In the late 1990s, we took a brave decision to incorporate ‘Advantage-India’. It turned out to be prescient, as India went on to emerge as a major global player. We too have evolved, to advise business interests in Singapore, HongKong, China, India, United Arab Emirates, the African continent, United Kingdom and Germany.

We do business across sectors. In BFS, we have covered the entire spectrum viz. Mutual Funds, Insurance, Pension Funds, Investment Banking, Securities Distribution & Financial Advisory. We have also advised clients from pharmaceuticals, medical devices, healthcare, mining, software, digitisation, education, auto ancillary, hospitality & travel.

The major benefit that clients get is the seamless integration of consulting, research and training – across multiple disciplines. Thus, clients not only get suggestions on the course of action, but are also able to build capacity and skills within the organisation. We are happy teaming with the clients in implementation.

Sundar Sankaran is Founder-Director. He is an alumnus of the prestigious IIM Ahmedabad (1986-88). He is also an associate of the Institute of Company Secretaries of India, and Institute of Cost Accountants of India. He has held senior positions in former Goldman Sachs associate, Kotak Mahindra and India’s leading automobile company, Bajaj Auto.

Since we are into consulting for the pleasure of making a difference to business, we are choosy in deciding on the clients we work with. We do not make any cold calls for business – most clients come through referrals. Some of them have stayed with us for over a decade. We are delighted with the long-term association, which occasionally transcends generations of business owners.

We do a lot of interesting work, including assignments that are exploratory for both client and us. They span strategy formulation, execution and monitoring. Our assignments call for various degrees of expertise in strategy, economics, finance, marketing, systems and people. The following types of assignments are illustrative:

• New Business

We help in setting up new business in India. This covers the entire gamut of preliminary activities such as legal structures, capital structuring, market research, business models, business plan and support in execution. We also hold powers of attorney for international clients as part of our trusteeship services.

• Existing Business

The challenges for existing businesses are deciding on a sustainable growth path, and ensuring that the strategy implementation is on track. We design innovative performance management frameworks that link physical and financial parameters. Thus, problems can be identified early, and corrective action facilitated.

Our services are offered confidentially, in a high-trust environment.

Shorter product life cycles and higher investment outlays are a lethal combination for business risk. This has increased the need for independent research to back various management decisions – not just marketing research.

Research is ideally suited for management decisions that cannot be taken intuitively. It can also improve the intuitive decisions. The issues may relate to any field of management, such as finance, marketing, human resources, production, supply-chain etc.

For instance, understanding country risk for a new market, estimation of demand function for a product, assessing the ideal capacity to plan for, evaluating the profile match between the client and sales person, measuring channel strength etc.

The structured research process that is adopted in academics, is equally relevant for industry. Smartly defined research problems, focused data frameworks and deft analysis of the data are key to cost-effective research and prudent decision making in organisations. We adopt industry-leading approaches in slicing and dicing good quality data.

We do both quantitative and qualitative research. Businesses can benefit immensely from management research conducted with a blend of academics and industry experience.

We offer a range of programs revolving around Strategy, Economics, Finance and the Markets.  A snapshot of these programs is shown below.