At EY India, silence says it all.

No public announcements. No farewell parties, either. Just senior partners vanishing from the consulting giant’s most-prized divisions. In recent months, some of its longest-serving tech leaders have departed—taking teams, clients, and decades of institutional memory with them.

Officially, it’s business as usual. But beneath it all, EY’s most valuable engine—technology consulting—is beginning to sputter: its profit margins, which typically hover around 27–30%, have slipped to 21% in FY25, per multiple people in the company.

So it went with Mazhar Khan, a 24-year tech-consulting veteran and founding member of EY’s SAP practiceFocuses on helping organisations leverage SAP solutions, who defected to rival Deloitte in July 2024. Burgess Cooper, a cyber-security stalwart, decamped to Adani Enterprises earlier in 2025. Then, Gautam Bhattacharya—the face of EY’s data-analytics practice for 15 years—left in June. On 22 July, Bhattacharya joined rival KPMG as partner and head of technology consulting, where he will lead the India division’s digital-transformation and analytics business, the company confirmed to The Ken.

Individually, none of these resignations caused much alarm. Yet collectively, they hint at a pattern—which looks a lot like some of the company’s most valuable people walking out. And that EY’s technology-consulting division, which contributed a third of the firm’s Rs 13,400 crore India revenue in FY25, is haemorrhaging talent.

“Technology is the biggest growth driver for the Big Four,” said Prashant Yadav, partner and lead for technology and professional services at Amrop India, an executive-search and leadership-advisory firm. “It now accounts for over 60% of their advisory business on average and is expected to keep growing. It also generates the highest revenue per partner.

This high-stakes segment also makes it a musical-chairs game, with generous offers, poaching, and entire client accounts moving with the music.

EY, for its part, insists this is fine. “Attrition is normal within the Big Four, and can be healthy. It has not impacted our business,” a company spokesperson told The Ken. “In fact, we have recruited more than we lost.”

But beneath all this lies the messier story: one about partners frustrated with EY’s top management, which rules with an iron fist.