Consulting and auditing companies in India are clamping down on hiring or letting people go on the back of the impact of artificial intelligence and a poor pipeline of work from clients because of the domino effect of the West Asia war.
Goliaths of the business—Bain & Co., Boston Consulting Group, McKinsey & Co., Accenture and Kearney, along with auditing giants PwC, EY, KPMG and Deloitte—have held meetings on the war and how it would affect the India headcount.
“Over the last two weeks, we had meetings with senior partners and the impact of the war on business was discussed. Lateral hiring has stopped for us, unless critical, and we have been told that cost cuts are on the anvil,” said a senior partner in the consulting team of a Big Four firm.
“While strategic consultants are not impacted yet, those who worked in the research teams and production services will be impacted. Many of these teams are based out of India and Eastern Europe and one estimates at least 25% layoffs in these profiles,” said a senior executive in one of the consulting companies.
Research teams are tasked with diving into data to analyze market sectors, find out what a client’s rivals are doing, and assess the impact of key regulatory and technological developments, among other things.
Production services help in the preparation of presentations such as slide decks and reports, which are often the hallmark of the top-tier consulting firms. Both these roles can largely be done by AI, leading to redundancy.
Selective need
“India’s consulting hiring market is undergoing a structural reset rather than a downturn,” said Monica Agrawal, India chairperson at executive search firm Sheffield Haworth. “Across the global consulting firms as well as the Big Four, the need for talent has become more selective, increasingly concentrated in AI, data, risk and implementation roles as automation reduces the need for traditional business analyst roles.”
According to Agrawal, recent workforce actions reflect this shift.
“One of the global firms has reduced headcount in India amid a slowdown in private equity-led work, while another has undertaken global restructuring, including cuts in non-client-facing roles. Across the Big Four, layoffs have been reported in audit, tax and support functions due to lower attrition, softer demand and automation-led efficiencies,” Agrawal told Mint.
According to an employee who worked with the global delivery team of one of the Big Four firms and was laid off last month, retrenchments are not taking place in one shot but selectively.
“My manager and HR called me in, handed out the letter and I received two-three months of salary. I was not allowed to tell anyone or meet the team before I left,” said the middle manager who worked in Delhi and reported to the European team of the Big Four firm.
Each of the Big Four firms employs 30,000-40,000 people. Consulting companies employ a much smaller number of employees. The impact on jobs in India mirrors the changes in the global teams as well.
AI takeover
Bloomberg reported last week that KPMG UK informed 600 employees in the audit division that their jobs are at risk.
In the beginning of the year, Bob Sternfels, global managing partner at McKinsey, said on a podcast that the consulting company employed 40,000 employees and about 20,000 personalized AI agents.
“AI implementation has severely impacted the audit teams in the Big Four as well as research and knowledge teams in consulting firms. AI has now taken over the knowledge process outsourcing work that previously required consultants to act as business analysts conducting market research,” said Puneet Kalra, managing director for executive search firm Russell Reynolds Associates.
Kalra pointed out that business analyst roles where one worked for compensation of ₹25 lakh-35 lakh are also getting impacted.
“Teams that were exposed to clients in West Asia and working on business expansion are also getting reallocated," he said.
Incidentally, consulting firms guzzled talent from the batch of 2026. Bain, Boston Consulting, McKinsey and Accenture recruited in large numbers, but largely for their AI teams.
The Indian Institutes of Management told Mint in the beginning of the year that the expansion of global capability centres and the increasing role of India offices led to the hiring spurt. But that was before the war between the US and Israel against Iran broke out in February end.
While Deloitte, McKinsey and Kearney declined to comment, the others did not respond to Mint’s queries.
