Q1 25/26

Jul 25, 2025

I think we can start. Yeah. Hi everyone, good day and welcome to the Q1 FY26 earnings call of eClerx Services Limited. Please note that this webinar will be recorded. To take us through the results and to answer your questions, we have with us the top management of eClerx, represented by Kapil Jain, Managing Director and Group CEO, and Srinivasan Nadadhur, Chief Financial Officer. We will start the call with brief opening remarks by Kapil, followed by Srinivasan, who will be sharing the financial update, and then we will open the floor for Q&A session as usual. I would like to remind you that anything that is mentioned on this call that gives any outlook for the future or which can be construed as a forward-looking statement must be viewed in conjunction with the risks and uncertainties that we face. These risks and uncertainties are included but not limited to what we have mentioned in the prospectus filed with SEBI and subsequent annual reports, which you can find on our website. Having said that, I will now hand over the floor to Kapil. Over to you, Kapil. Thank you, Prateek, and good evening, everyone. We are pleased to share the highlights of our performance in FY26 Q1. It was a good quarter on both the revenue and margin fronts. Operating revenue for Q1 was $109.2 million, up 4.2% sequentially and 17.1% year on year. In INR terms, Q1 operating revenue was INR 9,346 million, up 4% sequentially and 19.5% year on year. Margins came in stronger as well, despite the impact of the annual wage increase which we see in Q1. EBITDA for Q1 was INR 2,346 million at a margin of 24.8%, down 6.3% sequentially but up 25.3% year on year. PAT for the quarter was INR 1,417 million at a margin of 15%, down 6.9% sequentially but up nearly 27% year on year. Our deal wins were at $32 million for Q1. We are happy to note that Analytics and Automation went up 6% over the previous quarter, stronger than the firm growth rate, and that emerging client growth has outpaced top 10 client growth. Growth has been broad-based across all our verticals other than the Fashion and Luxury segment. On the new centers, we have recently opened our Lima operations, which went live this quarter, and operations in Cairo will be going live in Q2. I would like to share some commentary and outlook about our businesses. On Banking, Financial Services, and Insurance, clients in that segment have reported strong results on the back of high volatility. There are broad opportunities across large and small clients, both new and existing. We are working on several interesting KYC client onboarding opportunities with new clients as well as expansion in existing clients. These opportunities are a mix of tech, data, and operations. On Fashion and Luxury, there has been no change in the outlook from the previous quarter. This segment continues to remain weak with the U.S. market underperforming, weakness in China, and appreciation of the Euro. Both High Tech and CMT and our emerging businesses grew strongly in the last quarter, and the outlook remains broadly positive. Our market intelligence, platform, and tech services are resonating well with clients. On Communications, Media, and Telecom, we see good traction on both new logo wins and in cross-sell of CX services and omnichannel services that we provide. We will leverage the new delivery centers to grow footprint with both existing and new clients. Clients continue to remain focused on cost control and operational efficiencies. On technology and analytics services did well in Q1. We see interest in our productized services offerings around compliance, Compliance Manager, market intelligence, and in low-code/no-code services. I'll now cover some of the brief awards and recognitions that we have received this quarter. We have been included in the Leaders Quadrant of Everest Group's Financial Crime and Compliance Operations Services PEAK Matrix Assessment 2025, a recognition that demonstrates our commitment to delivering innovative and effective compliance solutions to our clients. eClerx's Chief Technology Officer Sanjay Kukreja has been honored as the Evangelist 100 by the Chief Security Officer Award CSO 100 by Foundry and IBG Inc. Co. for his outstanding leadership in driving technology transformation and fortifying cybersecurity strategy. eClerx has also been honored with the prestigious Financial Express CFO Award FE CFO in the Medium Enterprises Services segment, underscoring the company's commitment to financial discipline, risk management, sustainable growth, and having a highest set of corporate governance. As many of you know, learning and development forms the foundation of our delivery model. Six months ago, we introduced a cutting-edge GenAI training course in collaboration with the Technical University of Munich, one of the world's top universities in computer science and engineering. I am proud to share that as a result of this initiative, 8,000 employees have successfully upskilled, which represents roughly 40% of our employee count. We are also upskilling the entire technology team on GitHub Copilot in line with our CTO's vision to drive 25% productivity gain by leveraging AI code generation tools. FY26 has started on a positive note and we will continue to build on this momentum. We are grateful to our clients and partners for having placed their trust in us and for giving us the opportunity to be part of their journey. We look forward to their continued support in the future. Thank you and over to Srini for more details. Thank you Kapil and good evening everyone. I will provide some additional detail on our performance this quarter. As Kapil mentioned, the performance this quarter has been strong on both the revenue and the margin fronts. In constant currency terms, operating revenue was up 3.3% sequentially and 16.4% year-over-year, including other income of INR 105 million. Total revenue was INR 9,451 million, up 3.1% sequentially and 17.7% year-over-year. On a quarter-on-quarter basis, there was margin decline in both EBITDA and PAT of about 250 and 160 bps respectively owing to the annual wage hikes and the impact of the new delivery centers. This is lower than the decline usually seen and was achievable thanks to the strong top line growth in BFSI and CMT Offshore, enabling us to hire at the bottom of the pyramid. You will notice that we have added a couple of slides, one on key performance indicators and the second on balance sheet metrics, which show a long-term view of our performance in a graphical format and we hope that you find these slides useful. One thing that I'd like to call out on this slide is the net operating cash flow of INR 223 million and the EBITDA conversion metric 9.5% in Q1 are much lower than usual. There are a couple of reasons for this. Number one is that DSO has gone up from 80 days to 86 days. This is because of system and process changes in some of our large clients resulting in invoices being held for some time. These are clients with whom we have tenured relationships and I want to emphasize that there is no risk to collections. The second reason is that we made a large contribution to our gratuity fund basis advice from our auditors. The contribution is tax deductible and the returns are tax free and this will reduce our liabilities in future. Without these two, the Q1 net OCF would have been higher than that of last year. Another point to note is that we pay annual bonuses in Q1, so Q1 in general does tend to be lower than Q2 to Q4. Coming to the P&L, I had mentioned last quarter about a reclass of 120 bps from delivery to sales. That reclass last quarter had resulted in a higher S&D cost. Last quarter, 14.1% of revenue. Excluding that, the Q1 S&D of 12.3% is roughly down about 60 bps. Q1 Q DNA as a percentage of revenue has gone down as happens every Q1 because of the recalculation of WDV in the new financial year. On the other key metrics, top 10 concentration has reduced by 1%. We have added about 750 seats in our Aeroly facility in Navi Mumbai. Attrition at 18% is lower than Q4 and about the same as Q1 of last year. Staff utilization is down by about half a percent. I have already touched upon DSO earlier. That concludes our prepared remarks. We can now move on to the Q and A. Back to you, Deek. Thank you, Srinivasan. Thank you, Kapil. We will now open the floor for the question and answer session. The first question comes from the line of Sandeep Shah from ICICI Securities. Sandeep, I think Sandeep has moved out. I guess the next question comes from the line of Sandeep is there. Sandeep, please, you can go ahead. You can unmute your line and please ask your question. Yeah, earlier there was no option to unmute. Sorry for that. Just congratulations on a great execution both on revenue margin as well as employee addition. Just the first question, sir. Is there a seasonality in the ACV booking from Q4 to Q1? Though on a year-over-year we have done well, do you believe the decline Q1 Q is seasonal and may continue in future, or are there some delays in decision making? Sandeep, thanks for the question. Like I had mentioned in the last quarter as well, quarter on quarter there will always be some amount of volatility up or down. If you look at full year ACV of last year, we did roughly about $140 million. We expect to do higher than that on a full year basis. Thanks. Thanks. That was great. Also, some commentary about roll off. It continues at the scale of 15-20% of the top line. Yeah. About saying there is no significant change in roll off %. Okay. Last few things in terms of employee addition being robust, that implies we also have a healthy growth visibility at least in the near term. Is it a right way of looking at it? Yes, Sandeep, I think we do see client demand, and the overall strategy that we have laid out for the company is working well in terms of service line capabilities and the verticals that we have created. Okay. Okay. Just last two questions. Generally, Q1 margin is lower for wage hikes. If we compare the full year margin versus Q1 margin, it improves by 3 to 4 percentage points. In this scenario, do you believe this time we could be near the upper end of the comfort guidance of 24% to 28% in this year? We don't know. The year has just started, and it's possible that we may want to invest more in the business if we see margins trending up. That is a decision that Kapil and the executive team will make. Take during the course of the year. Okay, and the last question. Last year the buyback got concluded in the second quarter. When we come out with a Q2 result, we could have mandatory period of 12 months would have completed. In a fair scenario one can expect the buyback can be considered by the board in the near to medium term. It's possible, yes. Okay, thanks. I may have a follow-up and come back. Thanks Sandeep. Thank you, Sandeep. We have next question from the line of Mihir Manohar, Carnelian Capital. Meer, you can unmute and you can ask your question. Yeah. Hi. Thanks for giving the opportunity and congratulations on great set of numbers. Largely wanted to understand on the margin side, generally 1Q is a period where we have 200 or 300 basis points, kind of a drop in margins. However, this time that is not the case. If you can quantify the headwinds and. Tailwinds for margin on a QQ basis. For this quarter, that will be helpful. Yes. Roughly about 250 bps has come through because of various hikes, and about 20 has come because of the new delivery centers that we have opened, on that we were able to recoup margin because of the strong growth, especially offshore. As I mentioned, when the growth happens in a couple of our areas like BFSI and CMT, we are able to replace at the bottom of the pyramid, which results in the overall wage cost going down. Understood. Sure. Second question was on the DSO side, I mean you mentioned systems and processes, some change in some of the clients. What is this change exactly and for what part of the business is this change happening, and will it be reverted back to our original number? Some of our clients want to change the processes and their internal system that they use for tracking purchase orders. While they are migrating to the new system, some of our invoices are holding. This is in a couple of our BFSI clients and a couple of our retail and CMT retail and emerging clients. Do you want to talk about DSO? Yeah, I think we definitely this year the DSO moved from 80 to 86. We do expect it to bring in line with what it has been on average in the previous quarters to around 80, between 80 and 82. Understood? Sure. Third question was just on the GitHub Copilot. Copilot, so what number of people are broadly we trying to train on GitHub Copilot and trying to drive productivity? The technology team is about 1,700. I would expect that maybe about half of them will be doing pure technology work and the other half may be doing analytics kind of work. A rough assumption is about 60%, but. I would have to check with also I think the work that we do on the technology side, broadly we classify in services that we are rendering on top of our IP, and there our technology team that's working on the same. If they are able to get trained on GitHub Copilot, you can realize the productivity immediately because that's something on our infrastructure, on premises, and we are able to realize that productivity. Technology folks that are working on client systems, where we are delivering services on the client systems or we are providing low-code/no-code or doing tech work there, even if we are trained to apply that, productivity is a function of clients' infrastructure, security, and other parameters. I wouldn't take 25% off 60% of 1,700 as the number immediately. What we are looking at is people who are working on the back of our IP. That is something, yes, we will see benefits as we move along. Understood? Sure. on the margins and Analytics and Automation division, does analytics have higher margin for. Us versus the company average. At a gross margin level, the % gross margin is lower, but the dollar gross margin is higher. Yeah, that's it for myself. Thank you. Thank you, Mir. Next question is from the line of Dipesh Mehta, MK Global. Dipesh, you can go ahead and ask your question. Yeah, thanks for the opportunity. Two questions from my side. First, about the emerging client revenue. If I look at it after relative softness for the previous quarter, largely because of Fashion and Luxury related and digital spend where you indicated some softness, but this quarter it bounced back while your commentary remains largely similar on that fashion segment. If you can provide what is driving growth in emerging client this quarter, that is question one, and how you expect that momentum to continue in the coming quarter. Second question is about sales and distribution. Partly, you indicated about the reclassification, but even adjusted for reclassification, it is down. If you can provide some sense how one should look at these sales and distribution investments going forward. Thank you. I think growth in emerging clients is a function of a few things. One is average deal size going up, our ability to sell more services into our existing set of clients, cross-sell, upsell that I spoke about in terms of high-end fashion and retail. I think what you're seeing in margins is on account of the currency, constant currency. I think we still are cautious on that segment of business. What was your last question on? Sales and distribution cost? What was the question? Sorry. Sales and distribution, even adjusted for reclassification, is down when I look sequential as well as any year-over-year perspective. How should one look at it as a percentage of revenue going forward? I won't look at quarter on. Quarter I think, like I said, we will continue to let go of the bottom performers, continue to hire at the top end, continue to hire where we see growth momentum, either across service lines, vertical GEOs. I wouldn't look at a trend line quarter on quarter. On a yearly basis, we should be around the number that we had last year. Understand, and last question is about overall demand scenario perspective. Let's say from the beginning of the year, considering the way deal pipeline shape up happened as well as quarter one performance, are we more confident about growth acceleration, or you think things are largely stable? If you can provide some context compared to where you started versus now. We are cautiously optimistic in terms of what we are seeing. Like I said, our overall strategy is working well in terms of cross-sell as well as in the financial services space compliance. KYC seems to resonate well. We have recently been acknowledged by Everest on the PEAK Matrix. I think all these things definitely are the tailwinds that we have. Overall macroeconomic environment continues to be volatile and hence we are cautiously optimistic. Thank you. Thank you, Dipesh. We have the next question from the line of Shraddha Agarwal from AMSEC. Shraddha, you can go ahead and ask your question. Yeah. Hi. Thanks for taking my question and congratulations on another great quarter. Two questions. Last quarter we had indicated that the pipeline for FY26 is better than what it was at the beginning of FY25. With strong conversions coming through this quarter also, do we still have a stronger pipeline compared to what it was at the end of FY25? Yes, the pipeline continues to be strong. As I was mentioning, our deal sizes have gone up, which is taking longer from a conversion point of view, which is why Q1 you saw decline over Q4. Year on year there is a growth, and like I said, on the ECB basis for full year we do expect to do higher than what we did in FY25. Right. In terms of GCC, IT companies at least have a specific GCC approach now, and they have carved out business units to focus on GCC as a focused area. What is our strategy around GCC? Are we doing anything different now compared to what historically we have done around that space? Shraddha, we have been working with GCCs from the very beginning. I think every client we work with has a GCC in the financial services sector. For us this is an opportunity, and we have put a dedicated team as well. I think it's just doubling down on what we were already doing to capture market share from the GCCs. The last question, what drove a very strong growth in our Analytics and Automation practice this quarter? I think there were a couple of things. One is again on the analytics, martech, and some of the other capabilities that we have, our ability to cross-sell, upsell that into a wider set of clients. Second is we had made a structural change to bring Analytics and Automation and technology under one umbrella. That was another reason. We are able to bring in a more synergistic view for the clients across data engineering, analytics, insights, and it's broad-based across capital markets, financial services clients, high tech, and customer operations. Right. For last question, I know you had not commented on revenue growth guidance for 2026, but you had indicated that the DLCB number would be higher. Given how we've started off the year and given the kind of hiring momentum that has happened in the quarter, would you be comfortable in saying that 2026 growth could be on the revenue growth as well? 2026 could be better than 2025. I wouldn't comment on that. I think what I can say is because as I said there are a lot of macroeconomic uncertainties that we are living in. Definitely Q2 we will be confident of showing a sequential growth over Q1, and then we will give the further guidance as and when we meet in the Q2 earnings call. Great. Thank you so much, sir, and wish you all the best. Thank you. Thanks, Shraddha. Thank you, Shraddha. We have next question from the line of Girish Bhai from BOB Capital Markets. Girish, you can go ahead and ask your question. Girish, you can unmute your line and ask your question. I think he has dropped. We have next question from Vikal Gupta. You can go ahead and ask your question. Hi, good afternoon everybody and congratulations for yet another fantastic quarter. Thank you very much for that. My question is, when the results are coming so fantastic, don't you think that looking for revising the guidelines to the upside or is it too early to comment on that? The second question is in the. Near future, can we see. That, you know, consideration for the bonus share? Yeah, I'll take the first question. I'll let Srini answer. On the bonus share, as I had said, we don't give guidance for the future. What we have indicated is that pipeline is robust. We have seen sequential growth in Q1 and Q2. We are reasonably confident to deliver a sequential growth. The margin guidance, we continue to maintain between 24% to 28% despite opening up two new centers, one in Cairo, one in Lima. As you know, when you are opening a new center, it takes time to break even. I think we are not going to change the guidance on the EBITDA and margin front, and sequential increase in EBITDA is what we have said. I am continuing to maintain the same guidance. On the bonus, it is something for the board to decide. We are of course cognizant of the fact that we want more retail investors to participate, and therefore we would like the share price, at least from a psychological standpoint. To be in a certain low range. Where people can actively trade. Therefore, when the time is right, we'll propose it to the board, and I'm sure the board in their wisdom. Will take the right decision. Thank you. Thank you very much for answering the question. My main idea was a request for the bonus share for making more availability in the. Market and the liquidity for the, you know, retail shareholders. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you. We have the next question from the line of Girish Bhai. Girish, you can unmute your line and go ahead. Yeah. Am I audible? Yes, you're audible. Okay. One of the running themes in this result season has been vendor consolidation that most companies have been talking about. What has been your experience with regard to that? Yes, there has been, we have seen vendor consolidation in larger clients where, as I mentioned, our delivery continues to be strong backed by productized services technology. If anything, we have benefited from the consolidation in the industry. Okay, can you give out an outlook? Vis a vis verticals and the service lines that you have, especially retail and the consumer oriented side of the business, how is that kind of working? I said that the growth this quarter except the high end fashion and retail was broad. Based on financial services, I think we see healthy demand and outlook. This is also true on the communications, media and technology, high tech, and M and D. We also see growth in Q1 as well as in emerging markets. I think except high end fashion and retail, where we are still seeing some headwinds which I mentioned in my opening remarks, we see positive momentum across all of the four verticals. Any outlook on how order inflow is going to look like in the coming quarters? What will order inflow look like? The ACV, I think like I said, quarter on quarter, I think it's a little difficult in terms of the timelines. What I am saying is that we are reasonably confident to close the year higher than what we closed our ACV in FY2025. Between H1. H2 will be a stronger half. I'm hoping that H2 should be stronger. Than H1, I think, like I. There is a lot of overall macroeconomic uncertainty which we are living under. We will give you a better outlook when we meet in Q2. Earnings call, I have already mentioned about Q2. Okay, thank you very much. Thank you, Girish. We have the next question from the line of Rehan Syed from Three Netra Asset Managers. Rehan, you can go ahead and ask your question. Good afternoon to everyone and thank you for giving me the opportunity. As I have, most of the questions were already answered, so I am left with one or two. Yes, hello. Hello. Am I audible? Yes. Yeah. One of us. My first question is regarding the sir, can you share an update on new clients things in North America. Europe and the pipeline visibility from. These geographies, please put some light on this. We don't give client names. I think, like I said, the pipeline is robust across the US and Europe and across verticals that I just mentioned, and the pipeline remains healthy. Okay, so you have said that majority of your client consideration is coming from the US and Bureau of Market side. Am I right, sir? That's correct, yeah. My second question is on the CapEx side. What were the CapEx plans for this upcoming year, for going forward? If you could just mention the number. The number we don't usually mention, but our CapEx is led by demand, so demand for facilities and demand for computing equipment. To the extent that we see growth in the business, the CapEx will follow. Okay. That's it for me, sir. Thank you. Thank you for giving me that question. Thank you. Thank you, Rehan. Thank you, Rehan. We have the next question from the line of Devashish from Swan Investments. Devashish, you can go ahead and ask your question. I hope I'm audible. Yes, yes, yes. First of all, congrats on a great set of numbers. This is Jalash, I work with Debashish. I had a few set of questions. First question was around AI, the general discussions around it. What verticals or service lines is it supporting us in terms of the offerings and where is it impacting us negatively? There is a lot of noise around BPM businesses being negatively impacted by AI because the operational work is getting replaced. How are we using it to our favor? Could you put some light around it? Sure. No, I think you said you Angela. Okay. So Jalaj, like I had mentioned that the productized services that we provide, which are on our IP, for example, Compliance Manager in the KYC space, we are extensively using GenAI for client outreach, entity summarization, and some of the other functionality that we provide on the quality audit function that we provide. On the care side, we are using GenAI for speech to text, sentiment analysis, and providing insights. The insights that we provide our clients are using it to drive elimination and automation. Because of our superior delivery, we are net gainer in terms of the overall top line. In terms of the numbers also, I think we are also looking at passing on the benefits of some of the benefits that we are getting in terms of the work that we are doing by bringing in GenAI, agentic AI into the products that we use to deliver the services. Some of those benefits we are passing on to the clients. In terms of agentic AI, we are leveraging our Robo Box platform that we have where we have integrated our agent AI framework and we are building on top of the entire ecosystem that we have. I think we are using it as an opportunity because we understand the domain, we have underlying technology, our IP on which we are delivering services, and we have the process knowledge. If you bring it all together, I think it's an opportunity for us and we are not considering it like yes, the industry is there but those are like traditionally the models which is Bamuna seed model. I think the services that we are providing is an integrated offering across tech, domain, and process. Understood, Understood. Makes sense. Fine. That answers it. My second question was around if I look at the Europe numbers, quarterly there was some abrupt fall last quarter and it has recouped now. I'm talking the run rate. It is running in $16 million quarterly run rate in the Europe geography. It had gone to $14 million levels and now it is back. Were there some changes we did or was it one off? How should we understand what is the reason behind it? There was a reduction in CLX in Europe. Most of our European revenue is based on CX. Are you looking at Euro numbers? Are you looking at USD figures for the Europe geography? I'm looking at the USD numbers. That is the effect of the currency depreciation of the USD against the euro. If you look at constant currency numbers, I don't know whether you'll be able to work that out. Europe is largely flat for us, and that is largely driven because of this weakness in the CFS business. Okay. Okay. Any plans or any focus areas specifically on the Europe geography? Yes, in terms of UK and continental Europe, we do have plans to invest in sales hunting capability. As and when we find the right leadership, we will continue to invest in continental Europe and Ukraine. Okay. Verticals would still continue to be same. No. Okay. My last question was around specifically BFSI. We were talking about predominantly we have been working in B2B so far, a flavor of it. There was some discussion that B2C is also, we were trying to get into B2C vertical in banking. Specifically, it looks like the numbers have been very strong, the growth numbers in banking. Could you put in some flavor as in why or from where has the growth come in, and has there been something we have been able to crack on the B2C part also of the business? The growth I would say predominantly has come from the institutional side, which is B2B. However, we have made some inroads and success on the consumer side as well on B2C in certain areas. We do hope to continue our focus on the consumer side as well. Currently it's not a sizable part. Of the overall size of the business, you're right. I think it's good to see that we have had some success on the consumer side of the banking as well. Got it. Just an extension, you also have been mentioning one part of banking, banks reporting better numbers because of the volatility in the markets. What attribution of our growth would go to or would be due to the volatility in the markets? I understand that we do a lot of processing of backend derivatives also as a part of our offering. Has that also been helping the growth in our banking vertical or something else? Is it? Yes, some of it is attributed to the growth in the volatility that we have seen, but I think I would only ascribe a small % to that. Understood. Understood. Thanks. I'll get back to the queue. Thanks a lot. Thank you. Jalash, before taking the next question, I would like to announce that those who want to ask the questions, they can raise their hand. The next question is the follow-up question from the line of Sandeep Shah from Aquarius Securities. Sandeep, you can go ahead and ask your question. Yeah, thanks. Thanks for the opportunity. Kapil, just your qualitative and expert view regarding Capgemini announcing acquisition of WNS, especially during times where people have a concern that BPM can be impacted more through GenAI and agentic AI. Do you believe what has driven this? Do you believe this may create a competitive pressure? May not be near term, but in the next three to five years, I. think, Sandeep, I would suggest the best people to answer this question is Capgemini, who have acquired WNS, and only time will tell. I have told you our strategy, how we are using GenAI, agentic AI, and how we are able to bring in technology, domain, and process layer all together, and I wouldn't want to comment on the competition. Okay, and just a second question. When you apply the GenAI or agentic AI customer live projects, how the budgets shapes up post that for you as a particular vendor with that client? Does that lead to better outsourcing because of the saving in other areas, or how to look at it, this as a whole budgets within the client once you execute the GenAI and agentic AI again? What I am saying is that the products that we have, which we are leveraging to deliver services to our clients, we are enabling them with GenAI and also now agentic AI. There, as I was telling you, it's on-prem on our infra, and I'm able to deploy GenAI, agentic AI, and get the benefit and pass some of that benefit to the clients. It is helping both on the efficiency side as well as the effectiveness side because that's allowing me to deliver a better outcome for the clients, because my agent is now able to focus on enhancing the overall experience as opposed to looking at data and bringing data together. A lot of the traditional tasks, we are using our productized tools, which are enabled by GenAI. Those are the two reasons. It's helping us both enhance the experience, efficiency, and effectiveness. Okay. Okay. This last thing on a lighter. Note sir, when you are cautiously optimistic, you are delivering mid teens or higher growth. Once macro recover, I think street may expect more than 20% growth. All the best. Thanks for letting me know the street expectations, Sandeep. Thank you. Expectations, not your expectations. Thanks, sir. All the best. Thank you. Thank you, Sandeep. We have the next follow-up questions from the line of Girish Bhai from BOB Capital Markets. Girish, you can go ahead. Hello? Yeah, you're audible, Girish. Yeah. Yeah. Okay, just want to dig a little deeper. Into the GCC situation. You've been saying that you've been working with GCCs for a very, very long period of time. What would be the percentage exposure as a percentage of your total revenue now, if you can give that number? Would it be mid high single digit type? Has the work changed over the years? I mean what you're doing now, can you compare that with what you were doing for the GCC five years back? The other thing with GCC is insourcing threat. How has that played out for you? The last five, 10 years that you've been working with GCC? You asked three questions. One was the percentage of revenue when you said percentage of revenue coming in from GCC versus clients, the clients like the same client from U.S. or Europe? No, as percentage of the total turnover, how much is it coming from GCC? We don't count in terms of revenue that is coming from GCC. We count revenue on client index, vertical, and geography wise. When I said we were already collaborating with GCCs in Ops KPO, if you look at it, we are working with clients in financial services space, which majority of them have a GCC in presence. We are collaborating, cooperating, and working along with GCC and delivering the value to our clients. That gives us an edge to leverage the GCC. I think the question that was asked was that a lot of SIs have created a separate unit vertical. We also have a dedicated team to sell into GCCs now, which is what I said, that we are building on top of what we already existed from a collaboration point of view in GCC. Did I answer your question? Two other questions regarding the kind of work you do now versus, say, five years back on the GCC side. The work that we do today versus five years back, obviously we have moved up the value chain because the repetitive task which is there has either got eliminated or automated either by client or by us. The nature of work, the complexity of work has increased. The nature of work with GCCs, like I said, I think it goes back to the previous answer that I gave, that we are not differentiating that look, this is the work specifically I'm doing for GCC or for the client. It's like what we are delivering as a service, and we have created a dedicated team. The only thing I would add is we are also working on the technology side with GCCs, which, let's say, five years back we may not have been. Third question is threat of outsourcing. Insourcing, insourcing threat. Have you seen episodes of insourcing happening and how have you handled it? We haven't seen that in terms of, except I think when in Q3 of 2023-24 one of the clients that we were working with did look at insourcing, but other than that we have. Not seen. That impact. Okay, my second question has to do with margins and the impact of GenAI on margins. You said you keep some of it. You. Pass on some back to the client. Does that help in the overall? Context of margins, does that help? I think I won't. It's difficult to say whether it's margin. Look, we are looking at the overall top line and bottom line, and then we take a business call along with the client in terms of what are the benefits we would pass on to the client. I think it's a discussion that we have with the clients, and then we make a call. It's not like you would only look at margin. We'll also look at what is the value we are bringing to the client and are we helping them get better? Are we helping them enhance their end user experience, their retention of their clients, and in a holistic manner? We take a call. No, I'm asking from in recent quarters. Has GenAI helped you add to the margins that you have now? We don't look at it in terms of whether GenAI has helped. I think from overall perspective what we are looking for is that am I staying relevant for the client? Am I helping clients to stay in compliance with the regulators and the jurisdiction in which they are working from our compliance and KYC practice that we have. To say whether GenAI has helped me on the margin, I think we cannot quantify, but I would think that GenAI and our technology ability is helping us both on the top line as well as on the margin. Okay, thank you. Thank you, Girish. We have the next question from Ashray Vasa from Nippon. Ashray, you can go ahead and ask your question. Hello. Hi Kapil Sir. I was of the opinion, or correct me if I am wrong, macro uncertainties impact KPO/BPO or are offering slightly lesser than IT services. You have kind of mentioned twice about macro uncertainties. Is it just delayed decision making, more roll offs, or just. Just any color on that? How to connect the strong performance of our company over the last few quarters. Versus the macro uncertainties that you are kind of seeing. Second question on the gratuity transfer. Srini, just when was this last done? I know you called out the auditors mentioned it, but just anything, any more color on that? It's just a regular practice that has been done. Thanks. Asha, I'll answer the first question and I'll pass on to Srinivasan for gratuity. I think we are not seeing any. Increase. Uncertainty from our overall macroeconomic environment, however, and which is what is making me say that we are cautiously optimistic. You don't know what you don't know in terms of the actual thing. The only thing we have experienced is delayed decision making, which you're right. Other than that, I think like I said on Q2, which is short term, we are optimistic to show Q1Q growth. Beyond that, we will let you know as we meet next in the next earnings call. Does that answer your question? Yes. Yes sir. Thanks. On the gratuity fund, we had applied to shift our gratuity fund from LIC to HDFC way back in 2019, and then Covid happened and somehow that application got lost, we lost track of it. When the auditors brought it up is when we realized that this hadn't been completed. We did that process, we got it approved, we got the fund approved, transferred, and then we made a. Big. Payment in this quarter, till for the last four or five years, we've been paying as we go. This is a significant contribution that we have not made in the past. Oh, okay. Understood. The cash conversion will again be back to our normal range going forward. Thank you so much. Thank you, Asha. We have the follow-up questions from Dipesh Mehta, MK Global. Dipesh, you can go ahead and ask your question. Yeah, thanks for the follow-up opportunity. I think partly you answered, but I just try to get more detail about the delay in decision making because you said we expect full year deal ACV to be better now. Earlier is better for revenue conversion in that year. The delay in deal closure obviously has implication on future growth, not in immediate period. In that context, just want to understand whether delay in decision making could have some bearing on your growth expectation for the current year or you think things are fairly stable and it is as per plan kind of thing. Dipesh, like I said, we don't comment quarter on quarter. For the full year, we expect, and as you would have seen, we have shown growth on ACV on a year on year basis. If you look at Q1 of last year versus Q1 of this year, we have shown growth. Sequentially, yes, we have declined. We continue to expect the same momentum as we had last year across the quarters. We don't see major change in the overall mix. That's all I can comment at this point in time. In addition to that, I have also said that we are expecting a higher ACV than what we delivered in FY25. Let me ask it slightly differently. Whether this delay in decision making is an area of concern for you which could have some bearing about our plan, or you think it is broadly stable in the last three, four months, nothing unusual. Yes, the delay in decisioning is happening. As of now, I am not concerned with the delays that are coming. However, if there is a further delay in clients' decision making, yes, that can have an impact. As of now, we don't see the delay. Whatever has happened will impact the trajectory that we are on. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you, Dipesh. We have the next follow-up question from Swan Investments. Jalaj, you can go ahead and ask your question. Sir, with regards to the margins, I wanted to understand one thing. While you had joined in, post that there was a discussion around margins and being under strike pressure because of the investments which we were trying to make. Would it be fair to assume that we have made those investments and from now this should be, as in, a higher margin should be a new normal? Jalaj, like I had said in my previous earnings call, we are a growth business, a $400 million growth business. We will continue to invest in the growth, and the margin guidance we have given you will stay between 24% to 28%. Okay, so I just wanted to understand, has the investment phase been over or it's a going, it's a continuous process for us? That's what the agenda I wanted to understand. It'll continue, investments will continue. We'll continue to invest to drive the top line growth in the business. Okay. More so from a perspective of propensity of those spends being they would have reached to a certain level. That was directionally I wanted to understand, as in have we reached to a threshold of where the incremental spends would not be as much as required. When you say as much as required, meaning what? Whatever is required. We will continue to invest to drive the top line growth. As long as we are delivering to the guidance that we have given on the sequential growth on the top line growth, that we will be in the top quartile of the competitor set, we will continue to invest in the business. If we are not, then investors should be concerned that why are we delivering a higher margin? Why are we not investing for growth? I was just trying to understand the intensity, but that answers. Thank you. Sir, just one more question with regards to M&A. We are sitting on a decent amount of cash right now, and every few years we have been doing a few tuck-ins. What are your thoughts around the M&A? Are we looking actively, and any spaces we are specifically looking out for them? Yes, we are looking. We have a dedicated senior person who is focusing on M&A. However, we are very clear we are not going to do an M&A to just get the top line revenue. We need to look at adjacent areas, which is what we are looking at, and bring in synergistic value either on the service kit capabilities that we have or on the client access. As and when we find the right opportunity, and obviously the valuation has to be right, we will consider it and look at it. We are absolutely looking at inorganic and M&A assets on a continuous basis. We will only do it when it makes right sense for us. Hi Kapil, this is Divasish. Thank you so much for taking our question. Just a follow-up on the acquisition point. If I see the history of eClerx, every three to four years we used to do a comparatively larger size acquisition as compared to the size that we used to operate into. Largely we used those acquisitions to enter into either new geographies or completely. New verticals or completely new capabilities. am just trying to understand what would be your strategy. Your strategy would be a tuck-in acquisition or kind of acquiring a larger size company to get into a new business. Altogether. That is the agenda of this question. More than whether it's a tuck-in or larger size, I am more focused on the other attributes. If I acquire a company, can I deliver an alpha basis, either the capabilities that I'm delivering to the client or the vertical access that I have access to, the clients I have access to? Either it enhances my capability side or it enhances the client access, that I can take a new capability and take it to the client. That's the synergistic value. Is it both top line and bottom line accretive, and can it continue to give me the growth? If I am delivering the growth that I am delivering, it should deliver an alpha on the growth that I'm delivering. The valuation has to be right. Instead of size, whether it's a tuck-in or a large size acquisition, these are the attributes or framework on which I'm evaluating the assets on the acquisition side. Very well answered. Thank you so much. Thanks Devasheesh, thank you Jalaj and Devashish. We have the next question from the line of Pratik Dharamshi from Union Mutual Fund. You can go ahead and ask your question, Pratik. Yeah, thanks for giving the time. Apologies if I'm repeating this question. I was slightly delayed in the call. How should one see GenAI? To impact. Are we benefiting out of it? How should one see the overall scheme of things GenAI for us? Like I have said in the previous earnings call as well as I think this question was asked earlier as well, we see this too as an advantage given the way we deliver services to our client and we are embedding GenAI in our domain specific applications IP that we use to deliver services, be it KYC compliance manager, QA360 that we are bringing in to deliver services to the clients, and this will help deliver value to the clients on efficiency, effectiveness, as well as enhance the overall experience. Just the second one on hiring trends, we have seen incremental net hirings. At RN, which is contrary to what. We have seen it with other IT names. How should one see. The hiring. Trends evolving considering we have a strong. ACV, it's a precursor basically that this. Should continue to be robust going forward. Like I said, for Q2 I have said that we are reasonably confident to show a sequential growth, and beyond that we will give more color on Q3 and Q4. There was also a question on H2 versus H1, which I answered. I think if you look at companies that have delivered 3 to 4% growth Q1Q versus, I think the hiring is in line with the demand that we see as well as the expansion that we are seeing in the new geos. Yeah, thanks. Thanks for my question. Thank you. Thanks for answering. Thanks, Pratik. We are at the top of the hour. Okay, one last question. Last question from Sandeep Shah from Equator Securities. Sandeep, you can go ahead. Hi, thanks for the opportunity. Third time sir. Just wanted to understand what can go wrong in your consistent growth journey over the last eight quarters despite weak macro, and this question is outside macro concern. What other things which can go wrong? A, in terms of client specific issue, and B, in terms of any technology related risk. It's like a jari window. I don't know. I think there are things that I have control on. I think we are focusing on what we have to do to drive the growth, continue to drive value for our clients, continue to stay ahead of the curve from a technology point of view. In terms of what can go wrong, it is like an infinite set of outcomes. I would want to comment in terms of what can go wrong, but I can comment in terms of what we are doing and what our focus is and what our strategy is. Okay. Sir, last thing, when you took control as CEO you also highlighted one of the area of investment. Would be larger deals. If it requires some investment in larger deals, we would try to do that. Any such deals are shaping up in the pipeline. There are a mix. I won't comment on specific deals, but yes, I continue to maintain what I had said that we will not shy away in investing for our clients, with our clients on deals, and which I also mentioned earlier that some of the benefits that we are getting due to bringing technologies and AI, we are not shying away from passing that on to our clients. Okay, thanks. All the best. Thanks Sandeep. Thank you, Sandeep. As this was the last question, I will hand over the floor to the management for closing comments. Thank you everyone for your continued support. As you know, this is our 25th year of existence and we are celebrating it in a big way. Thank you for all your support all these years. We look forward to meeting you in the next quarter. Thank you, everyone. Thank you. Thanks, Pradeep. Thanks, Asha. Thank you.