Our target is to become the 3rd largest consulting player in the APAC region in a decade
India has some of the larger levers in place for becoming a manufacturing-backed economy. Most of the key levers are encouraging; however, Naresh Raisinghani believes that India needs to work on some fundamentals to translate India’s potential into reality.
Emerging markets
For all consulting firms, the emerging markets have provided the fastest growth rates although the emerging markets are still relatively smaller compared to the overall global sales. Typically, growth rates have picked up range for the larger firms between 10 – 20 per cent in the emerging markets.
BMGI in FY 2013-14
Last year has been an excellent year for BMGI, gaining its highest revenues. Additionally, based on its current plans, the company would organically grow at 35 per cent in FY 2013-14 and 100 per cent growth anticipated in FY2014-15. BMGI aims to become the 3rd largest consulting player in the APAC region in a decade.
Growth rate: lower than forecasted
The overall growth rate is still lower than forecasted, and this created its own pressures for various organisations. Hence, it was a mixed bag. Several firms did not reach out to avoid management consulting expenses as discretionary or outsourced intellect expenses, while several reached out to look at how BMGI can reduce cost structures and some for growth against the subdued macro-economic trend via M&A or organic sales growth.
New initiatives for growth
Typically, consulting is a referral business. BMGI India is proposing to look at geometric growth in the coming few years, and high growth rates can’t be sustained by wait and watch strategy. Hence for the first time last year, BMGI has looked at proactive sales as a potential engine for growth. The establishment of the sales structure has helped the company in reaching to a larger cross section of corporate India. Additionally, BMGI is entering into newer geographies, i.e. UAE and other gulf countries.
It is also on the lookout for acquisitions and strategic alliance with large-scale partners. Last year, the company has evaluated two potential relationships. BMGI is likely to look at the tie-up in this year, which would catapult the company forward and provide significant higher growth rates than the 35 per cent planned through organic growth.
India becoming a manufacturing-backed economy
India has some of the larger levers in place for becoming a manufacturing-backed economy. Some of the key levers which currently are enabling the manufacturing arm include a democratic set-up, reasonable positive relations with the developed nations, a good higher education to create talented professionals, a positive climate coupled with a fiscal policy encouraging external investments with caution, and several technology tie-ups in manufacturing.
Encouraging entrepreneurship
The fundamentals to encourage entrepreneurship are to set up business less bureaucratic for entrepreneurs and minimize taxation hassles for the first 5 years. Encourage accessibility to financial resources for competent entrepreneurs is also one such step.