BENGALURU: Accenture continues to bet big on Indian talent and is expected to hire more in the country. “We are hiring primarily in India, as we are hiring more in technology. This also addresses our pyramid structure. We hire all over the world and in technology, which is a big driver for growth as we see for FY25. We will be hiring more in India,” Accenture CEO Julie Sweet told analysts in an investor call.
Accenture has over 3 lakh employees in India out of the 7.7 lakh globally. The company made a net addition of 41,484 people in the 2024 financial year. In the August quarter, the company added over 24,000 people. Accenture follows a September-August financial year.
The company’s board has approved $4 billion in share buyback, bringing Accenture’s total outstanding authority to approximately $6.7 billion. Accenture has raised its revenue forecast to 3% to 6% for the 2025 financial year, which is an improvement from its previous forecast. This is attributed to two primary factors — a more favorable macroeconomic climate and the recent decision by the US Fed to lower interest rates.
The IT firm expects revenues for the first quarter of the 2025 fiscal to be in the range of $16.8 billion to $17.4 billion, an increase of 2% to 6%. For the full year, Accenture’s revenue grew 2% to $64.9 billion. In the August quarter, its revenue was $16.4 billion, a 5% increase compared to the same period last year.
For the 2024 fiscal year, new bookings reached a record $81.2 billion, a 13% increase from the previous year, and bookings for the quarter were $20.1 billion, up 21% compared to the corresponding period last year. In the fourth quarter of 2024, Accenture bagged GenAI bookings worth $1 billion.“We delivered full-fiscal year new bookings of $81 billion, including a record 125 quarterly client bookings of more than $100 million, and now have 310 Diamond clients, our largest relationships. We continue to accelerate our leadership in Generative AI, which we believe is the most transformative technology of the next decade, delivering $3 billion in new bookings for the year. Our successful strategy to lead reinvention for clients and continued investments in our business have positioned Accenture for strong growth,” Sweet added.
“The magnitude of this achievement is seen in comparison to FY23, when we had approximately $300 million in sales and roughly $100 million in revenue from GenAI,” she said in an email to employees. She also told employees that smaller deals convert to revenue faster, so the decrease in client spending on smaller deals impacted its growth this year.