As companies increasingly lean on acquisitions to power their growth, one of the biggest challenges continues to be the slow and fragmented nature of deal sourcing. Stepping into this gap, GrowthPal has announced a $2.6 million funding round to scale its AI-driven M&A copilot, designed to help buyers identify off-market targets and move from strategy to execution in record time.
The round was led by Ideaspring Capital, with participation from prominent global angel investors. The company, co-founded by Maneesh Bhandari, Shalu Mitruka, and Amaresh Shirsat, aims to use the capital to expand its product capabilities and strengthen its international footprint as demand grows for faster, more systematic approaches to inorganic growth.
Reimagining Deal Sourcing With AI
The traditional M&A origination process, dominated by banker networks, static datasets, and manual research, has barely evolved over the decades. As a result, buyers typically see only what’s already on the market, missing out on the rich universe of off-market opportunities.
GrowthPal takes a distinct approach. Instead of merely aggregating data like platforms such as PitchBook, D&B, Tracxn or Datasite, GrowthPal applies AI-driven reasoning to contextualise a buyer’s strategic intent and match it to high-fit companies.
“M&A sourcing is where most time and effort is wasted, especially for smaller and mid-market deals,” said Maneesh Bhandari, co-founder and CEO. “Teams spend weeks researching, filtering, and chasing opportunities that never go anywhere. We built GrowthPal to help buyers focus only on high-intent, high-fit targets and move from mandate to meaningful conversations far faster.”
From Mandate to Meaningful Conversations- In Days
GrowthPal’s AI copilot translates a buyer’s growth objective, whether entering a new geography or acquiring a capability, into a structured thesis. Its AI agents then scan more than four million technology companies, combining signals from public filings, hiring patterns, funding history, web activity, and more. What emerges is a short, curated list of precision-fit, often off-market targets, enabling corporate development teams to save weeks of effort.
The company also aims to tackle a deeper structural gap: while over a million meaningful startups exist globally, fewer than one percent scale successfully, largely due to the lack of timely exits or strategic partnerships. On the other side, buyers find it difficult to identify the right targets, especially for deals under $70 million that fall outside the radar of traditional investment banks. GrowthPal positions itself as the bridge connecting these two underserved segments.
Proven Traction Across Global Markets
So far, GrowthPal has supported 42+ completed M&A deals and facilitated 210+ LOI-stage conversations across North America, Europe, Asia, and Latin America. Its clients include large enterprises, private equity-backed firms, fast-growing startups, and corporate development teams in sectors like SaaS, fintech, IT services, and vertical software. In one case, a client reportedly closed seven acquisitions in 18 months using the platform.
Investors believe this data-driven approach can reshape how companies approach M&A.
“GrowthPal is solving one of the most under-optimised parts of the M&A lifecycle,” said Naganand Doraswamy, Managing Partner at Ideaspring Capital. “By focusing on qualified deal discovery and using AI to compress timelines, the team is enabling a more systematic approach to inorganic growth that traditional tools cannot offer.”
The Road Ahead
With this new capital infusion, GrowthPal plans to deepen its intelligence stack, expanding into valuation reasoning, deal structuring, and negotiation preparation. The long-term vision is to build a system of intelligence for M&A, supporting teams from early discovery all the way to execution. In a landscape where data is abundant but decisive insights are scarce, GrowthPal’s AI-first model could well redefine how organisations pursue inorganic growth.
By: Shivani Solanki
