FT独家：普华永道将把PwC美国的印度离岸“加速中心”与PwC印度咨询业务合并为约4万人的合资公司，预计2027年上半年交割；交易双方均为私人合伙制成员所，无上市载体

PwC shakes up Indian operations as AI threat looms over consulting sector
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PwC is consolidating its India operations to expand its offshore consulting work and better grapple with the impact of AI as competition intensifies across the professional services sector.
Operations owned separately by PwC member firms in the US and India will be put into a joint venture under a deal scheduled to be signed on Sunday, according to internal communications seen by the FT.
The new entity will combine offshore “acceleration centres” built in India by PwC US’s advisory business with the consulting business of PwC India.
Both businesses provide — and sometimes compete to provide — consulting and outsourced services for multinational clients. They also support PwC member firms worldwide with lower-cost or specialist labour. The joint venture will have about 40,000 employees.
Unlike traditional multinationals, PwC and its Big Four peers operate as a network of locally owned partnerships, which can create complexity when serving international clients. It can also lead to tensions between member firms over how to split lucrative cross-border work.
All the Big Four firms have been sending work offshore to boost efficiency. They have also been competing to offer advice on rolling out AI and dealing with an expectation from clients that they should harness the technology to deliver services more cheaply.
Consulting partners at PwC pushed for an agreement between the US and Indian firms to remove roadblocks to greater use of the “acceleration centres” by the rest of the network, according to people familiar with the matter.
“This combination will drive growth and strengthen how we serve increasingly global clients,” PwC US chief executive Paul Griggs wrote in an email to staff on Saturday. “India is one of the world’s most important growth markets and a source of world-class talent and capabilities. Bringing these businesses closer together will help us connect those strengths.”
The agreement comes as AI is challenging assumptions about how much work will be sent to low-cost centres such as India if autonomous AI agents can replace humans for some tasks.
A combined organisation will provide a stronger foundation for innovation, PwC executives claimed. The deal would bring “our technology, engineering and AI capabilities together at greater scale”, Griggs wrote.
PwC India has focused on retraining staff and lowering delivery costs through AI, its chair Sanjeev Krishan told analysts at an event in Bengaluru in June.
The joint venture is the latest in a string of moves by PwC to more tightly integrate its global consulting operations.
Leaders at the firm have been standardising PwC’s services, centralising training and demand planning, and concentrating more power in the hands of the biggest member firms.
Krishan will be chief executive of the new venture, which will be owned jointly by PwC US and PwC India, although financial details were unclear.
The venture “means our domestic clients gain access to best-in-class global capabilities, our multinational and global capability centre clients are served more seamlessly, and the capability and client perimeter for our partners and people go up”, Krishan said in a statement.
The deal is expected to close in the first half of 2027, subject to regulatory approvals and other conditions.