MnA Genome: A made-in-India, AI platform that can predict the outcome of M&A deals

The Mergers & Acquisitions market, valued at $4.7 trillion worldwide accounts for $1.7 trillion in losses because one-third of the deals fail at culture integration.

A Made-in-India, for the world, Artificial Intelligence platform christened MnA Genome, has the potential to predict the outcome of a merger or acquisition with culture analytics and the financial losses as a consequence of dysfunctional relationship.

MnA Genome is a nine-question survey, the results of which are mapped against 9,276 behaviour elements across 67 human dimensions and collated into seven reports. These are used to come up with a single Culture Entropy Score. The score is cross validated with the findings of 6,000 organisations across 56 countries, collated over the years.

The platform can be used as a decision making tool before acquiring a company or facilitating a merger, at the due diligence stage. It can also be used at the post-merger integration stage to help align the cultures of both organisations.

According to Yeshasvini Ramaswamy, founder MnA Genome, “The M&A market in India at $44 billion recorded a 26 per cent increase in deal values with a record number of 442 deals in the year 2018, driven by telecommunications, oil & gas, pharmaceutical, infrastructure, financial services and technology sectors. While culture consulting solutions are available, they are subjective and vague. There are no culture analytics solutions available in the market which can come up with a Culture Entropy Score that indicates the degree of culture disorder in an organisation as well as the costs that organisations incur as a consequence of a dysfunctional culture” .

She is also the Managing Director of e2e People Practices Pvt Ltd, a culture assessment and HR consulting firm that has facilitated 643 Culture Alignment Interventions for domestic and international organizations.

Yeshasvini and her team ran the platform on an India-based IT company with a global footprint, having a base of 2,552 employees, where 1,148 responses and 1,658 people were covered. The platform mapped the IT company’s culture to the year-on-year loss the company was making in terms of unproductive compensation which amounted to ₹32.4 crore.

“We work with the 'buy side' during the due diligence stage to help them make an informed decision on whether to go ahead with the deal or not; and also during the post-merger and integration stage by helping to align the two cultures. It has taken us nine years and multiple thought iterations to be ready for commercial deployment. MnA Genome has already been used by four organisations” said Ramaswamy.