IPG is reportedly in talks to sell off its R/GA business to Indian IT services giant, Tata Consultancy Services (TCS).

According to a fresh report in the Wall Street Journal, Interpublic Group is in discussions to offload the digital marketing agency to the IT consulting giant, with the asking sale price rumoured at about US$300 million. R/GA's client list includes Google Android, Fujitsu, United Colours of Benetton, Verizon and Nike.

The deal would be yet another weighty move by a consulting giant to extend its tentacles into the marketing and media ecosystem through an initial digital agency play. Other consulting groups such as Accenture and Deloitte began in a similar fashion but have gone even further, purchasing creative agencies, martech integrators and other forms of specialist player in order to create the full ecosystem of agency, digital, IT and CX services required by brands under one roof.

For instance, in 2022, Deloitte Digital picked up three specialist firms in martech and CX - Venntifact, Blended Digital and New Republique - in 2022 but also bought creative agency, Heat. Accenture meanwhile, has picked up a raft of digital agencies and locally owns both martech player, The Lumery, as well as creative agencies, Droga5 plus The Monkeys and Maud.As noted by WSJ, TCS has already started making moves into the digital and broader advertising agency space, appointing former Droga5 CEO, Andrew Essex, as senior managing partner of TCS Interactive last year.

According to the WSJ report, the two companies haven't yet agreed on a valuation for R/GA. Neither company has provided comment on the rumour.

R/GA became part of IPG in 2001 and has been suffering its way through several difficult years, laying off 15 per cent of staff in the US last year, according to several reports. WSJ also said R/GA had been hampered by executive turnover, client losses and a pullback in ad spending by tech clients, which has also crimped the broader agency business. It had revenue of about US$200 million last year, down roughly 20% from a year earlier, according to people familiar with its performance.

TCS reported about US$29.7bn in revenue for the fiscal year ended March 2023, with a full-year order book value of $34.1bn. The group has 614,795 employees globally.