Wipro Limited (BOM:507685)
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Q2 26/27 (Media)

Oct 15, 2026

Summary

Q2 IT services revenue was flat QoQ and up 0.6% YoY in constant currency, while operating margin rose 50 bps to 16.5%. Q3 guidance implies -1.5% to +0.5% sequential growth, with seasonal furloughs a headwind.

Nisha Chandrasekaran
Manager of External Communications, Wipro

Welcome everyone to Wipro's Second Quarter Earnings Press Conference. For those of us who are joining virtually, good morning, good afternoon, good evening. My name is Nisha Chandrasekaran, and I will be your moderator for today. Joining me on stage is our Chief Financial Officer, Aparna Iyer; our Chief Executive Officer and Managing Director, Srini Pallia; and our Chief Human Resources Officer, Saurabh Govil. We will begin with opening remarks from our CEO, followed by the financial review from our CFO. Post that, we will open the floor for your questions. With that, let me hand over to our CEO and Managing Director, Srini Pallia.

Srini Pallia
CEO and Managing Director, Wipro

Thanks, Nisha. Good evening, everyone. Thank you for joining us today. In this quarter, demand environment has remained largely unchanged. Our clients remain focused on efficiency and productivity, while increasingly looking to accelerate AI adoption and drive long-term value. In fact, this balance between efficiency and growth is shaping demand across industries for us. Let me begin with what we see in our priority sectors. In BFSI, we continue to see strong momentum. Clients are focused on cost optimization, legacy modernization, and of course, scaling agentic AI across their enterprise. Digital-native and new-age firms are driving demand in our technology sector. Investments in custom silicon, design to manufacture, and physical AI are creating opportunities across the engineering value chain. In fact, we also see growth emerging across AI model ecosystems from model training, evaluation, to execution.

In EMR, which is our energy and manufacturing and resources sector, we have seen some good wins in previous quarters, and in fact, those deals are ramping up. This sector for us continues to gain traction across markets, and I would specifically like to call out BPS and engineering. In consumer sector, we are seeing good traction in CPG, travel, and transportation. Our recent new wins and revenue from Olam deal have also supported our performance in this sector. However, healthcare in U.S. continues to be affected by policy changes. At the same time, cost pressures across payers and providers are creating new outsourcing opportunities for us. This, along with our differentiated platform-based offerings and rising regulatory requirements, we are shaping our pipeline. Now, moving to our financial performance for the quarter.

In quarter two, our IT services revenue stood at $2.61 billion, flat sequentially, and up 0.6% year-on-year in constant currency. Our operating margin for the quarter was 16.5%, an improvement of 0.5% compared to last quarter. Within our markets, three of our four SMUs reported sequential growth. Americas 1 declined sequentially due to client-specific issues and softness in healthcare. Americas 2 grew sequentially, driven by EMR with encouraging momentum in BFSI. Europe grew sequentially and year-on-year, delivering broad-based growth led by three sectors: BFSI, consumer, and EMR. Our APMEA SMU maintained strong traction, growing sequentially and year-on-year. Growth here was fueled by consumer, tech, and comms. Coming to deal wins and pipeline. This quarter, we closed $2.6 billion in total contract value and signed nine large deals. In fact, our bookings reflect a healthy mix of new business and expansion of existing engagements, which is very good news.

Here is an example of a consulting-led AI-powered transformation deal I wanted to talk to you about. A global financial institution engaged Wipro to accelerate its transformation through an AI-enabled operating model. Through this engagement, we will modernize software development, drive greater efficiency across the change lifecycle, and scale AI-powered ways of working. For the clients, this results in faster execution, broader AI adoption, and an agile operating model. This win, among others, including a large deal in energy last quarter, reflects growing impact of our consulting-led strategy in originating larger opportunities for us. I want to call this out. Beyond large enterprises, we see strong traction in deal wins and pipeline in the mid-market segment. These organizations understand that AI can be a force multiplier in scaling capabilities and redefining their competitive landscape. Let me give you an example.

A global mid-market consumer products company selected us to accelerate their technology transformation, and we are helping this by establishing an AI capability center in India. Through this engagement, we will scale engineering and technology operations to support their entire ERP modernization, cloud-native platforms, and build AI capabilities for them. This outcome will also drive innovation, improve their engineering productivity, and strengthen their global delivery model. In fact, we are beginning to see tangible returns from our strategic investments made in recent quarters. One, Mindsprint. It has strengthened our position in food and agriculture and opened new market opportunities for us. Two, Harman DTS. It has boosted our engineering capabilities, helping us win new logos and deepen existing client engagement. We will continue to make these investments even when they create near-term margin headwinds for us.

They enhance our strategic position, expand addressable markets, and build a stronger foundation for future growth. If you recollect, in April, we launched our AI native unit to help clients transition from traditional delivery models to an AI-native enterprise. We are making rapid progress here. Today, with over 2,000 engineers, including FDEs, we are seeing growing success in outcome-based deals and driving nonlinear growth. This investment has already delivered results for us. Let me share a few examples. One, an SLM deployment for a major U.S. retail bank. Two, implementation of an AI-powered digital plan for one of the largest petrochemical companies in the Middle East. Three, an enrollment and billing SLM deployment for a leading U.S. healthcare payer. We have also built industry-specific SLMs for wealth management, insurance, aviation, and asset-intensive industries, and we are seeing good traction around that.

Combined with our AI agents and our orchestration platform, these capabilities enable us to transform virtually any business workflow into an AI-native workflow, thereby helping our clients unlock new levels of productivity, speed, and more importantly, business value. Based on growing traction, we have also accelerated investments in AI services and solutions across emerging AI growth themes. AI data centers, AI foundry services, physical AI devices, and design to manufacturing. These services and solutions position us well across the full AI value chain and help us capture opportunities that extend beyond traditional technology spend. With that, let me share our guidance for the next quarter. For us, Q3 will remain impacted by seasonal furloughs. We are guiding for a sequential IT services revenue growth of -1.5% to +0.5% in constant currency. Despite a challenging macro environment, our business remains resilient.

We are very encouraged by emerging opportunities across all our markets. In fact, AI will expand new growth avenues, accelerate demand for higher value transformation. Signs of this are already evident in the momentum we are seeing across our new AI services. With that, I will now invite Aparna to share details on our financials. Thank you very much.

Aparna Iyer
CFO, Wipro

Thank you, Srini. Good evening, ladies and gentlemen, and thank you for joining us. Let me share an update of the financial performance for the quarter ended 30th September 2026, and after that we will open it up for Q&A. Our IT services revenue for Q2 grew 0.6% on a year-on-year basis in constant currency. Revenue was flat sequentially in constant currency terms, and was closer to the upper end of the guidance that we had given last quarter. Our operating margins for the quarter were 16.5%, an expansion of 50 basis points sequentially. Operational improvements, rupee depreciation, offset by continuing investments in our business, have been the underlying factors this quarter. We will work towards improving our margins even as we create head space for growth. Moving on to the SMU performance and the sector performance. All growth numbers that I will share will be in constant currency.

Americas 1 declined 2% sequentially and 2.7% on a year-on-year basis. Americas 2 grew 0.9% sequentially and declined 4.7% on a year-on-year basis. Europe grew 0.6% sequentially and grew 5.1% on a year-on-year basis. APMEA grew 3.1% sequentially and 13.3% on a year-on-year basis. Moving on to key sectors. BFSI grew 1% sequentially and 1.3% on a year-on-year basis. Consumer grew 2.6% sequentially and 6% on a year-on-year basis. Technology and communication declined 2.6% sequentially and grew 7% on a year-on-year basis. Health declined 3.8% sequentially and 6.5% year-on-year. EMR grew 1.1% sequentially and declined 6% on a year-on-year basis. Let me share with you certain other financial parameters. Our net other income, which primarily includes interest income, declined 68% sequentially due to the reduction in investment portfolio after completion of our buyback in June 2026.

As a result of the lower income, our net income was at INR 32 billion for the quarter. It declined 4.7% sequentially. What is a critical metric this quarter, given that we completed the buyback, is the EPS, which grew 0.9% sequentially and 4.2% on a year-on-year basis. While striving to deliver profitable growth, we remain equally relentless in driving cash flow conversion. Q2 is yet another quarter of robust performance. Our operating cash flows stood at 166% of net income. With this, our gross cash now stands at $4.6 billion as of 30th September 2026. Our effective tax rate was at 23.9% for Q2 versus 23.8% in the same quarter last year. Accounting yield for average investments held in India was at 7.1%. In terms of the guidance, I want to reiterate what Srini stated.

Our guidance for quarter three will be in the range of $2.571 billion- $2.625 billion. This translates to a sequential guidance of negative 1.5% to a positive 0.5% in constant currency terms. With that, I will hand it over to you, Nisha.

Nisha Chandrasekaran
Manager of External Communications, Wipro

Thank you, Aparna. We will now open the floor for your questions. For journalists outside of Bangalore who have joined us on Teams, you can send us the questions on the chat. For those who are present here, please raise your hand and we will give you the microphone. Request that you limit your questions to two, and we will come back to you if time permits. Please introduce yourself and then your publication before you ask. Maybe we can start with Haripriya, whose hand is in the air already.

Haripriya Suresh
Analyst, Reuters

Hi, Haripriya from Reuters. My first question on the deal wins. What explains the deal win numbers this quarter? I believe it is the lowest in four years, and I think large deal as well. Was there a closure that didn't happen during the quarter? One, I wanted clarity on that. Two, Americas 1 and 2, when do you expect on a year-on-year basis growth to come back? On the PERM suspension, I know that there was a statement that there was no material impact immediately. But given that for maybe retention or for hiring in the U.S., do you expect costs to go up in the long term and in the short term as well? Do you worry that it might lead to increased insourcing as well?

Srini Pallia
CEO and Managing Director, Wipro

Hi, Haripriya. Hi, Haripriya. You always get the first question, huh?

Haripriya Suresh
Analyst, Reuters

I just put my hand up first, that's all there is.

Srini Pallia
CEO and Managing Director, Wipro

There were two questions that I will answer. One is deal wins and large deals. Yes, our quarter three was lower this quarter. But having said that, you also had the answer in the question, which is there were a couple of deals that we were supposed to sign. It was awarded to us, but it did not get signed. All I can tell you is that these will flow into quarter three, and we are very bullish about our quarter three bookings performance.

Haripriya Suresh
Analyst, Reuters

Americas as well.

Srini Pallia
CEO and Managing Director, Wipro

I was coming to that, Haripriya. I was just looking at it. As far as Americas 1 is concerned, like I had made the statement that there was one particular client situation, and second was in healthcare, where it is going through that. You know, Haripriya, we do not guide beyond a quarter, and we do not give specific details on that. But if I were to look at both Americas 1 and Americas 2, one is U.S. market is doing very well, and we have very strong pipeline in both these sectors, SMUs. Also, the pipeline is really net new and very much transformational and AI specific. I will talk to you in the next quarter on this. Harip riya, PERM, this is not a reaction to what is happening, but a very planned talent strategy over the last four, five years.

We have actually moved our localization at one point of time, sub 40% to 80%. It is not that it will cost, or it will impact our clients, or it will impact the supply side. Very comfortable. Actually, on the PERM side, over the last three years, we did not even file for any PERM. So, it is a minimal impact for us from a long-term perspective. And insourcing anyway is happening, in whichever way it is today. So your GCC are growing, some things are happening somewhere. I do not think that this would be the reason for what has happened. There will be other reasons for this to happen.

Nisha Chandrasekaran
Manager of External Communications, Wipro

The next question. Bina, please go ahead.

Speaker 5

Yeah. If you could also tell us what kind of fresher additions did you have this quarter? There were some reports about you not onboarding already given offer letters. If you could just give us some idea on that, and does the 10,000 target for freshers continue and remain?

Saurabh Govil
Chief Human Resources Officer, Wipro

Sorry, go ahead please. Your second question, please. I struggled.

Speaker 5

Yeah, I also had questions for Srini.

Srini Pallia
CEO and Managing Director, Wipro

I was worried why you are not asking me a question. Go ahead.

Speaker 5

Not at all. You have been saying that clients have been pushing deals. Overall, what is the reason that is happening? Your growth seems to be a little different from your peers. What is the reason that Wipro has been subdued as compared to the peers, the larger peers? In terms of your AI revenues, you have not been declaring. I think most of your peers have been talking about it. If you could also give us a reason for that. Why is that not happening? Did you also see more inorganic growth this quarter, and did that help your revenue growth?

Srini Pallia
CEO and Managing Director, Wipro

I will take the first two, and maybe the third one Aparna can take, and Saurabh you got to wait.

Aparna Iyer
CFO, Wipro

Yeah.

Srini Pallia
CEO and Managing Director, Wipro

On the growth side, Anum. Yes, our growth has been, for this particular quarter, flat. But if you look at sequentially, and if you look at year-on-year, it was 0.6%. As far as the guidance for quarter three is concerned, we typically have quarter three furloughs, right? I am sure everybody has it. But for us, traditionally, quarter three furloughs has been a big impact. Having said that, the pipeline that we have and the deal momentum that we have, I am very confident where we are going to be, but I cannot give you the details, so I will just leave it there. As far as AI revenue is concerned, that is a very good question. If you look at our Wipro Intelligence stack, which is part of our consulting-led AI-powered strategy, where we have build AI, run AI, and reimagine AI.

Every opportunity in terms of build or every opportunity that we get run and operate, we actually embed AI into that. When it comes to reimagine AI, there we have this whole AI consulting advisory services. We have all the new AI solutions and services that are part of it, and also our AI native platform. Those are the reimagine AI services. Internally, we track the numbers. Externally, we have not given it out at this point in time. We just want to make sure that what happened with the digital in the past, we do not want to repeat it. I have been more focused on transforming our clients, leveraging AI, and helping them in their vision to be AI native. I think that is a focus that we will have. As far as inorganic is concerned, maybe Aparna you want to talk about it.

Aparna Iyer
CFO, Wipro

There is no component of inorganic revenue. Like we had mentioned last time when we did close the Mindsprint deal, that was actually like a deal wherein we actually won a business with Olam. It is committed revenues that we have. We had an additional one month of that particular deal flowing through, but I would not characterize it as inorganic.

Saurabh Govil
Chief Human Resources Officer, Wipro

Your last question among many questions was on freshers. I had called out earlier that, in the beginning of the fiscal that we have a healthy bench of freshers, and we will look at the demand side and look at it. In the first half, we have onboarded about 1,000 odd freshers so far. We will be onboarding more freshers in the H2, more towards Q4 than Q3, as you know, that is short quarter kind of thing. We had onboarded about 7,500 freshers last fiscal. Our intent is to keep that as the number that we want to onboard every year. Because we had not onboarded in the first half, we will see how it goes. But our plan they are very much, given the volume uptick and the demand environment to hire for H2 onwards.

Uma Kannan
Analyst, Deccan Herald

Hi. Hi, everybody.

Nisha Chandrasekaran
Manager of External Communications, Wipro

Sorry. Uma, go ahead, and then Reshab, we'll come to you.

Uma Kannan
Analyst, Deccan Herald

Hi, I'm Uma Kannan from Deccan Herald. Talking about fresher hiring, I just have a question. Are you planning further optimization or net reduction given muted demand now?

Nisha Chandrasekaran
Manager of External Communications, Wipro

Uma, can you hold the mic a little closer?

Saurabh Govil
Chief Human Resources Officer, Wipro

Can't hear you. Can you bring it closer?

Uma Kannan
Analyst, Deccan Herald

Okay.

Saurabh Govil
Chief Human Resources Officer, Wipro

Can you repeat your question, please?

Uma Kannan
Analyst, Deccan Herald

Can you hear me now?

Saurabh Govil
Chief Human Resources Officer, Wipro

Yeah.

Uma Kannan
Analyst, Deccan Herald

Yeah. Talking about freshers, I want to know, headcount has been reduced sequentially over 6,700. Are you planning further optimization or net reduction given muted growth outlook?

Saurabh Govil
Chief Human Resources Officer, Wipro

Headcount in our business has to be looked in the total people supply chain. There is demand, there is supply, there is attrition, there is utilization. You have to put all these four pillars together to look at this thing. We have driven some productivity in the quarter, but we continue to hire depending on the demand environment. As Srini said, we are looking at a healthy pipeline and going forward, we will continue to hire globally. There are certain skills which we want to hire. We are going back to the campuses now in H2 to hire. This will keep going up and down, but very focused right now on driving productivity and making sure that supply is not a constraint as far as as we move forward. Other opportunity which we have is we have headspace on utilization.

If you see our utilization has been flattish, and we believe that we can improve utilization. That also means that we can use the existing people more than hires. So it will impact headcount. But attrition has been flattish, if you look at it. Attrition has not changed much. Attrition has been flattish. That is the more environment today which we are.

Uma Kannan
Analyst, Deccan Herald

Okay. Also, will you be looking at more FDEs? Just pointed out about FDEs.

Saurabh Govil
Chief Human Resources Officer, Wipro

I can speak. Srini, you want to speak on that?

Srini Pallia
CEO and Managing Director, Wipro

Sure. We have FDEs within our AI native unit. I was waiting because you got distracted. We have two types of FDEs. FDEs for our AI native unit, where we are building our own platforms, and these are the FDEs who will be having strong domain capabilities within that platform and also the technical capabilities that is required. We are also building FDEs outside of this. We are with all the partners that we have. We have made certain announcement as well in terms of how we are going to scale that up, and that is an important part of our strategy, and we are seeing a very good traction with our clients.

Uma Kannan
Analyst, Deccan Herald

Srini, one more question. You spoke about AI investments. How are AI investments impacting revenue realization? Are clients demanding AI, like productivity, passthroughs, and pricing pressure?

Srini Pallia
CEO and Managing Director, Wipro

When it comes to AI, there are multiple ways we engage with our clients, right? Sometimes we engage on a retainer model, sometimes we engage them on a pod model, sometimes we engage them in an outcome-based model. The AI productivity, AI cost benefits varies from the way you engage with the client or the way the client would like to engage with you. From our perspective, we have our own delivery platforms, WINGS, WEGA, and whole agentic aspect of that. We actually take that forward calls. We take that to our clients, and that is one way of monetizing our platforms.

Second one is, obviously, if it is a software development life cycle, it compresses the development life cycle. If it is a run and operate, you can make it a lot more agentic. It varies from type of engagement and the way the economic models work for the client.

Nisha Chandrasekaran
Manager of External Communications, Wipro

Thank you. Reshab, please go.

Reshab Shaw
Analyst, Moneycontrol

Yeah. Hi everybody. Reshab here from Moneycontrol. Srini, two questions for you. Deal wins have been at a 19 quarter low.

Srini Pallia
CEO and Managing Director, Wipro

Reshab, can you say, I missed that. What is it?

Reshab Shaw
Analyst, Moneycontrol

Deal wins.

Srini Pallia
CEO and Managing Director, Wipro

Please close it.

Reshab Shaw
Analyst, Moneycontrol

Can you hear me?

Srini Pallia
CEO and Managing Director, Wipro

Yeah.

Reshab Shaw
Analyst, Moneycontrol

Can you hear me, Srini?

Srini Pallia
CEO and Managing Director, Wipro

Yeah, I can hear you.

Reshab Shaw
Analyst, Moneycontrol

So, deal wins have been at a 19-quarter low. But we are seeing a strange paradox where we have stabilized from negative growth. Have you acclimatized to this revenue growth, and is it stabilizing now? Second question is on AI deflation, where you and your peers have mentioned that there's at least about 30% of deflation. But then in physical AI silicon, as you mentioned today, is it better compared to the traditional AI deflation?

Srini Pallia
CEO and Managing Director, Wipro

Sure. So going back to deal wins, I did answer that, but I just want to answer it again. Yes, this quarter, our overall bookings have been lower, and your data point is right. But having said that, we had few deals that actually slipped to this quarter, and they're getting signed, which will actually show the bookings in our quarter three. Like I said, it'll be robust. So there's nothing to be really worried about. Sometimes this does happen because the clients could not get the paperwork done on time. As far as the AI deflation is concerned, the way I see it is that, for us or for the industry in general, the software development life cycle gets compressed. If you look at the software development life cycle, there are three parts, right? The whole business requirements, user use cases, and so on so forth.

Second one is coding and testing, and third one is deployment and production. Typically, we used to have a lot of big teams doing coding and testing. That's going away, because that is getting compressed because of AI tools. Now it's becoming human plus AI kind of a combination. But having said that, the clients are now able to do more projects with less money. Also, please remember that some of the costs will also get transferred as tokens because they're using AI tools. That's how the world is shaping up. Now, I never mentioned 30% deflation, so I'm not going to respond to that particular number. But having said that, in the context of a run and operate, if you look at it, the more AI and agentic AI you bring in, the productivity comes up, thereby the overall cost benefit the client gets.

And that's how we work through. We take a forward call on what kind of cost benefit and productivity one can get depending upon the way the process are structured. Sometimes we reimagine the process or sometimes we just implement as is. Coming to physical AI, Silicon AI, I think we are seeing a shift in terms of both the workforce and the kind of opportunities that we are seeing in the market. Some of these opportunities never existed before, and those are the new opportunities that are coming in. This is beneficial to not just Wipro, to the IT services industry. If you look at it one and a half years back, people talked about existential threat for IT services company, but today companies want companies like Wipro to come and actually help them in those whole AI transformation journey and get the value out of AI.

With that in the context, physical AI, Silicon and so on so forth, are the new opportunities which are growing rapidly. And for us as a company which has a engineering heritage, I think this comes very naturally to us, and we have a very strong capabilities around this.

Reshab Shaw
Analyst, Moneycontrol

Okay, one more question if I can squeeze in. There's an earlier stated policy that you will move away from tail end customers. On this side, we see that three, five , and 10 million customer clientele has increased. Is it because of an absence of large and mega deals?

Srini Pallia
CEO and Managing Director, Wipro

Reshabh, before Aparna answers that, our top five, top 10, top 20 clients have shown sequential growth, right? I think that's one data point I want to talk. I have a question for you, but let Aparna finish the rest of the answer.

Aparna Iyer
CFO, Wipro

I think you've answered it, Srini. That's what-

Srini Pallia
CEO and Managing Director, Wipro

That's what it is. Where did you hike recently?

Reshab Shaw
Analyst, Moneycontrol

I did hike in Gorkhaland. Where did you, Srini?

Srini Pallia
CEO and Managing Director, Wipro

Gorkhaland, is it?

Reshab Shaw
Analyst, Moneycontrol

Yes.

Srini Pallia
CEO and Managing Director, Wipro

Okay. That's wonderful. I did it in Delaware Water Gap. I do not know if you know that place. It's somewhere in Pennsylvania. Yeah.

Reshab Shaw
Analyst, Moneycontrol

Wonderful.

Srini Pallia
CEO and Managing Director, Wipro

That is not as exotic as what you are talking about.

Nisha Chandrasekaran
Manager of External Communications, Wipro

Ritu, do you want to go next?

Speaker 5

Most of the questions have been answered. Since you are not disclosing the contribution from the AI deals, largely could you give us a sense of how much of a boost to margins it is from these AI deals? That's the sense we've been getting from TCS, HCLTech, et cetera as well, that it's accretive for margins. What are you seeing on that front? For the rest of the year, I know you do not give a guidance, but in terms of deals and with the way some of these misses that you've had in the current quarter, will there be a meaningful increase in the second half that we'll get to see?

Srini Pallia
CEO and Managing Director, Wipro

The answer is yes, for the last part of your question. Rest to Aparna.

Speaker 5

Margins from the AI wins.

Aparna Iyer
CFO, Wipro

Certainly AI is a very effective lever on all our fixed price programs. The productivity that we drive comes on the back of AI tools. We have got our Agent Hive, which has WINGS and WEGA, which become the fundamental levers that we put for us to gain productivity in fixed price programs, and that is a very important and a significant lever for margin uptake. That is one of the reasons why our margins is up. I spoke to you about operational improvements. If you look at our metrics that we give out, utilization has been flattish. Offshoring has only slightly improved. A lot of it comes on the back of improvements in fixed price programs. Yes, it is a significant lever.

Nisha Chandrasekaran
Manager of External Communications, Wipro

Can we have the next question? I think you will have to pass it here. Mansee, please go ahead.

Mansee Dave
Analyst, ET Now

Good evening, Srini, Aparna, and Saurabh. Mansee Dave from ET Now, ET Now Swadesh. My questions are on margin deal wins and future revenue visibility. Margin improvement limited. What is preventing a stronger margin recovery? What is a sustainable margin range that you will be targeting going ahead? Deal wins future revenue visibility. How strong is the conversion of deal wins into revenue, and when should investors expect a meaningful improvement in organic growth? Srini, you did talk about the global giant, which has been engaged with Wipro and mid-market segment where you see strong deal wins and strong traction. Thank you.

Srini Pallia
CEO and Managing Director, Wipro

[Non-English content] Mansee.

Mansee Dave
Analyst, ET Now

Mansee.

Srini Pallia
CEO and Managing Director, Wipro

Mansee. Sorry.

Mansee Dave
Analyst, ET Now

You are improving on your Hindi, Srini. Thank you so much.

Srini Pallia
CEO and Managing Director, Wipro

I missed all the questions. Why don't

Mansee Dave
Analyst, ET Now

You were focused on the Hindi.

Srini Pallia
CEO and Managing Director, Wipro

I was trying to answer your question in Hindi, and I got lost with all the questions.

Mansee Dave
Analyst, ET Now

Putting you in a testing situation with me.

Srini Pallia
CEO and Managing Director, Wipro

I was trying hard to understand what you are saying. Some of the questions.

Mansee Dave
Analyst, ET Now

I'll repeat it for you, Srini.

Srini Pallia
CEO and Managing Director, Wipro

Yeah.

Mansee Dave
Analyst, ET Now

Yeah. Why is margin improvement limited, and what is a sustainable margin range that you're targeting? When should investors expect a meaningful improvement in organic growth? The global giant which is engaged with Wipro mid-market segment, where you see a strong deal win, if you can throw some light on that as well. Thanks.

Aparna Iyer
CFO, Wipro

Yeah. I'll take the question on margin improvement. We've improved 50 basis points quarter-on-quarter. We're almost flattish year-on-year. I think we shared with you last quarter that we rolled out our salary increases effective March 1. There was an impact of that that played out in Q1. We will now from here on consistently improve margins, and that's going to be the endeavor. What is going to be a sustainable margin range? For a very long time, we've shared that 17%-17.5% is a range that we are comfortable with. Our endeavor would be to get back to that range. Obviously, like I said, we will not shy away from investing for growth. That's the range that we will try and be in. We have enough levers for that.

Srini Pallia
CEO and Managing Director, Wipro

As far as the global deal that I talked about, it's clearly consulting-led transformational deal. Actually, it's done by Capco for us in one of the financial sectors. This is something that we want to replicate going forward as well, where we are transforming our clients' entire front end, back end, and entire business process leveraging AI. In fact, this entire deal, you could call it as AI deal, or you could say only those pieces of AI where you deliver. It's a tricky part, but I'll leave it there. As far as the mid-size segments are concerned, I think that particular client has an aspiration now to actually compete with the global players. With AI, they wanted to take the advantage. That's why they came to us.

They also want us to create an AI capability center out here, in India and leverage that to actually get to other markets, including Europe and Asia Pacific. For us, again, it's a very specifically AI-led but business transformation deal, which will actually enhance their capability to go to market in countries they're not present today.

Nisha Chandrasekaran
Manager of External Communications, Wipro

Sorry. We'll come back to you, Ritu. We'll take a question from Poulomi.

Poulomi Chatterjee
Analyst, Financial Express

Poulomi from Financial Express. I'm curious, can you give some color on the degree of competition that you're seeing for deals? Has it increased? Is it stable? It was quite competitive in the last quarter as well. With regards to greater focus on the mid-market, what are the margins that you're seeing for these new deals that are being signed in that segment especially? Also one last. The client-specific issues from Americas 1, do you expect them to be one-off?

Aparna Iyer
CFO, Wipro

In terms of the degree of competition, we've been calling out that over the last few quarters, the intensity has been higher. That is because revenue growth is premium, and therefore, you will have a certain amount of intensity. That's also in the nature of deals that dominate the pipeline. A lot of vendor consolidation, cost takeout deals, and that's the manner of the deals, right? I wouldn't say that in this quarter, the competition intensity has increased. It's broadly remained the same. We've been in this phase now for the last few quarters. In terms of margins and mid-market deals, these are very comparable to the margins that we would make on others. They're fairly significantly large. It's just that they're not in the top 100, right? But they're still very large, and the margins are very comparable. To your last point, what was it on? Sorry.

Poulomi Chatterjee
Analyst, Financial Express

Americas 1. You mentioned this

Aparna Iyer
CFO, Wipro

Yeah. The client-specific issues will be broadly behind us. I think in quarter 3, we've also factored some amount of softness that's going to play out in the healthcare sector that Srini spoke of owing to lower membership enrollments, which is all part of the guidance. I think once that is done, a large part of it will be behind. Yeah, that's what I wanted to share.

Poulomi Chatterjee
Analyst, Financial Express

Thank you.

Aparna Iyer
CFO, Wipro

Sure.

Nisha Chandrasekaran
Manager of External Communications, Wipro

Can we have the next question? Pooja, go ahead.

Pooja Patil
Analyst, BW Businessworld

Good evening. I am Pooja from BW Businessworld. You have spoken about the Mindsprint acquisition and the contribution from the Olam deal. What has been the early impact of these inorganic investments on revenue growth and operating margins? Should we expect more such acquisition or strategic stakes in future?

Aparna Iyer
CFO, Wipro

Mindsprint acquisition is actually a large deal. As a part of the large deal, we have also been able to get the kind of capability we have through Mindsprint. Srini covered in his speech, the early signs are very encouraging in terms of the capability they bring. They open us a completely new industry vertical, and we are very excited about the prospects that they bring around the supply chain capabilities as well. They also have an excellent platform around trading. All of this adds tremendous depth to the service offerings that we would like to take to clients globally. From a revenue growth and a margin standpoint, we have not called out that separately for quarter two.

We had made certain disclosures in Q1, and even at the point when we had acquired them, and you can just make your assumptions around that. They have both, in fact, Connected Services and Mindsprint are off to a very good start and we are very encouraged by their performance.

Pooja Patil
Analyst, BW Businessworld

Also, are there more inorganic bets coming? Can we expect any?

Srini Pallia
CEO and Managing Director, Wipro

So as far as we are concerned, we are always looking for both organic and inorganic growth. What is important is how does any inorganic opportunities that come our way fits into our overall strategy. So our strategy is very clearly consulting-led and AI-powered, and especially in the context of Reimagine AI. So the two examples that Aparna Iyer talked about, connected services and design to manufacturing comes from Harman DTS acquisition, and farm to fork, entire supply chain capabilities comes through Mindsprint. So we are very happy about that. So if we come across that, we are definitely constantly on the lookout in terms of wherever it makes sense to us.

Pooja Patil
Analyst, BW Businessworld

Thank you.

Nisha Chandrasekaran
Manager of External Communications, Wipro

Shilpa, please go ahead.

Shilpa Phadnis
Analyst, Times of India

Yeah. Hi. Shilpa from Times of India. Sir, coming to the-

Srini Pallia
CEO and Managing Director, Wipro

Shilpa, can you please move the mic a little?

Shilpa Phadnis
Analyst, Times of India

impact because there would be higher subcon expenses going forward. Secondly, a lot of management leaders are undermining the larger impact because of this. You will see a lot of attrition in the U.S. market, and companies switching over to those firms who are willing to sponsor Green Cards. So there is a larger talent problem because if you just look at the data, nearly one million people are waiting for Green Cards and employee-based immigration is larger chunk of that. So I just wanted to hear your thoughts on how we are seeing the talent play out in the near term, because this could trigger a lot of attrition in your client markets. Secondly, of the 6,000 odd employees, the headcount that has declined, is it largely a part of your integration exercise? How much of it is involuntary action?

Srini Pallia
CEO and Managing Director, Wipro

Yeah. So Shilpa, I explained it earlier, and I will speak from a Wipro context here. In U.S., for the last six years, very focused we have been on the talent strategy. Our belief had been that long term, we need to build very local capabilities. Over the last six years, we have been able to increase our localization from nearly 40 odd to an 80 odd percentage. To the extent that over the last three to four years, there have been zero to minimal PERM from our side. So if you ask me the challenges which you are calling out, it would be because we had thought about it earlier. We did not know about this, but we had in a very planned fashion. We do not see those challenges impacting us, including impacting in the supply side of the business. So that is on the PERM side.

We have done a full circle around this, and we are very confident in managing the situation. Second issue on the headcount, which is the. As I said, you have to look at the entire people supply chain. There is demand, there is supply, there is the hiring happening, there is attrition happening, there is utilization. We look at all the pillars in terms of how we are looking at it. We have seen a higher demand, so we have better volume growth. We are seeing attrition being flat. We are seeing a utilization which can go up. We are also looking at productivity coming in from some of the projects Srini spoke about. So it is a combination of that.

Plus, as I said in the first half of the year, because we had a healthy bench, we have not gone to campuses, or hardly 1,000 odd people we've onboarded. All these factors look at this, looking at the headcount number. To your specific question, voluntary, involuntary, is we do it. Our voluntary attrition has been flattish. You've seen that it's in the data sheet. It's an ongoing process. We have a bench policy. People leave. It's nothing which is unusual which we are doing. It's normal BAU for us, which happens every quarter. The people exit for known reasons. I think that's how we'll approach it.

Nisha Chandrasekaran
Manager of External Communications, Wipro

We have time only for one last question, so I'll just take something from online. If you could share a highlight on BFSI vertical. Are you facing any challenges or do you anticipate any challenges on the BFSI sector? This is from Business Standard.

Aparna Iyer
CFO, Wipro

I think BFSI has done very well. It has grown both sequentially and a year-on-year basis. Particularly banking has had a very strong quarter. It has grown sequentially 4%. If you really look at Capco has also grown sequentially 4%. They've also grown on a year-on-year basis. Overall, we feel very encouraged about the momentum in BFSI. Srini, if you would like to add.

Srini Pallia
CEO and Managing Director, Wipro

Sure. I think, BFSI is a segment across the three markets that we have, Americas, Europe, and Asia Pacific. The pipeline is very strong and a lot of conversations continue to happen on AI adoption and deployment, and also innovating AI into some of their own processes, for example, payments and so on and so forth. Also the clients in this segment continue to focus on cost optimization and vendor consolidation. Overall, it's been a good sector for us in terms of pipeline and also you saw the growth numbers.

Nisha Chandrasekaran
Manager of External Communications, Wipro

Thank you. We will have to conclude our Q2 FY 2027 earnings press conference. For all follow-up questions, please reach out to the external communications team and we will be happy to help you. Thank you, and we will see you next quarter.