Our approach
We provide private equity/venture capital (PE/VC) firms the much-needed flexibility to manage highly volatile workflow on either a retainer or a project-specific basis. We work as an extended arm of our clients, and ensure that all regular and critical functions of the funds, such as opportunity screening, due diligence, periodic reporting, business development, portfolio monitoring, and whitepapers, are carried out irrespective of any spikes in investment activity.
Support We Offer
- Private Equity Support
We provide end-to-end support to private equity (PE) firms on the investment side as well as horizontal support across middle-office and back-office functions.
On the front-end investment side, we provide comprehensive service offerings to support our PE clients across their investment lifecycles. We assist them from deal sourcing and target evaluation to portfolio monitoring and advisory.
We also support middle-office and back-office teams of PE firms by providing bespoke fundraising, investor relations and fund operations solutions. We assist clients from level 1 responses to activities such as RFPs/RFIs/DDQs, client presentations, factsheet generation, fund monitoring and fund valuation, and investor reporting. In addition to providing dedicated support on fund valuation, investor reporting and fund administration, we are experienced in integrating data operations into CRM systems, keeping onshore teams informed and flexible to respond to queries faster.
- Venture Capital Support
We provide comprehensive support to venture capital (VC) firms across the investment life cycle. We help them monitor existing and new markets for consumer behaviour and economic/demographic changes, helping them with real-time market-pulse tracking and sourcing quality targets to invest in.
Our deal-sourcing services help VC clients identify and maintain a pipeline of potentially interesting startups, helping them have increased visibility of startups in the space (95% visibility of attractive companies) and pre-empt investment opportunities. We also conduct VC due diligence by creating diligence frameworks and conducting research, ensuring faster turnaround on deal decision (40-50% reduction in time taken to close a deal).
Our portfolio monitoring and advisory services enable VC firms to track performance of portfolio companies and funds periodically, conduct strategic portfolio reviews and prepare bespoke presentation material for investor reporting with limited partners.
Acuity Knowledge Partners’ VC domain team is experienced in working with all market data sources relevant for VC clients including Preqin, FactSet, CB Insights, Crunchbase, SimilarWeb, App Annie, Venture intelligence, PitchBook and sector-specific sources.
- Private Equity and Venture Capital Fund of Funds Support
We help clients capitalise on opportunities in primary fund markets by screening fund managers by fund type, strategy and transaction preference, and by providing detailed due diligence information memorandums.
We work as a pure extension of your global onshore team, providing end-to-end support across the investment lifecycle. Our services include fund screening, fund benchmarking, manager research, manager evaluation, fund and portfolio valuation, portfolio monitoring, custom research and fund marketing. We also conduct due diligence by creating diligence frameworks and conducting research, ensuring faster turnaround on deal decisions (40-50% reduction in time taken to close a deal).
Our portfolio monitoring, fund operations and advisory services enable you to track fund performance periodically, conduct strategic reviews and prepare bespoke limited-partner reports, and source and validate information from general-partner material, fund accounting tools and private-company financial/annual reports.
- Private Equity Secondary Fund Support
Acuity Knowledge Partners is able to support clients on multi-fund deals: deal evaluation, fund pricing, portfolio monitoring and closing analytics.
We help your investment team analyse pricing at a fund level, factoring in DCF models, NAV discounting, ESG criteria, investment restrictions and more. We also undertake model updates for activities such as portfolio rebalancing, tracking hedges of public positions, consent requests and unfunded commitment tracking.
Our portfolio monitoring and advisory services enable you to track fund performance periodically, conduct strategic reviews and prepare bespoke material for investor reporting with limited partners.
We also provide comprehensive end-to-end support with all types of general partner-led secondary transactions, including continuation funds, tender offers, strip sales and preferred equity solutions.
- Private Credit and Mezzanine Investment Support
Our approach to private credit is to bucket it under capital preservation (senior debt/direct lending and mezzanine), return maximising (distressed debt) and opportunistic/niche (CLOs/CDOs and others).
We work as a pure extension of your global onshore credit team, providing end-to-end support across the research cycle. Our services include opportunity screening, custom research, execution support and fund operations.
Our biggest advantage is that we understand the unique challenges in this space: it requires complex operational flexibility, custom reporting, overcoming regulatory barriers (in certain countries), factoring in ESG considerations, and talented and experienced staff. This enables us to better help our clients and deliver measurable positive business outcomes.
- Real Estate Support to Private Markets
Acuity Knowledge Partners is able to support clients on screening, due diligence, deal acquisition and portfolio monitoring.
We help our clients fast-track their investment decisions by assisting them on property and loan screening, transaction and leasing comps, macroeconomic analysis and industry/sector research.
We also conduct due diligence by creating diligence frameworks and conducting research, ensuring faster turnaround on deal decisions (40-50% reduction in time taken to close a deal).
Our bespoke monitoring solutions enable you to track fund performance periodically, conduct strategic reviews and prepare bespoke presentation material for investor reporting. This includes lease abstraction, property and loan tapes, periodic updates of financial models, tracking operational and financial KPIs of investments, valuation templates, maintaining portfolio and sector-specific dashboards, and credit monitoring.
Support we offer
Technology enabled Solutions for Commercial Banks
Advanced Analytics Platform for Portfolio Monitoring
FolioSure enables General Partners (GP) and Limited Partners (LP) accurate tracking and comparison of the performance of portfolio companies.....
30-40% more cost-effective than other service providers
40-50% shorter turnaround time for portfolio monitoring and LP reporting
How we are different
One-stop solution for PE/VC firms with expertise and service offerings to support all aspects of the PE/VC investment cycle across the value chain
Extensive experience in supporting clients along direct, secondary, fund of funds (FoFs), and primary fund investments across all major private markets and asset classes
Expertise and experience in proactively sourcing and achieving maximum returns from investment opportunities
Experience in helping realize long-term growth strategies by identifying great opportunities and enhancing portfolio performance to derive maximum value from existing investments
Highly experienced and effective analysts who undertake intense tasks, including commercial due diligence, investment due diligence, valuation analysis, building complex distribution models, and exploring previous transactions
What we have done
Private Equity Investment for a US-based Global Private Equity Firm
What we are proud of
>8
years of partnership
>$48b
AUM supported
Data transformation support for a leading fund of funds client
What we are proud of
35%
faster turnaround
USD3.0m
annualised cost savings
Portfolio Monitoring for a US-based Global PE Firm
What we are proud of
100%
Accuracy with par-level TATs
>85%
bandwidth increase for the on-shore team
Coverage Expansion and Support for a Global PE Firm Headquartered in Switzerland
What we are proud of
4 years
of partnership
>$10m
in cost savings
Co-investment Monitoring for a Global PE FoF Firm Headquartered in the US
What we are proud of
5+ years
of partnership
~$2-3m
in cost savings
Secondary Investments for a Leading US-based Private Equity Firm
What we are proud of
>1,000
secondary funds reviewed
~20%
time saving for fund managers
In the News
Acuity Knowledge Partners wins ‘Best Supporting Institution of 2023’ at GIFA 2023
Read More
Private Equity Wire
Expecting More: The evolving demand for ESG and impact investing | Private Equity Wire
Read More
People Management
Why businesses must seize the opportunity for cross-border recruitment
Read MoreOur perspective on Private Equity and Venture Capital Consulting Firms
Blog
Venture capital – macroeconomic influences to .....
The year 2022 ended the longest positive economic cycle (which started in 2010) .....Read More
Blog
The future of global payments in an era of open .....
For over a decade now, the financial services sector and especially the global p.....Read More
July 25, 2023
Blog
Pet humanisation in China: how dogs and cats are.....
Introduction There are as many as 51m pet dogs and 65m pet cats in urban China......Read More
July 10, 2023
Meet our experts
Pratap Singh
Senior Director, Private Equity and Venture Capital Services
Pratap leads the Private Equity and Venture Capital practices at Acuity Knowledge Partners, responsible for managing and developing client relationships and overseeing multiple accounts. He has extensive experience in managing direct investments, primary fund investments, FoFs and complex secondary transactions. Over the last 14 years, he has been involved in more than 5,000 Private Markets deals.
Sumit Chhabra
Managing Director, Global Head of Corporate, Private Equity and Consulting/Venture Capital Services
Sumit heads the Consulting & Private Equity vertical at Acuity Knowledge Partners. He also oversees the China Delivery Centre. Sumit is responsible for strategy formulation and implementation, innovation and business development, in addition to providing oversight to delivery groups. He has more than 18 years’ experience across diverse lines of services, including private equity, consulting, market research, investment banking, and commercial banking. In his previous roles at Acuity Knowledge Partners, Sumit was instrumental in setting up the Investment Banking vertical and multiple other services. He also led the business turnaround of a subsidiary company as its COO. He is a chartered accountant and a national rank holder in the foundation level of ICAI.
Adrian Wright
Managing Director, Investment Banking, Private Equity and Consulting Business Development
Adrian leads Business Development across Investment Banking, Private Equity and Consulting clients in EMEA and APAC. He has 20 years’ experience working in the financial services industry, having spent 13 years working in Equity Capital Markets for Rothschild and RBS, before moving to Acuity Knowledge Partners in 2013. He has a deep knowledge of financial markets, having originated and executed over USD50bn of ECM transactions across a wide range of sectors, products and geographies. He has extensive experience working with and advising the majority of Investment Banking coverage and product groups, and leading global Private Equity firms. Adrian holds a MA (Hons Oxon) in Philosophy, Politics and Economics from the University of Oxford.
Thank you for sharing your details
Share this on
