Please note that this conference is being recorded. I now hand the conference over to Mr. Mohit Joshi, MD and CEO for Tech Mahindra. Thank you, and over to you, sir.
Thank you, and good evening, everyone. When we had met in April, we had announced our strategic narrative, Scale at Speed, and our overall three-year plan. I'm happy to share with you that in my meetings with clients across the world, with employees and with other stakeholders, this strategic narrative has really resonated very well. Clients across the globe have emphasized their need for a partner that can provide this unique combination of global reach and scale and agility. Q1 FY 2025 is also the first full quarter since we reconfigured the organization structure, and I'm very happy with the progress that we've made in aligning into the new service line structure. For Q1 FY 2025, we report revenue of $1.559 billion, which translates into a sequential growth of 70 basis points and a decline of 1.2% year-on-year, both on a constant currency basis.
We are reporting a robust growth momentum in manufacturing, about 6.4% YOY, while the healthcare vertical grew about 6.1% YOY. We see growth in North America and focused APAC markets, resulting in an improved share of revenue from that region in line with our strategy. This is a seasonally weak quarter for our communications vertical, partly due to decline in revenues from Comviva, which tend to skew towards the second half of the year. The new deal wins TCV for the quarter sums up to $534 million and is well diversified in terms of industry verticals and key regions. Notable deal wins during the quarter were: firstly, a deal with a leading U.S.-based telco to build, modernize, and operate various front and back-office applications for its wireless network services products portfolio.
This application development deal involves developing an application for customer information management, dealer activation portal, and point-of-sale systems for the customers' indirect channel stores, CXP and API integrations, case management, and back-office operations across ETL, database, and BI management services. Secondly, TechM was also selected by a leading U.K. network service provider for a countrywide fiber rollout, running customer management programs and digital transformation through implementation of curated solutions predicated on AI, ML, OCR, and hyperautomation by leveraging our network services and BPS competencies. Thirdly, we were selected by a Japanese automotive manufacturer for the global rollout of its company-wide SAP implementation as part of its digital transformation program. And finally, Sharecare selected Tech Mahindra to design and develop a personalized digital wellness platform for Medicaid members.
This user-friendly mobile app platform was launched for health plans, Medicaid members, equipping them with essential tools to manage their health and navigate benefits with ease. Demonstrating exceptional collaboration and agility, Tech Mahindra and Sharecare successfully progressed from ideation and design to product launch in a record time of just seven months. I also want to take this opportunity to update you about our latest launch, TechM VerifAI. You may have seen our press release about this exciting new offering earlier today. It addresses what we believe is the missing link that will help companies move from pilots and experimentation phases to enterprise-level adoption of AI. TechM VerifAI addresses the need for a robust validation and assurance framework for AI systems. Without this framework, there is a continued reliance on humans in the loop to validate outputs of AI programs.
We feel that this is the missing link hindering the wide-scale adoption and is also affecting the productivity gains possible from AI. This is why the leap from pilots to enterprise-wide adoption and commercialization has not fully happened. The recent CrowdStrike incident has again shown the deep importance of validation and assurance more broadly, and this is one way we are highlighting the importance of this crucial component in building out the AI journey for our clients. TechM VerifAI's prebuilt 360-degree validation framework across the GenAI life cycle, customizable metrics, microservices-based architecture, and seamless integration into existing technology stacks ensures faster and reliable AI value realization for enterprises. The solution validates data quality in the discovery and pre-development stages to ensure security and accuracy.
Continuing on the AI front, I am pleased to share that more than 25,000 of our associates have now been enabled with AI-led pair programming skills. We also now offer more than 100 AI-based solutions across AIO ps, computer vision, workplace automation, and more. Next, let me give you some more flavor on specific aspects of our business. Telecom. As you know, we are the leader in this segment and work with 7 out of the top 10 largest operators in the world. Our enviable position in the sector positions us well to be the preferred partner for their AI investments. Accordingly, we are investing in AI and niche skill certifications. Tech Mahindra will soon have the largest TM Forum- certified talent pool in the CSP IT service provider ecosystem.
Also, given our leadership and deep expertise in the sector, we anticipate benefiting from the cost rationalization-related consolidation activity across regions. We are leveraging our strong partnerships with hyperscalers and ISVs to create and incubate a wide variety of AI-powered solutions across NOCs, IT ops, field visit optimization, and customer experience to reduce TCO. Banking and financial services. We are seeing some new opportunities in existing accounts, and also we have won new logos. We have won a managed services contract from a Tier 1 global bank, and they have further awarded us the preferred vendor status, which sets us up well for the future. Select partnerships like Temenos and Guidewire are beginning to gather steam across the portfolio. In the U.S., we are seeing improved spending across asset and wealth management, cards and payments, retirement, risk and compliance, insurance.
On the other hand, investment banking and lending businesses are seeing some softness. Overall, though, given our relatively small size and the early stage of our transformation journey, I do expect to see some volatility in revenues here while we implement our plans to upgrade our BFSI offerings and client service. One of our important differentiators in BFSI is the expertise we derive from our portfolio companies like CTCo, Tenzing and Comviva. For example, Yabx is a leading fintech company operating in emerging markets that is part of the Comviva portfolio. It is revolutionizing the digital lending and microfinancing domain by partnering with local banks. Yabx leverages advanced data and AI models to offer embedded credit products in partnership with mobile wallets, payment gateways, consumer and merchant aggregators, and other payment techniques.
The operating margins for the quarter stood at 8.5%, an expansion of 110 basis points compared to last quarter. This was mainly due to cost saving efforts under Project Fortius and continued focus on operational efficiencies. Rohit will share more details on this. Again, the margin was 8.5% for the quarter. We also see encouraging results from our efforts towards improved market positioning as we rise in ranking quadrants across industry analysts and advisors during the quarter. We were rated as leader and rising star for ADMS in the ServiceNow Ecosystem Partners 2024 ISG Provider Lens study. Tech Mahindra was rated as the leader and rising star for Life Sciences Digital Services 2024 by ISG.
We were rated as a leader for AI in the Applied AI Services 2024 Radar View by Avasant, a major contender for insurance in the Everest Guidewire PEAK Matrix 2024 assessment, and finally, a major contender for healthcare industry cloud services, PEAK Matrix Assessment 2024 by Everest. We are recognized not only for our capabilities, but also for our leading sustainability practices. Tech Mahindra has been recognized as one of the world's most sustainable companies of 2024 by Time Magazine and Statista. We achieved the prestigious No. 1 position among all Indian companies and the 111th position globally. Another feather in our cap was the launch of Project Indus, which, as most of you know, is the first and one of the only large language model for indigenous Indian languages. This makes us the first among our peers to have built a large language model from scratch.
With 1.2 billion parameters, 22 billion tokens, and a team of just 15 people, it was trained on over 100 giga data. With this positive start to the year, we are more confident that this will be a better year compared to the previous one. We will continue to focus on the planned actions for building a long-term, sustainable foundation for Tech M. With that, I pass you over to Rohit Anand, our CFO, for a rundown on the financial metrics.
Thank you, Mohit. Good evening, everyone. Let me begin with an overview of the company's financial performance for the quarter. We ended the quarter with revenues of $1.559 billion, which is sequential growth of 0.7% and a year-on-year decline of 2.6%. Our constant currency basis sequential growth is similar to reported and decline of 1.2% on a YOY basis. Translating this in INR terms, we registered a 1% sequential growth in revenue at [INR 13,005 crore], which is also a decline of 1.2% on a YOY basis. As Mohit mentioned, this quarter the growth is largely broad-based, except for communication, where we see Comviva seasonality, for the quarter.
Our EBIT came at $132 million, in rupee terms, INR 1,102 crore, a sequential increase of 16.2% and 22% YOY increase. The resulting margin is at 8.5%, which is an expansion of 110 basis points QOQ and 170 basis points on a YOY basis. The margin in Q1 is impacted by decline in revenue in Comviva, an inching up of visa costs that we see in Q1 of the year, which was mitigated by operational efficiency and savings due to Project Fortius. We have also seen moderation in our subcontractor cost, which in the last quarter we had mentioned is increased because of certain deals ramp-ups.
and other SG&A areas, which were partially offset by the long-term investment that we had mentioned in our strategic narrative that we're committed to do to the business for long-term growth. The effective tax rate for the quarter was 26.6%, and the resulted PAT stood at $102 million, in rupee terms, INR 851 crore, which is 6.5% of revenue, and an expansion of 140 basis points sequentially, and a 130 basis point on a year-on-year basis. Our cash generation remains healthy, as our free cash flow for the quarter was $106 million, which translated to 104% of PAT. The total hedge book for us stood at $2.2 billion, versus $2.4 billion last quarter.
Based on hedge accounting, net mark-to-market gain for the quarter was $27 million, out of which gain taken to the PNL is $2 million, and the balance taken to reserves of $25.6 million. The DSO, including unbilled, was at 93 days, which is an increase of 1 day on a sequential basis, but an improvement of 5 days on a year-on-year basis. Our balance sheet continues to be strengthened. Cash and cash equivalent as of the quarter close, stood at $966 million, in rupee terms, INR 8,055 crore. Our deal wins for the quarter was at $534 million, which is an increase of 6.8% on a quarter-on-quarter basis, and also an increase on a YOY basis.
The key highlights about our deal win are that most of these are, as Mohit mentioned, broad-based and in focused prioritized markets of U.S., Europe, and selected pockets of APJ. And also from a service line perspective, the deal wins represent the mix for digital enterprise applications, cloud and infra, and next gen services. The detailed details of these deals are mentioned in our earnings presentation, as well as in the earnings press release. If you recall, from our previous quarter strategy presentation, we had mentioned about making investments towards strengthening our sales and marketing practice, and one of the pillars under that was to strengthen our advisor and analyst relationship. Following up on that, we held an advisor day in Pune, India.
The event was impactful, as research houses, their advisors and analysts were left with a much better understanding about Tech Mahindra, its service lines and competencies, and a strategic thought behind the scale and speed imperative. We also continue to invest in building our employee pyramid, as we onboarded close to 1,000 freshers in our talent pool for the quarter. Invest in building our employee pyramid is going to be one of our largest margin expansion driver for medium as well as long- term. We will continue to do this as we move forward. Beginning this quarter, we also have started reporting interns for our BPS division, which, as a part of overall headcount, as a practice, which was around 2,100. If you normalize for that on a quarter-on-quarter basis, our headcount is flat. We've also made progress on our portfolio company integration front.
We've completed full integration of two of our portfolio company with a core corresponding service line at Tech Mahindra during the quarter. So in summary, we believe the Q1 results are a positive start for the current turnaround year, as well as for our medium to long-term strategy. As we continue to prioritize our strategic areas, we will continue to invest in the business for long-term sustainable performance. With that, I will take a pause now, and moderator, back to you for Q&A.
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 the touchtone telephone. If you wish to withdraw yourself from the question queue, you may press star and two. Participants are requested to please use handsets while asking a question. Ladies and gentlemen, we will now wait for a moment while the question queue assembles. The first question is from the line of Sudheer Guntupalli from Kotak Mahindra Asset Management Company. Please go ahead.
Yeah, hi, Mohit. Congrats on a good set of numbers. So my question is outside the COVID high growth period, possibly this is the first time in the last several years where we are seeing sequential organic growth in June quarter. So has the Comviva seasonality come down over this time? And, will it be possible to call out the drag, due to Comviva at both revenue growth and margin level during the quarter?
Yeah, I think, the Comviva drag from Q4 to Q1 is roughly about half a percent, Sudheer. I don't know if that answers your, your question.
So this is both at the growth and margin as well?
That's right, Sudheer. That's correct.
Okay, got it. Got it. So, and, most of the companies reported so far have shown good growth in BFSI. And they are positive that it will continue into the subsequent quarters. So , I understand that you mentioned that there will be some volatility in our portfolio at our portfolio level, but broadly, if you can highlight a few trends in your key verticals, including communications, that will be helpful.
Sure. So let me, because you asked about BFSI first, let me cover that first. See, our BFSI vertical is relatively small compared to, you know, to our, peer group, and we are in the process of, crafting out a new strategy. As I mentioned previously, we have a new team as well. What we're focused on is a couple of things, right? The first is, you know, building out a new team to dig deeper into our existing accounts. So a huge focus on mining of the existing portfolios that we have. There's also a lot of effort going in for client logo additions.
In this regard, the one thing I mentioned, the, large global bank that onboarded us as a preferred supplier this quarter, is a positive movement. T here's a lot of work going on from a solution development perspective, especially in areas where we have strength, like, core banking, wealth and asset management, insurance and payments. And finally, we are looking to fully integrate the capabilities of our portfolio companies like CTCo, BORN, Citisoft, and SOFGEN.
So with all these, I feel very confident and comfortable about the long-term outlook of our financial services business. But again, given the small size, right, from a quarter-to-quarter, just a couple of million dollars movement can inject a degree of volatility, but we are comfortable about the long-term outlook of the business. And again, I feel that, if you leave one of our peers outside, I think our growth, on a quarter-to-quarter and a year-on-year basis actually is quite, you know, is quite good. We grew marginally quarter-on-quarter and declined only slightly on a year-on-year basis.
From a telecom perspective, look, I feel that our. Again, the telecom sector continues to be challenged. But if you look at it from an FY 2024 perspective for the full year, our telecom business declined by about 12.4%. So Q4, it declined by about 16.5%, but in the most recent quarter, the decline has come down to the single digits now. So I expect to see, you know, some level of year-on-year improvement in the telecom business over time. I believe that our sort of position in telecom from a competitive position remains very strong. We are present in several of the top 10 operators. And as I look at the priority that operators have, these are broadly in three areas.
The first is on the cost side, whether it's a vendor consolidation or it is autonomous operations and autonomous networks, we are active in that space. The second is revenue generation, both on the B2B side and on the B2C side, and on the wholesale network side, again, working on a number of initiatives with clients there. And finally, working with our clients to help them become AI-native telcos. So while the telecom sector overall remains stressed, and, you know, the spends are there to see across our peer group as well, I do feel comfortable that as the sector improves, as one of the largest players in the sector, we should benefit from an uptrend. I don't see it happening immediately, but surely this is a large enough sector, it should happen over time. Back to you, Sudheer.
Yeah, thanks, Mohit. And lastly, you spoke about development of a large language model. If you can elaborate a bit on it, because our understanding so far is that, only few companies that do the product, or, U.S. internet companies have been very strong on this. So if you can elaborate a bit on what are the use cases, who are expected to be the clients, and what is our expected monetization model, that will be very helpful.
Sure thing. So look, this started off more as a research project within our Makers Lab in Tech M. We were motivated to build out a large language model in various dialects of Hindi because we didn't see one being commercially available, and we thought it would be an interesting and exciting challenge for our teams. It is one thing to work on large language models that other people have created. It's a different level of understanding of the complexity and comfort with the technology if you can build your own model from scratch. And so we started out by collecting multiple data sources. We had a project called Bhashadan, which was actually to collect, you know, raw language primary data as well, in the various language dialects. And we built this model over time.
As I mentioned, it's got 1.2 billion parameters, 22 billion tokens, and was built with a fairly small team. We are still working out, and this is now hosted on Intel and Dell hardware. We are still working out a commercialization model, with you know, with various clients, and various third-party providers, including within the group. Beyond Indus, we also built out a large language model in Bahasa Indonesian, working with Indosat, working on an NVIDIA chipset. So again, I feel that it really demonstrates the differentiated technology capabilities, the AI capabilities of Tech M, where our teams are able to build complex models from scratch. Candidly, the commercialization models are not very well developed now, and I do not expect this to be a significant contributor to our revenues. It is more of a technology demonstrator from our perspective, Sudheer.
Thanks, Mohit. All the very best.
Thank you.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Rod Bourgeois from DeepDive Equity Research. Please go ahead.
Okay, thank you. Hey, I want to ask about your internal progress in making turnaround changes and also tracking your turnaround-related metrics. You're still relatively early in your turnaround efforts overall, and I'd like to know if you can give us a sense of the internal metrics that are essentially allowing you to gauge the leading indicators of your turnaround progress.
Thanks, Rod. Thanks for the question. So, Rod, when we presented our strategic narrative and the turnaround plan in April, when we spoke about the Scale at Speed sort of journey, we mentioned that to drive long-term sustainable performance of the company, we were gonna look at three pillars from a transformation perspective. The first pillar was linked to growth, and growth was about, you know, being able to grow our priority accounts, you know, our peak and prime accounts, the 20+ million accounts sustainably. We have a program called Turbocharge. We have dedicated client and delivery partners for our top accounts to drive more focus, and we see an improvement in this over time. We also spoke about, from a growth perspective, competency build, right? The investments that we are making in our focus service lines.
Just, Rohit spoke about the analyst day we did in Pune to drive more understanding of our competency, and the value of sharing that with the analysts. And finally, for the growth piece, we spoke about the need to invest in markets in the U.S., in Europe, prioritize the markets in APJ, which is also reflective of our deal wins this quarter and the numbers overall. Beyond this, there was the desire to, you know, to build on our leadership position in telecom and manufacturing. You've seen the results from a manufacturing perspective, and also to be a credible challenger in healthcare and BFSI. Again, both sectors where we've delivered a good set of numbers for this quarter. Beyond growth, there was a focus on margins, and we gave some metrics from margins perspective.
For instance, what is the entry level as a percentage of the total workforce? You know, as you know, we are one of the few companies that continue to imbibe fresh talent in our industry. We've added about 5,400-5,500 people in the past four quarters, and we will continue to build on this. From a margin perspective, we also spoke about C&B as a percentage of our revenues, including sub cons. In this, we improved YOY by about 80 basis points here as we continue to reduce sub cons significantly and focus on other areas like offshoring. And finally, beyond growth and margins, we spoke about the organization and talent transformation, right? And from a talent transformation perspective, the number one focus for us was employee upskilling.
We have made progress, you know, year-on-year and quarter-on-quarter. We spoke about the 25,000+ people who we trained in AI pair programming. Beyond this, we've, you know, gotten a chief learning officer with a very ambitious and a very robust plan for overall training, including investments to build out training facilities. From an org and talent perspective, we spoke about the percentage of clients who we infused with GenAI offerings. And again, you see progress over here. You see our new offering, VerifAI, that we spoke about today, which is focused on the assurance and validation space.
We also spoke about group synergy, where there's focused effort on working with M&M on the factory of the future, taking it to our clients, work across more group companies, and leveraging the M&M vendor ecosystem, right? So again, across these three areas of growth, margins, and org and talent metrics, we're making good progress. We do have a plan to report this on an annual basis in terms of the progress that we make on the metrics, but I want to show you it's something we're tracking very closely. And again, sorry, a fairly long answer to your question, but this is very, very critical for us.
Okay, great. In terms of the follow-up, you mentioned some positive developments in the BFSI business and the long-term growth confidence there. I wonder how much of these positive developments in BFSI are due to an improved demand environment versus Tech Mahindra improving its positioning in the market? And one point on that, you know, as we look at our research on enterprise buying factors, we are seeing enterprises often demanding more specialist skills from its IT services vendors. And I wonder if that's part of your positioning in the BFSI vertical, and if you're seeing that as a demand opportunity out there. Thanks.
Yes, right. So I would say that the demand environment in BFSI is, you know, reasonably stable. Again, our peer companies have given very different interpretations. Some have spoken about green shoots, others have been more cautious. I think from my perspective, the demand environment is reasonably stable, not really growing dramatically. I think we are benefiting from the fact that we have a new team, we have a significant amount of focus on the vertical, and that we're able to both open new clients, like the large global bank that I mentioned, and dig deeper into our existing clients to build out our solution sets to gain from the synergy of the portfolio companies.
So I would say that the gains that we are seeing are mostly based on our internal efforts and our improved market positioning. Your second question was, s orry, you had a second part to the question as well. Yes, it was about the demand for more experienced talent in the BFSI sector. And, yes, I think, for us, this is certainly a differentiator for us. We do have the most experienced talent pool in the industry, significantly higher levels of, you know, of experienced talent. And we position this to clients as being able to provide, you know, a diamond rather than, you know, a traditional pyramid.
Obviously, we are working to improve or to increase the level of fresh talent that we have. But even with those additions, I do expect that we will continue to have the most experienced talent pool in the industry, both within Tech M and obviously, certainly within the portfolio companies like a CTCo, like a Citisoft, or a BORN Group, that have very domain-rich and deep industry talent.
Thanks, Rob. Great. Thank you. Thank you.
Thank you. The next question comes from the line of Kawaljeet Saluja from Kotak Securities. Please go ahead.
Hey, hi, thank you. Congrats, Mohit. Nice start to your turnaround journey. A couple of questions, Mohit. One is that if you look at the current quarter, growth has been driven by BPO, which has added close to $25 million to your revenue incrementally. Now, I also noticed that there was an acquisition announced, you know, Orchid Cybertech. So what are the contribution of that to the revenue? And more generally, what has driven such a strong growth in BPO? And a related question to it is that when I look at a BPO portfolio, it's quite heavy on contact center services or call center services. Does that worry you, given that that business will be the first one to be impacted by GenAI?
Yeah. So look, I think, the BPO numbers are not really, you know, really correct. They're not comparable, and Rohit will address this because there is a recast that we did as well of our portfolio. And so, as he shared in his narrative, some of the revenue has shifted from IT services to BPO. That's probably giving you that sense. The Orchid Cybertech acquisition is over two quarters old, so it doesn't really have an impact, from a quarter-over-quarter perspective, Kamal.
Yeah, yeah. So, Kamal, just on IT and BPO, we've had some segmental change. So when you compare it to the relative performance, $11 million growth for the quarter from last to this, you can attribute half of that to the BPO perspective and half to IT. So it's kind of mixed. The change is what's driving the differential that you see on an absolute basis last year.
Yeah. And then on your BPS question more broadly, right? Look, I feel that our BPS business actually has been very, very innovative. For instance, in the AI space, the BPS business actually has made great inroads in a couple of areas. One is obviously working with the hyperscalers and working with a lot of the AI native companies. As they get humans into the loop in several of the AI platforms, that's been a significant growth opportunity for us. We've also been infusing AI into a lot of our contact center solutions and into a lot of our platform capabilities. And finally, we are using GenAI to become a lot more productive internally.
So I think this is an example of how our BPS business really has been very innovative around areas like AI, which is helping drive growth. A lot of our client base now is, the Silicon Valley companies, the cloud companies. Our contact center dependence as a company itself is very low, would be under, 5% for Tech M overall. Yeah. For Tech M overall. So I'm not too worried about, any significant disruption, from that perspective. It is small, and the portion that is there is very AI-infused now.
Okay. And the second, yeah, the second part of the question, Mohit, is that, you know, the market has been fairly active, in terms of, consolidation deals, in telecom. There have been many mega deals and consolidation deals announced in North America, in Australia, and even in Europe. Now, you know, I mean, this market is of course, fairly competitive as well. So would you be playing into this, market and consolidation deals, or would you stay away from it, given profitability considerations?
Yeah. So actually, Kamal, look, that's a very good question, right? And it's a question about, as we had shared, in the analyst day session as well, that if we have obviously we want to get growth and margin, right? But if we have to prioritize, we will choose margin. Now, we did not want to get into a situation where we're competing for deals which are hugely cash negative and hugely sort of margin dilutive, right? Having said that, given the capabilities of the company, we are winning several deals. So for instance, the large deals that we announced from a last quarter perspective includes several telecom deals, you know, including with American operators, with you know European-based operators.
Just this quarter, for instance, we have won a significant deal from an autonomous network operations perspective. So we continue to be competitive, we continue to win telco deals, but again, these have to be deals on our terms, right? I don't want to do the sort of deals that we have to then, you know, come back and make plans for, you know, for magical margin improvements. Again, given the stage we are in our turnaround, we wanna be very, very focused on the sort of growth that we want and the sort of margin structures that we will accept.
Okay, that's clear. Thanks a lot, Mohit, and all the best.
Thank you, Kamal.
Thank you. The next question comes from the line of Abhishek Kumar from JM Financial. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Hi, good evening. Thanks for taking my question. Maybe to Rohit. Rohit, you had indicated, you know, plans to reduce our cost annually by $250 million, and also, spend 1.5% of the revenue in first year of turnaround, which translates to around $100 million. Just wanted to gauge our progress against this target. Looks like good cost reduction this quarter, but there were some business-as-usual benefits that you indicated. So, how are we now placed against that target? And if we can give any indication of the cadence of, you know, this cost reduction or investment to the rest of the fiscal year. Thank you.
Sure, Abhishek. So, you know, as I mentioned, when you look at the margin, for the quarter, we've expanded 7.4% to 8.5%, right? The way to decompose that is, we have headwinds, from Comviva, revenue, which flows to the margin impact of broadly 0.5%. Plus we have impact on visa costs and some other direct costs associated with that, around 30 basis points. So that's the headwind we started off with. With, you know, post that, all the efforts that we did on cost optimization as a part of Project Fortius, net of investments, right? And we had clearly articulated to your point that we'll continue to invest, high for first year, and then gradually ease it down, because that's where we need a long-term sustainable business to grow.
So when you look at the savings net of investment, we see an improvement, contribution to margin around 1.2% driven by that. And then SG&A, excluding Fortius, we see some seasonal reduction in cost, that over the years will come back quarterly, sequentially. Those are the broad walk from a margin expansion standpoint. And we'll continue to report our progress of Project Fortius each quarter net of investments, and the buckets that we just to reiterate the buckets on the investment that we clearly articulated is continued focus on expansion of pyramid. We said we'll continue to drive learning and development investments, sales and marketing efforts, competency build, internal productivity tools for automation. So those are the broad buckets that we'll continue to prioritize.
Great. Just one quick follow-up, on, on growth. You know, I just wanted to understand, is the, is the demand environment similar to what we had envisaged at the beginning of the year? And if things improve, you know, does that present an upside opportunity to our margin target? Thank you.
Well, look, I think the demand environment is pretty much the same as when we had spoken in April. I don't think there is any significant improvement, nor has there been a deterioration, candidly, so it's still pretty much the same. Compared to a year ago, it's probably a little bit better. That's what we see. And obviously, if the demand environment should pick up significantly in the second half of the year, then it will be helpful from a margin perspective, everything else remaining the same, right? I mean, assuming that the attrition levels and all don't spike up massively, it should be positive from a margin perspective.
Great. Thank you and all the best.
Thanks.
Thank you. The next question comes from the line of Sandeep Shah from Equirus Securities. Please go ahead.
Yeah, thanks. Thanks for the opportunity, and congrats on a good start to the year. Just first question, Mohit. I think one of the growth strategy which you want to look at is to drive the multi-services deals as well. So any progress on that? It's too early to ask this question, but any pipeline which is shaping up, which can improve the order intake going forward?
Yes. No, thank you. I think that's a very good question. Look, multi-tower deals are very, very critical for us. We've set up a specialist group within the company, the solutions and transformation group, which specifically focuses on multi-tower deals that are over $25 million in revenue, right? So this team will collect the inputs, build estimation models, create high-quality solutions, and through deal advisors and, you know, and consultants and deal architects, actually shape the deals from the ground as well. For our largest accounts, we have put in a team of delivery partners over the past six months, and the delivery partners also help consolidate the capabilities from multiple service lines to give a seamless and a uniform experience to customers.
So it is very important for us. It is something that we track very, very closely. We look at the average number of service lines that our largest clients consume, and we're very focused on increasing that. Obviously, in verticals and sectors where we've been present for a long time, like a telecom or a manufacturing, that number is higher, while in our newer verticals like life sciences and BFSI, the number is lower. So there is a focused strategy to improve the service line penetration within our newer clients and newer verticals as well. So it's a very comprehensive strategy consisting of, structural changes like, you know, building out the SST team, of talent infusion, like, putting in the delivery partner, into the accounts, and finally, through a mixture of, incentives and, measurements, like the, measurement of service line penetration in each and every individual account.
Thanks. Thanks for the detailed answer. Any thought on wage increase or wage hikes in the coming year?
Yes. So as of now, we have been fairly, you know, transparent with our employees that we do not see an opportunity, for a wage hike at this time, and we will revisit it in the second half of the year, depending on our, financial, situation. We were the, first company last year to announce wage hikes, so I think our employees, we have that, credibility and trust with our employees, where they understand, what we are, you know, what we are focused on and the fact that we will revisit it in the second half of the year, if appropriate.
Just a last question as a bookkeeping. I think offshore efforts are one of the lowest, which as a large cap, Tech Mahindra has, and I did not hear that as a margin lever in most of the commentary by you and the Rohit. So is it fair to say because of the acquired subsidiary which are onsite driven, there is a hurdle to move the offshore effort materially going forward, or are we also strategizing for as a material margin lever going forward?
Yeah. No, Sandeep, I think that's a, that's a good question. So from our perspective, one of the strategic pillar that we have shared with you in, three months back, was, better integration of portfolio companies, right? So we'd said that our priority for the next, 18-24 months is gonna be prioritizing, the integration into systems, into policies, procedures, middle office, back office. So that's a focus effort that we will drive over that period and, continue to work on enhanced offshoring, which to your point, will get, you know, more, accelerated as we, do go through that journey.
Okay. Thanks and all the best.
Thanks, Sandeep.
Thank you. The next question comes from the line of Ravi Menon from Macquarie. Please go ahead.
Hi. Thank you for the opportunity. In last year, we took a significant provision for onerous contract and altogether through the year, INR 6.7 billion. Are we continuing to do any of that? It still seems a bit elevated.
Yeah, I think last year, as you know, as you saw in the business results, there was some volatility, and we mentioned clearly that we were reassessing portfolio. We were reassessing areas we wanted to update. As a part of that strategy, in areas where we could exist commercially in contracts, we did. Wherever we didn't wanna continue, we boxed that as a separate runoff portfolio to execute and close. So as a part of that, these provisions were heightened last year to represent our commercial position on those contracts.
This year, as we move forward, to be more, you know, business as usual, and as an ongoing part of our governance and project and contract reviews, we continue to assess our risk, and as per the financial principle, if we see any risk, we will take cognizance of that and record in the financial books, but that'll be now business as usual versus last year.
Thanks, Rohit. What, you know, just broadly, how should we think about any, you know, areas that you're thinking about improving, you know, win rate substantially? Because, you know, given the size of your portfolio, you need to improve in a large segment, or I'll say, a material market segment, right? So which segments would you be looking at, and, you know, given that digital, you know, it's still clearly early stage, right? I mean, we are, we are still probably in early cycle, but credentials have been set already. Do you see any gaps for Tech Mahindra, possibly that even some tuck-in acquisitions can solve?
Sure. So look, I think we are very focused on our win rate, especially for large deals. It is something that we track very religiously. And the win rate is really a combination of, you know... What I keep telling our teams is that our solutions have to be, you know, comprehensive. They need to cover the full gamut of tech and capabilities. They need to be competitive from a pricing perspective. But most importantly, they need, they need to be compelling, right?
They need to tell a really powerful story. Like, for instance, the fact that we have, we are the only large SI, or we're the only SI, to build a large language model from an AI perspective. So we are thinking about the win rate in exactly the same way that you mentioned. I do feel very comfortable that we have a full range of, you know, service line capabilities. We have a great set of clients in the sense, if you look at the old MBT clients or the old Satyam clients, we have a really good coverage of clients, and we have a very good track record with clients, right? The delivery capabilities and the delivery track record of Tech Mahindra has truly been exceptional over time.
We have a great talent pool, as I mentioned in my, the question that Rod had answered, that Rod had asked, about, the, very experienced talent pool that we have. So we have no reason why we should not have an improved win rate. We are just being very systematic about it. We are being very focused about it. We are very clear about the segment of the market that we want to serve, which is the Global 2000 companies. We're very clear about the service lines that we have. We're very clear about the geographies where we want to play, and we feel we have a compelling strategic narrative and scale and speed. So given all these, I fully expect our win rate to tick up, over time, and a combinatio n of an increased funnel and, you know, sort of an increased pipe and an improved win rate should give us, significant benefits over time.
Thank you very much. One last thing. You talked about 1,000 freshers being added, but when I look at the utilization, both including and excluding, freshers with, you know, the trainees, it seems to be the same. So, you know, have these trainees already been onboarded and deployed in the same quarter?
Yeah, they typically join, at different points of the quarter. The recent additions are more towards the back end, so that's why you probably don't see a difference.
Okay. Thanks so much. Best of luck.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Dipesh from Emkay Global Financial Services. Please go ahead.
Yeah, just, two questions. From vertical perspective, when look at it, retail and logistics did well, partly because of last quarter weakness. But if you can help us underlying, trend perspective, any changes you are witnessing? Because some of the peer indicated inflation-related impact on the sector and demand perspectives, if you can give some sense around it. Second question is data related about effective tax rate. If I look, it is in chart. If you can give some color about how one should, expect it to trend. Thank you.
Yes, maybe I'll take the tax rate first, and, Mohit, you can talk about the retail, transport, and logistics vertical trend that we're seeing. So on the tax rate, the effective tax rate for the quarter was 26.6%, and we clearly articulated the, our tax rate for the year should be in the range of 26%-27% based on the structure we are in. So, you know, there are quarterly variations based on different items, but that's the normalized rate we should be in, to expect.
Yeah. And on the sort of retail, CPG, you know, travel, transportation, logistics vertical, look, I think that this is, again, a relatively small vertical for us, but we do have, you know, a good set of capabilities, so I'm quite confident that this number will, you know, tick up over the coming quarters. There is no significant underlying weakness in this vertical, but again, it's a relatively small vertical for us.
Okay, thanks.
Thank you. The next question comes from the line of Girish Pai from BoB Capital Markets. Please go ahead.
Yeah, thanks for the opportunity. The CrowdStrike incident, which happened recently, do you think that could lead to some kind of shift of spending away from normal activity to maybe something focused in cybersecurity? That's point question number one. Second, one of your peers, a smaller peer, talked about unexpected furloughs in a certain sector, high tech. Are you seeing something similar? The third question is regarding margin, segmental margins. IT segment seems to have seen a 600 basis point QOQ improvement in margins. So can you explain that?
Okay. So I'll answer the first two, and then I'll pass it back to Rohit for the question on segmental margins. So look, I think as far as the CrowdStrike incident is concerned, cybersecurity has always been a key focus area for our clients, and I don't see that changing. This was, though, not really a cybersecurity issue. This was an issue of a failure of the validation process, and that is why when I spoke about VerifAI, I mentioned that we feel a strong validation and assurance framework from an AI perspective is very important. The only impact that CrowdStrike really had on us was a lot of our clients obviously had to spend money on remediation. There was a lot of effort involved in reaching individual machines and making changes.
And wherever we were providing these, end-user services or desktop services, clients were quite reliant on us, and they were very happy with the support that we had provided. So to some degree, it has helped us strengthen and cement existing relationships. We were not using CrowdStrike ourselves, so we were not impacted, you know, as a company. That's the first piece. On the high tech piece, yes, there are one or two clients where there is a, you know, there is a unseasonal furlough request. It is not material, I think, at this stage, and it is not widespread, so I really won't call it out from our perspective. And then on the margin question, let me pass you back to Rohit.
Yeah, so at this time, we, as I've mentioned, we've done a segmental change between IT and BPO. So if you look at the real performance on an IT perspective, we've increased quarter-to-quarter close to the company-level improvement. And when you look at the numbers that you see are without. On the segmental financials are without the unallocated cost, which is predominantly pertaining to IT, and hence, when you constitute that, you'll get a similar improvement. It's at a company-level average and not 600 basis points.
Thank you.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Rahul Jain from Dolat Capital. Please go ahead.
Yeah, hi. I think you were trying to address the question that he was to ask. So if you could clarify what exactly you are mentioning in terms of the reassignment, because I see the reported IT Services revenue to be almost lowest level since ninth quarter. So, what could be the other attributes other than the realignment that you just spoke about?
Yeah, so as I mentioned, we had realigned certain portion of the business to BPS, which better drives the synergies between the business, right? So that's why the baseline has changed. When you look at our earnings and estimates, we've shown the performance QOQ and YOY more aligned to the forecasted numbers as comparatives. So from that perspective, that's the way to look at it. And as we go forward, this will be the baseline to compare from a performance standpoint. So, so that's the change we've had. As I mentioned, if you look at QOQ, the overall absolute increase in revenue is $11 million, and half of it is driven by BPS on a comparable basis, and the other half by IT.
Right. And, just on this, margin recovery, kind of a thought process that we have, is there a certain base growth assumption that is required for us to, you know, be in that zone? Because, the clarity on the macro, is not as obvious as one would like to have.
I think, look, on the margin side, what we have said, and I mentioned this in my response to Kawaljeet just now as well, that we will prioritize, margin over revenue. So to that degree, we're quite focused. We do feel we have a significant number of levers to pull, even in a flat, demand environment. And also, the margin goal that we have given is a three-year goal, right? From an FY 2027 perspective. We have not given a goal specifically for FY 2025. Having said that, we are quite comfortable that, we have enough levers to push in our existing portfolio to, show an improvement in margins, and we have already demonstrated it this quarter.
Thank you. Those were my questions.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Manik Taneja from Axis Capital. Please go ahead.
Hi, thank you for the opportunity. While you've alluded to the focus in terms of deprioritizing some certain low margin or slow margin parts of the business, but if you could help us understand with regards to the client metrics, we've seen a decline in terms of number of active clients and number of $1+ million customers over the course of the last several quarters. How much of this reprioritization essentially is reflecting in terms of the revenue drop that we see in the business?
The reprioritization or the deprioritization of customers has almost no revenue impact. Wherever we have deprioritized accounts, it is because either from a geography perspective or from a, you know, from a size and attractiveness perspective, which really refers to their IT spend, they're not attractive to us. But most of these are very, very marginal customers, so we do not expect our pruning and shaping of our portfolio to result in, in a revenue attrition.
Sure. Thank you, and I'll get to you soon.
Thanks.
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, we will take that as our last question for today. I would now like to hand the conference over to the management for closing comments. Over to you.
Thank you again. Thank you all for making time for us today. We feel happy with the good start that we've had to the quarter. This is still very early stages in our transformation and our renewal journey, but I feel very confident that with the team that we have and with the support that we have from all of you, our clients and our teams, that we will make good progress. Thank you again.
Thank you. On behalf of Tech Mahindra Limited, that concludes this conference. Thank you all for joining us. You may now disconnect your lines.