Somebody replied to the first issue with a question I couldn't answer in one line.

She wants to buy a gym. Not open one, buy one. A neighbourhood place near her, the kind that's half empty by eight in the evening. She'd already worked out what she'd change about it.

Then she wrote this:

"want to know whether banks or govt can help me with funds as I don't own a lot of money to buy."

That's the question. Everything before it is enthusiasm. That sentence is where you find out whether the door is real, or whether you've been reading about something that only works for people who already have money.

I've been giving a half-answer to that question for about two years. So this week I went and read the actual documents.

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In America, there is a loan for this.

The SBA 7(a) will fund a change of ownership. The United States government guarantees a loan whose stated purpose is you buying somebody else's business. The buyer puts in ten percent, and under the rules that came into force in June, part of even that ten percent can be a seller note left on standby.

Think about what that does. Somebody with forty thousand dollars can buy a four-hundred-thousand-dollar business. The bank isn't lending against her assets, because she hasn't got any. It's lending against the cash flow of the thing she's buying, with the government standing behind it.

That one product is most of the reason the American searcher scene exists. Not the podcasts. Not the books. Not the conferences. The loan.

India has no version of it. Not a smaller one, not a worse one. There is no lending product in this country whose stated purpose is buying a business that already exists.

The internet will tell you otherwise. Here are the four things it points at.

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PMEGP. The one everybody names first. Its own guidelines: "Assistance under the Scheme is available only for new projects sanctioned specifically under the PMEGP." And in case that leaves room: "Existing/old units are not eligible." It exists to help you start a business. It cannot be used to buy one.

Stand-Up India. Ten lakh to a crore, for SC/ST and women entrepreneurs. Sounds built for exactly this. It's greenfield-only, and the scheme defines greenfield as the first-time venture of the beneficiary, an enterprise not formed by taking over an existing business. That isn't a footnote. That's the eligibility criteria.

MUDRA. Shishu to ₹50,000, Kishore to ₹5 lakh, Tarun to ₹10 lakh. Tarun Plus goes to ₹20 lakh, but only if you've already taken and repaid a Tarun loan. First time round your ceiling is ten lakh. Genuinely useful, collateral-free, and not the price of a gym.

CGTMSE. Not a loan at all, it's a guarantee that sits behind somebody else's loan so a bank can lend without collateral. Real, and it matters. But I read the scheme document, all thirty-eight pages, and the words acquisition, takeover and purchase don't appear once. Not prohibited. Never contemplated. Nobody drafting it was thinking about you.

Three schemes that exclude you by definition, and a guarantee for a loan nobody offers.

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I used to think India had no searcher scene because of culture. Family businesses don't sell. Nobody here has heard of this. Give it time.

Then I looked at the numbers.

Outside the United States, the international search fund study counts 320 funds ever formed and 146 completed acquisitions. India accounts for two of the funds and none of the acquisitions. Not few. None. The Asia-Pacific column is New Zealand, Australia and Japan.

I don't think that's culture any more. I think a country gets a searcher ecosystem when an ordinary person can borrow against a business they don't own yet, and doesn't get one when they can't.

And here's the part I'd rather admit than paper over. I went looking for how much acquisition debt actually gets written in India, any number, from anyone and there isn't one. It isn't badly reported. It's unstudied. Nobody has counted.

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Two answers. The second is uglier.

The seller becomes the bank. Agree a price, pay some at close, pay the rest out of the business's own profits over the next twelve to thirty-six months.

This works more often than people expect, and the reason is worth sitting with. A tired owner of a half-empty gym isn't choosing between your structure and a better offer. He's choosing between your structure and another two years of the thing that made him tired. Plenty take staged payments over a lowball all-cash offer, because the number is bigger and the alternative is nothing.

You're not asking for a favour. You're frequently the only exit on the table.

Or your family's property. Loan against property is what a lot of Indian buyers actually use, which means the security is a flat somebody already owns. That isn't acquisition finance. It's a mortgage with extra steps, and it moves the risk off the business and onto a house.

I'm not dressing that up. It's the true answer, and better you know now than in month five.

If you're reading this outside India, check before you assume. Most countries' small-business schemes are built to fund starting, not buying. America is the exception, not the rule.

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If you don't have the money, the structure has to come up before the price does.

Say it in the first or second conversation, not at the end when the seller has picked a number and told his brother about it:

"I'm interested. You should know now that anything I offer is going to be part at close and part over the next two years, paid out of the business. If that's a non-starter, tell me today and neither of us wastes a month."

Three things happen. Sellers who need all cash remove themselves in week one instead of week six. The ones still there have just told you they're flexible. And you've stopped competing on price against buyers with more money than you, a competition you were always going to lose.

The buyer with no capital doesn't win on price. He wins by being the only one still there in month four.

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She wrote back with a plan.

She's going to put a form out and find out whether the demand she thinks is there actually is. Then walk into the gyms near her and ask three things: footfall, rent, and monthly churn.

Not the equipment. The equipment is a red herring, a neighbourhood gym lives or dies on retention and rent, and the membership base is the asset.

That's a better first month than I had.

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Last time I asked for the maddest number you'd been quoted. Nobody replied, fair, it only works if you're already across the table from sellers. This one's easier, and it matters more.

Has a seller ever offered you terms? Part at close and part later, an earn-out, a holdback, anything other than all cash. Country, rough size, what was offered, and whether you took it.

I'm asking because of the gap above. Nobody has counted this. If enough of you reply, we'll have the only picture of it that exists, and I'll publish it.

Including if nobody replies.

Selling a business? [email protected], tell me what it does and what it makes.

Further along, and want someone to find and buy one for you? That's Kautilya. Reply "Kautilya".

Want the deals themselves rather than the reasoning? That's Kautilya's India Deal Sheet, what is actually for sale in India, every week. This newsletter is how I decide. That one is what's on the table.

– Dev

P.S. - There's no loan for this. There is almost always a seller who'd rather be paid slowly than not at all.