The Indian Accounting and Tax Consulting market space is going through a stage of rapid growth at the moment. The Indian Tax Consulting market grew at a rate of 9 percent over the last year accumulating total revenue of 42,500 Crores, According to a report published by New Research in 2018. Tax consulting has turned out to be one of the most lucrative segments of the professional consulting services industry. The segment offers a wide range of services that includes tax advisory practices, book-keeping, and host of other auditing and accounting services.
Factors that have influenced the growth of this sector are manifold that includes a growing number of workforces, and increase startup culture in India over the past decade or so. Many of the startup enterprises need accounting services such as tax preparation services. Government initiatives such as the introduction of ‘Make In India’ and ‘Digital India ‘programs are attracting a lot of foreign investments and the sector is likely to grow exponentially by the year 2024. The Government of India is expected to allow multinational companies to enter as auditors, which will further intensify the competition in this sector.
Globally, four companies are dominating the Tax and Accounting Consultancy servicing sector they are- PwC, Deloitte, EY, and KPMG. These four players are also dominating the Indian market, for instance, Deloitte has around 75 partners in the Indian tax and advisory segment. KPMG, on the other hand, operates with 250 partners in the advisory practice, which is planning to add 15-20 more partners in the coming months. The last member in the big four groups also has a relatively strong operation with 113 partners and they are too planning to expand in the future.
The largest Indian consultants in this segment are BMR Advisors, Dhruva Advisors, and Nangia & Company. According to tax experts in India, around 9 million companies have come under the jurisdiction of GST regulations. Thus, encouraging more of the tax and accounting consultants to crop up. An estimation of 1.3 million tax and accounting consultancies will be needed to meet the demands of not only Indian companies but foreign companies looking to expand its businesses in India as well.
As the world is re-aligning in accordance with the new-age economic, financial and digital forces, such developments have brought India into the spotlight as well. The past few years have witnessed significant reforms in relation to the processes of digitization in particular. It is becoming common practice for Accountants and CPA’s to outsource their accounting and bookkeeping services from India. National borders have become arbitrary in today’s world of rapid Globalization and Digitization. India has pushed up its rank in terms of ease of doing business. Hence, it is not a surprise to see Tax and Accounting firms strategically providing their services from India via outsourcing. With this growing trend of outsourcing, the question comes how much of the businesses relating to tax and accounting are going to be transferred to India in the next 10 years?
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