Janet Truncale, global chair and CEO of EY, said the professional services firm’s India operations are becoming central to its global AI strategy, with more than a quarter of its 400,000 employees based in the country. The workforce in India is among the fastest adopters of new technologies, according to Truncale. This importance was underlined on Thursday with the launch of the EY.ai Centre for Reimagination in Bengaluru, a client experience centre designed to help companies move from isolated AI pilots to full-scale business transformation. The centre is part of EY’s planned $1.4 billion investment in AI.
India as a Technology Hub
In an exclusive interaction with TOI, Truncale said the choice of India was deliberate. “The adoption of technology by our workforce in India is like no other. They understand it because they’re living it – this is a tech hub, right! And it’s always been the innovation centre for us.” The centre is intended to show clients what AI can do across sectors such as retail, banking, manufacturing, healthcare, and life sciences, and help them see how AI can reshape business models, operating models, and customer experience.
AI Transformation Within EY: Audit and Tax
Truncale said EY is also using itself as “client zero” — the firm has been clear that it must transform its own businesses before advising clients. The biggest example is audit. EY built a global audit platform, Canvas, a decade ago for its 160,000 clients and more than 100,000 audit professionals. It is now putting agentic AI on top of that platform. “That is not a small use case – it’s end to end,” Truncale said. The system manages workflow, accounting, and auditing knowledge for everyone on the platform. An auditor who earlier had to consult manuals to understand how to audit a banking allowance for loan losses can now ask an assurance agent and get guidance in real time. EY is doing similar work in tax, where its knowledge catalogue has been “agentified” by country.
Talent and Junior Hiring
Many global analysts expect such agentification to impact talent requirements at professional services firms, including consulting. Asked about this, Truncale said AI is changing the kind of work employees and consultants do, but said it is in no way reducing the need for junior talent. “Every one of our businesses is relying on bringing in new skills, new perspectives, kids from college. The question is, how fast can you get them to operate at a higher level and not do the menial work.” She added that academia must prepare students for this tech-enabled workforce. Ajay Anand, managing partner for EY Global Delivery Services (GDS), said GDS hired 25,000 people in the last year, many from campuses.
Implications for Professional Services Clients
Truncale noted that opportunities are also rising. Boards are asking how they can make decisions using real data and synthetic data, and how they should control agents working alongside humans. EY’s AI investment and the new centre signal that the firm is betting heavily on India’s talent pool and technology ecosystem to drive its global AI strategy. For trade and business executives, the message is clear: AI is moving from experimentation to enterprise-scale deployment, and professional services firms are reorganising their own operations to deliver AI-led transformation. Companies that engage with such centres can accelerate their adoption of AI across audit, tax, and consulting, potentially reducing manual work and improving decision-making speed.
| AI use case | Sector | Key feature |
|---|---|---|
| Audit (Canvas platform) | Financial services, banking | Agentic AI for real-time guidance on loan loss allowances |
| Tax (knowledge catalogue agentified by country) | Multi-jurisdictional tax | Country-specific AI agents to answer compliance questions |
The $1.4 billion investment underscores EY’s commitment to embedding AI across its services. The Bengaluru centre will be a hub for showcasing these capabilities to clients globally. As EY continues to hire and train its India workforce, the firm is positioning itself as a leader in AI-enabled professional services.
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