“Though not many would be aware of the fact that I am not a qualified CA by profession,” says Keyur Shah, Founder of Hrishee Strategic Advisors. With a futuristic business approach, Shah has been enabling strategic partnership through consulting approach. While in conversation with the Senior Editor, SugandhBahl of Business Era Magazine, Shah also opened up about his love for tennis, for which he isn’t able to spare much time amidst his hectic work schedules. But the pages from his life’s history aren’t less in terms of giving it a thorough read. Not belonging to a financial business outray, he has managed to build it a million dollar company today. Let’s flip through few pages of his toil.
Years of Establishment
Hrishee Strategic Advisors (HSA), was founded in 2003 by Keyur H Shah, which has been termed as a new-age Strategic Advisory, Business& Financial Management consulting firm with a focus to provide “Next Level Solutions” to its clientele. It was considerable a new offering in market at that time as opposed to the ones who have always been failing under scrutiny.
With the advent of globalization and rapid advancements in various industry sectors, it was becoming even more challenging for the companies to change their landscape and be at power with the growing businesses. “We at HSA, enable businesses to address their greatest challenge of ensuring consistent growth by offering services that range from Operational support, Process re-engineering, Strategic, Financial & Business Consulting to Banking & Funding solutions,” says Shah. His venture’s offerings provide an array of financial services to the business houses, ranging from Pre IPO, Post IPO, fundraising, etc.
Though not from a family business heir, his forefathers were engaged in textile business. Thus his venture was his sole offering which began in the year 2003. Back in 2001 when he was working with a loan company, he saw that the representatives were not able to sell their company’s offerings in an appropriate manner and seeing this void he decided to plunge into this sector, to make this market more organized. “My interest always laid upon numbers, therefore the growth of my firm has been exponentially great,” proclaims Shah.
Towards Next Level Obstacles
While establishing something new in the financial sphere, Shah’s main focus was to lend a helping hand in effective and organized working of this sector. His new firm believed in providing “Next Level Solutions” to help clients attain the next level of growth as it was a pre-conceived thought that Indian consultants lacked enormous expertise into their respective fields.
So, the 2003 established organization till now has managed to steer over 20+ small & medium but prestigious clients in their ‘business transformation’ journeys, and has come a long way since its inception where initially there weren’t reputed home grown consultants available in India. However, like anything new and disruptive, the company had to fight against the ‘pre-conditioned mindset’ of many prospects that came across as a bottleneck for initiating new relationships. But, moving ahead with the outlook that the work should go on, the motivated team braved through the times of gradual customer acquisition and engaged them with their spell bounding and timely deliverables. This resulted in repeat customers from existing clients. “Adding to this, referrals from our satisfied customers also acted as a critical business enabler for us. Quality and Professionalism have been our success mantra,” adds Keyur.
The company has now come a long way since its inception. Having built a strong clientele in India, the organization has also been successful in carving a niche for itself in the UAE market and are now targeting their new market in London as well. “I realized that the market in Dubai was not structured and the companies there also required the assistance of professional consultants other than the Big Four,” Keyur adds. Evolution of the company happened when Darvesh Group, Dubai recognized HSA’s endeavor as an advisor in 2009, since then HSA has emerged as a successful business model across the globe.
Keyur understood that every organization today strives to be a profitable one. However, emerging companies lack the internal expertise. Having understood the requirements and needs of small and medium businesses and to help them maintain and sustain the kind of growth they seek, Keyur moved his focus on various needs of clients/small & medium businesses. He then Launched HSA on another platform by forming Private Limited Company inviting other professionals on board. He brought all services under one roof so that clients do not have to run door to door for services and critical inputs can be routed through one supervisor. The Company formed association with the professionals; CA Yogi Derasari for the same.
This young firm helps clients raise funds, perform management analysis and identify areas of profit so as to help sustained growth. HSA has till now catered to over 75+ businesses, which have benefited exponentially owing to its superlative services.
The company evaluates the nitty-gritties of the business model and then tend to coordinate with the banks and financial institutions for syndicating debt, either for creating new businesses or growing existing ones. “We firmly believe in a holistic appreciation and understanding of the needs of our clients rather than on prima-facie evaluation,” explains Keyur.
Based out of Ahmedabad, Gujarat, the company has spread its wings across 7 Indian states and 11 countries across the globe and is increasing its reach by serving more clients for meeting their productive requirements. Working on exploring options to provide more products to meet the needs of their clients, HSA is determined to aid budding entrepreneurs to attain success.
Helping Improve Profit Margins
The firm does an in-depth analysis of the company’s key performance parameters & their processes, to pinpoint the base problem areas. 80 percent of the companies according to Yogi Derasari (CA) have incorrect perceptions about their own profit zones. The major area of concern is that companies rarely conduct profit analytics. They are unaware of where they make money and where they are losing it. The fact is that majority of the profit is lost due to certain non-profit activities, customers etc., thus making the company realize only left-over profits. There is a huge scope for profit improvement. With the help of HSA, clients can further gain insights for designing focused cost optimization & efficiency building programs, define the value addition that can achieved and use this data for performance management systems and financial re-structuring.
Apart from helping companies gain improved profitability, HSA’s view is also focused on implementation of SOPs and results.
Keyur explains, “While many consulting outfits just provide advice and shy away from implementing it, we at HSA believe that any advice is no good until it is implemented in a time bound manner.”
A large number of HSA’s clients have been family owned businesses that want to transform themselves into professional organizations with a modern way of working, but are clueless due to the complications involved, including its implementation. 90 percent of family owned businesses are growing companies, that have a set of loyal people managing the work, but who lack the relevant expertise and techniques.
“Such organizations require better processes, procedures, financial decision making and business insights to increase their profitability,” explains CA Yogi Derasari.
This is where HSA steps in. The firm helps such organizations break away from the shackles of traditional style of working and handhold them to become more efficient and profitable. Besides enabling profit maximization, HSA’s view also helps organizations identify and plug leakages in profit. With its forensic audit practice and litigation support through well-equipped associates, it has successfully audited many organizations and supported them thereafter with improved systems and procedures. This dynamic firm also emphasizes on its sincerity towards work. “If you ask any of our clients, they will unequivocally agree that we provide an extremely sincere, implementable and result oriented approach which is our USP.” beams Keyur.
With offices in Ahmedabad and Dubai and presence through associates in Mumbai and Hong Kong, HSA further wants to consolidate its position and open offices in London.
Addressing Customer Challenges
Companies usually endeavor to find ways to achieve better revenue scale, gain profitability, raise funds to support business growth and corporatize their business. ‘Apart from this, diversifying the business and achieving inorganic growth also poses as a major challenge for many,” explains Keyur.
Keeping this in mind, HSA provides a large gamut of services to client companies which includes, Board advisory, Capital-raising, M&A advisory, Business Plan advisory, Business Valuation, Joint Venture advisory, Business Performance Improvement, Real Estate Valuation, Market Feasibility study, Entry Strategy study, Organization Development, Business Due Diligence and Business Process Modeling.
“We prefer to work as strategic partners along with our clients and hand-hold them throughout their ‘business transformation’ journey,” explains Keyur. Given its well-rounded bouquet of services, the company has helped its clients increasing their profitability and sustainable growth.
Building an Organization’s Internal Vitality
For an organization, which has already identified its intervention, the company provides consultancy services for the specific areas. Illustratively, this could include financial re-engineering, business plan and budgets, organizational planning, functional policies and systems, cost management, business performance management systems, management information systems, employee performance management systems, governance process.
Client acquisition in the consulting industry is always a word of mouth phenomenon. Therefore, adding value and enabling superior performance is a must.
In this era of competition, HSA comes across as a one-of-its-kind Board advisory firm. “We have adopted the partnership approach to consulting. While most consulting firms look at shorter-term engagements, we focus on long-term engagements that include the implementation phase as well,” says Keyur.
Apart from this, HSA’s ‘Pay-as-you-go’ pricing model provides better visibility on the engagement progress to its clients and is easy-on-their-budgets. Leveraging its team’s vast experience in enabling business transformations across various stages of a company’s evolution-cycle, the presence of an expert advisory panel and its technology-enabled delivery model, the company has definitely carved a niche for itself.
Keeping an eye on gaining a bigger market share, the company intends to invest further in Expert brains to enhance its value proposition for customers. “We are also looking to expand our Advisory Board panel – a panel that will comprise of some of the best Subject Matter Experts for various sectors,” says Keyur about the company’s future plans. Given their dedication to transforming businesses globally, HSA is sure to witness an upward growth trajectory in the future.
With their success, innovative ideas and the idea of expansion over the globe, the company is heading towards greater heights.
