Zarna - AI Associates for Private Equity
Zarna turns weeks of deal work into minutes for private equity firms
Hey everyone 👋
We’re Rishabh, Hrishi, Vivan, and Rakesh.
We’re building AI associates that automate deal work for private equity firms.
(demo video)
Problem
Deal teams spend a surprisingly large amount of their time on repetitive processes:
reviewing CIMs, rebuilding models, creating tear sheets and IC decks, updating CRMs and trackers, and piecing together context fragmented across file drives.
What We Do
Zarna connects our cohort of AI associates to the firm’s history. Past deals, the CRM, shared drives, board decks, third-party databases, etc.
Once connected, they execute core work end-to-end:
- Generate tear sheets, IOI materials, and IC drafts in the firm’s format
- Convert CIM financials into diligence model structures
- Complete all data entry & enrichment into CRMs
- Sync operator notes & portfolio KPI trackers over time
- Analyze CIMs, teasers, and market reports to surface what matters
The goal is simple:
With the summaries, models, and trackers handled, investors can spend their time forming deeper views on companies and markets — building conviction faster on the right deals.
Why Zarna
Every PE firm has its own way of evaluating businesses, management, and risk.
So generic copilots fail — they don’t understand the firm’s history, style, or decision patterns.
The hard part is institutional memory and reasoning, not text generation.
We embed forward-deployed engineers with deal teams to tune how the agents:
- interpret financial signals
- format materials
- map market structures
- reflect the firm’s voice and conviction process
This turns what used to live in individuals who could walk out the door into something searchable, reusable, and cumulative across the firm.
The result is not just “faster work.”
It is firms that start each deal loaded with context instead of from zero.
Backstory
Pre-YC, we were forward-deployed engineers embedded in a $20B private equity firm, leading AI enablement initiatives & building agents automation across sourcing, diligence, and portfolio management.
The four of us are best friends who have been building together since college. We studied computer science, electrical engineering, & economics at UC Berkeley. We’ve explored many ideas over the last 3 years — this is the one where we saw the problem first-hand and couldn’t let go of it.
Who is Zarna for
We are focused on building for Private Equity, Growth Equity, Private Credit, Family Offices, & Investment Banking. Book a demo today at zarnaai.com.
Questions
Reach out to rishabh@zarnaai.com (630-631-9264), hrishi@zarnaai.com (603-233-4478), rakesh@zarnaai.com (510-458-6129), vivan@zarnaai.com (510-6849147)