Match making is an art - an art to connect the best for the lifetime - whether it is marriage or business.On one hand, business owners across the country seek partners to help them grow, finance or sell their business; on the other hand, investors, acquirers and advisors spend huge time and effort in finding quality business opportunities. But without the use of technology, the best potential partners often mis-connect with each other leading to lost opportunities. When Vishal Devanath (Founder - Business, SMERGERS) realized this huge gap, especially in the SME sector, he along with Krishna Bharadwaj (Founder - Technology) incepted SMERGERS in 2013 as a private market network for businesses, investors, acquirers, lenders, M&A advisors and boutique investment banks.

Small Start for Big Investments

While the traditional fronts didn't keep up with technology, FinTech startups are doing tremendous job

in bringing technology to business and generating high-end solutions.With in three years of its inception, SMERGERS has already made about 13,000 introductions across the globe, with 7000+ within this year. The company's access to a huge chest of private and public financial data clubbed with the valuation engine helps it provide a realistic estimate for business' valuation in a matter of few seconds. "SMERGERS brings in a lot of professionalism and quality to an industry which has suffered for way too long. As a financial advisor, I had used many other websites in the past and I am happy to say that SMERGERS has proved to be the most efficient. I connected with many good business owners on SMERGERS. With one of them I recently closed a debt transaction and I am in the process of closing another deal soon. I highly recommend SMERGERS and its network," says Vijay Sthalekar, Exit Strategist, MaxOut Consulting - one of the elated customers of SMERGERS.

Designed in-line with how large investment banks operate, SMERGERS' website, introductions clients get or the interaction with analysts provide a refreshing experience."Considering that we have a good mix of technology and business in our team, we believe we are able to create this unique experience for our customers," says Vishal. The offerings are modular in nature, thus enabling customers to pick services they require and pay only for them, hence probably emerging

as one of the most affordable and effective investment banking solutions in the world. While business owners pay one percent finder's fee post successful transactions, advisors who list businesses for sale on SMERGERS' website are exempted from paying this fee.

Certain professional features are available at premium subscriptions to help customers improve their process on the platform. Experiencing major progress through word of mouth, referrals from existing customers and organic search, SMERGERS has built a trusted user base of 60,000 business owners, investors, and deal professionals as of today which helped it grow at around 400 percent last quarter.

Going Ahead

Bangalore based SMERGERS has successfully prescreened 7000+ businesses and reached to investors from130+ industries in 95+countries with investment size from Rs.10 lakh to Rs.300 crore, and still counting. It has also been recognized as the fastest growing deal platform based on Alexa website rankings. Currently leading the game as India’s largest investment banking platform for SMEs, SMERGERS team is collaborating with financial advisors of U.S. and UK to enter these markets while marking its presence in South East Asian countries like Sri Lanka, Thailand, Bangladesh, Singapore, Philippines.