Parthenon Group sets up Asian HQ in India

MUMBAI: After attracting the who’s who of Wall Street, India is now attracting niche players, too. The Parthenon Group, which is a strategic business advisory and principal investment firm, has set up its Asian headquarters in India. Currently, the firm has its presence in the US and Europe.

The firm is known for its strategy consulting. And McKinsey, Boston Consulting Group, Bain & Company are its major competitors. Most of them have been in India for the past several years.

Besides India, Parthenon has been looking at offices in China and Hong Kong. Parthenon Group chairman and managing partner William F Achtmeyer said, “India represents the greatest opportunity and Indian companies are at the inflexion point of growth. There were two major negatives in China. Most of the consulting is for multi-national companies to get into the country. It is also a saturated market. The Indian market is not that crowded.”

Also, unlike other existing players, Parthenon is not looking at outsourcing from India. “The job requires enormous level of capability. Our work is, most of the time, with CEOs. We have a mix of senior partners. Our partners have only 2-3 clients,” said Mr Achtmeyer.

The firm covers a range of industry verticals, including industrials, consumer, healthcare, education, business and financial services, private equity and hospitality. The firm is betting on the PE practice, general consulting (M&A) and education in India.

Some of its global clients include Ford Motors, KKR, Gates Foundation, etc. On the education front, it’s betting big on online education and also corporate training. Amos Tuck School professor of international business Vijay Govindarajan said that there are 300 universities in India against 8,000 in the US. India would need 20,000 universities for a population of its size.

However, there is a faculty shortage. Indian corporation are in the flux point where US corporations were in 1960s. Many of the managers at that time didn’t have a management degree, as the US companies started growing phenomenally.