Indian IT firms win more clients by banking on consulting

Top Indian players plan to significantly increase consulting capabilities.

As Indian information technology (IT) services firms were trying to tide over the global uncertainties by winning quality clients and extracting more businesses from their existing accounts, consulting is set to play a major role in this effort.

Most of the Tier-I suppliers including TCS, Infosys, Wipro, Cognizant and HCL who started focusing on consulting practices at different points of their journey, have started to reap the benefits in recent times. These companies are seen aggressively increasing their consulting capabilities to become a preferred partner of their clients.

For example, Wipro started its consulting practice almost three years ago under the leadership of T K Kurien, the present CEO of its IT business. Since then, the share of consulting in their overall bouquet of offering has been steadily increasing.

The company started with a consulting-driven model of engagement with its mega and gama accounts almost 18 months ago, for better client mining. Today, the company says its average revenue from top 10 clients has gone beyond $100 million as compared to about $72 million a year ago.

“It is definitely having an impact. We pioneered this model with six of our top-20 accounts on a trial basis, and subsequently rolled out the remaining ones. Now, our consulting services is working closely with 22 of our top 60 mega and gama accounts. We plan to take it to the remaining accounts within 18 months,” said Kirk D Strawser, Managing Partner and Global Head, Wipro Consulting Services.

In the next three and a half years, Wipro plans to more than treble its number of consultants from 1,500 to about 5,000.