Ladies and gentlemen, good day and welcome to the TeamLease Services Limited Q4 FY 2023 Earnings Conference Call hosted by ICICI Securities. As a reminder, all participant lines will be in the listen-only mode. There will be an opportunity for you to ask questions after the presentation concludes. Should you need assistance during the conference, please signal an operator by pressing star then zero on your touchtone phone. Please note that this conference is being recorded. I now hand the conference over to Ms. Aditi Patil from ICICI Securities. Thank you. Over to you, Aditi.
Thank you, Dorvin. Good evening, everyone, and welcome to the TeamLease Q4 FY23 earnings call. Thank you TeamLease management for giving us the opportunity to host the Q4 earnings call. We have with us today Mr. Ashok Reddy, Managing Director and CEO; Mr. Sunil Chemmankotil, CEO Specialized Staffing; Mr. Kartik, Head of Staffing; Ms. Ramani Datti, CFO; and Mr. Kunal, Head of Investor Relations. We will start off with the remarks from management, after which we will open the floor for Q&A. I now hand the conference over to Mr. Ashok Reddy. Thank you. Over to you, sir.
Thank you, Aditi, good evening to everyone. I think we had a flattish quarter- on- quarter on revenues, head count and EBITDA. For the year, we grew revenues by about 22% year-on-year. Clearly the margins have been under pressure. General staffing has been adding head count and continued to add head count in Q4 also, but it has been negated by the losses in head count in the higher margin businesses of DA and Specialized Staffing, and that has really been continuing to put pressure on the bottom lines. On the staffing side, the larger clients are growing larger across sectors and across different companies.
The reality that larger clients pay a lower PAPM has also been one of the drivers to the lower realizations and the PAPM in quarter four has dropped about INR 15 on that count. We continue to work on productivity and FTE improvement across the businesses to drive more efficiency through technology and processes. I think that has kind of again played out with about a improvement on the FTE ratio by about six, seven incrementally for the quarter. I think we had on the DA front the element of the impact from the exit of the NEEM scheme continues to play out with more trainees dropping out from there. We do expect a complete exit of the NEEM trainees by end of quarter two.
The head count in the quarter from the NEEM perspective dropped by about 9,000. Cumulative impact of the drop of the head count in Q3 and Q4 has an impact of about INR 5 crores in the net revenue. While the drop in NIM head counts are expected over the coming five to six months, we have started to sign on new accounts for the apprenticeship, what we call the TPA and NAPS option. Traction on signing up the accounts and getting apprentices on board has initiated in a small way. We believe we will start seeing more traction in growth on those numbers sometime in Q2. I think the team is focused on that front.
While the element of details of the specialized staffing and staffing will be given by Sunil and Kartik, I think at a broader level, we continue to focus on the cost control in areas of business that are stagnant from a market outlook perspective, and continue to focus on growth in verticals that are seeing traction of open positions. I think the call-out that we were going to realign the team sizes in line with the market demand has been executed in Q4. Obviously, we will continue to stay focused on that aspect as we go forward in Q1 and Q2 and align resources in line with the market opening up and market opportunities.
I will call Sunil on to give a update from the specialized staffing front, followed by Kartik on the staffing front and Ramani from a finance perspective. Then we'll take the questions.
Thanks, Ashok. Good evening, everyone. Specialized Staffing business had a tough year. It started with an anticipation of huge tailwinds on the back of strong sentiments that was expected to drive a multi-year digitization cycle. As you all know, it turned out to be an unexpected and shocking headwind marred by uncertain economic conditions. Our IT clients were impacted by the prolonged uncertainty and started reducing the hiring numbers significantly. The dip was drastic to the tune of 60%. Based on the original anticipation of growth, we made huge investments in people and facilities which had to be cut down. The right sizing in line with the market conditions took some time and impacted our overall profitability for the year.
As informed in our previous calls, we had embarked on building a client base in non-tech space to improve our product portfolio mix since second quarter of last fiscal year actually, wherein we provide tech workforce to non-tech companies. We were able to capture a decent market share of the tech in the non-tech market and substitute some portion of the current IT team. Overall, a better product portfolio mix and substantial improvement in our fulfillment ratio of the available market opportunities helped us to grow the revenue over last fiscal by 7% and retain broadly the revenue run rate on a sequential basis. The dip in headcount by 9% is due to our earlier decision to opt out of a large client with over 900 headcount in telecom tech space due to payment issues.
The combination of dip in high-value IT business, exit of large telecom mandate, investments made in the early part of the year not paying off and subsequent time it took to right size led to a dip of 7% in full year EBITDA and a subsequent dip of 120 basis points on the EBITDA margins. On the sales front, we have some good news. We bagged 57 clients in FY 2023, out of which 23 are large strategic mandate, which shall feed into multi-year growth of our business. Coming back to Q4, FY 2023 performance, our revenue decreased by 1% on a sequential basis, whereas it decreased by 5% on a year-on-year basis. Our headcount decreased by 5% sequentially and 9% on a year-on-year basis for the reasons I had already covered earlier.
The EBITDA percentage is flat on a sequential basis and dropped by 230 basis points on a year-on-year basis. The macroeconomic situation still seems to be not conducive enough for our clients to open up hiring in the IT segment, while we see some uptake in tech and non-tech sector hiring. Despite these challenges, we remain focused on our long-term vision and are taking steps to position the company for success in the years ahead. Based on the ongoing dialogue with our customers, we understand that the uncertain outlook on hiring still continues, and it will impact our business in the near term. We pin our hopes on the IT sector reviving and looking forward to a better business outlook in the near term.
We have reduced 19% headcount and brought in an overall cost saving of 16%. We'll continue to focus on adding new strategic clients across the industries, fast-track our digitization efforts, continue to run the operations frugally, and put in our best efforts to maintain healthy margins. Thank you.
Kartik, on the staffing front.
Yeah. Thank you, Sunil, and good evening all. General staffing registered near 29,000 net additions to our associate base, which is the second-highest number we have reported in any given year, next only to last year's performance. Given the year before was a bounce back from pandemic, for all practical purposes, this is one of our better years in a long time in terms of headcount addition. Our larger challenge, as Ashok pointed out earlier, really has been in terms of PAPM, with some of our large customers getting larger and expecting pricing efficiency for volumes. For the quarter alone, we added about 8,000 associates. A word here again on our Q4 performance.
Typically, Q4 is not expected to be, you know, a better quarter and largely on the backdrop of businesses looking at tuning their OpEx spend, and our experience over the last decade shows a relative slowdown. However, this Q4 has been different and relative to this, has been one of our better Q4s in the past several years. The reason for that has been robust growth in our banking finance vertical, and it drove sales and hiring reserve across industry verticals. Our revenues went up by about 22.7% for the year, and there's been a 2% sequential quarter-on-quarter basis. In terms of absolute growth in associate base, our top two segments would be financial services and consumer goods, followed closely by telecom.
Consumer goods and banking and finance has registered a growth of over 20% and 18% respectively over the last year. Our sales acquisition continued with us closing this year with 459 new logo sign-ups, 31 of that being in Q4 alone. For the whole year, we have delivered about 63,000 new joinees who were hired by us, which is a 23% increase over last year. 52% of them, of course, hired through non-recruiter channels. In Q4, our FTE improved 10% on the strength of a 4% increase in associate headcount. Our investments in digitization initiatives have been paying off in terms of efficiency gains, resulting in our RMB to service a larger client base with the existing core employee base.
We see this trend continuing to play out in FY 2024, resulting in both faster client servicing as well as higher operating leverage. Coupled with anticipated growth, we shall be on track towards a further improvement in FTE during Q1 of this financial year. I'm sure some of you are probably already aware about the different insights that keep coming out. Just to share with you some of the insights from the employment market. I think based on our recent employment outlook, telecom and financial services, in the services sector, healthcare, pharma and FMCG and FMCD manufacturing sector are showing positive signs around hiring. Metro and Tier 1 cities going to be having a much higher intent to hire. Bangalore, Chennai, Mumbai are probably going to be the top cities, with maximum demands coming in.
Entry-level jobs in the services sector and junior level jobs in the manufacturing sector are exhibiting the higher intent to hire for different experience levels. Looking ahead, our business is well poised for growth in H1, and there's a clear visibility of a healthy pipeline with emerging demand across most of our customers. A few forward-looking, you know, sectoral changes which will continue to drive the future of business includes interest in continued formalization of workforce in FMCG and FMCD sectors. Capacity increase is expected in manufacturing, especially in electronics, which help create a large number of employment opportunities, including the temp workforce. There's a growing shift towards higher diversity hiring, be it in manufacturing or in services. The innovation therefore in our non-recruitment, recruitment hiring mix shall help us be on top of the emerging demand from organization.
Of course, we all know there's a funding freeze, which means, you know, a bit of challenge as far as the start-up space is concerned, including the e-commerce space. However, we expect the investment made in our ability to move labor from smaller towns to where the demand is shall continue to yield good results. Consumer and Financial Services verticals specifically are expected to grow post the expansion. Overall, our continued focus on contextual mastery, specifically in business around sales and hiring, and the emerging benefits of digitalization and process improvements is well poised to witness an impactful year ahead. Thank you.
Ramani?
Thank you, Kartik. Good evening, all. We had an annual revenue growth of 22% led by strong performance in general staffing business. However, headwinds in higher margin verticals of specialized staffing and DA had impacted the profits and margins of H2 and overall. On a sequential basis, gross revenue growth is 1% due to drop in DA headcount and also the impact of Q3 60/one-time billing in staffing business. PBT remains flat on both Y-O-Y and Q-O-Q basis. In case of EdTech business, which is reported under HR Services Segment, we have estimated a higher billing in Q4. However, the university sales cycle is taking longer than expected. During Q4, we have two exceptional items. One, write-off of INR 9.8 crore outstanding loan with TeamLease Skills University, referred in as TLSU. TLSU is the registered NEEM agent contributing to 40% billing of DA business.
For all NEEM trainees billed under TLSU, about INR 100 is retained by TLSU to manage their operations, the balance is transferred to TeamLease. Given the uncertainty around NEEM scheme and lack of future cash flow viability at TLSU, we have taken a call to write off the entire outstanding loan to TLSU. The second exceptional item is regarding the IL&FS settlement. We received INR 9.2 crore part settlement on IL&FS investments under the PF trust. Accordingly, proportionate provision has been written back as an exceptional item. During the year, we received total income tax refunds of INR 72 crore and the outstanding TDS receivable as of March is INR 230 crore. Our current free cash balance is INR 370 crore, out of which INR 100 crore is earmarked for buyback.
In terms of core costs, between Q2 and Q4 of this year, we have reduced the core employee headcount by 200, translating to about 8% reduction. Largely in Specialised Staffing and DA businesses. We continue to hold a tight control on costs and maintain the current run rate to next year as well, except for the employee appraisal impact is about INR 4 crore per quarter. Thank you.
Thank you, Ramani. Aditi, we are good for the questions now.
Thank you very much. We will now begin the question and answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may press star and one on their touchtone telephone. If you wish to remove yourself from the question queue, you may press star and two. Participants are requested to use handsets while asking a question. Ladies and gentlemen, we will wait for a moment while the question queue assembles. The first question is from the line of Deep Shah from B&K Securities. Please go ahead.
Thanks for the opportunity. First on Specialized Staffing, you did mention that you added 22 new large clients. In this segment, do we have pricing pressure compared to what we have in General Staffing with large clients? An additional question there would be, given that we've made these changes now and the costs have come down, would it be fair to say that margins have now bottomed out and they should only improve from here?
Just on the specialized staffing front, Deep, we work on what we call the rate card model, and the margins are between 15%-22%, broadly. I mean, there's really not too much of a margin pressure per se in specialized staffing at a gross realization level. Purely once we sign new customers, scaling them up takes time because it's a 100% hiring activity. Clients normally tend to give a smaller number of open positions to start with, and we build on that base in a trajectory. I think signing on more customers is good for the long haul because you start building the element of open positions and delivery across a larger base.
No new sign-up really starts off as a big customer to start with. I think, like I called out, at a gross margin level, we are not under much pressure in the specialized staffing at this point in time. However, because we had chosen to make investments in team and structure for, you know, a tailwind that was there last year, we had higher costs as an opening balance. A lot of that has been adjusted into the current year, and I think as we enter the coming year, we are optimized on the cost front. I would be able to say that I think we have bottomed out on the margin depletion possibility in the specialized staffing, subject to the numbers holding at this point.
The view from most customers that we are getting is, hiring is kind of still on hold. They're not talking about a reduction. Should reductions happen, then again, there'll be a lag between revenue drop to costs, and that could put some pressure. Other than that, I think we are optimized.
Right, sir. Thank, thanks a lot. Second question on this NEEM and this TeamLease Skills University write-off. The revised or the I think Government of India did come up with some other alternatives to NEEM. First, is that assessment correct? Second, does that benefit us? If it does, then is this TLSU write-off just as a measure of abundant caution? Is it that that money is very unlikely to come back and the TeamLease Skills University will not be helpful in, say, whatever revised or the new government program for trainees?
there is really no new alternative program that has been introduced in place of NEEM as of now. I think the government has made optionality under the Apprentices Act where we can work for corporate administering and managing their quota, which is what we call the TPA model. there is the option for us to depute our quota of apprentices to corporates, which is an APS model. both of those are what we are taking to market. what I called out earlier, we have started to sign up customers on that front, which should start seeing traction of I mean, apprentices coming on board from Q2 onwards.
I think, however, the apprenticeship model translating to what we are looking at, the DA, which is degree apprenticeship model, is really where the opportunity for the TLSU to contribute will really play out. Which is why I think the optionality of TeamLease Skills University for the future, if the degree apprenticeship system gets embedded, is clearly there. That's an optionality that, you know, we are keeping to evaluate and play out into the future. The loss of NEEM, and all NEEM trainees kind of being students of TeamLease Skills University, and that drop which we have seen in the past two quarters and will see in the coming two quarters, is really where the impact for the INR 10 crore write-off is there.
That, I think, is the right thing to do given the drop we have had there. The call option around degree apprenticeship and the alignment of TeamLease Skills University into that over the next one to two years is what we would keep the call option for.
Understood, sir. This is really helpful. Thank you so much. All the best.
Thank you.
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, if you wish to ask a question, you may please press star and one. The next question is from the line of Amit Khetan from Laburnum Capital. Please go ahead.
You mentioned that the PAPM has been impacted as customers expect pricing efficiency in exchange for volume. In that context, would it be possible to share some color on the granularity of the 220K headcount that we have in general staffing? Say, what percentage of our clients would be with more than 500 employees?
We could circle back to the specifics on that, Amit. The way today we have is about 80% of our customers are on a fixed PAPM and 20% are on a percentage markup. We broadly look at customers as large, medium, and small. Realization between the three buckets, as we've called out in the past, does vary to an extent of it being X for large, about 1.5x for medium and 2x for the small clients. In the current environment, over the last two quarters, we have seen the large clients growing larger. The demands are really coming in from them. The fact of the lower realization there has put the pressure on the overall PAPM number.
Specifics of how many clients get distributed between the lot, we can circle back on that.
How do you classify someone as large? Like, is it like what, 100 employees, 500 employees?
Large for us is about 1,000 employees. 100-1,000 is considered medium, and less than 100 is small.
Okay. You wouldn't have a sense right now what this 1,000+ or this bucket between small, medium and large consists of right now?
About 25 odd will be in the large. There would be about 200-300 in the medium, and the balance would be in the small.
I meant the percentage of the 220K.
On the associate split? Let's circle back.
I don't want to take a guesstimate on that. We will circle back on it.
Okay. Okay. Thank you.
Thank you. Participants who wish to ask questions may please press star and 1 on their touchtone phones at this time. Ladies and gentlemen, to ask a question, you may please press star and one. The next question is from the line of Aditi Patil from ICICI Securities. Please go ahead.
Thank you for the opportunity. I just have one question. Sir, can you provide outlook on general staffing in terms of, like, vertical-wise demand and general staffing?
I think, on a broader spectrum, Aditi, as was called out by Kartik, we have seen continuous quarter-on-quarter growth in the associates count. Largely it has been driven by BFSI, telecom and consumer. I think as we enter the year, we do have continued demand in those three sectors that we are delivering to and working with customers on. As Kartik has called out, I think emerging is still quite muted, just given the funding freeze. E-commerce is also a little muted on the demand front. Manufacturing, we believe could see some element of opening up as more investments happen. You know, there's a lag between the investment to the demand on the employment front in manufacturing.
Okay. Sir, how should we look at the number of headcount addition? This year it was 28,000. Should it be north of 25, better than this year or lower than this year?
Aditi, I'd love to have it higher than this year, clearly. I think it's early to make that call. It would depend on sustained demand from the sectors playing out over the coming quarters. Like it was called out, I think, for last year, three verticals did drive the growth, and we continue to see positive demand from those three sectors playing out into this year also. Ideally, yes, I would like to have a higher growth than last year.
Okay. Thank you. All the best.
Thank you. Just if I might add, Amit, in response to your earlier question, while I don't have the exact associate split, and we will circle back with the detail, our top 10 clients gave us about 38% of our associate volume last quarter. That has gone up to 42% this quarter. There's been like a near 4% increase with the top 10 customers.
Thank you.
It's a hard answer, but we'll get back with it.
We have the next question from the line of Vidit from IIFL Securities. Please go ahead.
Hi. Thanks for taking my question. My first question was on the specialized staffing margins. These margins, you know, you alluded to earlier and even maybe last call, was because of dropping off a big customer and 900 odd associates. Are we to assume that these margins will not recover until there is any sort of recovery in the IT staffing? Are there, you know, plans for the margins to recover? How much of cost can be cut, to, you know, add to EBITDA of specialized staffing?
I don't think, on this front, Vidit, the margin drop was not on account of the drop of a telecom customer. The headcount drop was on account of the telecom customer that we let go of. The drop in margins, if I look at it, at an EBIT margin, between FY 2022-2023, has been about a 1% drop, from 8.8 to about 7.8. Is largely driven on the aspect of the headcount being flattish to actually negative, coupled with the element of what Sunil had called out earlier.
We had created a larger cost structure for the element of the tailwinds we were seeing in the industry. In between Q1, Q2, those tailwinds actually turned out to be headwind with hiring freeze across IT companies, and that kind of led to us realigning the structure of the teams and costs. I think today the costs have gotten realigned, and, you know, between Q3 and Q4, they've had a flattish margin play out. Subject to no further drop in headcounts on the specialized staffing, I think we can say that we have hit the bottom on the margin front and should support that going forward.
Okay. No, when I look at revenue from, let's say, 2Q FY2023 to today, it's been around flat for the last, you know, three quarters. EBITDA has fallen from INR 13 crores to INR 9 crores. Despite of flat revenues and, you know, the alignment of, you know, cost was already done by 2Q, like, margins have fallen even since then, despite revenue not collapsing. I was just trying to wonder whether it's a change in mix or are we seeing pricing pressure out there?
No. The headcount adjustment, it's initiated in Q2, completed to end of Q3 and Q4. It didn't get all done in Q2. Like we had called out, we held the element of team between Q1 and Q2. As has been called out, there has been a reduction in headcount, which is also impacting the realizations. I think a combination of that is really where the drop in EBIT comes in from.
Okay. Fine. In terms of, you know, the working capital front, we've seen a, like, a decent improvement, in, the debtor days unbilled revenue, versus FY 2022. Now, is this a, just a function of general staffing, which is a lower working capital business growing faster than specialized staffing, or are we consciously taking calls to improve our cash generation out?
It's both. Obviously general staffing, which has had better, or lower, DSOs, is the business that has been growing, and 22% of the revenue growth largely comes from the staffing business with much lower DSOs. The specialized staffing business has been maintaining its discipline around invoicing and collections, with, I would say, flattish DSOs over the year. I think the mix of businesses is overall adding to that.
Okay.
Kartik, you wanted to add something to that?
Same thing, Ashok, because it's a combination of both. Even in Specialised Staffing business earlier, our DSO used to be close to 90 days, around FY2022 times, so that we have managed to bring down to about 75 days now. Also, the unbilled revenue outstanding balance we have substantially brought down. It's not just because of increase in general staffing contribution. It's also with other initiatives that we have taken around control of credit period as well.
Thanks. If I just could squeeze in one more. You know, if you could just provide an outlook on the PAPM now. Like when you said it's dropped by INR 15, which makes it 680, what's the outlook here? Is this likely to be the new normal? Are we likely to see it go back to 700 where we were post-COVID, or can we even see 750 where we were pre-COVID?
I think clients are obviously very margin conscious and negotiating hard on the price fronts. Kartik is looking at multiple options on how we could try and hold and grow the PAPM. Don't have a comprehensive solution on the table at this point in time. Multiple variables that are being explored with upselling, cross-selling and other avenues, which over the next one, two quarters we'll go to market with and see how that kind of responds. Ideally, we'd like to hold and grow the PAPM.
Okay. Fine. Thanks for that. I'll get back to you.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Mukul Garg from Motilal Oswal Financial Services. Please go ahead. Ladies and gentlemen, the line for the current participant seems to have disconnected. Participants who wish to ask a question may please press star and one. As there are no further questions, I would now like to hand the conference over to the management for closing comments. Over to you, sir.
Thank you. I think as has been called out, we are conscious about the fact of driving growth, while some of our, two of our businesses have clearly had a headwind, one from a perspective of the market in Specialised Staffing, and one from the aspect of the gazetted notification being canceled in the NEEM business. I think the continued element of growth with cost administration at the back end is going to be key. However, the reality is that general staffing is our low margin business, and a key focus for Kartik is going to be on driving associate growth, revenue growth, working on the PAPM sustenance and growth, and clearly the FTE productivity angle playing out as we go forward.
On the specialized staffing front, as like has been called out, the demand at this point is flat. It is about sustaining the current numbers, by replacing the attrition and absorption that we are seeing. I think from a cost perspective, optimization has happened. You know, we look to sustaining those numbers and hopefully on the back of, turnaround of demand, growing, in the segment. IT has been very flattish to negative, IT and non-IT, is something that has contributed to, complementing the decline there. I think that's an area that, Sunil and team will continue to focus on. On the degree apprenticeship front, like I called out, we do see a sunset of all the NEEM numbers by end of Q2.
The green shoots of signing up customers in the other service areas will start to kick in numbers from Q2 onwards. I think it's important for us to stay on course in a controlled manner for growth and driving the aspect of profitability. I think all other aspects of financial discipline and everything else will be key for us, and we continue to stay focused on those fronts. I think, the current aspect of the share buyback that was in process, we look to completing that next month and taking it on from there. Thank you all for being on the call, and we will connect and provide more information as we go.
Excuse me, sir. The participant who had dropped from the line has rejoined the queue. Would you like to take the question, sir, for just one more?
Yes, I can take the question.
All right, sure. I will hand over to Mr. Mukul Garg from Motilal Oswal Financial Services to proceed with his question. Please go ahead.
Thank you so much, Ashok, for, you know, allowing this question. Sorry for getting dropped off. A couple of questions from my end. First one, you know, on this impact of NEEM on margins, you know, what was the impact this quarter on the overall profitability from NEEM, you know, kind of decline? You know, how should we see the impact over next two quarters, you know, while it bottoms out by Q2? How should we see the impact on the, you know, overall profitability?
Yeah. Like, I think we've had about 9,000 drop in NEEM headcount in Q4. On account of the Q4 and Q3 headcount drop in NEEM, the impact at the net revenue level was about INR 5 crore. I think that will clearly continue to play out. We do expect another 8,000-9,000 probably dropping out across the quarter on the NEEM front. Obviously we're trying to offset this to some extent with getting trainees slash apprentices in the other scheme. Also some element of the contribution to growth that staffing would have, given that they are still seeing healthy demand in some of their verticals is really what we believe could offset the downsides.
Yeah. I was looking more for the impact on margins, you know, because NEEM business historically, on staffing side, has been more, you know, of a positive tailwind. Can you just break out, you know, what, would have been the impact on EBITDA margin for the staffing business?
Ramani, you want to take-
Yeah. Mukul, for the current quarter, as Ashok mentioned, given the headcount drop of Q3 and Q4, the impact on profit is almost two and a half crore, close to two and a half crore. With additional, estimated loss of another 8,000-9,000 in the next one to two quarters. That can go up to almost INR 3 crore, plus something. That's the estimated quarterly loss, on the NEEM headcount loss.
It's about, I would say around 20 basis points, broadly, would be the drop in margin on account of the NEEM trainee drop. Exact number, Ramani and Kunal will come back on. At a ballpark, I would say it's about 20 basis points.
All right. You know, just again coming back to the PAPM question, you know, how should one think about. I understand, you know, you guys are trying to figure it out.
In terms of our export on.
Mukul, your voice is kind of echoing a little bit. Can't hear. I mean, if you can just pick up the phone or...
Mr. Garg, the line for you is sounding muffled. If you could use your handset, please, it would be great.
Is this better?
I mean, if you speak clearly. Not really. Carry on, Mukul. Carry on, Mukul.
Sir, the participant has dropped from the queue.
What we can do is, Kunal will get in touch with him, post the call and, address the queries.
Sure, sure. All right. We do have two more participants who have joined with you, sir. Would you like to take their questions, sir?
Yeah, I'll take it.
All right. We have the question from the line of Ruchi Mukhija from Elara Capital. Please go ahead.
Thank you. Could you help on dissecting or breaking out your comments on outlook on IT sector between, let's say, products, captives and IT services? Do you see same trend across these sub-segment, or there are some variations that you see?
I'll take that question. We see across IT sector there is a hiring freeze and uncertainty. When I say hiring freeze, it's not completely frozen. We tend to get some requirements which are which we are able to fulfill our attrition. We see some intake coming in from GCCs, the captives. However, the volumes are not in to the tune of what it can compensate for the dip in the IT services. I would summarize saying that, you know, there is a drastic drop in IT services, but IT captives still have some requirements flowing in. Tech and non-tech also there are some requirements flowing in, but the volumes are not comparable.
Thank you. Thank you. That's really helpful. All the best.
Thank you.
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, that was the last question. On behalf of-
Thanks.
Yes. Please go ahead, sir.
No, no, I just wanna say thank you.
All right. Thank you very much, sir. On behalf of ICICI Securities, that concludes this conference call. Thank you for joining us, and you may now disconnect your lines.