Bridging the South Asian Context Gap, one engagement at a time.
CIGAER is the bespoke professional intelligence division of Creditcheck Partners Private Limited. We translate frontline intelligence — discreet HUMINT, structured OSINT, on-ground field investigation and forensic analysis — into executive-level risk mitigation, organised around six analytical pillars our name spells out.
CIGAER is a seasoned team of professional intelligence experts operating across India, Bangladesh, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Pakistan and Bhutan. To many, South Asia seems like a conundrum — the subcontinent is an enigma, with layers of cultural context and subtext rolled together like a fine cigar. Hidden between those layers are the social, political and economic realities of doing business here. We understand them perfectly.
With decades of on-the-ground experience and an innate understanding of our part of the world, we now hold over 200 years of collective experience across the team. We have cultivated trusted relationships and a reliable network of people resources that cut through the smokescreens of South Asian markets.
Our mission is to bridge the South Asian Context Gap — the daily distance between what a Western data room shows and what a local source knows. We close that distance with discreet inquiries, field investigation and forensic analysis, and we deliver findings that hold up to boardroom, regulator and court scrutiny.
Founded under Creditcheck Partners Private Limited and headquartered in Mumbai, we maintain active research teams in Ludhiana, Chennai, Dhaka and Colombo. Our multi-lingual team of 30+ consultants is drawn from business, economics, law and law-enforcement backgrounds, and supported by an advisory group of former Indian Police Services, DRI and FICCI office-bearers.
Global investors, multinationals, financial institutions, family offices, NGOs and government bodies operating across or into South Asia.
Discreet human-source intelligence and structured open-source research, combined with on-the-ground field investigation and forensic profiling — calibrated to each engagement's evidentiary needs.
We are bespoke, source-led and we refuse to overclaim. Every report is built to support the decision the client actually has to make — and to withstand scrutiny if it has to.
Every CIGAER engagement applies the same six-pillar analytical lens — the brand name made visible, and the framework that translates fragmented grassroots intelligence into board-ready insight.
Every engagement begins with the question the client cannot answer with public sources, and is built — bespoke, not templated — around what is actually needed to answer it.
Pre-investment intelligence on counterparts, ownership and operating reality — across deal structures from M&A to PE/VC to credit.
Whistleblower probes, fraud and forensic investigations, on-ground field intelligence — calibrated to client evidentiary needs.
Evidence gathering, witness identification and source triangulation to support negotiation, arbitration and litigation.
FCPA / UK Bribery Act / ESG compliance investigations — testing conduct against international standards.
Phase-1 intelligence and Phase-2 verification across financial, landed, movable and intangible asset classes — domestic and cross-border.
Credential verification, criminal-history checks and source-led integrity assessment of executives across jurisdictions.
Vendor, distributor, partner and customer verification — including onsite confirmation where the deal warrants it.
Discreet market, product and operating-model intelligence to inform strategy and market-entry decisions.
Verification of sustainability, labour, environmental and governance claims against ground reality.
Digital evidence preservation, network analysis and forensic recovery to support investigations and disputes.
From a one-line answer at a family dinner to a formal pitch in a boardroom.
We are like private investigators for big companies — we help global investors and multinationals figure out the real story about people, businesses and assets across India and South Asia before they sign deals or after something goes wrong.
CIGAER is a Mumbai-based professional intelligence collective. We help global companies, investors and financial institutions get the real story behind the deals they are considering across India and its neighbouring countries — by talking to the right people on the ground, verifying credentials and tracing assets. Think due diligence — but the kind that gets past the data room.
CIGAER is the bespoke professional intelligence division of Creditcheck Partners — 200+ years of collective experience, 500+ global clients, networks across India, Bangladesh, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Pakistan and Bhutan. Boards and investors come to us when their open-source diligence stops being enough: when they need to know who really controls a counterparty, whether a CEO's record holds up, where a defaulter's assets sit, or whether sustainability claims survive contact with the ground.
We organise everything around a six-pillar framework called the CIGAER Hexagon: Compliance, Integrity, Governance, Accountability, Ethics, Reputation. Each letter is a discipline of our practice.
Most investment failures in South Asia don't happen because the data room is wrong. They happen because the data room is incomplete. The land title looks clean — but the access road runs through a contested patch. The CEO's CV checks out — in the wrong jurisdiction. The vendor list has sixty names — only twenty exist on the ground.
CIGAER closes that gap. We are a Mumbai-based professional intelligence collective, with research teams in Ludhiana, Chennai, Dhaka and Colombo, and a 200-plus-year collective track record of working with global investors, multinationals and financial institutions across the Indian subcontinent. Our work is anchored in a six-pillar analytical framework that our brand name itself spells out — Compliance, Integrity, Governance, Accountability, Ethics, Reputation: the CIGAER Hexagon.
We deliver across ten service lines — from transactional due diligence and asset tracing to mystery shopping and ESG verification — all built on discreet human-source intelligence, structured open-source research and on-the-ground field investigation. Findings are organised to support boardroom decisions, regulatory responses, recovery proceedings and reputation defense. We are bespoke, source-led and we refuse to overclaim.
Founded under Creditcheck Partners Private Limited and operating under the bespoke CIGAER brand, we are the Indian subcontinent's specialist professional intelligence and forensics partner. Our practice was built on a simple observation: Western governance frameworks assume legible records, enforceable contracts and accessible registries. South Asia delivers something different. Land is a state subject, indexed by date rather than by owner; antiquated statutes encourage benami holdings; family-name custody of assets is a cultural norm, not an anomaly; and political, social and commercial actors are intricately knit together. We call the distance between those two worlds the South Asian Context Gap — and closing it is what we do.
We operate across six countries — India, Bangladesh, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Pakistan and Bhutan — with our headquarters in Mumbai and active research teams in Ludhiana, Chennai, Dhaka and Colombo. Our team is multi-lingual, post-graduate-qualified, drawn from business, economics, law and law enforcement, and supported by an advisory group that includes former Indian Police Services officers, Directorate of Revenue Intelligence veterans and senior office-bearers from FICCI. Collectively, we hold 200+ years of professional experience, and we have delivered for more than 500 global clients across investment banking, private equity, multinational corporates, financial institutions, family offices, NGOs and government bodies.
We translate frontline intelligence into executive-level decisions through the CIGAER Hexagon — six pillars, each a discipline of our practice. Compliance: testing adherence to multi-jurisdictional regulatory frameworks. Integrity: verifying the foundational probity of counterparts. Governance: mapping who really controls a business through layered ownership structures. Accountability: tracing financial flows to actors, admissibly. Ethics: testing conduct against FCPA and UK Bribery Act standards. Reputation: triangulating an entity's standing across independent local sources.
Our service portfolio spans transactional due diligence, senior management due diligence, asset tracing, FCPA and UKBA investigations, dispute resolution support, counter-party checks, competitive intelligence, ESG compliance verification, mystery shopping and crisis support. Every engagement is bespoke — we don't ship templates. Our outputs are organised to withstand boardroom, regulator and courtroom scrutiny — and where evidence is partial, we say so. Restraint is itself a credential.
Whether you are evaluating a South Asia investment, defending against an allegation, tracing a defaulter, ratifying an executive hire or testing a sustainability claim — CIGAER closes the gap between what your data room shows and what the ground actually says.
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