Manhaday Consultants Private Limited is a boutique investment banking firm which is in existence for more than a decade. Manhaday Consultants is into growth advisory / fundraising, both debt & equity / Mergers & Acquisitions / Joint Venture, India Entry, etc.
Manhaday Consultants is promoted by ex-bankers and finance professionals. Manhaday Consultants has associates in many parts of the world and Manhaday is also a member of many international M&A networks. Manhaday Consultants is also into India entry for foreign companies looking at entering India. Manhaday Consultants has been recognized by many business magazines as one of the top investment banking firms in India and the directors are speakers at many economic/financial seminars.
A Mastermind behind the longstanding growth of Manhaday Consultants is Mr. Uday Hegde, Director. Under his innovative vision, the smart team of Manhaday Consultants is achieving a new height every day.
In a talk with him, let’s discover more about the firm and its offerings.
• What were the initial challenges you faced?
In the beginning, it took some time to convince clients that we can deliver their requirements, the challenges were to adjust with no big financial institution name behind us, so we had to work on our professional strength, our knowledge, our experience, our contacts in the corporate and financial world so this took some time. Once we had the initial success, clients started believing in us on our deliverables across India. Now the challenge is to up the antenna of our services in different financial products/growth strategy/fundraising / M&A (both local & International), etc here the expectations from the clients is now very high as they now know our business deliverable history
Fund raising is the gentle art of teaching the joy of giving
Hank Rosso
• Which was that point that triggered the growth of the firm?
To pinpoint will be difficult but on debt raising level we managed to get debt funding for two textile projects in 45 days flat for USD 10 Million way back in 2008 and getting private equity from a corporate group for an engineering services firm. Sometimes it is the challenge of getting it done irrespective of the transaction value.
• What is the reason behind Manhaday Consultants’ long-standing success?
In our business I believe success is a continuous work in progress, what we achieve in between is milestones, be it closing a transaction/advising in a growth strategy for an SME client / achieving our stiff targets, etc
There is an eagerness to learn new products, services, upgrade our skills, expand our network locally and internationally, and to better our past achievements, also compete with the best. Manhaday Consultants have a strong relationship both in the corporate and financial world which is very important in a business like ours. Manhaday Consultants have a fantastic network of investment banking firm’s / marketing firms/solicitors internationally
• What are the products and services the firm focuses on? How are your services different from those in the market?
The success of an advisory firm depends on how it foresees the shifting market landscape can impact potential deals. When it comes to Manhaday Consultants, the firm helps clients to identify the true value of an opportunity by combining meticulous financial analysis with deep industry/business knowledge.
Efficiency is doing things right; effectiveness is doing right things
Peter Drucker
Our strength is understanding business models/process / better reading of financial reports and finding their gaps and where we can add value for our client to grow, here our corporate lending experience and knowledge of working in financial institutions come as a great advantage and having lend finance across Industries comes in great use. The products we offer are
♦ Raising debt funding
♦ Raising Private Equity
♦ Merger & Acquisitions
♦ Joint Venture
♦ All the above we do both locally and internationally
♦ Growth advisory for SME / MSME
♦ CFO Services
♦ Risk management
• How do you decide to take the firm a step further in terms of your products and services?
The benchmark will only be when we can take the services a notch higher compared to previous challenges we have achieved or comparing with the best in the industry, this will be huge in our services segment.
On products it is a continuous learning process, be it structure, be it introducing a new method of finance both locally and internationally. One of our focuses has been getting international corporate to do Joint ventures/technology tie-ups with Indian companies; here Manhaday Consultants already have some good Indian names as our clients.
Here I would like to add that some of the policies the present government has initiated make a strong pitch for foreign companies to look at India, like make In India, ease of doing business policy changes, draconian laws being removed, 100% investments in some industries and automatic investment route
Sometimes the client is so fixed on raising financé from banks / NBFC that he has very little knowledge of other financial products which is good for the long term. Some clients have been stuck with one main lender for decades and are not shifting because of emotional reasons or comfort zone, though the lender is not good in the present scenario, here sometimes Manhaday Consultants have to push the client to change his lender so he gets better ROI / better financial products and structure which will help him in his growth story. Here the majority of them are from SME / MSME and we call them Sethji companies with very little professional management
• Can you please brief us about your professional experience?
Have done my MBA and am ex-senior banking finance professional with nearly 18 years of experience and more than a decade in the investment banking business. I Am a speaker at finance / economic seminars and events. Am also the director of SkyEarth Tradecom where we represent foreign companies in India and recently started taking Indian companies international on a business level. I am a strategy advisor/board advisor to a couple of start-ups and SME companies. Am also on the various committee of the business group and cross border business chambers
• What are the key achievements of your entrepreneurial journey?
Key Achievements changes every year but some of our milestone achievements in recent years are when we got a term sheet from Europe for a large group in India for an M&A job, the work is still going on, another is getting strategy investor for an SME company. Coming to debt proposals our achievements are now arranging new products / better structure in a shorter time. Now we are telling our clients to look for international finance which I believe is good because of the ROI / tenure and structure but international finance takes time so the client should have some patience
• Is there any special experience with your clients you would like to highlight?
A couple of years back Manhaday Consultants advised a client to shift his banker and also start looking for an international JV partner, as usual, he said no and said that am very happy with my present banker and all my needs are met but last year he came to us as his banker was not increasing his limit and also wanted additional security. The client had invested around Rs. 20 crores on his own in P&M and was also facing cash flow challenges as his clients have started delaying payments by 3-6 months, this was a challenge he was not facing earlier.
The client approached us and we shifted to another lender with an increased limit within the same collateral and better financial products, happy to say that now we have got a mandate for international JV, and from the new financial year we will also start CFO services where we may include enterprise risk management. Our CFO team is having experience of nearly twenty years as being CFO of large companies.
Coming to the future, I will say one thing India is at a very bright sport internationally with GDP growing around 5% and in coming years it will be somewhere around 7-9% if all goes well. Here for us is a great opportunity with SME / MSME companies will grow but they will be looking for increased finance / better ROI / new products and international growth opportunities. The world is looking at India and I am sure our investment banking sector will be a major player to support this boom.
