Cross-border telecom acquisition — diligence & MergeCo planning
Technology due diligence on a multi-billion-dollar cross-border telecom acquisition. IT risk assessment and MergeCo integration planning across two estates and two regulatory regimes.
Akansh Partners — Technology M&A & AI viability advisory, led by Vishesh Yadav
In M&A, technology is never just technology.
It stands or falls on operations, growth, and value creation.
Technology M&A | Technology in M&A — advisory across the full deal cycle, with an operator's judgment and an advisor's rigor. Buy-side and sell-side. Private equity and strategic. A proprietary AI platform takes the laborious admin off each deal — scoping, collating, surfacing, collaborating — so engagements move faster. Judgment and the calls that matter stay with me, never the AI.
250+
engagements
30+
PE sponsors
19+
years · 13 in M&A
3
continents · NA · EMEA · APAC
Mandates
Buy-side & sell-side, full deal cycle
Engagement length
One-week reviews to multi-year platform advisory
Capacity
Senior principal direct, scalable by network
SaaS · Healthcare · Manufacturing · Transportation & Logistics · Aerospace · Energy · Telecom · Professional Services · Higher Education
What I do
Technology read against the deal — not a technical audit.
Every engagement starts from the investment thesis, not a checklist. The work is to test the technology against the deal rationale and the growth plan — what it supports going in, where the waste sits, and what it costs to own and operate after close. Technology paired to operations, growth, and value creation, never assessed in isolation.
Nineteen years across technology and business, thirteen of them in M&A advisory. 250+ engagements, the large majority private equity, buy-side and sell-side from the middle market up. Some deals need a one-week read before a sponsor commits; others run for years across a platform and its add-ons.
Technology, including AI, is an essential business utility.
Its risk is always operational and execution risk.
AI viability advisory
Where AI earns its place — and where it doesn't.
Most AI decisions aren't technical. They're about where it creates value, what it costs to run, and whether the operation can absorb it. For operating companies and PE portfolios, I separate the use cases that pay from the ones that don't, size the value and the execution risk, and build the path to deliver the ones that survive that test.
Grounded in having built an AI platform and run AI-operations engagements — not a strategy deck. The same line of sight as the deal work: technology judged by what it does for the business, and priced for the risk it actually carries.
Who I work with
Four kinds of client. The same senior person on every deal.
Private equity sponsors
Buy-side and sell-side technology diligence — IT, cybersecurity, and product risk read against the thesis — then sized and priced. Where the deal calls for it, integration or separation planning and delivery on that plan after close. The bulk of the work, across North America, Europe, and Asia.
Strategic & corporate buyers
Technology diligence and integration advisory for corporates buying or merging — cross-border transactions, MergeCo planning, and C-suite advisory on the technology playbook behind the deal.
Advisory firms
Embedded technology-M&A capacity inside your engagements. I work to your methodology and your brand, slot into the deal team, and scale through my own network when a deal needs more hands.
Portfolio companies
Post-close and pre-exit work — integration, separation, operating-model redesign, sell-side readiness. Usually with the sponsor in the loop. The focus is delivery, not another report.
Practice areas
What an engagement covers — scoped to the deal, not the template.
Used in combination or on their own. Even diligence is conducted with a value-creation line of sight.
Technology due diligence
Buy-side, the technology weighed for risk and value. Sell-side, the case built to survive a buyer's diligence.
Cybersecurity risk
The real exposure a buyer is taking on — not a compliance checkbox.
SaaS & product evaluation
Architecture, scalability, and roadmap — what's real versus what's pitched.
Separation & carve-out
TSA scope, stranded cost, and a cross-border separation blueprint.
Post-merger integration
MergeCo planning, Day-1 readiness, and the cost and timeline of joining two estates.
Target operating model
How the technology function is staffed and run, and whether it can deliver the plan.
Transformation & value creation
Where technology spend earns its return, and where it's just carried.
QofE coordination
Normalized IT run-rates, R&D capitalization, migration P&L — built into the earnings story, not bolted on.
How I work
Four ways to engage.
Rapid read
A one-week technology review at a flat fee, for deals that need a fast read before committing to full diligence.
Scoped project
Fixed-fee diligence scoped to the deal up front — defined coverage, deliverables, and timeline. Not hourly.
Embedded
Embedded directly in a deal team or portfolio company for the duration — inside your process, not running a parallel one.
White-label
Delivered for other advisory firms under their banner — augmenting their capability where a deal needs technology depth they don't staff in-house.
Solo by design, scalable by network. You get the senior person on every engagement, and the additional hands behind them when a deal calls for it. No junior handoffs, no accountability layers.
A scoping tool on akansh.io lets you set the deal parameters and the areas to assess before the first conversation — so that conversation is about what matters, not where to start. It generates a scope document, data-request list, and engagement letter, off an M&A technology platform that carries diligence through to post-close, tied to operations and financials from day one.
Selected engagements
The work, by what it delivered.
Client names withheld. Sectors and outcomes are real.
Due diligence
Buy-and-build advisory across a platform
Multi-year technology M&A advisory to a platform's CFO and CTO across 18 add-on acquisitions. IT, cyber, and product diligence on each, plus a replicable playbook for screening, PMI, and execution the platform used on every deal after.
Energy major — US market-expansion advisory
Technology M&A advisory to a global low-carbon energy company entering the US. IT, cybersecurity, and HR diligence on acquisition targets, with C-suite advisory on an integrated technology playbook.
Diligence portfolio across sectors
Buy-side and sell-side technology, cybersecurity, and product diligence across SaaS, healthcare, manufacturing, transport & logistics, and professional services — roughly 150 delivered under a corporate advisory banner, the balance led independently or alongside specialist transaction-advisory firms.
Integration & separation
Merger of equals — diligence to Day 1
IT and cybersecurity diligence on a $1B transport & logistics merger of equals, then post-close PMI planning and Day-1 technology readiness across distributed operations.
Carve-out diligence & separation blueprint
Technology and cybersecurity carve-out diligence for a PE sponsor acquiring a medical-device division from a Fortune-50 parent. TSA assessment and a cross-border separation blueprint.
Value creation & exit
Market-leading telecom merger — tech rationalization & zero-based budgeting
Advised on core technology rationalization and zero-based budgeting for a market-leading telecom merger. Identified and delivered procurement savings across enterprise systems, infrastructure, and vendor consolidation.
Transformation & operating-model redesign
Technology modernization and operating-model redesign for an automotive parts manufacturer, built around organic growth and an M&A roadmap — legacy systems retired and operations moved to cloud. The redesign drove roughly $600K in topline growth over three years and $50K a year in operating savings.
Sell-side exit readiness
Pre-sale technology transformation for a PE-backed portfolio company. C-suite alignment, sell-side IT and cyber diligence, management coaching, and quick wins that addressed buyer concerns before they became deal risks.
Telecom operator — AI operations strategy
Operations-automation roadmap focused on customer-service cost reduction. Executive alignment, quick-win implementations, and a blueprint for scaled adoption.
About
Nineteen years in technology and business — thirteen turning technology risk into something a deal team can price and act on.
I started in enterprise technology, moved into deal advisory, and increasingly into the operational work behind the deals — redesigning operating models and delivering the change, not just advising on it. The problem I kept seeing was the same: technology assessed late, in isolation from operations and financials, handed over as a report nobody reconciled against the deal. The work since has been to fix that — read the technology against the thesis, tie it to the operating model and the earnings story, and leave something a sponsor can act on after close.
I built and scaled that practice twice. At RSM US I co-established the operations transaction advisory practice and led a 15-person technology, cyber, and product team to a $2–3M P&L. At Point B I built the technology transaction advisory line from zero to $1M in year two with a team of ten — recruited, trained, methodology and all — then handed off a working engine. Independent since 2021, I work directly inside major advisory firms on their engagements, and directly for sponsors and strategic buyers on theirs.
More recently I built an M&A technology platform — AI on the admin work, judgment left to the consultant — so diligence ties to operational reality and the financials from day one, and reads as the starting point for post-close work rather than a transaction checkbox. The domain logic comes from 250-plus executed engagements.
- 19+ years in technology & business · 13+ in M&A advisory
- 250+ engagements · the large majority private equity
- 30+ PE sponsors
- Practices built and scaled at two US consulting firms
- ACG conference speaker — technology risk in PE transactions
- MBA · B.E. Computer Science · PMP
- On the ground across North America, Europe, and Asia
- English & Hindi (native), Italian (conversational)
Contact
Let's scope it.
Scope it first and the call starts aligned, not cold — set the deal parameters and what you want assessed, and the conversation picks up from there. If you'd rather talk first, book the call and we'll start there.