Sheer Hard Work and Persistent Positive Energy Is a Good Recipe for Entrepreneurial Success! – Girish Bhise

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1. Tell us more about your company and your journey.

ValueAdd Research and Analytics Solutions (ValueAdd) is a research and consulting firm focused on augmenting the in-house research capacity of its clients across the US, Europe, GCC, and India. The name ‘Value-Add’ was coined from the phrase value-addition (which means delivering beyond the perceived value). We are a bootstrapped company founded in 2015, with a sales office in New York and a research delivery centre in Mumbai, India.

Before I started ValueAdd, I was in a leadership position with some of the largest firms in India. Had serviced clients including Deutsche Bank, Credit Suisse, Morgan Stanley, JP Morgan, among others; and had managed a team size of 120+ members across India, Sri Lanka, and Costa Rica.

I realized that the likes of these large clients were well-serviced by the industry players, however, the growing mid-sized segment was completely under-serviced. This gap prompted me to start ‘ValueAdd’ to cater to the growing and dynamic demands of the small-to-mid-sized segments.

2. What problems are you solving at ValueAdd Research and Analytics Solutions and how do you add value to your clients’ businesses?

Our clients include global asset managers, mutual funds, hedge funds, broking firms, investment banks, commercial banks, private equity/venture capital firms, corporations, and consulting firms. Here’s how we offer value to our clients:

• For the asset managers and private equity/venture capital firms, we offer help across origination and maintenance of their research coverage universe across equity and fixed income and credit research. This directly benefits them with an increased number of investment ideas, exhaustive and in-depth research, effective investment decision-making, and thus the creation of more alpha!
• For the broking firms, we act as their research backbone and offer a complete research production support for white-labelled research service. We are responsible for the initiation of research ideas, writing initiation reports with buy/hold/sell recommendations on stocks and bonds/loans, building valuation models, model updates, and attending fund manager meetings.
• For the investment banks, we act as their execution platform by delivering research products/collaterals across equity and debt capital markets (ECM/DCM), and M&A deals. The products/collaterals include information memorandums, pitchbooks, teasers, peer comparables, valuation models, and industry research.
• For commercial banks, we offer commercial lending research, KYC support, loan-default predictions, cross-selling opportunities, CRM and back-end support
• For the corporations and banks, we offer research and consulting support for organic and inorganic growth. The services include market sizing and trend analysis, market research, industry benchmarking, product benchmarking, competitor analysis, and treasury investment support.
• For start-ups, we do market research, business plans, project reports for fundraising, business valuations, ESOP valuation, and business advisory.

All the above services are offered with a blend of fundamental research and data science, which aids in delivering the most scientific and accurate outcomes for our clients.

3. What according to you are the top challenges every entrepreneur faces in their journey?

We have the same set of key challenges that other firms have including new client acquisition, client retention, and talent management. However, being an aggressive and growing firm, we give a tough competition to some of our large competitors in the market, by differentiating across, the level of service experience, the engagement structure, superior talent, and creative pricing solutions!

4. What is your advice to young entrepreneurs?

Honestly, although I’m a 20-year experienced professional, I’m just a 5-year young entrepreneur, hence not an authority to advise anyone! However, I’m happy to share some key learning that can help the budding and existing entrepreneurs/leaders:

• Dare to dream BIG and take risks!
• Do not have a Plan B or an alternate option. Remember, the only alternative option for success is a failure!
• There is a great difference between a leadership role in an established corporate (although you may be managing an entire P&L) and an entrepreneurial role in your own firm. Your success in the leadership role need not lead to your entrepreneurial success.
• Hire an Ace Team. Do you think Steve Jobs would have made Apple Inc. this big, without his Ace Team?
• Maintain a high level of business ethics and integrity
• Have patience, good temperament, persistent positivity and energy, and lead from the front, whenever needed.

5. How will the business ecosystem change after this pandemic, what steps have you taken for your business?

You must have heard about the philosophy that the large trees are uprooted during the storms; however, the deep-rooted smaller trees are less affected as they are flexible. I guess that’s the secret of our survival! However, we did have our share of pains, including client losses and contract renegotiations. But we managed to get out of woods, by implementing the following initiatives:

• Proactively offered help to our clients by going beyond the contract terms to safeguard their business health and growth
• Rationalized our vendor costs, lease rentals and other major fixed costs to reduce the damage
• Offered job security to our performing team to ensure stability and motivation
• Thanks to the whole team, who swiftly switched to Work-From-Home environment and even today they continue to service our clients, relentlessly
• Increased our online marketing presence through focused high-quality content creation. Our articles on Salesforce and Hertz are published in some of the reputed 3rd party blog sites including seeking alpha and Auto Rental News.
• Accelerated our Sales outreach, to offer timely help to our prospective clients who are seeking research support and rationalizing costs through restructuring their vendor mix.

And, as a result of these initiatives, we have won two good research projects in late July, to be commenced in August.

6. How do you keep yourself motivated?

I’m a passionate musician; and I like all genres of music, but I find my peace in Hindustani classical music. I do running, cycling, and Yoga; I used to run 25KM and 10KM marathons until 2015. But most importantly my loving and supporting family keeps me highly motivated to push the boundaries. I truly love my family.

Interview By - Benil Joseph