Ladies and gentlemen, good day and a warm welcome to Sonata Software Earnings Conference Call for the second quarter of FY 2026 ended 30 September 2025 . We have with us on the call today Mr. Samir Dhir, MD and CEO, Mr. Jagannathan CN, Chief Financial Officer. We also have our Extended Leadership Team on the call. Please note, there will be an opportunity for all participants to ask questions after management opening remarks. Should you need assistance during the conference call, please raise your hand from the participant tab on the screen. While asking questions, we request you to please identify yourself and your company. Please note, this conference is being recorded. Please note that during this call, management may make certain forward-looking statements that involve risk assumptions and are based on information currently available to management.
Sonata does not undertake any obligation to update any such forward-looking statement that may be made in course of this call. We advise participants to exercise discretion while making any investment decisions. We will begin with opening remarks from CEO, followed by a business overview and financial highlights. After that, we will open the floor for questions. With that, I now hand over the call to Mr. Samir for his opening remarks. Over to you, sir.
Thank you, Maurito. Good day and good day, everyone, and thank you for joining us today. We truly value your time and appreciate your continued trust and support for Sonata. In today's session, we'll walk you through Sonata's overall strategy, the progress we have made over the past few quarters, our forward-looking roadmap, and a detailed view of our financial performance for Q2 FY 2026, which concluded on 30 September 2025 . We're excited to share the momentum we are building as we continue to execute on our long-term vision and growth aspirations. I'll begin with an overview of our strategic priorities and key objectives, followed by the highlights for the Q2 FY 2026 performance. Firstly, the strategy and the goals. At Sonata, our ambition is clear. We want to be a differentiated AI modernization engineering firm powered by our proprietary platform mission framework.
We are executing at scale across three core strategic dimensions. First, across the four focus verticals, which are healthcare and life sciences, banking, financial services, and insurance, BFSI, retail manufacturing and distribution, RMD, and technology, media and telecom, TMT. The second dimension is on five priority geographies that we have decided to focus on, which are North America, U.K., Europe, India, and Australia. We want to focus on modernization engineering leadership with sustained investments in our IP, proprietary lightning tools, and robust offerings. We are enabling continuous modernization for our clients, building digital AI and data platforms that deliver transformative value for our clients.
We see significant opportunity at the intersection of AI and modernization engineering, driving momentum across strategic bets we have made, which is enabling us to consistently secure large deals and large accounts, expanding significantly our footprint in BFSI and healthcare verticals, deepening capabilities in data, AI, and modernization engineering, backed by scaling our talent across sales, delivery, HR, and finance, and other operational functions to support our growth ambitions. With that, let me provide you a progress update on the quarter. Our success is anchored on three strategic pillars. Number one, scaling Sonata for the next phase of growth. Second, relentless focus on large deal wins. Third, sharp focus across strategic verticals, geographies, and talent. I'm going to get deeper into each of these three dimensions. First, scaling Sonata, specifically on AI, which is a strategic growth pillar for us.
We have made steady progress in scaling our AI order book and are perhaps one of the few companies which publicly share our AI order book consistently. For the most recent quarter, our AI order book grew from 8% in Q1 to 10% in the most recent quarter. These AI-driven wins span multiple verticals, with TMT vertical showing the highest adoption of AI. We have tightly aligned our go-to-market with our AI CSP co-sale program, particularly with Microsoft's new AI consumption model, which went effective July 2025. We are replicating this model with other CSPs as well. During the quarter, we closed two mid-size AI and CSP deals. We expect these deals to drive both client expansion and sustainable new client acquisition engine. Earlier this year, we launched our cloud-agnostic agentic platform, AgentBridge. The platform is designed to help clients build and deploy next-generation agentic AI solutions.
In addition, we are collaborating with IISC in India and Wharton School in the US for enhanced research in agentic AI. We have deployed agentic solutions internally within Sonata through our AgentBridge platform. Our HR and finance teams now run production-grade agents, reinforcing our aspiration to be a model AI-led technology services firm. We are truly proud of that. We are actively pursuing AI opportunities across 100+ clients, helping them unlock value through operational efficiencies, time-to-market, and transformative business models through AI innovation. Let me provide an update on the key modernization driving engines. First, cloud and data. Cloud and data opportunities now account for 55% of our total pipeline, reflecting strong client demand for modernization. We are seeing accelerating adoption around Microsoft Fabric, where Sonata is an official Microsoft Fabric feature partner, and enabling clients to build data analytics foundations for an AI era.
Microsoft Dynamics, we continue to work closely with Microsoft on programmatic growth plays across ERP modernization, SaaS transitions, and low-code, no-code compete deals. With that, let me provide you an update on large deals. Large deals pursued remain a cornerstone of our growth strategy, with approximately 40% of our pipeline comprising large deals. I'm pleased to share in Q2 FY 2026, we won yet another large deal. This is with a leading healthcare provider client in the US who awarded Sonata a multi-year contract to modernize their core platforms, leveraging automation and AI to drive enhanced consumer experience, reduce technical debt, and AI enablement with data-driven insights for the end customers. In the deal win, Sonata differentiated through its AI-led transformation approach, integrating modernization engineering practices and platform-driven data modernization to create real outcome-driven value for the clients.
In addition to the large deal, we also won several mid-size deals in AI. I wanted to cover the top three. The first AI win is through supersizing with one of our leading financial mortgage leaders. They awarded Sonata a multi-year engagement to migrate its legacy suite of applications to a modernized platform. This strategic engagement modernizes the customer's core platform, enhances security, scalability, and sets the foundation for future SaaS transformation. The second AI win is within a retail vertical. We secured a strategic AI program with a US-based consumer product client to develop their enterprise playground powered by AI. We will provide a comprehensive solution using AI, which will provide robust security and privacy access control and monitoring. We also secured two AI CSP mid-size deals in the quarter, one with a healthcare client and another with a global TMT client.
With that, let me provide an update on our verticals, geos, SITL, business, and talent. We remain confident that our investment verticals, which are healthcare life sciences and banking financial services, are on track to scale to ₹250 million Indian Rupee of revenue in about three to five years' time. Together, these verticals now contribute to 33% of our total revenue, a sharp rise from 13% just three years ago, a clear reflection of our strategic focus and disciplined execution. Our North America business has now scaled significantly and represents over 70% of our total revenue, up from approximately 54% three years ago. This shift reflects our continued success in the geography. On the SITL front, we are making strong progress across three strategic growth pillars.
First, to expand the Microsoft channel with a sharper focus on SMC segment, which also included incubating our Sonata on Cloud offering, which we launched about four to six quarters back. Second, broaden partnership with other ISVs such as Oracle, IBM, OpenText, and others, expanding beyond the three hyperscalers that we already have very strong partnership with. Third, win large SI deals that integrate various product sets and ISVs' infrastructure with leading cloud platforms. These strategic bits are core to building a more diversified, resilient, and future-ready business, and our teams have been judiciously executing this strategy over the last several quarters. With that, let me provide you an update on Sonata capabilities and talent. Our trailing 12 months' attrition stands at 14%. Our gender diversity remains healthy at 31%, underscoring our continued focus on building an inclusive organization.
Despite a challenging macroeconomic environment, we remain committed to future-focused talent investments in training and strengthen our ability to deliver on our growth ambitions. Sonata University continues to power our upskilling capability agenda with a strong focus on AI readiness. 94.8%, nearly 95% of our workforce and 80% of our managers are now AI-trained, reinforcing our commitment to building future-ready skills across delivery, engineering, and consulting. We also rolled out vibe coding training across the company, with 78% of the employees successfully completing it, reflecting in high engagement in a very short span of time. We are delighted to announce that Inder Samarth has joined us as sales leader for Quant to drive our next phase of growth. Srini, who led Quant earlier, has decided to pursue opportunities outside of Sonata. We are proceeding with our annual compensation revision for this year, despite market headwinds.
These compensation revisions have been enacted in Q2 and will continue to be enacted in Q3, reaffirming our belief in investing in people and maintaining industry-leading engagement and learning initiatives. In terms of industry recognition, during the quarter, we continued to be recognized as a workplace of culture and market momentum. We won CII AI Awards for 2025 for Best AI Solution Showcase and Best Industry AI Application for AgentBridge Platform. We were recognized also as a major contender in Everest Group's Application Development Services for AI applications by Peak Metrics Assessments. With that, let me dive deeper into Q2 FY 2026 performance. Tailwinds which are driving our growth. Number one, during the quarter, we continue to benefit from three strong tailwinds. Number one, strong momentum from large TMT and healthcare deals that we announced earlier in the year. They've continued to provide us with the ramp-ups and expanding scopes.
Number two, the continued strength in our healthcare and life sciences and BFSI verticals continues to be a pillar of strength and robust performance in data and AI-led wins reflecting growing client confidence in our capabilities. In addition, our operational efficiency is driven by three levels: higher utilization, planned large deal offshoring, and AI adoption and agentic AI implementation across all functions within Sonata that delivered a net EBITDA equation of 0.7% quarter on quarter, even after absorbing 0.9% of impact from salary increments. That is a total of approximately 160 basis points of EBITDA accretion in the quarter on a gross basis and 70 basis points on a quarter-on-quarter basis net. We expect full quarter upside to reflect in Q3 from the work we have done in Q2 to drive sustainable actions we have implemented in Q2.
As we continue to drive improvements from the above three levels, our expectation is that PAT will further accrete in the second half of the year compared to the first half of the year. With that, let me talk about headwinds and offsets. While we are navigating this business, there are some real-time challenges as well. Our largest BFSI client underwent organizational changes and budget constraints and led to a significant ramp-down in the course of the quarter. Within SITL, we had headwinds. However, based on our three-pillar strategy enacted several quarters back, our teams were able to largely offset the impact of the broader sectoral impact that we see in the business. As previously indicated, we continue to see decision delays in our largest TMT customer and global R&D.
The impact from the BFSI client was largely offset by the large deal wins in healthcare and TMT and the mid-size AI wins. Outside of these TMT and BFSI accounts, we recorded healthy growth across all our client base. We are truly proud of that, reflecting the resilience and diversification of our portfolio. International business revenue grew 1% quarter-on-quarter constant currency. Our order booking stood at 1.28 book-to-bill ratio. We secured one large deal in the quarter. The number of clients with more than ₹10 million Indian Rupee annual run rate is now at eight. We added six enterprise-grade clients during the course of the quarter. Our AI order book, as I previously mentioned, contributed 10% of our total order book. EBITDA significantly improved to 17.3%, much in line with the roadmap which we have shared with you earlier.
We will continue to see the secretion going into the next quarter as well. The utilization rate improved to 87.3%, maintaining delivery efficiency. In the SITL business, our gross contribution was at 0.3% quarter-on-quarter. In summary, Sonata delivered a resilient performance in Q2 FY 2026. We secured one large deal, expanded our AI-led order bookings, and now have eight clients with an annualized run rate of exceeding ₹10 million Indian Rupee . Our long-term ambition to be a differentiated modernization engineering firm powered by platformation continues to drive a strategic momentum for us. I want to thank all Sonatians globally for their continued dedication and commitment. Their efforts form the foundation of our progress and future success, and we remain confident in delivering a long-term value to our clients, partners, and shareholders. With that, I'll turn it over to you, Jagan. Jagan, you might be on mute.
Thank you, Samir. Good day to all of you. Let me walk you through our financial performance for the quarter ending 30 September 2023. First, starting with the international services. In Q2 FY 2026, USD reported revenues stood at $82 million US dollars, growth of 0.2% quarter-on-quarter. In constant currency terms, it represents growth of 1% quarter-on-quarter. Repeat revenues stood at ₹ 730.30 crores Indian Rupee, growth of 4.3% quarter-on-quarter and 3.2% year-on-year. EBITDA before other income and forex for Q2 FY 2026 improved to 17.3%, up 70 basis points sequentially from 16.6% in Q1. This expansion was primarily driven by operational improvements across delivery, SG&A contributing to 160 basis points, reflecting better delivery efficiency, cost optimization, and also benefit from cross-currency forex impact. EBITDA improvement was mainly driven by utilization improvement to 87.3%, up from 86.6% in Q1 FY 2026. Planned large deal offshoring in our FP program. As a result, our offshoring mix improved to 57% from 53% in Q1 FY 2026.
Q2 utilization and headcount were also driven by sustainable productivity improvement and operational efficiency in delivery enabled by AI adoption, differentiated AI solution, agentic implementation across projects. We expect utilization to further improve in future quarters due to productivity gains from AI across all functions. These improvements offset by wage increments impacting margins by 90 basis points as we continue to invest in talent. In summary, on a net basis, EBITDA improved by 70 basis points. We expect full quarter upside to reflect in Q3 from the sustainable actions implemented in Q2. EBITDA after other income and forex for Q2 2026 improved to 19.9%, up 150 basis points sequentially from 18.4% in Q1 2026. Q2 2026 reported PAT stood at ₹ 78 crores Indian Rupee against ₹ 70.7 crores Indian Rupee in Q1 2026. Growth of 10.3% quarter-on-quarter and 25.5% year-on-year. Reported ROCE and RONW for the quarter stood at 17.8% and 22.6% respectively.
International services DSO in Q2 is reported as 68 days against 62 days in Q1 2026. Now, let me provide you with an update on domestic business. Domestic business revenue for Q2 2026 stood at ₹ 1,391.3 crores Indian Rupee , with degrowth of 38.8% quarter-on-quarter and degrowth of 4.8% year-on-year. Gross contribution for Q2 2026 stood at ₹ 68.7 crores Indian Rupee , with growth of 0.3% quarter-on-quarter and degrowth of 2.1% year-on-year. PAT for Q2 2026 stood at ₹ 42.2 crores Indian Rupee against ₹ 38.6 crores Indian Rupee in Q1 2026, with growth of 9.3% quarter-on-quarter and degrowth of 4.8% year-on-year. DSO of Q2 2026 is 42 days as compared to 63 days in Q1 2026. Reported ROCE and RONW for the quarter stood at 43.8% and 42.5% respectively. Update on consolidated business. For the quarterly update, consolidated revenue for Q2 2026 stood at ₹ 2,119.3 crores Indian Rupee , with a degrowth of 28.5% quarter-on-quarter and degrowth of 2.3% year-on-year.
PAT for consolidated business in Q2 2026 is at ₹ 120.2 crores against ₹ 109.3 crores Indian Rupee in Q1 2026, growth of 10% quarter-on-quarter and 12.9% year-on-year. Consolidated EPS in Q2 2026 is ₹ 4.33 Indian Rupee per share. Q1 was ₹ 3.94 Indian Rupee per share, increased by 9.9% quarter-on-quarter. Reported ROCE and RONW for the quarter stood at 22.1% and 27.1% respectively. The company has declared its second interim dividend for the year at ₹ 1.25 Indian Rupee per share, in line with commitment made during the previous call to implement quarterly interim dividend payments. Starting this year, the company intends to follow quarterly interim dividend payment policy. Cash and cash equivalent stood at ₹ 323 crores Indian Rupee at the end of Q2 2026 compared to ₹ 600 crores Indian Rupee in Q1 2026. Moving on, update on other operating metrics. Business operating performance. Total headcount stood at 6,649 in Q2 2026 against 6,859 in Q1 2026, with attrition of 14%.
On-site offshore revenue mix was at 43% to 57% in Q2 compared to 47% to 53% in Q1. Utilization reported at 87.3% in Q2 versus 86.6% in Q1. We added six new customers in Q2 2026. Top 10 clients contributed revenue share of 53%. In Q1, it was 56%. Number of clients greater than ₹5 million Indian Rupee stood at 13 in Q2 2026, same as Q1 2026. Number of clients of more than ₹3 million Indian Rupee up to ₹5 million Indian Rupee revenue increased to 8 from 6 in Q1. Q2 2026 order book stood at ₹105 million Indian Rupee with a book-to-bill ratio of 1.28x. In summary, we are confident about our large deal momentum, AI adoption, agentic AI implementation, and continued focus on sustainable EBITDA improvement levers. With this, I hand over back to the operator. Thank you.
Thank you, sir. We will now begin with a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question, please raise your hand. We will send you an unmute request when it's your turn. Please accept the request and then go ahead and ask your question. If you're connected via the webcast and would like to ask a question, please click on the Q&A tab and type your question in the text box. Ladies and gentlemen, we will wait for a moment while the question queue assembles. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may please raise hand in Zoom. The first question is from Mr. Vipulk umar Shah from Sumangal Investments.
Am I audible, sir? Hello? Yes, you are. We can hear you. So I want to know why our on-site offshore mix is so skewed in favor of on-site. All other large companies have an offshore ratio of around 75%. So why is ours around 50%? Hello?
Yeah, yeah. We are able to hear you. Okay. Yeah. So our offshore ratio has actually improved this quarter from 53% to 57%. I'm not sure how the last companies have more than 75%. I don't think the fact is right. We are one of the companies, a few companies who have more offshore percentage of revenue.
I think Infosys has around between 72% to 75% offshore. On-site, there is around 25%. I am the shareholder since a very long time, so I can say about Infosys. I don't know, Minsoo, what are the reasons for your low offshoring? Just I wanted to know that.
Hi, Vipul. Shilpa here. Let me take that question. I think what you're looking at is the headcount mix. What we are talking about here in Sonata Tech is revenue mix. Headcount mix.
This is revenue mix.
Oh, okay. Okay. Got it.
Thank you.
Yeah. Thank you.
Thank you, sir. The next question is from Mr. Abhishek Shindadkar from InCred Capital.
Hi. Thanks for the opportunity. I hope you can hear me.
Yeah.
Okay. First question is on the services business. If I look at the growth across verticals, it has been lopsided and driven by a particular vertical for the first half of 2026. Samir, the question is, I understand the challenges, but in terms of the interventions required to make it a broad-based growth, if you can highlight some, and when we could see more broad-based growth across verticals. That's question number one. Question number two is on the products business. Very heartening to see the increase in the gross contribution despite the drop in the revenue.
If you can just highlight, is that seasonality which is playing out of the last quarter, or is this more business-driven improvement? That's question number two. The question number three is on the purchases, especially between the standalone and the consult business. In the standalone business, the purchases have gone up dramatically. If you can highlight what has led to this, that would be helpful. Thank you for taking my questions.
Thank you, Abhishek. I'll take the first two, and I'll request Devan to take the third one. On the vertical side, Abhishek, just to give the first strategic overview, we started, as you know, banking and financial services and healthcare verticals about three years back. I think we made good progress in a broad-based sense across the three verticals.
Like I earlier noted, our revenue from BFSI and HLS has gone up from 13% of revenue to about 32% of revenue or so now. It is a pretty good growth for us in the three years from a mixed perspective. Why that is important is because, as you probably know, banking and healthcare together constitute about 60% of total outsourcing, which is an area that Sonata did not have earlier. We are very pleased with the progress that we are making and continue to make. Of course, we have a headwind in one specific client in BFSI right now, which will probably continue for this quarter and last quarter. If you back that out, I think in general, we have seen fairly solid momentum across healthcare and banking over the last three years.
As far as the retail, manufacturing, and TMT is concerned, I think retail, manufacturing in general has had a slowdown. We noted that in our earlier calls as well with you guys. I think this quarter is a little bit of an aberration. We got one-time revenue in this quarter, but in general, retail, manufacturing has been a little muted across the industry given what is happening in the tariff side. We see in the next two, three quarters, hopefully by Q1 next year, it will stabilize and return back to growth. TMT, as far as that is concerned, I think it's a tale of two cities. If you look at the big tech, I think there has been softness given one of our large clients is in the TMT side.
Outside of the big tech, the small tech or the medium tech, I think we've seen very, very strong growth. That is probably noticeable in our numbers as well. Despite the large client slowdown, we have been able to hold up on TMT overall growth numbers because the growth in the non-big tech has been very, very good for us. In fact, the large deal that we announced earlier this year was also in the TMT sector. If you look at it from a geo vertical mix perspective, large deal win. Earlier, we announced TMT win. We announced healthcare. Just now, we announced another healthcare win. We are very pleased with the progress. The headwinds that we continue to have are one large TMT client and one large BFSI client.
If you back those two out, I think we are pretty pleased with the progress for the rest of the business. That is on the first point. On the second point, I think on the SITL business, and I am going to invite Sujit to add to it as well. Look, I think Sujit and team have done a phenomenal job to enact a three-pillar strategy, which I talked about earlier. I think growing our footprint in the Microsoft channel in the SMC business, broadening our partnership with other ISVs and SI deals. I think we enacted that strategy about four to six quarters back. We are reaping benefit of it right now. Hence the headwind that we got into this quarter based on the other decision that we had to withstand, we still came out balancing that out.
We feel very, very confident that the business has been well diversified now, and we are well on our path to diversify the business. The strategy we have put in place is the right strategy. I'll just request Sujit to see if he has any additional points on that. Sujit?
Thanks, Samir. If you have observed for many, many quarters, in our business, there is not always a very direct correlation between the profit and the revenue because of the character of this business. There can be times the revenue numbers can drop because of various reasons. We as a group always concentrate on maintaining and growing our what we call the GC, that's the gross contribution. As Samir mentioned, there are various strategies which are in place to make sure that we continue to hold on and grow our GC.
Fortunately, as of now, we have been able to maintain our GC stand. Hopefully, in future, even if we have some trouble times, we'll be able to manage it. Thank you.
Shilpa, you take the last one. Last point, Abhishek has a third point as well.
Third point is on cost of goods sold, Abhishek. There is no aberration on the point. This is related to the India business, and it is in line with the revenue growth. Some of these quarters, as Sujit was also mentioning, the revenue growth has been we are not always concentrated on GC, and the revenue growth can change depending on a particular trade transaction or a particular transaction or a particular mix of revenue, whatever we have. The cost is also in alignment with that. There are no changes in this.
More details, if you wanted, we'll give you offline on that. Hello.
Operator, you can pick up the next question, please.
Yeah. The next question is from Ashis Dash from Mirai Asset Capital.
Hi, good morning. Hope I am audible.
Yes, Ashis, go ahead.
Thanks for the opportunity. My question is again on the domestic business, basically your SITL business. Last quarter earnings call, you mentioned that there could be some discussion with Microsoft team regarding this domestic or product business. I just want to, now you mentioned that the business has diversified. What I understand, most of our business was towards Microsoft. My question is, I just want to understand how have they started taking over some of your partner accounts? How do you see that business is going to impact, particularly from Microsoft?
Sujit, you want to take this, please?
Sure, Samir. Thanks. So first, I mean, if I've understood the question, if there is an apprehension that Microsoft is going to take out all business, that's not the case. As of now, although they have not given anything in writing, our guess is that worldwide, they are trying to have some direct contract with a limited number of very, very large accounts of theirs or large customers of theirs. In that list, there may be few which will fall in India, and it can fall into our customer basket as well, right? That is the real situation. It's not that Microsoft has decided to completely go from an indirect to direct model. This is the first time they are doing it in the Asia-Pacific region, including India.
This is the first year they are trying to do some direct billing. We have to wait and see how things are going to span out and to what extent they are going to go. We are not in a position to make a comment on that because obviously, we do not know what exactly their future plan is. Knowing the environment, knowing Microsoft since the last 30 years, we believe that right now, it is a very limited intervention and limited plan which they have. That is our assessment. Now, coming to diversification, obviously, once we come to know of this change in the business policy, to protect our business, we have to do various other things to make sure that our revenue and profit growth, how to maintain that and how to keep on track.
We have done various things, including within Microsoft, looking at various different options, outside Microsoft, what are the other businesses' possibilities, growing towards associated services around the platforms. There are many, many things which we are trying to do now. Hopefully, in the next four to five quarters, six quarters, we will be able to zero down on some of the plans which are actually going to work and will continue to focus on them. That is what is our strategy to hold on to our business and continue to our growth. I hope I have answered.
Yeah, got your point. Earlier, we used to say that our gross contribution is expected to grow at 15% CAGR in the medium to long term.
That assumption continues, or should we, like, you see that certain because of the changes, there could be certain headwinds would be there on this domestic business?
When there is such a large change in the policy, definitely, there will be certain headwinds. Considering the fact that we operate on most of our customers within the large enterprise segment, there can be a few hits and misses here and there based on the Microsoft policy. There will be some headwinds. As I said, and as Samir also explained, knowing this environment, we have our diversification strategy. We are trying our best to make sure that in the next few quarters, we come back to the growth we had discussed earlier.
Got it. Thank you. Samir, my next question is on now in your presentation, you have mentioned your net new deal TCV number. Between FY 2022 to date, you mentioned that there is a net new deal TCV of ₹467 million Indian Rupee . If I see the incremental revenue from FY 2022, it's just ₹132 million Indian Rupee . What I see is that there is some non-linearity. Could you please help me understand why there is a gap between revenue growth and the deal TCV?
Yeah. Ashis, the deal TCV that we announced, these are for multi-year deals. Some of these could be even three years, five years, ten years as well. The order book that you might be referring to, I don't know which number you definitely have in mind, but maybe Jagan can build on that. These are generally for the total contract level in the term of the contract.
It could be three, five, or 10 years, or maybe sometime even longer. What you're referring to, the growth, is the revenue realized in the year, which of course will be lesser than the overall deal book that we have booked. You are saying that there is no revenue leakage has happened, and the growth will come back in the coming years? Yeah. Those deals, if you want, the order has been booked. As time moves forward, we'll continue to realize revenue from the orders that we have booked already. There is no concern on that front. Okay. My last question on your USAIC. You mentioned that on USAIC, we saw 90 basis points impact in Q2. What kind of remaining impact can we expect in Q3? Yeah, it's pretty much in the same range in the coming quarter as well.
Like we indicated, given the efficiencies that we have enacted in Q2, we think we'll be able to absorb that and still are a bit creative in the coming quarter.
Thank you so much for taking my questions.
Thank you, sir. The next question is from Mr. Amit Chandra from HDFC Securities.
Hello. Am I audible?
Yes, go ahead, Amit. We can hear you.
Yeah, yeah. Yes, sir. Thanks for the opportunity. Sir, just the continuation on the TCV question. Over the last six-seven quarters, we have been in the range of, say, ₹100 to 105 million Indian Rupee . Seeing the large deal pipeline that we report, we have around 28 to 30 deals in the large deal pipeline. This TCV number has been constant. Obviously, the revenue has also been constant for us.
Just to understand, for the revenue acceleration to happen, do we have to win more deals? Obviously, we have to win more. This ₹100 million Indian Rupee kind of a TCV number is sufficient for the revenue acceleration to happen if we see some stability in the existing book. Also, in terms of the large deal pipeline, earlier, we used to have like two-three large deals, which has also slowed down. Any views, any incremental challenges we are seeing in terms of closing deals?
Sure. Great question, Amit. I think let us explain. What we talk about as 1.28 book-to-bill is for the new business that we are winning. I think what that gets tempered is the runoffs that have happened in some of the large accounts that we have seen headwinds in, specifically the large tech client and the large banking client.
It's a bit of an extraordinary situation. We have seen the last two, three quarters, or four quarters now that two large accounts have had issues. They end up offsetting the more than one book-to-bill ratio of us. In our mind, our desired state of book-to-bill ratio is between 1.2 to 1.3, and that's where we're operating at. We just had one too many mishaps in terms of large accounts, which is really causing this growth slowdown to happen because of that. We have been very open with you guys about that. I think as we move forward, we are pivoting the change mix from a quality of revenue to more AI, which we talked about earlier. We do believe as a company that 1.2 to 1.3 range of order book is pretty sustainable.
If we do see continued impact of some, God forbid, some large account as well, then of course, we look to improve that number. For a foreseeable future, we think that's a range that we want to operate at.
Okay. Also, you mentioned about the impact on BFSI. Obviously, you have been very clear about it. Just to understand the extent of the impact, because if I see in terms of numbers from the peak of last third quarter last year, we have almost halved in terms of the BFSI revenue. Do you attribute it all to the issues in top client, whether the top client revenues have been totally out of the system or is it still there? Third quarter, we generally see is seasonally strong for BFSI.
If you can throw some light in terms of how the furloughs are looking and also in terms of furloughs for the third quarter.
Sure. We do not have a material furlough impact in our business, Amit. We do not see that much. Let's just understand the BFSI business in two parts, Amit. Let's think of minus the large account and everything else. Of course, the large account has had a significant headwind, and we have seen significant ramp down of that, especially during the most recent quarter. Maybe the final impact will come in the current quarter as well. Beyond that, the other accounts have really grown quite well for us. That has been a little bit of an offsetting factor for us.
We think the other account that we have won in the course of the last two, three years, many of them have potential to scale up to be the top accounts from a banking perspective. Yes, we are fighting a headwind against a large client, but the positive momentum we see is on the rest of the large account of the banking business. They all have potential. If not, most of them have potential to grow. That is where our focus is. While it is a one-off bad news, we feel pretty good about the health of the business where it is at. Once the whole impact of this one large client is absorbed, I think we fully absorb the end of Q3. I think we are looking to build the business from there further on going into Q4.
Okay. Thank you. Sir, last question on the margins. Obviously, we have seen healthy expansion in margins in this quarter, despite the quarter being flat. There was a wage hike also in this quarter. If you can give the walkthrough of the margins, what actually led to the margin expansion and what is the normalized margin that we should look at for the ITS business, international IT services? Also, in terms of the efficiency things that we are mentioning, where are we in the journey in terms of the efficiency that we want to achieve?
Yeah. We have stated before also, and I think this question came last couple of calls as well, Amit. Look, we have always talked about our aspiration to be a high teens EBITDA company and aspirationally to be a low teens, low 20s EBITDA company.
We're well on our path to be a high teens EBITDA company at this point in time. That's what we're executing to, as you've probably seen in the results right now. That really has happened on count of three levels, which I commented on earlier as well, but I'm happy to recap. One, our utilization has gone up, which I think has helped us. Second, because of the large deals that we had won over the last several quarters, we tried to move work offshore, and that has helped us. It was planned offshoring. As we won the deals, we have always announced to you that we'll move work gradually to offshore. This quarter, it was a bunch of planned deals that the work had to move offshore. Third is really systematic implementation of AI, both in our delivery and our functions.
We have been very careful and strategic about implementing AI within Sonata in our core functions, as well as implementing AI across our delivery ecosystem. A combination of these three factors has led us to the improvement that we think. We think that's a very sustainable model that we have put in place. Hence, we are confident about equation going into Q3.
Okay, Samir. Thank you and all the best.
Thank you.
Thank you, sir. The next question is from Mr. Jallit from Sony Investment.
Thanks for the opportunity. Hope I'm audible.
Yes, you are.
Yes. Samir, this question was pertaining to the largest client T&T vertical. I understand that you usually go for renewals during the last quarter. What sorts of discussions have you had with them so far for these next years? Have you seen any increase in the budget outflow or the deals with them, or we are at a decline or a static situation with them?
Yeah, Jallit, great question. I think the renewals happen in June, July, August timeframe. We are quite happy with the fact that the renewals that we expected to happen have happened. We have not seen a shrinkage in that. I think the challenge has been to win the new business, which is where the softness has been there in the relationship. I think we were hoping that as they start the new fiscal year in July timeframe, the budgets will get disseminated to the next level of operating managers. That has not happened because they've gone through a reorg yet again. The whole budget dissemination process has been delayed. We expect by January timeframe, the budgets will get disseminated.
Hence, hopefully, going into Q4, or worst case, Q1, we'll start to see some uptake. As far as renewals are concerned, we are in a very good place. We feel we have secured the renewals that we wanted to secure.
Got it. Got it. That's fascinating to know. Sir, one more question. On a related basis, I want to understand the BFSI software, the top-tier softness. How should we think about it? Should it continue for the roll-off? I know you partially alluded to that, two more quarters we should see it. Could you give some more flavor? Because I understand that Quant would have a Q4 seasonality impact also. How should we see both these things together? When should we see an uptake in this BFSI as a vertical from here? How would you see it?
Let me answer the first part. I think the largest client impact was materially absorbed in current quarter Q2, or the quarter we're just announcing results for. The tailwind effect, a small effect, will probably trickle into Q3. That will be the end of, hopefully, the end of the impact from this large client impact as we see it right now. Like I said earlier, beyond that, we really want to see the business going back up again based on other logos and wins that we're having in the BFSI vertical. From coming out of Q3, we'll start to see build the momentum up from Q4 onwards in the banking industry in general.
Awesome. On the India business, should we consider this the new base of whatever reset had to happen in terms of Microsoft going direct to the clients, or do you feel there is more business which could come under contraction or is there at risk?
Amit, do you want to take that piece?
Sure, Samir. As of now, there is nothing in writing from Microsoft that what they're going to do and how they're going to do, as I mentioned previously. Based on our understanding and how it has happened in other countries, the way it happened is that there will be some accounts, some customers which they may decide to go direct. All this does not happen overnight because there are existing contracts. Even if they decide to get into a direct contract, they wait for the renewal period to come.
That means suppose you have a three-year contract and the contract is going to get over in December 2026. After December 2026, for a new contract, they will come in. I mean, this is what is our current understanding. This is how it is happening as of today, whatever few which has happened. This is how it has happened. Based on that, our understanding is that in India, there will be 10 to 15 accounts all over for Microsoft. I am not just saying for ourselves. For Microsoft India, there will be 10 to 15 accounts which they may decide to go direct. Out of that, few may fall in our basket. That is what we have to take care of and we have to manage.
Got it. Just an extension to that. Let me put it just in a way. What sort of or what contracts in the next six months are coming under the D1 in the reselling business or India business? I guess that would give us a little clarity.
Sure. To answer your question, in the next six months, we do not expect any of our customers to get into a direct. I mean, Microsoft wanting to take it direct. That is our understanding.
Got it. This should be the new base. I am assuming that.
Yeah, but I just answer you in six months.
Okay. Yeah. Yeah.
That is how it is as of today.
Okay. Okay. Best of luck. Thanks a lot.
Thank you.
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, that was the last question for today. I would now like to hand the conference over to the management for closing comments. Thank you. Over to you, sir. Thank you.
I think a good set of questions during the call. We all will appreciate your time. I just want to make one clarification. I think there was a question on order book specifically. The 1.28 is really for the overall business. Because it is for the whole business, that is how we report out to you. The two large accounts' headwinds have really offset that number. Our aspiration still is for overall business to be between 1.2 to 1.3, which is where we have been in the past. I just want to clarify. It is not for net new only. It is for the overall business. We appreciate the time from each one of you. Thank you for your interest in Sonata. I also want to take this opportunity to thank all the Sonatians globally for their hard work and commitment to the company. Thank you all, and we'll speak to you in a quarter's time.
Thank you, members of the management. Ladies and gentlemen, on behalf of Sonata Software, that concludes this conference. We thank you for joining us, and you may now disconnect your lines. Thank you.