Partnerships
Strategic partners
The core of the practice. We identify the partner who changes a company's trajectory — a distributor, a licensee, a corporate sponsor, a co-investor — and we stay in the room until the agreement is signed.
London · Since 2012
The hardest thing a young company buys is its first client.
Basalt Advisory finds strategic partners for companies entering unfamiliar markets, and opens the doors that take years to open alone.
Practice
Sales, marketing and business development for companies at their highest-risk stage.
Access
New markets
Clients have diversified and expanded their presence across Africa, the Middle East, Europe and Asia through Basalt's network. We handle the introduction, the context and the follow-through.
Revenue
Early client acquisition
Start-ups and fledgling companies live or die on the clients they win early. We work alongside founders to build a credible pipeline and convert it, rather than hand over a list of names.
Sectors
Nine sectors, across markets that rarely share a room.
Select a sector
Basalt works across a deliberately broad set of industries. The common thread is not the technology — it is a company that needs a partner it cannot reach on its own.
Selected work
What the mandates actually look like.
Sport
A Formula E title sponsor
Sponsorship secured for DS TECHEETAH, the only Chinese-registered team in the ABB FIA Formula E Championship, through our sports practice at Obsidian Sports Management.
Commercial partnershipsEntertainment
Advising Axia Media Group
Axia manages high-profile clients across sport, music, television and entertainment. We work with its leadership on strategic positioning, international expansion and the partnerships behind its next phase of growth, including its US presence.
Strategy and expansionGlobal health
Private capital for public programmes
Work with the private sector engagement team at The Global Fund, one of the largest financiers of global health, identifying corporate and philanthropic partners whose resources could strengthen delivery against HIV, tuberculosis and malaria.
Public-private partnershipsBeauty & wellness
Two science-led brands
Sales and marketing strategy for Layla & Kays, a science-led UK brand, and the distribution partners to take it into new markets. Separately, strategic partners identified for Filter by Molly-Mae to support growth.
Market entryNatural resources
An African mining portfolio
Years of work alongside a family office with diverse interests across Africa — gold, diamonds and bauxite — learning the full life cycle of a mining project from licence to offtake.
Investor and partner networksHealth data
A market for medical data
Symbiotix Health, founded and led by Chas, lets hospitals, labs and clinics unlock their data for life science research. It reports access to over 30 million patients worldwide.
Founded and operatingReach
A network built one relationship at a time, in four regions.
Region
AfricaMining and oil and gas projects, and health information systems built with ministries and NGOs.
Region
Middle EastFamily office capital, healthcare buildout, and sponsorship and entertainment rights.
Region
EuropeHome market. Corporate partnerships, sponsorship and institutional introductions.
Region
AsiaInvestor networks and distribution partners, from natural resources through to sport.
Principal
Chas Dabhia
Founder
Chas spent the first fourteen years of his career in the City, across asset management and hedge funds. His experience spanned product development, sales and business development, fund distribution and institutional relationships, with roles at Gartmore, F&C and Old Mutual Asset Management, before moving into the hedge fund sector with a London-based global macro fund.
He founded Basalt to bring that experience in commercial strategy, business development and relationship-building to growing companies. Early projects took him into natural resources, supporting a family office with mining interests across Africa on strategic partnerships and investor engagement, before moving increasingly into healthcare and technology.
Since then he has worked across electronic health records, global health and healthcare data; founded Kinect and Symbiotix Health; led business development initiatives with Raphael Labs and Aventus; and has been a partner at Obsidian Sports Management since 2016.
That work is what Basalt runs on. Behind the firm is a global network of operators, investors and industry specialists, built one relationship at a time and used to source, diligence and execute opportunities for our clients.
- Capital raised
- Over $700 million raised across investment strategies.
- Experience
- Fourteen years in the City, and a further decade in advisory.
- Education
- Nottingham Business School, Nottingham Trent University.
- Also
- Founder and CEO, Symbiotix Health. Partner, Obsidian Sports Management.
Contact
Tell us which door you need opened.
Basalt takes on a small number of clients at a time. If you are entering a new market or looking for a specific kind of partner, tell us briefly what you need and we will come back to you.