The mergers and acquisitions (M&A) consulting market in Singapore has seen a regrowth, fuelled by the growing value of M&A deals post-pandemic. Businesses are not only accelerating their growth strategies but also future proofing them by sourcing new areas for future growth and maintaining market relevance through tech applications, and M&A is a popular vehicle to achieve this at speed.
In addition, Singaporean government initiatives like the Enterprise Financing Scheme Merger & Acquisitions, strongly supports M&A powered business expansions, provides access to finance for local or overseas targets, and encourages companies to explore complementary businesses, emerging sectors and ‘new-age’ solutions. With strong growth, government support and emphasis on innovation and technology, the M&A consulting market is expected to expand further.
BLUEBOX Group is an investment and advisory firm based in Singapore that focuses on nurturing and growing early-stage novel and disruptive ideas. BLUEBOX Group has positioned itself as a holistic startup growth partner with a focus on early-stage investments, consulting services for startups and providing development opportunities for entrepreneurs.
Tailored Solutions for “New Age” Spaces
The challenges faced in this segment vary greatly, ranging from lack of exposure and understanding of M&As, unclear or misaligned objectives, difficulties in assessing valuation, limited access to M&A partners, lack of resources and capability to execute and integrate post M&A, provide governance and stakeholder Management, and more. BLUEBOX Group takes a tailored approach to each partner engagement.
The company does not believe in using industry generalizations to assess its partners’ needs or challenges, butinstead works to identify specific needs and capability gaps through a bespoke discovery phase. Based on this it then provides support through its advisory platform and network to help partners formulate future state strategies, align M&A objectives to these, identify appropriate types of M&A, support valuation growth, plan for and execute the process, manage stakeholders, and plan for post-M&A integration.
Since its inception in 2012, BLUEBOX Group has experienced significant growth in partners acquisition and geographical expansion. Starting with the acquisition by Accor of its first partner, the company quickly learned and grew regionally into India and China, focusing on areas such as gig economy platforms and big data. The company then established its presence in the Middle East and Australia.
“BLUEBOX’s journey has been characterized by a strong focus on long term strategic partnerships and expanding its reach into ‘new-age’ spaces. We leverage our company’s expertise and ecosystem in the startup space to provide tailored solutions for amplified growth for companies with M&A as core part of their strategy”, says Roshni Pandey, Co-founder.
Creating Legacies
BLUEBOX Group offers a range of services as it believes that creating legacies requires a holistic approach. Its consulting arm supports overall strategic direction setting, investor process management, acquisition/merger, among others. The company provides inhouse resourcing support, particularly for capability and value build, as well as board role services. In addition, BLUEBOX Group provides investment services, including angel and seed rounds, to help partners secure initial funding needed to kick start their growth. The company also offers ancillary support services such as networking, partnership building, mentoring and coaching. Through its comprehensive suite of services, BLUEBOX Group helps its partners navigate multiple areas of complexities to achieve their strategic goals.
The team’s expertise ranges from creative problemsolving and strategy and business development to finance, process design, transformation, and integration using emerging technologies. BLUEBOX Group’s top-down and bottom-up support model provides a 360-support structure for its partners with the end goal of creating a higher capability and value quotient which is crucial for the M&A process.
“BLUEBOX Group subscribes to the notion of long-term relationship building with partners, focusing on establishing trust and understanding their needs before initiating any M&A process. We believe this is crucial for collaboratively building value and this is directly linked to our value per deal metric by which we measure our own performance”,says Jagdish Sidhu, Co-founder.
A Unique Perspective
BLUEBOX Group differentiates itself from other players by its unique approach and passion for tackling unknown spaces. “Our partners are predominantly disruptors tackling global challenges, new world economy, platforms and business models and the same DNA runs through our philosophy and approach. Aside from growing individual capital value, we want to build a collaborative growth ecosystem that amplifies the individual value for an even higher level”, says Roshni. The team’s combined experience as founders and investors gives a unique duality to their perspective and empathy for all its partners within the ecosystem from founders to investors.
Roshni Pandey, Co-Founder
BLUEBOX Group plans to expand geographically into European markets, add incremental skillsets for increased agility and foundational capability, and establish strategic partnerships to offer more holistic end-to-end solutions for partners. BLUEBOX Group has a social enterprise arm called TRIBE that does social work focusing on education and welfare/rehabilitation in the Philippines, Fiji, and India, and looking to expand that into Cambodia and Nepal soon.
Jagdish Sidhu, Co-Founder
Jagdish is a business process design, transformation, and information security expert with 20+ years of experience across the education, media, subscription, and telecommunications industries. Having lived in Singapore, and Australia and working in China and India for extended periods gives Jagdish the unique expertise to understand diverse perspectives and the ability to work within agile networks. He is an Australian CPA, Certified Internal Auditor (CIA), a Certified Information Systems Auditor (CISA), ISO 27001 Certified Auditor, and Certified Information Privacy Manager (CIPM). While he has diverse areas of expertise stretching from business strategy, finance, operations, governance, and information security, his strongest passion is the adoption of emerging technologies.
Roshni Pandey, Co-Founder
Having spent 20+ years delivering strategy and solutions, as a consultant, head of various functions at global MNCs, an entrepreneur, and a board member, Roshni (Indian by ethnicity, Fijian by birth, Australian by citizenship, & Singaporean by residency) is a firm believer in the balance between art and science, intuition and data, and thus, has been leveraging insights, innovation, and data a nalytics, to create new products, experiences, brands, programs, and lead strategy development and delivery for global brands, across markets and sectors. Her social cause and entrepreneurial passion have witnessed her set up businesses and social enterprises of her own.
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