The Ever-Growing Consulting Industry in India

Organizations often find themselves stuck with operational, functional or technical challenges. Consulting is the business of providing specialized solutions to solve such problems. The pillars of the consulting industry are problem-solving and decision-making, coupled with communication, negotiation, and analytical skills. The demand for specialized consulting services has never been higher – in India and globally – than now. 

There are three types of consulting firms that offer services to a variety of customers:

Consultancy firms offer solutions and services to a broad spectrum of sectors such as aerospace, banking & financial services, IT, agriculture, petrochemical, healthcare, education, etc. They help organizations in the following ways:

1. Help them scope out new opportunities to grow. 
2. Help them diagnose the issues and challenges faced by them.
3. Help them improve their performance.
4. Help provide innovative products and services.

According to a recent report by The Associated Chambers of Commerce and Industry of India (ASSOCHAM), the consulting industry in India:

• Has 6000 consultancy firms in metropolitan cities
• Has 2000 R&D institutions and laboratories supporting these firms
• Is expected to grow at a compounded annual growth rate of 30 percent. 
• Will be a 27 billion industry by 2020

The demand for Indian consultancy firms such as TCS, Infosys, and Wipro in countries like the US, EU, UK, China, Japan, and the Gulf has been growing. Ten strengths that set the Indian consultancy firms apart from the others are:

1. Low-cost structure
2. Professional competence
3. Focused approach
4. Expertise in diverse areas and usage of knowledge management tool
5. Following data warehousing best practices 
6. Strong interpersonal skills
7. High acceptability to customer demands and expectations 
8. High learning agility
9. Flexible thinking
10. Overall business understanding

Some of the significant challenges faced by the consulting industry in India are:

1. Competition with global consultancy firms in the market. 
2. Lack of clear demarcation of unique identity that differentiates them from other global players.
3. Keeping up with the changing pattern of demand of the clients. 
4. Constant need to re-structure and re-organize with the increasing globalization of consulting firms.
5. Leverage organizational knowledge effectively and efficiently. 

The three trends that will redesign the consulting industry in India are:

1. With the advent of digital transformation and other new automated technologies like AI, robotics, etc. the consultancy firms in India have a tremendous scope of growth.
2. There is a high emergence of short-term employees and contractors who are available at a cheaper rate. Consultancy firms have started preferring gig workers as cost-effective options, although grooming the flexible workforce can be slightly challenging.
3. To justify ‘value for money,’ consultancy firms are gradually expected to work on performance-based payments.

Consulting is a popular field that many management students wish to enter. It has tremendous scope and growth potential. Consulting is a career accelerator that comes with lucrative pay-packages and many perks, responsibilities and challenges.