The Hindu Businessline is reporting that Moss Adams plans to hire a few hundred people in India over the next couple years because India “offers the best talent pool.” Talent shortage? Aggressive growth? Cheaper labor? Who can say. But Moss Adams’ COO Dave Follett gave all the details to Businessline.
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American accounting and consultancy firm Moss Adams says that the Indian skill pool fits the company’s demand for complementary capabilities. To accelerate its growth momentum, the firm plans to build an Indian team of 500 people in a couple of years, according to Dave Follett, Chief Operating Officer, Moss Adams. It established its first office in India in July 2022 and has hired 50 people in the country so far.
“This is the first foreign hiring we’ve done and have only worked with individuals on a contractual basis in the past,” said Follett. A few years ago, the company saw the need to expand its capabilities, “After thorough research and assessment, we narrowed it down to hiring from India as it offers the best talent pool,” he added.
This doesn’t sound like the usual off-loading workload excess to India but rather an actual team capable of doing its own work semi-autonomously.
Instead of making its Indian team a back-end office, the company intends to hire people to handle its clients. According to the COO, “Their work would be similar to what our people do in the US.” At a base minimum, Moss Adams expects the India team to contribute to its revenue growth of 15 per cent year-on-year.
In the next couple of years, the company intends to build a team of 500 people in India. Follett said, “However, it won’t be feasible to place a cap on it. By the end of CY22, we plan to add 150 more individuals, and are currently employing senior managers and above.” Although the company would not be hiring freshers yet, it does intend to hire juniors with one to two years of experience.
The accounting firm has over 30,000 clients from across industries including listed and multinational companies. Last year, it generated $955 million in revenues and has a total headcount of over 4,000 people.
Soon to be 4,500 if Moss Adams is able to find the talent. As is the case in the United States, they’ll be competing against Big 4 firms, all of which have expressed their own plans for aggressive India hiring.
Anecdotally I’ve been noticing labor shortages and high turnover even within the offshore/India teams I interact with. India has a large labor force on paper, but if you’re narrowing it down to people who are fluent in English, have some accounting knowledge, and are willing to work long hours for low pay, pretty soon you run out of staff.
Yeah, I feel like it’s a bit delusional for firms to think there’s an unlimited supply of willing talent in India. They’re going to run into the same problem we have here in the U.S., people who might have been attracted to accounting in the past are gravitating toward better paying fields like tech and analytics. Indian professionals with English proficiency have way better options than grinding corp tax returns for peanuts.
“Best talent pool”. More like lots of live bodies to hire. There are significant communication issues and their proficiency in accounting is still far behind where we are in the developed world. Get used to seeing the time charged to simple jobs go up 4-fold.