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Finance
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7 mins
When Rohan Mehra started his Chartered Accountant firm in Ahmedabad in 2012, he imagined a future filled with expanding ledgers, bustling client meetings, and weekends spent balancing books. For nearly a decade, his firm managed everything from GST filings and bank reconciliations to payroll processing and statutory audits. Work was abundant. Deadlines were stressful but predictable. Growth seemed linear.
However, in 2025, Rohan faces a different reality. Not because clients have vanished, but because the nature of work itself is shifting. Many tasks that were once the bread and butter of CA firms are being rapidly automated.
Rohan's journey is not unique. Today, India is home to approximately 98,967 registered CA firms, a number that reflects the vast footprint Chartered Accountants have across the country. Nearly 75,000 of these are sole proprietorships, often operating from modest offices or even home setups. The remainder are partnerships and LLPs clustered in metro cities and business hubs.
These firms have traditionally been the backbone of financial and compliance services, handling everything from tax filings and bookkeeping to audit certifications and secretarial work. Across these firms, an estimated over 2 lakh people find employment as article clerks, junior accountants, audit assistants, and administrative staff.
Yet, with automation taking over basic accounting tasks, close to 60 percent of these roles, particularly those involving manual data entry and compliance filing, are now at risk of becoming obsolete unless firms rapidly reposition their workforce.
Rohan remembers a time when filing tax returns meant late nights with mountains of paperwork. Today, across global markets, the accounting profession is witnessing a technological transformation. What was once an industry reliant on manual bookkeeping, physical files, and repetitive compliance checklists is now embracing intelligent automation.
Basic transaction coding, invoice management, reconciliations, and statutory filings are increasingly being handled by AI based systems. These AI systems not only work faster but often catch discrepancies human eyes might miss. In India too, traditional ways of working are giving way to real time accounting, continuous audits, and predictive compliance.
Firms that once prided themselves on their ability to manually reconcile bank statements are now realizing that the game has changed forever.
The story of CA firms today is a lot like the journey of milk. Milk by itself is essential, but widely available and cheap. Turn milk into yogurt, and you create a product that is slightly more valuable because it requires processing. But if you refine it further into cheese, you get something that commands a premium, prized for its rarity, complexity, and flavor.
In accounting, bookkeeping is the milk, necessary but commoditized. Compliance advisory, like yogurt, requires some refinement and carries higher value but is increasingly common. Business advisory, virtual CFO services, forensic audits, and strategic consulting are the cheese, rare, high margin offerings that businesses truly value.
Rohan realized that staying focused on milk would trap him in a race to the bottom. It was time to create cheese.
Rohan began exploring higher order tasks that could differentiate his firm. He invested time into learning about cash flow advisory and strategic planning. He attended workshops on valuations and mergers and acquisitions consulting. His team started offering risk advisory and internal control reviews.
He noticed that clients were more willing to pay for advice that helped them grow, rather than services that merely helped them stay compliant. A CA charging INR 3,000 per month for GST returns could instead charge INR 30,000 per month for full cash flow planning and strategic CFO advisory.
However, they could only move upstream if the low value tasks were off their plate. Automation was no longer optional, it was a necessary lever for growth.
The Indian SME sector is booming. According to NASSCOM, over 60 million SMEs contribute nearly 30 percent of India's GDP. These businesses require smart financial advice but are increasingly intolerant of slow manual services.
They demand real time insights, predictive cash flows, and instant compliance updates. If CA firms do not evolve, clients will migrate to those who offer more strategic value.
Six months ago, Rohan made one of the most critical decisions for his firm. He adopted AI Accountant.
In the Indian context, if you are a business today, there is a high probability that you maintain your books on either Tally or Zoho Books. Despite the ubiquity of these systems, businesses have long struggled with the manual effort needed to update them from bank statements, credit card payments, and offline receipts.
It bridged a longstanding operational pain point, ensuring that financial ledgers were updated in near real time without the need for manual intervention. In addition to reconciliation, AI Accountant flagged hidden charges, highlighted anomalies, and generated real time dashboards that tracked his clients' revenue, cash flow, profit trends, and outstanding receivables.
Today, rather than preparing MIS reports, Rohan's staff interprets them. Instead of filing returns, they advise clients on tax saving strategies months in advance. Rather than managing checklists, they manage client growth plans.
"I spend less time chasing data and more time chasing opportunities for my clients," Rohan says. "The nature of our conversations has changed. They no longer ask me 'Is my GST filed' They ask 'Can you help me grow my margins'"
In the age of AI, CA firms will not only survive, they wil thrive. They will transform into what businesses always needed but could not afford.
Strategic, accessible, forward looking partners.
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