EY buys pune-based digital design company FCUX

23/12/2018

PUNE (MUMBAI): Ernst & Young has acquired Fortune Cookie UX Design, a Pune-headquartered digital consulting and user experience (UX) design firm, to add a diverse set of digital capabilities to its service line at a time when many clients seek digital transformation. The two companies confirmed the deal on Thursday without revealing the valuation or financial details. 

“Over the past two years, we have collaborated with FCUX Design in the implementation of several digital transformation engagements and have benefitted immensely from this association,” said Mahesh Makhija, emerging technology and digital leader at EY India. “The integration comes at a crucial time as clients are becoming increasingly digital and looking for innovative solutions to better engage their customers and accelerate business performance,” he said. 

With this, EY inducts capabilities such as design thinking, UX design, usability and building user-centric digital ecosystems. Demand for such digitisation services from leading Indian companies and the government has been on the rise in the last couple of years, industry trackers said.  Founded in 2008 by Shashank Shwet, Vidhika Rohatgi and Sonam Agarwal, Fortune Cookie UX Design currently employs about 75 people. “Empathy and design thinking is an important tool that businesses require to address digital disruption,” Shwet said. 

The acquisition comes at a time when most of the Big Four – Deloitte, PwC, KPMG and EY - are vying for opportunities in new age technologies like blockchain, artificial intelligence, big data and robotics.

Sources within EY said the firm is looking for more acquisitions in the digital space to fill in the gaps in its digital service bouquet. At present, there are over 2,200 digital and technology professionals working at EY India. It plans to hire another 2,000 professionals with diverse capabilities over the next three years, the firm said.