BackAccenture to hire 1,500 in India to deliver globalized consulting
Accenture to hire 1,500 in India to deliver globalized consulting
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New Delhi: Accenture, the New-York listed consulting and tech services company, will recruit 1,500 management consultants in India by August 2008, to provide services to both global as well as domestic clients, as part of its larger global expansion strategy.
The company, which already has about 500 management consultants spread over offices in Mumbai and New Delhi, is keen to leverage India’s vast tech and management workforce to better serve its clients globally.
“With globalization, there is a significant acceleration in the volume of businesses, and we want to leverage India’s intellect and brain power to help Indian companies to go overseas, help multinationals come to India and assist the fast-growing domestic market here," said Mark Foster, Accenture’s group chief executive for management consulting and integrated markets.
Accenture on 19 March announced plans to double the number of its management consultants worldwide from the current 13,000 in three years. To start off, by August 2008, it aims to hire 4,000 employees in the US, the UK, Germany and Bric—short for Brazil, Russia, India and China—countries.
“The Bric economies are a huge opportunity for us because of two reasons—market access and talent supply, and the management consulting market is maturing here," said Foster. Expanding business in low-cost countries—particularly India and China, where top global corporations are increasingly outsourcing tech and back-office support work to—is on Foster’s agenda.
Of the 500 consultants in India at present, just 150 service global clients while the majority caters to the domestic market. “This transformational initiative will change that ratio so that of the 1,500 new recruits in India, a majority will consult (for) global clients," said Harsha Manglik, chairman and managing director of Accenture’s India operations.
Accenture is recruiting graduates from top business schools, chartered accountants and doctorate holders from multiple locations in India, Manglik added. The company employs 27,000—mostly tech and call-centre workers—in India at 10 delivery centres located across Mumbai, Delhi, Hyderabad, Chennai, Pune and Bangalore.
S. Sabyasachi, senior director at offshore consulting firm neoIT,said that most of the clients of consultants such as Accenture have operations outside the US as well.
“When you are consulting (for) clients having operations across the globe, you need local teams to support these projects," he said.
Another reason for establishing an offshore consulting division in a location like India could be a lucrative domestic tech services market, valued at $15.9 billion (nearly Rs70,000 crore) by trade body National Association of Software and Service Companies or Nasscom. Bharti Airtel, India’s biggest mobile phone services firm, has a $1 billion outsourced services deal with IBM. “We have already seen huge outsourcing deals such as Bharti-IBM, and there is an opportunity for more deals with large Indian corporates," Sabyasachi said.
In May 2004, Accenture announced a 10-year-long tech outsourcing deal with Dabur India to manage the New Delhi company’s software applications and consult with it on a business consulting assignment.
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