Deloitte is India’s second-largest professional services firm behind EY but is growing faster and could overtake the market leader, which it trails by ₹1,400-1,600 crore on a like-for-like basis, in 12-15 months if its strategic bets play out as planned, industry watchers said.
The firm is generating approximately $1.7 billion in annual revenue for the year ending in May, equivalent to about ₹14,500 crore at an exchange rate of ₹85 to the dollar, and is growing at an annual rate of around 21%.
When Shetty took over about three years ago, Deloitte India ranked 14th within the global Deloitte network. Today, it is the sixth-largest member firm worldwide. In consulting, it is ranked third globally, behind only the US and UK.
Also read | Deloitte India could lead professional services space soon: Romal Shetty
Technology consulting has emerged as the engine of Deloitte’s transformation, contributing about ₹9,300 crore, or nearly two-thirds of the firm’s revenue. That was a ₹250-crore business nine years ago, when Shetty took charge of the consulting practice. The market-leading business in India’s professional services sector is still expanding at a rate of 28-29% annually.
Responding to suggestions that Deloitte has been winning technology mandates through aggressive pricing, Shetty said the consulting business is highly profitable and fully self-sustaining, generating enough capital to support partner economics while funding substantial reinvestment in future capabilities.For Deloitte, other service lines are scaling rapidly too. The firm has doubled its tax practice in the past three years while building what Shetty describes as one of India’s strongest M&A tax teams. Corporate finance revenues have more than tripled, albeit from a smaller base, as Deloitte expanded its offerings to include strategy, transaction advisory, value creation and post-merger integration. “We are no longer just helping clients close deals; we are helping them identify opportunities and create value long after the transaction is complete,” Shetty said.
At the heart of this larger ambition is Project Bharat, Deloitte’s three-pronged plan to unlock markets that large professional services firms have traditionally overlooked because they were difficult to serve profitably at scale. The goals are: helping 100 to 150 founder-led companies in smaller cities grow into billion-dollar businesses and eventually into $3-4 billion enterprises; reaching at least one million MSMEs through its E-Vardhan digital platform; and backing startups in emerging towns with advisory support in M&A, succession planning, governance and IPO preparation, and, in selected cases, even investments.
These initiatives form the foundation of what Deloitte calls its 5511 strategy, a roadmap to build a $5 billion business, remain consistently among the top five firms in Deloitte’s global network, and become both the employer and adviser of choice.
The aim is to “stretch the organisation beyond what appears immediately possible,” Shetty said. At a time when many organisations are slowing hiring or reducing workforce amid rapid artificial intelligence (AI) adoption and automation, Deloitte India has taken a contrarian approach by announcing plans to add 50,000 professionals over the next three to four years. AI is central to that vision, already helping Deloitte process 40,000 job applications and hire about 1,000 people each month, while internally developed audit tools are expected to save 60,000 hours and free professionals to focus more deeply on quality, judgment and higher-value work.
Over the next two to three years, Shetty expects automation to eliminate about 30% of manual effort across Deloitte, with products, platforms and technology-enabled offerings contributing 40% to 45% of revenue, up from just 5% today.