Danish cofounded CIEL in 2022 to provide strategic capital markets and M&A advisory to middle-market real estate companies and investors. Since inception, CIEL has advised on over $1B in M&A and $150M in capital markets transactions. During his career, Danish has advised on over $6B in transactions across project finance, portfolio acquisitions, public market exits, and cross-border transactions. His experience spans private and public markets, including REITs, REOCs, BDCs, opportunity funds, and institutional platforms.
Danish is the Founding Partner of CIEL. He comes with extensive experience in real estate M&A and capital markets, with expertise ranging from project finance to portfolio-level transactions and public market exits. His responsibilities at CIEL include creating a global footprint of solutions for real estate companies that are looking to access the global capital markets, grow through M&A, or expand into new markets and geographies.
Prior to CIEL, Danish served as Chief of Staff at a U.S. real estate and energy family office, where he monitored and reported performance and implemented turnaround and value-creation strategies across portfolio companies spanning operations, finance, compliance, internal audits, reporting, investor relations, and stakeholder management.
He enabled full-cycle M&A and capital markets execution across underwriting, financial structuring, capital markets readiness, and stakeholder management, including legal, tax, and investors, for transactions such as a $1.4B mixed-use portfolio, a $300M development pipeline, and a $175M SFR portfolio spanning 3,000 homes. Danish also served as a liaison to the management teams of portfolio companies including REITs, business development companies, opportunity funds, and equity funds.
Earlier in his career, Danish was an investment banker at Sutter Securities and Securities Research Associates, focused on the TMT, real estate, and healthcare verticals across the public and private markets. He started his career as an investment banking analyst at Securities Research Associates and Sutter Securities, concentrating on companies in the TMT, healthcare, real estate, AI, and ML sectors. Danish has underwritten $6B+ in transactions, helped companies secure $300M+, and achieve $1.5B+ in M&A goals.
Danish earned his Bachelor of Arts degree in Statistics and Economics from the University of California, Berkeley.
Outside of work, Danish is an avid squash player, passionate about education and housing-driven community redevelopment across South Asia and Central America, and a culinary expert in South Asian cuisines.