The Hindu Business Line : Baker Tilly to expand in India

BAKER Tilly International, the world's tenth largest chartered accountants group, is looking at scaling up its Indian presence, courtesy its tie-up with K. S. Aiyar & Co, a local professional services firm.

The London-based outfit has just wrapped up a fact-finding exercise in India, marked by an assessment by Mr Geoff Barnes, CEO and President of Baker Tilly International. The basic idea is to promote the Baker Tilly brand in the country and strengthen its network.

The group has lately identified Asia as the focus, even as it proposes to tap emerging opportunities in Latin American countries in the near future. "India, given the kind of developments that are taking place here, will offer good prospects for us," Mr Barnes told Business Line. Baker Tilly International is particularly seeking to develop relationships in the IT and auditing communities in India, he added.

India is said to offer certain advantages, driven by its IT capabilities, which are available to global customers at a relatively low cost. Baker Tilly, in this context, is hopeful of securing high quality and superior standards, all of which are critical for large-scale projects.

Baker Tilly International itself is growing quickly on a world-wide basis, with its pace of growth expected to increase. It will in the future, continue to draw support from member firms.

Its Indian associate, according to Mr Raghuvir M. Aiyar, CEO and Senior Partner of K. S. Aiyar & Co, currently offers a wide range of services, including audit, taxation and management consultancy, its origin tracing back to its founder, Kalyan Subramania Aiyar (1897). K. S. Aiyar currently operates from six locations in India. It has been a member firm of Baker Tilly International for some time.

The two partners have already formed a joint venture, Baker Tilly Aiyar India Pvt Ltd, which has brought into the international network a new technology consulting practice.

Meanwhile, a separate software services set-up has come up in this domain as well. Impetus Technologies, which operates out of Indore and Delhi, also runs an office in Silicon Valley, the US, for business development and customer support. It caters to clients in sectors like financial services and healthcare. Impetus, Mr Aiyar pointed out, has already engaged a fairly large number of employees.

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