BANGALORE: Accenture has some aggressive plans for hiring up its sleeve for the financial year 2016 and look forward to spend close to $ 1 bn  on acquisitions to race against Indian companies with latest high-end technologies. The company presented its plans for financial year ending August 2016 at an investor conference in New York, reports ET.

"Last year we hired roughly 100,000 people. Though the number isn't set for this year, we expect to hire roughly in the same range," said Chief Financial Officer, David Rowland, Accenture, at the conference.

This massive hiring plan would make Accenture as the second biggest employer in the IT space after Tata Consultancy Services that outpaced it for having the maximum employees in 2013.

TCS on the other hand has plans for FY2016 where the IT employer looks forward to have 65,000 new employees on board. The financial year for TCS ends in March.

Not just hiring, Accenture is also leaving IT counterparts behind in the amount of money it is shelling out for acquisitions. FY2015 witnessed investment of $850 mn by Accenture for acquisitions and is working on to reach between $900 million and $1 billion on acquisitions in FY2016. The IT conglomerate would pay attention to on the three spheres- cyber security, digital and cloud which chips in a third of the company’s revenue.

According to analyst, this smart move by Accenture would prove highly beneficial for the company whereas it sends  an alert for Indian rivals to buck up and be a part of the race.

Accenture’s revenue by the end of last fiscal year was $7 bn generated from its digital business which comprises of interactive, analytics and mobility. Wipro and TCS ended the last financial year with $7.1 bn (overall) and $2 bn (digital business) respectively.

The digital business of Accenture comprises of 36,000 employees, revealed CEO Pierre Nanterme. "I would say that in our digital and operations business, we are the market makers. I spend a lot of my time looking at the competition, but there I would say we make the market. Our competition in digital is very fragmented and isn't doing what we are doing," Nanterme told investors.

"Tuck-in acquisitions are likely needed to fill critical gaps in the digital value chain. There has to be a greater degree of co-operation and flexibility in working with heterogeneous partners in the ecosystem. Indian IT is tech savvy, but much less partnership savvy," Viju George, analyst with JPMorgan, said in a July note on the digital opportunity for India firms.

Accenture is focusing on building and strengthening partnerships in the digital space following its merger strategy.

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