Good day, ladies and gentlemen. I'm Harpreet Kapoor, the moderator of this call. Thank you for standing by, and welcome to Nucleus Software quarterly earnings conference call for the quarter and nine months ended on 31 December 2021. For the duration of the presentation, all participants' lines will be in listen-only mode. We will open the floor for Q&A post the presentation. I would like to now hand over the proceedings to Swati Ahuja. Over to you, Swati.
Thanks, Harpreet. Good afternoon, everyone. This is Swati from Investor Relations team at Nucleus Software. A very warm welcome to all of you for this Nucleus Software earnings conference call for the third quarter and nine months ended on December 31, 2021. For discussion, we have here from the management team, Mr. Vishnu R. Dusad, our Managing Director. Mr. Parag Bhise, CEO. Mr. Anurag Mantri, CFO and Executive Director. Ms. Ritika Dusad, Executive Director and Chief Innovation Officer. Mr. Brajesh Khandelwal, Vice President, Neo Business. Mr. Ashwani Arora, Senior Vice President, Global Customer Success Team. Mr. Sanjeev Kulshreshtha, Senior Vice President, Product Build. Ms. Prema Rajaraman, Chief People Officer. Mr. Tapan Jayaswal, colleague from the finance team. As you all are aware, Nucleus Software does not provide any specific revenue earnings guidance.
Anything which is said during this call which may reflect our outlook for the future or which may be construed as a forward-looking statement must be reviewed in conjunction with the risk that the company faces. An audio and transcript of this call will be shortly available on the investor section of our website, www.nucleussoftware.com. With this, we are now ready to begin with the opening comments on the performance of the company for the third quarter and nine months ended on December 31, 2021 from the MD. Post that, we would be available for the Q&A session. With this, I'll now pass it over to Vishnu, sir. Over to you, sir.
Thanks, Swati. Thanks a lot, Swati, and a warm welcome to all of you for this investor call ending third quarter 2022. Financial year 2022. This is one of those unique years when despite the huge turbulences in the environment, we have taken some of the strongest and boldest steps to continue building the strength of all our stakeholders. We have continued to innovate for our customers, coming out with brilliant six-monthly releases, full of ultra-flexible and ultra-rich functionality. Opportunities for all the Nucleites to continue growing to the best of their abilities have been further enhanced during this year. Likewise, for our shareholders, we have done a buyback that is the biggest and unprecedented, again, by our side so far.
This buyback is also an indicator of our confidence in the future of the company and, that is how we would, you know, want our investors and all our stakeholders to appreciate this fact. With those words, I would now like to hand over to Parag Bhise, our CEO.
Thank you so much, Vishnu. Good afternoon, everyone. Thank you very much for joining this call once again. While it continues to be another tough quarter for us, I'm happy to share that we've been able to recruit a large number of freshers, as mentioned in the last investor call. They are at various stages of onboarding, including many who have started to contribute to our deliveries and hence to our top line. Adding on to the initiatives that Vishnu just mentioned, we have taken the following more initiatives in this quarter to strengthen both the security as well as the convenience of Nucleites, as we call our associates, by providing them with better work environment. We have completely eliminated BYOD, that is bring your own devices, in India.
BYOD is a concept, where we allowed Nucleites to use their own devices, essentially laptops, for work. It had become mandatory for us when we had to suddenly mobilize our entire workforce to start working from home. We have replaced all such devices with brand-new company-owned laptops. The large numbers of laptops that we have procured are also being distributed to the new joinees, both freshers and laterals. We are also transitioning to Microsoft Teams, one of the best collaboration platforms that you may be aware of, for use by all the Nucleites. This kind of explains the significant investment that reflects in our books, in addition to the increase in personal expenses that we spoke about earlier as well.
We are otherwise experiencing good traction from the market, both with our existing as well as our new customers. We have a sizable work in hand as well as strong pipeline. With the measures mentioned earlier, both in terms of upgrading the skills and knowledge of our associates, as well as by providing them with better working environment, we are expecting significant productivity gains to come in the following quarters. Considering that the market situation still remains very dynamic in our sector especially, we have taken a decision to advance our next year increments by three months to be effective from first of January 2022, as against first of April 2022 that we would have normally done. Thank you so much once again, and over to you, Swati.
Thank you, sir. Now I request Tapan, sir, please put some light on the financial highlights. Over to you, sir.
Thank you, Swati. Am I audible?
Yes, sir.
Swati, am I audible?
Yes, sir, you're audible. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Okay. Key highlights from financials are for revenue. Our consolidated revenue for the quarter is at INR 121.6 crores against INR 114.1 crores quarter-over-quarter and INR 124.1 crores year-over-year. Overall revenue in foreign currency, including India rupees revenue, is $16.3 million for the quarter against $15.5 million quarter-over-quarter and $16.8 million year-over-year. Product revenue for the quarter is at INR 99 crores against 93.2 crores quarter-over-quarter and INR 103.2 crores year-over-year.
Revenue from projects and services for the quarter is at INR 22.6 crores against INR 20.9 crores quarter-on-quarter and INR 20.8 crores year-on-year. As for expenses, cost of delivery, including cost of product development for the quarter, is 79.5% of revenue against 81.5% of revenue quarter-on-quarter and 67% of revenue year-on-year. In absolute terms, this is INR 96.7 crores against 93 crores quarter-on-quarter and INR 83.1 crores year-on-year. Marketing and sales expenses for the quarter is 3.8% of revenue against 3.6% of revenue quarter-on-quarter and 3.3% year-on-year.
In absolute terms, this is INR 4.6 crores against INR 4.1 crores quarter-on-quarter and INR 4 crores year-on-year. As for G&A expenses for the quarter, it is 12.3% of revenue against 10.8% of revenue quarter-on-quarter and 8.7% year-on-year. In absolute terms, this is INR 14.9 crores against INR 12.4 crores quarter-on-quarter and INR 10.8 crores year-on-year. EBITDA for the quarter is at INR 5.4 crores against INR 4.7 crores quarter-on-quarter and INR 26.1 crores year-on-year. Other income from investments and deposits is at INR 7.1 crores.
Tapan, sir, can you hear us? Are you there, sir? You're not audible. Swati, I can see his line, but not audible. Tapan, sir, I request you, if you can please disconnect and dial in again.
Swati, let me call him from another number.
Okay.
Hello?
Yes, sir.
Hello. Suddenly my line got disconnected. Okay.
Go ahead, sir, please. Now you're audible.
Total comprehensive income, which includes net profit and other comprehensive income, is at INR 7.6 crores for the quarter against INR 7.1 crores quarter-on-quarter and INR 26.3 crores year-on-year. EPS for the quarter is at INR 2.77 as against INR 2.95 in the previous quarter and INR 8.55 in December 31 quarter. In terms of foreign currency hedges on December 31, 2021, we had $4.7 million of forward contracts at an average rate of 76.12. There is a mark-to-market gain of INR 41.40 lakhs which is taken to hedging reserve in the balance sheet. The revenue contribution from the top five clients for the quarter is 23%, which is same as previous quarter.
The order book position is INR 563.8 crores, including 541.4 crore of product business and INR 22.4 crore of project and services business. In September 30, 2021, the order book position was INR 546.8 crore, including INR 514.8 crore of product business and INR 32 crore of project and services business. Total cash and cash equivalent as on December 31, 2021 are INR 543.3 crores against 724.5 crores as on September 30, 2021.
This includes balances in current accounts of INR 32.4 crores, various schemes of mutual funds, INR 377.1 crores, fixed deposits of INR 29.9 crores, investments in tax-free bonds of INR 98.6 crore and INR 5.3 crores in preference shares. With regard to receivables, we are at INR 83.4 crore against 77.7 crore previous quarter. During the quarter, there is a gross addition of fixed assets of INR 16 crores, consisting primarily of INR 10.5 crore on computers and INR 5.5 crore on software. Now I'll hand it over to Swati.
Thank you, sir. Sorry for the inconvenience caused. With this, we are now open for our Q&A session. I will now hand it over to Harpreet. Over to you, Harpreet.
Thank you, Swati. With this, we will open the floor for Q&A interactive session. I request you, if you wish to ask a question, please press zero and then one on your telephone keypad. I'll repeat. To ask a question, you need to press zero and then one. First question of the day we have from Prabal from Honesty and Integrity. Your line is unmuted. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Hi, sir. Thanks for providing the opportunity. I just have first two questions, actually. On the buyback, I think congratulations. That was a good move. Going forward now, given the promoters are already close to 75% of their stake, we need a radical rethink on the capital allocation. In the sense that, whatever problems you're currently going through, I'm sure you will overcome that. A window for buyback, unless and until promoters start entering their shares. Can we expect, you know, dividend payout ratio to be substantially higher going forward, when things return to normal?
You know, these decisions pertaining to dividend payouts and buybacks, these are taken by the board, considering various factors, both short-term and long-term, keeping various factors, both short-term and long-term at the back of mind. Appropriately when the board would take the decisions, I don't think we will be able to commit anything in this call about this matter. I would rather want to understand, in fact, from you. You talked about radical rethink on capital allocation. What exactly is meant by that?
Capital allocation, I mean to say how the whatever cash that we generate, how that cash is utilized in terms of what is retained in the business and what is distributed to shareholders. Right. The more and more cash we retain in the company, that gets reinvested into low earning investments like, you know, debt mutual fund and all of those things versus the distribution to the shareholders. That's what I meant by capital allocation.
Fair. We would, you know, the board would be keeping all these factors in mind when these decisions are taken in future.
Correct. Lastly on the PaySe platform, good thing that, you know, RBI has approved our product under Regulatory Sandbox, and now probably we'll see some more action. Just wanted to understand where is the potential lies for PaySe and what would be the revenue model. Because at the time when we launched it, we said that there will be potential on the payments bank, on the e-commerce side. I think most of that has already been now captured by Google Pay and, you know, Paytm and likes of the world. What is the remaining place where PaySe can be relevant, and what would be the revenue model that can be there?
Yeah. The very excellent question. So, the places where PaySe continues to be relevant is where people do not have a smartphone, and that population is quite huge.
Right.
I think at least there'll be anywhere between 200-300 million adults who do not have a smartphone. That is the target segment which is still relevant. However, we continue to face the challenges in terms of acceptance by the
By the relevant government agencies. We continue to focus on how do we get them to appreciate the value of this very unique offering. Then we will come back to you with the latest in next quarter.
Okay. Okay. That's it from my side. I will come back in the session.
Thank you. Thank you so much.
Next we have Rakesh from Investor First Advisors. Your line is unmuted.
Hello. Yes, sir. Hi. Thank you, and, you know, congratulations on a well-executed buyback. Just a couple of questions, sir, from my end. Number 1 is that, so I was going through the results and, you know, our operating and other expenses are up year-over-year from, let's say, INR 15 crores to about INR 21 crores even on a QOQ basis. I think in one of the comments you've mentioned that essentially it was on account of G&A because the sales and marketing was not up that much. In the G&A, sir, which part of it, you know, has it expanded? Is it something that's going to continue on a continuing basis at this pace or is it just a one-off thing? That's one of my questions, then I'll come with a few more, sir.
Thanks for appreciating the buyback. Now, as far as this increase is concerned, mostly it is because of the depreciation that has gone up thanks to the purchase of hardware and software. This is going to last for you know quarters to come.
This will last. This is what, like a license fee or what? What have we paid here?
See, as I mentioned, this is both depreciation as well as the license fee, combination of the two.
Okay, sir. Do you think it'll continue at this pace or do you think it will go on increasing also?
As of now, it should continue at this pace, unless we acquire some very high level, you know, hardware, etc., which there is a possibility, but as of now, I would say, it will continue at this pace.
Okay. Basically our G&A, we can assume it will continue at INR 16 crore, roughly.
Yeah.
Okay, sir. Sir, in terms of the employee cost, you know, I know that we've had you know quite a time and we've you know successfully added a lot more pressures. Do you think, sir, on the employee cost front, we are past the troublesome times at least, and now we are into the steady state period? Or do you still think that you know that we still have some ways to go?
I'll request our Chief People Officer, Prema, to take this on.
Yes, sir.
Sure. Thank you, Rakesh, sir. The trend that you've seen in the past year and more than a year actually, you know, whatever we are reading in the market, it appears like the trend is likely to continue for anywhere between 12-18 months. It's something that the big data industry is seeing, and definitely it's not unique to our organization. We are just preparing for that. With the induction of freshers, we do see that we will be able to manage on the cost front and
Mm-hmm.
hiring related costs that one would normally incur.
Mm-hmm.
Yeah, the trend we do see is likely to continue for 12-18 months.
Got it, Prema. Got it. Just one question from my end again on another point. We see your segmental results, sir. There seems to be, you know, I mean, some in Southeast Asia, sir, we seem to be, you know, both losing revenue momentum as well as, you know, there's a PBT loss, a segment loss. Just to understand again, is it a one-off or, you know, was it some project roll-off and that's why our fixed costs have come out here? Or what is the situation there, sir, in Southeast Asia?
I'll request Anurag to take this question.
Fine.
Hi. Good afternoon. Can you repeat your question, please?
Anurag, hi. Essentially. Yeah, no worries, yeah. Anurag, essentially, if you were to see, you know, the segmental reporting that's there, you know, we did about INR 24 crores of revenue, with a segmental EBIT of about negative INR 78 lakhs in December 2020. December 2021, you know, that's moved to about INR 2.5 crores segmental loss. There's been a degrowth even in the revenue as well from INR 24 crores to INR 21 crores. Is there something to read through in that in the sense that some projects are rolling over and that's why our fixed cost is now, you know, coming out? Or do you think this is a temporary thing?
Okay.
Is there something that's happening in Southeast Asia?
First of all, regarding the inconvenience that you have to repeat the question.
Don't worry.
Slight disturbance at my end. Yeah, yeah. First of all, though it has lasted for a few quarters, it's a very temporary situation, I will still say. The reasons are again related to the overall industry situation that we have a good number of projects and business pipeline in our hands. Having said that, as the immigration for Singapore has been closed for almost 18 months now.
Mm-hmm.
The talent paucity has increased here, and
Mm-hmm.
We are not able to execute all the projects to the extent we wanted them to be executed.
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
In addition to that, there is a significant increase in the personnel cost here. You can imagine.
Mm-hmm.
It's an island which is closed from everywhere.
Right.
The talent scarcity has increased, and that has increased our personnel cost and led to this type of change in the financials. We are expecting a few innovative methods to increase our revenue. At the same time, once the borders are open, we will be easily getting the talent as we used to it in the past, and this situation will be surely reversed.
Understood. Got it. Last question from my end. Is similar situation in the Middle East? Because Middle East also INR 8 crore EBIT has come down to about INR 2 crore. Is that also because of the closed borders?
To large extent, yes. The personnel cost, you know, personnel cost has increased. That phenomenon is only present. That has cost everywhere. Middle East was also closed from the aviation perspective. Recently it has opened up, and that's why we will be seeing the differences there as well.
Got it. There should be more pro-projects in Dubai and Saudi and things.
Predominantly in the UAE region.
Yes.
Yes, there are a couple of in the GCC.
Got it.
Rest of GCC region. Yes.
Got it. Thank you very much, Anurag. Thank you. Just if I may just ask, you know, you had mentioned the total cash on books. I know the signal fell at that time. Just don't mind repeating the total cash on books, that's all. Thank you very much, and wish you the very best of time.
Thank you.
Next we have Rishi Modi from Baroda Investment. Your line is unmuted.
Yeah. Hi. Can everyone hear me?
Tapan, you may want to just repeat the cash on books situation as of 31 December.
Sure, sir. Okay. Total cash and cash equivalent as on 31st December 2021 are at INR 543.3 crores, sir.
Yeah. Okay. Thanks, Tapan. Back to you. Sorry, Brajesh. Had to interrupt.
Yeah, no problem. Onto I have a few questions. First, on just the numbers front. I think in the past con calls also, people had suggested if we could have a segmental revenue based on on-premises and FinnOne Neo and similar for FinnAxia on-premise and cloud. Do we have those numbers with us right now, or should I reach out offline for those numbers?
No, we don't have those numbers offline, and we may not be able to give you those offline either.
Okay. Just, like if you could give a brief guidance on how FinnOne Neo's clientele and revenues have grown, like just the Neo and has grown over the past three, four years. How much of that has been from shifting of on-premises to Neo versus new additions? If you could give a brief overview of that.
Brajesh, would you like to take this or, you know, Parag, you-
Yeah. I'm okay. Yeah, Brajesh, go ahead.
Thanks for the question. We will not be able to give the products-wise and the deployment methodology-wise revenue bifurcation. I can only say that it's fifteen releases. The 15th one coming out on the first of February this year. FinnOne
Sorry to interrupt you here. Is it just me or is your voice breaking for everyone else?
Yeah, Brajesh, it is not audible.
Yes, I was breaking it.
Maybe, Parag, you may want to answer.
Okay.
Parag, do you want to take this? Yeah.
Okay. I hope my voice is audible. This is Parag here. Yeah, segmental revenue as well, product-wise, as Vishnu said and Brajesh said that that's not what we'd be able to give. Since you talked about last few years, I would like to mention that FinnOne Neo is going strong, both on-premise as well as in the SaaS model. We have 50 odd customers on the SaaS model already and some big names on-premise. Some of our existing customers have started to migrate from FinnOne to FinnOne Neo. Yeah, if that answers the potential for FinnOne Neo, it's very promising. That's how we look at it.
Okay. All right. If you could give me just a couple of numbers before I move on to the qualitative questions. Do we have a revenue from repeat clients as a percentage of revenue or a renewal rate for the clients on a year-on-year basis? Hello?
Yeah.
I don't think so.
This number, the precise number we would, you know, make it available offline and next.
Quarter onwards it will give us. We'll be talking upfront about it. Our guess is as of this quarter, it will be in the vicinity of 90%-95%.
Okay. That's great. That's helpful. Now coming on to the qualitative end of the questions, if I could get a brief idea about what do we have any products in the pipeline and any new technological capabilities that are being built into the staff or even within the company? Like be it blockchain or any other sort of decentralized system that we are building our capabilities on.
Brajesh Khandelwal, would you like to take that question?
Yes, I can take this question. Is my voice clear?
Yes. This is clear.
Recent developments on the technological front, one is AI ML. We are investing into AI ML. We have come out with some solution offering leveraging this capability, and we see more that would be done on this front. Apart from that, if I talk about the business technology, we have come out with a buy now, pay later offer, which handles the scale required for the massive lifestyle financing that is happening in these days.
Okay. All right. One more thing, we were trying to reprice our contracts even in renewal phase or new contracts with new clients. If we could get an overview of how successful the repricing has been, like how much % increase in the contract value on an average has taken place, and are we facing any pushback from the clients? That would be helpful to know.
Thanks for asking this, but this is too specific. I can only say that, client-wise appropriate pricing strategy has been worked out to ensure that it is win-win for both clients and us. Beyond that, I will not be able to share the specifics.
Okay, understood. All right. This is helpful. Yeah, that's it from my end. Thank you.
Next we have Vivek from Nine Rivers Capital. Your line is unmuted.
Thank you for the opportunity. We understand from the commentary that you gave that, and in the past commentaries that you have made, that you all have given a significant raise to your current employee base and also hired new people who are yet to go online, so to say. We appreciate, you know, that's a forward-looking and a requisite step that you all have taken. What we want to understand is, correspondingly, why have we not seen a growth in revenue? Is there still some lingering effect of the ransomware attack that you all had? I'm asking this question specifically because, you know, some of the peers who are listed in this space, you know, they have come out and, you know, shown significant top line growth or traction in their revenue profile.
You know, is this something that is likely to get corrected in short order? Or is this, you know, while we work with elevated cost structure, the top line will take much more a longer time to, you know, to start showing traction? That is what we wanted to understand.
Clearly, thanks for a very meaningful question. Clearly, the way we would like to respond to this question is, there are two, you know, approaches that we are following. One is a long-term approach, which would take few quarters, it could be couple of years also, to demonstrate results. Parallelly, we are working on the short-term measures. How well do these measures pan out in terms of numbers, et cetera, that remains to be seen. This is more of a, I would say, experimental work that is happening.
We are extremely confident that results of these experiments are gonna be very meaningful, certainly for our customers and then in turn for other stakeholders as well.
Sir, when you say these experimentations, what are these experimentations that we are referring to? The delivery, marketing, or, you know, how we manage our cost structure, people cost. What exactly are we referring to? If you can be a little more precise, that will be very helpful.
Yeah. These are experiments that we are conducting across the board right from concept stage of a product through validation of those you know ideas into the marketplace and then converting them into meaningful architecture design, testing, implementation, the entire life cycle, and making sure that our customers are able to derive value out of the world-class intellectual property that has got created. It is experimentations across the entire end-to-end value stream.
If I can, you know, just draw up on what you said, and please grant me this request, it is more from the delivery product development delivery model. But even and that is futuristic in nature. There is a cost involved, we understand that. But even otherwise, you all had a good set of products, which you all were delivering to the customer. Why aren't we seeing a traction there? Is there something that has come up which is hampering you all from, you know, even showing marginal growth even, you know, single digit, high single digit growth?
Is there some clip somewhere which is holding you all back and it is kind of confidential or it has some, you know, strategic importance from a business point of view, which you all are not. Well, you know, it's not so much the cost structure, but it's also the top line, the inability to accelerate the top line that is, you know, that we want to understand.
No. It is essentially those, you know, setbacks that we got and that is what, you know, in terms of the COVID and ransomware attack and attrition, which is what is, you know, holding us back for our-
Going forward, how are we making this? Because, you know, while COVID might be out of the way, attrition is gonna last. Ransomware happened. The last place we would expect a ransomware to happen is the tech company, but all the same, it happened. So are there any lingering effects of the ransomware because of which certain projects are on hold while you all have deputed people, the execution is not happening, billing is not happening? Where exactly is the holdup? Again, this is in reference to, you know, people have gone through the same, you know, the external macro factors and have shown growth. They have had ups and downs and temporary, and we assume that is also temporary in the case of QTI.
Even in the last one year, they have shown growth. That's where we were trying to understand what exactly is, you know, holding back the top line growth.
Yeah, once again, let me reiterate that when it comes to ransomware attack, no lingering effect whatsoever. In fact, I'll request Anurag to elaborate for your benefit and Anurag's benefit.
Thank you.
How we have much more stronger than a whole lot of players. Yeah. Likewise, we are confident that we'll bounce back. The top line will bounce back soon enough, as our experimentations start becoming more and more successful. Over to you, Anurag, to just give a perspective on how we have grown stronger on cybersecurity.
Sure, Vishnu. Thank you. After... See, first of all, when we were hit with the ransomware or cybersecurity breach, we could contain it to a maximum extent. That is one. Second, our recovery was quite faster in comparison to generally what organizations take to recover after these type of attacks. This is the second thing. After that, we have gone for a very comprehensive assessment. We have engaged unarguably the best cybersecurity consulting firm in Southeast Asia. They have been our cybersecurity advisory and our internal team, and that cybersecurity advisory had actually gone for very comprehensive measures on strengthening our cybersecurity posture.
I can tell you that all our digital assets are currently protected with best of the class cybersecurity platforms and tools. We have gone for a different type of multi-factor controls, multi-layer controls in our environment. As a good practice, what we have done precisely to add strength to our cybersecurity, I will not be able to share those details, but I can tell you that one of the top four consulting organizations, in addition to that, our cybersecurity advisory, has gone for a detailed discussion with us, assessment, and they have mentioned that right now, probably, we are among the top 3% IT organizations having the proper cyber guards. That's the level.
As we had to update our customers about this incident and our recovery, just to add how strong we have become is also evident from the fact that many of our customers have gone for detailed discussions with us, what we have done. They have also consulted the same consulting organization and gone for
For quite a few detailed exchanges with us to see whether they can also follow the same type of measure and put the same type of controls. That's the level that for this also we have got multiple appreciations from our customer at what type of guards we have put in after the incident.
I think that's all from my side.
Yeah, yeah. Thank you.
Next is Rahul Jain from Dolat Capital. Your line is unmuted.
Yeah, hi. Thanks for the opportunity. Hope my line is audible. Firstly, if you could share the order book data. I think I missed if you shared that in the opening comment. I have a follow-up question to ask.
Tapan, can you please share this?
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Am I audible or no?
Yes, you are. Yes, I can hear you.
The order book position is at INR 563.8 crore, including INR 541.4 crore of product business and INR 22.4 crore of project and services business. In September 30, 2021, the order book position was INR 546.8 crore, including INR 514.8 crore of product business and INR 32 crore of project and services business.
Right. Thank you. My second question is, you know, is there any three specific things, you know, on the positive side, that we can highlight and say, okay, these three good development that happened in the business in last 12 odd months. If you look at some of the comments that we shared in this quarter as well, like, on the supply side, you said that it's not going to normalize in any time near future. And also from the demand side, we are not able to scale up despite very strong tech spend scenario by the BFSI segment that we are witnessing in case of many Indian services as well as software peers.
Anything we want to highlight as a positive thing that has happened?
Parag, would you like to take that?
Yeah, I will. Would you, because you made a few observations, could you repeat them? Because some of them I can share the positives which I done, but then some of the observations, if you could repeat because yeah, that will help.
If you want, I can rephrase my question. What I'm essentially trying to understand-
Yeah, that will be better because,
I'll do that. On the supply side, we are saying that the supply side is going to be tight for some time. That is not going to resolve in a hurry. That we all know, right? That is something which everyone every other peer is also talking about. From a demand side, what we have delivered in the last couple of quarters is also not very exciting, which is different from what others are experiencing, where we are seeing one of the best growth for many of your peers. By peers I'm counting even the product peers as well as services peers. I'm saying the demand does not look like good for us. Supply side we are going to see challenges.
In this kind of a situation, what are the three big positives that you can highlight is happening in the business?
I'll respond with a perspective. Look, I'll kind of repeat what I shared in my opening remarks that the good thing is, we are able to hire a good number of freshers from the market. You know, that's a positive. It's in hundreds. It's not just a few numbers. They are in different stage of onboarding, including some who have already been deployed on projects on our implementation and projects and starting to contribute to our top line. Yes, if you're talking about supply side in terms of manpower being available, that's going to continue to be a challenge. However, to be frank, lateral hiring, we have been facing challenge.
However, fresher hiring, there is a very good traction. Now, as regards deliveries, you talked about revenue growth also. I mentioned in my initial comments that we have good tractions both with our existing customers as well as the pipeline. The challenge remains execution. The primary reason, I agree that, as Vishnu sir answered that, ransomware was kind of one-time phenomenon. COVID also one time or couple of time. These are. What is having a lasting impact is the severe attrition that we faced.
Now while we have hired so many people from the fresh domain, you would appreciate and especially in the product domain, it takes longer for us to get those people to understand our products and then start to deliver as compared to what we would do in a normal services situation or in a project situation. While we've got those people, it will take us some time for them to deliver. There is no dearth of work, and that's why I talked about both work in hand as well as good traction from the pipeline, which I had meaning the new orders. Okay? Some of the experimentations that Vishnu talked about is just to give you some quick examples. We've hired these freshers from market.
It takes us a few months to train them. The experiments we are trying is how can we make them productive in lesser time. That's one simple example. Those are the things which we are, because they need to. They come with some technology background, but we have a program where we bring them up on the technology front. More challenging is we bring them up on the product front. We are trying to see how that can be reduced. The positives are we got good traction from the on the fresher hiring. We're getting good traction from our existing. A lot of our customers are wanting to migrate to a newer platform.
Execution, yes, it is a challenge at the moment, but with the fresher hiring that we have done and with the productivity gains, the tools and the platform that we talked about, I talked about the Microsoft Teams, I talked about huge number of new laptops that have been hired and given to people, and the process improvement and the training that we are doing, we expect that to give us benefits in the coming quarter. I'm not sure if I'm able to answer you. May not be directly to your precise question, but I wanted to give you a perspective of how the business is looking to us. We are quite hopeful and upbeat about it. The kind of.
I don't know if you meant that, but it's not such a I can't comment about other competitors, how they are doing. We don't know their business model, how they go about it. The other aspect which you touched in the very beginning of, as response to one of the questions is, we are also working on our pricing, which Brajesh also kind of answered. It's early, but then that is an area of focus which we are working on, because our customers do realize that the costs have increased. More than the cost, we also are getting into value discussions with them. We tell them what value is our product giving to them, how is their business benefiting from our products, which is something which we were probably not doing so explicitly in the past.
These are the kind of experiments that we are trying. I hope I'm able to answer your question in a larger perspective.
See, I understand and appreciate your detailed thoughts on it, but what essentially we are seeing as an outcome is that in FY 2022, we are going to close our revenue, which we did in FY 2019. Incidentally, this is the same period where most of the companies are talking of a common word, which is the most common commonly used word, which you might have also come across, is digital acceleration. I don't see that acceleration we being beneficiary of it. In fact, looking at the numbers and not spending any energy on understanding your business, people would say that probably we are a very traditional business, and that's why we are getting disrupted in such a scenario. While I know and have spoken to your clients, they speak very highly about your product.
Somehow your the kind of product that we are having and the kind of numbers which we are delivering does not look like the people at the helm are doing the right justice. Maybe it's much easier said than the situation on the ground. I understand hyperinflation and hyper attrition is a real worry which every company in your industry is facing right now and also in many other industries. If that is your biggest concern because you have, as you said, there's no dearth of work, right? You have the right positioning for your product. You have demand for that kind of product, but you're not able to deliver.
If the issue is completely on the supply side, not on the demand side, then why we are not able to take some very, very aggressive step? Because it's not one quarter or two quarter, it's been two years, and we are getting into a third year where we are not, possibly will not grow. Is there something that somewhere we need to do a introspection into and come out to be? And maybe you already have seen those early signs, as you rightly said, that some of the things are started falling in place. Can we say that the FY 2023 is going to be a very good growth year because some of these challenges will be behind us? Can we get that kind of comfort if not we see any challenge in the current situation that way?
I would say we hope to, but as Swati mentioned in the beginning, we don't give any predictions. I will not talk about it. Of course, I'll only say that the kind of thing that we are working on the basics in terms of getting good, intelligent, fresh people from the institutes, working on infrastructure. Our product is anyways strong, and you kind of validated that. You also considered one of our customers. You could consult more customers. On the technology front, look, we come out with product releases every six months. While there is a functionality component to it, in the current circumstances as well, there's a very strong technology component to it.
Our product releases are not only functionally enriched, but they're also technologically enriched. Brajesh talked briefly about the AI ML because they're slowly which are subtly getting into our products. Saying that, maybe you made that statement that the product is very traditional and not up to speed on technology is probably not fair because you would know, we talked about it earlier, this new product that we've created has been completely re-architected, which probably no one or very few in the industry would take such a big risk. We completely rewrote this product because we wanted to always remain on the latest technology. In summary, I would respond that probably some more patience is required.
We are very sure of what we are doing. Unless the market dynamics again change very unbelievably, we should be making good progress. That's what I would like to conclude.
I completely agree. Just one last point I would like to say. I have heard only good things about your products. There's no question about it. If in the same market, we say that our product is superior to others, but probably the companies with lesser superior products or inferior products for that matter on a relative scale are delivering better numbers than ours, then there is something wrong between having a good product and having a good market. That is something, as you said, you cannot comment on others' performance, but I think you need to look into what others are delivering. They're delivering their best ever numbers in these years. On the contrary, we are seeing the worst performance in last five, six years happening right now with us.
Which is very conflicting with what is happening in the marketplace. That is something which I wanted to highlight your attention to. Thank you. That's it from my side.
Yeah. Thank you. Thanks for those inputs. We'll, as we're reflecting upon these things, we will keep your inputs in mind. Thank you so much for these critical inputs.
We have one last question of the day from Vaibhav Badjatya from Honesty and Integrity Investment. Over to you.
Thanks for the follow-up. Just want few numbers. What is the number of employees in this December 2021 quarter ending and December 2020 quarter ending?
Prema, please take that one.
Hello.
Yeah.
We are having a headcount of 1,689 as of December 31, 2021. We were having 1,998 as at December 31, 2020.
Okay. Lastly, we understand the pressure that we are seeing on the employee cost front, and you also highlighted that you have upfronted the increments from January. It's obvious that you know, the employee cost will keep increasing. Apart from the employee cost, do you see any other place where costs can be managed or reduced? If you can highlight which are those areas where we can probably reduce costs, so to offset some of the margin impact that is coming from the employee cost.
We are trying the productivity measures, and that is how we can hope to.
Hmm.
Reduce the costs otherwise.
Mm-hmm.
Percentage terms-wise. Otherwise, you know, as the industry is experiencing, it's a very tough situation as of now.
Got it. I understand. That's it from my side. Thank you.
Thank you.
With this, I would like to now hand over the floor back to Swati for final remarks. Over to you, Swati.
Thanks, Harpreet. Now, we would like to thank all our investors for joining us today for this call. I would now pass it over to Vishnu sir for his closing comment. Over to you, sir.
I'd like to take this opportunity to thank all of you for your continued interest in Nucleus Software, and would like to reiterate our commitment to ensure that we deliver value on the long term to all our stakeholders. Thank you so much. Have a great day.
Thank you so much. Thank you so much all the speakers and investors for joining the call. That does conclude our conference call for today. You may all disconnect now. Thank you, and have a pleasant day.