Accenture wants to learn Indian growth trick

Mumbai: Nandan Sengupta, a bubbly 20-something software developer in his second year at Accenture India, can't hide his exuberance that he may get a chance to meet the company's chairman and chief executive officer Bill Green.

"We have been asked by our human resource department to send innovative ideas on how Accenture can accelerate its business in India. If my idea is selected then I would be sent to Delhi to discuss it with our chairman Bill Green who will be in India on the 13th of this month," Sengupta said.

Accenture is hosting its flagship annual event called Global Convergence Forum (GCF) involving clients, stakeholders and others for the first time in 20 years outside the US in Delhi this month, indicating the importance of India for the global consultancy firm.

"With Accenture's recognition of India as a strategic growth market, comes a big 'ask': how will we stretch ourselves to grow our India business, strengthen relationships with key government and industry stakeholders, and improve our delivery for international clients," read a mail sent to Accenture employees in India.

Meanwhile, in India to participate in the GCF, Accenture chairman Bill Green said the company will continue to focus on India, especially in the area of analytics. Green said that in the next two months the firm will hire another 8,000 in India taking the workforce strength in the country to 50,000 and globally to over 180,000.

"In India, besides many big firms, we have consulted firms which were yet to earn any revenue. We handhold them from their business conceptualisation stage to go-to-market," said an Accenture executive at the sidelines of a conference in Mumbai.

Accenture aims to bag IT and consulting projects from the current high-growth sectors in India such as utilities and pharmaceuticals. Top local IT firms and Accenture rivals such as Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), Infosys Technologies, HCL Technologies and Wipro Technologies, too, have started focusing on the domestic demand for IT.

TCS and Wipro already earn over $1 billion from their respective India businesses.
Accenture earned annual revenue of $21.58 billion for fiscal 2009 that ended August 31, 2009.