Helping Companies Mitigate Commercial Risks – Vigilancia Partners

• ByAyushi Ray     |    July 23, 2021

“Explore your environs, look for complications, come back home , solve them and  sell them” said Kritagya Grover, founder of Vigilancia Partners LLP in an interview with Startup Story.

From Corporate Job To Starting His Own Venture

 Kritagya Grover completed his graduation focused in Commerce from University of Delhi in 2019.  He also plans to do an MBA. After his graduation, he started working at the risk advisory division of Grant Thornton, where he assisted private equity companies and fortune 500 companies in managing their security and investigation affairs.

During this period, Kritagya realized that with globalization, companies are diversifying their investment and business portfolios within emerging markets. These emerging markets, generally have a high return component to offer, however with a significant fraud risk exposure. With huge capital infusion and reputation at stake, an unassailable due diligence and counter party profiling cannot be ignored. In order to help investors navigate successfully in these unchartered territories and help them make informed decision, he decided to start Vigilancia Partners in December 2020.

Launching Vigilancia

The whole transition happened during the outbreak of Covid-19. At that point, everything was uncertain. “I had quit my job, and wanted to start something of my own. It was a difficult period since I knew if things do not work out, getting a job will be really difficult and time taking, considering the market locus” Grover recalls. He, anyhow, took the risk mostly because not much funding was required for his company; all he needed to start out was a laptop and one client.

“My first client was my previous employer. Fortunately, I was able to explore and network, which helped me source some business from the market. My venture also provides IP protection services.” Grover explains.

His company currently assists multinational professional services firms and Private Equities in managing their Business Forensics and Pre Transaction – Commercial & Counter Party Due Diligence requirements. Vigilancia evaluates the market standing, background, integrity, reputation, regulatory, non compliance exposures, geo-political risks and performance track record (suppliers, vendors, customers feedback) of the management group or corporate entity by collecting and analyzing information that is available in the public domain, subscribed databases, market sources and industry experts.

Service Portfolio

The service that Vigilancia provides is that of – Security and Compliance investigation. They provide complete feedback and insights around an entity which their client is interested to either invest or to acquire. The feedback includes intelligence gathered around a company’s key management, their background, company’s management structure, internal controls, clientele, vendors and industry. They follow a discreet mechanism and use specific databases on a stage by stage basis.

Being A Step Ahead

“We are targeting major audit companies at the moment. The commercial due diligence part is what we are targeting. Also, to help MSME ventures navigate through such tough times of Covid -19 , we are working on a tech product especially designed for helping MSME ventures access micro research reports about their stakeholders (vendors, buyers and agencies) – financial strength, background, litigation portfolio, market standing etc.”

The MSME ecosystem, catalyst for socio-economic development of the country comprises of approximately 60 million firms which employ around 110 million individuals.  Expert reports have shown that disruptions caused by the Covid-19 pandemic have impacted MSMEs earnings by  almost 35 -50%, micro and small enterprises faced the maximum heat, mainly due to liquidity crunch and  moderated order books. In the coming years, the MSMEs are more prone to commercial defaults and IPR infringements. Therefore, to prevent these MSME ventures from collapsing it is important to secure its future high value transactions with its pipelined and existing stakeholders. During the pilot run, we were able to offer the services to around 10+ MSME ventures.” says Grover.

While discussing their future goals, says Grover, “Right now, we are working closely with our advisory based clients and going forward we would be focusing on building our resources and knowledge assets which will help our clients show more confidence in us” In case of business development, his expansion would be to private equity and multinational professional services firms.

Team And Funding Plans

 Vigilancia is right now functioning with three analysts. They have a couple of empanelled legal and industry experts, who are called in as per case requirements.

Vigilancia is currently bootstrapped. Since it is a service based company, knowledge is the primary capital for them.

Word For Budding Entrepreneurs

“Networking is the key. It will help you in any way, and you would not even realize it. Everyone should focus on building a credible network.” says Kritagya Grover, founder of Vigilancia.

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