Big Four alumni build boutique consulting rivals, targeting startups, PE and VC firms

Summary

A new wave of mid-tier consulting firms, founded by former Big Four partners, is targeting startups, private equity and venture capital clients with specialized services. They offer equity, independence and flat structures to lure senior talent.

A fresh crop of advisory firms has sprung up in India amid intensifying competition in the sector and the changing nature of work in consultancy services.

Squeezed between the established Big Four and management strategy consulting companies, these mid-tier consulting companies have chalked out a different strategy -- offering specialized services to startups and private equity and venture capital firms that are more likely to tap the new cohort.

The founders of this new set of consulting companies cut their teeth in the established audit and advisory firms, but unlike their larger competitors, they are focussed on offering a select bouquet of services such as managing family offices, risk advisory, and planning initial public offerings (IPOs) instead of providing the gamut of services from IT to audits and consulting.

"The consulting sector grows at almost twice the rate at which the GDP of a country does and therefore there is a lot of work coming in for the newer players as well," said Jamil Khatri, co-founder and chief of Uniqus Consultech.

Khatri led the assurance practice of KPMG and quit to start Uniqus in 2022. He said Uniqus differentiates itself by specializing in IPO-readiness, finance transformation, artificial intelligence and risk.

"While legacy companies may have some bias for larger brands, startups, PE and VC firms are keen to work with newer consulting companies like us. We are 800 employees with 80 partners, many of whom are from the Big Four," Khatri said.

In audit and advisory parlance, the Big Four are EY, KPMG, Deloitte and PwC, firms that were predominantly audit companies but expanded over the years into advisory services. Armed with thousands of partners, these giants together employ around 200,000 people.

They often move into the lanes of management consulting companies such as Kearney, Bain & Co, McKinsey & Co., and Boston Consulting Group, which do not work on audits and focus on strategic consulting. This cohort runs smaller teams of a few hundred only.

Calling card

According to executives, the newer crop of consulting companies picks up partners from larger firms, luring them with prospects of building their own portfolios, the opportunity of acquiring equity in the new company and more independence. The calling card of the new ventures includes a more agile workplace where there is little hierarchy and decision-making lies largely in the hands of the partners.

"Many of the Big Four senior partners we hire are from the audit teams who want to work in the consulting sector and do not want any conflict of interest, which is common if you are in the audit team of a firm," said Khatri. "We manage to hire without a significant raise but what we offer additionally is equity, which can remain invested in the company even when the partner leaves."

A senior headhunter at one of India's top three search firms said the demand for consultants is on the rise as clients want specialized services which some of the advisory firms offer.

"When a senior partner leaves, he/she takes along the team and although there is a no-poach clause in their contracts of around six months, they join a smaller firm after the cooling-off period is over," said the headhunter who works with some of the Big Four firms and did not want to be identified.

For the newer lot, the role of consultants has changed in many ways since the pandemic. Global wars, businesses going digital, a hazy vision of business cycles given the tariff wars and geopolitical strains along with the impact of artificial intelligence have led advisory firms to rejig their offerings to clients.

Complex decisions

"Clients want clear, focused advice -- with their needs at the centre. At Transaction Square, we partner with them to execute complex decisions across restructuring, family offices and M&A," said Girish Vanvari, founder of Transaction Square.

Vanvari was national leader for tax at KPMG before he started his company in 2018. Of the other founders, Amol Khanna and Chirag Shah came from KPMG while Saloni Khandelwal was from PwC.

"We are four co-founders, 30 partners and a team of 350 professionals. Our first 12-13 partners came from the Big Four. Since then, we have built our team by bringing in talent from across industries," Vanvari told Mint.

Some clients may need specialists instead of a large brand that bills higher and this is where boutique consulting firms come into play.

"Our SAP practice has nearly doubled in recent years, making it a key growth area for us, alongside technology transformation, cyber security and privacy," said Sachin Tayal, managing director, Protiviti Member Firm for India, referring to support services for the enterprise software. "We are also making significant investments in data and AI, expanding into newer offerings and capabilities to address the rapidly evolving needs of clients."

The 12-year-old consulting firm in India had about 30 managing directors and senior directors in 2020 and the number now is 110. Tayal worked with EY for more than a decade before joining Protiviti.

Making adjustments

While boutique consulting firms are getting aggressive, the established ones are going through their own adjustments. PwC India struck a joint venture with PwC US Advisory, prompting rivals to reassess ties with their own offshore units.

Driven by AI's disruption of traditional consulting and fiercer competition for US-based global capability centre clients, the move signals a broader shift toward merging onshore-offshore advisory operations.

Competition in the consulting sector is getting stiffer as more entities start testing the waters. Mint reported in September that Temasek-backed upGrad is entering B2B advisory services as it broadens its portfolio ahead of a planned 2027 listing.