EY, Deloitte step up tech, business consulting hiring: Amrop study

Business Standard

12-06-2025

A study into two of the leadership and hiring trends at the largest Big Four advisory firms has shown technology, business consulting and tax among the top growth practices for EY India and Deloitte India.
'There is a huge consistency in this report in terms of focus areas for the Big Four firms. It is also indicative of where the good opportunity lies for those who want to move to Big Four firms,' said Prashant Yadav, Partner, Digital & Technology, Amrop India.
The study, conducted by Amrop, a leadership search and executive advisory services company, said: 'The Big 4 consulting firms have been growing Advisory practices – business consulting, technology consulting, deals and risk – at over 2x of historical growth rates. Tax practices have also grown significantly.'
The Amrop report shows that hiring and promotions for technology consulting saw the highest growth of 40 per cent at Deloitte, while business consulting was the highest growing vertical with 24 per cent growth at EY India between February 2023 and January 2025.
The study found that Deloitte has invested aggressively in acquiring deals and capabilities and continues to invest more selectively. 'Deloitte has had higher attrition, largely involuntary, since Jan '25. The attrition numbers in 2025 are expected to be much higher than in previous years,' the Amrop report said. It reported annual attrition below 1 per cent for both firms.
While gender diversity for new hires was in the lower range for both EY – 3 per cent – and Deloitte – 8 per cent – in terms of promotion it was higher at 20 and 23 per cent respectively, according to the study.
At EY, the technology sector across services and products accounted for 29 per cent of overall hiring, with other Big Four firms the second largest source for talent. For Deloitte, almost half of the hiring – 47 per cent – has been from the Big Four, followed by technology sectors – 34 per cent – while rapidly scaling practices.
Within technology practice constituents, both firms have seen higher growth in Oracle compared to Microsoft. For Deloitte, Oracle growth has been thrice that of Microsoft. The highest growing area within tech for both Deloitte and EY has been SAP – Systems, Applications & Products in Data Processing. Digital transformation and data & analytics are the other tech constituents seeing high growth in terms of hiring and promotion.
In terms of location, Mumbai and Bengaluru have seen the highest growth for Deloitte, while Mumbai and NCR are on top of the location heatmap for EY.
Deloitte and EY together have over 2,000 partners and drive over 60 per cent of Big Four revenues, according to the report. The study states that EY is the market leader with the maximum number of partners and revenue of over ₹13,000 crore. Deloitte, Amrop said, was the second-largest firm by number of partners, with revenue of over ₹9,000 crore, and has been investing heavily in people at leadership levels.