Brokerage Firm Transworld Business Advisors Opens India Office, Cites Business Succession Gap

Transworld Business Advisors, a business brokerage firm founded in Florida in 1979, said it has opened an office in India to advise small and mid-sized companies on business sales, mergers, franchising and ownership succession.

The company, which calls itself the world's largest business brokerage firm, said it would work with businesses reporting annual turnover of ₹5 crore to ₹200 crore and above. It cited an estimate that India's market for such transactions is worth $123.8 billion, a figure the company did not attribute to any independent source.

Ray Titus, the company's founder and chairperson, said at a launch event in New Delhi that many Indian businesses remain dependent on their founders rather than being structured to operate independently. "Our ambition with TBA India is to help change that equation," Titus said, adding that the company wanted to make Indian businesses "globally investable and acquisition-ready."

The company's India president, Sanjiv Maini, said Indian entrepreneurs have tended to build businesses “around themselves rather than building enterprises that can outlive them.”

India's small and mid-sized business sector has drawn increasing interest from advisory and brokerage firms in recent years, as a generation of founders who built companies over the past two to three decades approach questions of succession, retirement or exit. Business brokerage, matching owners looking to sell with buyers or investors, is a more established industry in the US than in India, where such transactions have typically gone through informal networks, chartered accountants or investment bankers rather than dedicated brokerage platforms.

TBA said it operates in other markets using a proprietary CRM system to match buyers and sellers, though it did not disclose deal volumes or revenue figures for its India launch.

Industry participants at the event, including Yash Vasant, managing director of the Vasant Group, argued that Indian companies too reliant on their founders faced structural risks as they scaled — a view aligned with TBA's own pitch for its advisory services.

The company did not disclose financial targets or a timeline for its India operations.

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