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THE MANIFESTOVol. 01

The 'Bloomberg Moment' for Private Markets

In 1984, transparency transformed the bond market. Today, it’s coming for Indian venture capital.

Published

NOV 24, 2025

Read Time

8 min read

Author

Abhishek Verma

Founder

The 30-Second Thesis

  • Private markets are undergoing a shift from relationship-based access to data-driven transparency.
  • The 'Black Box' problem of Generative AI creates a trust deficit in financial decision making.
  • Canonical extraction is the only way to build a verifiable 'Glass Box' intelligence layer.

I. The Shift

In 1982, if you wanted a bond price, you had to call someone. Literally. Traders hoarded quotes like trade secrets. Information asymmetry wasn't a bug; it was the entire business model.

Then Bloomberg built a terminal that did something dangerous: it made prices visible to everyone, at the same time. The "I know a guy" premium evaporated overnight. The informed won because suddenly, everyone was informed.1

Private markets today are flying the same blind flight path.

Deal flow lives in WhatsApp groups and warm intros. Analysts spend 80+ hours per company playing data archaeologist - excavating numbers from PDFs, transcribing them into spreadsheets, praying the pitch deck matches the MCA filing. (It usually doesn't.)

The spreadsheet becomes "truth" by default. The analyst who built the model leaves. The next analyst starts from scratch. Institutional memory? Zero.

Here's the uncomfortable reality: success in private markets still depends more on who you know than what you know.

But the winds are shifting. AUM in Indian alternatives has crossed $100 billion, growing at 25%+ annually. LPs are demanding process, not vibes. But the reality is that most investors still rely on tools that weren't built for emerging markets—leaving them with incomplete data, manual workarounds, and weeks of delayed decisions.2

Here's where the skeptics get it wrong.

Some say India is a smaller market. The data says otherwise. India's alternative investment industry has crossed $400 billion in AUM, growing at 25-30% annually—twice the rate of developed markets. SEBI-registered Alternative Investment Funds alone manage $130+ billion in commitments, up 3.6x since FY20.3

Add global institutional capital flowing in—FPIs pumped $23.8 billion into Indian equities in FY24 alone—and the opportunity becomes undeniable.4

This isn't a frontier market. It's the proving ground.

India isn't a smaller market. It's the hardest market. The data is messiest. The infrastructure is weakest. MCA filings contain audited financials for every Indian company—locked in PDFs nobody reconciles. We're unlocking them. If we can build here, we can build anywhere.

II. The Problem With AI (And What We're Building Instead)

GPTs are an incredible tool. We use it daily. But it has one fatal flaw for investment decisions: it's a confident liar.

Ask it about a startup's revenue. It will give you a number. That number might be fabricated, confused with another company, or pulled from a press release three years old. You have no way to know—because AI is a black box. Information goes in. Answers come out. What happened in between? Nobody knows.

"The model said revenue was $6 million."

"Where did it get that?"

"I don't know."

"Can we verify it?"

"Not really."

Would you bet $12 million on that? Neither would we.

So we're building a Glass Box instead.

Every insight traces to a verifiable source. Every number carries its provenance. "Revenue: $5.6 million" → MCA Annual Filing FY24, Page 12, Line Item 3. Click through. See the original document. Always.

We don't aggregate data (Crunchbase says X, LinkedIn says Y, here's both). We reconcile it. If the numbers don't match, we flag it. If they do, you know they've been verified across sources.

"You don't trust us. You verify us."

III. What This Actually Looks Like

The Old Way

  • • Analyst searches Tracxn (15 min)
  • • Cross-references Crunchbase (20 min)
  • • Downloads MCA filings (30 min)
  • • Manually enters data into Excel (3-4 hours)
  • • Realizes numbers don't match pitch deck
  • • Calls founder. Waits 2-3 days.

Total: 80+ hours

Confidence: "Pretty sure, but..."

The New Way

  • Enter company name
  • System pulls & reconciles 7 sources
  • Canonical financials auto-generated
  • Health metrics flagged automatically
  • Memo drafted with traced sources

Total: Hours, not weeks

Confidence: "Verified against MCA"

This isn't theoretical. Accenture Ventures ran a 20-day pilot. Their analysts refused to go back to the old workflow. Verdict: "10x faster than our internal process."

IV. What We Believe

Speed without trust is theater.

Anyone can build a fast AI. The question is whether you'd stake your fund's reputation on its output. If not, the speed is worthless.

Hard markets first.

The tools that work in New York don't work in Mumbai. MCA filings contain audited financials for every Indian company—locked in PDFs nobody reconciles. We're unlocking them.

AI should show its work.

Black boxes are for magicians. Investment decisions require Glass Boxes—systems that explain themselves, cite their sources, and invite verification.

V. The Invitation

We're not building for everyone.

We're building for Growth VCs, CVCs, and family offices tired of missing deals because diligence took too long. Tired of presenting to IC with data they can't fully verify. Tired of watching analysts burn out on copy-paste work that a machine should do.

If that's you, we'd like to build with you.

We're onboarding 5 design partners. Not customers—co-creators. Funds who want to shape what investment intelligence becomes.

What you get:

  • Early access
  • Direct input on the roadmap
  • Never manually enter MCA data again

What we ask:

  • Honest feedback
  • Access to real workflows
  • Patience while we iterate

The Bloomberg Terminal didn't just change trading. It changed who could trade.

Before Bloomberg: "I've been in this market 30 years. I know people."

After Bloomberg: "Here's the data. Make your own call."

Private markets are next. The funds clinging to access will get outmaneuvered by funds with better systems. The analysts drowning in Excel will lose to analysts augmented by verified AI. The memos based on vibes will lose to memos backed by canonical data.

We're starting in India. MCA filings today. Companies House tomorrow. EDGAR after that.

The only question: which side of the shift will you be on?

If you can't see the source, you can't trust the insight.

We're building the Glass Box for private markets.

samkhya.ai