A business always seeks growth opportunities not just in their home market but beyond. Whether that opportunity is for expansion of their product / service line and geographical footprint, or getting into new industry verticals, or trying to bring in a new concept that may give them competitive edge; feasibility testing of such ideas becomes imperative and a pre-requisite to ensure that the decision making for proposing new investment for growth opportunities is supported by fundamental rationale. Over the decades, Argon’s team have executed numerous feasibility study projects not just in India but globally, and across industry verticals. We conduct end-to-end feasibility studies for our clients, which includes the following:

1. Economic Feasibility
2. Demographic Feasibility
3. Market Feasibility
4. Technology Feasibility (only if specifically requested by the client)
5. Competition Intensity
6. Concept Feasibility
7. Assessment of Investment Requirement
8. Financial Feasibility

The above eight areas conclusively determine whether the proposed project idea would be feasible from a long term perspective. This helps our client in their pursuit of seeking growth opportunities

Argon’s team has considerable experience in conducting commercial & business due diligence, and have executed numerous such mandates globally. This is the most aggressive exercise in the entire transaction life-cycle since it determines if the proposed deal should be consummated, and if yes, does the valuation claimed by the sell side is justified. Depending on the severity and number of red flags, it can either break the deal or push the parties back to the negotiating table. Therefore, this becomes the most critical part of the transaction life-cycle. At Argon, we are extremely diligent and aggressive while undertaking due diligence mandates wherein each of the assumptions used during making the pitch by the sell side is put to test and thoroughly validated. Representing our clients in this category, who are investors, we test and validate the following for the investee company:

1. Company’s strength and differentiators
2. Company’s weakness
3. Company’s revenue and cost
4. Company’s stakeholder ecosystem
5. Competition
6. Policy directives and regulations

The above reveals the reality vis-à-vis the claim made by the investee company, which is shared with our clients on the buy side

Even after doing a proper homework, sometimes companies face unexpected challenges and roadblocks. These hiccups, depending on the nature of business, could be due to market aspect, SCM, productivity, capital expenditure, and capital structure, among others. The cost-benefit analysis at each of these stages and the subsequent recommendation is what makes Argon one of the preferred partners in the advisory landscape. Our capabilities of understanding business dynamics and business cycles and how the market forces acts on it makes us unique in providing specialised advisory services in this spectrum. Our offerings in the restructuring space includes, but not limited to, the following:

1. Restructuring from a market aspect – cost-benefit analysis based on product / service line, market opportunity & penetration, demand-supply, market proximity based on customer segments
2. Restructuring from SCM aspect – cost-benefit analysis based on input prices, hedging, sourcing delivery time, inward logistics, warehousing, assigning to facility, outward logistics
3. Productivity – cost-benefit analysis based on inventory classification, facility up-gradation, etc.
4. Financial Restructuring – assessing liquidity requirements based on operational restructuring, re-organizing financial assets and liabilities thereby finally altering the capital structure

Argonites have in-depth knowledge and expertise in conducting brand valuation. Whether it’s income approach method or relief from royalty method, our capabilities customize the brand valuation technique for our clients depending on their end objective, markets, customer segment it caters to, type of products / services, market depth, and potential capability to scale-up from both price point and volume perspective. A company would need brand valuation for either or all of the following objectives:

1. As a periodical ongoing exercise to ascertain the brand strength
2. For similar brand acquisitions
3. For the purpose of brand hive off / exit

A specialized advisory services designed and tailor made for our clients to help them achieve sales and operational efficiencies. Companies having multiple product / service line across multiple geographies may, at times, face the issue of inefficiencies creeping in. The most important questions emanating out of these challenges are – Are the offerings too crowded / cluttered? Are they addressing the customer needs? Are the customers able to comprehend what the product / service intend to deliver? Are we present in areas where we are not supposed to be? Are there enough demand for our product / service offtake? Are there any geographical pockets that we are not doing well? Argon not only helps address these questions to its clients, but also create a solution framework along with a dashboard that draws up the optimal product / service line that will help maximize the sales efficiency

Similarly when it comes to optimizing cost, the typical questions that companies seek answers for are – Are our sourcing strategy delivering the results of reducing input cost? Are our sourcing supply chain optimized / do we have enough bargaining powers? Does our sourcing initiative helping in reducing our inventory / warehousing cost? Do we need to revisit our inventory allocation method? Is our strategy of sourcing utility / power for production efficient? Does the manufacturing process / techniques needs to be revisited? Is the output-to-cost ratio per shift the same? Can this ratio be improved? Is our outward logistics effective from depot / warehouse to retailers / intermediate users? Are the administrative processes effective? Does it need to be redesigned to improve response turnaround time across the operations ecosystem? Our capabilities of understanding business and operations dynamics help address these questions to our clients, and also build a cost-benefit sensitivity model that helps in identifying areas for optimizing cost and improving the efficiencies / economies

While our integrated service under this category would include revenue and cost optimization, we also help our clients in reducing the leverage (debt servicing) cost to effectively deliver the end objective of maximizing profits and increasing shareholders’ earnings – EPS

Unlocking hidden values enhances a company’s overall value, and, therefore, companies always emphasize on unlocking values. Whether it’s hiving off a business line or merging of a business line, or re-classification of product / service portfolios under specific business lines, or business restructuring for unlocking hidden values; Argon’s team has considerable experience in providing the much-needed expertise in this area across the length and breadth of this spectrum