As companies increasingly rely on acquisitions for growth, deal sourcing has become slow, opaque, and largely focused on in-market opportunities. Mergers and acquisitions teams are under growing pressure to achieve more with fewer resources.
With corporate development teams becoming leaner, timelines are tighter, and the competition for quality assets is rising. Consequently, participants in the capital markets are increasingly turning to artificial intelligence (AI) to navigate a structurally tighter exit environment.
AI is being used to enhance the viability of M&A, secondaries, and strategic exits at scale by improving efficiency earlier in the deal lifecycle. GrowthPal, a startup based in Pune, is one such company applying AI to M&A deal sourcing and execution. According to Maneesh Bhandari, co-founder and CEO of GrowthPal, “M&A sourcing is where most time and effort are wasted, especially for smaller and mid-market deals. Teams spend weeks researching, filtering, and pursuing opportunities that often lead nowhere. Buyers typically see only what is currently on the market, while many high-quality, off-market opportunities remain hidden.”
GrowthPal is an AI-led M&A platform co-founded by Maneesh Bhandari, Shalu Mitruka, and Amaresh Shirsat. The company has raised $2.6 million from Ideaspring Capital, along with participation from prominent angel investors worldwide, to support its expansion in response to growing demand. The new capital will be used for product development, expanding international market presence, and enhancing capabilities in deal sourcing, valuation analysis, and execution workflows.
Bridging the $70 Million Gap
“While there are over a million meaningful startups globally, fewer than one per cent scale successfully, often due to a lack of timely exits or strategic partnerships. At the same time, many acquirers struggle to find the right targets, especially for transactions under $70 million, overlooked by traditional investment banks. GrowthPal connects these two sides by making deal sourcing proactive, discreet, and data-driven,” Bhandari explained.
Beyond Public Listings
GrowthPal employs sector-aware models to identify potential acquisition targets in the global private market, rather than relying on public listings or static databases. The platform’s AI-driven reasoning helps pinpoint which companies truly matter based on strategic intent, sector context, and readiness to transact. GrowthPal identifies off-market targets, validates their fit, and accelerates deal sourcing and execution, enabling buyers to focus on high-intent, high-fit opportunities. Using signals from public filings, web activity, hiring trends, funding history, and other indicators, its AI agents scan an enriched database of more than four million technology companies. It results in a shortlist of precision-fit, often off-market targets that closely align with the buyer’s goals, rather than broad lists of loosely relevant companies.
GrowthPal has supported 42 completed M&A transactions and facilitated over 210 Letters of Intent stage conversations across North America, Europe, Asia, and Latin America. Its clients include large and mid-market enterprises, fast-growing startups, private equity-backed firms, and corporate development teams across various sectors such as IT services, SaaS, fintech, and vertical software.
Naganand Doraswamy, Managing Partner at Ideaspring Capital, noted that by focusing on qualified deal discovery and using AI to shorten timelines, the team is enabling a more systematic approach to inorganic growth than traditional tools can offer.