Investment Banking in India Is Now a Networking Game

The first part is the network: knowing who is looking to invest or acquire, what they want and how to reach them.

Reaching out: knowing which funds, buyers and lenders are active, in which sectors and at what deal sizes.

Staying in touch: securing the meeting and keeping the investor engaged over the one to two months a deal usually takes.

Presenting: showing the company in the format each investor prefers.

The second part is execution: the work that turns interest into a signed deal.

Deal documents: the teaser, the information memorandum (IM) and the financial model.

Due diligence: checking the company's financial, tax and legal records.

Agreements: reviewing the term sheet, shareholders' agreement and share purchase agreement.

Investor questions: answering every query accurately and on time.

Both parts used to be expensive, so both had to sit inside the same firm. A CA who knew the business owner but had no analyst team could not compete with a bank.

Much of an analyst's week goes into reading years of accounts, writing the IM, building the model and reviewing agreements line by line. AI can now produce a first draft of most of this work in hours rather than weeks, and to the standard expected from a large bank.

AI does not replace judgement. Someone still has to decide what a business is worth and which risks matter. What it replaces is analyst time, and analyst time is what made small deals uneconomic.

The firms that gain most are those that never had analysts. A small CA firm could always give sound advice. It can now also produce the documents investors expect.

In any process, fixing the slowest step moves the constraint somewhere else. For small advisory firms, the slowest step used to be paperwork. With AI, it is now access to the right people.

A CA in Ludhiana knows three business owners who want to sell, but not which of India's 1,600-plus registered funds would look at them.

A boutique banker in Mumbai knows twenty funds looking to buy auto-parts companies, but not a single owner in Pune's auto belt.

Each holds half a deal, and neither knows the other exists. The question for both is no longer whether they can execute a deal. It is who to take it to, and where the next one will come from.

Deal Network is designed to close this gap. Its first phase is built on three choices.

Free to join. The aim is to bring every CA, banker, lender and fund manager into one network.

Profiles, not companies. Members are not asked to upload client details. We ask only about the member: sectors, cities, deal sizes and relationships, and we match members on these profiles. Sharing a client's name is optional, and members decide if and when to do so.

WhatsApp-first. More than 500 million Indians use WhatsApp, and business use in India has more than doubled since 2021 (TechCrunch, 2025). Members should not need to learn a new app.

Members include CAs, investment bankers, merchant bankers, NBFC credit and sales teams, and PE and VC fund managers. When two profiles match, we introduce them. For example, a CA with textile clients in Tiruppur could be introduced to a fund that buys textile companies.

The number of investors in India has grown quickly.

SEBI-registered AIFs (private funds such as PE, VC and debt funds) grew from about 200 in April 2016 (Business Standard, 2016) to 1,649 by September 2025 (SEBI, 2025).

Money committed to these funds rose from ₹4.87 lakh crore in June 2021 to ₹17.53 lakh crore in June 2026 (Business Standard, 2026a).

Family offices grew from 45 in 2018 to more than 300 by 2024 (Business Standard, 2024).

There are 235 SEBI-registered merchant bankers (SEBI, 2025), plus many advisory firms that are not registered.

NBFCs are the exception. Their number is falling each year (Business Standard, 2026b), yet they now account for about 26% of MSME lending by value (TransUnion CIBIL and SIDBI, 2026).

There is no official count of deal professionals in India, but the trend is clear. The market has many more participants, and most of them are not connected to each other. More participants do not create a network. Connections do.

7.83 crore businesses are registered on Udyam (PIB, 2026).

GST, e-invoicing, Account Aggregator and MCA filings now let outsiders verify their numbers.

36% of Indian family businesses have no succession plan (PwC, 2026).

Many of these owners will sell, raise capital or borrow over the next ten years. Most will speak to their CA first, not a banker. Almost every business has a CA for tax, GST or loan paperwork, and India has 4.23 lakh CAs (ICAI, 2025). No other profession is in regular contact with so many business owners.

That is why Deal Network is built around a CA network. Owners do not need to find us. We need the advisors they already trust.

This is the most important change for CAs.

Private equity and venture capital investment in India fell 17% to $36 billion in 2025. However, the number of deals rose by about 10% and the average deal size fell by about 25%, as investors wrote smaller cheques (Bain & Company, 2026a).

Globally, buyout funds hold $1.3 trillion that they have not yet invested, while the average buyout reached a record $1.2 billion (Bain & Company, 2026b). A large amount of capital is competing for a small number of large companies.

Smaller companies are also cheaper. In the US, companies worth $25–100 million sold at a median of 8.5 times operating profit (EBITDA), compared with 13.2 times for companies worth $500 million–$1 billion (PitchBook, 2026).

For a fund manager, large companies are expensive and heavily contested. Better value often lies in buying several smaller companies at lower prices, combining them into one larger group and growing it. This strategy is known as a roll-up.

Private equity in India is no longer focused only on large hospital chains in major cities. Funds are also buying smaller regional hospitals and combining them.

Private equity-backed deals for general hospitals in tier-2 and tier-3 cities rose from ₹3,625 crore in 2024 to ₹4,517 crore in 2025, an increase of nearly 25% (Medical Buyer, 2026).

More than 40% of private equity investment in Indian healthcare since 2019 has gone to single-specialty providers such as IVF, cancer care, kidney care and eye care. A 40–50-bed single-specialty hospital costs about ₹30–40 crore to set up (Medical Buyer, 2026), which places it in the MSME range.

KKR bought Baby Memorial Hospital in Kozhikode and then used it to acquire Meitra Hospital, KKR's third hospital deal in Kerala (DealStreetAsia, 2025).

Max Healthcare bought 58.4% of Kalinga Hospital in Bhubaneswar for ₹300 crore (Medical Buyer, 2026).

The owner of a 60-bed hospital in Nashik or Warangal is rarely known to a Mumbai banker. The hospital's CA, however, knows the owner, the numbers and whether the family is considering a sale.

Roll-ups depend on finding deals. No one runs an auction for a ₹30 crore company, so someone has to know that it exists. In India, that person is usually the CA.

Bankers and fund managers have limited time. Each can maintain only a few dozen strong relationships, built in person over many years.

This is why bankers already work with a business owner's trusted advisor, often the family CA, and share the fee when the deal closes. Twenty years of trust cannot be bought. It can only be reached through the person who has earned it.

Today, these partnerships are formed slowly, one relationship at a time. Deal Network makes them easier to find.

A banker with a deal can find CAs who know that sector and city.

A CA with a client can find the bankers and funds who do that type of deal.

Five trends point in the same direction.

AI has reduced the cost of execution, so access to people now matters most.

The investor side is large, growing and fragmented, and needs better connections.

Private equity in India is moving to smaller deals, and MSMEs are now investible.

A CA network already reaches these business owners.

Bankers and fund managers have limited time and already work through trusted advisors.

Together, they point to one missing piece: a simple way to connect those who know the businesses with those who have the capital. The first phase of Deal Network is built to provide it.

Investment banking in India has always been two jobs. AI now handles much of one. Deal Network is being built for the other.

This article does not apply to audit clients. Section 144 of the Companies Act, 2013 does not allow an auditor to provide investment banking or investment advisory services to a company it audits, or to that company's parent company or the companies under its control. ICAI's rules on fee sharing and advertising apply. This article is for information only and is not investment advice.

Note: US valuation figures are used as a rough guide. Comparable Indian data by deal size is not published.

Bain & Company (2026a) India Private Equity Report 2026. Available at: https://www.bain.com/insights/india-private-equity-report-2026/ (Accessed: 24 September 2026).

Bain & Company (2026b) Global Private Equity Report 2026 [Press release], 23 February. Boston: Bain & Company.

Business Standard (2016) 'Sebi-registered AIF count hits 200 mark', Business Standard, 20 April.

Business Standard (2024) 'Family offices rise to 300 since 2018; tier II, III cities in demand: PwC', Business Standard, 3 July.

Business Standard (2026a) 'AIF commitments rise 24% to ₹17.53 trillion as of June 2026: Sebi data', Business Standard, 21 September.

Business Standard (2026b) 'RBI cancels registration certificates of 135 NBFCs across India', Business Standard, 10 June.

DealStreetAsia (2025) 'KKR buys Meitra Hospital, its third acquisition in India's Kerala state: report', DealStreetAsia, 22 September.

ICAI (2025) 76th Annual Report 2024–25. New Delhi: Institute of Chartered Accountants of India.

Medical Buyer (2026) 'Regional hospital hubs draw record private equity investment amid scrutiny', Medical Buyer, 11 September.

PIB (2026) Over 7.83 crore enterprises registered on Udyam Registration Portal. New Delhi: Press Information Bureau, Government of India.

PitchBook (2026) 'Middle-market PE firms move down market in search of value', PitchBook, 14 September.

PwC (2026) PwC's 12th Family Business Survey: India findings. Gurugram: PwC India.

SEBI (2025) SEBI Bulletin, October 2025: Table 2, SEBI registered market intermediaries/institutions. Mumbai: Securities and Exchange Board of India.

TechCrunch (2025) 'WhatsApp's biggest market is becoming its toughest test', TechCrunch, 14 December.

TransUnion CIBIL and SIDBI (2026) MSME Pulse. Mumbai: TransUnion CIBIL.

The author, Adish Bharadwaj R, is a co-founder of Deal Network, and has 10+ years of experience in investment banking.