August 2018
Equiteq, a global leader in providing strategic and M&A advisory services to knowledge-intensive services firms, is pleased to announce it has advised DBM Consultants, Australia’s leading provider of insights based consulting for the financial services industry, on its merger with Illuminera, an APAC based data empowered consultancy. The transaction closed on August 1, 2018.
Founded in 1992 by Dhruba Gupta, one of Australia’s leading market researchers, DBM is a specialist research and insights agency and with over 80 consultants is one of the top 5 largest privately-owned market research agencies nationally. DBM has a rich record of experience and expertise in financial services, blending research and analytics to solve the most challenging problems facing Australia’s banks, insurers and wealth managers today and beyond. DBM’s Consumer Atlas is the most comprehensive source of information on the banking, insurance and wealth management behaviour of Australians. It complements DBM’s Business and Financial Services Monitor (BFSM), the largest and most representative ongoing B2B research program on business financial decision makers. The BFSM is subscribed to by Australia’s largest financial institutions and banks to better understand the needs of the business market. Illuminera was founded as a market research agency by CEO Paul Zhou in 2007 and has evolved to become a specialist data-empowered consultancy, focused primarily on the pharmaceuticals and consumer goods sectors in Asia. Illuminera is headquartered in Shanghai with over 100 consultants and continues to be a fully independent agency owned 100% by its management. Illuminera is focused on enhancing its big data capabilities to capitalise on the rapid acceleration of new data sources, which are replacing traditional survey based research in APAC markets. Dhruba Gupta commented, “Illuminera will provide capital support for DBM investment and international expertise required to further enhance our financial services product suite. I am enthusiastic to be part of the next stage of DBM’s growth in Australia and in the APAC region.” Paul Zhou added: “We are excited to announce this strategic partnership between DBM Consultants and the Illuminera Group to capitalise on both firms’ capabilities to create a data-empowered insight and marketing consultancy.” Chris Riquier, CEO International, Illuminera, will support Dhruba Gupta at DBM Consultants in Melbourne as Executive Chairman to oversee the ambitious growth of the firm. Chris had a lengthy career at WPP owned TNS, most recently as CEO of the Asia Pacific business. Chris said: “I am thrilled by this new challenge to continue developing DBM Consultants by leveraging Illuminera’s data analytics and international expertise which will be a source of great value for our clients’.” Pierre Briand, Managing Director of Equiteq Australia commented: “We have been backing DBM consultants for the last 2 years to prepare them for their next stage of growth and find the right partner to succeed on its continuous journey towards developing its value proposition. We are convinced that Illuminera and DBM, Chris and Dhruba are the right team to create a significant player in the research and data analytics sector in Australia and APAC.” To see all of our deals, please click here. ©Equiteq 2018