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    Raising Private Equity

    Raising private equity means selling a stake in a profitable, established business to a fund that underwrites audited historical performance rather than a growth story.

    Service within Venture Capital & Private Equity

    In Growth Strategy: Realise the Value

    How we help with Raising Private Equity

    PE does not buy the story. It buys the last three years, audited.

    1. Establish what the last three years actually show

      PE underwrites history, audited. The first step is knowing what your own numbers will say once someone examines them properly.

    2. Present the business as an asset

      Cash generation, margin durability, customer concentration and management depth. A venture narrative about future growth is the wrong pitch to this buyer.

    3. Prepare for a different diligence

      Deeper, longer and more operational than venture, with quality-of-earnings work and management interviews. Different documents, different rehearsal.

    4. Negotiate the structure, not just the price

      Control, board composition, earn-outs and leaver terms decide what the founder actually keeps. In PE these matter more than the headline number.

    More services within Venture Capital & Private Equity

    Where we have done this

    SaaS

    Scaling a SaaS Platform to Series B

    Built the finance basics and the investor story that helped a software company serving one industry raise growth money from large funds.

    3.2x ARR growth in 18 months

    Consumer / D2C

    Building Investor Readiness for a D2C Brand

    Designed unit economics, cohort analytics, and a fundraising data room that anchored the next funding round.

    Closed oversubscribed Series A

    FinTech

    Compliance and Governance Reset for a FinTech

    Rebuilt the compliance, secretarial, and reporting stack to meet regulator expectations ahead of a strategic partnership.

    Cleared regulatory review on first pass

    FAQ

    Questions founders ask about Raising Private Equity

    How is private equity different from venture capital?

    Venture buys a growth story and expects most investments to fail. Private equity buys audited historical performance and expects none of them to. That changes what is diligenced, how it is structured, and what the founder keeps.

    Is my company a PE candidate?

    Usually it needs consistent profitability, predictable cash generation and a management team that can run without the founder in every decision. The revenue threshold varies by sector, but profitability is rarely optional.

    Will I lose control?

    Often some, and sometimes all. PE frequently takes a majority, and the terms around board composition and reserved matters decide what remains. This is the part of the negotiation that deserves the most attention and usually gets the least.

    How long does a PE process take?

    Typically six to nine months, longer than a venture round, with the extra time in diligence. Quality-of-earnings work alone often takes eight to twelve weeks.

    What our research says about Raising Private Equity

    Enterprise value isn't built on a founder's confidence. It's built on numbers that hold up when someone who doesn't trust you examines them.

    Sriram Chidambaram, in Below ₹20 crore, you can run on gut. Above it, gut starts to lie to you.

    The irony is that investors don't actually fund your numbers. They fund their confidence in your numbers. And nothing builds that confidence, or destroys it, faster than whether the revenue you promised last time showed up the way you said it would.

    Sriram Chidambaram, in Fundraising rigour vs revenue rigour

    How you keep your numbers is evidence of how you run your company. A three-week close and a data room assembled the night before tell them something about operational maturity that no headline metric can hide.

    Sriram Chidambaram, in Investors don't fund your numbers. They fund their confidence in your numbers.

    Guides and downloads on Raising Private Equity

    E-books and masterclass material from the SRF library, free to download.

    The people behind Raising Private Equity

    Raising Private Equity is run by the studio team: one multidisciplinary team whose pods work in tandem, matched to the sector and the stage the company is in.

    Haripriya V

    Investment Banking pod

    Led by Haripriya V

    Lead - Investment Banking & Business Growth. Manages transactions and strategic capital events.

    See the pod structure
    Studio TeamThe operators, investors and builders who run engagements end to end.Meet them

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