ervi es e tor 10.5
consultAncy services The key areas with enormous potential for
Indian consultancy firms are: building of urban
Consultancy services are emerging as one of
and transport infrastructure, power generation,
the fastest growing service segments in India,
renewable energy, electricity transmission and
overlapping. A large number of consultancy firms
distribution, roads and bridges, water supply
and individual consultants are operating in India
and sewerage, IT and telecom, health care and
at various levels across the sectors. manufacturing. Emerging sectors such as bio-
Technical consulting constitutes about technology, nano-technology and other advanced
two-thirds of the total consulting market, while disciplines also offer tremendous opportunities to
management consulting constitutes about one- consultants. Consultancy services can also look
third. Technical consulting in India, which forward to deriving revenues from newer services
mainly consists of engineering consulting, is and newer geographies with Big Data, cloud,
much stronger than management consulting M2M and Internet of Things becoming a reality.
in terms of the number of players, consulting
capabilities and size of consulting firms. The reSearch and development (r&d)
Indian management consulting market, on the ServIceS
other hand, is mainly captured by large size foreign
multinational consulting firms. Though there are At present, there is no separate head6 for Research
huge opportunities for the growth of the Indian and Development (R&D) and it is now a part of
consulting industry, there are some key inhibitors the professional scientific and technical activities.
like low brand equity, inadequate international The major features of India’s R&D services are as
experience of Indian consultants working abroad, given below:
lack of local presence, lack of strategic tie-ups, low The sector grew by 17.5 per cent and
competency image, lack of market intelligence 41.1 per cent in 2014-15 and 2015-16
on consulting opportunities abroad and lack of respectively. India- based R&D services
a strong competency framework of consultants companies, which account for almost
that improves quality in delivery of consulting 22 per cent of the global market, grew at
assignments. The GoI has taken many initiatives 12.7 per cent.
to help the industry – India’s gross expenditure on R&D has
(i) Marketing Development Assistance and been low at around 1 per cent of GDP.
Market Access Initiative schemes; India currently ranks 60th out of 127 on
the Global Innovation Index (GII) 2017,
(ii) Guidelines on broad policies and
though this ranking has improved from
procedures for selection, contracting and
66th rank in 2016. Among the BRICS
monitoring of consultants; and countries only South Africa is behind
(iii) Initiatives aimed towards capacity India in R&D expenditure ranking.
development of domestic consultants and As per the global rankings of service
sensitisation of client organisations. providers in the Engineering R&D
Recent initiatives taken by the GoI such as Make segment for 2016, the R&D spend by
in India, development of smart cities, skill global top 500 R&D spenders is growing
development, along with the focus on improving
6. This has been done in 2017-18 by the CSO under its
industrial policies and procedures, have opened new method, as per the Economic Survey 2017-18,
up a plethora of opportunities for consultants. Vol. 2, Ministry of Finance, GoI, N. Delhi, pp. 163-165.