India GCC is an innovation hub for EY

EY, one among the big four global professional services firms, sees India as one of the key hubs driving the organisation’s AI innovation agenda through its global delivery services (GDS) unit.

The GDS unit is EY's global capability centre (GCC). The unit's global employee strength is 75,000, across the Philippines, Argentina, Mexico, Poland, and India. Its India operations has around 60,000 employees spread over Delhi-NCR, Bengaluru, Chennai, Hyderabad, Coimbatore and Kochi.

The GDS unit in India has been operational for more than two decades,

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“I feel passionate about what we can build here as it has gone from providing standalone services to end-to-end support. This is the hub for innovation as the AI platforms of EY are being built in India,” says Ajay Anand, Global Vice Chair, EY GDS.

The GDS unit of EY started off with providing tax-related services. Today, its role encompasses audit, assurance, consulting, technology stacks, tech enablement, strategy, and M&A. These services and solutions are provided for both clients and the firm’s internal processes.

Today, AI (artificial intelligence) and generative AI (GenAI) have become the top priorities for EY GDS, says Anand. “Our entire team has been trained on AI, and we are hiring a lot of tech talent.”

The entire team of EY GDS has access to all AI technologies. The unit has also built its own LLM (large language model) platform. Around 25,000 of GDS employees have been awarded an ‘AI badge’, which means they have attained a certain level of proficiency in the technology.

Embracing AI tech has brought in early success in the area of risk assessment for EY. Kapish Vanvaria, Global and Americas Risk Leader, EY, says, “AI disrupts everything but actually it is an opportunity.”

He says the risk team at EY is now engaging with AI to do functions such as evaluation of spreadsheets and compliance documents. Given that AI does many of the early tasks, it allows the risk team to focus on the best possible outcomes for clients.

Vanvaria cites an example to illustrate this. EY GDS has built an AI LLM platform for risk assessment; earlier it used to take about a week to get the task done, but now it gets done in a day, he points out.

“Our contract renewal rate with clients has gone up 100% as we are bringing value beyond compliance,” he remarks.

For EY GDS, it is about harnessing all the knowledge it has built over the years and creating an AI solution that does not replace people but accelerates the firm’s growth.

Leadership and technology development

Over the years, the role of EY GDS has extended beyond providing services and technology solutions to make room for leadership. The unit in India is not just an innovation hub but has also emerged as a centre of leadership.

Anand says, “Some of the leaders for EY globally are actually based in GDS. Our global cloud computing leader for EY is actually someone from GDS.”

EY GDS in India is a regular host for the global leadership meetings of the firm and its clients.

“GDS for the future will become the talent factory for leadership," says Anand.

There are around 20,000 technologists employed at EY’s GDS centres globally and an overwhelming majority of them are based in India.

EY GDS also helps other companies to set up their GCC in India. The company follows the model of build, own and operate, and in some cases, it transfers the GCC to the company itself.

The future roadmap of EY GDS in India looks promising.

Technology remains a core part of its expansion plan as it plans to hire over 20,000 people in India, with a majority of them being technologists. The company is also looking at Tier II locations in the country for this expansion.

“This (India) is the place where innovation and technology development (LLM, analytics and big data) is happening, especially in AI,” says Anand.