Pros
- In terms of career prospect, it’s definitely a good platform to start your career. For Finance / CFA students, it will be good to begin a career in investment banking / commercial lending / PE verticals (means the end client for Acuity are from these verticals). There are couple of good verticals within Corporate & Consulting division. However within this C&C, there are few idiotic jobs which are basic Google and other secondary research stuff (in corporate terms – “BIS – Business Information Services” or "Rapid Research"). Please avoid joining such teams. - In terms of remuneration, Acuity does a decent job, at par (or better) with the industry (Outsourcing / Offshoring industry). Previously they used to have bi-annual appraisal (came through the legacy Copal Partners; turned Copal Amba; turned Copal Amba, a Moody’s Analytics unit; turned MAKS), but now they have a single annual appraisal, which is the most practiced scenario across sectors and companies. - They do a lot of CSR activities, that's simply great!
Cons
- Acuity (erstwhile Moody’s Analytics Knowledge Services – MAKS) was earlier a sub-unit under Moody’s Analytics (the analytics arm of Moody’s Corp., the other being the Moody’s Investor Services that cater to the rating business). Post management buy-out with participation from Equistone Partners Europe, the organization was re-branded as Acuity Knowledge Partners. - It operates in the Outsourcing / Offshoring space, and it works with numerous clients from different business verticals, to name a few – investment banks, PE firms, asset managers, consulting firms, other corporate houses etc. And if I am very honest – what Acuity does for these clients are the “low hanging fruit” jobs. To elaborate it – all these clients (I-banks, PE firms etc. as I mentioned above) have certain low-value (as in they don’t require very specific or niche skill sets) tasks, they outsource such activities to Acuity (and similar other firms like EValueserve, Aranca, Genpact, Cians Analytics etc.) due to low-cost advantage. If you notice the offices (delivery centres, not sales or representative offices) of these companies, they are predominantly based in developing countries, where labour wage rate is cheap (India, Sri Lanka, Philippines, Argentina, Costa Rica etc.), but there is huge section of skilled labours. These firms operate in low margins (as you can understand, for a low value job, you cannot charge a premium from the clients). So the basic business model is to produce more hours of work (eg. FTE basis– full time employee based model) with thin margin. As a consequence, the internal work culture is not quite open, and it is often stretched. You generally will not find a great work culture, as the outsourcing firms are fighting with each other for every dollar for a low value job. - Talking about the culture – when Copal Partners was founded as a pure Outsourcing company model – the culture was simple in a way. Tons and tons of work, and no life (however work-life balance can be relative). That legacy still continues as there are certain people (now part of Senior Management) who believes in such an environment (and why not, they have grown from there, so should be the following generations…:)). Some of these senior people left the company and joined a UK-based lending company Oak North (it has a similar delivery center in Gurugram). This Oak North is founded by the same two entrepreneurs who created Copal. So you’ll kind of find a similar work culture (non-transparent, behind the door policies, stretched work culture, a bureaucratic feeling etc.) in Oak North too. But off the late, Acuity is trying to revive its image in a positive way. Things are much brighter now, in terms of work environment, HR policies, ethical practices etc. But that feeling of Outsourcing / Offshoring model is still there. And I am sure, you’ll understand, the Outsourcing / Offshoring space still works on the “low hanging fruit” job. So the overall culture of the company is still in a stinking state.