Global consulting firm McKinsey & Company has beefed up its Digital division in Europe with the acquisition of IncepTech, a Hungarian company that develops digital products and businesses.
The acquisition is McKinsey’s first in Europe since it acquired Swedish sustainability consultancy Material Economics late 2021 and UK-based Vivid Economics in the first quarter of that year. Outside of Europe, however, the firm has focused its acquisitions on its digital capabilities, with Hypothesis in Australia and Candid Partners in the US the two most recent additions to McKinsey Digital.
The bolt-on of IncepTech adds a team of 60+ digital consultants, product engineers and software architects in Budapest to McKinsey Digital.
Paul Jenkins, a senior partner and head of McKinsey Digital in Europe, said on the deal: “With IncepTech’s technology leadership and deep engineering skills, we can significantly grow what we are already doing: mobilising small, highly-skilled teams to help clients build digital products, channels, and businesses.”
Founded by a group of former McKinsey & Company alumni, IncepTech specialises in software engineering, digital expertise, and technology. The firm takes a different approach to the traditional technology houses, said Gyorgy Buslig, who founded IncepTech in 2014.
“When we first started our firm,” said Buslig, “we wanted to create a culture that merged the worlds of technology and business. It’s not just consultants and engineers who work together – but engineers who want to be digital business leaders, and business consultants who love this world of technology, and want to understand the inner workings of all things.”
In 2019 two former McKinsey consultants – Daniel Schay and Aron Antal – joined IncepTech as a partner, further intensifying the ties between the two firms. Over the past years, the pair worked together on several projects such as “helping a fast-growing real estate agency build a digital-service ecosystem to increase earnings, and working with an expedition cruise company to develop their digital distribution platforms for travel agents and customers,” said Buslig.
Now part of McKinsey Digital (terms and conditions of the deal have not been disclosed), “our teams will be 100 percent integrated from the start. This will provide us the opportunity to work on some of the most intriguing digital challenges today,” stated Buslig.
McKinsey Digital studio
The new team in Budapest will form the core of a new studio, becoming the fourth McKinsey Digital studio in Europe. Across its studios in London, Berlin, Budapest and Stockholm, McKinsey Digital has 500+ digital, technology, design, and analytics experts.
“In our studios, which are McKinsey Digital expert communities, cross-functional teams help clients solve their hardest, make-or-break challenges, often on very tight timelines, working in a fast and agile way,” explained Chris Smith, a McKinsey partner in London who helps lead the McKinsey Digital studio network in Europe.
Sourced from Consultancy.eu