Ladies and gentlemen, good day and welcome to NIIT Limited Q1 FY 2026 Digital Earnings Conference Call. As a reminder, all participant lines will be in the listen-only mode, and there will be an opportunity for you to ask questions after the presentation concludes. Should you need assistance during this conference call, please signal an operator by pressing star, then zero on your touch-tone phone. Please note that this conference is being recorded. On our hands, the conference opens to Vijay Thadani, Vice Chairman and Joint Managing Director. Thank you and over to you, sir.
Thank you. Good afternoon, everyone. Thank you very much for your continued interest in NIIT Limited and joining us today in the middle of a busy results season. We hope all fine at your end. My purpose of this call was for us, our management team, to provide you an update on our quarter one results for the years 2025, 2026. Also from specific developments in terms of inorganic activity and also the way forward. I have with me Pankaj Jathar, who's the CEO of the company, Sanjeev Bansal, who's the CFO, Kapil Saurabh, who manages M&A and Investor Relations, the whole team, the Head of HR Technology, and we also have some of our Directors. Sapnesh Lalla is here, who's the Non-Executive Director, and Rajendra Pawar, who will be joining us, and the third founder, Mr. Rajendran, who is joining us from Asia.
To make sure that we can answer all your questions and give you a correct brief of the situation, I'll just set the context briefly, and then after that, Pankaj will take us through the details, and then I'll step in whenever required. To start with, I think it would be safe to say that we have all experienced some really unprecedented times with a very high level of uncertainty, economic volatility, and geopolitical turmoil over the last few months. With this background, let me begin by acknowledging that our organic performance this quarter does not meet our own expectations. In fact, we fell short of our guidance both in terms of revenue growth as well as margins. That said, it's important to analyze, therefore, what happened and where did our analysis go?
There was one part which was from deliberate actions that we took, and the second, we could not foresee, and it happened to us. More importantly, the efforts that we have made to remain confident in the direction that we are headed in, and I think we are starting this call with that, these questions. It's important to note that during the quarter, in addition to the organic activity, we consummated two inorganic transactions, acquisition of 70% stake in iamneo . Very interesting AI powered. They are our deep skilling SaaS platform, which adds a new capability, a new market segment, a new experience, to NIIT. The second was the purchase of the stake of ICICI Bank in our joint venture, NIIT Institute of Finance Banking and Insurance Limited, thus making that a wholly owned subsidiary.
I'll invite Pankaj to walk us through the quarter's performance, and then we'll step in and discuss the more organic activity around. Over to you, Pankaj.
Thank you, Vijay. Good afternoon to everyone. Thank you for joining us today for our Quarter One FY 2026 Earnings Call. I echo Vijay's sentiment that we fell short of our guidance both in terms of revenue growth as well as margins. Let me first talk about what impacted the Q1 performance. As we start, I want to highlight that Q1 is a seasonally brief quarter for the business. Also, the results include the impact of iamneo acquisition and the IFBI transactions, which have been consolidated from April 17 and June 11, respectively. Let me talk about revenue. Revenue for quarter one was INR 841 million, up 2% year- on-y ear, and down 3% quarter- on- quarter. iamne o financials are consolidated from April 17. The above includes INR 52 million in revenue contributed by iamneo .
Excluding the same, the organic business declined by 4% year-o n- year and by 9% quarter- on- quarter. EBITDA was negative INR 63 million. While we had stated EBITDA will be negative this quarter, this includes the impact of the lower revenue and the planned investment. The business continued on its planned course of investment, which delivered an improved order flow but did not benefit revenue or EBITDA. Depreciation was INR 67 million, versus INR 59 million last quarter and INR 56 million last year. This includes the impacts of the new acquisition. Net other income was INR 179 million as compared to INR 221 million last quarter and INR 155 million last year, primarily comprising of treasury income. Profit after tax for the quarter was INR 44 million as compared to INR 131 million last quarter and INR 78 million last year.
Earnings per share was INR 0.32 per unit asset. Excluding the impacts of inorganic transactions, tax was roughly similar to last year. Based on strong feedback from some of you, we will be sharing additional metrics. These are order intake, and we will also give you a split of the enterprise and consumer business. The order intake in Q1 was INR 1,065 million as compared to INR 778 million last year and INR 742 million last quarter, reflecting early impact of our investment. In terms of business mix, enterprise business contributed to INR 574 million in revenue this quarter and was up 7% year- on- year. The consumer business contributed the balance INR 267 million, which was down 8% quarter- on- quarter. The business mix was 68%- 32% in favor of the enterprise business in quarter one, versus 65%- 35% last year.
In terms of product mix, revenue from technology programs was INR 587 million, up 7% year- on- year, while revenue from BFSI and other programs was INR 254 million, down 9% year- on- year. The technology to BFSI ratio was 70- 30, versus 66- 34 last year. Running through some balance sheet numbers, the balance sheet metrics remain strong. DSO days were at 53 days, in line with the 54 days last year and 51 days last quarter. We are slightly up quarter- on- quarter due to seasonal, consistent with the investment cycle the company is in. CapEx for the quarter was INR 81 million. Cash and equivalents at the end of the quarter were at INR 7,115 million, versus INR 7,580 million in Q4 last year and INR 7,185 million last year's quarter one. Employee headcount at the end of the quarter was 885.
This includes 151 employees from iamneo . Our Q1 performance was weighed down by several external and transitory factors. Global system integrators, GSI, are once again experiencing discretionary spending churn and a slowdown in decision-making cycles. This prolonged uncertainty directly affected hiring, onboarding, and training volume, which is in sharp contrast to the pickup we had anticipated earlier in the year. In parallel, the banking sector saw a clear pivot to a risk-off stance. Elevated credit deposit ratios, rising strength in retail loan portfolios, and lower attrition levels prompted several banks to reassess and defer hiring plans, which in turn impacted committed and planned onboarding programs. These dynamics resulted in sudden and deep reduction in training spend, creating a double whammy across GSIs and MACs, significantly impacting our early career skilling and enterprise training volume.
We witnessed delays in order intake and uncertainty leading to execution slippages across early career and workflow learning programs, resulting in significantly lower training volume compared to our plans, affecting the utilization in ways we could not foresee and act on. The geopolitical conflict in the region had a direct, though localized, impact during a two-week period in May. The situation led to cancellation of certain planned training batches and delays in the commencement of others. Beyond the immediate disruption, the heightened tension contributed to a distracted decision-making environment, further affecting onboarding and program execution. Some of these effects extended into the following weeks, creating a cascading impact on training volumes for the quarter and consequent impact on utilization. On the margin front, performance was impacted by planned front-loaded investments in AI and also in the go-to-market GTM engine . People platform product partnerships have not attained their market.
We have invested in all of these across both enterprise and consumer business. Transaction-related and integration-related expenses tied to our recent inorganic growth actions. Yet certain transitionary expenses as we took advantage of the environment to fine-tune operations. Lowered reflection addictions arising from order delays and onboarding vessels below the planned capacity leading to negative operating leverage. An update on our strategic actions and progress on those. Despite these headwinds, this was also a quarter of purposeful execution and strategic build-out. We laid down strong foundations for building momentum in our business. Let me highlight a few key developments. As noted earlier, we accelerated GTM investment, conducted senior leadership, expanded our sales team, and increased brand visibility through targeted marketing and influencer campaigns.
On the technology front, we revamped our learning platform, introduced deep skilling programs in new age technologies, and integrated agentic AI tools to enhance learner outcomes and internal productivity. We expanded our offerings to include generative and agentic AI, AI and digital coaching for banks and enterprises, and solutions tailored for sectors like Auto, Telecom, and Consumer Electronics. OEM partnerships now stand at 35, further strengthening our partner and solution ecosystem. We completed the acquisition of iamne o, which brings an AI-led SaaS platform for deep skilling and personalized learning capabilities, and adds universities and colleges as a new channel. A strong strategic fit with clear synergies already in place. We also acquired the remaining 19% in IFBI from ICICI Bank, simplifying our structure and improving our agility to address the BFSI sector. Importantly, we are already seeing the early impact of these investments.
We had a material uptick in order intakes in Q1, and the momentum has continued into July, improved digital engagement and showing a stronger pipeline momentum. We signed 10 new logos this quarter across BFSI and our other business segments. Further, despite the headwind, order intake in the enterprise segment was up 35% year- on- year, and overall order intake, which includes iamn eo, was up 37% year- on- year. The road ahead, while the near-term environment remains volatile, our conviction in the medium to long-term opportunity is intact. When we met in the first half of May, our assessments were that the worst of the macro headwinds were likely behind us. However, the external environment turned more adverse than anticipated as the quarter progressed.
Although global tariff pressures and macro uncertainty were known risks, the depth of the slowdown in onboarding across GSIs and BFSIs and the cautious hiring sentiment became more pronounced later in the quarter. This contrasted with the strong intent on hiring we had heard from IT major and consequent expectation on hiring pickup. Also, while the geopolitical conflicts in the region had already occurred earlier in the quarter, its cascading effects continued into the second half, leading to deferred revisions that reduced execution velocity in some programs. At that time, we were also seeing early indicators that the strategic investments we had made in our go-to-market engine, expanded solution offerings, and brand visibility were beginning to show positive traction. Importantly, those investments continue to deliver the intended impact. We've seen progress in areas like order intake, new logo wins, digital engagement, and customer pipeline.
All of this validates the strategic choices we made. The momentum has continued into Q2. Early indicators, stronger order intake in July, shows that our investments are causing an uptick in key metrics. In spite of the uncertainty, we remain confident in delivering sequential growth in Q2 and a steady progression through the year. As a result, the growth momentum we had expected to convert in Q1 has now shifted out into Q2. The strategic momentum remains intact, but the realization of outcomes has been delayed by a quarter and is coming at a higher than originally anticipated negative impact this quarter. We expect strong sequential growth in Q2, driven by improving order flow driven by our GTM investment, which has created a stronger pipeline, better execution velocity, and greater utilization of delivery capacity.
However, given the Q1 dates, our full year-on-year growth is now expected to be lower than our original guidance. That said, we firmly believe Q2 will mark the beginning of a gradual and sustained recovery. Our investments in GTM, portfolio expansion, and technology are starting to yield results. The market's structural need for advanced next-generation skilling, particularly in AI, digital, and domain-led learning, remains global. We are well positioned to solve this demand. We continue to work on the inorganic growth mandates driven by the board. Now, coming to our guidance, the current environment continues to be marked by significant volatility and uncertainty. Despite this, based on a strong order inflow in Q1 and July, we expect Q2 revenue growth in the range of 13%- 15%. As we continue to invest in strategic initiatives, margins for Q2 are expected to remain negative, marginally negative.
For the full year, we project revenue growth of 15%- 20%, contingent on macroeconomic conditions not becoming worse than they are. Given the fluid external environment, we will reassess and update our guidance on a quarterly basis. Medium to long term, we continue to see a significant opportunity ahead and remain fully committed to delivering on our long-term strategic objectives. I need to reiterate, NIIT has a strong and trusted brand. A differentiated deep skilling methodology delivers over a scalable AI-powered delivery platform with proven outcomes. We have 200+ active corporate partnerships, customers with revenues greater than 90% from repeat customer orders. We have 35 OEM partnerships that give us early access to cutting-edge technology. Strong balance sheets to continue investments in innovation and growth. Significant business transformation cycles ahead, which would create demand for specialized talent. We are well poised to take advantage of that demand.
The focused entity enables us to be nimble and detailed to address this market. We will continue to look for opportunities for both organic and inorganic growth. We completed these in April of a young, fast-growing, profitable, and innovative company. I will invite Vijay back to provide us an update on iamn eo.
Thanks, Pankaj. I'll just give a brief, I think you've all been through the releases that we made on strategic acquisition of iamn eo. We bought a 70% stake in iamn eo EduTech Private Ltd., a leading provider of deep skilling technology training solutions to a scalable AI-powered SaaS platform. The transaction was approved by NIIT's Board of Directors at a meeting on April 17, and under this agreement, NIIT will acquire the remaining 30% in phases from iamn eo's promoters subject to achievement of agreed financial milestones. iamn eo's founding leadership is continuing in their existing role and continues to drive growth. This strategic acquisition unlocks substantial growth opportunities, enabling NIIT and iamn eo to deliver robust outcome-driven learning solutions at scale for undergraduates and early career professionals through universities, as well as corporates.
The initial transaction value, that is 70% stake, was INR 609 million, which included INR 100 million primary issuance and INR 509 million in secondary purchase subject to closing adjustments and co-ops. NIIT will acquire the remaining 30% in phases from FY2025 to 2030, linked to defined performance milestones. The transaction is expected to be growth, margin, and EPS accretive from the very first year. We are very excited about this achievement and warmly welcome iamn eo's team, founders, and their full family to the NIIT family. iamn eo's innovative solutions significantly enhance our capability to deliver impactful digital transformation curricula at scale. I think we've got goings from the world goals, from submitting papers, and I think we are doing some exciting things together. The second transaction is the purchase of a stake of ICICI Bank in our joint venture, NIIT Institute of Finance Banking & Insurance.
In June, NIIT purchased 19.28%, 18.7% from ICICI, and 0.49% from certain individuals. In IFBI from ICICI Bank and individual shareholders at a consideration of INR 62.7 million. Consequent to this, IFBI is now a 100% subsidiary of NIIT Limited. This transaction enables simplification of operating structure and increase in speed and agility in decision-making and expansion of scope substantially beyond banks in the BFSI industry. Though it was a challenging quarter like Pankaj shared, it was also a building quarter. We believe that the strategic levers we have activated in quarter one are setting the stage for a stronger performance in the coming quarter. We are confident that the groundwork we have laid may translate into both growth and acceleration, as well as margin improvement as we go on.
I would like to now open it for questions- and- answers, our questions, so that we and our full management team here with you have the time. Over to you. Thank you very much.
We'll now begin the question- and- answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may press star and one on their touch-tone telephone. If you wish to remove yourself from the question queue, you may press star and two. Participants are requested to use handsets while asking a question. Ladies and gentlemen, we will wait for a moment while the question queue assembles. Participants, you may press star and one to ask a question. Ladies and gentlemen, you may press star and one to ask a question.
While people are figuring out their questions and are digesting what we have just shared, let me ask Pankaj to use this time to talk a little bit about our AI initiatives and how we are leveraging AI to build a very strong competitive edge in the markets that we operate in. I will also tell Sapnesh, as Sapnesh, in fact, has talked about this on other platforms, to supplement what Pankaj covered.
Thanks, Vijay. We've already shared with you that our business is on the enterprise and consumer side. I'll talk about our AI initiatives along those lines. On the enterprise side, we are working with a number of customers where we are helping them understand how they can leverage AI in their business. We are training management teams and leadership teams on better utilization of AI internally, and then training organizations on productivity improvements using AI. We have built training programs along these lines. We have also built some tools which companies can use as a sandbox for practicing or understanding how they can utilize AI. That's on the enterprise side, external training. On the consumer side, we have incorporated training programs as part of products that we sell directly to consumers, and they can skill themselves on how to use AI in their career and business.
On the third dimension, we are also using AI internally for NIITians to become more productive. We are using it very specifically in our code-sware creation processes and in our program creation to improve our productivity cycle. I would love Sapnesh to talk to us a little bit more on what the NIIT ecosystem is doing with AI.
Thanks. Thanks, Pankaj. I think AI is fundamentally changing how a number of jobs get done, and this change is going to be rapid, and it's going to be changed, the change is going to be quite fundamental. As Pankaj talked about, we train on or educate folks on a number of different job roles. For example, programmers or QA engineers or bank relationship managers or wealth managers across the two key market segments we service. It's not that programming will go away, but how programming gets done will change dramatically. Programmers will be able to use AI to become significantly more efficient in their ability to build applications. I think, as we saw when digital transformation took place, they will be able to create applications that are not possible to be created today. Our endeavor would be to enable that.
From the point of view of our customers, their endeavor would be to make sure that their talent does not get left behind. Because if it gets left behind, they would not be relevant. I think our opportunity, with respect to technology-related training and likewise with respect to banking and other market segments that we service, is to be able to reimagine the way a job is going to be done and be able to educate our constituents on how to be able to do that job using AI so that they are significantly more efficient and they are able to imagine their product using AI in a way that's significantly better than what they could imagine in the past. I think that's going to be a real key differentiator.
For example, if we are able to enable a programmer to imagine applications that they have never dreamt of before, applications that can change the way a corporation works or change the way it produces products or changes the way it automates business or changes the way it services its customers, that will enable the organization to become significantly more competitive. The same goes for banks. The same goes for automotive companies that we serve. The same goes for telecom companies that we serve. Our goal would be to enable talent so that they can reimagine how they can do their jobs. It can make them more impactful, to get them to imagine the world in a different way. That's really what we're trying to do. I think we are making more progress than at least our competitors are.
Right.
Operator, are there any questions?
We but we don't have any other questions here at present. Ladies and gentlemen, you may press star and one to ask a question. The first question will be from [Ganesh Shetty] an Individual Investor. Please go ahead.
Good evening, sir. My question is regarding gNIIT, which you have launched in a renewed way. With the acquisition of iamn eo, can we be able to cross-sell this product into universities? There is a lot of marketing expenditure which you have done to launch this gNIIT. Can you please tell me the response of the quote in the market and the road ahead for this particular quarter?
Thank you. I think Pankaj will be happy to answer that.
Thank you for the question. You are right. The acquisition of iamn eo creates opportunities for gNIIT to be sold to another sales channel or go-to-market channel in partnership with iamn eo. That is something we are exploring. We are already seeing the encouraging early signs of possibilities there. That synergy is definitely being created. Overall, on the marketing side, you might have seen, we recently launched some advertisements with the gNIIT program. We did this on YouTube and Instagram, and we are seeing the very high engagement of these ads. It is significantly higher than average engagement on both the channels, on YouTube as well as on Instagram. We are seeing elevated traffic to our website after we've launched these ads, right? Definitely seeing a positive response.
While the ads are focused on gNIIT, the response we are seeing is across the board, not just on gNIIT. Customers who are visiting the website are looking at the entire portfolio and engaging with the website accordingly. On both fronts, the partnership with iamn eo, very encouraging early signs. I expect that to help us create more synergy and more opportunities there, since they are the channels. On the marketing front, the campaigns that we've launched, they are showing good early signs of pickup, and we are seeing a higher number of visits and repetitions, both on account of the marketing as well.
Vijay, anything you'd like to add to that?
Time out.
Oh, my.
There is some noise on the line.
Oh, go.
Yeah.
Thank you. Participants, you may press star and one to ask a question. Next question is from the line of Rahul Jain from Dollar Capital. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Hi. Thanks for the opportunity. I just wanted to get some clarity on this order intake data. How one should read it in terms of what is the mix of this across vertical and also the 10 years that typically this may take to get consumed? Any color, insight into it should be appreciated.
Okay. Thanks, Rahul. I think Pankaj and Kapil will together answer this data. Pankaj and Sunesh will together answer this data, providing with this data. Just to let you know, if you are familiar with the part of NIIT, in our other businesses, we also used to use a term called revenue visibility. In this case, these are fixed orders. That means a customer has committed that they would consume an amount of training, which could be in the form of whatever service that we are providing, defining the quantity, defining the rates, defining the period. Based on that, the order intake is considered. Order intake can be over one quarter, two quarters, one year, or many more years. What we do for order intake, and that's our internal norm, we have been using it for a long period of time.
Our internal norm is the word order intake is used to depict orders which will get consumed in the next 12 months whenever the order comes. That is what is, it may be a three-year order, but we will only take that amount which can be consumed over three years or one year, sorry, for the next 12 months. Typical duration of execution of an order will be something which Pankaj will share with you. The second issue which I would like to say is that it's the data which we have been tracking for a long period of time, but we thought instead of confusing everybody with multiple data elements, we had kept it simple to revenue. There was a request coming from many, many quarters, I think including yourself, saying that we need more color and visibility on some of the lead indicators.
The part order intake is a very good indicator of what kind of revenue can one expect in the future. Pankaj, over to you.
Sure. Thanks, Vijay. You've explained what order intake is, and this will complete out what we talked about when it gets consumed. It's very by business division. The OEM training that we do, that kind of order typically gets consumed within a few days or a couple of weeks because that's the duration of training. Some of the other transformation kind of trainings we do, that order goes over weeks and months because that's a different kind of engagement you have with customers and a different kind of training program we do. On the consumer side, the programs like gNIIT are multi-year programs, and there are others like Full Stack Software Engineer, which is a six-month program, or digital marketing, three months. The consumption of the order intake is accordingly over that period of time.
Rahul, just to answer your question, I'll repeat the order intake I mentioned earlier, and I will add a little bit more information there, so that it gives you the color that you're looking for. Order intake in Q1 was INR 1,065 million, as compared to INR 778 million last year. I'll break this up into enterprise and consumer. The order intake for the enterprise business was up 35% at INR 789 million, and order intake for consumer business was up 41% at INR 275 million. We saw a robust uptick on both these fronts for order intake.
Could you just want to clarify that the order intake includes iamn eo?
Yeah. Both of these numbers include iamn eo, since iamn eo came on board on 17th April. This quarter's number includes iamn eo. Even with iamne o aside, we saw a robust uptick in order intake, especially for the enterprise business. I hope that helps, sir.
Yeah, that is clear. Just to clarify further into it, if I look at, you said, around INR 70 crore of this is the enterprise business, and our overall enterprise business is two-thirds, give or take. The runway, from a 12-month executable point of view, is barely for a four-month runway. Are we trying to say a bulk of the enterprise business is also on a short duration book?
Pardon, your question requires refinement. Let me demonstrate my understanding. What you're saying is that the enterprise order intake, do the orders get consumed in a shorter cycle? Is that what you were referring to?
Yeah. What I'm trying to say is that, give or take, our business on the enterprise side is INR 200 crore on runway. Our order intake is INR 70 crore. This is 12-month executable as you defined it. We have a visibility of only four, five months in terms of the enterprise business. That means that deals are signing up pretty short tenure.
This is right. Most of the deals would be of short tenure, between one to three months.
Yes. Most of the orders would be. Deals are long. Yeah. When we work with a customer, we work over a longer duration. For order intake, we will take a specific number order that a customer gives us. The execution of that will be short term, but the engagement with customers is long term. If we are saying selling someone or 2,000 people on Oracle, then the order intake will be by back end month, but the program is for a 2,000-people program over a longer duration.
In this example, you would take the number of people who could be done from a 12-month forward basis into your order intake?
It will depend on the specific work order for execution, right? While the engagement with the organization would be on the larger program, the specific work order that they give us is what we count as order intake, and that will be executed on a shorter duration.
Understood. Order intake is a 12-month book, executable book, but the total also would not be a significantly larger number than this because the tenure itself is smaller.
Yes, to an extent. The nature of our business is also that we will keep getting orders every quarter. It's not a business from what you mentioned. We will build an order book, but we will also be getting new orders every quarter, which we will execute within the quarter also.
Right. In the enrollment data, if you could give data extra of the iamn eo part, what could be the enrollment numbers of the quarter?
You have to give about 200,000 people who want to know. Hey, why I feel the order intake is a better measure. Enrollment was a very good measure when the average ticket price, if I may say, was in and around a particular number. Right now, with the kind of work that we are doing, the ticket price varies at an individual level over a very long, large range. We thought, therefore, order intake is the better measure.
Okay, that I can understand. I'm saying what is the enrollment number because I heard you saying 200,000. I was asking, or 200,000 is the iamn eo part. Is that what you were trying to say?
No, 200,000 is iamn eo part.
Is the iamn eo part? He's asking for the other one.
Total is 270. 270.
270.
If I have to go by that, I understand, as you rightly said, the range for the enrollment would be significantly different. The base number for our organic business was 52,000. Are we saying on the core business, we have seen enrollment done from 52,000- 70,000+ ? Why or why?
Yeah. Actually, we have the data. We can share that with you very easily, but we decided we'll focus on this. If you have the data.
Fair enough. That's it from my side. Thank you.
All right. Thank you. Q1 FY 2025 equals 48,827, and Q1 is 71,000 minus 16,000, is 55,000. It was 48,827, which has now become 55,000 as far as enterprise is concerned. As far as consumer is concerned, it was, but 98 is including iamn eo. You have to remove just because those numbers. We can share that with you. It's not as different as you said it is. We'll give you the exact numbers while we address the other questions.
Thank you very much. Participants, you may press star and one to ask a question. Next follow-up question is from the line of Ganesh Setty, Individual nvestor. Please go ahead.
Hello. Am I audible, sir? Hello. Sir, we are organizing several editions of Digital Architecture or Flows. Whether this is helping us to acquire a few businesses in GCC enterprise segment, sir, or how are we going to respond to that?
Yeah, thank you for asking that question. I think Pankaj will be happy to answer.
This year was the third edition of the Digital Architect Conclave , and we have more than 150 participants representing a number of companies. Most of them represented GSIs and some of them represented GCC. These are practicing digital architects who attend the conference. The way we've positioned the events, it is a community that we have created of digital architects who come together and share ideas with each other. They spend the day there learning about what's the newest thing happening in their space from each other and from speakers who attend the day. In preparation for that, a lot of them actually spend a lot of time to participate in some of the activities we do there. There is a poster competition where digital architects come and share their innovative solutions and how they have solved problems for their customers. A panel selects from that.
As a program, it has been very successful. In terms of downstream business, we have seen, we have actually seen opportunities coming out of last year's digital conference for us, which resulted in direct business as well. It results in our engagement with the digital architect community. It gives us access to knowledge, information, and access to mentors in this space and helps us create that sense of community and belonging among digital architects across the industry. We've based a very premium position for ourselves in this space, and it is serving us very well. Even this year, I expect greater engagement with some of the customers who attended the conference, resulting in future business from them.
Yes, sir. My next question is regarding, in your opening remarks, you have mentioned about building the organization and making it fit for the future. This quarter, we had some high-level recruitment also. Whether this investment phase is going to reduce, I mean, there will be a lesser amount of investment in the future. We can increase our EBITDA margins in the present business. Can you throw some light on this, sir? The investment will continue in the same space? Please, I require reverse clarification of this.
No, it is. We are investing in building the retail side of the business, and investments in that space will continue for at least the next four to eight quarters, right? That kind of a business needs the flywheel to go faster before it generates its own momentum. We will need to put that effort to build the retail side of the business and, of course, rebuild the organization overall as well. Some of the investments will come down very soon, but some investments will have to continue. Investments, especially in building content, building course materials, and building the retail business, will continue for some time. Yes, as a company, we will see some of the changes happening over the next few quarters.
Thank you, sir. That's all for all the time.
Thank you .
Rahul, while there is support, let me give you the data that you were asking for. In Q1 FY 2025, we had 52,630. In Q1 FY 2026, we have had 56,883. Both these numbers are without iamn eo.
Thank you very much. Participants, you may press star and one to ask a question. Next question is from the line of Balkarishna Mundra from Mundra Investments. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Hi. This question is for Mr. Pankaj Jathar. We have given a revised guidance of 15 to 20%. I want to know what will be the organic and the inorganic guidance for that because I think that guidance also includes the iamn eo one. I want to understand what is the core organic growth guidance and what is the iamn eo guidance, if you can specify that to us.
The guidance you've given, I think, pointed out does include the inorganic as well. This is how Pankaj is referring to our numbers overall. If I were to squeeze it out, then the organic guidance would be between 5%- 10% per month, and added on top of that would be the inorganic.
Okay.
The 25% of guidance would also include iamn eo.
Yeah, that's the given. Given at that time.
Oh, okay. Thank you. Thank you.
Thank you. Participants, you may press star and one to ask a question. Ladies and gentlemen, you may press star and one to ask a question. As there are no further questions, I'll now hand the conference to the management for closing comments.
Thank you very much. Thank you very much, everyone, for joining the call and for your questions. As usual, your questions open new windows in our own mind and help us sharpen our strategy as we go forward. We did acknowledge that the results fell short of our own expectations, but we are confident, with our very strong order book intake as well as additions in the families like iamn eo, that we would be on this growth path. It's like what we were expecting to see from last quarter would now start seeing, we start seeing from the next quarter. Pankaj has given a guidance. Of course, that assumes that the environment remains the way it is and hopefully improves a little bit and does not give us any more unpleasant surprises. Thank you very much for your continued interest as well as guidance.
We look forward to interacting with you in person. Having mentioned that, we are in Mumbai on Monday morning. Monday, we are spending time with both of you in the country. We'll be very happy to organize one-on-one or group meetings to answer any further questions. Thank you for your continued interest. All the best.
Thank you.
Thank you very much. On behalf of NIIT Limited, that concludes this conference. Thank you for joining us, and you may now disconnect your lines. Thank you.