Building Indian Big 4 Firms: Scaling Indian Consulting

The session opened with a direct look at why India's consulting market remains lopsided despite decades of domestic capability build-up. Ms. Sonal Mehta framed the core structural issue: public-sector RFPs routinely carry turnover thresholds, prior-government-project criteria and empanelment norms that effectively pre-qualify only a handful of global firms, leaving Indian consultancies unable to accumulate the very track record the tenders demand. Mr. Abhijeet Sinha connected this to the Ease of Doing Business agenda, arguing that procurement design — not talent or technical depth — is the binding constraint on scaling Indian firms toward the Viksit Bharat 2047 ambition articulated in the PM's Independence Day address. Mr. Kaushal Kishore and Mr. Deepak Narayanan then unpacked what "government as anchor client" would actually mean in practice. The conversation moved past slogans to specifics: rationalising turnover thresholds for defined tender categories, recognising private-sector and BFSI mandates as equivalent experience, carving out consortium-friendly lots, and building a credentialing pathway so that a mid-sized Delhi or Bangalore firm can graduate from state PSU work to central ministry mandates within a defined horizon. Mr. Kishore added the audit and assurance lens — noting that ICAI-registered firms face a parallel version of the same scale problem, and that NFRA-era credibility will hinge on Indian firms being allowed to build depth on domestic listed-company work first. Mr. Aryaman Tandon and Ms. Sarieka Bansal brought the practitioner view on JV structuring and tax-side realities. The panel was candid that most India-foreign JVs in professional services have historically ceded economic control, brand equity and client ownership to the global partner, and offered concrete guardrails — revenue-share floors, IP ownership on India-built methodologies, and governance rights on India-market decisions — that founders should insist on before signing. Ms. Bansal flagged the GST and permanent-establishment issues that quietly erode JV economics if not structured upfront. The closing discussion mapped these levers to firm-level action: which empanelments to pursue in the next 12-18 months, how to position for infrastructure, transaction and technology advisory mandates emerging from central ministries and state governments, and where MSME and industry-association advocacy can meaningfully shift procurement norms.