity, Hedge Funds and Real Estate

We provide the following services that are related to Fund Administration and Accounting:

Fund Launch Assistance

We assist in all operational aspects of the new fund launch. Our offerings are:

-Review of the offering document prepared by legal counsel

-Review of Operating Procedures

Accounting and Administrative Services

These services keep the fund operations running smoothly. Our service offerings are:

-Process Investor Subscription and Redemptions, corporate actions, etc.

-Record Trades, Non-Investment Transactions, Receipt/Payment of Intrest or dividends,  all trading and bank account activities, fees and rebates, etc.

-Maintain primary books and records

-Review trade exceptions

-Reconcile cash, positions, market values, etc

-Report client portfolio information

-Calculate management and performance fees from the source documents

-Allocate profit and losses, waterfall allocations, etc

-Prepare investor statements and distribution of the same

-Prepare audit package and draft financial statements including all schedules and footnote as per GAAP

-Liaise with auditors and counsels

Additional Private Equity Accounting and Administrative Services

Here are the services specific to a Private Equity Fund:

-Preparation and distribution of Capital Call letters

-Reconciliation of calls and distributions

-Waterfall allocations

-Fee Calculations

-Deal tracking and analysis

-Performance calculations

Tax Preparations

Here are the services related to tax preparations

-Maintaining tax capital accounts for all investors

-Preparing tax allocations, tax returns, and K-1s

-Communicate with external tax advisors

 

 

We also have an in-house online tool to track fund performance and all other details on a real-time basis. The access to the tool and its layout could be customized as per the client’s requirements

 

If you agree with the nature of the problems stated above and need to outsource the suggested solution, please read on. We at Magistral Consulting offer a full suite of solutions regarding the fund administration outsourcing process. Here are some of the reasons, you should be working with us:

Cost competitive

We are a fund administration outsourcing company with offices in a low-cost country like India. This arrangement ends up building all the advantages of outsourcing fund administration along with the unbeatable price advantages due to the location. An indicative savings of up to 70% is very much possible by outsourcing your complete fund administration process

Proprietary Tools

We have multiple online investor relations and client relations tools that update the data in real-time. This means no follow-up required on anything. Both GPs and LPs get the real-time fund performance snapshot

Middle Office Support

Our middle office support includes EoD reporting, Intraday reporting and reconciliations, performance contribution and attribution reporting, trade bookings and settlements, Daily cash positions, Daily NAV and reconciliations, vouchers and reimbursements, performance calculation and reporting, and monthly factsheets. Apart from this, we offer documentation support throughout the fund set up process in tax havens and other countries

Access to the ecosystem of professionals on a need basis

We have a roaster of professionals who may bring in expert opinions if the situation so demands like the liquidation of assets, legal hassles, translators, and lawyers specializing in a specific country’s commercial laws

Global Presence

With delivery centers based out of India for cost advantages and sales offices or resellers in San Francisco, New York, London, Oslo, and Singapore, we understand the global nuances of the fund administration process

About Magistral

Magistral Consulting (www.magistralconsulting.com) has helped multiple Private Equity, Venture Capital, Hedge Funds, and Real Estate Funds in outsourcing Fund Administration Process

To explore the opportunity of working with us, talk to our client references, or having a look at our work samples related to the fund administration process, please write to Prabhash.choudhary@magistralconsulting.com

 

About the Author

The author is the CEO of Magistral Consulting which is a premier research and operations outsourcing firm for Private Equity, Real Estate, Investment Banks, and Family Offices across the globe. He could be reached at Prabhash.choudhary@magistralconsulting.com for any queries.

 

 

Introduction

Covid-19 is a massive challenge not only for the global economy but for humanity as a whole. This is once in a lifetime black swan event which is going to rewrite the rules of businesses across geographies and industries. As the details and impact of this tragedy are still unfolding, here are the steps that Private Equity firms can take, including Private Equity Operations outsourcing, which will significantly mitigate the risk in these tough times:

Focus on Employees

A PE firm should first and foremost secure its employees. This can either be done through offering work-flexibility or giving incentives for effective testing and treatments. The partners should act as the role model and it makes sense to communicate the firm’s commitment towards the health and wellness of their employees. In the scenario where all the work is done remotely, it also makes sense to communicate more often through continuous audio and video calls.

Streamline Processes

An event like Covid-19 will test the Business Continuity Planning elements of even the most agile organizations. It’s an opportunity for Private Equity firms to fine-tune theirs. Making sure all important elements of the business are efficiently run is the need of the hour, whether it is about continuously looking for more investment targets, having effective investment committee meetings remotely, and being in touch with the management of portfolio companies for any assistance required. Board and other meetings need to be done remotely and assure the portfolio companies of the financial assistance and other support. This is also a good time to test operations’ outsourcing because if anything, this is going to be the time of hyperactivity, fishing for opportunities. An outsourcing agency can help in taking care of the additional work-load

Zoom in on Portfolio Companies

Covid-19 will impact every business on the planet. PE firms should dedicate most of their time in assessing its impact on their portfolio companies. It will largely depend on the industry in which the portfolio companies are. Some portfolio companies say in the business of Pharma, Healthcare and FMCG need to move faster to adjust their processes to take business advantage and to make themselves available for this humanitarian challenge. Also, there will be some businesses like frontline retail, hospitality, and airlines that are bound to take a hit. Analyzing where to focus the resources and energy is going to be crucial. A PE firm that moves quickly and decisively during these times will see earlier and more profitable exits as compared to peers in the future

Financial Challenges of the Portfolio Companies

Once it is identified as to which portfolio companies will need financial support, the next step would be to get into the details of the Balance sheet and business of these portfolio companies to fine-tune the contours of the package. Here are some of the operational areas that could be looked into: 

-Vendor Payments: Can payments to vendors be postponed/staggered? Can contracts be re-negotiated for better terms?

-Collections: Can collections from clients be expedited? Is it possible to collect early by giving discounts? What has been the impact of Covid-19 on customer’s businesses? Is there leverage available? If the impact has been positive, can it be monetized quickly?

-Debt options: What are the short term debt options available to the business? Which is the most competitive option in terms of interest rates? Can there be some advantages that can be taken on the back of historically low-interest rates currently prevailing?

-Further infusion of cash: If the business has long-term viability and would emerge victorious after the Covid-19 challenge, it might make sense to offer cash to the portfolio company as an equity or debt

-Opportunities of M&A: If there are portfolio companies that are similar and operate in the same industry, are there enough synergies to justify an M&A to tide over the financial challenges?

 

Putting Dry Powder to Work

Private Equity as an industry has entered this phase with a record dry powder with them. It is time to put that dry powder to use. If there are any businesses that are going through tough times and would need urgent infusion to stay afloat, recovery would be swift and returns may very well justify the risk. The trick here is to stay in the industry where the firm has expertise in, and may very well be aware of the targets and its operational challenges to decipher if the challenge faced is short term or strategic

Communicate well with LPs

Limited Partners like everyone else are panicked too. In these times of uncertainty, they look forward to receiving as much information as possible on their past investments and the impact of Covid-19 on the operations of the firm and the portfolio companies. A more frequent and dedicated newsletter highlighting all the risks and rewards would go a long way in earning their long term loyalty with the firm and the fund. It’s time to communicate well and communicate more, albeit remotely

 

Overall it can be concluded that if handled effectively, these times can very well turn out to be an opportunity for global private equity firms. The need is to be operationally agile and hyperactive.

 

We wish as humanity we see through this challenge successfully and emerge stronger out of this. Stay Safe!! Stay Indoors!!

Magistral Consulting has helped multiple Private Equity firms in reducing costs through operations outsourcing. To drop a business inquiry visit here

 

The Author is the CEO of Magistral Consulting (www.magistralconsulting.com), a firm that helps global Private Equity firms in outsourcing operations. He can be reached at Prabhash.choudhary@magistralconsulting.com for any queries.

 

Magistral Consulting (www.magistralconsulting.com) was approached by a Family Office for an assignment related to finalizing a Long-Short Equity Hedge Fund. Our assignment was to find a fund that generated alpha over a long period with minimal risk. We also needed the fund to be focused in a specific global region, have minimums in terms of investment value, a threshold AUM and vintage of the fund. Here are the steps that we took to identify the fund:

Secondary Research for all best performing Asset Managers in the region:

We searched the internet for all the best performing Asset Managers in the region. It ended in us drawing a list of more than a hundred Asset Managers in the region. This was pretty much the universe of Asset Managers in that specific region.

Finding the fund satisfying the criteria with the Asset Managers:

We reached out to all the Asset Managers for the funds that satisfied our criteria (like minimums, AUMs, regional focus, etc.). This reach-out was done over the emails and several calls.

Information gathering from all relevant Funds:

We asked for Net Returns MoM since inception for all the funds that satisfied our initial criteria. This information was fed into our analytics model that calculated all fund performance parameters like Cumulative Returns, Annualized Returns, Standard Deviation, Sharpe Ratio, Sortino Ratio, Max Drawdowns, Average Up-capture, Index Capture, Average Down Capture, Index Correlations, and several other objective and subjective parameters. This process took weeks as many Fund Managers needed support from us in calculating the metrics, some needed multiple follow-ups for the information to be provided to us. The picture became clearer when all returns information was fed into the model separating the performing funds from the non-performing ones. The robust model also ensured proper consideration of risks taken by the fund manager to deliver the returns. Best performing funds were shortlisted for the due diligence.

Due-Diligence of shortlisted funds:

Due diligence involved preparing a detailed report running into tens of pages analyzing all operational aspects of the Asset Manager and the fund. The parameters on which information was collected and analyzed, included Information on Human Resources, Compliance Frameworks, IT and Business Continuity, etc. for the Asset Manager or the Management company. For funds, we collected information related to Legal framework and structure, Transactions, Valuations and Accounting, Risk Management and Monitoring, Service Providers (Admin, PB, Auditor, etc.), Ownership Structures, Current Investors and their holdings, Key personnel bio and their relevant experience, Exception to general allocation rules and several other parameters.

Evaluation of fund performance on all parameters:

There was a sanity checklist that was made. A questionnaire was also designed to collect information from funds over a meeting. Once verbal information was collected documentary proofs were analyzed to prepare the level of depth related to each parameter. On the basis of numbers, proofs and documentation; a rating was arrived at, for each of the fund parameters. As per the weightage of each parameter and fund performance on all parameters, a recommendation was made for the investment in one chosen fund.

This was one of the examples where the Magistral team worked closely with the client team to arrive at a recommendation that moved millions across a cross-border transaction, into a fund that has a solid track record of providing superlative returns when compared to others.

We are in the process of doing due diligence for several other funds as I write this.

The Author is the CEO of Magistral Consulting (www.magistralconsulting.com), a research and analytics firm, that helps Family Offices in identifying best performing fund managers. For any inquiries you can reach out to him at Prabhash.choudhary@magistralconsulting.com

Tags/ Keywords: hedge fund outsourcing, hedge fund, outsourcing, outsourced trading, asset manager, fund, fund manager, trading desk, trading, hedge fund managers, portfolio manager, investment managers, due diligence, firm, institutional investors, bton financial, outsourced trading desk, investor, JPMorgan, prime brokers, fund administrators, trading operations, prime brokerage, emerging managers, asset class, cloud providers, fixed income, service provider, outsourced trading services, hedge fund industry, pension funds, fund administration, brokers, CFO, Private Equity Funds, Private Fund, Outsourcing Services, Trade Execution, Private Equity, Fund Strategies, Traditional Asset Managers, Operational Due Diligence, Operational Risk, Management, Financial Firms, Financial Services, Infrastructure, Investments, Alternative Investment Firms, Assets

 

In the last decade or so, almost all functions of investment banking have seen major disruption. An investment bank from pre dot com bust era is almost unrecognizable in the present scheme of things. Almost all banks are struggling to keep in tune with the historical profits that the industry is quite used to. It’s an era where factors like Technology, Outsourcing and Innovation are relaying the rules of the game for Investment Banks

Here are the major trends that are being observed in the industry:

Changes in the IPO business

Traditionally assisting corporates in accessing the public markets has been a major source of revenue for investment banks. Banks have typically charged around 3% to 7% of the money raised as their fees. Bigger and simple IPOs commanded less percentage while smaller IPOs and complex deals commanded higher fees percentage. The number of IPOs has gone down significantly, and the average size of the fund raised has increased. Also, most bigger IPOs have been from tech firms like Facebook, Uber, and Softbank. As the tech firms are already a household brand name even before the IPO, it does not necessitate a reputed Investment Bank underwriting its shares. That gives more bargaining power in the hands of these tech firms as compared to Investment Banks and hence the fees commanded by Investment Banks are under stress.

Apart from the major trend of lesser IPOs and more bargaining power to tech clients, here is what that is further making the industry more challenging:

The trend of staying Private

The last decade also saw the emergence of multiple Private Equity and Venture Capital firms, which formed an alternative to raising funds by going public for the companies. Firms like Softbank have mega-funds which have raised hundreds of billions of dollars to be invested in companies. Raising money from private investors is faster and attracts lesser scrutiny from regulatory authorities. Companies can also function independently in a much efficient way without the pressure of retorting to QoQ profits that public companies are subjected to. This has led to even fewer companies using the services of Investment Banks to go public.

Direct Public Offerings

This concept was first shown in practice by Spotify which went public without underwriting its equity. As tech firms have previous acceptability and brand established, It is easier for them to access money due to its own brand name, rather than a Goldman Sachs or a Morgan Stanley backing it up. Spotify has shown the way to other tech firms, who probably will use this route of public listing more and more in the future.

Alternative Exchanges

There have been multiple substitutes for traditional stock exchanges like NYSE that have cropped up. These exchanges like Investor Exchange or Long term Stock Exchange (LTSE) provide an alternative to list without many complications. All of this leads to a further reduction in the fees commanded by Investment Banks. There have also been multiple platforms that bring together investors and companies using technology. One such platform, Axial Network is now known to be the Tinder of M&A.

Initial Coin Offerings

Still at its infancy but ICO is expected to be used more and more in the future. Here a company offers its equity or right to equity in a blockchain or crypto-based coin. It is still facing too much suspicion from regulatory authorities to become mainstream anytime soon.

Changes in the M&A landscape

M&A activity saw a major boom in the 80s and 90s on the back of public companies looking to improve their EPS and hence improving their valuations. Investment Banks had a bigger role to play as M&A activity was driven more from a financial angle. Presently most of the M&A activity is on the back of the strategic vision of the management, rather than looking for a quick bump in the EPS. This has led to more active role play by the Management and less importance to the value that Investment Banks bring to the table.

Apart from these following are the underlying trends that are rewriting the rules of M&A

Boutique banks and Specialization

There are multiple boutique banks that have shown spectacular growth in their business on the back of specialization. Banks specializing in tech space have shown bigger increases when compared to bigger and more generalist banks. This is because boutique banks understand the industry well and are in a position to recommend vision, strategy, and synergy-based M&A targets.

Technology

There are multiple platforms that are aiding to DIY M&A. Axial network, which is known as Tinder of M&A, connects start-ups with investors, is showing tremendous growth regarding the transactions on its platform.

Changes in Asset Management landscape

Asset Management which still forms the major chunk of revenues for bigger Investment Banks is also going through multiple changes.

Although the major chunk of revenues of bigger investment banks comes from Asset Management, it seems Banks are losing to specialized asset management firms when it comes to traction and growth.

After Lehman brothers collapse, regulatory changes led to bigger investment banks to hold bigger percentage of funds as liquid. This took away the advantage that the banks had in terms of their scale. Specialized Asset Management firms turned out to be agile and relatively less susceptible to regulatory constrictions. Specialized ETFs have given better returns than the funds managed by Investment Banks.

Changes in Equity Research

Equity research for investment banks has been commoditized to a great extent. A huge chunk of information is available that is researched sometimes manually and sometimes using automated programs, but there is very little that is being absorbed. It meant less for the Banks and Clients and probably was not even being used in the way envisaged. Banks did not care much as the cost of the research was bundled along with the cost of a trade.

A recent European Commission’s directive called MiFIID II is set to change all this. Under this Banks are expected to bill the cost of research separately. This has led to banks across the globe, taking notice of their Equity Research operations. Now that the research would be paid separately, it makes sense to evaluate the value addition it brings to the table. Investors also are now more alert in consuming these reports given that they will be paying separately for this. All of this will lead to the elimination of useless repetitive and non-insightful equity research.

Changes in Sales and Trading

Of late after the Lehman Brothers episode, there have been multiple curbs on how much a Bank can trade in the market with its own and client’s money. This has led to curbs on the capital available for trading and thus killing another lucrative source of revenue for Investment Banks

How are banks countering all this?

Large banks have taken different strategies to counter the challenges I mentioned earlier. Here are the major types of strategies followed by them:

Offloading the loss-making verticals: Banks like Morgan Stanley are letting go business divisions that are not profitable and at the same time investing more and more in verticals like Asset Management, that is turning out to be increasingly profitable.

Investing in technology: Others like Goldman Sachs are investing heavily in Technology and Platforms. They are also outsourcing a lot of operations to Low-Cost countries like India. JP Morgan is coming up with Blockchain-based crypto called JPM coin.

Still in the world of Finance, the prestige of investment banks holds significant sway. Changes have arrived but still, the pace of change is expected to be slower as compared to other industries.

The Author Prabhash Choudhary. is the CEO of Magistral Consulting (www.magistralconsulting.com), a firm that helps Investment Banks in outsourcing their operations. He can be reached at prabhash.choudhary@magistralconsulting.com for any queries.

Keywords/ Tags: Investment Banking Outsourcing, Outsourcing, Investment Banking, Investment Bank, Bank, Financial Institution, Company, Service Provider, Outsourcing arrangement, banking, firm, financial firms, capital markets, operational risk, offshoring, client, regulatory compliance, investment, provider, business process, wealth management, outsourcing firm, business services, market, risk, cost savings, asset managers, metrics, analytics, private equity, regulatory requirements, technology, compliance, retail bank, asset management, asset class, outsourcing services, budget constraints, investment managers, jp morgan chase, financial sector, investment banker, value chain, operational costs, banking operations, cost reduction

Investment Banking as an industry relies on the brightest of the minds in the financial world. So when the concept of “outsourcing” is discussed, it is frowned upon by some as being unreliable and low quality. Doing everything in-house is a matter of “Unique Selling Proposition” for the bank.

Is it really so?

In this article, we will build a case for outsourcing against doing everything in-house.

Here are the reasons that you should consider before deciding ‘for’ or ‘against’ outsourcing.

If you are growing, doing everything in-house will bring down your pace of growth: For any organization, whether it’s an Investment Bank or any other, growth is a piece of good news. But it also brings with it, the huge uncertainties in terms of cash flow. You secure that big client that you were chasing for months and you sign a contract. You hire and then realize that the client has shelved the project. Now new hires sit there in your cost bucket without any revenue against them. If you let them go, it is usually bad for the brand. Hiring bright associates then becomes difficult once you are out again for hiring. Outsourcing here acts as a temporary patch. You get the project, you outsource it till the client stabilizes and then decide what to keep in-house and what to outsource. It brings down the cash flow risks dramatically. Outsourcing keeps pace with your project flow and you don’t wait for months for the new associates to join you. Read further, if you think handing an important client to outsourcing may be detrimental to your business.

 

Quality concerns around outsourcing are unfounded:  Another factor that is sighted against outsourcing is quality concerns. I encourage you to see the work that the Top 10 global investment banks are getting done in India. All of the top 10 banks have an India connection. Some have their biggest global delivery centers or captives based out of India while others have big contracts with Indian vendors, but no one thinks the quality is bad and avoids India altogether. Do you think this scale would have been possible with sub-standard delivery quality? You need to think again!!

 

There are unmistakable advantages in terms of costs: The complete business case of outsourcing is usually built around saving costs, and it is very difficult to miss the details. Depending on your location in the US, Europe, the UK, or Australia, outsourced analysts are cheaper in tune to 30% to 80% of the costs of onsite analysts. There are further savings in terms of lower supervision time, costs of databases, skill bandwidth of the whole outsourced team as compared to a few onsite analysts and the flexibility with which new resources could be added or removed

 

If you are small, you can’t do without outsourcing: It is understood that outsourcing will bring mighty savings on top of the headcounts in thousands. Though that is correct, there are immense benefits for small setups too. A small set up sometime may miss some of the critical skills that bigger banks have. Outsourcing plugs in that skill gap in smaller banks. Also with purse strings tightened for smaller banks, outsourcing sometimes is the only option for operational continuity without breaking the bank.

 

Not all Investment Banking jobs are strategic: There is absolutely nothing strategic about entering expense voucher details in excel or making the fund pdf editable, but these are the jobs that still need to be done and possibly at the lowest cost. Outsourcing is not only an alternative but the best one for these mundane tasks.

 

Selling “Outsourcing” to your clients: There is still a notion that Investment Banking clients will frown on outsourcing operations as it is perceived to be low quality. If a bank does everything in-house, it sends a signal that Bank has too little to do on its own. What advantage does it bring to do mundane jobs in-house? On the contrary, it’s perceived that the team is inefficient and has high maintenance costs. Who foots this bill? Your clients!! Say your management fees might come down by a few percentage points due to outsourcing and see the perception of outsourcing change. Keep the critical tasks in-house and outsource the non-critical ones.

 

Assignments move at double the pace: Outsourced team acts as an extended team to the onsite team. With time zone differences, it is like the combined team is moving at double the pace working in the day and the night as well. So an assignment that would have taken 30 days to complete may see itself being finished in 15 days’ time. Agility does have value in the marketplace.

 

No exit barriers from contracts: If you are not happy with the quality, timeliness, and responsiveness or have any other issues with your own business or the quality of services, the contracts have a swift exit clause. You can terminate the contract with a few days’ notice.

 

Competitive pressures regarding outsourcing: As suggested earlier in the article, the top 10 global banks are outsourcing work to India. It gives them an immense advantage in terms of costs and hence pricing their services to their clients. Someone who is doing everything in-house will be costlier without adding any additional value to the client. Competitive intensity regarding outsourcing is huge, and it may force everyone to outsource at some point. Early movers may rope in significant rewards though.

 

Hiring an individual Vs. Hiring a team: When you outsource, you don’t hire a single individual, you also hire the expertise of a team that is working across investment banks for years. This means an Investment Banking standard quality being delivered on day 1 as compared to months for an onsite hire.

 

Data Security and Privacy: Data security is a big concern for outsourcing. For this, it is suggested that outsourcing contracts should carry a penalty in case of a data breach. Usually, outsourcing players are organized on the basis of support teams for each client. There is little interaction between teams on assignment related issues. One analyst works with only one client at a time and hence there is safety in terms of sensitive news leaking to other clients. There are IT arrangements as well in terms of secured workplace access, IT firewalls, and inspection of all outgoing emails and online activity of each analyst.

 

If you are still tentative about outsourcing, please get in touch with Magistral Consulting (www.magistralconsulting.com). We support dozens of Investment Banks in outsourcing critical and non-critical work. We have a step-by-step, no-risk approach for Investment Banks to reduce their operational costs. A typical conversation starts around our capabilities. Our work samples are provided to the clients. Clients also get to talk to our references in their home countries, who have used our services. Further, we will ensure you get a pilot done to see the quality of our work before deciding on a long term engagement.

This step by step method ensures there are no financial or quality risks associated with you deciding to outsource your operations.

The author is the CEO of Magistral Consulting. Magistral has helped dozens of Investment Banks based out of the US, the UK, Europe, and Asia in outsourcing operations. He can be reached at Prabhash.choudhary@magistralconsulting.com in case of queries, observations or business inquiries.

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Over the years our team has worked on multiple pitch decks, some raising funds for a Private Equity fund, some looking for co-investors, some pitching a real estate investment while others for incubators trying to exit a portfolio company.

Recently the demand for pitch deck outsourcing has gone up due to more sophisticated demands from angel investors and VC firms for a robust business plan. Also, pitch deck design requirements have also gone up by several notches. A potential investor judges the business potential of a startup from the PowerPoint Presentation or the pitch presentation that details the business, its target audience, clients, its social media presence, marketing collateral, customer acquisition strategy, digital marketing strategy, and several other operational ideas about the upcoming startup. A pitch deck that explains the business idea well gets multiple investors. A pitch deck template with attractive graphic design that also explains the business model well will get the attention of angel investors. A successful pitch deck explains the value proposition, details out the financial model, talks about all the market segments, that the small business is trying to reach out. Investor pitch should be the entrepreneur‘s complete idea of the business for a successful fundraising round. It should have all the branding aspects in terms of colors, logos, etc. Financial projection should clearly spell out revenues, costs, valuation, and marketing plans with calculations around customer acquisition cost and strategy. It’s then only that the pitch deck will resonate with your target audience which is angel investors or VC funds.

Almost, always there are some consistent characteristics of the pitch deck that eventually pulls it off on the road-show. Here are these characteristics of the winning pitch deck:

1. Number of Slides: The number of slides for an investment pitch deck is ideally is 10-12. It can go as high as 20, but anything over that is overkill to raise money. A pitch that we designed only on 5 slides, for real-estate investment, was used to raise as much as 10 Million USD in co-investments

2. The flow of Presentation: Information has to flow like a stream of water. You introduce a subject, just to tease the reader and before an obvious question, your next slide is sitting there, answering it. Slides are as engaging as a story-book. Typical example: Start with a universal problem that everyone acknowledges, detail the current ways of solving the problem, go onto propose how all existing solutions are ineffective, present your solution that is different from everything else out there, give business case for your solution, your funding requirements, what can investors expect and finally closing it with the team profile and their accomplishments. Everything flows one after the other like an engaging storybook

3. Structure within a slide: All tables and structures used consistently follow the MECE principle. MECE stands for Mutually Exclusive and Collectively Exhaustive. A combination of any number of bullet points on a slide has to be MECE. All bullet points combined should exhaustively cover all aspects of a subject and at the same time, no two bullet points should convey anything similar

4. Brand logo and color consistency: Rainbow of colors look good on a book that carries nursery rhymes, but for something that is meant for an Investment Banking crowd, it needs to be soberer. Limited colors on slides which specifically need to be derived from the brand logo, shows the professionalism of the presenter. Loud colors can be used for investment themes related to B2C but for anything B2B, hues need to be tapered down

5. The structure across the slides: If something is repeating again and again on multiple slides, like fund returns of different funds on different slides, the corresponding data needs to be at the exact same place on every slide. It’s like while you quickly move from one slide to another, tables should not dance from its place. The eye of the recipient gets trained to see specific data at a specific place on every slide

6. Less the text, better: For everything that can replace a text is welcome. A picture says a thousand words and one should use info-graphic or a picture to convey rather than writing a thousand words on slides

7. Back-up Material: Although fewer slides are there on a pitch deck, every number that is used on the slide should have a detailed back-up ready to be opened in case of a query. A 5 slides Pitch Deck is usually preceded by 30-40 page business case or a project plan. Another excel carrying P&L, Balance Sheet and Cash Flow projections almost always follow. Financial Modeling is done for more complex investment plans

8. Team Bio: It’s the team that usually gets funding. Their credentials and experience are almost always highlighted in the pitch deck. It needs to be made sure that pictures of all partners are there, preferably in similar professional outlook, clicked at similar zooms, preferably in professional or no background

9. Simplifying the content: We work on multiple concepts that are very “Sciency” and “Academic”, like a core tech, topics that are purely academic, a scientific breakthrough or global epidemic. Material that is available on the topic is good for pursuing a doctorate but the idea is to simplify all these core concepts to the level that is easily understood by investors and in the least amount of time.

There may be several other things that might be important for a pitch deck in a niche area or a specific situation, but almost all the winning pitch decks in our experience have these common characteristics.

Magistral (www.magistralconsultig.com) has worked with multiple firms like Private Equity, Venture Capital, Investment Banks, and Asset Management companies in supporting their fund-raising efforts. We have prepared logos, website and website content, pitch decks, project plans, industry reports and financial modeling that support the fund-raising efforts of our clients.

The author is the CEO of Magistral Consulting and can be reached at Prabhash.choudhary@magistralconsulting.com for any queries or work samples.

 

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Business Research is an important element for a growing company. The requirement for effective business research is to be on the dot, quick, actionable and still cheap. If you are at a company, managing it is comparatively easy, with a vendor who has a long-standing relationship with your company delivering on expected assignments which are often repetitive in nature.

But when you have the responsibility of multiple portfolio companies, which may be operating in similar or different industries, there are other complexities that creep in. The nature of assignments may not be necessarily repetitive; a specialization may be required to understand the nuances of valuations, fund-raising, and exits. Also, all companies are different cost centers with their dedicated management and boards. As the mandate is to grow companies aggressively, a lot of research may be required in traditional areas as well as lead generation, market studies, competitive intelligence, etc.

A solution that investors have been working with is to have a Research function or resources in each of the portfolio companies. Not only does it lead to higher costs, but there is also no cross-pollination of learning from one company to another. Research now is so sophisticated that it requires not only the research expertise but elements of social media, design, editing and when dealing with an investment portfolio, knowledge of fund-raising environment too. It’s difficult to have all these skills in a single company without incurring challenges in terms of costs and resource availability. Picking up a resource from one company and deploying it in another will have challenges as both entities will have separate P&Ls.

A solution that plays further over the advantages of traditional outsourcing is to have a centralized research team in a low-cost country like India. FTEs (Full-time Equivalent) act as full-time employees of the investors. The team can be scaled up or down depending on the work requirement. Work can be prioritized in accordance with the schedule of board meetings of different companies. The investor gets multiple resources with varying skills at a cost centralized for multiple companies, that doesn’t break the bank. Invoices can either be raised on the investor, who can then allocate it to the portfolio company or directly to the portfolio companies. Costs are competitive as the scale of work gets combined for multiple companies. Specific events related to fund-raise, valuations, M&A and exits, that trigger heightened research demand, can be met with additional resources offshore and after these events, the team can be ramped down. Cross-pollination of knowledge from one company to another is seamless and doesn’t get lost in transition.

Magistral Consulting has helped multiple investors, who are on multiple boards to implement their ideas across the portfolio companies with centralized outsourced research function.

The Author of this post is CEO of Magistral Consulting and can be reached at Prabhash.choudhary@magistralconsulting.com for any queries, work samples or clarifications

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Why Private Investments are more important than they ever were?

Wealth creation has moved from ‘Post-IPO’ in public markets to ‘Pre-IPO’ in private markets. All indicators related to private investments are at an all-time high. Gone are the days, when institutional investors would invest in primary and secondary markets to stay in the security for the long term, for continued wealth creation and regular flow of dividends. Increasingly, experienced investment managers are investing in private markets, scaling the company, merge it with others, and take the bigger entity public to create wealth for themselves, while limiting the returns upside for retail and other institutional investors in the secondary market. Robust Due diligence exercise is imperative.

At least in the near future, it can be said that IPO will not be the source of funds for the companies also. It is going to be the private investors in the form of Angel, Private Equity, and Venture Capital firms. Companies are increasingly postponing their IPOs in favor of private investors due to less regulatory requirements, the savvy nature of investors to back maverick ideas, less number of stakeholders to manage, and industry-specific knowledge of investors that can be used for further scaling companies. But private investments from investors’ point of view are very different from investing in equities where all the data is available upfront. Due diligence of private target companies is a painstaking process. As part of due diligence, the following are the items that need to be checked before a private investment is signed and closed:

Founders and the Founding Team: We hear this often that a VC backs a ‘team’ and not a company. So when we talk about due diligence of early-stage investment, the team acquires the center-stage, in terms of investment decision making. There are a host of questions that need answering before backing a founding team. For example, whether one of the founders was sacked in the last job due to charges of sexual harassment against him? How founders behave with their teams when investors are not around? Are the educational and experience credentials claimed by founders correct and verifiable? Has someone spoken to the references provided? And so many more!!

When millions are riding on the personal conduct of a group of people, no investor would want to repeat a ‘Travis Kalanick’ episode. It is thus imperative to get into all the minute details about the founding team’s business and personal conduct.

Market and Industry of the Target Company: Another oft-repeated saying of the Alternative Investment industry is that ‘it is better to invest in an average company in a rising industry rather than backing an excellent company in a declining industry’. To be on the top of the industry trends and how it is going to unfold in the near to mid-term is imperative for risk aversion of the invested capital. An industry with all its hues of multiple sub-industries with cross-germination of tech into it needs a specialist intervention in terms of market research and forecasts

Past Financial Performance: The target company usually provides data on revenue and market traction. Although dollars coming into a bank account is a fairly straight-forward end KPI, there are multiple other market traction KPIs that finally ensure dollars in the account at some point in time in the future. These traction KPIs are industry-specific like the number of paid customers, freemium customers, free to paid customer conversion rates, claimed market share, etc. It would have been fairly simple if the company would have provided these numbers accurately. Sometimes clouds are deliberately maintained on data. One sees a month-on-month increasing number of customers, but what is not known is the percentage of paid customers amongst them or worst still, maybe the whole surge has come from free membership campaigns. Devil is in the details. Talking to market and tech experts along with customers will go a long way in ensuring the right investment decision.

Future Financial Performance: Future financial performance is usually a linear or exponential extrapolation of current performance or sometimes just pulled out of the hat to sell a rosy picture of the future. Many times, the company is struggling to meet expenses currently, but future forecasts graph takes off like a rocket headed into space. All these forecasts need to be taken with a pinch of salt. It’s worthwhile to check and challenge all the assumptions that have gone into coming up with the financial model and the forecasts. It is a factor that could literally make or break for your millions going into the private investment.

Customers: Proof of the pudding is in the eating. Customers talking well of a company is a good sign for investors. Also, customers vote with their dollars. Talking to them gives an idea about the customer journey, pain points, existing alternatives to product or service and what exactly would be needed for them to shell out those dollars for the product or service. This requires a specialist Market Research agency that has expertise in ghost shopping and customer surveys.

Employees: One of the first people who bought into a vision is the ‘employees’ of the start-up. A place that has happy employees speaks louder than any other credential for the founder. At the same time, a toxic culture will be quicksand that will absorb millions of dollars in no time, without a blip on revenue numbers. Most founders are not ‘Steve Jobs’ type visionary. They are average folks, who get stressed with day to day running of the start-up machinery, which takes a toll on them. How do they behave with their employees at that point in time is a fairly good indicator of an individual’s potential as an effective stakeholder manager currently and in the future? A research agency can provide honest feedback on this indicator.

Regulations: Are there any regulatory risks in the business, that will come into play after scaling up of operations? Thorough research and liaising with government agencies can go a long way in avoiding statutory and regulatory risks that might plague your investment in the future.

Other Investors: Old boys of the industry do remark that ‘VCs and PEs hunt in packs’. It is heard often. Other investors are more of a support than a threat. If they have voted with their dollars than it might be a good company. Also in situations of B2C tech where winners take it all or a small group of winners take it all, funding dollars make the difference between the winner and the laggards. Multiple investors backing a company will take care of those dollars, which means your own investment is safer. At this point, verifying the claim of the company about other lead investors, co-investors, and conversations going on needs to be verified by a neutral agency.

Magistral Consulting helps Private Equity, Venture Capital, Family Offices, and Investment Banks in performing due diligence for private assets. All these steps are taken care of, in our proprietary research method that is designed to eliminate potential investment risks. A concise weight-based evaluation metrics with clear recommendations about future potential and risks are delivered in aggressive timelines. As our delivery centers are based out of low-cost countries, it builds in significant savings in terms of research costs as well. To know more, please get in touch with info@magistralconsulting.com

The author is CEO of Magistral Consulting and can be reached at prabhash.choudhary@magistralconsulting.com for any clarifications and queries.

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Marketing at Venture Capital and Private Equity firms is a trend that is still shaping up. It was in year 2001 that Marry Meeker published her first internet report, which could be tentatively marked as the beginning of Marketing as a function in Private Equity and Venture Capital echelons. Marry Meeker’s influence today can be gauged from the fact that Alibaba’s stock dropped 6.25% on the day of its latest report release.

A lot has happened since 2001, industry grew and contracted at-least twice, first during the dot com bubble crash of 99-01 and then Lehman Brothers aftermath of 07-09. But application of science and art of Marketing at Venture Capital firms is more resounding than ever before. Here are the pillars of a Private Equity and Venture Capital firms’ brand building efforts:

Reputation: Reputation takes years to build. So does that mean a GP which has not seen even a single cycle of fund-raising, investing and harvesting, which typically takes a decade, can’t do anything for years regarding this? Yes, it takes years to build but with emergence of connectivity across the globe, that cycle of years can be short-circuited with Marketing hyper activity at the start. A reputation can be created online in a relatively shorter span and the good news is that online reputation matters as much; and greatly influences the offline reputation too. What is online reputation? It’s the content that is available against your firms name on the net. Its combination of industry reports, PR, blogs, partners’ speaking gigs and any events that you may have conducted in the past.

Communication: Your brand of communication defines how you are seen in investor and investee communities. Communication plays a vital role in your positioning with LPs and entrepreneurs. Great firms focus in multiple aspects of their communication with both of these communities in terms of frequency, quality, availability and relevance. David Skok’s blog ‘For entrepreneurs’ is a fine example of a great communication strategy aimed at investee companies in terms of frequency, quality, availability and relevance. Twitter has also come to rescue the communication efforts of Private Equity and Venture Capital firms. Smart firms are using it to communicate what they stand for

Experience: Nothing speaks louder than an impressive delivered IRR figures from the past. If you have completed a cycle and have returned 5-10X to investors, you are in an exclusive club of a few who can be proud of being there and done that. Softbank’s growth is miraculous for a firm that came into existence in 2004. It’s simply on the back of impressive returns that it has generated for its investors and its Marketing blitzkrieg that follows all its activities. No wonder its 100 billion dollar vision fund closed in record 7 months’ time. So then, is it all over for fund managers starting now? The other alternative is to sell the expertise of partners through a smart content management strategy. Better still is to chose a niche technology that itself is new and there are not many fund managers who can boast of harvesting profitably. Almost all good emerging managers focus on emerging technologies; and who is perceived good there? One who has the most relevant content that can be found online and offline.

Specialization: Branding and communication strategy revolves around pedalling the specialization of a Private Equity or Venture Capital firm. A marketing strategy is weaved around a specialization and would go haywire in case there is no specialization. Specializations that firms chose can be a specific technology like AI, Blockchain, Crypto or a specific industry like logistics or Real Estate. Specializations are also on the cross-sections of a specific industry and a specific tech like AI in healthcare. Investing strategy itself forms specialization in many cases. New strategies like “second seed”, “very late stage funding”, “Pre-Series A” amongst others still have space to accommodate new fund managers. Here it’s imperative to chose a specialization and follow it up with an immaculate Marketing strategy

Methodology: Methodology is what differentiates boys from men in the VC game. A process oriented firm is stable in turbulent times and can beat returns expectations of the investors. A firm that is cut above the rest will have a well documented process for fund-raising, investor relations, investee relations, deal origination and sourcing, portfolio management and an excellent and well timed exit strategy. All VCs claim they have processes but most of the time it just stays just in their heads and is not documented. These processes give a leg up to your marketing effort. Once processes are established, focus can move to reduce the costs of operations, which means more dry-powder for investments and better returns for investors.

….but my fund is small, I may not need marketing!!

An economic cycle bubble bursts every decade or so. With geopolitical tensions in biggest economies, we may be on the cusp of another one. If your fund is small and you don’t invest in Marketing, you may not survive the next bubble burst. Maiden fund is small and second fund may just never come, pretty much wrapping up the business. Also when subsequent fund is 10X size of your last closed fund, without any change in your strategy for fund-raising, it’s bound to fail. Your marketing effort needs to match your ambitions and show you as a serious long-term player in the game.

…..I am into angel investing and I have ears on the ground, I may not need marketing!!

In Angel investing your brand to help entrepreneurs is as important as your wallet size. A well researched report carrying opinions of all entrepreneurs on challenges that they face and how you help is a typical stunt that will tilt the scale in your favor when entrepreneurs sit and chose the best VCs for them

….I am in a very local business, I may not need marketing!!

With the advent of internet, there is nothing that is absolutely local. Highly targeted marketing campaigns for a locality can do wonders for your business.

In conclusion, marketing is the only differentiator between the VCs who crop up in a boom cycle just to go down with the next bust and the ones who are in the game for long term. A sincere Marketing effort shows knowledge, commitment and capability of the VC, all of which go a long way in attracting investors and investees.

I represent Magistral Consulting that helps Private Equity, Venture Capital and Asset Management firms across the globe offshore their marketing activities for better effectiveness and lower costs. For more information, please write to me at prabhash.choudhary@magistralconsulting.com

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Softbank achieved fund-close of its latest Vision Fund of 100 billion dollars in record 8 months. This fund is dedicated towards late stage funding of tech companies. To keep things in right perspective, the amount raised by Softbank is more than the total amount invested by all of American VCs in 2017. This success comes on the back of past record of returns generated by earlier Softbank’s funds, which is in the range of 25-30% IRR.

While likes of Softbank are able to achieve fund closes of eye popping amounts with amazing alacrity, emerging managers find themselves struggling to close even their maiden funds.

We at Magistral, have been working with some of the global funds in assisting them with the fund raising efforts; and here is what we think can help emerging managers close their funds quickly:

  1. Specialized Content: If you claim to be an expert in real estate related to cannabis, and your fund aims to invest in this and generate superior returns, how much content regarding this area do you carry in your opening meetings? Is there a credible content available with Investor relations, business development and fund-raising teams? What are the legal-social aspects of investing in this? Compelling content establishes your authority right away and places you favorably with investors. Get the content and strategy regarding your fund right.
  2. Exhaustive Reach-out: Achievement of fund-close with target amount is a function of number of LP meetings a fund is able to achieve. At the same time, number of meetings is a function of LP reach-out efforts. LPs can be reached through calling, emails, references and social media. An exhaustive reach-out program ensures there is no door left to knock.
  3. Past Performance: Past performance in individual capacity of partners goes a long way in convincing investors to put their money in a GP. Pitch deck should clearly talk about realized paid up returns delivered by partners in the past. It establishes credibility of the GP.
  4. Capability to park funds: LPs not only see the capability of GP to provide handsome returns, but also the experience to handle and deploy large amount of funds. A GP capable of parking bigger checks means less hassle for LPs. In this scenario, smaller niche funds tend to miss out
  5. Events: There are hundreds of LP and GP events that take place across the globe throughout the year. Finding out the relevant event for your fund, and participating in the same has the potential of opening flood gates of investors for your fund. A slot for keynote speaker ensures some more mileage
  6. Social Media and SEO: Social Media and SEO still remains a black box for majority of GPs. These channels may not directly bring in funds, but are crucial for setting up opening meetings, getting references, supporting information and distributing content. A credible online presence helps LPs in its due diligence of GPs
  7. Over-dependence of Private Placement players: In our experience, we came across GPs who before giving out any details about their investing philosophy started talking about the brokerage; they are willing to give out for introductions. This is short-sighted. A Placement guy who will be attracted to such schemes would be short-sighted and will not benefit both the LP and GP. Even if the broker is well connected, it’s not possible for him to work with all type of GPs. It’s better to take responsibility of reaching out to LPs organically rather than depending on brokers and enticing them with ‘cuts’, which of-course would be paid from the fund that should have ideally contributed to returns to LPs. A situation where everyone is a loser.

I hope all the experience shared by us here is helpful and helps you close your maiden fund as soon as possible.

I represent Magistral Consulting, that has helped Emerging Managers in the areas of Private Equity, venture Capital, Real Estate and Infrastructure and Hedge Funds  raising their maiden funds. We have assisted GPs in all the above mentioned areas. For more information, please drop a query at prabhash.choudhary@magistralconsulting.com

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Rules of the game for online content marketing have undergone a sea change in last few years. It’s established even for B2B marketers, that their target customers are spending most of their time on internet either hooked on laptop, mobile or tablets. If you need to reach your customers, going online is the only imperative.

Though it’s obvious that internet presence and compelling content is of paramount importance for B2B marketers, reaching the top decision makers is still an Achilles’ heel for most. People at CXO levels are extremely busy and getting their attention for content requires some serious homework. Putting in some content in hope of getting top management’s eyeballs, is spray and prey technique, that in today’s world of incessant barrage of irrelevant content, is a ploy of diminishing returns.

Here are few rules that in my experience have worked wonders and have helped clients in engaging top deck in meaningful conversations:

Topic of content: Generalized content gathered from other sources of information is passé.  A report on an industry say as big as Management Consulting, is expected to draw a blank. What helps here is coming up with topics that are of immediate interest to the decision makers in the industry that you are targeting. Targeting a very specific sub-market helps.  Rather than report on ‘Management Consulting’, a report on executive search market for CXO level recruitments in a defined geographical space is far more appropriate. Ofcourse, executive search is also a subset of management consulting industry like dozens others. It helps to know your exact market and in as much details as possible.

Data, data and more data: “In god we trust, everyone else brings data”. A piece of statistic communicates in thousand ways. It establishes the credibility of the content. A top management professional would rather prefer a neat data table that tells him what he needs to do, rather than an elaborate piece of report with recommendations that gathers dust. Let him draw his own conclusions

Understand the challenges of your target: It’s a ground rule and probably oft repeated, but it’s appalling to see so many B2B marketers failing at this. The board of a family business being run in India would not be concerned about IoT interventions on assembly line, but about the ways to manage a non family member CXO, that they hired recently for salary more than they ever paid themselves. It’s important to understand what keeps a board member awake at night, before you decide to make content for them. Next obvious step is to weave content around it and dovetail your products and solutions into it.

Infographics: A texty report is still in vogue. Marketers feel more text means more information. Sadly nothing gets read. Even if it gets read, there is no chance a busy executive will read it in the details that marketer would have envisaged.  Cutting down on text, as ruthlessly as you can helps. Building on infographics to convey the same information is time consuming but well worth the effort. Any report or content that can’t be skimmed in 5 minutes is out of the window.

Once you are done with finalizing a crisp, data and infographics loaded, relevant report for your target, its distribution through online channels is the next hoop. About that in some other blog, some other time!!

Author is CEO of Magistral Consulting which has helped multiple B2B corporations in creating winning content for top management. He can be reached at prabhash.choudhary@magistralconsulting.com

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Are you a Private Equity or a Venture Capital firm that has finalized the asset with a huge manufacturing base? Then read on….

Valuing a factory or a manufacturing company can be tricky. Number oriented investment bankers are more comfortable with the valuation derived from the financial models. All the assets like land, factories, machineries, inventories, vehicles etc. are taken into account with assumptions on depreciation to arrive at a value that a manufacturing-based asset deserves.

There is one thing that often gets overlooked in the financial models. That is the potential for factory to save costs or improving productivity in future. Assessing this has significant element of experience and intuition. It can have an impact on the final COGS and thus improve the bottom-line of the overall organization. An improved bottom-line that is possible in future will have a bearing on the current valuation. It also decides if the asset managers will be able to derive the value that they plan from the asset in the future.

I will detail a few tools here, that can give experienced operations personnel, a quick and dirty guide to indicate the improvements that are possible in the operations of a manufacturing company or a factory.

Productivity Improvements Studies

DILO: DILO stands for “Day in the Life Of”. It has been used for years now by productivity improvement consultants. DILO is shadowing personnel for a whole shift/day to understand nature of all activities performed by him, and whether they are value adding or not. DILO is performed over the activities of first level supervisor in the plant. It’s not done for the people at the top and it’s not done for people at the lowest rung too. First supervisory level DILO gives a firsthand idea about the cultural DNA of the organization. It also helps zeroing on the productivity improvements that is possible. A 20% productivity improvement using improved systems is not exactly unheard of.

Management Control Systems: An effective Management Control System study charts out flow of information in the organization and the actions that are being taken on the same. Production planning processes, production control processes and production reporting processes are taken into account. All KPIs/KRAs and review mechanisms are studied too. This study should be able to show gaps in the processes and improvements possible. This can be repeated for functions of Maintenance, Quality Control, Supply Chain, R&D or any other function that has an important bearing on the final output.

Pit-stop studies: A pit stop study is conducted to see if the flow of material, men and information happen as they happen during a pit-stop in F1 racing. It also records all the bottlenecks for not achieving the pit stop level efficiencies. Analysis of these bottlenecks give a fair idea about the improvements possible

Bottleneck Study: Identifying a clear line of value addition itself is a task in multiple industries, but if processes are visibility and logically connected, a bottleneck study can be done to find out the bottleneck process or a bottleneck machine. Once identified it’s clear that any improvement that is done on the bottleneck process/machine improves the productivity of the whole line. We need to study the bottleneck machines/processes in further details to find out downtimes and reasons for the same. More avoidable the reasons are, more chances of improvements. A bottleneck process improvement has been able to show 10% improvements in throughput even across process-wise mature plants.

Process Maps: A simple flow of material and information exposes the gaps in processes. Material waiting for information or material waiting for other material or machines or men, all cause delays. As per the established principles of Toyota Production System and lean methodology, wastes need to be identified. Once identified, it needs to be ascertained, if these wastes are avoidable. Again, more avoidable the reasons, more chances of improvements.

Quality Processes: Reduction in quality rejected items directly adds to the throughput. Finding out the effectiveness of quality systems can point towards improvements possible due to reduction in quality rejects.

5S and other housekeeping systems: It makes the workplace clutter free. Absence or presence of these systems point towards the current processes maturity and thus improvements possible.

Cost Optimization Studies

Material Cost: Material costs most often are the highest cost bucket for a factory. There is some raw material fed at the beginning of the production line and there is output in terms of finished product at the other end. All the material that is lost in between is the dollars lost. In process industries, this is also referred as material yield. Finding out the potential to reduce this waste is guaranteed to give future direct bottom-line benefits.

Inventory Cost: In some industry cost of inventory is huge. If inventory turns are not monitored carefully, it leads to working capital being tied up in inventory. Finding out if A, B, C classifications are there and if there are inventory standards for each classification can be a starting point. In case there are standards, a quick audit of some A class materials will show potential of releasing stuck working capital back to P&L.

Procurement Costs: A quick look at procurement processes show if there is some value that can be derived from tighter procurement standards. Few things that can be looked at include, how contracts are finalized, presence of penalty clauses in contracts, contracts negotiations process, RFQ process, low cost country sourcing potential, supply chain cost reduction possibilities, mass discounts and vendor rationalization possibilities. A tighter procurement process has known to produce 10% savings in the spends related to material.

All these studies will also need to be supported by number crunching exercises. It all depends on the extent and quality of data available in the factory.

A dipstick study can be concluded in 2-3 weeks’ time for a plant that produces around 200-1000 Crore worth of stock by a team of 3-4 people. This exercise gives an input to valuation of the plant and the company. It also acts as the road-map for the management in case the asset gets acquired.

Prabhash Choudhary, CEO, Magistral Consulting.

Magistral (www.magistralconsulting.com) is a leading consulting research and analytics firm that helps PE/VC firms globally in performing operational due diligence. The author can be reached at prabhash.choudhary@magistralconsulting.com for queries.

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Procurement is an area where cost optimization strategies start to show an impact on bottom-line almost immediately. It’s one of the foremost areas, which is attacked by experienced turnaround professionals. Direct sourcing which almost decides the profit margins of the organization or even its competitive standing in the market hogs all the management attention. Indirect sourcing at the same time is complex and requires expertise that is usually not present in the organization.

For beginners, direct sourcing is the sourcing of materials that make it to the final product. For example; procurement of tires in an automobile company. Indirect sourcing is the sourcing of material or services that don’t make it to the final product. For example; office furniture or plant security services.

For direct sourcing, there is lots of attention and expertise that is available in the organization as the very survival of the organization depends on it. For indirect sourcing, there are way too many categories and its vast in scope, so organizational attention about it dwindles.

Following are some of the steps that are very relevant as first steps of reducing spend base for indirect sourcing. Please note some of it may be relevant for direct sourcing too

1. Spend Analysis: Spend Analysis, as simply put is an analysis of all your indirect spending. For a complex transnational organization, it’s a huge exercise. Similar items are booked under different names and codes in SAP system. Codes have been created recklessly over the years and at some point in time it all becomes too difficult to manage. Someone needs to rationalize the codes and put all the spends under a standard system of category nomenclature. Output has to be in the form of a Pareto chart that tells the amount and nature of biggest indirect spending.

2. Contract Renegotiations: Once biggest category of spends are identified, next step is to look for how these items are getting procured. It’s a good idea to have a look at these contracts and see how price increments over the years have been given. Has there been a technology intervention in the industry that has brought down the prices but your organization continues to pay year on year prices escalations signed years ago? It’s time to renegotiate. A smart purchaser should be able to save 10-20% simply by negotiating a contract which buys higher volumes and for longer periods of time.

3. Low Cost Country Sourcing: Some items are assumed that they will be cheaper if procured locally, but there are so many items where landed costs of items even after all import duties and taxes paid, works out cheaper than locally sourced material. Finding out these items and procuring them from a low cost manufacturing country brings in the requisite value. An experienced purchaser knows these items from the experience and attacks it effectively. In manufacturing set-ups this step itself has been known to bring 5-10% of cost savings

4. Vendor Rationalization: Having lots of vendors providing similar services and products is not a good idea. If for top category of spends, there are multiple vendors, one needs to initiate vendor rationalization process. Next step is to find out the best and/or biggest vendor, get into negotiations with them to get mass discounts as the volumes will increase. Offering a contract for longer period of times, will further bring in some more dough.

5. New Vendors: For all top categories of spends, there has to be a continuous effort of finding new and more competitive vendors. Vendors who use technology to bring down the landed cost of items should be preferred in this scheme. This requires a continuous profiling of potential vendors, who can replace existing ones. If you have onboarded vendors as and when it was required over the years, it may be time to have a strategic look at the same.

6. Vendor Industry Profiling: Vendor industry profiling brings immense value in industries where commodity prices and international supply chain play an important role. If you have monitored your vendors’ industry carefully, you would know exactly how much a vendor could be squeezed for savings. It helps to research out the cost structure of the industry beforehand. That way you get the best prices without leaving anything on the table.

 

Author: Prabhash Choudhary, CEO, Magistral Consulting

Magistral Consulting has helped multiple organizations optimize its procurement processes. To know more click www.magistralconsulting.com. Author can be reached at prabhash.choudhary@magistralconsulting.com for any queries.