Paritosh Devbhandari

Paritosh Devbhandari is the co-founder and CEO of Ascentra Labs, the London- and New York-based AI platform for consulting and corporate strategy professionals that he co-founded in early 2025 alongside CTO Oliver Thurston. Devbhandari spent his career at the intersection of management consulting and enterprise AI, accumulating over five years of consulting experience across private equity and corporate strategy at McKinsey & Company before moving to lead AI product sales at QuantumBlack, McKinsey's advanced analytics division. This combination of deep consulting domain knowledge and enterprise AI commercialisation experience is the direct foundation of Ascentra's product thesis: that the best AI tools for consultants will be built by people who understand the work from the inside.

Devbhandari co-founded Ascentra at the start of 2025 with a specific and deliberately narrow initial focus: automating the most repeatable and time-intensive analytical workflows in private equity due diligence — specifically the processing of raw survey data into formatted, formula-rich Excel workbooks that junior associates would otherwise construct manually. Within months of launch, Ascentra counted three of the world's top five consulting firms among its users, with over 80% of its customer base in the United States. Early adopters reported two to four times faster execution on key project workflows. In December 2025, Devbhandari led a $2 million pre-seed raise from NAP (formerly Cavalry Ventures), with angel backing from Alan Chang of Fuse Energy and Fredrik Hjelm of Voi. He subsequently relocated to New York to lead Ascentra's US market push, reflecting the company's strong early traction with American consulting and private equity firms.