Inside BCG’s long game to defeat McKinsey in India

From a distant second, BCG claims to have beaten McKinsey as India’s premier consulting firm. This is the story of how it built a bonafide presence in India’s corridors of power

Alpesh Shah, BCG’s MD in India, claimed the firm outstripped rival McKinsey both in terms of revenue and number of partners

While McKinsey says otherwise, financials The Ken accessed support the narrative that BCG has toppled its older rival in India

BCG’s rise has been many years in the making, slowly but surely entrenching itself in both the public and private sector by any means necessary

By hitching its wagon to India Stack initiatives like Aadhaar, UPI, and now NDHM, BCG has become an inextricable part of India’s policy ecosystem

UPDATE: Following the publication of this story, McKinsey, which had previously declined to share its financials, reached out with revenues for McKinsey & Co Inc. (India Branch Offices). The combined India revenue of McKinsey’s two consulting entities stands at Rs 2,926 crore ($398.8 million) for the year ended March 2020. This is 25.8% higher than BCG’s India revenue for the same period. The Ken has reached out to BCG for clarification about its claim of beating McKinsey in India. The story has been updated to reflect McKinsey’s inputs, and will incorporate BCG’s response if and when it is provided.

AUTHOR

Seema Singh

Seema has over two decades of experience in journalism. Before starting The Ken, Seema wrote “Myth Breaker: Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw and the Story of Indian Biotech”, published by HarperCollins in May 2016. Prior to that, she was a senior editor and bureau chief for Bangalore with Forbes India, and before that she wrote for Mint. Seema has written for numerous international publications like IEEE-Spectrum, New Scientist, Cell and Newsweek. Seema is a Knight Science Journalism Fellow from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a MacArthur Foundation Research Grantee.

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