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.