Asia-Pacific offers no single playbook for expansion. Its markets differ widely in their business cultures, ownership structures and pace of change. We believe building a regional platform requires local judgment, the right people and knowing where a firm’s broader experience is most relevant.
Johanna Barr, Managing Director and Co-Head of Limited Partner Services, sat down with Shweta Jalan, Managing Partner, to discuss what drew the firm to Australia and Japan, and how a network built over more than 16 years could help position Advent to participate in the region’s next phase of growth.
Global presence, one network
Advent’s presence in Asia today spans four markets: India, China, Australia, and Japan. Jalan traces that footprint back to how it was built. When Advent opened in Mumbai in 2009, most of the industry’s attention in Asia was on China. Advent went to India first, added China in 2012, and has since brought on Australia and Japan, in what Jalan calls “a slow but sure move into
Asia.” That sequencing matters because local presence can buy the firm something distance can’t: real access to deals on the ground, and teams close enough to a portfolio company to support it properly. Jalan points to Encora as an example: a deal that pulled in teams from India, Boston, New York, Palo Alto, and Latin America, working as one deal team rather than five separate offices competing for the same asset.
“What really differentiates us is the global network. We’ve seen it play out in India over more than sixteen years, and in China, where the sector teams operate seamlessly. Encora is a great case in point: the India, Boston, New York, Palo Alto, and LATAM teams all involved on one asset. We’re so sectorally aligned that the teams are genuinely integrated, and that’s how we bring the global network to bear.”
Shweta Jalan
Managing Partner, Advent
Establishing a local point of view in Australia
Once Advent began considering the next phase of its regional growth, Australia and Japan stood out. In Australia, the build-out moved quickly: hiring began in January 2024, and the team was on the ground by that September, eight months from decision to office. That timeline shows how a regional ambition acquires substance. A local team can build relationships before
opportunities become formal processes, develop a grounded view of companies and management teams, and connect the market directly to Advent’s wider sector network.
That local perspective is essential to the model. We believe global experience offers pattern recognition, but not the judgment that comes from sustained presence in a market. Advent put that foundation in place within the year in Australia. The work from there is to deepen it.
Taking a long-term view of Japan
Japan presented a different proposition: the scale of change underway within the market itself. Jalan describes it through what she calls the “transformation axis.” Public-to-private transactions, corporate carve-outs and businesses being separated from larger industrial groups reflect a broader shift in the way Japanese companies are approaching ownership and
strategic change. That is happening in a private equity market still young and underpenetrated. For Advent, this creates an opportunity to participate in transactions that would have been less common in an earlier phase of the market’s development. Jalan says Advent is already seeing the kinds of transactions it expected when Japan first emerged as a priority.
Building the team required patience. The search for the right candidate took close to twenty months. That timeline suggests that conviction in a market and readiness to enter it are not the same thing. The opportunity may be visible before the right local leadership is in place, and establishing a credible long-term presence depends on having both.
Together, Australia and Japan mark the next phase of a platform built steadily across Asia-Pacific. The route into each market has been different, shaped by the opportunity on the ground and the time required to assemble the right local team. What connects them is a common operating model, combining local access and judgment, backed by sector expertise from across the firm.
That model has grown over 16 years, beginning in India and extending through China. Encora exemplifies what can be delivered when teams across markets work as one. As Advent’s presence grows in Australia and Japan, each market adds another source of insight to the broader platform. For Jalan, that is the long game in Asia-Pacific: building local depth over time, then multiplying it through the network.
