Build an India Finance & Accounting Center — Not Outsourcing

Building a finance and accounting back office in India — not as a distant vendor but as your own India center or captive team — is increasingly a strategic choice for foreign firms that want direct control, faster scaling and operational agility from their extended delivery model. The argument is especially compelling for companies in markets such as Australia, where multiple indicators point to a constrained domestic supply of accounting talent even as the startup and scaleup ecosystem grows. Below, I present the case in essay form with clear section headings and the recent, concrete data that underpin the recommendation.

A Global Finance Talent Crunch Across Major Economies

Across major economies like Australia, Europe, the USA, and New Zealand, the labour market for finance and accounting talent has been under sustained pressure. Recruiters, institutes, and industry surveys consistently point to a widening gap between the number of roles businesses need to fill and the talent available to take them up. In several markets, job postings for core accounting and finance roles have surged year over year, while firms report longer hiring cycles and increased competition for even mid-level positions.

Low Vacancy Fill Rates Are Slowing Finance Operations Everywhere

Professional bodies across these regions echo a similar story: vacancy fill rates for essential finance roles — including taxation specialists, auditors, controllers, and management accountants — remain weak. In some surveys, roughly one out of every three open positions goes unfilled through standard recruitment efforts. This mismatch between rising demand and slower fulfilment creates a structural constraint for organisations that rely on dependable, well-staffed finance functions.

Shrinking Graduate Pipelines Are Deepening the Talent Shortage

The issue extends beyond open roles — it runs through the talent pipeline itself. Data from multiple countries shows a steady decline in the number of new accounting graduates entering the profession, with year-on-year drops in enrolment and qualification completions. As older professionals retire and regulatory workloads increase, the supply of new talent is not keeping pace. For businesses across Australia, Europe, the USA, and New Zealand, this means a persistent headcount challenge and a shrinking domestic pool from which to build future-ready finance teams.

Startups and capital flows are making demand stickier

Demand for finance and accounting capability in Australia is being pushed higher by the growth of startups and scaleups that require robust financial control, investor reporting, payroll, tax and FP&A from very early stages. National and regional data show that venture capital and startup funding have remained material. At a national level, Dealroom’s Australia snapshot reported that VC investment in Australia held at about USD 2.8 billion in 2024, illustrating continued funding activity that drives demand for professional finance teams.

At the state level, New South Wales alone recorded around USD 2.6 billion in funding across 203 deals in 2024 — an 18% increase on the prior year — showing how concentrated ecosystem growth feeds real hiring needs inside rapidly growing companies.

NSW Government

When startups scale quickly or take fresh rounds of capital, their immediate needs change from transactional bookkeeping to investor-ready reporting, cash-flow modelling, tax provisioning, and governance. In a tight domestic market, that sudden increase in qualified-accounting demand translates into longer hiring cycles, higher salaries, and more frequent use of interim or external advisers — all of which add cost and slow execution.

Why India Finance and Accounting Center not outsourcing?

India Finance & Accounting Centre is not the same as outsourcing. Outsourcing hands work to a third-party vendor; an India centre builds your own team, operating under your governance, your systems, your culture, and your controls. The people, processes, and data remain inside your organisation — just located in India. It offers the capacity advantages of offshore talent without giving up visibility, decision-making authority, or operational ownership. In short, outsourcing is a service relationship; an India centre is an extension of your company.

Why does an owned India center preserve control while solving capacity problems?

India Finance & Accounting Center is not about cost, but about growth. The stronger, longer-lasting rationale for an owned India center is control combined with capacity. When a company builds its own India finance team (a captive, GIC or tightly governed satellite), it retains direct line management, defines SOPs, embeds security and data governance under its own policies, and integrates the offshore staff into the firm’s culture and performance metrics. That level of control reduces the governance friction and visibility problems that often accompany third-party outsourcing and ensures intellectual property, processes and reporting standards are preserved inside the firm.

Crucially, India provides a deep and growing talent pool of finance and accounting professionals — from transaction specialists to people with Big Four, shared-services and ERP experience — enabling firms to staff month-end close, payroll, tax compliance and increasingly strategic roles such as FP&A and investor reporting. Because hiring is done on the firm’s books, teams can be redeployed, re-skilled and managed exactly as headquarters requires, giving firms the flexibility to change scope quickly without contractual penalty. This is particularly useful for Australian businesses that need to scale up after a funding round or scale down during a seasonal lull.

Flexibility and scalability in practice

An India center allows companies to begin with a small, focused team to handle transactional processing or month-end close and then expand the remit into more value-added work as confidence and governance mature. That flexibility protects the business from fixed-vendor constraints while letting it grow capabilities at its own pace. Time-zone alignment is another practical advantage: many India-based teams operate in Australian-friendly hours, which shortens close cycles and makes collaboration in daily decision-making smoother than a purely offshore-nightshift model. Modern cloud ERP systems and workflow platforms make it straightforward to centralize data while distributing the work, so the India team can function as an integrated, always-on extension of headquarters. For many firms this means faster reporting cadence, improved controls, and better responsiveness to business needs.

Governance, compliance, and security are no longer blockers

Concerns about compliance, governance, and data security have historically been legitimate reasons to avoid offshore teams. Today, however, many India centers operate under ISO and SOC frameworks and have experience managing multinational statutory and IFRS reporting. Professional services and shared-services providers in India routinely support highly regulated industries, which lowers the bar for building a compliant, secure captive operation that meets corporate and auditor expectations.

An evolutionary, low-risk approach: captive-lite

The decision to build an India finance and accounting center need not be an all-or-nothing bet. A phased “captive-lite” approach — starting with a small team focused on well-defined transactional activities, layered governance and strong onboarding — lets firms de-risk the move. Over 12–24 months, the remit can be broadened to include higher-value services such as FP&A, tax provisioning, and investor reporting as internal control frameworks and culture integration solidify. This staged path preserves control, protects IP, and builds capacity at the firm’s tempo.

Conclusion: control, flexibility, and scalability as a strategic hedge

The combination of (a) rising advertised demand for accounting roles, (b) profession-level evidence of pipeline weakness and below-par vacancy fill rates, and (c) continuing startup funding and ecosystem growth makes a compelling operational case for an owned India finance & accounting center. For Australian firms facing longer hiring, wage inflation, and the need for rapid finance capability after funding or market moves, an India captive provides a way to preserve control, gain flexibility, and scale quickly without accepting the visibility and governance trade-offs of traditional outsourcing.