Hello, and a very warm welcome. I'm Kritika Saxena, and you're watching the Second Quarter FY24 Earnings Press Conference of Tata Consultancy Services. Thank you for everyone joining in on the live stream. We have all our stakeholders joining in on our social media live streams, and of course, as always, we have our friends from media joining in in person in our Mumbai headquarters. Without further ado, I'm going to introduce the management. We have with us MD and CEO, K. Krithivasan. NGS, COO.
Hello.
CFO, Samir Seksaria, and our CHRO, Milind Lakkad.
Hi, everyone.
As always, I'd like to invite K. Krithivasan to take over for the opening address. Krithi, the floor is yours.
Thanks, Kritika. Good evening, everyone. This is a quarter where we displayed strong execution in the face of continued macroeconomic uncertainty. Our revenues grew by 2.8% on a constant currency basis. Our rupee revenue grew by 7.9%, to reach INR 59,692 crores. Our disciplined execution across multiple margin levers helped us achieve an operating margin of 24.3%. This represents a sequential margin expansion of 110 basis points, translating to INR 14,483 crores of operating profit. Our net profit for the quarter has come in at 19%, translating to INR 11,342 crores. Consequently, our EPS has reached 31 from 30.26 in Q1.
Cash from operations at INR 11,821 crore is a healthy conversion at 104.2% of net profit. The board has declared an interim dividend of INR 9, amounting to about INR 3,293 crore. In addition, the board has also recommended a share buyback of INR 17,000 crore at a price of INR 4,150. This is in line with our practice of returning 80%-100% of free cash flows back to our shareholders. In this quarter, despite macroeconomic uncertainties, customer metrics showed improvement across all banks. The number of customers from whom we make more than $100 million rose by two to 61 customers on a year-on-year basis. There has been a strong customer movement across all the other banks as well.
In addition, our customer base of one million-plus stands at 1,272 customers, an increase of 62 over last year. Moving on to segmental commentary. United Kingdom continued to outperform its outperformance to achieve a revenue growth of 10.7% year-on-year. North America grew by 0.1%, and Europe grew by 1.3%. On a sequential basis, happy to report Europe returned to positive growth. Our growth markets of MEA, Middle East and Africa, and Latin America also had strong double-digit growth. Among the verticals, Manufacturing, Energy, Resources, and Utilities, and Regional Markets, essentially our banks and BFSI platform, had strong sequential growth.
On a year-on-year basis, Manufacturing grew by 5.8%, Life Sciences and Healthcare grew by 5%, Energy and Utilities by 14.8%, and Regional Markets and platforms by 14.3%. As you can see, BFSI de-grew by 0.5%, and Consumer Business, which would be the new name for our retail, travel, transport, and hospitality business, grew by 1% on a year-on-year basis. However, BFSI posted a positive growth on a sequential basis. Our deal wins continue to be very strong. Our order book closure for the quarter stands at $11.2 billion. This is our third consecutive quarter of more than $10 billion in order book. This includes two mega deals of JLR and BSNL, which we announced already.
This represents a sequential growth of 10% and a year-on-year growth of 38% of TCV. Our order book for North America stood at $4.5 billion, for BFSI at $3.03 billion, and Consumer Business at $1.44 billion. Our attrition continues to improve. On LTM basis, our IT attrition has reduced to 14.9% from 17.8% in Q1. Last quarter, I talked about our investments in generative AI. During the current quarter, we launched our AI.Cloud business unit by bringing in together the power of cloud data and AI/ ML, including generative AI. Our customers are looking to leverage cloud migration, composite data foundation, application modernization, workplace transformation, and edge to cloud, coupled with AI to drive growth.
Our AI.Cloud unit builds on our award-winning partnerships with hyperscalers and AI partners to deliver superior value to our customers. We also had an opportunity to validate our future-ready AI- first point of view at the. And our four-layered architecture for enterprise adoption of generative AI in our customer summits in North America and Europe, which were very well received. We are currently engaged in more than 250 generative AI-powered engagements with our clients. We have also defined a catalog of use cases that help our customers to fast-track their generative AI adoption. As mentioned in Q1, we completed the initial generative AI readiness training for 100,000 associates already. Further training is going on for next level of training. As an update on our R&D efforts, we have filed for 218 patents in Q2 and were granted 149 patents.
Both the numbers are significantly higher than Q1. With those updates, I hand it back to Kritika, and we will open it for question. Back to you, Kritika. Thank you.
Thank you so much, Kriti. We'll throw the floor open for Q&A. Let's start with Anisha Jain from ET Now. Anisha? Two questions.
One from each, right?
2 questions overall.
You know, I'll ask it one by one, so just that it's easier. Good evening, gentlemen. Thank you so much for your time. Kriti, what explains the dip in revenue that we have seen this quarter? Is it a broad-based slowdown, kind of, request from clients to slow down the execution, or is it more specific to a specific client, geography or vertical?
See, to some extent, it's broad-based, but we've been explaining it last quarter also, okay? The trend is same. Essentially, clients want to invest and invest in newer technologies, so technology adoption is very high. And given the macroeconomic uncertainty, there is also a lot of request to cost optimization projects. So we are able to sign new projects. And the project that we sign, we continue to execute them, and they yield the revenue as planned. But in any given quarter, there'll always be some amount of degrowth. Essentially, some projects will be complete, they come to a natural end, and some projects will get downsized. So if the degrowth is much stronger, or usually in a regular good growth quarter, there'll be less of degrowth and more of new addition coming in, so net-net, you see a lot of growth.
What's happening now is that we are not fully compensating for the degrowth, which is a more normal process, but we are not fully compensating because clients are also optimizing or pausing some of the ongoing projects, and there is some deferral happening. That's the reason why you see while the TCV is still strong, the revenue growth, it's not reflecting in the revenue growth.
Okay, so let me toss it to NGS. Since the ramp-ups are slower, when are you expecting those ramp-ups to actually show into the numbers? And will the bulk of it only come in FY 2025? And let me just add the questions for others as well. Samir, I mean, the margins is something which has surprised us positively, and you're talking about how the continued push for growth, efficiency and innovation levers leave further improvement room for the profitability. So are you hitting that 26% mark this year itself? And, Milind, the question to you is, a lot of reports around you coming back from the hybrid model to full-time at work. Is that true, and what impact would it have on business?
Ramp-ups, I wouldn't say they are slower. I think, you know, all the new projects that we are starting, as Krithi explained, right? Those, ramp-ups are according to the plans that we have, we have put in place, right? But as he explained, that, you know, any quarter, you know, for example, for TCS, there will be projects which will get completed. In this quarter also, we have two large transformation engagements we delivered successfully, and they got completed, right? So to that extent, you know, the revenue, from those projects will, will be sharply lower in this quarter. So, the, the revenue pull that happens from new ramp-ups, new project that we have signed, is according to plan, right?
What is that plan now for the ramp-up of the other deals?
It's according to what we committed to the project, and it's a project-by-project we go through. But see, I don't see any variations per se that we see now typically when we execute large projects, right? So customers are looking for cost and optimization, so there are vendor consolidation, those kind of projects and deals that we are winning. The large-scale transformation programs like what we announced for JLR or what we announced for BSNL, those kind of deals are really shaping up. So it will have its own ramp-up plan, you know, as a multi-year contract that we sign, right? I don't see any aberration per se in any one of those things.
We have a fairly good capacity in terms of people, and we have invested in our people, trained them, so they're all ready to be taking up some of these projects as we speak, right? I don't see any, anything which is an aberration to call out, right?
I know, aberrations of Q1 to Q2.
Anisha, let's take this. Yeah.
On the margins, we delivered a margin of 24.3%. That's a 90 basis points improvement. Let me walk you through the bridge before we come to FY 2024. 100 basis points we got from disciplined execution, which is primarily from productivity, utilization, and further optimization of subcontractor expenses. Another 35 basis points we could get from, like, driving efficiency, mainly in discretionary expenses. Like I called out last quarter, some of these expenses had achieved critical mass. On the other hand, we continued to invest on infrastructure expenses. Now coming to our guiding. Our guiding does remain 26%-28%, and with your best wishes, hopefully soon.
So not ruling it out, right?
I said it.
All right, let me give you some context. We have hired a large number of people in the last three years, you know, and for most of the period, they were working in a hybrid/virtual mode. We strongly believe that, for—they need to come to work so that the new workforce get integrated with the larger workforce of TCS, and that is the only way they will learn and understand and internalize the TCS values and the TCS way. Having said that, yes, we are asking people to come all days in a week.
Having said that, we will continue to assess the work models and, you know, evolve depending on what works best for our customers and our employees.
Yes.
Reema Tendulkar from CNBC TV18.
Gentlemen, good evening. Krithi, the first question is, I understand that there is a natural revenue leakage when deals come to an end, but is the revenue leak from existing deals a little higher? And also, despite seeing very strong deal wins, why is it that the fresh revenue, incremental revenue from deal wins, it's not able to offset this revenue leakage? And also, if you could talk about, the improvement that we've seen in BFSI quarter-over-quarter. You know, that's picked up. High Tech has picked up. But on the other hand, manufacturing's fallen 17%, I think, sequentially, based on, you know, some of the numbers that 16.9. Is that correct? QOQ.
Manufacturing is at 5.8%.
QOQ.
QoQ, no, on a year-on-year basis, but manufacturing is a growth.
QOQ also?
Both, both QOQ.
So we have restructured a bit, and we have called it out.
Okay.
So we have carved out a few things. But manufacturing-
So just talk about, sectorally, you know, what's happening, pain points-
Yeah
and where growth is.
Yeah, see, the first question you asked, right? Like, we have signed a lot of new deals. They have different tenures, and there is a revenue pattern, revenue, already defined. It's obvious, right? Like, if the existing projects get paused or optimized more than the incoming revenue, you'll have... So that's, it's a, that's what you see here. But, Once things settle down, once there is a certainty, we believe that, the reduction or optimization, will be overcompensated by the new projects, and we should get back into growth. But we won't know when, okay? But, in terms of sectoral, like, while BFSI returned to positive growth, it's a small positive growth. I think I don't want to read, too much into it. UK continues to be our,
If I go through the industry verticals, manufacturing is one that actually been performing very well, and Energy Resources has been doing well. Actually, one thing of interest is all our Regional and emerging markets are doing very well. Middle East, Africa, India, or banking platform, they're all doing very well. Banks and banking platform, they're all doing very well. And if you look at geographies, UK continues to be our performer for us. And again, on a positive note, Europe has turned positive. Like, Europe, we have some specific, NGS was mentioning about particular projects closing or once you complete integration, after that, the revenue drastically falls. So we had a couple of issues in Europe. In Europe, particularly, Benelux region is doing very well. Nordics is okay.
The issue is, to some extent, restricted to Germany, France, kind of region. So, it's mixed bag in Europe, but, I think long term, our TCV has been good. Our order book looks good in Europe for us to set us on the right platform for growth.
NGS, when do you think discretionary spend will come back? And two, on deal wins, third consecutive quarter of $10 billion dollar plus, would you like to step up your, guidance on deal wins of $7 billion-$9 billion?
I think we are pretty happy with what we are doing, right? I'll be happy if we are able to clock between 9-10, at that range.
So you're raising it little bit, right?
Yeah.
7-9 is now 9 and 10 on an average? Can we say-
Yeah, I think, you know, a couple of quarters ago, I think somebody asked, and I said that-
Yes
Look, I think nine to, 9 and 10 is a good number to have, given what we are doing, whatever we are doing. But important thing is the kind of projects that we are winning, right? I think, it's fantastic, and, in every project there is, an element of cloud, element of automation, generative AI, ML. You know, so there's a new technology-based wins, which is, very satisfying for us. That also gives an opportunity for all our, associates to try all the things that they learn, you know, and, bring in that collective experience and contextual knowledge to deliver that well, right? So which is, really good, right. In terms of when the discretionary spend will come, I wish it's hap- it happens from tomorrow, right?
Mm.
But just before coming here, I was watching, I think on your channel or something else, and, you know, one of the economists was commenting that economy is resilient to recessions and inflation, but it's limping ahead and not sprinting. And then, it said that, look, growth projects are good, but it's below the historical averages.
[crosstalk]
Right?
So I don't know what to read, right? But I think, you know, as Krithi said, we have had a fantastic customer summit in U.S. and in, Europe. They're all, comfortable with the way that we are delivering to them. See, there's a portfolio of projects that we execute for them, which we continuously disrupt. That means that we have to keep optimizing it, we have to adopt and adapt technologies, and then, give them that more for less or less is more paradigm in which we have to execute. So that optimization takes place, which is good for us, and which raises experience to people, to the other pool that we have. So we are happy with where we are.
Good that we are clocking some large deals, and I think, you know, we continue to execute well on them, and then hopefully, you know, we will do well in the coming quarters.
Samir, are the large deal wins margin dilutive? That's the big fear in the market. Milind, your headcount has fallen by more than 6,000 on a quarter-over-quarter basis. Little bit on that, and also you had a plan to onboard 40,000 freshers this year. On track to do that? And how many have been done so far in the first half? Thank you.
Reema, on the large deal wins, we look at our margins on a portfolio basis, and we try to ensure that our individual portfolios deliver the desired margins. During a deal cycle or a life cycle of a project, it would go through various phases and might have different margins, but overall, our focus is having the portfolio deliver the required margins.
Over the tenure of the deal, the margins should be as-
Absolutely.
Initially, it will be lower?
Absolutely. We can take strategic calls, but in general, yes.
[crosstalk]
Rima, let's-
We would definitely take strategic calls on specific accounts.
What are the margins to get-
At portfolio level, guiding we can 26-28.
We can take this more offline.
Regarding the negative headcount, I know, I've been saying for now last three or four quarters that we have been investing heavily in our fresh talent, you know, and that investment is, now paying off. You know, having said that, there is a reduced attrition. You know, we have, recalibrated our, hiring, hiring numbers, you know, and as a result, our, total hiring is, is, less than our attrition this quarter, and hence, the negative number. It is... That is basically the dynamics of that. Nothing more than that. It is basically more, you see as a investment paying off. That is the way to look at it.
With respect to trainee hiring, trainee hiring continues to be what we have been doing all along, you know, and we'll continue to onboard trainees. We continue to onboard trainees. We onboarded trainees last quarter, we onboarded trainees in this quarter, and we'll continue to onboard them as we go along. The number of how many we get them every quarter depends on the business situation. But what I'll tell you, and I have been telling all along, that we obviously honor all the offers. So there will be some delays, a quarter here and there, but they will come on board.
Thank you. Next question from Romita Majumdar, from the Economic Times.
Hi. A couple of queries for Milind. First, again, going back on fresher hiring. Just want to understand, has the company started the campus placements process? I understand it's a bit delayed this year for all companies, so the commentary on that. What is the situation with the variable pay for this quarter? And, you know, from Krithi, I would want to understand, one is what is the outlook from customers in North America? Like, what is the feedback that you're getting over there? That is one. And second is in terms of the situation that we have seen in Israel, just want to understand if there's any impact to the business of your company or to any of the client projects that are you know whatever is operating from the region.
So, yeah.
Romita, campus hiring, as you know, we have discussed many times, is a core strategy for TCS, and we would continue to hire trainees every year, and we have initiated the process this year as well, so that is on. With respect to variable pay, we are going to basically have 100% of the variable pay for 70% of our workforce. The remaining workforce will get paid based on the business unit performance.
Romita, if you look at what's happening in North America, overall economic macroeconomic situation is slightly confusing, right? Like, North America unemployment rate is still low, and inflation is slow coming down. Okay? But the outlook for your spend, actually, spend is still high, but what we are told is the household saving, saving is coming down, and it's projected to slow down further into 2024. So this is the backdrop in which you need to see the discussion. Generative AI has caught everybody's attention. When we talked about our customer summit, almost everyone discussed about generative AI as a key theme, how they are trying to leverage it for new products and services.
Given that there is an overhang of economic uncertainty, there are discussions around how do you optimize projects? Is there opportunity to consolidate, operating model transformation? These are the broad themes that you hear, like nothing very specific or specifically different from previous quarter. On Israel, I would request N. Ganapathy Subramaniam to answer because all the projects—most of the projects are anyway directly managed by him.
I think as I would said, I want to thank, and my salute to all our employees in Israel. They're good, and they are supporting our clients, and we are in touch with them and ensure that they are safe, number one, and do their bit to support the community in which they live, right? I think that's the first thing. Overall, you know, in any of these kind of situations, we work very closely with our customers, and listen to them in terms of what is it that they are planning to do for their own workforce, what are the priority for their applications and system support, and things like that. I think we have talked to all our customers, our employees, and our business continuity plans.
Where it need to be executed, we are on track to execute it. So as we speak, you know, I can't say it's business as usual, but from our obligations perspective and, our focus to support the community that we live, I think our leadership team here is in constant touch with our customers and employees to do the right thing.
It's about 250+ employees and dependents that we have.
Shivani Shinde from Business Standard.
Hi, good evening. First question to Milind again. Is it fair to assume, especially with, you know, getting employees back to office for five days, the 25x 25 strategy is done away with or is there a rethink happening within the cover on that? Kriti and NGS can also add on, onto that. NGS, $11.2 billion order book, can you break this up for us in the sense which are the geographies which are leading it? Europe—I think U.K., this is the third consecutive quarter where it's leading the growth. If you can give some color on the $11.2 billion. Also is BSNL in it? Of course, in this quarter, do we have a BSNL impact? Kriti, you said that.
Two questions for you, two. You said that your Regional and smaller markets or rest of the world, rather, I should put, has done very well. In the current scenario, that's happening, do you see some impact, Middle East? Do you see, because of what's happening in Israel, impacting your growth story there? And also, on the RMG issue, if you can give us an update, what's happened, there. To Samir, work from office, so impact on margins, is there room optimizing that? Yeah.
Shivani, like I said, I mean, we have internally management team we have you know brainstormed this quite a bit. You know, having a large number of people coming in in the last three years, we believe it is important that we get them to office. And I said this earlier, primarily to make sure that they understand internalize our values and our way. I think with respect to 25 by 25, you know, we will continue to assess our you know future work models as we go along. Whether it is 25 by 25 or something else, you know, we will adopt you know based on what works for our employees and our customers.
Sorry, have you scrapped that, 25 by 25?
No, I will not say that. I will not say that. At the same time, it can be something else, but, you know, it can be a model which will evolve. You know, we are all like you. We are also assessing how the market is evolving, and based on that, we'll decide.
Yeah.
Shivani, on the order book, I don't know where you picked up the UK number. I know that you have some insider information. Normally, we publish only what is North America, BFSI and Consumer Business. North America is at $4.5 billion, BFSI is $3.03 billion, and consumer is $1.44 billion. Now, BFSI has grown quite well compared to last year and compared to last quarter. All the others have also grown very well compared to last year. Your other question on Regional Markets, see, when we, Our Regional Markets, when we talk about it, we talk in terms of as Middle East, Africa and India, Japan. Middle East, Africa is a smaller portion, so we don't expect any major impact to our business because of this. Okay.
On the RMG issues, we have completed our investigation. We have taken action on all the people that, or appropriate action, whosoever we believe have violated our code of conduct. Actions differ based on the kind of violation and, but all actions have been taken, and it's closed.
Are you giving the number of people impacted the way the action has been taken?
You have the number with you.
Shivani, let's take it offline. There's already a lot of questions.
We'll give it to you.
Yeah.
$11.3 billion includes BSNL, so you have $2.8 billion plus. I can confidently say that about talking about BSNL now, right?
Mm-hmm.
I think, as far as this 25 by 25 question is concerned, I just want to add one more thing to what Milind said. See, we always have pioneered the workplace model and workforce strategy for our business, right? When the pandemic struck, we, within a matter of a week or 10 days, we enabled working remotely almost 100% of our employees, right? So we have the systems, processes, and tools to adapt ourselves to do the right thing for every project, right? So it's a question of, you know, what is required at this stage, right? We had discussed it internally, and we have been advising our employees to come and work with us in the office, right? And the advantages are being realized, right?
People feel that it is better to be in the office. So we have got about 70% of our employees have started to come to office, right? That's at this stage.
Mm-hmm.
Which is a very good thing, right? And given that, the large-scale hiring that we did and the kind of attrition that we experienced, and, we feel that there is a mix of people, leadership, et cetera, we have today, which we believe that it is advisable to get everybody back to office at this stage, which is the need of the hour for TCS. So that, you know, as Milind explained, the TCS way of working, the mentorship that they experience, and, the kind of interactions that one typically has in a collectively with the customers... These things are not taught anywhere. These things are observed and learned, right? And it's better done in a collective, workplace or coexisting workplace, right?
So I think we felt that that is something that we need to emphasize at this point in time, so we are getting into that. 25 by 25, you know, in that context, if you, if you look at it in that context, if you say 25 by 25 is going to be defocused now, you know what I mean? Yeah, that's a, that's one conjecture that you can, you can actually have it. But, you know, we don't have to say that we are going to stick to 25 by 25, or it's going to define as 25 by 27. You know, we'll talk about all of this. But important thing is, do we have the systems, processes, and the agility and the diligence with which we execute projects, whatever the situation commands, right?
Now, the way that we execute projects for our Israeli clients now, today, is very different from the way that we are executing projects for Indian clients, right? So it's a... The important thing is, do we have the right systems, processes, and procedures to adapt ourselves to the needs of things? Our focus is to get everybody back to office, and, and for that, you know, the people who have joined us in the last about 2 years or 3 years, get the full feel of TCS. I think that's more important.
The office infrastructure, to begin with, we did not give away any of our office spaces. We continued to invest into our infrastructure. So, and if you see over the last couple of years, our infrastructure expenses, discretionary expenses also went up, and we took measures where we can optimize or we want to optimize on. So expenses might gotta go up, but we don't see any substantial impact on margins.
Harshada Sawant from CNBC Awaaz. Harshida, two questions, please.
Good evening, gentlemen. I want to understand as to what the sentiment amongst your clients is, because last quarter when we spoke, you said they're very cautious, they're not looking to spend money at all. Krithi, you specifically mentioned that you can't comment on H2 because you hadn't grown in Q1. Has the sentiment changed?
No, I would say the sentiment has remained same. We've been quite cautious because, as I told last time, as I mentioned now, we don't have any better information. Like, can anyone tell us when the economy will be back on track? If, once we have a certainty, everyone will start spending. At this time, there is anticipation of slowdown, and so people behave accordingly.
So the fear, the market is also trying to factor in or perhaps address, and perhaps take a comment from you, gentlemen, is that FY 2025 could also be a washout year, and two brokerages have also said that. Is that a fear among your clients at this point in time? Because I see you winning deals. And should one understand that perhaps the deal conversion is going to take far longer than anticipated, and it may take longer to reflect in the revenue as well, NGS?
I think, you know, it's safe to assume that the planning horizon for all of this, especially in this sector and given what's happening, probably a fortnight. Right. Anything to look beyond, to talk about to FY 2025 now is, I think, too premature.
These conversions, are they going to take longer than anticipated?
No, I mean, I think, you know, we've got...
Really?
Three successive quarters of good deal bookings, and I think, what we would like to focus on is to execute them as fast and as efficiently we can.
Thanks, Harshada. Ekta Suri from Zee Business.
Good evening, sir. Sir, I want to ask you, your partnership with NVIDIA for AI, the training session, how far has it reached? And, you know, going ahead, what kind of AI projects are you planning for your clients, or what kind of demand is there in the market for the same?
You want to.
The training process for our alliance with NVIDIA, we started the training, like, because it's where... NVIDIA is, as you know, is, like, more a semiconductor and chip manufacturer. So we are working with them on how we can, like, leverage their infrastructure for training more of our associates. You'll hear the plan soon. Kind of projects, like, what you see is the complexity of the generative AI projects are increasing. Like, as when you started, the projects were more about knowledge discovery. As people and clients understand more on what we can do, or we go and explain to them what is sort of possible, you slowly see the complexity of the projects increasing. Like, for instance, now we are doing projects around, like, some sort of a copilot for a financial advisor.
When the financial advisor is talking to their client, what kind of advice they can give, okay? Or, when you are talking to actuary, like helping them, I'm sorry, an underwriter, helping them in underwriting the policy. So the complexity of the projects that we are doing is steadily increasing. You will hear more and more interesting case studies as we go along.
Also, as we are seeing, like, negative growth in certain sectors like BFSI, Communications and Media, Technology and Services, is there any specific reason for it? And, you know, when do we see that, you know, this will be positive? And as you were mentioning, that there are certain kind of AI projects that you are doing for, you know, like a financial sector you just mentioned. So various industries and various sectors, when they are going and talking about AI, so is it, like, are they genuinely prepared? Is the tech foundation strong enough to build the building of an AI? Because what's happening nowadays is that, you know, the tech foundation already was haywire, and you are building an AI on that foundation. So the CRM and other services are highly impacted because-
You know, our customer is also lost, and also the company is also lost because they want to be part of the AI thing, but are not strong enough for the same.
Go ahead.
Can I add?
Yeah, go ahead.
I think you are able to articulate this better than us, so we are going to hire you, right? Be that as it may, I think NVIDIA partnership is extremely critical and important. It gives us a tremendous opportunity, right? The AI processors on which, you know, the art are possible is phenomenal, right? Across these various verticals, we have clocked, as Kirti said in his opening remarks, a number of use cases, and we have cataloged all of them per vertical. We have been able to go and, you know, engage with clients in conversations, whether it is, as you rightly said, whether it is CRM-related processes or payments-related opportunities or wealth advisory-related opportunities.
So each one of these verticals, we have defined and cataloged certain use cases, which is what we are using right now to go and engage in conversations. But having said that, look, clearly, you know, it has captured the imagination. And, the tech foundation that you talked about, I think customers who have moved into a cloud-native architecture and cloud-native things, it's a lot easier to implement, no doubt of it. But people who are in their in-progress journey and then have adopted a multi-cloud strategy and things like that, there are certain enhancements to the foundation that we have to do. But overall, it's a lot of work, lot of interesting work, lot of intellectual discussions. So very nice, actually.
Mm.
Thank you. Debangana Ghosh from MoneyControl.
Hello, gentlemen. My first question to Milind. So the bribery probe has now been completed, so just wanted to understand from that perspective, what kind of measures are being taken to, you know, ensure that the compliance happens and these kind of situations don't come up? That's one question. My second question is to NGS, sir. NGS, sir, you mentioned that Israel also has around more than 250 TCS employees at the moment. So are there any steps being taken to evacuate them, or is the situation has the situation grown to that extent to, you know, you need an evacuation there? That's... And I also wanted to understand, you had mentioned in the previous quarter that TCS was working on building its own LLM. So is there any update there?
Okay. I think, you know, when the investigation has happened, obviously, all, as all the details of the investigation, followed by all the suggested actions in terms of what we need to do from a process, from a technology, from people standpoint, and all those actions are actually very, very well documented. I probably will not get into those details right now, but I think it is, it is... We have to look into all these aspects: organizational aspects, people aspects, you know, technology aspects in terms of how technology can help us prevent some of these things, and some of the process-related aspects as well.
Any best practices you could mention?
Actually, too detailed for me to mention all of these things in this forum, but, you know, in general, basically along these four lines.
As far as Israel is concerned, you know, we are watching the situation, and if people want to come back or people want to stay, is some kind of discussions that are—we have, we have to take it along with our customers, number one. And most flights are now put on hold or canceled, so we'll see how it evolves. But safety of our employees is a prime factor in deciding that. And having said that, out of the 250 employees I talked about, a good number of them are locals as well, right? So we have to worry about people from India or other countries who have gone there for projects execution. So I think we'll calibrate that as we move across.
I don't think we said that. Look, we are generating our own LLM, right? Now, I think that's a very, very involved effort, right? We are trying out all technologies that are available, right? We are making available to our employees the infrastructure, the digital infrastructure that is required so that they can see the art of possible. They can learn what a particular vendor is making it available. In the process, we are also creating. You know, for example, you take a LLM, and then you get to train it the way that you would like to train it. So there is significant amount of work that happens.
You know, when, when we say that we have trained about 100,000+ people in TCS who are GenAI-ready, the first level of training has been completed. So there are a lot of internal projects that are being given to them, so that they are also experiencing some of this, right? Whether we will... Is, does it make sense to develop our own LLM, or in what area? Is it going to be a Mickey Mouse or a mountain? You know, these are all big questions. But important thing is, how do you be relevant to customers in their journey of generative AI? And I think we are very well prepared for it.
Right. Just have one last question for Krithi. So, there has been some internal structural changes, which sort of integrates what was the structure pre-2022, and also what was there in 2022. So just wanted to get your perspective on how this new structure is going to help. How are the clients looking at it?
See, the reason that we went for this structure is based on customer centricity, and we wanted to ensure that we are able to bring the best of TCS to each customer. Our customers have reacted very positively to the changes that we have made. We have not heard any negative comment, because in a way it's a natural thing customers understand. Like, it has been quite positively received. Similarly, same way for our internal organization also. We very seamlessly moved into the structure. We announced it around July end, I think, and the last two months, the teams have taken to it and we produced our Q2 numbers based on the new structure. They are starting to go on this future.
So we don't see any hindrance or hiccup along the way for this.
Sure. Thank you. Tushar Deep Singh from BQ Prime.
Hi, gentlemen. The first question is around generative AI. You want all the TCS employees to come back to work. Against that backdrop, what are the productivity gains as from generative AI if among your own employees, and how do these two equate? Extending the generative AI conversation, how is the deal-making in generative AI? What is the deal size like, and are they materially showing in revenue at this moment? Second, a little left field, based on the JLR deal, do you think this auto software business or the auto tech business contributing significantly more as cars become more technology-driven? So do you think this will be as big as a business as, say, BFSI in the next, say, decade? Are you looking at something on those lines? Thank you.
Yeah. Generative AI, I think, you know, the deal sizes, if you look at it as a standalone generative AI, they are all small, right? Because it's about trying it out, right?
Less than 1 million.
Uh, yeah.
Yeah.
Multiple projects of less than $1 million, kind of, you know, opportunities which comes in. If you take the JLR deal that we signed, certainly a part of that is related to AI, ML, and, you know, those kind of opportunities will be embedded into this, right? Overall, as I said, it's a huge opportunity, which is there, right? It's too early to comment on the productivity gains, right? I have put my own generative AI, you know, something in for my helping me, so it saves 70% of my time, right? That doesn't mean that I will get 70% productivity across the board, right?
Okay.
I have to go by what I read in the reports. Everybody talks about anywhere between 30-40% as a productivity gain. A lot of people are talking about it, but they're also talking about it, that gains are going to be offset by the cost that you have to pay for getting all the LLMs and how much you are going to pay. So it's net-net, it may actually be neutralized. We have to see how this whole thing evolves. Important thing is that technology is good. It has a huge potential. It has the ability to deliver something which is, I mean, of superior quality and superior value. I think how do we exploit that meaningfully for our business and for our clients is something that we have to evolve as the technology matures and more opportunities emerge.
More on the auto software business, do you think it's become as big as BFSI?
Uh-
Also, just a little bit addition to that.
Yeah.
What is the kind of overlap or synergies that you may see with, say, Tata Technologies, which is going to IPO in the next one month or so? I don't know. You know that.
That's out of syllabus.
Yeah. Synergies. You think the overlap or synergies-
No, no. That's out of syllabus. I think...
Okay.
I don't want to comment on it. But I think, you know, it has a... What you talked about as the more and more of the vehicle or, drones or robotics or any of these things is going to be driven by software, and even the telecom equipment, the radios that you see is going to be a lot more driven by software. So that kind of technology, the engineering piece of software, is going to be on the rise, right? Whether it will become bigger than BFSI? No. If I'm a banker, if I wear a banker hat, I will say no.
Okay. Thank you, sir.
Varun Sood from Mint.
Hi, gentlemen.
Hi.
Three questions, sir. First, on specifically on BSNL, the deal value, I believe, is $2.9 billion, and there are three companies. So just if you can help us understand, how much would be for TCS, the of the BSNL deal, and what will be the profitability? The second question, sir: up until now, TCS was the only company which managed to increase its headcount sequentially or year-over-year, compared to all IT services companies. But this is the first quarter when you've really seen a kind of a big decline. Are things getting difficult, macroeconomically, if we see where your headcount is slipping? And will this be the trend going forward, that over the next 2 or 3 quarters, there could be some recalibration with regards to your workforce?
Especially because over the last three years, you've expanded your workforce pretty high. The third and the last question, sir: the first two quarters of what is considered to be very good quarters for the Indian IT services companies, yours has been a very soft growth, like some of your other peers. Q3 and Q4 also has a little bit of seasonality and furloughs. So if we have to understand from pre-COVID era, with a little bit of macroeconomic uncertainty, fears of a looming slowdown, furloughs, will Q3 and Q4 be,
Far worse than perhaps pre-COVID? And I'm not asking about FY25. So, thank you.
I think BSNL. I don't know where you got that number of 2+, whatever it is, but as I said, it's a little over INR 1 billion+ is what we have.
For us.
For us, we have contracted so far, right? There will be others which will come eventually, right? This is what we have contracted so far. We don't give breakups in terms of what is for us, what is for somebody else at this point in time, but it's important to recognize that it's a very large, complex deal. We are responsible for establishing the modern 4G, 5G network for BSNL. That includes supply of the equipment, installation, commissioning, the whole RF planning, network design, and making sure that the network works efficiently across coverage, capacity, and experience parameters, right? I think we are focused on that, and I think the project, as you all know, that's been going on for quite some time. We completed the proof of value for BSNL on top of it.
We won this contract, and we are proud that we are going to be rolling out a completely indigenously designed network and network gear for BSNL. This quarter, we have started to supply, started the supply of the equipments. As we speak, few circles in which we have started to do the design and, installation, commissioning, and hopefully, you know, we will live up to the expectations of BSNL and deliver a superior experience to customers of BSNL. Yeah.
Okay. Varun, I think you answered the question yourself. We hired so many people in the last two years, so that, and we invested in them for good 18 months, and that's why we don't need to hire as many now or as otherwise, otherwise we would have to. So that is the reason. I think one, you know, one point I want to mention is, we should not relate the headcount growth or headcount degrowth with, with business demand or business situation, because all of this is happening across quarters. So, you know, these people coming in for last 18 months are now getting leveraged over the past year in the, in the business, is what is happening today. And going forward also, you will see something similar, for the next couple of quarters.
Varun, on the H one, H two, your observation on H two seasonally being weaker than H one, that's factual. Okay, but whether H one will be worse than H two from pre-pandemic level, we wish that it's better, but, am I going to make a prediction? No.
Lalatendu Mishra from The Hindu.
What I understand, most of the questions have been asked. You know, what I understand is the headwind is still on. Is that correct, and it is continuing?
As I said, like, yes, there is an uncertainty because of which clients are focused more on optimization, which results in the older projects getting optimized or some, some of them getting paused or reprioritized, resulting in muted or moderated revenue growth.
In the last quarter, you have made some changes in the organization. Is there any more changes likely? I hope you have settled down and...
See, like, whatever we thought is a priority, we have done. Otherwise, as an organization, like, we continue to evolve. If you see a need to make some changes, tweaks, we will continue to do. Nothing is cast in stone in terms of organization structure. Like, what we believe is right for the organization, like, TCS is fairly agile organization and, our leadership is very tenured. So folks are quite, willing and available to do different jobs or different roles as required.
From Hindu Business Line, Ayushi Kar.
Good evening, gentlemen. I have a few questions for Mr. Milind, and this is to the point that NJS also pointed out, that AI is bringing at least 30%-40% productivity to your employee base. And given that sort of headcount.
Did he say the 40%?
I didn't say that.
Oh, okay. Apologies.
He said, he said actually 70%.
Seventy percent for himself, but he did not want to generalize. Definitely, there has been some... What I wanted to understand was, given the way headcount is heading, I mean, you have said that fresher hiring is going to remain a cornerstone for the organization, can you give us a date on when you will start recruiting? Again, like, how much is AI going to play into just your, sort of, sort of, hiring kind of vociferousness shaping out in the future? For NGS, so for BSNL, you have pointed that you've started to, like, get equipment and establish networks in certain circles. Can you give us a target for this quarter?
What are, what, what are the, like, how many, what is the extent of the 4G network that is going to be sort of, be established by the end of this month? And also, given that you have partnerships with NVIDIA, you're also seeing telecom operators kind of build... Like, Jio has partnered with NVIDIA as well to set up an LLM. Can a partnership with TCS and Jio or Reliance be sort of in the fray?
To build those kind of, yeah, like a potential LLM in the future?
I think let's take these questions first.
Ayushi, Ayushi, if I may respond to you. You said, "When will you start hiring?" We have not stopped hiring. We are continuing to hire large numbers, both from the campus and from the market. It just happens in this quarter that whatever we hired is less than the people we lost. That is, that is, h iring is continuing, and in large numbers, you know? That will continue. You know, our trainee hiring definitely continues at the same pace this quarter, and it will continue in the next couple of quarters as well, and it will continue next year as well. With respect to AI, I think NG has already answered the question.
Too early to say anything with respect to productivity at this point in time, but we are continuously looking into all these things, working on so many POCs and projects now. We'll understand and assess on how it impacts over a period of time.
Mm-hmm.
I think, you know, if AI delivers that kind of a productivity, I think the demand for consultants will be so high that we'll end up hiring a lot more, is what my thinking is at this point in time, right? But it has the potential, and we'll have to see how it plays out at enterprise systems and application level. I think that's we should see. As far as BSNL is concerned, I don't want to give any breakup in terms of what I'm doing now, what will happen quarter one, quarter two, quarter three, but then our target is to complete the rollout in about between 12 and 18 months, right? The whole 4G and 5G network.
She asked about NVIDIA, Jio, LLM.
Yeah, I mean, NVIDIA, for sure, that I think we are looking at, leveraging that a lot more. And I think NVIDIA chips and processors, the way that, given that a lot more of it is going to be AI-driven, and then I... It's good to design systems that works more efficiently on NVIDIA processors, and then, sort of our own, you know, for example, In fact, most hyperscalers are also looking at AI chips and AI processors, right? So that opportunity is definitely there, and I think, we'll be absolutely, I'll be delighted to have the other telcos as our customers.
Thank you. Rajesh Kurup from Financial Express.
Hi, good evening, everyone. So, one general question, you know, what is, what, what you see globally on the, for the IT industry because of the macroeconomic situations? Is this a slowdown coming in, is it a mild recession, or are we seeing a major recession? That's one, you know, just generally for the IT industry. And for, from the HR front, ghosting is one of the biggest issues right now. Ghosting people, accepting offer letters and disappearing. How, what, what are you seeing on that front? Is, is that happening to you also? Is it... How serious is, is it, is it impacting the HR sector, generally for the IT industries?
Rajesh, you are seeing what we are seeing. IT industry, the growth has moderated. Till there is a certainty on the global economic outlook, this moderation will continue because many of the customers will try to conserve cash for a difficult period ahead if they expect a difficult period. Once that certainty comes in, you would see growth also. Whether it's going to be difficult for IT companies specifically, this is a function of the overall global economic situation. It cannot be separated out from the global situation. You want to?
Yeah, I think, no, I can't relate to what you're saying, because what-
People are not taking offer, he says.
Yeah. No, that's the point is, in fact, the other way around, our conversions have gone up. You know, more people are joining. Joining ratios have gone up, you know, good percentage points. So, you know, it's a good thing, good thing for us, good thing for everybody. So I, I can't relate to what you're saying.
A final question from Vivek Kumar from Informist.
Couple of questions. First, to Samir: You, what can we expect for margins if growth remains under pressure? Where does it put margin outlook for you for the next couple of quarters? On deal pipeline: For the past three quarters, you have won deals north of $10 billion. Going ahead, is deal pipeline giving you confidence that you can continue that in the upcoming quarters?
So on the margin front, we delivered 110 basis points this quarter, and when the top line growth was sluggish, and we relied on productivity, utilization, and subcontractor cost optimization as the levers, and we'll continue to do so. Growth can only help us accelerate this journey.
Overall, our pipeline is quite strong still. In fact, despite a heavy conversion into order book, our pipeline continues to be strong. I cannot comment whether all of them will get realized in Q3 or whether Q3 TCV will be same number. But, pipeline is quite strong, and it gives us the confidence that our order book will also continue to be strong going forward.
With that, we are at the end of this press conference. To everyone joining in person, thank you so much. Please join us for high tea. For all our stakeholders that have joined online, have a good day, and thank you so much for staying with us and watching.