Ascentium eyes India acquisitions to build Asia-focused global services platform

Mumbai: Ascentium, a Singapore-headquartered professional services firm, is looking to expand in India through acquisitions, stitching together specialist professional services firms into a larger platform as part of its ambition to build an Asia-centric global corporate services business, group CEO Lennard Yong said. Just three years old, Ascentium, backed by private equity firm Hillhouse Investment, has rapidly expanded its presence to 27 markets, with about 3,000 employees.

India, Japan, Singapore and Hong Kong are among the strategic markets central to the firm's growth, Yong told ET in an interview. "India is one of the key jurisdictions. It is virtually impossible to become the No. 1 player in APAC without a dominant presence here."

The firm aims to establish a strong presence across Asia-Pacific, Europe, Middle East and Africa, he said. Ascentium's strategy hinges on helping Asian companies expand internationally while assisting foreign companies entering India and other Asian markets. Many of Ascentium's competitors are based in the US, UK and the Netherlands and have traditionally provided services to western businesses looking to expand into Asia.


"We have set up from this side of the world, helping Indian, Singaporean, Malaysian and Hong Kong companies go international. I think it is time," Yong said.

The group's India operations, rebranded Ascentium India after the Singapore-headquartered firm acquired InCorp in 2024, have nearly 350 employees, including more than 150 chartered accountants, across 17 offices in eight cities.

"The platform has completed seven acquisitions in India since 2019 and is currently negotiating one more, with discussions underway for a couple of others," said Manish Modi, CEO of Ascentium India.

Ascentium has evaluated more than 65 acquisition opportunities globally and completed 16, Yong said. In India, Modi said he had held 250 acquisition-related conversations over the past seven years, including at InCorp, reflecting the market's fragmentation, the difficulty of reaching agreements with local firms, and the group's selective approach to consolidation.

For Yong, the opportunity lies in a structural gap in India's professional services sector, where the Big Four - PwC, Deloitte, KPMG and EY - dominate the upper end of the market, followed by firms such as BDO and Grant Thornton, leaving room for rivals with scale and global networks. A crucial differentiator, Yong said, is Ascentium's corporate structure.

Unlike global accounting networks, where member firms operate as independent partnerships with their own profit-and-loss accounts, Ascentium is a single corporation. "Manish (India CEO) and I share a single P&L. He and his leadership team are incentivised on the same P&L as I am. If I don't get paid, he doesn't get paid," Yong said.

"We are not partners; we are shareholders in a corporation. Manish and I have not received dividend distributions because we are reinvesting the cash to grow the company."

Ascentium is creating its own data lake using expertise gained from corporate services engagements and intends to deploy agentic AI in specific business operations.