In 2022, accounting firm Ernst & Young decided to split its auditing and consulting businesses to avoid conflict of interest, in a move that reignited an age- old debate on whether it is ethical for accounting firms to offer both consulting and auditing services.
For a long, accounting firms have come under fire for conflicts of interest due to these companies conducting both audits and consulting work for the same or related companies. These conflicts often result in a breach of fiduciary duties, corporate misstatements, and sometimes even fraud.
Two former KPMG employees Jamil Khatri and Sandip Khetan pondered over the same dilemma and decided to build a consultancy firm that allows them to advise companies without any bias.
In January 2023, the duo established Uniqus Consultech, a consulting firm that provides consultancy services related to environmental, social, and governance (ESG) and accounting. The team consciously decided to not include auditing in their host of services.
“We are a pure play consultancy. This allows us to do the end-to-end implementation and consulting work for our clients without worrying about conflicts of interest,” Jamil, Co-founder of Uniqus told YourStory Gulf.
While the team is spread across the world, the company is incorporated in Delaware, United States. It also has a clientele spread across the Middle East, the United States and India.
Uniqus also wants consultancy to be driven by technology.
“Historically, the consultancy has involved very little technology. But we want to change this. We can help companies embed technology and automation in all elements of the finance function such as automating the consolidation of financial statements, consolidating data and more,” said Sandip, co- founder of Uniqus.
Uniqus raised $12.5 million in a Series A round from Nexus Venture Partners, Delhivery, Postman, Zepto, Turtlemint, and others. During the same time, it acquired Indian ESG consulting firm SustainPlus and onboarded Anu Chaudhary, Founder and CEO of SustainPlus, as the Global Head of ESG in Uniqus.
Source: Yourstory Gulf Edition
