Cortara Information

Cortara is a next-generation strategy and commercial due diligence consultancy for lower mid-market consumer businesses. We help founders build the commercial case for a sale, and we help investors and their advisors understand what they are buying. Most advisory models were built for deal sizes above £100m, where fees support large teams and the work often sits with junior staff. Below that threshold the economics rarely translate. We use AI to compress the research and analysis, which buys back time for the senior engagement most firms reserve for the pitch and delivery. Underpinning each engagement is our own proprietary market intelligence platform: a source-verified dataset covering every brand, retailer and SKU in our target consumer sectors — pricing, ratings, financials, growth signals — which lets us corroborate or challenge any claim a business makes about its market. Our work spans sell-side and buy-side commercial due diligence, growth strategy, and pre-exit preparation for founders twelve to thirty-six months from a sale. We work across the consumer sector, on both sides of the transaction. Cortara was founded in 2026 by Tom Holt and Jacob Gascoine-Becker, with around forty years between us across consumer strategy, due diligence, digital and retail.