Good evening, everyone, and thank you for joining us on Intellect Design Arena's Q3 Earnings Call. It's a pleasure to speak with you today as we share our performance for the Q3 of the financial year. Before I get into the quarter, I would like to begin with the last 12 months' performance, because we believe that the LTM view best reflects the true direction and health of our business. I'm pleased to share that for the first time in our history, Intellect's LTM total income has crossed INR 3,000 crore, reaching INR 3,025 crore, representing a 23% year-on-year growth. This milestone is not just a scale maker, it is the outcome of a deliberate, well-architected growth strategy that has been executed consistently over the last decade.
Platform revenue for the LTM stood at INR 497 crore, compared to 218 crore in the previous year, a strong 128% year-on-year growth. License-linked revenue of INR 1,595 crore, compared to INR 1,163 crore in LTM as of Q3 2025, delivered a robust 37% year-on-year growth. Our annual recurring revenue stood at INR 1,118 crore in the LTM, compared to 700 crore a year ago, representing a strong 60% year-on-year growth. EBITDA for the last twelve months stood at INR 709 crore, compared to INR 534 crore in LTM as of Q3 2025, a 33% year-on-year growth. PBT for the last twelve months grew 34% over the previous period.
Our cash position as of December 2025 was INR 1,198 crore, compared to 804 crore as of December 2024, a 49% growth year-on-year. The strong improvement in collections also contributed meaningfully to strengthening our balance sheet and liquidity position. Beyond financial metrics, the LTM period also highlights the depth of market traction and execution capability that Intellect has built. Over the last 12 months, 53 new customers have chosen Intellect's digital stack for their transformation journeys. In parallel, we successfully enabled 82 digital transformations, where global financial institutions went live on our products and platforms. This LTM performance is the foundation on which our quarterly execution rests, and it gives us strong confidence as we continue to scale responsibly and sustainably.
Our performance is anchored on three scaled business engines, each built over successive growth cycles and now supported by an emerging fourth engine. The first and most mature engine is wholesale banking, which we initiated as a scale engine in 2015. Today, wholesale banking contributes around INR 1,400 crore to our LTM revenues. The second engine is consumer banking, which became our next growth focus from 2018 onwards. This now contributes close to INR 1,000 crore in LTM revenues. The third engine is Intellect AI, which includes wealth, insurance, and AI-led platforms. This engine was deliberately seeded from 2021 onwards and has already scaled to around INR 500 crore in revenue. From 2024 onwards, we have begun building our fourth growth engine, Purple Fabric, our open business impact AI platform. Over the coming years, this will become a powerful multiplier for Intellect's next phase of growth.
Finally, our growth over the last 12 months has been supported by deliberate investments in leadership and institutional capabilities. 27 senior leaders have joined Intellect during the last 12 months. These additions strengthen our global consulting, delivery, product, and go-to-market capabilities. In a key leadership move, Manish Maakan has been elevated to Executive President and Group Chief Revenue Officer, while continuing in his role as CEO of Intellect Wholesale Banking. This step brings sharp alignment across product strategy, sales execution, and revenue ownership at an enterprise level. We are also pleased to announce that the Board of Directors have approved the appointment of Mr. D. Shivakumar as an additional director, designated as an independent director based on the recommendation of the NRCC. Mr. Shivakumar is a respected business leader with extensive experience across Indian and global organizations.
He is currently an operating partner at Advent International, a global private equity firm. He has previously served as Group Executive President at Aditya Birla Group, Chairperson and CEO of PepsiCo India, and CEO of Emerging Markets at Nokia. As an alumnus of IIT Madras, IIM Calcutta, and the Wharton School, he brings a wealth of strategic and governance insight to our board. His appointment for a five-year term is subject to shareholder approval via a postal ballot. Now let me turn to the financial performance for Q3. Total income for the quarter stood at INR 753 crore, reflecting a 21% year-on-year growth. License-linked revenue, which is the platform plus license plus AMC, for the quarter stood at INR 391 crore, growing 34% year-on-year. On profitability, EBITDA for Q3 was INR 122 crore, translating to a margin of 16%.
Profit after tax stood at INR 28 crore, impacted by a one-time gratuity provision of INR 30.84 crore on account of the new labor code and the resultant deferred tax of INR 7.8 crore. Collections for Q3 stood at INR 913 crore, compared to INR 553 crore in Q3 as of full year 2025, up by 65% year-on-year. eMACH.ai continues to power composable transformation across banking domains, enabling clients to modernize at speed while maintaining control and predictability. Purple Fabric, our open business impact AI platform, is increasingly embedded into live production environments. During the quarter, 14 new value discovery partners joined the Purple Fabric ecosystem, expanding our reach across AI-led underwriting, risk claims, collections, and payments use cases. Together, these platforms are enabling clients to move beyond digitization into intelligent, explainable, and outcome-driven transformation. On the market recognition-...
We are proud to share that Time magazine has recognized our chairman and managing director, Arun Jain, as one of the Global Growth Architects, a rare and prestigious distinction that recognizes leaders building for long-term value in a world obsessed with quarterly outcomes. In addition to this global media recognition, Intellect has received strong analyst validation this quarter. Datos Insights awarded our Transaction Limits Management Solution the Gold Medal for Innovation and Operational Efficiency in their Commercial Banking and Payments Impact Awards. Euromoney named Intellect the World's Best Transaction Banking Software Provider 2025, including Best in Cash Management and Best Corporate Channels. Gartner acknowledged eMACH.ai Core Banking as a visionary in the Magic Quadrant for Retail Core Banking Systems, Europe. IDC MarketScape identified Intellect's Corporate Loan Lifecycle Management System as a leader in its worldwide vendor assessment for 2025, and many more.
Together, these recognitions reflect the depth, breadth, and relevance of our platforms across core banking, treasury, risk, compliance, transaction banking, AI-led business intelligence. To summarize, Q3 represents a quarter of structural progress for Intellect. We crossed INR 3,000 crore in LTM revenue, anchored on three scale engines and an emerging fourth. We delivered robust cash flows and balance sheet strength, and we continue to execute large-scale transformations with consistency and discipline. As we move into the final quarter of the year, we do so with confidence, backed by a strong portfolio, resilient cash flows, and a repeatable growth engine designed for the long term. Thank you for your continued trust and support. Over to you, Manish.
Thanks, Vasudha, for a detailed commentary. Good evening, everyone, and thanks for attending this investor call. Let me try and summarize some of the things which Vasudha talked about into five strategic themes which we are focused on. I think an LTM growth of INR 3,000 crore, crossing INR 3,000 crore in this quarter, is a really proud moment for all of us, and I'm sure we'll be equally proud for all of you being part of this journey. A 23% revenue growth, 33% EBITDA growth, 49% additional cash generation, I think we're ticking all the right, critical parameters, and clearly shows that the investment we have been putting in well orchestrated and is delivering the right results for us. Let me briefly talk about the five salient themes that explain how this growth algorithm works.
I think the first one, which we believe is an technology moat, eMACH.ai. At the core of our model is eMACH.ai, our AI-first composable platform, architected for scale, reuse, and continuous evolution, which is consistently being demonstrated with the wins and our ability to execute quicker and faster. I think we're proud that we have built this system with AI first as an objective across the life cycle, rather than induce it or put a bolt-on on top of it, while some of the... my peers are doing that same thing. This composability is driving faster time to value and helping us get a better rates and a platform stickiness from us. The second pillar I want to focus upon is multiple engines, like what Vasudha called out, are working in one flywheel a nd everyone's being able to.
The wholesale banking fortune—I was fortunate to initiate and lead that from 2015. It's crossed INR 1,400 crore and has been a consistent growth engine. It's a mature cash-generating engine, focused on long-cycle transformation programs with the largest Tier One banks. I think our second pillar, consumer banking, which we started in 2018, scaling up, very proudly is crossing the INR 1,000-crore mark, and is becoming the powerhouse for digital and new-age core banking, which banks are looking at. This has the robustness and the depth of capabilities, and is not just a framework. I think I want to call our youngest platform, Wealth Insurance, which is solely anchored around AI. Our focus started 2021, and has now crossed INR 500 crore LTM.
All three of them, I'll repeat again, are powered by same AI-first platform backbone, Purple Fabric, allowing reuse of capability, intelligence, and operating leverage across the organization.
Mm-hmm.
A third engine is our markets. Our revenue is battle-tested in the world's most demanding financial hubs, with 62% of our revenue coming from advanced markets, and is also well-distributed across the Americas, Europe, Middle East, APAC, and India, avoiding any geographic concentration in any place. Success in these high-bar economies validates product maturity, regulatory robustness, and delivery predictability at the same time. I think this is well set for India, APAC, and Africa, which are the followers and also the faster-growing economies, to be able to adapt to all of this. Our success with Tier One banks across multiple geographies has created a strong global brand. This result is, gives us the-
Mm-hmm
... insulation against the regional volatility, and it's no more a noise for us.
Mm-hmm.
I think the fourth dimension, which is now the next growth frontier, which we are embedding into our platform, as well as looking at for scale, is around mainframe-to-cloud migration and enterprise AI versus Purple Fabric. In this last quarter, we have signed one large global system integrator for our AI propositions, taking out to the market, as well as 14 value discovery partners to evangelize and help us take this to more clients across the board. On momentum, we are in advanced discussion with a global mainframe infrastructure leader to jointly transition monolithic banks to eMACH.ai-based architectures from the mainframe architecture. These are not just adjacent bits, these are natural extensions of the same platform, eMACH.ai. I think the fifth thing, which is in summary, is the downside protection or a risk absorption designed by Intellect. No single geography, customer, or product line can materially impair our performance.
Revenue is distributed across multiple buyers, regulators, and decision cycle. Execution risk is reduced through platform reuse, standardization, and delivery industrialization. So in closing, so this is not being opportunities - opportunistic, this is all about engineered growth built from first principle and powered by AI-first platform. This is the essence of our growth by design, and that's why Intellect is a unique asset, sufficiently de-risked by a matured, diversified portfolio, yet poised for growth through AI leadership and advanced market dominance. Thank you for listening, and I'll pass it back to Praveen for Q&A.
Thanks, Manish. Now the platform is open for the Q&A. Please click, click, so that in case you want to ask a question. First, we have Mr. Garvit Goyal from Cyrena Capital. Mr. Goel? Mr. Garvit Goyal ?
Next.
I think he's not there.
Yeah, Praveen Malik.
Next we have Mr. Mihir Manohar from Trust Mutual Fund. Mihir, please ask your question.
Yeah, hi, thanks for giving the opportunity. And congratulations on crossing the INR 3,000 crore mark, and INR 3,000 crore LTM number. So congratulations for that. Sir, largely wanted to understand on the cloud side, I mean, you know, there are a lot of talks that Anthropic AI cloud is getting introduced into the US BFSI side. Not on the core operations, but yes, middle office, back office, and also on the insurance underwriting process. If you can provide some clarity over here as to how is the is Anthropic Cloud AI becoming a competition for us, and how to understand this? Yeah.
Manish, you want to maybe take this?
Yeah. So, you know, there is obviously different LLMs continuously upgrading in the market. And I think we are, we basically utilize for our Purple Fabric platform has the ability to optimize the right LLM that a customer needs for each use case. So, you know, we are not really, we don't believe that they are really our competition in that sense, because we orchestrate financial services AI-first products end-to-end for our customers, and we optimize the right LLM. So LLMs will continue to improve as, as we sort of, as the Purple Fabric platform is only a consumer of these LLMs. So I think we are not really concerned, and we are not finding that they are actually coming and occupying a place where Purple Fabric is placed.
The other thing I wanted to state is that a lot of them are focused right now in the assistant area, while we actually have digital experts, which is on the agentic side of multiple agents working together to make use cases more successful for customers. In the agentic side, we still believe our full stack, which, you know, you all are fully aware of, you know, both what we call the knowledge garden, where we vectorize data from multiple data sources. We have digital experts that work on that data. But we have the optimization hub, which is quite unique because the user continuously needs to ensure that the digital experts is using the best LLMs to achieve their objective of outcomes for the customers.
I think fundamentally, the big difference between us is not just orchestrating use cases, but orchestrating multiple use cases for our customers. Therefore, the fourth part of the Purple Fabric stack is really the governance part of Purple Fabric. We are seeing more and more governments paying a lot of attention to ensuring that we follow an ethical AI standard, which ensures that we can actually manage to govern different digital experts in a way in which we can get the best performance from them. To answer your question, I think, you know, there will definitely be competition, there will be definitely different people doing things, but the combination of what we bring, along with our leadership in financial services products, makes most of our eMACH platforms today completely AI-native and AI-first. So, I know, I hope that answers the question, yeah.
Sure, sure. No, absolutely. I mean, it is very difficult to displace CBS. That's the core of the part. Second question was on the Purple, Fabric. What would be the Purple Fabric revenue for nine month? Because for full year, we were roughly looking at 200 crores kind of a number. Some clarity around that will be helpful.
Mihir, we're on track for what we are forecasting for the INR 200 crore number. I think we're reasonably confident of coming close to that number for the year.
Sure, understood. And last question was on the SG&A side. I see SG&A, QQ, some increase. So, I mean, any hiring around the foreign geographies, any incremental differential hiring on foreign geographies?
I think Vasudha shared that we have been investing for distribution for the market in a planned way of what we had planned for. That's also evident in the growth we are seeing. So it's a planned capacity addition.
... Sure, yeah, that's it from my side. Thank you very much.
Thanks, Mihir. Next, we have Mr. Jitendra Agrawal from Wellax Capital. Mr. Jitendra Agrawal from Velox Capital. Jitendra?
Yes. Hi, good evening.
Mm-hmm.
I'm sorry I don't have a question, but it is an observation. So if you look at your shares that were outstanding at a corporate level, right? In December 2020, we had about 132,664,000 shares outstanding. December 2025, that number has increased to 139,315,000. So there's about a 5% dilution in a period of about 5 years. If you look at our market cap, somewhere about INR 12,500-13,000 crore. That's a float of anywhere about INR 500-600 crore in the market just because of ESOPs. And if you actually look at the promoter shareholding, right, that has also gone down in that period by almost the same percentage. We seem to be very comfortable in terms of our cash balance.
Given the way the business is doing, it seems that, in the foreseeable future, also, the cash generation should be good. My request or suggestion would be that instead of paying it out as dividends, can you please consider a buyback internally? That's it from me. Thank you.
Thank you.
Praveen, we can go to the next.
We can. Thanks. Thanks, Jitendra. Next, we have Mr. Rahul Jain from Dolat Capital. Rahul?
Yeah. I hope my line is okay.
Yeah, clear.
So, yeah. My question was related to the fourth pillar point that Manish articulated. If you could elaborate more, what I could understand was about building the SI ecosystem. So if you could go deeper into that thought. And secondly, on the similar line, since we have built a roughly 1,400 crore of GTB business, does that mean it would at that scale, you may see a significant SI contribution in terms of new client on as well? Or we are still not that point where we get a lot of deeper messages.
No, Rahul, thanks for the question. On the fourth pillar, what I'm talking about is, I think we've been talking about Purple Fabric and getting partnership development. So we have finally now executing with one of the largest global system integrator, and we taking this out to the customer. Other than that, we have also signed 14 value discovery partners across the globe to take Purple Fabric out. That was the first piece of it, where we were doing the work for last 2 quarters, which you are aware. In the last quarter, we have additionally now tied up with an infrastructure leader, which is focused on mainframes, so that we can help transition mainframe loads to eMACH.ai cloud loads. Banks are looking for solutions.
That's where a composability of a solution, it's not a rip or replace, it's not just pick up the load and deploy somewhere else. We've been. We've done multiple mainframe-to-cloud migrations, and we see this as a natural alliance, whereby working together, we can take it forward. Your third question around wholesale banking touching INR 1,400 crore, and we are, we're already working with. Publicly, we have shared, along with Accenture in some of the implementations, and I'm continuing to grow along with multiple other partners, where the large transformations we can take along. We are doing big-scale wholesale banking transformation. We have got core lending, payments, the full corporate stack, and we've got a couple of other SI partners already working around them. We'll hopefully announce some of these partnerships also publicly.
Sure. Manish, when we say about the mainframe infrastructure player, are you referring something like the IBMs of the world, who would have that core infrastructure, and they may also need some application to do the workload shift?
Yeah, this partner supports quite a bit of Mainframe infrastructure. At this stage, I want to keep it there.
Mm-hmm.
Significantly large, yeah.
but these are-
Yes.
Yeah, so these are the SI guy or these are the mainframe guy?
They focus on mainframe support significantly.
Understood. Thanks for that color. And just last bit, from my side, the growth in this quarter in particular, was not pretty exciting. Our investment in terms of marketing and go-to-market has been, pretty strong. So is it just like one-off quarter in between, where we are seeing this kind of a, dip, or it's more of some kind of an economic, factor that you're seeing in the market, causing a slower ramp-up in particular markets? And, with those thought, how you see, you know, current year or Q4 panning out? Thank you.
... No, so, Rahul, the key thing is we've said we have designed for a 20% growth company on an LTM basis. Right now, we're demonstrating that. We're not from quarter to quarter. We had said at the beginning of the year that we have to stay above INR 700 crores-- first three quarters, we have stayed above INR 700 crores. Now is about in between Q4 and Q1, how do we go above, above INR 800 crores revenue? That's what us, all of us as leadership team are working. So that's a very nice momentum from that perspective, cumulatively, if you look at. See, I don't want-
So you're saying-
-the pressure of signing a deal, distress, because I have a quarter ending. We're building a robust business. Sometimes quarters is not what we look at. The yearly is where we are committed to demonstrate performance, and I think... And we had said, measuring at an absolute level, up, stay above INR 700 crore, and in the next two quarters, see how between Q4 and Q1, how we can go above INR 800 crore revenue. So we are all working towards that. I'm still confident of-
Okay.
-
Okay, okay. Thanks for that color. Thanks a lot, Manish, and best wishes for the time in here.
Thanks, Rahul. Next, we have Mr. Rohit Balakrishnan from iThought PMS. Rohit, please ask your question.
Yeah. Hi, good evening, everybody. So sir, my question was, I think,
Rohit, are you there?
Yes, Praveen, we can hear him.
We can hear him, Praveen.
Can you guys hear me?
Yes.
Yeah, go ahead, Rohit.
Okay. Okay.
Yeah.
Thank you. Thank you very much. So my question was, sir, I think, so we had, I think, talked about these accelerated investments in Q3 and Q4. So if you could maybe... I think if my memory serves right, we had talked about around 40-45 crore in Q3 and another, I think, a similar number in Q4, in terms of spend- market investments towards both Purple Fabric and eMACH.ai. So maybe can you just call out what the number was in this quarter, and what do you think would be the number in Q4? That was one. And the second question was, so we saw license revenue come down, you know, INR 100 crore after almost six-seven quarters.
I know this is very lumpy, so anything you want to call out in terms of the delay that is happening? And, like, are there any deals which sort of fell through this quarter or will get covered up in the next quarter? Anything you want to call out? And I have one more question, which maybe you can answer that, and I'll come, I'll ask the next question then.
Rohit, I'll go reverse order. I think, like I said, please don't ask which quarter, 100 crore more or 100 quarter. LTM basis consistently remain focused. We're showing good results. I think it's a proud moment to be above INR 3,000 crore from that perspective on a run rate basis, and, we're driving towards... We said we will stay above INR 700 crore mark. We've remained above INR 700 crore mark. I'm already saying that we're targeting in the next two quarters to cross the INR 800 crore mark. That speaks of everything of what you wanted to ask from your second question perspective. Could you repeat your first question? On the cost side, I think the cost is primarily around the three dimension. Vasudha can give color to the absolute numbers.
It's around Purple Fabric, it's around a bit of distribution, plus, given what I am seeing in the coming next two quarters, we've also invested right now on our delivery execution capability side, because we need to be ready, and we need to have these people not joining the day before, one or two quarters before we make that investment on the delivery side. So these are the three elements of where the cost has gone.
Yeah, just to add, last quarter, we said we made an incremental investment of INR 15 crore, and similarly, this quarter also, we have made similar investments between INR 10 crore-INR 15 crore. That's an incremental investment this quarter.
Got it. And, Manish, I think just from the LTM point of view, I think, we had said that we'll be, despite all these investments, we'll be at 20% kind of margins, adjusted for these investments, I mean, after these investments. So, do we still hold on to that number for this financial year, FY 2026?
I think look at consistent INR 700 crore, investing towards INR 800 crore. Those are very, very positive metrics. Don't look at quarter on quarter. Look at-
No, I'm asking for the entire year, not looking at this quarter as such, but I'm saying for the entire year.
Okay. Manish, let me answer.
Yeah.
So, like Manish said, it's always better to look at LTM performance. If you look at our LTM EBITDA, LTM EBITDAs has fetched us about 23.8%. Going by that, yes, we are very highly hopeful that we'll also end up in a similar number as we close this financial year.
Mm. Got it. And last question was on the U.S. expansion.
Yep.
So any qualitative commentary, Manish, you can give, like, how are you seeing this calendar year or next financial year in terms of the growth there? We were expecting very high growth for this year as well, so maybe you can comment how U.S. has been for this year-
...
how do you expect next year?
I think I wanna maybe just quantitatively share one more forward thing. I think across North America, I'm not far from start touching INR 1,000 crore revenue. It's been a good North America growth for us this year. That's why we, across Canada and U.S., we are investing. Some parts of execution happens out of Toronto, some happens out of New York. Purple Fabric has been helping us grow significantly. Payments has our liquidity and CTX platform was a growth platform. Payments is where we are now making multiple breakthroughs, so we're investing over there. Corporate core is something which we have been winning over there. So if you see, multiple levers are firing over there. So we're happy that with PF also, we are now expanding our distribution across multiple hubs.
If I can just add, in Canada, we are also seeing significant growth in credit union space, both in our Digital Engagement Platform, as well as now we're just also getting some success in our loan lending platform. So we're able to cross-sell into the same segment.
Got it.
Mm-hmm.
I'll join back. I have one more question, but I'll join back in the queue.
Sure.
Thanks, Rohit. Next, we have Mr. Vivek Kumar from Bestvantage Investments . Vivek, please ask your question. Vivek, are you there?
It looks like, Vivek is not there.
Oh, he's there now.
Okay, please, take next.
Vivek is there. Vivek-
Vivek?
You can unmute and ask the question.
Am I audible, sir?
Yep.
Yeah. Please.
Thank you. Manishji, just, if you can throw qualitative light on, are you facing tailwinds or headwinds in terms of if you... Just three quarters back, Arunji was explaining about sales cycle, sales cycle being long, and in next two, three quarters we will convert a lot of deals. So can you, like, qualitative outlook on, like, different, revenue streams that you have highlighted in your presentations, like consumer, GTB, GCB, and A and wealth? If you can talk in terms of tailwinds and headwinds so that-- And also, anyway, and even given all these things, you are still confident on 20% growth on a LTM basis, right? So these-
Yes
... these two are.
No, I think,
You can talk about tailwinds and headwinds, because what are the tailwinds which are the products which are, like, really having lots of tailwinds? Because that would give us more qualitative picture on, if you can give us.
I think the multiple products under each of this wholesale banking, consumer banking, wealth, insurance, which are now getting scaled, so which is a good news for us. It's not just firing on one or two products or one or two lines of business. Clear evidence we have shared with you, INR 500 crore, INR 1,000 crore, and 1,400 crore. So that is helping us. A balanced portfolio approach helps us to deal with any market volatility. I think that's why we continuing to say we've designed for 20%. This balanced portfolio approach across markets and across product lines is helping us manage it. Our technology moat is the big differentiator out, which I'm most proud of, with eMACH.ai.
I'm able to grow the size of the deals also with this, because what people see is this is a desired architecture state where everyone would want to be from the composability and the scalability and resilience perspective. And bank after bank, the largest tier ones consistently signing is just giving us that confidence. There's always headwinds of you hear noise of politics, different things. We got to deal with that. That's what we design business for, so there's nothing right now material of headwinds or material tailwinds. I think a balanced growth is... I'm feeling good and confident.
So we are feeling good about 20% growth on a yearly basis. I'm not talking about quarter, right?
That's what we have designed for. That's what we are looking at. The goal is how quickly, with next quarter or the following quarter, how do I cross INR 800 crore revenue, and then run it for 3-4 quarters there, and then look at INR 900 crores. This INR 100 crore consistent growth in 3-4 quarters, if we can drive it, I think that's the evidence.
Because three years back, we, we were very confident on Quantum central banking. So just any... Rajeshji, any, like, any outlook on Quantum as a product, central banking?
Sure. I think, as you are aware, that we are one of the only companies which has a core banking for central banks, right? And this comes from our legacy of RBI, because we run the central banking for Reserve Bank of India. So, as you know, if you look at the TAM, right? The TAM of this market is limited because there are only that many central banks. And these are—there are a couple of opportunities that we are chasing with central banking, but it'll always be a limited market by the design as compared to, let's say, a core banking, et cetera. But we continue to be the market leaders in this market, and we continue to be consistently rated in Tier one, as Tier one in this space.
We are, as we speak, in a couple of opportunities with large central banks.
Thank you. Small suggestion, like what Jitendra Agrawal, as I said, your equity dilution, because now we are generating cash and you're already sitting on, close to INR 1,200 crore cash, I think. Can please ask, suggest Arunji to consider buyback, because there's a lot of you, almost one person is entering free float every year, right?
We'll record your comment.
Thank you, Manish. Thank you very much.
Thanks, Vivek. Then we have next, Mr. Pawan Kataria. Mr. Pawan Kataria from Bullseye.
Yes.
Pawan?
Can you hear me?
Yep.
Yeah, yeah. Please go on.
... Yeah, so, as Manish sir said, we saw sharp Q3 compression in the margins, right? So can we... So Manish sir already broke it down, but how much are we heading back to 20-25% margins for the year, given that the margins for Q3 has been out of 15%?
Pawan, that's what Vasudha just now also confirmed, that we're driving towards 20%+ margin for the full year. We've done it in LTM basis for the last twelve, so for the financial year also, that's what we're driving towards. That's why the balanced investment is there. We're not going aggressive, we're not shying away from right investments when we see opportunity.
Okay, sir. And sir, another question, sir. So last, in the last call, Arun sir said, he, we'll have, we are striving towards 25% margins, right? So do we see that happening, somewhere in FY 2027?
Mm-hmm. I think if you go back, study some of the peer companies, it's about getting to scale. At INR 3,000 crore, the profitability is X, at INR 4,000 crore, it moves to Y, at INR 5,000 crore... So it's about I think we, we should all be looking towards consistent and more growth, and right investments to balance to drive that growth. I think that's most important.
Mm-hmm.
We would all want to be... It is, it's naturally gonna come. The leverage keeps coming as the more license comes in.
Wow! Got it. Got it, sir. Thank you, sir. That, that was from my side.
Thanks, Pawan. Next, we have Mr. Anjan Puranik. Puranik, ji, you are there? Looks like he's dropped. Puranik, ji? No, I think he's dropped. Then, next, we have Ms. CA Vansh Handa. Mr. Vansh Handa from Niveshaay . Vansh?
Hi. I'm audible?
Yes. Yeah, yeah. Please go.
So I have a question. Like, I noticed the cost escalations apart from the exceptional items during quarter three, that appears to have impacted the overall profitability. So could you help us to understand that what are the key drivers behind that increase in cost? And, also, like, this is not clarified in any of the presentation or management commentary, can you help me with that?
Vasudha?
Cost, cost escalation.
No, the... Okay. One, if you're talking about the exceptional item, sorry, if I have got your question right, that is, related to the, gratuity provision, the one-time provision that we have considered in our, books on account of the new labor code. And that's about INR 31 crores, and also there is a resultant, deferred tax that we have considered for about INR 8 crores. So, that has pulled, our PAT down by close to INR 24 crores.
Yeah, and just to add to-
I'm not talking about this, exceptional items, but if you look before, profit before exceptional item also, it has impacted from INR 900 million to like INR 671 million this quarter, so...
So Vansh, just to add to what Vasudha is saying and what, Manish also alluded to, see, we, if you look at the current quarter, there has been significant investments in terms of capacity building. Whether it is capacity building from a sales and marketing perspective, or capacity building in anticipation of the deals we are planning to close in the current and the next quarter. So that is primarily the reason for us for our cost to go up.
Okay. Okay. Okay, sir.
Thank you.
Thanks.
Thanks, Vansh. Next, we have Prem Doshi from Ace Securities. Prem Doshi?
Hi, sir. Am I audible?
Yeah, yeah. Please, go on.
Yes, sir. So I have two questions. One is that, in particular for this quarter, as we have already discussed, that some of the cost escalations were there, and for some other reasons, the profit was muted, right? So what we are looking at, what is... Are we looking to close the quarter, as you said, close, close the year at INR 3,000 crore+, that you have already guided for, for the financial year? So my question is actually for the next financial year, after we cross, say, INR 3,000 crores in terms of revenue and we maintain a 20%, margin, are we looking at on such a high base to continue growing at 20% for the next fiscal, or you expect some moderation in the guidance for the next fiscal in that case?
Prem, I will stay away from guidance on next financial year. We very simply get to INR 800 crores, it will... Then we'll stay there a few quarters and then get to INR 900 crores. We're building the business INR 100 crores at a time, and right now we feel good about what we are doing. So from a guidance, I'll stay away.
Okay, okay. And sir, earlier we have read up stuff that, we want to position ourself like the top AI companies, such as Palantir, right? So how is the plan faring? Is the management satisfied with how the overall, positioning that we are doing in the AI space? Like, are you personally satisfied with how the segment for us is moving towards?
I think we had said upfront that we're gonna drive towards INR 200 crore revenue on this. So from that perspective, if you look at, are you satisfied, are you headed towards that? I think we are in the right direction. We are consistently among the top three players, along with Palantir, so that's not a concern right now.
Right. Thank you so much, sir.
... Thanks, Prem. Next, we have Keshav Sureka from Nivesh. Keshav Sureka from Nivesh?
Hello. I think my question was already answered. Thank you.
Okay. Okay, thank you. Thank you. Next, we have Mr. Krish Jain. Mr. Krish Jain from Nafa Asset Managers.
Yeah.
Mr. Krish Jain?
Yeah. Hi, I hope I'm audible. Yeah. Thank you for taking my question. So my question is regarding Purple Fabric. So what I can see from the presentation is that your LTM revenue from operations is INR 2,919 crores. Out of that, wholesale, retail, and AI business put together is around INR 2,900 crores. Am I correct in understanding that Purple Fabric in the last twelve months has contributed only INR 19 crores? And since you've reiterated that you're on track to hit INR 200 crores this financial year, I wanted to understand how is that possible in the next three months.
No, Purple Fabric is embedded across the businesses on wealth, insurance, and everything. So we're not looking at it like that. When we look at segmented Purple Fabric, that's where we are saying we are good for INR 200 crore.
Oh, okay. Got it. So next question is, you mentioned Palantir and C3.ai-
Yeah
as your main competitors in, for Purple Fabric. Are we still sticking to that, or do you see any new competitors, you know, entering this space?
Manish, you want to help in this, please?
Yeah. I mean, you know, I think Palantir and C3.ai are our fundamental main competitors, the way we see it. There will be lots of noise with small players coming and doing use cases in different areas, but when you actually look at end-to-end orchestration and enterprise-level AI deployment, I think those two would be our primary sort of competitors when we look at orchestrating different type of use cases. And what Manish mentioned is that a lot of our existing products also have moved to AI first. So a lot of the Purple Fabric capabilities of orchestrating AI is getting embedded into everything we do.
Mm-hmm.
So I, I think, frankly, you know, other than those two, there are various other, you know, people we run across, but we haven't found somebody who orchestrates end-to-end use cases the way, you know, anybody other than those two.
Okay, got it. Just I'll squeeze in the last question regarding Central 1, the acquisition that happened a few months back. So, they are still reporting revenues in the digital banking, segment, and they mentioned there's a transition period as well, as well as the reporting losses. So my question is: How long is this transition period, and, what are the losses we are bearing, in the business that-
We-
We've taken off from Central 1, and how are we going to make it profitable?
So we are already making profit on Central 1. It's a single-digit profit that we are making. In fact, initially we said it's going to be margin neutral-
Mm.
But we are making some profits out of it.
Yeah. So, and how long is the transition period?
What do you mean by transition period, Krish?
The transaction is completed, and it's now... Okay, yeah, go on.
Yeah.
Uh-
When you say... Yeah, when-
Yeah.
Are you talking about transition from to our Digital Engagement Platform?
No. I'm taking this from Central 1's quarterly report, actually. In their Q3, it's calendar year Q3, which is our Q2 of the financial year, they have reported CAD 4.5 million as non-interest income, so revenue. And they've mentioned, revenue has gone down because the business is being transitioned to Intellect. So-
Yeah, when they say-
Let me answer that one.
Yeah, Rajesh, please answer that. Yeah.
Yeah. So, Krish, let me just explain this to you. So what we did was we acquired Forge business from Central 1, which is the digital business from them. That business, as Vasudha confirmed, is already giving us a single-digit margin business. Initially, we had said it would be margin neutral, but we are actually seeing a single-digit margin business. Now, Central 1 is providing us some support. For example, their the cloud infrastructure of on what this Forge business works on is still provided by Central 1, for which we are paying them a certain cost. That is what they are showing it. Otherwise, the business has completely transitioned into Intellect. I hope that helps to explain your query.
Yeah. Yeah, that helps. Yeah. Thank you for taking my question.
Thanks, Krish.
Yeah.
Next, we have Mr. Kushal Goenka. Mr. Kushal Goenka from Mangal Keshav Financial.
Yeah. Hi, sir. Can you hear me?
Yeah, yeah, please go on.
Yeah, yeah. So my question was on the gross profit margin. Like, I'm not trying to analyze quarter-on-quarter, year-on-year basis, but I just want to understand that if we offer more, say, specialized products like Purple Fabric, integrated to our other services, so shouldn't our gross profit margin should increase? Because I think, so we saw around 300 basis point blip, quarter-on-quarter and year-on-year also. So just wanted your thoughts on the same.
... no, that, that, that is already happening. In addition to that, as Manish had mentioned in the beginning, we are also capacitizing. So we are also building capacity, in anticipation of the work to be completed in the coming quarters, and that's why you are seeing some dip over there.
So ma'am, if you can just allude to what exactly are the line items in the gross profit then? So isn't that the people-
It is... Yeah, it is the-
People that we take, doesn't it come under the EBITDA part?
No, no. See, for computing the gross margin, the costs that we consider are those which are directly attributable to the projects. Okay?
Yeah.
And also, people sometimes work on, you know, proof of concept and proof of delivery, and those costs are also billed part of those SDE cost. That's how you compute your gross margins.
Okay. So if I may ask in another way, so, like, what can be a sustainable, at least a gross margin basis? I'm not going to the EBITDA part, but like 54%, I guess, this year.
If you... Yeah, if you, if you look at our trend, maybe again in the last 12 months, and then even in the previous last 12 months, it was hovering around 57%.
Yeah. Okay. So we can expect at least, we come back to 57% from 54%.
Mm-hmm. Yes.
Okay. Okay.
Okay. Thank you.
Okay. Thanks, Vishal. Next, we have Mr. Ravi Mehta. Mr. Ravi Mehta from [OneUp]. Ravi?
Yeah. Hi, I'm audible?
Please ask your question. Hmm. Yeah, Ravi, come.
Yeah. Well, I just wanted to check, you mentioned that, you know, this quarter there was an incremental investment of INR 15 crores. If you can help us, you know, split, in which headline items it was being split, whether it was software development, SG&A. Because I'm just trying to see how the impact is playing out on EBITDA and on gross margin, just to understand how the normalized course can be.
I don't think so we need to get into that level of nitty-gritty. So anyway, the amount is not that much. For a INR 15 crore value-
Okay...
We need to go to that level.
Yeah.
So we can-
Uh-
Yeah, we can-
So is it in SG&A what I wanted to understand, so where-
Predominantly, yeah, predominantly in SG&A, that you can see. And, we also had some global events this quarter, which also contributed to the increase in SG&A cost. There were some partner commission which got included. So, the investments mostly went into SG&A, and some bit of it also into product development, yeah.
No, it's reflecting in SG&A. I just thought, we'll confirm it here.
Yes.
Sure.
Okay. Thanks, Ravi. Then we have Mr. Dhruv Shah. Mr. Dhruv Shah from Ambika Fincap.
Yeah. Am I audible?
Yes.
Yes.
Hello.
Manish, I have two questions. One is, we won eight deals this quarter, which is lowest in eight quarters. Is there something to read into it or is that, seasonality? Do you want to just, answer this?
No, I'm not reading too much into it.
Because it's the lowest in eight quarters, that's why it came up, but... Because we just launched Purple Fabric, and we have done a lot of investment. That's... That's why it popped up, that that's the lowest in eight quarters.
No, it is, it is from account it is low, but I'm right now not concerned. Like I said, Dhruv, I'm looking at crossing INR 800 crore, and it's one or two quarters away. So-
So, Manish, should we see that going forward, will we be chasing larger amount, enterprise deals compared to lower, low ticket size, and that's why the deal wins will be lower going ahead?
No, it's a very good, fairly balanced mix. One thing good is happening is we getting more of the large, big deals also we playing in there. See, with Purple Fabric, what will happen is they will start small, but suddenly they will start showing big results in year two, year three, as the consumption grows. So that's a consumption-based business.
Right. Okay.
Mm-hmm.
My second question is on the press release we did last week on adding 14 value discovery partners. Are these mainly SIs or are they distributors for Purple Fabric?
These are smaller mid-sized technology companies which we are helping to take us forward.
Okay, understood. Great, thank you so much.
In each of the-
And group-
there are people with 300, 400 people who really are entrenched in one or two different banks, so leverage that relationship and capacity gives them an opportunity to grow, and it's in a connected field, so...
Fair enough.
Yeah. Okay.
Fair enough.
Thanks.
Thanks. Thanks, Dhruv. Next, we have Mr. Pranay Jain from BanyanTree Advisors. Pranay, please ask your question.
Can you hear me?
Yeah.
Yeah.
Please go on.
Okay, thank you. So, one question I had on Purple Fabric: whenever you're going to, you know, to our clients, whenever we are trying to close deals, what has been the key differentiating factor for us in terms of client adopting something that is fresh in the market? So that would be my first question, and then I have a couple of smaller questions as well.
... Manish, you can help us?
Yeah. So, you know, we've been having a lot of discussions with different clients. I think our key differentiation-
Mm.
—as I said earlier, is the ability for us to be able to help the customer achieve business impact. There's been a lot of, there's been a lot of work that people have done using the ChatGPTs, and assistants, and copilots. But when it comes to business impact, a lot of what we can orchestrate at end-to-end journeys actually helps the customer either improve their cost and productivity, or improve their revenue, or their customer experience, or, you know, or fundamentally, a lot of our customers in certain markets, in wealth and other areas, also focus a lot on compliance and regulatory stuff. So what we are seeing is the ability to understand the leadership and the thought leadership in particular lines of business, and actually achieve business impact for them.
Clearly that is something that in 2025, a lot of people, you know, believe has not been achieved so much, which is where our platform positions ourselves best to do. And I think we are seeing that as something that's attracting a lot of attention. You know, we must remember that AI is still at an early stage of adoption in the agentic and the digital expert space, and therefore adoption will take time. But actually, when we run these pilots, they can actually start seeing business impact. And we have a lot of customers we've already been doing that for, because we started earlier with, you know, insurance and certain product lines here.
Got it. That's helpful. The second question that I have is, whenever we are doing large Destiny Deals, are they typically front-loaded in terms of revenue recognition, or do they ramp up gradually over multiple years?
It's multiple models, Pranay.
Okay. So there'll be a mix of, like, front loading and, like, annuity tail kind of thing as well?
Annuity based on variability.
Understood. Got it. Yeah, that's it.
Okay.
Thank you, sir. Thank you.
Thanks, Pranay. Next, we have Mr. Krishna Agrawal from Mangal Keshav. Mr. Krishna Agrawal from Mangal Keshav. Secure.
Hello? Hello. Hello.
Yeah, yeah, Krishna. Please go on.
Yes, sir, I am audible.
Yeah, Krishna. Yeah, yeah.
Yes, sir.
Please go on.
It is just a follow-up question regarding our competitors. Sir, as you said, that you only consider Palantir and C3.ai as your major competitor, but I still wanted to get some light on Indian competitors. Sir, currently, in the Indian banking technology ecosystem, there are multiple players offering AI-led solution for banks, such as TCS BaNCS, Aurionpro, NPST, and [AI Compass]. So sir, how does Intellect differentiate itself from these competitors in terms of depth of AI capabilities and platform maturity in the long term? And sir, additionally, how close are these players to Intellect's current level of AI-led banking technology, and what is the Intellect strategy outlook to maintain and extend its competitive edge going forward with these Indian competitors? Thank you.
I think there are a lot of SI players, like TCS and others, like you mentioned. I think, as I said earlier, our big differentiation is our full Purple Fabric stack, where we have invested significant amount of effort over the last 7-8 years, going all the way back from the early models of machine learning to the large language models right now. I think that learning and experience for our product lines, I think compared to a lot of people coming and offering use cases or... And a lot of the people are actually building SI type of work for customers to be able to do things that can help them achieve some level of AI independence. Everybody says AI right now, but nobody really has a full end-to-end platform.
And I've already covered the four sort of stacks that make up our platform. I think that combination... And the most important thing that we are seeing is when customers want to scale multiple use cases, they need to govern them. The ethical AI stack of governing our platform is fundamentally very different from what anybody else does. Because when, you know, when you implement these use cases, that ethical AI stack gives you the ability to govern digital experts. You've got to think of this as human and digital experts working together in an operational role. In that model, the digital expert really needs to be managed on a regular basis because of the continuous changing language models, the continuous changing data that is fed into those digital experts.
So think of it that governing digital experts is a very, very detailed part of the Purple Fabric stack, which, you know, you won't find this in most of the other people. They are still talking about doing small use cases here and there of doing SI work. So I think that's the fundamental difference with most of the, most of the Indian players in, in my mind, yeah.
Okay. So-
Okay, sir. Thank you very much.
Thanks, Krishna. Next, we have Sonal Minhas from Prescient Capital. Sonal?
Hi, sir, this is Sonal Minhas. I hope I'm audible.
Yep. Yeah, yeah. Please go on, Sonal.
I want to continue from the question the last participant asked. Some of the players, as you mentioned, you mentioned that they don't have a full stack, and I think, having attended some of these calls with these players, they also mentioned that, the real ROI of AI showing its value add in productivity or similar matrices, basically something which is still at the proof of concept stage.
So we wanted—given the fact that you say that the Purple Fabric project has linkage to close to INR 200 crore of top line, are there early signs for you guys where this is showing up in terms of how you bill a particular client or in terms of you having better margins for some of the use cases where you've implemented Purple Fabric? Or is this early days for us right now? That's, that's about it.
Yeah. You know, adoption of AI, it is still at an early stage. Having said that, I think the opportunity for us to be able to bring productivity would mean a different way of working. Because we are seeing significant impact on operational work, on compliance work, that we are beginning to see in our pilots and already in production. For our insurance business, we've seen significant, you know, impact on the same work being done by the human through a BPO-type process versus the way we do it using AI end-to-end. So I think it is very therefore important for us to keep in mind that this is early-stage adoption. The agentic actual work, which, you know, is something uniquely put together on Purple Fabric, which is why it's a multiple agents coming together.
Very few of our competitors have multiple agents coming together, and we refer to that as digital experts in different areas coming together. I think that piece has not taken off as fast as we, you know, we believe it sort of will in the future. I think it'll change fundamentally the, the way in which we operate or, you know, we often call it the future of work, will change quite significantly. And I think we are actually experiencing the early stages of that. And some product lines where this has been AI first, like the insurance and some areas in, in wealth, and now some areas in trade and some areas in payments, I think that will actually go much faster as the adoption starts taking place.
So, you know, there is obviously ROI challenges in the industry, which normally happens when you start something like this new, as it happened, you know, 25 years back with the dot-com. So it'll happen, that we will stabilize, but fundamentally, new business models using AI will appear, and we are well positioned for that.
Got it, sir. So thanks for explaining this, in detail. I also have a follow-up. I think, a couple of my other colleagues were also asking the margin profile, and you were mentioning that, companies have a different margin profile at INR 700 crore run rate, INR 800 crore run rate, maybe 900,000. Are there... And this is similar to, let's say, what a SaaS company does talk about, in the U.S. My understanding is that. Please correct me if I'm wrong on that. Are there some companies which are into banking software, which have scaled up, where, we could refer to, to understand the margin profile of businesses as they scale up and as they mature? Are there some peers would you refer to in the U.S.?
I think go back and look at from India, FLEXCUBE and Oracle. So we have a combination of that as a business model as well as SaaS. So we have a dual engine firing. Look at what was FLEXCUBE's margin at INR 300 million, INR 400 million, INR 500 million, INR 600 million. You'll find a good story.
Got it, sir. Thank you.
Thanks, Anil. Manish, there is one more and then a lot of re-raised hands. So one we can take, I think-
We can take one and then-
This is.
You can write back to you, and we can reply to them.
Yeah. Please, the persons who are re-raising their hand, please write to me. We'll get back to you. The last we have Sameer Dosani from ICICI Pru. Sameer?
Yeah. Hope I'm audible.
Yeah, yeah, Sameer, please go on.
Yeah, I'm not sure whether it's clarified, but, our original plan was to ramp up investments, through the year, and obviously it's needed for the business, so it's good. But just want to understand, INR 225 crore of SG&A, like, will we see further ramp up, from here on in, and then it will settle there? That is the plan. Or, you know, there are some programs, as you mentioned, and you had some, marketing programs and roadshows, et cetera. So, you know, how to think about this SG&A for maybe next 12 to 18 months from here on?
Sameer, this quarter, the last quarter is typically when we have more road shows and more events, large events, which happens every year.
So that's from an annual cycle perspective. Rest is calibrated based on when we see opportunities as we are growing in. Like right now, you see U.S. is a big focus. We're driving growth in North America, so a very large market from a size as well as geography. But we're keeping it calibrated to ensure we don't run ahead of ourselves.
That's, that's fine, and it's needed for the business. But, our original plan was to ramp up, like, INR 100 crore annualized SG&A, if I'm not wrong, that we wanted to ramp up through the year. So it's that ramp up, step, step up in terms of SG&A is already done, is it, that I should think of? And then maybe gradual investment here and there, whatever is needed, it should... That is how I should think about it?
No, so right now, like we said, beginning of year, INR 700-INR 800 crore. As we stabilize at INR 800, when we say INR 900 or INR 1,000, we will have to add more. So it's a cycle. Mm-hmm.
Okay.
Nothing-
So this level... Yeah, so this level of investment is okay for INR 700- 800 crore of revenues, INR 800 crore revenue?
That's right.
Okay. And obviously, Purple Fabric required software development and related expenses. So that step up in terms of investment in software development expenses is also done, right? We should think of and year-on-year incremental increase, you know, is what I should think of?
Yes.
Okay. Okay, that, that's it from my side, and good luck. Thanks for taking my questions.
Thanks for supporting.
Thanks, Sameer. Thank you, everybody, for joining today. In case any questions you have, you can just write back to us, and we'll reply accordingly. Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you, all.
Thank you.