Thank you so much for joining us this evening. We know you've had a very long day, so just wishing everyone a very happy new year and hope you and your family are safe wherever you are. The management is here with us, so let's start with N.G. Subramaniam, COO. CFO, Samir Seksaria.
Hello.
Of course, Milind Lakkad, the CHRO. We'll kick-start the press conference with the opening address with Rajesh Gopinathan. As usual, Rajesh, the floor is yours now.
Thank you, Kritika. Welcome, everyone, for our earnings release for the quarter ended December 2021. We have had an exceptional quarter growing at 15.4% on constant currency terms to hit a revenue of ₹4,885 crore in rupee as well and $6.52 billion in dollar terms. That's a growth of 16.3% in rupee terms and 14.4% in dollar terms. The quarter also was exceptional that in the year, the calendar year 2021, we have now hit a $25 billion revenue mark. The most importantly, the growth came with continually industry-leading profitability. Our operating margin is at 25%, giving us total operating profit of ₹12,237 crore.
Similarly, the trend continues on the net profit side with a net profit margin of 20% and an EPS of INR 26.41. Our cash conversion continues to be very strong and cash from operations in this quarter stood at INR 10,853 crore. We currently have close to about 65,000 crore cash on the balance sheet. The overall revenue trend was coming from a broad-based growth across markets and segments. Our most important market, North America, which accounts for 50% of revenue, grew at 18% year-on-year on constant currency terms, hitting a revenue of $3.31 billion in this quarter.
Continental Europe continues to be a strong performer, growing at 17.5% year-on-year, while U.K., slightly lower than the others, but still a healthy 12.7%, and hitting $1 billion each in both U.K. and Europe. From a vertical industry perspective, again, our largest vertical, BFSI, similar to the U.S. commentary that I gave, grew at 17.9% year-on-year to hit a revenue base of $2.09 billion. Retail and CPG, which includes the travel and hospitality segment inside, bore the brunt of the COVID impact. Very happy to report that, on a year-on-year basis, we have come up with 20.4% growth to hit almost $1 billion in revenue.
Underlying even the segment of travel and hospitality, which was particularly badly hit due to the pandemic, has finally found revenue parity back to its peak revenue. That's the trend on retail. Manufacturing is another vertical where we are seeing very strong participation across the board. In areas automotive has been very strong. Overall, the vertical has grown 18.3% year-on-year, and it has come across geographies, whether it be North America or Europe and U.K. in this case also. The segmental performance is also reflected in our customer metrics. Number of customers from whom we make more than $100 million a year grew by 10 on a year-on-year basis, growing from 48 to 58 customers.
Similarly, if you look at the customer metrics down the chain, we have had strong customer additions at all levels of revenue bands. At the lowest level, which is 1 million+, our year-on-year growth has been almost 100, where we have added 98 customers from one full year to full year, last year to this year basis. The quarter also has been a standout quarter from our talent management perspective. Our attrition, though it is inching up, continues to be the best in class by far in the industry. We have an LTM attrition of 15.3% this year.
Despite that attrition, we were able to increase our total associate count by 87,725 on a year-on-year basis, both managing attrition as well as attracting the right talent to power our growth across the board. Looking back at the quarter, it's been a quarter of though a seasonally weak quarter, a quarter of significant growth across almost all our key segments, whether it be verticals or markets. We're seeing participation on all parts of the customers' digital and technology transformation journeys. As you know, we have continued to build out our capabilities across a wide spectrum, whether it be cloud, whether it be digital analytics and other areas, and we see continued strong traction across the board.
From a pipeline perspective also, we crossed a TCV of $7.6 billion this quarter. We saw strong TCV across all segments like North America, BFSI, retail, etc. Overall, net-net, a very strong quarter. With that, I want to turn it back to you, Kritika, and we'll take questions afterwards.
Thank you, Rajesh. We'll start the question and answer session now. Let's bring in our first question, which is coming in from Sajeet Manghat from BloombergQuint. Guys, I really just, I want to request you to just stick to two questions, please. Sajeet, two questions, and you can unmute yourself now.
Good evening, gentlemen. Happy New Year to all of you. To begin with, Rajesh, I just want to get an idea of the growth which you're going to see coming on the back of the $7.6 billion TCV that you have booked in Q3. Is it fair to say that based on the kind of TCV that you've been clocking, you would cross the FY 2021 TCV of $31 billion and the revenues which you've grown in Q3, you will end FY 2022 with a high-teen growth rate going forward? For at least FY 2022, you'll grow 18%-19% year-on-year. My second question is for Samir, which is on margins, basically.
There's been some pressure on margins, but there's a commentary in your release saying that you're seeing bottoming out of at least of attrition bottoming out and there could be, you know, moderation going forward in that. Will that be able to bring back your margins higher above 25% in the coming quarter? And finally for N.G.S. on banking and manufacturing has seen growth, but it's muted as compared to retail and communication on a quarter-to-quarter basis. What was the reason for that?
Sajeet, thanks, and very happy New Year to you too. The TCV numbers, as we said, is actually same compared to last quarter at $7.6 billion, but a very healthy number when you look at it on a year-on-year basis and as a trend line, you would have seen a continuously increasing one. The standout aspect of this quarter, which is again similar to what was there last quarter, is that the TCV is very broad-based. It's coming across segments, it is coming across markets, and it is not skewed by any single large deal. It's a very broad-based growth that we're experiencing, a very broad-based demand environment, and we are participating strongly across the full spectrum of demand.
That gives us quite a lot of confidence in terms of, you know, the overall outlook for the future. Beyond that, I wouldn't like to quantify the numbers, but I think the TCV, both what we have had in the past, those are materializing in the revenues that we are seeing now, and the current TCV also positions us strongly as we look forward.
Sure. Thanks, Rajesh. On the margins, Sajeet, to your question, our margins were at 25%, and that's down 60 basis points from the previous quarter, but we still maintain industry-leading margin. To your question on attrition, as I have said in my comment, we have done both tactical initiatives or tactical measures during the quarter as well as long-term measures to tackle the churn or the supply side challenges which the entire industry is seeing. As I had said last time as well, as far as the churn continues across the industry, we'll do whatever it takes to whatever interventions are required, as well as we'll look at measures.
Our priorities would be to capture growth and ensure business continuity for us as well as our customers. While we also have the lowest attrition, but we'll take all those measures required. Once it normalizes is when we'll look towards optimizing the margins. Over to you, N.G.S.
Thank you. Let me at the outset wish all of you a great start to the year. Let's hope that 2022 will be a much better year than the previous two, both in terms of personal as well as professional front. Banking Financial Services has been our largest vertical, as you know, and it's grown by about 18%, you know, year-on-year during this quarter. Manufacturing has also done well for us. It's grown by 18.3% year-on-year. I take your point that sequentially, you know, there has been a tad lower than normally what you would expect. As you know, in this particular quarter, these two industries they are particularly having challenges with respect to furloughs.
In banking financial services, we had our challenges of furloughs, which we typically account for, and that is seen in the sequential growth that we are putting in. Having said that, look, we see a phenomenal momentum and the overall deal value or at least total contract value signed in banking financial services this quarter is about $2 billion+ . Manufacturing also, I think, slight lag in growth was tagged because of the furloughs as well as s ome shutdowns in factories and things like that due to chip shortages and things like that. Overall, you know, nothing wrong in any of these two verticals, and we should see the growth momentum continuing on these two. Thank you.
Thank you, gentlemen. The next question from Reema Tendulkar from CNBC-TV18. Reema, you can unmute yourself and ask your two questions, please.
Gentlemen, it's great seeing you, and congratulations on a strong quarter. Again, I wish you all a very happy new year and a healthy one. Rajesh, the first question is, according to you, what has been the change in the demand environment in the last three months, for better or worse? If you could provide some nuance to that. How do you expect BFSI to perform, U.S. BFSI to perform in light of rising interest rates? Second, on deal wins, you've given us an absolute number, but could you give us a sense of the mix between smaller deals as well as larger deals? Because we are seeing anecdotal evidence seems to suggest that we are moving towards a greater number of smaller deals. Is there a way you could quantify that? Milind, just one question.
On this very strong hiring number of 28,000 on the back of 20,000+ that you did in the prior quarter, what is the mix? What percentage of this 28,000 of hiring that you've done were fresher hirings? What is the experience age band? Thank you.
Thanks, Reema. The demand environment over the last few months, I wouldn't say there's much to call out on in terms of change. As you recall, we have always spoken about this medium-term visibility that we have on a very strong demand environment and the overall technology upgrade cycle that is currently underway. We are seeing a broad-basing of that. If you look at it from a vertical-to-vertical basis, for example, manufacturing and, in fact, auto, which was one of the more impacted ones in the post-pandemic scenario, is seeing significant amount of investments both on the EV side with the OEMs as well as into the tier one side. We are seeing direct-to-consumer selling going on. We are seeing movement into subscription-based revenue.
We are also seeing significant amount of adaptive supply chain and supply chain resilience being modeled to take care of the chip shortage and prioritization related one. You're seeing much more broad-based type of demand across industries. I just gave manufacturing as one example. Same thing holds good for healthcare, for retail, multiple industries. To your specific question on BFSI, I don't think our demand is significantly impacted by the interest rate scenarios. Typically, it's a balance sheet item, and they don't. Most of the technology commitments that banks have are not very volatile to immediate interest environments. We see banking continuing to invest into payment modernization, into customer experience, lot of focus on digitalization.
Those are the themes that have been there for some time, and they are continuing to pick up momentum. I don't see that significantly changing with the tightening interest environment.
Thanks, Rajesh. Reema, with respect to the mix, about 34,000, you know, associates at entry-level which have come in, and associates specifically from the market is based on the demand from each vertical. You put the math of significant amount of addition coming in from the campus and the rest coming from the market.
Overall, on the banking financial services side, Reema, you know, I think, we have a mix of large and small deals. You know, more importantly, I think, at least four deals which are fairly significant deals and, they're all in the areas of the future, which is what is making the whole sector very interesting. We are participating in, for example, crypto exchanges, crypto clearing settlement, payments modernization, as Rajesh pointed out, carbon credits marketplaces. You know, I mean, they're all things which are of the future and, they're all, you know, things which we would like to join, we would like to participate and really leverage our contextual knowledge, market knowledge and domain knowledge in that particular domain.
From talking to our customers and customer portfolios, their plans for the coming year for this year has been quite neat and we are not seeing any reduction in budgets or anything. On the other hand, they continue to, they would like to invest in typically more digital, more growth and transformation initiatives. Overall, you know, I don't see any slowdown per se, except that it's whatever is seasonal. Yeah.
Thank you. Next question from Anisha Jain from ET NOW. Anisha, you can unmute yourself and switch on your video. Yeah, go ahead. Anisha, you're on mute. You'll have to unmute yourself.
Can you hear me now?
Yes. Please go ahead.
Hi. Good evening, gentlemen. My first question is to Rajesh. You did talk about medium term. In calendar year 2021, you achieved a revenue of $25 billion, and we are at the cusp of multi-year cycle. If you continue the 15% growth rate for the next five years, can we see a revenue around $50 billion mark in a period of five years or not? Samir, a question to you on the deal pipeline. You did talk about the segments which are doing well, but is there any mega deal which is there on the horizon? And as far as the pricing is concerned, have you been able to negotiate better prices with the clients? And lastly, N.G. Subramaniam, to you. India growth has moderated on track this quarter 15% versus 20% last year.
Going forward, do you think there can be any impact of Omicron wave, whether in terms of the talent and employees or in terms of demand on India business?
Thanks, Anisha. INR 50 billion is definitely a possibility. Whether it happens in 2026, 2027 or 2030, that's the only question, and I think it's too premature for us to be able to take a call on it. The way we see it is that there is demand out there, and what is required for that is a significant focus on our customers, significant focus on talent development and making sure that our partnerships are in place to move the ecosystem and to participate in the ecosystem very positively. We have spoken earlier in this call about our focus on talent. We've spoken about our focus on customers.
From a partnership perspective, I want to, touch upon what we've spoken earlier about cloud and our significant investments that we're making on that area. I'm very happy to say that across all the three major hyperscalers, we have emerged as their partner of choice across all three major platforms. This similar partnership focus continues across all our key alliance partners. We believe that, working together in this ecosystem, we should be able to get those milestones faster and, you know, in a manner that I'm sure even you will meet the expectations that we are setting.
On the deals, as you asked, we have a very healthy share of deals which are in the $50 million-$500 million range. Whereas, we don't have in this quarter any deal which would be above $500 million. On large deals, we have a very healthy share of it. The second question was on pricing. We did have a slight realization dip this quarter itself, and we look forward for a realization improvement over the next few quarters.
Yeah. As far as the India geography is concerned, we had a fantastic quarter in Q3. It really, you know, I think we participated well. Moving forward, you know, it's very hard to say. You know, as we point out, India and some of the regional markets are always volatile. You know, as you have noticed that we had a great renewal passport program that happened. In line with the government's Aatmanirbhar initiative, we have chosen to be part of some of those big programs, and we are investing in some of those things, taking certain proactive long-term calls to be part of the nation-building exercise the government is doing. Hopefully, you know, our efforts in the India geography will play toward a longer time in a much better manner. Thank you.
Thank you. Our next question is from Sankalp from Reuters. Sankalp, you can unmute yourself and switch on your video and ask your question.
Hi. Good evening, everyone. I have two questions. One was about how could you call out some sectors that you may potentially be concerned about during the Omicron wave across U.S. and some other geographies? Rajesh was saying that travel, et cetera, was hit last year. Is there a chance that that could happen again? I also wanted to ask the impact of higher salaries on your margins as you you know go into this mode of overdrive where you're hiring a lot of people across the board naturally and freshers. I wanted to ask if you could give a bit of detail about this Talent Cloud model that you've spoken about previously. How is that helping as the industry reels under this supply crunch? I mean, we're not expecting this to be over anytime soon. Those questions. Thank you.
Yeah. Sankalp, the current wave, its impact on specific industries is difficult to say. As you said, travel could be, but it could very well be a secondary impact. I'm sure you're following the news that a lot of delays and a lot of cancellations are coming through just because of the impact on the crew. So it's a supply side impact rather than a demand side impact. How long that lasts and how that will play out, I think, is too volatile an environment for us to speculate on. The more important thing is that even without significant amount of international business travel coming back, the travel industry has managed to find its footing, as it were. When I talk about it from a TCS perspective, we have broad-based our presence in that segment.
Beyond airlines and hospitality into logistics, shipping and other areas, postal services, railroads, and significantly broad-based so that we are able to backfill that revenue. If I were to take just the airline segment, that is still way below its peaks, pre-pandemic, peaks. The overall T&TH revenue has managed to come back to where we started declining. That's the take in terms of specific points impacted. The point that you raised about salaries. Yes, it could have a short-term impact on margins, but we believe that investing in talent is the right thing to do, both from our own perspective as well as the role that we play with customers.
Tactically, and in the short term, those impacts will have to be dealt with. In the medium term and the long term, it will be net positive to us, both on the revenue side as well as on the overall margin side. Because we are hiring the people that we want to hire and significantly investing in retraining them so that we have the right talent which is deeply integrated with the overall TCS ecosystem. That's the one. I want to hand it over to Milind to answer your question about the talent.
Yeah. Thanks, Rajesh. I think Talent Cloud is definitely helping, you know, be it in terms of enhancing customer satisfaction or be it in terms of increasing our revenues. You know, being able to put an expert from any location that is a lot more acceptable to our customers now and to our own managers now than ever before. That has caused a significant creation of strategic value for our customers and for the organization both.
Being able to work, you know, in New York, for a customer in Chicago or being able to work, you know, in Pune, you know, where, you know, customer is not anymore looking for somebody to come in and being able to pay the premium because based on the skills, you know, and not based on the location. It is the way it is going, and it will go that way. Talent Cloud is definitely helping a lot, and it's good. It is the future for all of us.
Thank you. Next question from Chandra Srikanth, from Moneycontrol. Chandra, you can unmute yourself.
Yeah. Hi. Thanks for that, Kritika. Happy New Year to all of you. Rajesh, just want to understand the overall deal environment because, you know, while some analysts say that deals are getting smaller, we are still seeing some large deals. Overall, can you break it down for us? Are there still mega deals, large deals, smaller deals? Which segment will TCS go after? A question for Samir. In terms of the pricing, analysts say that, you know, there is possibility of price hikes of up to 5%-7% for some of these new age transformational kind of projects, hot skills. So are you know, able to get that pricing gain, and will it help offset the cost that you're seeing because of your talent costs going up?
Just in terms of the return-to-work plan. You know, Wipro just a couple of hours announced that they are going to close offices worldwide for the next four weeks. Do you see a need for measures like that or will your current hybrid model work? Finally, Milind, congratulations on the 2 lakh milestone as far as women employees are concerned. I wanted to ask you about the overall headcount number. H1 I think you hired 43,000. H2 was supposed to be 24,000, but you've already met that target. Can you give us a sense of how much you will be adding in Q4 alone? Thank you.
Yeah, Chandra. I think your first question, which was the one here, was on the pipeline. Overall, we don't have a specific preference of for small deal, medium deal or large deal. We participate across the board as you have seen us, and we stay continuously engaged across the full spectrum. The very large deals, you know, the $500 million-$1 billion kind of deals, they by nature are few and far between. More importantly, they take a long time to mature, and they are unpredictable in terms of when they will close. There are a few in the pipeline, but we can't take a call as to when that will come through.
The here-and-now ones are the medium-sized ones and relatively large, but not the kind of size that you're talking about. Those are what constitute the majority of our current pipeline and will continue to be the bedrock of our overall TCV with the one-off mega deals coming in and, you know, spiking it occasionally. The basic idea being that we don't have a preference of one versus the other. The current TCV is composed of the relatively large and medium-sized deals, though the pipeline has an equal representation compared to our historical trends. Yeah. I think...
Yeah. Chandra, to your question on. Go ahead, Rajesh.
Go ahead, Samir, please.
Sure. Okay. Chandra, to your question on our pricing. Our pricing has been stable with an upward bias. If you look at from a customer perspective, the relationships which we have with our customers are long term.
We don't look forward for short-term variations to be discussed with the customer. Having said that, if you look at our business, our traditional services are differently priced, whereas the new age services have more pricing resilience. With that is what I said to a previous question, that we look forward towards improving our realizations even further. We had a uptick in realization this quarter, and we'll look forward towards improving our realizations in the future quarters as well.
Your question on work from home, work from office. We ran one of the extraordinary vaccination programs for our employees and their dependents. More than 90% of our employees and dependents are vaccinated. We are staying focused on improving our Secure Borderless Workspaces model and architecture as well as our 25 by 25 model. We are staying committed to that. Some of our leadership team, you know, and I think, the next level of leadership team have started to attend office, and we have given them the flexibility to decide when they would like to be in the office, when they choose to work from their home.
The intent is to really see how they would like to operationalize the 25 by 25 operating model, always prioritizing employee safety. I think, you know, the business continuity plans and the 25 by 25 operating model, these two will be rolled out or will be defined at pretty much a client level and a project level. That will constitute how people will come and return to office, from where they will work, how they will work, all of that. We are staying committed to our 25 by 25 working model.
Thanks, N.G.S. Chandra, you know, we are very happy that we have crossed that 200,000 women in the workforce milestone. It's a proud moment for us, for all of us. Thank you. With respect to your question on the trainees coming in. Like you said, we hired 43,000 in H1. I said in the last quarter that we will hire 34,000 in H2. We ended up hiring 34,000 in this quarter itself. What I can say is our intensity will continue. I don't have the number to give it to you for Q4, but our intensity of hiring will continue.
Thank you, gentlemen. The next question from Shivani Shinde from Business Standard, who is joining us on audio. Shivani, you can unmute yourself.
Hi. Good evening, gentlemen. Congratulations and a happy New Year. Rajesh, and this question is for Rajesh and N.G.S. both. You know, revenue beat $25 billion for calendar year 2021. The size of the company is becoming bigger and bigger, almost every quarter. Does the size then become the reason why the higher double-digit growth kind of gets skewed? I mean, despite all these great numbers, at the end of the day, we will be saying that, okay, you know, this is what the revenue number was. And so does the size somewhere brings that down the impact of growth and, you know, hence the higher double-digit growth numbers come, you know, start looking smaller and smaller. That's for both Rajesh and N.G.S. N.G.S. to you on Passport deal, congratulations.
That's the second phase also TCS has got it. You did say that you are taking some long-term calls for the Indian market. Could you elaborate a little bit more on that? Milind, on the numbers, great set of numbers the way you are hiring. Could you just throw some more color on the compensations that the company may have given for this quarter? If you could elaborate more on that. Yeah, that's it.
Very happy to hear from you, Shivani. See, the logic that you're putting was equally applicable when we were a $10 billion company or a $5 billion company. The size looks large from our historical perspective, not necessarily from where the opportunity size is. I believe that our expectation of growth and our expectation of sustained growth should be benchmarked where we think the overall opportunity size is. When we look at the market out there and the opportunity, I believe that there is no reason why we should not aspire to continue to grow. Whether that growth will be 15%, it will be 20% or 10%, that will vary period to period.
Larger point being that there is significant headroom available for growth, and that is what we are, you know, setting up the company for, both from a talent perspective, from a customer perspective, investments and our overall philosophy. So that's the perspective. I think we need to stay disciplined, we need to stay focused. The most I mean, this is the industry to be and this is the time to be in this industry. The market is out there, it's up to us to capture it. Over to you, N.G.S.
Yeah. No, thank you, Rajesh. I think, you know, we don't want to be asked, can this elephant dance again? You know what I mean? I think that we are extremely focused on, and our organization model has always been ahead of time, right?
To make sure that we are agile, we are nimble, and we have an empowered and decentralized organization structure by which the company is really one that can be looked upon as several small companies and each one hold themselves accountable to right investments and create the right knowledge base and assets and grow the business, right? I will leave it at that. As far as India is concerned, you know, we believe that India will be a platform-driven market, right? You know, see, if you really look at the consumer as well as the institutional operators, everybody is used to a platform. Everybody is going after digital in a big way or a consumer of digital platforms in a big way, right?
Be it insurance, be it banking, be it manufacturing . Thanks to the India Stack. You know, many of these things are happening. Our view is that we need to be part of each one of these platforms, position ourselves with the right set of apps, right set of platforms, that can integrate very well with the India Stack and provide each one of our customers, whether it is government or the industry or even the consumer for that matter, to be able to do what they want to do pretty much invisibly and seamlessly. I think in that context to that, we are investing in platforms, investing in banking side of it.
We are investing in a suite of APIs and microservices that can be connected from practically anywhere to anywhere within the India Stack. There are many such initiatives that we are doing, but it'll be a platform-driven market, and it will evolve as we see it, and we are well-positioned to participate in that particular segment. Trust that gives you an answer.
Shivani, with respect to the compensation question you asked, I would say. To respond it this way, our progressive people policies, you know, our policies such as Career Link, Career Link to Learning, fast track Careers Link to Learning is what excites people, you know, and what keeps them going. Their ability to really, you know, significantly increase their compensation by going through the paths which we are defining it for them is what keeps the organization excited day in and day out for us. That is what I would say. In addition to that, you know, if I had to do some quantification on numbers, we have promoted 110,000 people this year. We are going to promote another 40,000 people in this quarter.
You know, all of these things together, you know, getting people to, you know, to those levels where they feel they deserve, where they need to be, recognizing them through a proper objective process and ensuring that they are learning and they are creating value for themselves in the process is what we believe in and we have been doing, and it is working for us, you know, and it. We continue to improve upon it as we go along.
Thank you. Next question from Romita Majumdar from Economic Times, who's on audio as well. Romita?
Good evening, gentlemen, and congratulations on the numbers. For Rajesh, I would like to understand if we are seeing this long-term shift to, you know, more of mid-sized deals, does that mean that the pool of competitors for such deals has also increased with more maybe mid caps and small cap and smaller companies basically vying for the same set of deals? Of course, differentiation is always there. For the clients, is it, you know, a larger set of competitors to deal with? And also, can you please share, you know, your renewals number over here? And for N.G.S., if you could give us some color on the kind of performance from platforms business as well as the kind of incremental revenue that it is adding to segments like BFSI and retail. That's all. Thank you.
Romita, I did not say that there is a shift to smaller sized deals. What I said is that when we look at it from our pipeline perspective, the distribution of the pipeline in terms of mega deals, large deals, and mid-sized deals continues to be similar to what it has been in the past. Just that in the nature of the mega deal, they close, they're a fairly long cycle kind of deals, and they don't close with the same cadence that relatively smaller deals close at. Our current quarter TCV does not have any single very large deal in there, but the pipeline continues to be well-distributed across all deal sizes. There is no structural shift in the market towards either large or towards small. N.G.S.?
Yeah.
Yeah.
Overall, Romita, you know, products and platforms did well this quarter. TCS BaNCS continued to win new clients and had a great quarter in terms of getting into some of the new areas that we wanted to get into. We also completed one of the big mergers in Saudi Arabia between, for example, the Saudi National Bank, right? The whole merger between Samba and the National Commercial Bank, as it originally used to be called, that merger program got completed in a record time of nine months. It's been a great success there. Ignio, for example, did extremely well this quarter. Again, you know, won a significant number of customers. Our OmniStore e-commerce platform, again, you know, that did quite well. Above all, you know, the MasterCraft.
It has won 24 new wins in this quarter, and it's quickly evolving in itself into a great low-code, no-code platforms, right? Overall, we had a very good quarter in terms of all our products and platforms, not to mention about TCS HOBS and things like that. Regarding the incremental revenue on how these platforms contributed, I have not done that analysis. I've not tracked it, but I will do that, and I'll get back to you. Thank you.
Next question from Saritha Rai from Bloomberg. Saritha Rai, pardon me, from Bloomberg. Again, requesting everyone to stick to two minutes. Very tight on time.
Thank you, Kritika. Hello, gentlemen. I wanted to ask you about two things particularly. One is, you know, the beginning of the year conversations that you have with clients across verticals and across geographies. What are you reading from those conversations for this calendar year in terms of, you know, IT budgets? That's the first question both for Rajesh and N.G.S. The second question is that, you know, all of the talent challenges such as training, hiring, reskilling, pay raises, how are you gonna factor that into the pricing? Is that going to come into play? Has it already come into play as you price deals? I was very curious about that.
Congratulations on hitting the 36% and 44% women in the workforce milestone. There are 4 tiles in front of me. Very soon, I hope there is a fifth or even one of the 4 is populated by a woman. I look forward to that day. Thank you so much.
Thank you, Saritha. The first question was, what was the first question?
My first question was about client conversations across verticals and geographies.
Client conversations.
Yes.
We'll give you a commentary based on end of last year kind of commentary. We conducted a series of customer events and reach outs before the current set of pandemic-related closeness. Overall, across all, and I would even say almost across all sectors, customers were very positive about the long-term visibility or the medium-term visibility of their technology investment agenda. Their business transformation anyway continues at pace, and we see that across industries. When we look forward into the next year, calendar year, the demand environment continues to be very robust, and I see no reason for any flattening of that demand environment. Yeah. N.G.S., do you want to-
If I can add there, Saritha, you know, I think, when there was a window of opportunity, we chose to fly, and we chose to meet with customers. I think, Rajesh spent, nearly 10 to 12 days in U.S. and met with a host of customers, last quarter. Overall, you know, we found that there is a general belief that they would like to meet, number one, and, their offices are all geared to meet, taking adequate precautions of safety of people and safety of. For example, you know, as long as your test results are good, you know, you are allowed entry into beyond the reception. Once you are inside, I found that there is actually people are comfortable, you know, meeting and talking, right?
I think, you know, the hybrid model is something that will stay, and that's a great realization that they will all work in a hybrid environment. They will increasingly lay emphasis on person-to-person meetings for very premium time or premium issues. I'll put it this way, right? You know, it's not that they'll meet in person for anything and everything. Overall, you know, they all believe that they will have to coexist with this environment for a foreseeable future. They look at this as business as usual, and accordingly, they are drafting their own business plans, their own growth, their own safety measures, resilience measures, and so on and so on, right?
Profusely, you know, everybody was thanking the work that TCS has done or employees have done in the last 12 to 18 months. Some of them, you know, will say, "Look how seamless it had been," you know, for their growth programs, for their efficiency programs, resilience programs, and so on and so on. As far as the people hiring talent, et cetera, et cetera, I think, you know, fairly, you know, it is business as usual for us. You know, the only thing is that, you know, holding ourselves accountable for the skills that we need has been the hallmark of TCS, right? I think we have continued to invest in people. Organically, we have hired them, we have groomed them, we have trained them.
We've given them opportunities to grow their skill sets, motivated them, inspired them, nudged them in terms of building the right skills that they all need and to be relevant to our customer base. I think that has been
The hallmark of TCS and we have continued to do that. You know, there are. In terms of pricing, yes, you know, certain skills, certain type of projects, certain speed to market, speed to value type of projects demand a certain level of pricing. But at the same time, we are very conscious of our long-term relationships with customers, the current situation in which they are in. The value 360-degree basis is more important for us and that determines the price that we charge and the price that they pay.
Thank you. Next question, Jochelle Mendonca from ET Prime, who is joining us on audio. Jochelle?
Hello, sirs. Good evening and congratulations on the results. I have two quick questions. One is on the statement that TCS made that attrition may be bottoming out. I was wondering if you could give me any color on what is driving this statement. Are resignations trending down? Any color what's giving you this confidence? The second question is a follow-up to N.G.S., sir, to Shivani's question. You said that TCS was investing in platforms for the government, for corporates and consumers. Is that just iON or could you give some color on the platforms that you're investing in on the consumer side?
Yeah, Jochelle. Milind here. I think when we said bottoming out, we actually meant that churn will come down in this quarter. In Q4, the churn will come down. The way we measure it, arithmetically measure LTM may still go up, but the churn for the current quarter will come down. That is a clarification I want to give to everyone. We believe that it is flattening. It is not. I would not say bottoming out. It is flattening. When the churn will flatten, may reduce a bit of churn. LTM may still continue to go up a bit. Yeah.
I think, you know, on the India side platform aspect, I think what I mentioned is that everything that we do for our customers in India specifically, you know, it's more and more shifting towards a consumption-driven market. People are very comfortable using a platform, comfortable with using, let's say, a mobile phone to do many of the things that they want to do. In that context, every platform that is out there, whether it belongs to us, it belongs to somebody else, we need to find mechanisms by which we hook ourselves into this, and that's exactly what we are doing. In the interest of time and, you know, it's of interest to you, we can have an offline conversation separately. You know, I will leave it at that at this point in time.
Thanks a lot, Jochelle, for sticking to two questions. Harshada Sawant next from CNBC Awaaz. Harshada, unmute yourself. Harshada, I think you haven't unmuted yet. We can't hear you. Can you try muting and unmuting again? Let me just get back to Kushal, who's next, and we'll try to see if we can get back to Harshada. Kushal Gupta is Zee Business, was our last question. Kushal, you can unmute yourself and ask your question.
Yes. Good evening, gentlemen. My question to you, Rajesh, would be particularly on the growth aspect, as in going forward for the next, like particularly FY 2023, how the growth trajectory would be, going ahead? Because we are seeing like the kind of revenue which the company has showed over time, so that has been brilliant. Going forward, what would be that? And secondly, would be on the margin front. Margin per se, going forward, would it be stable right now at the current juncture which it is, right now? Or, it would go down to some extent, because one is the attrition and the second is probably the travel cost going high. Thank you.
Thank you, Kushal. From a revenue growth perspective, as I said, the demand environment continues to be strong and the opportunity headroom is quite high. It will definitely be our endeavor to maintain the growth momentum that we are currently enjoying. Specifically what that will imply in terms of numbers, we won't comment on, but definitely we'll aim, you know, going all out to try and maintain the momentum. On the margin side, similarly, there is kind of a very strong demand environment. It should be overall conducive to margins. Tactically, there might be some amount of volatility given the overall market environment that we are seeing.
We are confident that a combination of what we see on the demand side and the investments that we're making on the supply side, where we are significantly investing in reskilling and bringing on our own talent and making our growth self-sustainable, that would be very supportive to the overall margin scenario. We should see good growth with stable margins.
Okay. We're very tight on time. Harshada, if you're back, one quick question, please. Okay, no problem. We'll take that offline, Harshada. Thank you so much, everyone for joining us in this press conference. Hope you have a lovely evening and you're safe. Sometime this year we get to meet in person and host you here. Thanks a lot. Goodbye.