Ladies and gentlemen, good day and welcome to the Zensar Technologies Q2 FY26 earnings conference call, hosted by Motilal Oswal Financial Services Limited. 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 the conference call, please signal an operator by pressing star and then zero on your touch-tone phone. Please note that this conference is being recorded. I now hand the conference over to Mr. Kaval Bhargava from Motilal Oswal. Thank you, and over to you, sir.
Thank you. Good evening, everyone. On behalf of Motilal Oswal Financial Services Limited, I welcome you all to the Zensar Technologies Q2 FY26 earnings call. We have with us Mr. Manish Tandon, CEO and Managing Director, Mr. Pulkit Bhandari, Chief Financial Officer, and a few other members of the senior management team. Before I hand over the call to Manish, I would like to highlight that the safe harbor statement on the second slide of the earnings presentation is assumed to be read and understood. Over to you, sir.
Thank you, Kaval. Hello, good morning, good afternoon, good evening, everyone. Thank you for joining this call on a late Friday evening. Besides Pulkit and Vijay that Kaval mentioned, we also have Vivek Ranjan, our Chief People Officer, also on this call. This quarter, Zensar Technologies delivered steady revenue and margin growth through disciplined execution and a sharp focus on capability building. We continue to scale our AI talent and deepen our commitment to delivering meaningful experiences for our clients. We are proud to announce the launch of the Zensai platform, our next-generation platform designed to elevate how we deliver on our core value proposition of experience, engineering, and engagement. In a first-of-its-kind example, we have updated our website, zensar.com, to showcase our AI-led transformation. I would encourage you to visit our AI chatbot on that website.
These milestones reflect our drive to deliver secure, personalized, and enduring value to our clients. Our strategy remains clear: client-centricity, adapt to global shifts, and lead with AI. Moving towards our quarter performance, for Q2 FY2026, Zensar Technologies reported revenues of $162.8 million, a year-over-year growth of 4.2% in reported currency and 3.4% in constant currency. It translates into a sequential QOQ growth of 0.5% in reported currency. On a QOQ reported currency basis, revenues rose 5.6% in banking and financial services, 3.9% in healthcare and life sciences, and 0.1% in manufacturing and consumer services, while telecommunication, media, and technology declined by 9.9%. This performance underscores our ability to drive momentum consistently, even in a dynamic market environment. As we mentioned last time, effectively July 1, we announced annual salary hikes for all our employees.
Today, we are pleased to inform you that we have absorbed the impact of one-time bonuses and annual appraisals without compromising our operational base and margins. Our gross profit margins improved to 31%, sequential growth of 50 bps quarter-on-quarter. EBITDA improved to 15.4%, sequential growth of 20 bps QOQ, and with improved utilization. This, coupled with 9.8% attrition, demonstrates our commitment to employee recognition and financial discipline while continuing to execute our strategic priorities. With that, I will now invite Pulkit Bhandari, our Chief Financial Officer, to provide an update on critical financial data.
Thank you, Manish. Good day, everyone. Thank you for joining this call. I will take you through some of the key business and financial metrics for the quarter ending September 25. The overall macroeconomic environment remains unchanged. Evolving U.S. policies, particularly around trade tariffs and visa regulations, are creating further challenges across businesses. However, cost optimization and productivity-linked programs are gaining traction, supported by cloud modernization, cybersecurity, and early generative AI initiatives. Clients are increasingly focused on vendor consolidation and outcome-based engagements, driving selective deal momentum. The reported revenue for the second quarter of financial year 2026 stood at $162.8 million, reflecting a growth of 4.2% YOY and 0.5% sequentially in reported terms. In constant currency terms, YOY revenue grew by 3.4%, and sequentially, it remained flat. Our EBITDA this quarter expanded by 20 bps sequentially, despite absorbing the impact of wage hikes, offset with favorable exchange gains.
Additionally, operational improvements such as enhanced utilization, improved shore mix, and targeted cost control initiatives have contributed positively to our margin performance. Our PAT for the quarter stood at 12.8%. Some other key highlights: we launched Zensai platform, a next-generation AI platform to drive enterprise-level innovation and intelligence. Zensar Technologies was named a challenger in the Avasant Digital Masters Award in 2025. Our order book for the quarter stood at $158.7 million. Our book-to-bill ratio for the first half of the year is 1.02, indicating a sustainable business momentum. Cash, including investments, stood at $293 million post-dividend payout declared in the previous quarter. DSO increased by three days to 75, majorly due to exchange impact. Our attrition was constant at 9.8%. Diluted EPS grew to INR 7.9 per share, which is 16.2% growth YOY.
On the ESG front, Zensar Technologies received CRISIL ESG score of 71, up from 69, placing it in CRISIL's highest leadership category for ESG ratings. With that, I will now invite Vijay, our Chief Operating Officer, to comment further on Q2 FY26 results.
Thank you, Manish and Pulkit. Greetings, everyone. I will share details about our operational efficacy, service line performance, and AI journey. Our utilization for the quarter stood at 84.8%, which is 200 basis points higher year over year and 50 basis points higher quarter over quarter. The rigor associated with accelerated fulfillment and capability enrichment continued in Q2 FY26. We had a gross addition of 831 employees. Our voluntary attrition was 9.8%. This is the third successive quarter where our voluntary attrition has been below 10%. The offerings from our service lines and industry services groups continue to resonate well with our clients. The share of revenues from our service lines increased to 68%, which is 150 basis points higher year over year. On a year over year reported currency basis, cloud infrastructure and security services grew by 14.1%. Data engineering and analytics grew by 9.2%.
Products and platforms, including CMO services, grew by 4.3%. Enterprise application services had a degrowth of 2.6%. Our Zens AI platform continues to find resonance among our clients. We have further enriched the agent library of our platform by creating many relevant industry-specific domain agents. We have also created agents that accelerate legacy modernization. AI capability enrichment of our people has gained additional momentum. Over the last four months, more than 5,000 people have deepened their skills by leveraging the multi-tiered learning journeys in AI, GenAI, and agentic AI. We have also intensified the focus on enhancing the leadership proficiency in emerging AI areas, thereby creating a pool of strong strategic consultants who guide clients on their AI-first transformation journey. We continue to deliver significant value to our clients in key AI engagements.
Some examples of value delivered are: we executed an application modernization program for a global financial major as part of their customer experience improvement program. Leveraging our innovative GenAI solutions across the SDLC cycle, we were able to accelerate go-to-market by 25%. We have built a real-time AI-powered fraud analytics solution to process mobile claims. The model reduces the workload for claim processing by 40%, with an accuracy of 96%. We delivered a computer vision-based defect detection system that significantly enhances a leading client's quality control processes in industrial tube manufacturing. We are partnering with a large retailer to create an agentic AI-based ecosystem to build APIs in a factory model. This is driving cost efficiencies to the tune of 70%. With that, we can now open the line for questions.
Thank you very much. We will now begin with the question-and-answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may press star and then one on their touchstone phone. If you wish to remove yourself from the question queue, you may press star and then 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. Our first question comes from the line of Nitin Padmanabhan from Investec India. Please go ahead.
Hi. Good evening, everyone. I think we had a good quarter from a BFS and healthcare perspective, but I think TMT has been a pain point again. It appears, at least on the service line side, that this is on the experience services side. Could you give us some context there? Do you think this has sort of bottomed out from that perspective? Any color top client versus experience services alone? Do you think it's bottomed out? That's the first question.
Hi, Nithin. Thank you for your question. This is Manish. Yes, I mean, we have seen a good amount of traction in all our other verticals except TMT. What I would say is I see a more secular trend on TMT in terms of the amount of money that is being put in CapEx by some of our clients. You would have seen a lot of announcements in terms of rationalization of workforce and rifts that they have done and that they are planning to do. As a very senior CEO said, you can have either GPUs or people, not both. We are seeing that a lot of OpEx is being rationalized in the TMT space to spend it on CapEx related things. We don't see this trend going away in a hurry, unfortunately.
The fortunate thing for us is that, as we have been saying, our exposure to the TMT sector has been coming down successively. Hence, the impact on us will hopefully be less going forward as compared to others who have higher exposure to the sector.
Got it. We have two verticals which haven't been really firing, right? One is TMT and one is MCS. It's done maybe slightly better earlier, but this quarter has been soft. What do you think will sort of get a consolidated double-digit growth for us? I think last year we did two large deals. Anything on that front that could help improve growth, anything from an acquisition perspective that could help alter the portfolio in some form? How are you thinking about this?
Nitin, to be frank, except for this TMT headwind, I am feeling very, very positive about our business. Our pipeline is quite good, including our large deal pipeline. From a pipeline perspective, we have one of the highest qualified pipelines that we have seen in our history, including a good large deal pipeline. It's just a matter of converting some of these things in the next couple of quarters. We are a company that is focused a lot on execution. I feel, except for this TMT headwind, I actually feel very good about our business. I feel good about, as I said, our pipeline. I feel very good about the fact that despite giving salary hikes and taking a 2% EBITDA hit, we were still able to deliver MITIN margins. Again, as I said, I feel good. I feel very good about what we are doing on AI.
As I said, except for this TMT thing, I feel pretty good about the business.
Got it. Very helpful. Any thoughts on the deal wins? This quarter has been soft. Do you think it's just a timing issue and it should start coming back? At least it looks like the pipeline is pretty strong and all of that. Do you think we should start seeing a bounce back from a deal win closure perspective?
Yeah, I think it's just a timing issue. Some of the—see, because of the Liberation Day tariffs and all that, uncertainty was introduced in the market. A couple of deals got shifted to the next quarter. Also, when I looked at it, typically this quarter is low on renewals because most of the renewals happen in Q4 or in Q1. It's summertime in Europe, so again, business is a bit slow there. When I go deeper into my order bookings, I see a reasonable amount of traction on existing new and NN. Hence, I am not really too worried about what I'm seeing there.
Perfect. Thank you so much. I'll come back for a follow-up. All the best.
Thank you, Nitin.
Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Sandeep Saran from HDFC Securities. Please go ahead.
Thanks for the opportunity. Manish, if I look at the book-to-bill in this quarter being 0.97x, which is one of the lowest in the last 11 quarters, and even if you need to report a flat TCV this year, the ask rate in the next second half would be about $220 million. That looks like a tall task. Business visibility in terms of growth beyond FY2026 will be dependent upon TCV growth happening in FY2026. In that scenario, are you worried that the deal TCV this year may hamper the growth in the next year, outside TMT as a concern that you have highlighted?
Sandeep, again, a great question. Am I worried? I am paranoid about everything, but this is not something that I'm really worried about, primarily because I think the pipeline that we are dealing with is pretty good. It's a question of being able to convert a couple of them quickly, and we are hoping that we will be able to announce some of them soon enough. I am not unduly worried about it overall. Again, I mean, it's a question of perspective. I mean, if you look at if that hit on TMT was not there, we would have grown something like 4% this quarter, right? It's a matter of perspective, and as I said, I feel good about our business.
Okay, Manish, just further here, are you targeting TCV growth this year that will happen on $775 million TCV booked in FY2025?
Ultimately, see, Sandeep, there are only a few numbers that I track and worry about. Like you, I am most worried about top line and bottom line. That is where the focus is. Bottom line, as I said, we have been very focused and consistent in terms of Zensar Technologies' EBITDA delivery. In fact, our PAT, if you look at cash conversion of our EBITDA, it's one of the highest in the industry. Our PAT is 12.9%, close to 13% on an average. That is really, I feel, exceptional overall. To answer your question, am I really looking at higher or lower TCV, or am I really worried about it? I don't think so.
Okay. Okay. Just last few things. PQ generally has a furlough season for you and the industry. How do you see the performance in PQ this time?
For Q3, it is a weak quarter for everyone in the industry. The furlough impact will be there. It'll happen to us also, like others. The only silver lining in the drop in TMT in Q3 is that the furlough impact will be perhaps less in Q3 than it would have been had TMT grown. I don't see any material change in the furlough situation overall for the industry. Since our exposure to TMT has successively reduced over the years, I am hopeful that we will not be impacted as much.
Okay. Okay. Just last thing, offshore revenue mix has gone up. Is it fair to assume the volume growth is higher than the headline growth?
Yes. I mean, one of the reasons why we have been able to deliver better margins is that we have been able to get a lot more work done offshore. That is a positive for us, and we are seeing some amount of volume growth, obviously. Although our headcount is not increasing, our utilization is increasing. Yes, there is perhaps more volume growth than what is being reflected in the revenues.
Okay, thanks. I have a question on margin, will come in the follow-up. Thanks.
Thanks, Sandeep.
Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Manik Tenaja from Axis Capital. Please go ahead.
Hi. Thank you for the opportunity, Manish. Just wanted to prod you with regards to the weakness that we've seen in the high-tech vertical. If you could help us understand, is this some particular customer-specific, as has been the case over the course of the last several years, or this will be probably more broad-based? Especially given over the course of the last two to two and a half years, you have focused in terms of diversifying the presence in this industry segment. That's question number one. The second question is with regards to our performance in other verticals like financial services. If you could help us understand, what are you seeing on the ground, and how should we be thinking about possibly the furlough?
You mentioned that the furlough impact may be much lesser, but it would be good to understand in terms of how you're thinking about furloughs compared to the July quarter heading into the third quarter in the high-tech vertical. Thank you.
Yeah. I'll answer your—I think I've answered the first question, but I'll reiterate it. It doesn't matter whether it's one client or two clients or three clients. What we are seeing is that there is a secular trend in the technology, particularly in the technology space, where they are investing heavily on CapEx, on GPUs, on data centers. That money has to come from somewhere, and that money is currently being shifted from OpEx. I mean, I am sure you're reading the same newspapers that I am. Almost everyone has announced a significant layoff in the tens of thousands, not in thousands. I would say it is more a secular trend than a client-specific trend that we are seeing. On the other vertical, as I said, I have been very positive about—we are doing really, really well, knock on wood, in banking and financial services and insurance.
We are doing well in healthcare and life sciences. I think things are really picking up in manufacturing and consumer services for us. If you look at the other, this thing, things are looking up for us in both Africa and in Europe. Almost all other parts of the business seem to be doing okay. As I said, it's just a question of making sure that we can take the hits in TMT and we can make up for those in the other verticals.
Sure. One last question with regards to our non-delivery workforce. We've seen a significant increase in the first half compared to last year. Is this some reclass issue, or is there significant investment around sales and account management that you have probably stepped up through this first half of the year?
I'm sorry. Can you explain what you mean by non-delivery workforce?
I was just referring to the non-delivery workforce. At least it appears to. The overall headcount minus the technical headcount.
Okay, just give us a minute.
Hi. This is a minor increase of around 40 people, and this is across the board. It is not just basically sales. It will be across multiple other functions which are there. We don't really see this as any major deviation or major cost.
Great. One last question.
Our workforce is basically on sales as well. This will be each and every headcount which may be there in multiple support functions.
Okay. One last question. You mentioned about confidence of closing certain large deals for you in the foreseeable future. If you could help us understand or provide us some color as to which industry segments are you essentially seeing some of these deals being in advancing. Thank you.
All I can say is that we are seeing these in sectors where we are doing well, and we are not seeing these in sectors where we are not doing well. Beyond that, I would not like to comment.
Thank you, Manish. Wish you all the best.
Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Keval Bhagat. Please go ahead.
Thank you for the opportunity. Manish, in the last quarter, you have highlighted that nearly 30% of active pipeline was AI-driven, right? Then 20% of bookings were AI-driven. Has that proposal increased or decreased in PQN? What kind of client use cases are scaling faster, right? In which vertical are we seeing a good amount of traction? Also, could you share early feedback on Zens AI adoption? Are clients moving from a pilot to production stage, or are you beginning to monetize this platform beyond POC stage? Thank you.
I just wanted to share that good news with you. Thank you for asking that question. 28% of our order bookings this quarter are AI-influenced order bookings. I just want to clarify what AI-influenced means. AI-influenced means that we led with an AI-infused solution to the client. From last quarter, as you said, 21%. This quarter, it is about 28% overall. Pulkit, do you want to add any more color?
No, I think that's good enough. On those kind of solutions, which—
Yeah, yeah. Solutions. Vijay, you want to give some color on all the interesting stuff that we are doing on AI?
Hey, guys, just go to our website, and there is this beautiful AI bot that we have created on our website. It even answers financial questions. You can ask the quarterly revenues for the last four quarters and all and give you some of those numbers. You can ask us about our capabilities, etc. I mean, this is true AI in action. Vijay, over to you.
Yeah. I think on the Zensai platform, we are seeing a lot of traction and resonance with our clients. Broadly, there are two, three dimensions where the clients are leveraging it. The connected intelligence framework is helping our clients look at the overall, how to leverage their intelligence and then build applications on top of it. That is really working well. The agents associated with legacy modernization, that's finding a lot of traction. We have also built specific industry-level agents that help in things like fraud detection, automation of testing, and things like that. There is a lot of traction. In the coming days, we expect that this will drive further growth on our AI space.
Yeah, that was very helpful. Thank you.
Thank you. Before we take the next question, a reminder to all the participants. You may press star and then one to ask a question. Our next question comes from the line of Girish Pai from BOB Capital Markets Limited. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Thanks for the opportunity. Manish, you had mentioned that you would aspire for a double-digit growth in FY2026. That would have meant a fairly decent quarter on a QQ basis in the previous quarter. Did this slow growth come as a surprise to you? This CapEx that you're talking about being done by the high-tech customers has been happening for a while now. Did something change? Was there some vendor consolidation exercise that you lost out on, stuff like that? If you can give me some color on this.
There is no. As I said, this is a secular trend that we are observing. There is no vendor consolidation that has impacted us to the best of my knowledge. I think my knowledge is pretty good on this front. That was on TMT. What was your first question, Girish, on double digits?
You mentioned double-digit growth. Did the quarter come as a surprise to you?
Yes. The quarter came as a surprise to us. The industry growth rate of 4% to 6% or even less, NASSCOM's revision downwards of the industry growth rate also came as a surprise to me. I think it's high time we recalibrate what we expect from the industry.
Okay. Do you think FY 2026 is going to be a better growth year compared to FY 2025 now that we are facing, I mean, we are in Q3 with furlough situation, stuff like that?
Girish, see, I don't want to comment on the future. We don't give guidance, as you know. I don't want to comment on growth rate for the rest of the year. I would guess that you have to make your own estimates based on the commentary that you're hearing.
Okay. Just on the margin walk on a QQ basis, you mentioned something like 200 basis point headwind from salary hike. What were the offsets for that?
What we had called out, I think, last quarter as well, is that roughly around $3.2 million is the cost of salary increase, which comes into this quarter. That has been offset largely by better utilization, improved chore mix, and some targeted cost control initiatives that we had planned for. I would say all that came together to help us absorb this headwind on basically salary increase in a successful way.
Was there any Forex tailwind? Can you quantify how much that was?
There is no quantification that we'll give on the Forex part. There was some partial benefit on account of Forex. Yes, there was partial benefit on account of Forex as well.
Okay. My last question is on margins. Do you think we are underinvesting either from a perspective or from a capability building perspective or from an AI platform perspective? Has this come late, or should we aspire for slightly lower margins?
No, the short answer is that, are we underinvesting? No, we are not. One of the key reasons as to why we give a broader guidance on margin, not specific, is because we want to keep the flexibility of investment at our end. No, we are not underinvesting. We are rightfully investing in all the areas that we should be focusing on.
Okay, thank you.
Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Shradha Agrawal from AmSec. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Hi. Two questions from my side. Pulkit, did we see any impact of the new ESOP scheme which got effective this quarter? If yes, what was the impact? What should we build in for the second half of the year?
Shradha, basically, the new ESOP scheme was approved in the middle of September. The impact that you saw is only for 18 days. That is point number one. Second, rather than basically building a specific impact or number on ESOP, what I would request you is to triangulate the margins in the mid-teen range that we've been talking about, which gives us the flexibility to invest not just in people, but also in capabilities. I think that's where we will be for the next few quarters, and that's what we've been guiding as well.
What should be the ballpark range of ESOP impact on margins?
Whatever the impact, whatever the impact.
For 18 days, I'm saying for a full quarter impact.
That's what I'm saying. Even for the coming quarter, what you have to triangulate is roughly the same mid-teen guidance that you are seeing. Because, see, what happens is you'll see some impact of ESOP. There will be some right backs also, which happens. There's no real reason to give a specific number. Mid-teens is what you should be working with.
Got it. If I look at your margin composition, actually, on gross profit, we improved our margins by 100 bps despite a 200 bps impact of salary hike, one-time bonus, and 18 bps impact of ESOP cost that you're talking of. I do understand that repeat depreciation would have helped margins. Apart from that, what was the lever that helped us sail through all these negatives and still show 100 bps gross profit margin expansion?
As I said, repeat utilization, mix, and there were certain targeted cost control initiatives as well. ASR is something that we knew is going to basically come, right? Which we knew basically in Q1. We at least had no plans to defer it, like say some players would do. To that extent, we planned around it. To that extent, those cost actions helped us negate the ASR increase.
Got it. Thanks. One question for you, Manish. I know, I mean, there has been a lot of news around layoffs in tech companies. When we look at the growth numbers reported by your peers in the same segment of high tech, broadly, to my best recall, most companies have reported sequential growth despite the same industry headwinds impacting them as well. What was the specific reason that you would attribute to Zensar that has led to a very sharp decline for us in particular?
I would just say that don't look at a single quarter in isolation. One swallow doesn't make a summer. Look at the overall trend and see for some of us, it might hit us early. People with more discretionary spend as a part of the revenue mix will get impacted earlier. Those who have more annuity-based spends will get impacted later. That's why I wanted to highlight that I am seeing this as a secular trend. We should not be reading it as just an individual Zensar Technologies trend. As I said, for some, it will come now. For some, it will come later. Hopefully, things will improve. For some, it may not come at all, even in maybe Q4 or Q1. That would be more related to the nature of business and their client portfolios rather than that this secular trend is not there.
Got it. Just one clarification, Manish, if I can. There was no preponement of furloughs that we had seen last year in PQ that had an additional bearing?
No, there is no preponement of furloughs. Shraddha, you've been asking about margins. I just want you to know that as a management team, we are very committed to mid-teens margins. There will be things every quarter, up, down, etc. Again, we plan for it, we look at it, and we make sure that we try and stick to that range that we have guided for. It takes a lot of effort, and it takes a lot of planning to get it done. I would say I would advise that we all focus on the overall margin profile rather than the individual elements of it.
Got it. This is helpful. Thanks. Thanks, Manish. Thanks, Pulkit.
Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Jalaj from Swan. Please go ahead.
Yes, thanks for the opportunity. Hope I'm audible.
Yes, you are.
Yeah. Manish, apologies at the start for, again, harping on the TMT vertical. Just one question. Should we consider this as the newer base in terms of the absolute numbers, or is there more pain to see from here? What you called out looked like a structural change. The priorities of these trends will change. If we are not present in those areas, obviously in the CapEx related, the revenue streams would not flow to us. How should we understand this? Maybe not just next quarter, but broadly, I am trying to understand.
The sector has been stressed for quite some time. I don't know, and I don't really have a crystal ball to say that, okay, the worst is behind us or the best is ahead of us or whatever. The sector has been under stress, not only for us, but for others also across the board. This is not a one-time thing. I would say something or the other keeps happening in this sector. This time it is GPUs. In the last couple of years, they had overspent after COVID, and they were trying to rationalize the cost. Till now, I would say this is a sector under stress. I frankly don't know. Whoever says they know, maybe I should seek their advice because the way artificial intelligence is evolving is changing pretty much every day.
I'm not sure how I can be certain as to what will happen next quarter or the quarter after. As I said, this sector has been under stress for quite some time.
Got it. Manish, just a follow-up on that part. I get what you were saying, and it makes logical sense. Considering the discussions you are having with the clients since you are the closest to them, what sort of discussions are you having? Is there more to come, or is that what in the near term? What sorts of discussions with the clients are you having?
Clients in this space only talk of one thing: AI. As simple as that. They are very keen on showing to the world that AI can drive productivity improvements. The best way of showing that is by showing that they can do the same with less number of people. Period. That is the conversation that I'm having with almost all the clients in this space. Everyone is very bullish about AI. Everyone wants to prove that they are at the leading edge, the bleeding edge of this. Everyone wants to prove to the rest of the world that AI is delivering value and improving productivity. You can figure out how you want to interpret it. That is where you asked me truthfully. I'm answering truthfully. This is what I'm hearing.
Thanks. That was very helpful. The second question was around that while you had started this journey at Zensar, there was an objective or an aspiration to start to move towards the top quartile or every year to move to another next quartile in terms of growth amongst our peers. Where are we on that journey? Has there been any change in that aspiration or that phase?
Last year, we were number four in the industry performance and revenue growth in terms of INR. This was when at least two of those three players ahead of us had done inorganic stuff, and we had not done anything material inorganically. I think we are doing well on the overall target that we have set for ourselves. Again, I would say in terms of INR, if you see our year-over-year growth, we would still be somewhere in the top half of the range rather than in the bottom half of the range, irrespective of this quarter.
Got it. My only point was, as an investor or somebody who's in volume with you guys, we would want that journey accelerate. I just wanted to know your thoughts in terms of.
I also want that journey to accelerate. I also want that journey to accelerate. We are part of the same market, right? If there are headwinds in the market, it impacts all of us, right? I'm still running at 100 miles an hour. If the headwind is 50 miles an hour, then the average speed is 50 only, right?
Understood. What I wanted to understand is if there is any more investments we would need to put in for any sorts of capability building that you are aspiring for or investing in, just some thoughts around that.
Pulkit rightly said. We solve for our investments. We solve for, as a management team, we are deeply committed to our shareholders. We use our cash judiciously. We invest in things judiciously. Believe me, we will. If we have to invest for growth, that investment is being made. We are not shirking away from making that investment.
Understood. Got it. Thanks a lot and best of luck.
Thank you.
Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Sandeep Saran from Equirus Securities. Please go ahead.
Thanks for the follow-up. Manish, in the Q1 earnings call, you said worst seems behind in TMT, but you also made a statement. Will it lead to a Q1 Q growth? You said you are not sure about the same. Is it that there is a sudden change which has given you a negative surprise in Q2 versus Q1? On a longer-term basis, as you are saying, it's a secular trend. What are the corrective measures we are taking in terms of diversification and making sure that the TMT journey does not impact the growth? That has been the cause in the last many years.
Yeah, true. Thanks, Sandeep. I mean, you have been following us for very long. Our share of TMT has been progressively coming down year over year. The only solution is to grow other parts of the business much faster than what TMT can decline. As the share of TMT business has declined overall, we find that we are progressively improving our risk profile from TMT. Just to put things in perspective, FY2024, 27.1% of our revenues was TMT. Now it is only 20% in this quarter, right? We have been, and despite this decline, we have still been delivering revenue growth, right? That strategy still remains in play. As you can see, all other verticals, we have seen growth, and we will continue to play on that strategy.
I mean, there's no point in going after, if there is a secular decline in a vertical, then there's no point in investing excessive energy into that. The marginal rate of return is fairly limited.
Okay. Okay. Just on manufacturing, consumer service, you were expecting growth to come back in this quarter. Though the decline is lower, there is a constant currency decline of 0.6% in this quarter. How do you see growth prospects in this segment?
Good pipeline is all I can say. We have a fairly good pipeline in this thing. Good news is that in normal currency, it still grew 0.1%. MPS still grew 0.1%. I think this quarter is also a quarter where there is a lot of strength in retail because of season time and so on. We also have a decent pipeline in this sector. I'm not too concerned about this sector.
Okay. How is the dependence on the H1B visa for us now, and how do we see to reduce that going forward?
See, we are not H1B dependent at all. There is some information that we have. We hardly have less than 3% of our people using H1Bs. Of the overall workforce, less than 3%. Also, as a company, we have been consciously trying to hire locally for a very long time. We are not as dependent on H1B as some of our peers. Sandeep, this is going to impact only in November of next year because these new visa rules are applicable only in the new lottery. One year is a long time in any business, and it's a very long time in politics.
Thanks, thanks and all the best.
Thanks.
Thank you. Our next question comes from Dhanashree Jadhav from Choice Institutional Equities. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Thanks for taking my question. My question is pertaining to discretionary spending. I would like to get your thoughts on how your client conversations have been this quarter regarding the discretionary spend as Zensar is more. I mean, the discretionary spending is higher compared to peers. On that point, also on AI-led productivity gains, if you can share how that is infusing or improving our margins, some qualitative aspect would be helpful. Thanks.
On discretionary spend, any AI-related discretionary spend is very welcome by clients. Any non-AI-related discretionary spend is a tough call to take by clients because, as you know, with Liberation Day tariffs and things changing every day, there are enough and more uncertainties. In an uncertain environment, typically, you will do mostly non-discretionary projects. As I said, as far as AI is concerned, it's open season for discretionary projects also. Regarding the benefits of AI, productivity benefits of AI, it's too early to call it out. What we are trying to do is making sure that the benefits of whatever are the benefits are shared significantly with our clients. That is where we are using it more as a competitive lever rather than a productivity edge.
Thank you. That's it.
Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Kuber from HDFC Securities. Please go ahead.
Thank you for taking my question. Most of my questions have been answered. Just one question. In terms of demand, where are we witnessing growth in terms of geography?
As I said, except for TMT, we are seeing pretty good pipe.
In terms of geography, I mean, yeah.
Geography, I mean, if you leave aside TMT, we are seeing growth in the U.S. We are seeing growth in the U.K. and Europe. We are going to see growth in South Africa.
Moving ahead, because we have seen a sequential decline in the U.S., are we expecting any sequential decline further, or is it going to get revived?
See, you can't mix vertical. As I said, except for TMT as a vertical, which is concentrated primarily in the U.S., we are seeing positivity everywhere, at least in our business.
Okay. Yeah. That's it from my side.
All right. Hopefully, this was the last question. We are at the end of this time. First of all, again, I want to thank you all for spending your time on a Friday evening and wish you all a great weekend ahead. As we look ahead, we can see the uncertainty in today's global market landscape. We see this AI particularly as an opportunity. It is not a threat. It's a big opportunity for all of us. As your management team, we are very, very keen on making sure that we come out winners in this AI opportunity that is presented to us. We remain focused on delivering differentiated value through innovation, operational discipline, and deep commitment to client success. The road ahead is dynamic, we all know, but we are very confident of our strategy, our people, and our ability to turn market shifts into momentum.
Once again, thank you for being on this call on a Friday night, and have a good weekend, everyone. Thanks.
Thank you. On behalf of Motilal Oswal Financial Services Limited, that concludes this conference. Thank you for joining us, and you may now disconnect your lines.