Booz & Co enters India again

Booz & Co, the global consulting firm that was spun off from Booz Allen Hamilton in July 2008, is re-entering India. The company is making a comeback eight years after it shut shop in the country in January 2000 to focus more on developed markets.

"Ten to 12 years ago, few companies understood what consultants could bring in. The market has evolved since then. Today, they understand what consultants can do in handling any kind of discontinuities,'' said Suvojoy Sengupta, Booz India CEO, who has relocated to India with four to five consultants.

"Today, Indian companies are much savvier. They have either used consultants or considered using one at some point of time,'' said Sengupta. Shumeet Banerji, the firm's global CEO, was a part of the Booz India team in the mid-1990s.

"The Indian market has matured dramatically since I was last here. Indian companies now have confidence. They have a global agenda and they have access to efficient capital,'' Banerji said in an interview last month.

Booz Allen was among the earliest entrants in India in 1995-96 with Boston Consulting Group (BCG) and McKinsey and worked for clients like IDBI, Asian Paints, Tata Steel and LIC. In 2000, its board decided to focus on European and North American markets.

"The market then was in an early stage of evolution. It was fairly small. Since 2003, there has been a shift in momentum and growth in sectors like telecom, insurance, infrastructure and retail,'' said Piyush Doshi, principal, Booz & Co.

The management consulting business was spun off from Booz Allen Hamilton in July 2008 after private equity firm The Carlyle Group acquired a majority stake in the residual US government consulting business, which retained the firm's name.

The separation enabled Booz & Co to take a decision to re-enter India as its board approved the same within a month of the spin-off. The firm, which opens an office in Mumbai tomorrow, plans to scale up its staff to 100 people in three years. Booz has already relocated 4 to 5 of its consultants from the UK and the US.