Professional services firm EY plans to hire 2,000 employees in India in the next three years to expand its digital solution services to clients. 

The bulk of this hiring is expected to happen in domains like analytics, new technologies, intelligent automation, artificial intelligence, blockchain, and tax technology, besides big automation projects for the government and the private sector. 

Ram Sarvepalli, Leader, advisory services India and Partner, emerging markets centre at EY stated, “There is significant capital available for new startups and big Indian companies are investing in digital. The government is heavily investing in digital from a citizen services perspective. Many of the traditional customer-oriented industries are trying to find models which allow access to customers to tier-two, tier-three towns from a digital perspective.”

He added that regulatory changes like GST and e-filing and automation of central and state government departments have created a huge opportunity and the need for hiring digital talent. 

Sarvepalli revealed that analytics as a business is growing heavily for EY, and the company is hiring about 600 people every six months in analytics across all businesses. Meanwhile, for the government business, EY has added close to 700 people in the last 18 months.

Digital governance and citizen services are themes that almost every state is focusing on. With the kicking in of Aadhaar 2.0, further big projects and opportunities for citizen services are expected. 

Currently, EY has over 2,200 people working on digital and technology solutions across service lines in India.  The planned hiring would be a mix of lateral and fresh talent.

The impetus comes as globally, EY plans to invest $1 Bn in new technology solutions, client services, innovation and the EY ecosystem over a two year period that started in July 2018. 

As per Hanne Jesca Bax, EMEIA Managing Partner for markets and accounts at EY, a large part of hiring would be around intelligent automation. 

However, EY alone is the only one banking on opportunities being created by digitization. This month PwC India also announced plans to invest Rs 100 Cr towards the development of digital solutions and is expected to hire about 1,000 digital technology experts over the next three years. The move comes as it looks to strengthen their capabilities to deliver tech solutions. Similarly, management consulting firm KPMG also announced big hiring plans, stating that it will be hiring 8,000-9,000 people in India and a tenth of them will be deployed on projects overseas.

Image Credits: Business Insider