NEW DELHI: Professional services firm EY said it will hire 2,000 employees in India in the next three years to expand its digital solution services to clients. The bulk of this hiring would be for domains like analytics, new technologies, intelligent automation, artificial intelligence, blockchain and tax technology, besides big automation projects for the government and the private sector.
“There is significant capital available for new startups and big Indian companies are investing in digital,” said Ram Sarvepalli, leader, advisory services India and partner, emerging markets centre at EY. “The government is heavily investing in digital from a citizen services perspective. Many of the traditional customer-oriented industries are trying to find models which allow access to customers to tier-two, tier-three towns from a digital perspective. There are regulatory changes like
GST coming in and e-filing and automation of central and state govt departments … all of this is triggering a massive opportunity and the need for hiring digital talent,” he said.
Analytics as a business is growing heavily for EY and the company is hiring about 600 people every six months in analytics across all businesses, Sarvepalli said. For the government business, EY has added close to 700 people in the last 18 months. “Digital governance and citizen services are themes that almost every state is focusing on. As Aadhaar 2.0 comes in, there will be big projects and opportunities for citizen services,” he added.
EY is the market leader in advisory services in India with 100-plus partners and has witnessed a steady increase in complex large-scale transformation projects. As clients across sectors embark on a 'digital first' strategy, the big four professional services firms — KPMG, PricewaterhouseCoopers and Deloitte, along with EY — are getting a fillip in consulting demand.
The hiring would be a mix of lateral and fresher talent, Sarvepalli said. Globally, EY plans to invest $1 billion in new technology solutions, client services, innovation and the EY ecosystem over the next two financial years, commencing from July 2018.
Hanne Jesca Bax, EMEIA managing partner for markets and accounts at EY, said a large part of hiring would be around intelligent automation. “Some of the other firms have chosen to set up digital as a separate business unit. We have decided not to do that which in the short term was difficult because we try to embed it in everything we already have but for the long run it makes more sense.”
EY has over 2,200 people working on digital and technology solutions across service lines in India and 25% of India's gross hires are from the Science Technology Engineering Maths (STEM) background. It has hired several new partners to expand capacity in tech consulting, digital, managed services and analytics. EY India leader Rajiv Memani has unleashed an internal initiative to inject digital technologies across the EY functions in a bid to get the firm future ready.
Some of EY’s projects include the ePragati project with the Government of Andhra Pradesh and partnering with a digital company called Pega for digital platforms for citizen services and a project with the Uttar Pradesh Police for helplines and operating processes. It has also made significant investments in building assets and tools like DigiGST for GST compliance for companies.
Source: economictimes.indiatimes.com