Professional services companies add record partners as business booms
professional services firms in India combined now have over 3,300 partners — equity plus non equity — with EY being the first firm to exceed 1,000 partner benchmark driven by continued strong growth in advisory businesses after the Covid-19 disruption.
In the last three years, the advisory businesses — consulting, deals and risk — have grown much faster — 25% plus-than the traditional areas like audit and tax, which have grown between 15% and 22% for most firms, as the firms continue to pivot towards high-growth advisory services, including tech consulting and implementation.
With EY being the last Big Four firm to close its financial year on June 30, the combined revenue of the Big Four firms — affiliates included — in the last financial year has crossed ₹39,000 crore, according to multiple senior partners ET spoke to across firms.
With growing demand for services due to increased economic activity, growing regulatory complexity, rapid tech-led disruption and increasing digitisation, the firms have been forced to expand their middle and top level leaderships, hence the record partner additions, particularly in consulting and tech consulting.
In FY 23-24, Deloitte promoted and laterally hired around 150 partners. Just to put things in perspective, in 2014, the firm had 173 partners in all. Rival firm PWC internally promoted or laterally hired more than 100 partners, while KPMG added 29 partners in FY24.
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