Built by operators. Designed to compound value.
North Axiom brings investment judgement, executive operating experience and applied technology into one platform.
Why North Axiom exists
Capital, operations and technology can no longer be managed separately. Returns must be earned, technology must pay back, and change must be sustained. North Axiom was built to address all three together.
Annual EBITDA growth a typical deal now needs to deliver historic returns.
Bain and Company, Global Private Equity Report 2024Of organisations use AI, yet only around 6% attribute more than 5% of EBIT to it.
McKinsey, The State of AI in 2025Of organisational transformations succeed in improving performance and sustaining the gains.
McKinsey, The science behind successful organisational transformationsOne platform. Three engines.
Deep technical expertise to integrate complex systems, built and tested in real operating environments.
ViewHow the platform fits together
Investments, Advisory, and Technology and IP, all feeding one body of evidence.
The founders
Two operators, from regulated global enterprise and from owner-operated retail and hospitality.
Avtar Sehmbi
Global COO and CTO
Avtar is a Chief Operating Officer and Chief Technology Officer with over 25 years of experience across investment banking and insurance. He builds businesses, fixes them under scrutiny, and takes them through acquisition and separation when required.
He has led global technology and operations mandates in some of the world’s most regulated markets, covering operating model design, cost management, capability centres, enterprise risk and responsible AI. He has chaired an Ethical AI and Cloud Centre of Excellence and carried statutory board responsibilities. His career spans HSBC, Cigna, Deloitte, Verizon and Centrica.
He has also owned and run businesses of his own, most recently acquiring and transforming a company across automation, finance, data, digital growth and AI governance. That experience sits behind the operating and technology side of the North Axiom model, from Day One plans through digitisation and AI to integration and separation in M&A.
He sits on the Forbes Technology Council and the Fast Company Executive Board, serves as a Non-Executive Director at the Cigna CHSI Innovation Hub, and is a graduate of executive programmes at Yale and the University of Cambridge.
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Balvinder Singh Bhandal
Multi-site retail and hospitality operator
Balvinder, known as Bobby, is an owner-operator with more than 25 years of experience acquiring, converting and running businesses across UK convenience retail and hospitality.
His approach is acquisition-led and hands-on. He identifies underperforming sites, repositions them into stronger formats and holds them for the long term. His first acquisition and conversion set the pattern for his career: repositioned into a new format, operated for 14 years and realised through a successful sale.
He has since operated a multi-store portfolio under the UK’s leading symbol-group brands, including Budgens, One Stop, Booker, Simply Fresh and Costcutter, with long-standing commercial relationships across the country’s largest food, retail and wholesale suppliers.
In hospitality, he founded and has run The Podge & Tin for 14 years, a full-service restaurant business built from the ground up, giving him direct command of fresh supply chains, kitchen operations and service standards.
At North Axiom, he brings owner-operator discipline to every investment: format change, supplier relationships and execution on the ground.
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Founder timeline
A visual timeline of career milestones, shown once verified.
- Fill in: Career milestonesRoles, companies and dates from your CV
- Fill in: PhotographsExecutive and operational portraits
Eight steps from capital to enterprise value
The stages are a value-creation system, not a rigid sequence. A business can enter at any point, and M&A can occur before, during or after the others. Value has to be built inside the business, step by step, from the first investment to the final realisation.
Invest
Capital backed by an operating and technology plan
- Acquisitions and buyouts
- Growth and minority capital
- Founder succession
- Corporate carve-outs
Operate
Senior operators leading execution from Day One
- Day One and 100-day plans
- Interim CEO, COO and CTO
- Transformation office
- Operating model redesign
Digitise
Integrating systems and data into one enterprise platform
- Process and data foundation
- Data platform and architecture
- Systems replacement
- Technology cost and resilience
Automate
Engineering automation into processes, production lines and systems
- Automation opportunity assessment
- Robotic cell and line automation
- Machine vision quality
- Intralogistics
Predict
Connected data and AI that identify change earlier
- Demand and supply forecasting
- Predictive maintenance
- MARCO decision intelligence
- Scenario planning
Optimise
Continuous improvement in price, cost, cash and flow
- Pricing and commercial excellence
- Procurement
- Working capital and cash
- Flow, OEE and throughput
Scale
Standard platforms that replicate performance across the portfolio
- Replication playbooks
- Shared portfolio platforms
- North Axiom operating system
- Capability building
M&A
Integrating, separating and ring-fencing technology through every deal
- Technology due diligence
- Day One readiness
- Merger integration
- Standalone build
Operating principles
Seven rules that govern how we work.
- Evidence before adjectives
- Economics before technology
- Operators own outcomes
- Automate the right work
- Build controls into the system
- Measure what changed
- Turn learning into reusable IP
Governance
How we manage the responsibilities that come with advising, investing and building.
Responsible AI
Governance, human decision rights, model evaluation, privacy, security, explainability where needed and continuous monitoring.
Conflicts and independence
Because North Axiom may advise, invest and develop technology at the same time, engagement structures, information barriers, conflicts and commercial interests are identified and managed. Fill in: confirm the conflicts policy that sits behind this statement
Information on this website is provided for general information only and does not constitute investment, legal, tax or accounting advice.
Experience and outcomes achieved in prior executive roles are attributed to those roles and should not be interpreted as results achieved by North Axiom Capital unless expressly stated.