Leading global consulting and advisory firm PriceWaterHouseCoopers will move its entire software development and services work to India in the next five years.

With this, PwC, which has a $150-200 million infotech budget globally, joins several other multinational firms, including IBM, Accenture, Oracle and Microsoft, wanting to make India their global hub for software development and services.

India, which now handles an insignificant share of PwC's global software requirement, will meet 15-20 per cent of its software development requirement by the end of this financial year.

"PwC India aspires to be the sole back office technology support provider for its parent company in the next five years. This has become one of the focus areas after our merger with IBM," Ambarish Dasgupta, partner, PwC India, told Business Standard on Friday.

Asked about the status of its development centres in other countries, Dasgupta said, "Those will just be the implementation and customisation centres for certain aspects. India will be the only development and service centre for PwC globally."

PwC is also expanding its development centres in India. The company, which has about 200 software professionals in India, will be increasing headcount by 50-60 per cent every year for the next few years.

"We are targeting a 75 per cent growth in revenue, and for this we need a manpower growth of 50-60 per cent," Dasgupta pointed out.

PwC also expects its technology consulting business to generate about $10-12 million in revenue.

The company, which sold its technology consulting business to IBM, is free to undertake work with domestic and international mid-sized firms, with revenues of less than $300 million, as per its agreement with the Big Blue. "This gives us a market access to almost 80 per cent of Indian companies," Dasgupta said.