India Must Gain Global Client Leadership

On 13 September, PwC announced a proposed joint venture combining PwC India Consulting with PwC US Advisory’s India-based capabilities into a roughly 40,000-person platform for global clients. PwC US would hold 50.1 per cent and PwC India 49.9 per cent; PwC India chairperson Sanjeev Krishan would lead the venture. PwC says the platform would combine market relationships, industry expertise and delivery. Indian professionals are already taking leadership roles inside global platforms. The higher-value position is to win international mandates and retain the client relationship across markets.

India exported $124.2bn of business services in FY26, 29.5 per cent of total services exports. Aggregate export data cannot show which firm originated an engagement, held the client relationship or won the repeat assignment. Professional reputation and recurring business accumulate around that relationship.

On 5 September, the Prime Minister asked why India could not produce global consulting, accounting, legal and financial firms. Accounting makes the structural gap visible. Institute of Chartered Accountants of India data reported in October 2025 counted roughly 100,000 registered CA firms; around 72 per cent were sole proprietorships and barely 2 per cent had six or more partners. The fragmentation explains the renewed push for aggregation.

India has pursued multidisciplinary practice for two decades. The 2006 Chartered Accountants amendment sought to enable multidisciplinary firms and widen multi-professional services. ICAI’s current Aggregation of LLPs framework again seeks operational efficacy and global competitiveness. Larger partnerships can add breadth and capacity. They still need to win complex mandates, build a reputation recognised across markets and retain clients across jurisdictions.

The governing rules remain split. A July Department of Expenditure advisory found that high turnover thresholds, excessive weighting of firm experience and inflated payroll requirements could unduly restrict competition in consultancy procurement. Further implementation of ICAI’s Global Networking Guidelines has remained in abeyance since July. Firm structure, access to major mandates, international networking and professional safeguards sit in different rulebooks. India’s global-firm ambition depends on those rulebooks working together.

There is no single corporate form for global scale. Deloitte operates through legally separate member firms connected by a common brand, methodologies and client-service standards. Forvis Mazars combines a US member firm with an internationally integrated partnership operating across more than 100 countries and territories. Both structures allow clients to be served across borders under consistent professional standards.

India can build its own architecture. Rules should allow firms to assemble specialist capability, compete for complex work and remain with clients across markets while preserving audit independence and open competition. Protecting larger domestic firms behind restrictive qualification barriers would simply create a new concentration problem.

Merger counts, headcount and domestic turnover show whether firms are getting bigger. They do not show whether firms are becoming global. Policy should track international mandates originated by Indian firms, recurring foreign-client revenue, repeat multi-country work and the share of cross-border business led from India.

By 2047, India’s services strength should include firms that retain global customers, repeat mandates and revenue across markets alongside the professional work already delivered from India.