Metamorph's Manish Raniga spent a decade turning around distressed airlines — now he's rolling up the Gulf's wellness industry

Manish Raniga (LinkedIn) has spent his career inside the room where deals are made — first at PwC, then at Etihad Airways during the decade it used M&A to put Abu Dhabi on the aviation map, then as a C-suite operator turning around other major airlines. In 2024, he and his former boss-turned-business-partner Prasad Hedge decided to build something that combined dealmaking and operating capability under one roof.

That became Metamorph, a private equity firm that just closed its first Gulf platform: a USD 200 mn wellness and longevity JV backed by Abu Dhabi's Al Nasser Holdings’ Nova Capital. The firm’s board includes heavyweights like former Bridgewater Associates CEO Eileen Murray, ex-Executive Vice President of Blackstone Brad Hogas, and Dr. Christopher Jensen, a longevity physician who advises Six Senses, Aman Hotels & Resorts, and Four Seasons.

Each week, My Morning Routine looks at how a member of the community starts their day — and throws in a couple of questions just for fun. This week, we sat down with Raniga, Metamorph's co-founder and managing partner, to talk about his path from Sydney to Abu Dhabi, how Metamorph is structuring the Gulf's next wave of roll-ups, and what his mornings look like. Edited excerpts from our conversation:

EnterpriseAM: You started in M&A, went on to work more on the operational side of things, and now you’re back on the dealmaking side of the table. Why did you decide to get back into investment, and why start Metamorph?

Manish Raniga (MR): I joined PwC as a graduate and was there for 10 years, leading the M&A and transaction services practice out of Sydney on headline agreements like the BHP Billiton merger and the privatization of Sydney Airport, before transitioning into more of a strategy role at Macquarie Bank as a program director restructuring the bank and building a back office in India that became its global nervous center.

I then got a tap on my shoulder to join Etihad Airways in 2011 — first as finance director of the commercial division, then as head of corporate strategy and strategic projects, including orchestrating M&A transactions across Jet Airways, Air Berlin, Air Seychelles, and Alitalia. A lot of these were distressed airlines, and the question was how to turn them around and integrate them into Etihad’s mandate as the growth engine of Abu Dhabi. From there, I moved into C-suite roles at Jet Airways and GoAir, then South African Airways, where as, CCO, I took it through a bankruptcy process, a recapitalization, and a relaunch during the pandemic. Later, I joined a large family private office, a mid-tier private equity firm in Miami, where assets under management grew from USD 4 bn to just under USD 20 bn in funds under management, running a roughly USD 5 bn portfolio myself across diversified assets like football teams, fintech, aviation, and consumer finance.

My business partner Prasad Hedge was my line manager there, and in 2024, we decided to create something different. We wanted to create a firm with the DNA of a private equity firm and an operator, with digital at its core. We aim to support the entrepreneur and provide them with the operating capability to scale. We incorporated the business in Delaware, and then set up a legal entity in ADGM.

E: How central is the Gulf to Metamorph's strategy versus other markets you look at?

MR: I see the Gulf as a growth engine, not just for our firm but for the global economy. We see the UAE as our number one priority, followed by the GCC as our core geographical pillar — with my business partner in the US giving us the North American market too. Outside of that core, we only look at [windows] on a tactical basis, where there's a potential synergy back to the UAE or the GCC. For example, there's a synergy between our healthcare business in the US and what we're doing in wellness and longevity — traditional primary healthcare and the healthcare of the future, which is regenerative medicine.

E: Beyond wellness, what other sectors is Metamorph eyeing investments in? What’s the investment strategy?

MR: Right now we're working on five platforms: wellness and longevity, a healthcare platform based in the US, AI infrastructure, real estate and hospitality, and aviation. We're also about to launch an industrial platform focused on logistics and warehousing.

In wellness and longevity, as part of our first wave, we'll be acquiring five businesses, and we'll be making an announcement in the coming weeks on who those are. We're integrating these businesses into a single operating model under a single operating framework — it's going to be a hero brand, taking the best of talent and capability across each business up to the platform level. Our ambition is to take these UAE-born businesses to a global stage.

E: Running a business like this comes with famously long hours. What does your routine actually look like?

MR: First and foremost, before being a private equity professional, I'm a husband and a father — I've got a son and a daughter, and my wife and kids are based in Australia. I spend approximately four to five weeks at a time in Dubai, then go back to Australia for a couple of weeks. While I'm in Australia, I'm also the national vice chair of the Australia India Business Council — a volunteer role working with the Australian government on the Australia-India corridor, which is Australia's number one trading partner right now.

I spend early mornings with my family in Australia on Zoom. My business partner is in Miami, so we usually hop on four to five hours of back-to-back calls once he comes online around 3 or 4pm Dubai time. Somewhere in between all of that, I need to eat and go to the gym. I do personal training three times a week and I'm very focused on my fitness. I try to get at least six hours of sleep a night; that's the minimum for me to function and perform.

Other than that, I'm kind of like Mrs. Doubtfire, running between meetings in DIFC with different capital partners. Abu Dhabi is extremely important for us, particularly with the Al Nasser relationship, so I spend a fair amount of time there too, making sure I'm physically present with our capital partners.

Every day, my business partner and I spend a good hour to an hour and a half on ideation — we'll pick one of our platforms, say AI infrastructure, and ask what's broken about it, how we create the alpha, and what the gaps in the market are. We do deep research, we use a lot of AI to accelerate our thinking, and we challenge each other on why a particular industry should be transformed. That ideation then becomes a strategy we present to investors. We prefer to work on fewer, higher-quality agreements rather than being transactional — if we're doing five transactions, we want five out of five to succeed.

Raniga's favorites

His favorite coffee spot: I live in Downtown, so I typically walk to Dubai Mall for my coffee. Arabica is one of my favorite spots. If I can't get that far because I'm running late, I'll go down the road to Black Sheep. A cortado is my coffee of choice.

What he's listening to: I'm really into biohacking at the moment, so I’m following Bryan Johnson and others — I try to study the science behind it.

Favorite piece of advice: My father, who was also a chartered accountant before becoming an entrepreneur, told me: Work with people or hire people who have the right attitude and not the right aptitude. The people who have the right aptitude may not have the right attitude — they may not have shared values or think the way that you do. And if you don't have aligned values and vision, it doesn't matter how smart or successful that person is, because that in itself is a broken relationship. I can teach people skills, and they can acquire knowledge, but one thing you can't change is one's attitude and value set.