The Hindu Business Line : Accenture plans to hire 13,000 more here

Mumbai April 22 Accenture will be steadily ramping up its Indian operations and hiring 13,000 people within a year, as part of its strategy to facilitate India playing a bigger role in its global operations.

Accenture, which has a headcount of about 37,000 in India at present, intends to scale up this figure to 50,000 in the next 12 months, Mr William D. Green, Chairman and CEO, said.

Worldwide, its gross addition is expected to be 60,000 by the year ended August 31, 2008.

Strategic market

“India is a strategic market for Accenture both for its access to talent and the business opportunities here,” he told presspersons here on Tuesday.

Mr Green is on a visit to India, along with other board members of Accenture, to hold its first regular board meeting in the country.

Accenture serves more than 350 global clients, including Fortune 1000 global clients through its operations in Bangalore, Chennai, Delhi, Hyderabad, Mumbai and Pune. India is also an integral part of Accenture’s Global Delivery Network, a network of more than 45 integrated delivery centres across five continents.

No talent crunch

Replying to a question, Mr Green said the company was not facing a crunch in availability of talent in India. “We spend about $780 million in training worldwide and a significant part of it is invested in India. We are a good human capital company and all we need is good raw material,” he said.

Accenture is especially bullish on the retail and telecom sectors in India. He expected India to lead in Accenture’s global innovation initiative.

NO order CANCELLATIONS

Replying to a question, Mr Green said Accenture did not face any cancellation or deferrals of orders as an upshot of the US sub-prime crisis. “As we have diversified offerings, we have not been affected by what had happened in the US financial markets. What we offer to companies today is different from what we had offered one year ago. In other words, we change our offerings to generate our own domain (during such crisis times),” he pointed out.

Stating that the sub-prime issue had nothing to do with the system, he said the “key thing now is that they (companies stung by it) are determined to get out of it and put all that behind them. It is going to pay off, as the global economy is still strong.”