PwC India, US to create 40,000-strong consulting JV: India to get operating control

PwC India will enter into a joint venture with PwC US, combining the Indian firm’s consulting business with PwC US’s India-based acceleration centres (ACs) to create an entity with 40,000 employees at launch, said Sanjeev Krishan, chairperson, PwC India.

The proposed JV, subject to regulatory approvals, including that of the Competition Commission of India, will have PwC US holding a 50.1% stake and PwC India 49.9%.

The operating control, including of the US-run ACs, will rest with PwC India, Krishan said. Hence, this would be a jointly controlled entity.


The new entity will house PwC India’s consulting operations—including management and technology consulting and risk consulting—and the US firm’s acceleration centres in India.

PwC India’s audit, tax and deals businesses, as well as certain government advisory-related work, will remain outside the JV.

“This is PwC India being trusted to drive global growth,” Krishan said, pointing to India’s large and increasingly sophisticated talent pool.

The restructuring will create a separate consulting-focused entity within the broader PwC India operation.

As competition for consulting and technology consulting assignments intensifies among the Big Four, technology consultants and strategy firms, the arrangement will give PwC a larger common pool of resources for global mandates while allowing its Indian business to tap global capabilities and partners more readily.

Krishan will also be the CEO of the proposed JV.

The JV comes at a time when global professional services firms are increasingly using India as a strategic delivery and capability hub.

"The firms that win will be the ones that stop thinking about markets, capabilities, and delivery as separate pieces. That's what makes this combination so powerful," said Paul Griggs, PwC US Senior Partner and CEO. "We're bringing the full breadth of our advisory talent in India together with PwC US — one team with the relationships, expertise, and scale to deliver for our clients and the PwC network.”

The combined platform would strengthen PwC India’s ability to serve global clients, domestic companies and the rapidly expanding global capability centre (GCC) segment.

PwC India currently has a workforce of about 33,000, according to Krishan.

With the addition of the acceleration-centre workforce, the combined platform will significantly expand its scale.

He said that with this JV, the firm would aspire to grow fivefold in three years, compared with the threefold growth in five years articulated in PwC India’s Vision 2030.

The deal is expected to take PwC India from a $1.3 billion business to about $2 billion on day one, subject to regulatory approvals.

The JV is also expected to give PwC India greater access to global partners and capabilities, while enabling the firm to deploy resources more flexibly across domestic, global and GCC clients.

Especially in the fast-growing and lucrative GCC segment, the firm expects the unified consulting platform to bring Indian and global partners closer together and remove points of friction in mandates won and led by partners in the US or Europe but increasingly delivered by India-based delivery centres.

Given that more than half of the Big Four’s combined revenues in India—around Rs 50,000 crore—now come from technology and management consulting, the firms are scaling up their consulting and GCC businesses aggressively.

The JV puts PwC India at the forefront of this competition, giving it access to a significantly larger talent pool as well as global capabilities and partners.

At the same time, as India-based delivery arms of global firms rapidly expand independently of their India member firms to leverage the country’s cost advantage and deep talent pool for global clients, the PwC JV brings one such US delivery operation directly into the fold of its India consulting business, tightening the link between global mandates and their execution in India.

“This isn't about where work gets done. It's about building something clients can't get anywhere else: the best of PwC, brought together around their biggest opportunities, wherever they operate,” said Griggs.

The Big Four India delivery centres now employ more than 2,50,000 people, reflecting the country’s growing importance as a global delivery hub.

For PwC India, the deal marks a significant shift in the role it plays within the global network—from being primarily an India market operation to becoming a larger engine for global consulting growth, Krishan said.