New Delhi: The Centre has made it easier for domestic consultancy firms to bid for government contracts, giving them a level playing field under the Atmanirbhar Bharat initiative, according to two Indian officials directly involved in the process.
The department of expenditure (DoE) has relaxed key conditions including high turnover requirements, weightage assigned to experience and minimum payroll staffing for a project, the government officials said. The revised norms discourage procuring entities from setting excessively high turnover thresholds and stipulate that minimum payroll staff requirements are proportionate to the manpower actually needed for an assignment.
The department has asked all ministries to follow the revised eligibility, qualification and evaluation criteria while issuing consultancy tenders. Under the revised framework, consultants will be shortlisted based on their experience in handling general and similar assignments and their financial capability, the officials added.
The new norms could change how government consultancy contracts are awarded, with implications for domestic firms as well as global giants including the Big Four – Deloitte, PricewaterhouseCoopers, EY and KPMG.
“For years, high turnover thresholds and an excessive reliance on past credentials have kept many capable Indian consulting firms out of government projects,” Divakar Vijayasarathy, founder and CEO of DVS Advisory Group, told Mint. “A more balanced eligibility framework will create a level playing field, enable domestic firms to win larger mandates, reinvest in talent and capabilities, and build the scale needed to compete not just in India but globally.”
This comes in the backdrop of the Centre proposing in September 2025 to set up multi-disciplinary partnership firms to take on global consulting and auditing giants. The proposed multi-disciplinary partnership firms were to provide multiple services including maintenance of cost records, accounting, auditing, assurance, secretarial, legal, valuation and management services under one umbrella.
High thresholds
India's management consulting and business advisory services market is estimated to be worth about $9.36 billion in 2026, according to market research firm Mordor Intelligence. The segment is projected to grow to over $17 billion by 2031.
According to one of the officials, a study of consultancy procurement tenders floated by central government entities on the Government e-Marketplace (GeM) over the past three financial years showed that some organizations prescribed minimum annual turnover requirements of five to 10 times the estimated cost of consultancy assignments, which could restrict competition without necessarily improving the quality of services.
“Several tenders prescribed comparatively high turnover requirements, gave greater weight to a consulting firm's experience than to the qualifications and experience of proposed key personnel and stipulated minimum payroll staff strength far exceeding the manpower required to execute the project. Such practices could unnecessarily restrict competition in the procurement of consultancy services,” the official said, requesting anonymity.
The proposed changes are intended to facilitate wider participation in government consultancy contracts through GeM. Ministries, government departments and public sector units and entities use GeM to procure goods and services by inviting bids from suppliers and service providers.
Firms will now be shortlisted based on their experience and financial capability, while the qualifications and experience of proposed experts will be assessed at a later stage.
“The government has deferred consideration of the qualifications and experience of proposed key experts to the request for proposal (RfP) stage, instead of assessing these criteria at the expression of interest (EoI) stage,” the second official said, asking not to be identified.
This could give smaller and domestic consultancy firms a better chance of qualifying at the initial EoI stage. With this, the government will not use the qualifications and experience of the proposed experts to decide whether a consulting firm qualifies in the EoI stage.
‘Need of the day’
On technical evaluation, the revised framework gives less weightage to a consulting firm's experience and greater weight to its proposed methodology and work plan as well as the qualifications and experience of key personnel. The weightage is 5-10% for the firm's experience, 20-50% for methodology and work plan, and 30-60% for key personnel.
Queries emailed to the spokespersons of the ministry of finance, the GeM CEO and the expenditure secretary on Monday remained unanswered till publishing time.
“A policy for enlarging the consultancy fabric in India is the need of the day and is rightly the focus of the policy makers. It must be inclusive and participative to allow the marginalized and the budding and small consultancy entrepreneurship to grow,” said Pankaj Dikshit, executive director and chief AI and data officer at Cygnet.One, a tax technology and financial digital transformation solutions provider.
Tendering departments should word their RFP clauses to state outcomes which must avoid qualification requirements such as turnover thresholds, mandatory past projects of size or brand names that tend to exclude rather than include, he said.
“Such restrictions based on turnover, company size or past tenders do not allow smaller firms the opportunities to bring their expertise to the large board tables. There is, therefore, a very visible and longstanding case for policies and processes to be made as inclusive as possible,” Dikshit told Mint.