Can India create homegrown giants to rival the Big Four firms?
For decades, India has served as the world’s back office and knowledge hub. Can it now convert this strength into competitive prowess and challenge the Big Four's dominance in consulting and auditing?
What will it take for India to build its own marquee multi-service delivery firms in areas such as consulting, audit, advisory, compliance, and environmental, social and governance (ESG)?
That's the question the government is now exploring as it seeks to reduce reliance on foreign majors and tap into the country’s vast talent pool to create Indian champions in professional services capable of rivalling the Big Four (EY, KPMG, Deloitte and PwC).
For decades, India has served as the world’s back office and knowledge hub, but turning this comparative strength into competitive global dominance remains a formidable challenge.
Domestic dividend
Since the liberalisation reforms of the early 1990s, India’s growth story has been steered by the services sector, which has consistently contributed 50-55% of the country’s total gross value added (GVA), far outpacing agriculture and manufacturing.
A major force behind this surge has been professional, scientific and technical services. In just the past decade, the GVA in this sub-sector has nearly tripled from about ₹30,000 crore in 2013-14 to ₹84,000 crore in 2023-24. This performance is anchored in India’s distinctive advantage in human capital.
Each year, the country produces a vast pool of engineers, MBAs and chartered accountants who speak English, are technically proficient, available at affordable wages and able to work across time zones. This workforce is capable of handling a broad range of tasks, from basic analytics and compliance checks to complex consulting projects and high-level auditing assignments.
The paradox, however, is that these professionals are not powering Indian companies. Instead, their expertise is channelled by foreign multinationals, which leverage their skills at a fraction of global wage costs.
Comparative edge
India’s deep pool of skilled professionals has helped it emerge as a global hub for high-skill service exports. According to the latest data from the World Trade Organization, the country’s exports of professional and management consulting services are nearly three times the world average, surpassing several advanced economies including Singapore (1.96), the UK (1.44) and the US (1.24). In 2024, India exported $125.7 billion worth of consulting services, making up about one-third of its $374.9 billion in total services exports.
Much of this work is being delivered through the global capability centres (GCCs) of foreign multinationals. Unlike separate legal entities, GCCs function as extensions of their parent companies, focusing on technology development, data analytics, R&D, finance, HR and shared services for global clients.
With over 1,800 GCCs, India now hosts more than half of the world’s total, and this number is expected to climb to 2,400 by 2030, according to estimates by EY. Tier-II cities are increasingly joining this wave, pushing India’s domestic GCC market towards an estimated $110 billion by 2030.
Giant gap
The combined global revenue of the Big Four firms has risen from about $94 billion in 2009 to around $212 billion in 2024. With the global consulting and auditing industry valued at nearly $240 billion currently, the Big Four, therefore, account for the lion’s share of the market. Decades of global expansion, a deep base of multinational clients and a reputation for quality and scale have cemented this dominance.
Also, large talent pools, common methodologies and shared technology platforms have helped them ensure consistent service delivery worldwide. This global supremacy is mirrored in India’s consulting and auditing landscape as well. Revenues of the Indian arms are estimated to have crossed $5.4 billion in FY25, with growth outpacing the parent networks.
India’s largest listed companies rely heavily on the Big Four, along with Grant Thornton and BDO, with estimates suggesting they audit more than two-thirds of the Nifty 500 companies. Strong brand reputation and global credibility continue to draw Indian clients across sectors.
Fragmented market
In sharp contrast to the giant scale of the Big Four, Indian firms remain small and fragmented. Sample this: of the roughly 95,000 firms registered with the Institute of Chartered Accountants of India, nearly 70,000 are proprietorships or sole practitioners. Only about 400 have more than 10 partners, a fraction of the size of their global counterparts.
This lack of scale is further compounded by regulatory barriers. Current rules restrict the formation of multidisciplinary partnerships, preventing accountants, lawyers, actuaries and company secretaries from operating under a single firm structure. This limits collaboration and the ability to offer integrated, full-service solutions of the kind that international firms provide.
Strict regulations on advertising and branding further stifle growth, making it harder for domestic firms to build visibility and compete globally. Licensing adds another layer of complexity, with different regulators governing different professions and operating in silos, which further encourages fragmentation and weakens the competitive position of Indian firms.
AI apprehensions
India’s push to build its own globally competitive multi-disciplinary partnership firms comes at a time when the future of traditional high-skill services such as consulting is being reshaped by artificial intelligence (AI) and questions are being raised about the need for human consultants.
A recent experiment by Harvard Business School and Boston Consulting Group found that the AI tool GPT-4 can perform routine consulting tasks such as idea generation, market segmentation and report drafting with greater speed and accuracy than human consultants.
Further, AI can act as a powerful leveller by raising the baseline of consulting performance while also enabling higher performers to further enhance their efficiency. However, when it comes to advanced functions such as strategic recommendations, integrated judgment and solving complex business problems, human expertise remains essential.
As a result, consulting firms are shifting away from low-end, repetitive tasks and have begun looking for individuals who can take on higher-value, strategic work.
For India, building globally competitive firms will therefore require more than scale. It will demand investment in developing professionals who excel in advanced problem-solving and critical thinking, areas where human judgement will continue to remain critical.
Puneet Kumar Arora is an assistant professor of economics at Delhi Technological University. Jaydeep Mukherjee is a professor of economics at Shiv Nadar University, Chennai.
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