Yashraj Bhardwaj, Partner, Petonic Infotech, discusses the Indian consulting industry

1.      Please say us something about your company and its offerings?

Petonic is a professionally managed, fast-growing mid-sized Indian consultancy firm with corporate headquarters in New Delhi and a Hong Kong representative office. Its uniqueness stems from its collaborative approach, which focuses on innovative and creative solutions tailored to the needs of each organisation. Petonic's success has been based on its outcome-based business model. In today's complex and uncertain world, the company also develops unique and adaptive strategies to help organisations succeed. Since its inception, the company has experienced phenomenal growth and has transformed a large number of businesses, societies, and markets.

 Yashraj and Yuvraj Bharadwaj, the company's founders, are researchers, ideators, and entrepreneurs who began their entrepreneurial journey at a young age. Since then, they've completed 36 research projects, filed 18 patent applications, and launched a slew of innovative and ground-breaking products and businesses in India and around the world. Petonic is one of the Bhardwaj duo's group companies.

 Petonic has provided consulting services to a wide range of industries, including Technology, Finance, Agriculture, Environment, Manufacturing, Climate, Food, Healthcare, Economics, Public Policy & Governance, Development Partnerships, Substantiality, and many others. Various MNCs, Central/State Governments (in India and abroad), and others are among the clients. Petonic specialises in project management, transformation consulting, M&A services, academic research, strategic studies, fraud analysis, data analytics, IT, and other services for the government, including E-commerce, System Integration, Control Command Center, Defence & Homeland Security.

 2.      Considering the differences between the Indian domestic market and the global market, what are the most common challenges that Indian consulting firms face in India?

 Increased competition and USPs: The most difficult challenge for Indian consulting firms is to consistently acquire new skills in order to compete with global players in the market. Indian consulting firms must recognise the growing importance of high-end strategy consulting, the evolution of greater market segmentation, and a focus on the consulting assignment's outcomes.

 

Upskilling and reskilling of organizational design: Firms are under constant pressure to keep up with the constant change with the advent of new technologies and techniques, they are under pressure to adopt new organizational design that best suit their contexts and identities. Consulting is one of the few industries that hasn't evolved in terms of organisational design; therefore, Indian firms must enter the picture and innovate business models in such a way that they become high value, low cost. It should not only allow access to knowledge within the firm; rather, frameworks should be designed in such a way that knowledge outside the firm's walls can also be accessed.

 AI identical technologies: Technology, especially AI is disrupting businesses across the globe. Companies integrating AI or at least automation into their operations, are seen to have a competitive advantage over their slower growing counterparts.

 Outsourcing to India is both a challenge and a motivator: Management consulting is one of the earliest examples of outsourcing in the business world. While outsourcing can help with development and globalisation, many Indian consulting firms find that it limits their growth in the regions where they are outsourced. This issue has more to deal with the orthodox culture of protecting knowledge. Outsourcing exposes companies to potential risk of losing institutional knowledge and insight but knowledge what we have, if not useful for us can still be monetized, by sharing with third party, and ensure collaborative operational excellence out of it.

 Knowledge Management: Indian management consultancies are expected to be highly skilled on the latest technologies that enter the markets. The firms have a challenge to leverage the existing organizational knowledge efficiently. Firms are also under relentless pressure to hire the right people with the right skill sets to keep up in the market. Indian firms are quite capable to play a high value low cost number game in consulting business, but what makes the scaling tough is that there are no such identified flows of knowledge, which really reflects a next level value proposition to the potential client.

 3.      Please throw some light on the demand for consulting services in India? What were the Covid induced challenges for the consulting sector in India?

 India is undergoing a rapid transformation to become a global superpower. This is the reason why consulting services are going to be a key business in India, as they handhold the firms to develop their best optimised way. Also, due to the involuntary reduction in the workforce, many organisations lack the technological, strategic, and project management abilities to handle market and technical changes in the ever growing market. As a result, the business world is in desperate need of consulting help right now. It is estimated that over 2.2 lakh people will be employed in nearly 10,000 consulting firms across the country in the next three years.

 The global management consultancy did hit a road block due to the pandemic but this impact on the economy may provide some interesting opportunities to management consulting firms. While larger management firms may be placed better but smaller organizations will try to invest the available resources into current operations that need the most attention. In such tumultuous times, clients are more likely to hire large firms with more resources to devote to projects.

 But it would be wrong to say that pandemic has just negatively impacted many industries, for instance, this situation also made clients seek domain knowledge and deep expertise from consultants to adjust to new market conditions. They are also reaching out to consultants to restructure their operations while mapping future financial scenarios, ensure business continuity, becoming digital-savvy, and gaining better insight for any future disruptions. Following the global recession in 2009, the revenue of consulting firms increased from 2010 onward, thus the next crop of winners will comprise organizations that have the right skills and well equipped to handle the currents challenges and tackle the future risks.

 4.      Did your company take any innovative measures to protect your employees during the pandemic?

Yes, we took a variety of precautions to protect our employees during the pandemic, including using a hybrid office model. Day-to-day activities included social distancing, regular COVID 19 symptom tracing, and so on. However, in order to assist society, we at Petonic went above and beyond to contribute and assist society in the following ways:

-        Through its multinational partners, clients, and associates, Petonic raised INR 2 crore for COVID relief. NGOs such as the Open Innovation Lotus Foundation, Project India Foundation, and others are working to reach out to rural India during the second wave of the COVID crisis that India is currently experiencing.

-        Petonic also gathered data on COVID 19 in a few states and developed a predictive analysis platform to map COVID supplies within the state in order to best channel and manage resources. The intention was also to have dashboarding done, which could lead to better COVID 19 management within the states.

 5.      Which sectors, in particular, will determine the future prospects of consulting in India, particularly in the aftermath of the pandemic?

 Due to better liquidity and capitalization, the financial services industry should be in a better position than most other industries. Consulting firms are expected to assist the BFSI industry not only in the development of stimulus package strategies, but also in the implementation of digitalization initiatives. Despite this, it is expected that demand for consulting services in the BFSI industry will decline.

 In the short to medium term, there will be less demand for consulting services in both private and public health care, as clients may not see the value in engaging with consultants when the more pressing matter of responding to the coronavirus takes precedence. However, it is expected that in the long run, the need to address hospital capacity shortages will offset this factor, resulting increased demand for consultancy.