Ladies and gentlemen, good day and welcome to the LTI Mindtree Limited Q1 FY 2026 Earnings Call. Please note all participants are currently in listen-only mode. There will be an opportunity to ask questions following the conclusion of the management's opening remarks. Please note that this conference is being recorded. I now hand over the conference to Mr. Vikas Jadhav, Investor Relations at LTI Mindtree. Over to you, sir. Thanks, Sinwar. Good day, everyone, and welcome to LTI Mindtree's Q1 FY 2026 Earnings Conference Call. Today we have with us on the call Mr. Venu Lambu, Chief Executive Officer and Managing Director, Mr. Nachiket Deshpande, President, Global AI Services, Strategic Deals, and Partnerships, Mr. Vipul Chandra, Chief Financial Officer. We'll begin with a brief overview of the company's Q1 FY 2026 performance, after which we'll open the floor for Q&A. During the call, we could make forward-looking statements. We state that we consider the environment as we see today and carry risk and uncertainties that could cause our actual results to differ materially from those expressed in today's call. We do not undertake to update any forward-looking statement made on the call. With that, I now turn the call over to Mr. Venu for his opening remarks. Thank you, Vikas. Hello, everyone, and thank you for joining us on the call today. I'm excited to share the highlights from Q1 FY2026, my 1st quarter as CEO and MD. As we continue to navigate market shifts, our robust strategy and disciplined execution have translated into an all-round performance. Vipul and I will discuss this during the course of this call. Let me begin by sharing the headline numbers. In Q1 FY 2026, we reported revenues of $1.15 billion, reflecting sequential growth of 2% in USD terms and 0.8% in constant currency terms. Our EBIT margins expanded by 50 basis points, sequentially to 14.3%. Our order inflow for the quarter stood at $1.63 billion, up 17% year-on-year, marking the third consecutive quarter of order inflow exceeding $1.5 billion. I would now like to highlight some of the noteworthy deals that were achieved during the quarter. We have won our largest-ever deal with a global agribusiness leader as part of their vendor consolidation strategy. We have been selected to implement an AI-driven model for application management, infrastructure support, and cybersecurity services, including SAP S/4HANA, ServiceNow, and Microsoft Azure platform, with a strong focus on efficiency and simplification. We were selected as a strategic partner by a leading digital company in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia to manage their supply chain and digital landscape. A global leader in professional services partnered with us for their supplier consolidation initiative, spanning client technology, enterprise technology, and information security. In addition to these major wins, our pipeline remains robust, with several large opportunities. Regarding our vertical performance, we reported sequential growth in dollar terms across all industries. BFSI grew 1.6%. Technology, media, and communication stabilized this quarter, registering a growth of 0.8%. Manufacturing and resources experienced a growth of 0.3%. The consumer business delivered robust growth, achieving 6.2%. Healthcare, life science, and public services witnessed a growth of 4.8%. In terms of geographies, Europe led with a sequential growth of 9.7%. Americas grew by 1.8%, and the rest of the world declined 6% sequentially. Our headcount at the end of Q1 FY2026 stood at 83,889, a decline of 418 employees. Our focused approach to operational efficiency resulted in an improvement of 2.3% in utilization levels, from 85.8% in Q4 FY2025 to 88.1% in Q1 FY2026. As part of our continued focus on fresher indexation, I'm pleased to share that we have onboarded 1,600+ freshers this quarter. In addition to these operational strides, we also received several recognitions across our strategic partnership during the quarter. Let me share a few. LTI Mindtree was honored with the Diversity in Security award at the 2025 Microsoft Security Excellence Award, emphasizing our dedication to promoting inclusive security teams and providing innovative Microsoft-based security solutions. We were named Google Partner of the Year 2025 for industry solutions in manufacturing for the second year in a row. We've been named the Databricks Business Transformation Partner of the Year, highlighting our exceptional contribution to driving data and AI-led transformation across industries. Our capabilities are well recognized by industry analysts, and we secured leadership positions in ISG Provider Lens, SAP Ecosystem 2025 for RISE with SAP Implementation, and SAP Business AI and BTP Services Globally. HFS Horizons Energy and Utilities Service Providers 2025. Everest Group Talent Readiness for Next Generation Application Services PEAK Matrix Assessment 2025. You can read the full list in our press release. In Q1, we made significant progress in our transformation journey while delivering profitable growth. I'm pleased to share a few strategic updates. If you recall in Q4 of FY2025, we spoke about focusing on a few transformational initiatives. Firstly, our sales transformation has been crucial in strengthening our ability to increase our win rate in large deals. Secondly, the Fit for Future program has been instrumental in rebaselining our cost and improving agility. This has enabled us to streamline processes and operate more efficiently. Lastly, our strategic pivot towards becoming an AI-centric organization is well underway. This is not mainly about adopting new technology, but also redefining our business model and strengthening our internal foundations. These initiatives have contributed positively to our results. Building on these efforts, we continue to expand our capabilities to remain relevant for our clients. In quarter one, we launched Blue Verse, our agentic AI ecosystem for the enterprises of the future. It helps clients accelerate their AI concept-to-value journey. Blue Verse is powered by AI advisory, which accelerates innovation, transforms organizational culture, and drives optimization. AI Foundry, which not only helps build tailored AI solutions, but also has the ability to orchestrate multi-agent solutions across various enterprise stacks and agent marketplace, an expanding repository featuring over 300 industry and function-specific AI agents designed to accelerate AI adoption across industries. We also launched GCC as a Service, a unique AI-powered industry offering that provides a modular, unit-based framework for clients looking to establish, optimize, and scale their capability centers effectively. This comprehensive catalog encompasses a wide range of services across build, operate, transform, and transfer phases, allowing clients to leverage capabilities in a consumption-based service model. Our offering includes entity setup, infrastructure provisioning, facility management, industry and technology solutions, and access to our Blue Verse ecosystem, including our AI studios. Adding to the momentum, NextEra, our strategic joint venture in Saudi Arabia with Aramco Digital, became fully operational this quarter. These growth initiatives are part of our journey to strengthening our digital transformation positioning through the convergence of human insight and intelligence systems. In that context, I would like to highlight a few of our AI-led client success stories and progress on our internal adoption. For a large manufacturing company, we integrated AI throughout their engineering and operations, achieving a 25% improvement in mean time to resolve and a 30% improvement in mean time for self-service and implementation. For one of the world's largest financial services institutions, we enabled their AI-led legacy modernization journey, driving an 80% reduction in the time it takes to write a complex logic, a 20% faster speed to market, and 10%- 15% lower cost. For an auto rental major, we deployed a computer vision-based damage detection system that reduced inspection time from two weeks to under three minutes with over 90% accuracy. For a utilities major, we used a GenAI-based maintenance solution that boosted field services productivity by 30%, reduced rework by 28%, and lowered operational costs by 18%. In addition, we have extensively adopted AI across our internal function. With 62 initiatives across seven product lines and nine business processes, we are driving an AI-led transformation from an employee experience to delivery excellence. We are among the first adopters of Microsoft Security Copilot, incorporating the natural language assistive agent to aid our internal security team in incident response and threat hunting. Our HR and talent acquisition team have integrated AI throughout the talent lifecycle, enhancing employee experience and productivity. We have introduced Rhyma, an AI companion designed to support employees with a personal interaction for a query resolution and HR support. Rhyma aids in various areas. Such as talent attraction, onboarding, and recognition, while also providing executives with actionable insight on key performance indicators. I will now turn over the call to Vipul for financial highlights. Thank you, Venu. Hello, everyone. We trust that you have reviewed our integrated annual report for FY2025, which offers detailed disclosures encompassing both financial and non-financial metrics and highlights our ongoing commitment to ESG principles. Let me now walk you through the financial highlights for the 1st quarter of FY2026, starting with our revenue performance. Our Q1 revenues stood at $1.15 billion, reflecting a growth of 2% quarter- on- quarter and 5.2% year-on-year in dollar terms. Corresponding constant currency growth was 0.8% quarter- on- quarter and 4.4% year-on-year. Our EBIT margin expanded by 50 basis points sequentially to 14.3% in Q1 FY2026. This increase was primarily driven by our Fit for Future initiatives, which resulted in an approximately 1% improvement, although seasonal visa costs and Forex impact partially offset the increase. Profit after tax for the quarter stood at INR 1,255 crore as compared to INR 1,129 crore in the previous quarter, which is an increase of 11.2% quarter- on- quarter. The higher sequential increase in PAT versus EBIT was on account of higher exchange gain and other income. The quarter's effective tax rate was 27.3% compared to 26.2% in Q4. This was due to a one-off tax impact on the repatriation of some capital from one of the subsidiaries. Basic EPS was INR 42.3 for the quarter as compared to INR 38.1 in Q4 FY2025. Our total DSO for Q1 increased to 81 days from 79 days last quarter. However, Q1 unbilled DSO improved to 22 days from 24 in Q4. The operating cash flow-to-PAT ratio was 82`.3%, down from 88.4% in Q4. Free cash flow-to-PAT ratio stood at 60.7% compared to 67.7% in Q4. Cash and investment balances stood at around $1.5 billion, or INR 12,835 crore, post the payout of final dividend for FY25. Compared to INR 13,346 crore in Q4 FY2025. Return on equity for the quarter was at 22.1%. As of June 30, 2025, our cash flow hedges stood at $3.87 billion, and hedges on the balance sheet were $284 million. For the quarter, our trailing 12-month attrition continued to remain stable at 14.4%. On the ESG front, LTI Mindtree has received a CRISIL ESG rating score of 73, placing us in the leadership category, and another commendable score of 75 given by NSC Sustainability Ratings & Analytics Limited. I now hand it back to Venu for the business outlook. Thank you, Vipul. In summary, this is a promising start to the year, and we are committed to building on this momentum. We remain confident in our ability to sustain growth and improve profitability. With disciplined execution, deeper client engagement, and a robust pipeline, we are well-positioned to deliver value to all of our stakeholders as we navigate the ongoing challenging macro environment. With that, let me now open the floor for questions. Thank you very much, sir. Ladies and gentlemen, we will now begin the question and answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may click on the raise hand icon from the participant tab on your screen. If you wish to withdraw yourself from the question queue, you may click on the raise hand icon again. We will wait for a moment while the question queue assembles. We take our first question from Sulabh Govila of Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead. Yeah, hi. Am I audible? Yes, sir. So please go ahead. Yes, you are audible. Yeah, thanks for taking my question. So my first question is with respect to the top five client bucket. From a Q1 QoQ growth perspective, the growth appears slightly muted relative to the company average that is there this quarter. So is there any sub-vertical where you think growth could have been better? And how should we think about this client bucket for the rest of the year? Look. Sulabh, is your question on the top 20 client bucket? Top five. Okay, yeah, top five. Look, I think if you actually look at the top five client bucket, it's actually 0.5% against 0.8% at the company level, right, on a constant currency basis. So it's not, I mean, yes, it is lower, but it's not something material that really worries us. It's sort of a seasonal. There are certain spend that happens within the quarter, and there are some spend which rolls up into the next quarter. So there is nothing which is materially that I can call out. Of the top five account category bucket, sort of. Okay, okay. And how should we think about this bucket for the rest of the year? Well, to be honest, not just for the top five bucket, the overall business itself, we're sort of looking at the commentary from one quarter to the next quarter because you know how the things are outside. So it's too early to look at it from the full year perspective. I can only say that. As I mentioned in my outlook commentary, the growth momentum will continue, and the growth momentum will be there across all the industries and across accounts. So that's the best comment I can give you at this time, Sulabh. That's clear. That's clear, Venu. Thank you. Second question is with respect to the margins. If I look at the segmental margins this quarter. The high-tech margins, we saw the high-tech margins coming off in the third quarter of last year. When we had passed on some of the productivity benefits to the top client. And they appear to have also come off again this quarter also. So if you could highlight what led to that, it's a sharp decline of 200 basis points. Vipul, you want to do that? Yeah. So I think in terms of the. We had some ramp-up. We had some late-quarter ramp-ups in anticipation of some deals, and the holding cost for those resources has primarily resulted in this impact in this quarter, but again, it's a quarter-on-quarter variation. The ramp-ups sometimes get. Comes in the later part. Comes in the later part, or sometimes it is spilled over into the next quarter. So it's a temporary phenomenon. Okay, okay, understood. And then last bit, again, on the margins front. We saw gross margin inch up quite sharply based on the utilization improvement that is there this quarter. So one is that. How sustainable are these utilization levels that are there? And what has led to the SG&A cost increase on a QoQ basis? Yeah, look, let me comment on that, and Vipul feel free to add on this, right? So, look, I think if you recall, we had spoken about Fit for Future program, which is a very comprehensive program to rebaseline the cost both the SG&A overheads as well as the direct cost, and that has produced results, and that's the one of the key contributing factors that you see when we look at the margin improvement, and second thing is that in terms of sustainability going forward, I think we're reasonably confident for continuing this margin expansion moment as we go into Q2. Third was utilization. There's a comment on utilization. Look, 88.1%. Given that we have a reasonably decent demand, so I would have liked it to be slightly lower utilization so that we can maximize the potential of revenue realization. But the ramp-ups that happened against a couple of last deals and the momentum that we saw in the quarter sort of pushed us to the higher utilization. Yeah, over a period of time, our preference is to bring it slightly lower down so that we can cater into the demand that comes within the quarter and has to be fulfilled within the quarter. So. Also, in terms of your question about the SG&A expense going up in this quarter versus last quarter, I think Q1 we normally see a seasonal uptick because of the marketing events and related travel expenses. So it's a seasonal phenomenon to some extent in the Q1 versus Q4. Also, in Q4 last year, we had seen some recoveries in provision for doubtful debts. It was lower in Q1 as compared to Q4. Q4 we had a good run on that side. Understood. Thanks for taking my questions. Thank you, Sulabh. Thank you. Our next question is from Manik Taneja of Axis Capital. Please go ahead. Mr. Taneja, could you please unmute your mic? Hi, thank you for the opportunity. I hope I'm audible. Yes, Manik, you're audible. So basically, while my question related to margins has somewhat been answered, I just wanted to check on the revenue performance within your top customers. If you could talk about what are you seeing within your top customers across financial services and the high-tech vertical. That's question number one. The second question is with regards to this margin improvement program that we are running, if you could talk about the different levers that you think will come into play over the foreseeable future. And then a related question around any thoughts on wage hikes for the current year. What's the third one? You said? Wage hike. Oh, wage hike. Okay, sorry. So Manik, thanks for the question. Look, I think when we look at the tech and the media and communication sector. We see an interesting trend that's happening over there, right? So there's a pivot of the business model itself of the customers in that sector, right? I mean, as they invest more and more onto their AI pivot. They're sort of managing their spend that is needed towards an investment towards making their business models aligned to the AI pivot. So that also offers a good opportunity for us in the long run. So I do feel that our approach is continue to keep that momentum going on as we go into the next sector. But I think fundamentally, there are a lot of clients in that sector that are actually going to redefine their business model. I think that's going to be an interesting remodeling that will happen, especially when you sort of break the AI capabilities and investment on the AI infrastructure that makes the entire, even if it's an ISV versus the hardware companies, how the hybrid is happening. And also, there's a convergence of capabilities that's happening, right, in terms of their own acquisitions and companies expanding into the different areas and so on. So with that we see as an opportunity if we stay very close to our customers. And in the long run, I'm fairly optimistic about that sector. BFSI, I think if I just look at the BFS aspect of it. It's a sector which is still cautious in terms of its spend. Primarily, you can relate to all the macroeconomic themes that you're all aware of. And what we intend to do is that we are focusing on those accounts within the BFS sector, which has the high growth potential. That is well positioned even though amidst all this macroeconomic environment. So at the end of the day, we can take a sectoral view. But I somehow feel that if you take a specific view, our ability to execute much sharper and get the best out of it amidst all the challenges is the kind of an approach that we're adopting. So sector-wise, there's no change. It has been the same as what it was in Q4. But it all comes down to, okay, which accounts we can get a better growth going forward. So we're taking a very account-specific approach than getting blurred with the sectoral narrative. The second is with regard to the levers in Fit for Future. Look, Fit for Future is not just about the cost-saving initiative. It's a very comprehensive initiative that makes us more agile as an organization, more fit as an organization as we navigate our future transformation journey. It has elements of simplification of the process. It has elements of how do you enhance the AI adoption into the internal environment. It has aspects in terms of how do you enhance the sales productivity. It has aspects of how do you look at the bench that we need to map it against the demand that we need to do it, and also, of course, we can get smarter on other overhead expenses as well, and then finally, the direct cost, which is essentially the cost of delivery, so it's all these levers that makes an organization Fit for Future, so I don't like to pick up one specific area. It's a very comprehensive program. There's a lot of focus in that. From a governance standpoint, I personally review it every week on this along with my leadership team, so I'm very pleased that the whole organization is running behind to deliver the results on that. With regard to the wage hikes plan, look, at the moment, we haven't spent time in planning for it. Sometime during the year, we'll give you an update in terms of what's our plan with regard to the wage hike. That helps, and if I can ask one quick one, this is a clarification question for Vipul. While you commented on the reasons for the drop in segmental margins for high tech, if you could talk about the HLS vertical as well, because for now, two quarters, we've seen those segmental margins come off in that industry segment compared to what used to be the trend for the last several quarters. So HLS vertical drop, I think, on the HLS vertical side, to look on the positive side, we have seen revenue growth coming in in this vertical, which is also a change after a few quarters. And the drop in the margins has been cyclical as well as to some extent related to the drop in the volumes that had happened in the past. So with the recovery of the revenues in this margin and the cyclical nature playing out again, this margin should improve again. Another thing which has affected the margins in this segment is one of our public services project that got over, and that margin contribution from that project has gotten taken out and replaced with other projects which have come in. So again, it's difficult to kind of look at it on a quarter-on-quarter basis. I think the overall margin improvement program that Venu spoke about is going to show results in all segments over a period of time. Sure. Thank you. All the best for the future. Thank you. Our next question is from Sandeep Shah of Equirus. Please go ahead. Yeah, thanks for the opportunity. Just in terms of sustaining the growth momentum in future quarters, I just wanted to understand because in the 1st quarter, we had a lot of new business PCP wins on the mega deals. And I think if I'm not wrong, outside the one deal we announced, there was a second deal which we were expecting to close in manufacturing in one year. And there could be more deals in the pipeline. So is it fair to assume the growth momentum has an upside rather than a downside on a going forward basis? And this year's revenue growth in our constant currency could be similar to last year's revenue growth in our constant currency? Sandeep, thanks for the question. Look, I don't like to give you a commentary with regard to the guidance of the full year, which we usually don't do, but I can only talk about the traction in large deals. After Nachiket sort of took over the mandate of driving the large deal organization globally, we have a lot of activity that's going on in the organization, right from the way we have the conversation with clients and proactively how we structure the large deals and our ability to win those large deals, right? So even the win rate of those large deals so that traction is increasing significantly, and as I said, the momentum will continue as we go into the next quarter. I don't like to comment anything beyond the next quarter, with the way how the macroeconomic changes so fast, and all this upside and downside commentary, it depends on what reference you have from us. From our point of view, I'm looking at the reference of the Q1. I'm confident that from the reference point of Q1, we'll continue the growth momentum as we go into Q2. Okay, very good. And your commentary about BFSI as a growth outlook is quite contradictory versus most of your large peers. So is it more to do with our client-specific issue, or are we seeing a pattern across many of the BFSI clients? Look, if you take a very high-level sectoral view, the commentary won't be different from. It won't be different as such, right? But I somehow feel that the approach we have taken is a very deep, sharp focus on execution in our focus accounts, right? So that's the pitch that's available for us to play the game. So we want to be focused on that. And all the commentary with regard to our BFS vertical was in the context of those specific focused accounts. Not a very high-level sectoral view. Okay, okay. And just the last two questions. Is it fair to assume many of your top client-specific issues are likely behind? And can you also give a color in terms of how is the large deal, mega deal pipeline entering into Q3? Yeah, I'm not sure which issue you are referring to. If it is about productivity as a topic, I think we confirmed that in Q4 itself. And with regard to the large deal, I would request Nachiket to give his commentary on the large deal traction, please. Nachiket. Thanks, Venu. So as Venu mentioned, I think. With the formation of the centralized focus global large deals team, Sandeep, we are seeing the traction improve both in terms of the deal invites, the pipeline of the deals that we have, and also, as Venu said, in the win ratios and the consistency with which we are pursuing these deals. So yeah, I think the short answer is yes, we're seeing the momentum continue, at least in the next few quarters. Okay, thanks and all the best. Thank you. Thank you. Our next question is from Surendra Goyal of Citi. Please go ahead. Yeah, hi. Can you hear me? Yes, sir. Yes, Surendra, we can hear you. Yeah. So good evening. Did the largest deal that you talked about contribute to revenues in the 1st quarter? And if yes, could you share any details and what should be the trajectory of ramp-up going forward? And also, any margin implications that we should be aware of? Look, the large deal which we announced in the middle of the quarter, right? The revenue realization, the transition has started in Q1. So the revenue is staggered between Q1 and Q2. And of course, the subsequent quarters, as we enter into the steady state and we start ramping up into the areas that we are contracted for. So I would say it's a revenue spread across a couple of quarters to start with, and then it'll be steady as we go along. There's no material impact on the margin with regard to the last deal. Sure. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Our next question is from Ravi Menon of Macquarie. Please go ahead. Hi. Thank you for the opportunity. Right on a decent quarter. The margins for the energy vertical, it's significantly below company average. This is one of the margin drivers that we have as we try to move our margins back towards 16%+. Give us a second. Sorry, your voice was breaking in between. Is the question related to the manufacturing and energy utilities? Yeah, the energy utilities vertical, where the margins are significantly below company average. Okay, got it. Yeah. Vipul, you want to pick up that question? Again, in terms of the manufacturing and energy vertical, there have been ramp-ups for a few deals which are underway. And we have seen good growth coming in these verticals. So the margins are expected to pick up as we go along and the ramp-ups stabilize. And actually, if I can add, Vipul, right? I mean, if you look at it, the manufacturing sector had significant growth. For us on a sequential basis as well, right? So when you have that kind of a growth, you also build up a ramp-up in the later part of the quarter that starts realizing the revenue for the subsequent quarter. And the other thing to note is that. The growth in that sector also came in despite the pass-through that came off from Q4 versus Q1. Thanks. Could you give us CC growth in Europe, please? 3%. CC growth in Europe was around 3%. Okay. Thanks so much. Thank you. Thank you. Our next question is from Rahul Jain of Dolat Capital. Please go ahead. Hello. Please go ahead, sir. Yeah, hi. Thanks for the opportunity. Basically, I have one question. Is that if you look at your revenue coverage, it's kind of a best ever since we've been reporting this TCV data. So can we say that the growth rate are bound to improve here on taking FY 2025 level as a base? Rahul, our endeavor is to do that, to always get better from one year to the next year. But as I mentioned in response to the other question, I don't want to give any specific guidance for the full year. I'll just live with what I told in my outlook. We're keen to continue this momentum as we get into the Q2, which we are reasonably confident of. Right, right. So I think the only thing which you said additionally was that you are confident of higher TCV in this year versus the previous fiscal. So do you see the culmination of that into revenue is any weaker than the past year? I didn't say that it will be higher. We only reported that for Q1, we had the higher growth of TCV. We did not comment on the full year unless I miscommunicated that. Yeah, so that's where it is. Yeah, of course, if we close big deals in the first half of the year, it will start impacting our revenue as we go into the second half of the year. At the moment, we are focused on closing some of the big deals that are in the pipeline that Nachiket spoke about. Surely. And last bit on the utilization front, what is an ideal operating level that you see should be ideal for our business moment? Look. It depends on the demand pattern we get. If we get, and if we have a demand pattern of an orderly demand pattern which gives us good visibility or a couple of quarters ahead, which is slightly a bit more challenging in the macroeconomic environment, I would say probably 86-87 would be a healthy utilization to have. The reason I ask this is because one of the peers actually specifically highlighted the demand-supply mismatch in terms of the talent pool. So you think our resources are pretty flexible that way, or you think at the current moment it is ideal, but we need to work on it as well? Is it more of the skill set mismatch is the question? Yeah, yes. Yeah. Look, to be honest, I don't think we see a material difference on that. Yes, of course, there is always newer things that come in our industry, especially with AI coming in. There are newer roles, new skill sets that are coming in. But is there anything that is actually becoming a bit of a drag for the growth or fulfillment and all that? We don't see that, honestly. Okay, okay. That's helpful. Thank you. And best luck for the year. Thank you. Thank you. Our next question is from Nitin Padmanabhan from Investec. Please go ahead. Mr. Padmanabhan, you may ask your question now. Yeah, hi. Good evening. I hope I'm audible. Yes, you are. Thank you. So just wanted your thoughts on the retail, the consumer vertical. It's done well this quarter. Anything specific that sort of is it the last deal or what has contributed to the growth and how do you see things panning out there from this vertical perspective? The second thing, I just wanted your thoughts on, so you did mention risks as we go through the year, uncertainties and all of that. Anything specific that you're worried about across any of these verticals, or is it just a broader macro concern that you have? I think it's a broader macro concern, but I think, as I mentioned, the approach that I'm sort of recommending is that, look, the environment is what it is, right? So it's about how best you can get the growth by staying very close to our customers, by bringing in new capabilities, helping them in redefining their business model and so on. So we are hugely focused on the execution part of it by staying very, very close to the customers. So if we stay that, then the environment will remain what it is. We can't influence that part of it and see what best we can get as a growth. And that's been our approach in Q1, and that's how it has helped us to get the result for us in Q1. That's what we intend to continue in the subsequent quarters. Very specific to the consumer services, yes, there is a part of it that contribution was because of the last deal. But again, there has been a broad-based growth in the other sub-verticals as part of the consumer business. And that also has helped us, whether it's in travel, transport side of the business as well, where the business uptick has been decent compared to the Q4. Got it. Got it. And just one question for Vipul. Vipul, you mentioned that the Fit for Future program actually contributed to almost 100 basis points of margin expansion this quarter, but that was offset by visa and higher travel costs. You think that becomes a tailwind going into the next quarter, or are there some other headwinds as well? I think max is pretty clear, so yes, you can deduce that. Perfect, perfect, perfect. Thanks a ton and all the very best. Thank you. Thank you. A reminder to our participants, if you wish to ask a question, you may click on the raise hand icon. We'll move to our next question. That's from Dipesh Mehta of Emkay Global. Please go ahead. Yeah, thanks for the opportunity. I just want to get some understanding about the NextEra JV. How once you look at the business scaling up there, and if you can help us have a role in any margin profile difference in that business. So margin profile as well as working capital cycle variation in that business, if you can provide broad perspective. Yeah. Look, NextEra is operational at Q1. We're at the very early stage of business ramp-up over there. We're seeing a good acceptance of these joint venture capabilities. We formed a joint venture with one of the best-known brands in the Saudi market with Aramco Digital. So we get entry to not many client organizations within Aramco as well as outside of Aramco as well. So it's a very early days, I would say, Dipesh, right? As we go along in the journey over the next couple of quarters, I'm happy to call out specifically on the deals and the traction that comes on NextEra. But in the beginning, in the first 30, 60 days, we're seeing good discussions happening with Aramco as well as the other customers within the Saudi market. And with regard to the margin, I would suspect that it will be a little bit below our company average because of the market at which you sell the services. Compared to the deals that in the U.S. or another part of the world, it will be, yes, it will be less than the company average in that sense. Understood. And last question is about the insurance. You made a comment about BFS. Can you provide a sense about how insurance is playing out for us? And broad outlook, what are the demand drivers and what are the challenges you face in that? Look, insurance demand drivers are all about tech modernization and, again, the AI adoption in terms of their customer engagement part of it or internal processes identifying. That's the kind of discussions and the kind of opportunities discussion that we do with insurance. I think insurance will. We're not seeing a big scenario change in insurance vis-à-vis Q4- Q1. Compared to BFS, I would probably say insurance, we are seeing fewer deals. On a comparison basis. Compared with BFS, insurance is we have a less number of deals compared to BFS. Understood. Thank you. Thank you. Our next question is from Rishi Jhunjhunwala of IIFL. Please go ahead. Yes, thanks for the opportunity. A couple of questions here. Firstly, if we look at when the merger of the two companies happened, one of the key factors there were that there was significant or lack of overlap in key clients in terms of either service line exposure or otherwise. And cross-sell upsell was a big opportunity there. If you look at past two to three years of data, at least in the top 40 clients, it doesn't reflect growth being anywhere closer to what it could have been. Outside of the macro factors, can you give some color in terms of where we are on the journey of probably increasing the number of service lines to each of the key clients across the two entities that used to be there? Look, Rishi, this is part of the sales transformation track that we have, which is essentially focused on enhancing the sales productivity, if I may say. And then one of the biggest levers of enhancing that productivity is that: can you sell more capabilities to our existing clients? So that's part of the transformation. We just made the start of that transformation. It's not that it did not exist before. It was always there. We had a service lines. Both delivery and we have invested in service line sales organization globally as well. We are seeing good traction in specific service lines, but I think we can do a lot more in cross-selling and upselling into our existing accounts. That's a journey we are on, and the more we do, it starts getting reflected at the company growth level as well. If you actually see, even for this quarter, I think out of 10 service lines, we had almost seven service lines or eight service lines which has shown good growth, both quarter-on-quarter growth and year-on-year growth. And those growth have come across these service lines, and that's reflected in the industry growth. It's a reflection of the service line growth as well, but yes, we can do a lot more to sell, cross-sell, and upsell more. Got it. And I think just to add, Rishi, on this point, I think in the last few calls also, we have clarified that cross-sell upsell cannot be really looked at divorced from the market conditions in terms of driving growth. Ultimately, for the cross-sell upsell to work, the clients have to be willing to commit fresh spends, which has been slow in the industry. So I think one area which we have talked about in the past also is that in this environment, the way we have been able to get larger deals and participate in vendor consolidation, that also is a reflection of this capability. Yeah. Last deals will have multi-service lines. So, I mean, if you look at the one which we announced, it has probably six or seven service lines built into it. Fair enough, sir. And secondly. If you look at from a supply side perspective, you're currently at peak utilization. Your subcon expenses are lowest that it has been for the past four or five years. And you haven't hired much in the past two quarters, whereas the TCV or the order inflow has inched up reasonably well in the past two, three quarters. So how do we think about the dynamics there? Is it a function of higher non-linearity that is going to play out due to productivity, or is it something, or is there any other reason to that? Look, I think I explained the reason for utilization in the earlier question. It was also due to the ramp-ups that happened in the quarter and all the accelerated hiring that started in the later part of Q1 is going to come on board in Q2. The hiring process that has accelerated. There are two, three things that we are doing very strategically in the talent supply chain part of it, right, which I covered in my commentary as well, right? In terms of how do we actually bring the AI capabilities in the way we source the talent, we match the skill sets of the talent, and how do we reduce the onboarding time of the talent under that, so that's also part of our transformational initiative. So we've actually made some good progress over there, but having said that, yes, this is an area where we need to do a lot more to get to that utilization level that I said that we can, if it has been in 86% and 87%. It's a good range to be around, at least at the end of Q2, if we can be around that range, it'll help, so we are doing a lot of proactive hiring in that context. Our talent team is fully engaged to get to that ramp-up. In some way, it is a good problem to have, I would say, Rishi. We will mitigate that, and I think I also called out the pressure indexing, right? 1,600 people we injected in Q1, and we will inject more throughout the year. All right. So thank you. All the best. Thank you. Thank you. Our next question is from Debashish Mazumdar of SVAN Investments. Please go ahead. Hey, hi Venu. Thank you so much. And a little late, but we'll come back. So. Thank you. Three questions I have. One is. If you hear the whisper in the industry, it is very clear that you guys are extremely aggressive in chasing, especially large-sized deals. But if I see the TCV that you announce every quarter for last three quarters, it is hovering around 1,600-1,700 range, 1,600-1,700 million range. So if you can give some direction that at what level you are looking at or whether you are comfortable at this level of deal wins or how the pipeline is looking like. I'll request Nachiket to comment on that, please, Nachi, on the last deal phase. Yeah. So I think, as we talked about earlier, we are seeing definitely an increased momentum on large deals, and even going into Q2, we hope to announce a few more and continue to build the pipeline for the rest of the year. So, definitely, the large deal closure rates will improve. On the order inflow, I think there are a lot more other factors that go into it on a quarter-on-quarter basis. So I wouldn't say that it's a one-to-one comparison. There are different renewal timings on various different customers and different industry segments. So if you look at it on a yearly basis, I think you would definitely see a higher order booking and a large deals booking reflecting into that for the full financial year. On a quarter-on-quarter basis, I would say it would be very difficult to exactly attribute that to the deal closures. So, is like $1.6 billion quarterly run rate a kind of comfort zone for you, and you feel that this will give a sufficient amount of growth because I understand that YoY there is a growth and book-to-bill ratio for us also improved. Do you think that $1.6 billion is a correct number to look at? See, as our size grows, we would also have to keep up our order booking proportionate to that size to deliver similar growth that we aspire to grow, right? So to that extent, you would need to, we would want to see the growth in our order booking as well as we go along as our base size also increases. That's how I would look at it. Sure. Understood. And the second question that I have is, if I just relate the vertical-wise growth and the top five client performance, it seems to be that. Our tech client, large tech client is still not out of the woods for us. So do you think that. That business has kind of bottomed out and we will start seeing growth here? So, look, I think in the Q4, I did mention that the productivity topic is behind us. Whatever the program we executed to deliver productivity program, we sort of executed it very well. And otherwise, at the vertical level, if you actually seen it, we have grown this quarter, right? Sequentially, we have grown the tech vertical, right? And the top, I don't want to get very specific to a specific client situation, but if I just look at the overall vertical level, it has grown sequentially as such. But with regard to the top client, the productivity issue is behind us. That is not material. What we need to do is probably to win more deals and expand our value chain in that account. But we don't have anything material issues that we have to deal with. It's all sales that we need to focus on in the top client. Okay. And one last question is the rest of the world business that we see. Normally, we see seasonal degrowth in this quarter. So is it same like that or there's something else to read in it? So in the rest of the world business also, one, it is a smaller pie as compared to the rest of the company overall in terms of revenue. And any seasonal variations do tend to get exaggerated because of the small base. And in terms of the rest of the world coverage, seasonality due to the license revenues in Q4 does play out in Q1 in comparison. And we are also kind of looking at some more deals coming through in this vertical as well. So it could pick up in the future as we go along. But as I said, it's a small portion of the total. Okay. Understood. No, the question that I'm trying to understand is, I mean, the point that I'm trying to get into is whether we are leaving a few of the businesses to get into better margin because a lot of our peers is doing that in the rest of the world to get into better margin levels and to focus more on the areas which matters. So is it more intentional or it's just a seasonality? That is what I'm trying to get into. It's just a seasonality aspect of it. I don't think we are. We are always selective in deals. Anywhere in the world, we are selective, not specific to the rest of the world, right? So it's not just about revenue or profitability. It's also about can we really add value in those engagements? So we qualify the opportunities in the context of whether we can add value to our customers, and then, of course, does it fit into the right commercial profile? Sure, sure. Thank you so much. Thank you. Our next question is from Sumeet Jain from CLSA. Please go ahead. Yeah, hi. Am I audible? Yes, Sumeet, you are. Yeah, thanks for the opportunity. My first question again is on probing your top account in the high-tech vertical. I mean, historically, it used to grow very strongly in June and September quarters, and obviously, you used to do a lot of product engineering work for their cloud platform, which still continues to grow pretty strongly, so can you just highlight, is there a change in the rhythm of the growth of that account going forward, given that it's still the most important account for LTIMindtree? How do you see that as a strategic account, and what are the growth levers for you in that customer? Look, I would probably answer it in two dimensions, right? So. Firstly. The account has grown over a very long period of time very consistently. So we are at a base where we are hugely material to the client. And our growth, we are seeing a greener pasture as the top client expands into the newer areas, right? So. That discussion continues. But we also need to remember that we came at the back of a revenue net of the productivity gain in the last two quarters, right? So the whole team was engaged in delivering to that program. And now, as we started this year, we started off with the good progress in the tech vertical with the sequential growth. And our relationship is stronger as always. And we will leverage that and look for opportunities where we can grow beyond that. See, I don't want to compare it with historical trend because the base was different, Sumeet. Got it. No, that's helpful. And sorry. You want to. No, and also the market environment. Market environment, even for the top client for that matter. Right. Got it. And secondly, wanted to understand, I mean, you guys are doing a lot of initiatives on GenAI. So wanted to understand, are you seeing any sort of deflation in your existing business? Or the new or the contracts which are coming up for renewal? Are you passing on productivity benefits and seeing any sort of impact on the revenue growth? And then in relation to that, do you see non-linearity for your business between revenue growth and headcount growth because of GenAI? Yeah. I mean, look, the opportunities in the AI is something we are very, very optimistic about. And that's why we have an AI organization under Nachiket. And we launched Blue Verse as an agentic ecosystem. We are sort of penetrating AI across all of our service lines and industry verticals. With regard to the productivity ask that comes from the clients at the time of renewal or even outside of the renewal process, it's always a discussion that we will evaluate it because we have this relationship. And most of this productivity gain also comes at the back of incremental scope we can deliver for the customer, right? Because every client wants to do more with less. So if we can get more coming our way and we can deliver the same more with less, it's a win-win equation. So I think most of these productivity discussions, in my view, will lead to a win-win discussion. With the way we are approaching it, which is something which I'm fairly confident about. There's no material impact because of productivity as a topic that I can call out. But is there an ask from the clients with regard to the productivity? Absolutely, yes. That ask is always there. And our effort is to come out with a win-win equation that, okay, can we do more with the same client with less? The third is with regard to the non-linearity. Look, we'll have to wait and watch how things will pan out in terms of because the nature of contracts also have to change in our existing book of business also, right? If there's a T&M contract, can we convert that into the managed services? Is the client okay to convert into managed services? And can we bring AI within that managed services construct and thereby reduce the headcount? This is something we'll have to do along with the customer. So the customer also has a significant role in redefining the way forward business model. So it's too early to call it either way. But you are seeing the trend anyways, right? Over the last two years, if you see the revenue addition that we have added and the headcount, there are enough indications to say that the non-linearity signs are visible. Is it visible to an extent that you can call it as a completely new business model? I don't think that is there. But definitely we are adding revenue either with the same headcount or with a slightly less headcount already. Got it. And maybe one last question if I can squeeze in. I mean, in your last in-person analyst meet, you obviously talked about $10 billion revenue target by 203 1, but obviously, I think things have changed to that extent. But given the fact that, are you having any ambition to grow probably in leaders' quadrant or in double digit, anything you guys are planning to give any outlook? I'm not asking for quantitative guidance, but at least where do you stand compared to your competition? I don't know which competition is being referred, but in general, look, our aspiration or our strategy is firstly, for the clients, we want to be very, very relevant in our positioning of digital transformation partner, and then second is I spoke about all the transformation mandate of being a very people-centric company with AI focus, and third is the aspiration, right? Aspiration, of course, $10 billion revenue is an aspiration that we have, and we are working towards that aspiration, so that aspiration hasn't changed, right, but it's all about reaching that aspiration goal one step at a time, so that's why I'm restricting myself to Q1 and to the next quarter, which is Q2. Got it. Very helpful, Venu. Thanks a lot and all the best. Thank you, Sumeet. Thank you. That was the last question. Ladies and gentlemen, on behalf of LTI Mindtree Limited, that concludes today's conference. 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