Thank you. Good evening, everyone.

On behalf of HDFC Securities, we welcome you all to the TeamLease Quarter 4 FY26 earnings call. Today, we have with us the management team of TeamLease represented by Ms.

Suparna Mitra, Managing Director and CEO; Mr. Ashok Reddy, Executive Vice Chairman; Ms.

Ramani Dathi, CFO and COO; Ms. Neeti Sharma, CEO, Specialized Staffing; Mr.

Balasubramanian A, Senior VP, Enterprise. I will now hand over the call to Ms.

Suparna Mitra for opening remarks, post which we can open the floor for the Q&A session. Thank you, and over to you, Suparna.

Hi Arjun, this is Ashok. I'll just start it and hand over to Suparna.

Just wanted to apologize for the delayed upload of the results to BSE and NSE, and hence the delay in the call. There were some deliberations that were happening on the buyback, and that got closed, and the results and the board outcome has been uploaded now.

Just wanted to apologize for the delay in the scheduled call and appreciate all the attendees who have stayed and are participating in the call. Now, we've had Suparna join us to take over the MD and CEO role, and the transition has been going well, and from this quarter onwards, she will lead the dialogue on the results front.

Over to you, Suparna, and...

Thank you, Ashok. Good evening, everyone.

Thank you for joining us. It's an absolute pleasure and honor for me—this is my first earnings call—to be on this call.

I want to first begin by acknowledging and thanking what Ashok and Manish have built in TeamLease over the last 25 years. This is a company that has a very important tagline, "Putting India to Work."

It's a business that has put over 24 lakh Indians to work and created, at the same time, one of India's most respected people solutions companies. The company has a very strong financial record, great balance sheet, a lot of free cash, virtually no debt, and also a very strong brand and operations backbone.

I'm very grateful for this legacy that I've inherited and am very excited and committed to building on top of this foundation. Now over to this particular quarter.

Q4 was a quarter that actually demonstrated and tested our operating discipline. Revenue came in softer because of the full impact of an insourcing by one of our big NBFC clients.

We had already flagged this off in Quarter 3, and as a result, the overall headcount growth was muted. Having said that, the operational discipline and the machinery actually came in handy, and we had a good profit story for the quarter.

EBITDA grew 8% sequentially, and PBT grew 30% year on year. Profit after tax grew 22%.

This is also the last quarter of the year, and I'm happy to announce that for the full year, EBITDA grew 14%, PBT grew 36%, and we delivered ₹82 in EPS, 28% higher than last year. As I kind of reflect on the quarter and also building on what I'm focusing on in the next few quarters, these are some highlights and some focus areas: I think new logo addition in general staffing and continuing the momentum on operating leverage is a clear callout.

Accelerating the scale of higher-margin businesses, especially TeamLease Digital and our degree apprenticeship business, is a priority. I think India's formal employment market is an inflection point.

I think the last few months, many things have happened: rate cuts, even the implementation of the labor code, income tax relief, EPFO, PLI schemes, GCC wave, they are all many important things happening. Also in the digital businesses across the board, not just for our company, there is a significant incoming AI impact, and our job is to be ready to capture the opportunities that come up in this changing environment.

We will do it with the right sales focus and intensity, the right product mix, and the right cost structure. I have been spending my first few months visiting clients and really listening to what their challenges are, what their issues are, and calibrating our go-to-market accordingly.

Lastly, and this is a point that Ashok also touched on, we have the balance sheet to be bold. The ₹600 crore of free cash is a huge number, and the buyback the board has approved today is an expression of capital discipline.

I also want to make this point that we are very keen on investing in the future, in the technology, in talent, the adjacencies that will make TeamLease the absolute default partner for Indian CXOs thinking and planning about their workforce as we go into the future. For FY27, I will be focusing on profitable growth, deepening client relationships, and focusing on operating leverage.

My colleagues will now take you through the details of the individual businesses and overall financial performance. We will then open the floor for questions, and I look forward to some interesting conversation.

Thank you. Over to you, Bala.

Thank you, Suparna. Good evening, everyone, and thank you for joining us.

FY26 has been a year of two distinct stories. The first is a regulatory-driven transition with one large NBFC client back in Q3 where about 20,000 associates moved directly onto the client's own payroll, as we highlighted in our last call.

The second is the story of our underlying business, which, if you look past that single transition, added meaningful headcount throughout the year. Because our operating performance diverges so materially from the absolute headcount line, we think it is critical to look at both pieces transparently.

To give you the specific numbers, our general staffing business closed Q4 at about 2.37 lakh associates, reflecting a net sequential addition of over 4,500 associates. For the full year, while our net headcount shows a decline of roughly 5,500, adjusting for that Q3 transition reveals that the underlying business actually added about 14,000 associates.

We also continued to widen our market footprint, adding about 120 new logos over the full year, with almost two-thirds of those coming in under variable markup structures. The more important narrative for the year sits on the profit side.

Despite a marginally negative volume year, we delivered an 11% growth in PBT. This came primarily from operating leverage, specifically a structural reduction of over 20% in our cost to hire year on year.

We achieved this by optimizing for fitment, capability, and productivity in our hiring mandates, alongside an increased variabilization of our sourcing. Additionally, our broader digital backbone, spanning compliance, payroll operations, and associate engagement, is allowing us to run a larger associate book without a linear proportionate increase in our core team headcount.

We've spoken in prior calls about process and tech-led leverage being a structural shift rather than a one-time gain, and FY26 is the first year where that thesis is clearly visible in the profit line. Looking closer at our operational metrics, we delivered about 62,000 gross joinings in Q4, with 31%, that is about 19,000, coming in through our own internal hiring efforts.

Interestingly, 24% of the gross joinings, which is about 14,000, were first-time employees, reflecting our continued participation in the broader formalization of the Indian workforce. Turning to sectoral performance, the picture in BFSI is really one of rotation rather than market expansion.

The unsecured retail credit cycle is still working through its correction, the overall sectoral hiring pie hasn't really grown much. Instead, our growth in BFSI has come mostly from wallet share gains from incumbents at select private banks, small finance banks, and mid-sized NBFCs, alongside a steady shift in our hiring footprint towards Tier 2 and Tier 3 markets.

We believe the BFSI trough is largely behind us, though the shape of recovery will vary by segment. The consumer vertical was a bit mixed.

Consumer durables, particularly air conditioning, white goods, and appliances performed strongly in Q4 in anticipation of a hot summer, further aided by the GST rationalization on several large categories back in September '25. Consumer goods and retail, however, were more uneven, with rural and semi-urban demand outpacing urban markets.

Meanwhile, e-commerce and quick commerce have clearly shifted to a profitability and consolidation phase, meaning hiring growth was heavily concentrated among the top few category leaders rather than being broad-based across the sector. Last but not the least, in telecom, industrial, and power infrastructure, we saw some very...

Yeah. Last but not the least, in telecom, industrial, and power infrastructure, we saw some very encouraging structural developments.

Power, transmission, distribution capex, and digital infrastructure have emerged as meaningful new growth areas for us, while telecom services continued its steady expansion led by ongoing network rollouts. As we look ahead and enter FY27, the macro setup is highly supportive.

We have the RBI repo rate at 5.25%, inflation at decade lows, GDP tracking at 6.5%, and the consumption tailwinds from GST 2.0 and income tax relief starting to flow through the system. Our own employment outlook report, published in March, confirms this positive sentiment, showing the net employment change improving to 4.7% for H1 FY27, which is one of the highest readings we've seen in the last couple of years, with 58% of surveyed employers planning to expand their workforces.

However, there are three uncertainties that warrant flagging. Firstly, the four labor codes, while a clear long-term tailwind for formalization and organized staffing, will create some transition costs across the industry through FY27 as central and state rules get finalized.

From our side, given our existing compliance, process, and tech infrastructure, we are able to drive smooth transitions for our clients. Secondly, discretionary consumption, while improving, remains a little uneven and pocketed.

Thirdly, the broader geopolitical environment carries second-order risks that we're watching closely, specifically around energy and petroleum price inflation, potential supply chain disruptions, and tentative consumer sentiment. Ultimately, what we remain fundamentally confident about is our operating model.

The work we've put in over the last 2 years on commercial discipline, cost to hire, process and tech infrastructure, and our direct-to-associate offerings have built deep operating leverage. This engine will continue to convert into earnings growth even if volume growth moderates.

We enter the new fiscal year with about 20,000 open positions. Moving forward, our in-house hiring platform, along with an increased focus on cost variabilization, will be sharp areas of focus for us throughout FY27.

Thank you, and with that, I'd like to hand it over to Neeti.

Thank you, Bala. Good evening, everyone.

FY26 was a year of diversifying across skills, sectors, and geographies for our specialized staffing business. While the market stayed selective in its hiring requirements, we did see an increase in demand for critical and niche roles in areas of AI, data, cloud, cybersecurity, and specialized functional roles in healthcare, engineering, R&D, and BFSI sectors.

We closed Q4 with 7,500 associates, a net addition of 1,000 associates in the last one year and about 300 additions in the last quarter. With a shift towards high-value and niche skills hiring, our PAPM realization has gone up by 17%, and our year-on-year PBT has grown by 15%.

We're not just growing by adding headcount, but growth is also being driven by better realization on the mandates we bring in, improved utilization, and a stronger mix of products and skill sets. While demand for traditional IT skills has been moderated, there has been a steady and significant rise in hiring for roles such as AI developers, AI integrators, and R&D and engineering professionals, a shift visible across both the IT services companies as well as GCCs.

Our GCC business remains a cornerstone of stability and growth for us. With partnerships spanning over 110 GCCs, the segment contributed approximately 60% of our associate headcount and around 67% of our revenues.

It continues to demonstrate structural strength across high-value verticals including BFSI, healthcare, retail, FMCG, and high-tech engineering services, driven by strategic demand, longer engagement cycles, and deep customer relationships. A strategic move early in FY26 was our decision to partner with GCCs to build and scale the BOT models.

This has also allowed us to move meaningfully up the value chain, delivering integrated workforce solutions rather than just transactional staffing. The results have validated the strategy, and the GCC segment remains one of our most important and enduring growth engines.

We added 85 new logos in the last year, 24 of them in Q4, contributing nearly about ₹20 crore in annualized revenue. Simultaneously, remaining revenue momentum was safeguarded by deeper penetration into our existing customer base.

Our recruiter productivity has improved by 20% year on year, reflecting the positive impact of our investment in upskilling our recruiters, building AI-led efficiencies in our hiring processes, and optimal use of our AI-enabled ATS that gave us leverage for faster and efficient hiring. Our global business grew by 200% in terms of revenue, a meaningful milestone for us.

It is now very well integrated with our India delivery. It is margin-accretive and has been built as a capability extension of everything that we are doing here in India.

Operationally, FY26 has been a year of strong execution and discipline. We continued to improve recruiter productivity, utilization, fulfillment efficiency, and overall delivery capacity and capability while maintaining very tight control on costs.

Improvements in productivity and operating leverage has helped us manage seasonal non-billable impacts effectively during the year and supported margin improvement. As we move into FY27, our focus will remain on scaling this model in a disciplined manner with continued focus on profitability, productivity, and high-quality growth.

Thank you, and with this, I hand this over to Ramani.

Thank you, Neeti, and good evening, everyone. This is Ramani, and I'll walk you through the financial highlights for the quarter and the year.

I'll also cover the highlights of our apprenticeship business, as Nipun couldn't join the call today. Before I begin, I would like to remind the participants that this call will cover only publicly available disclosed information in line with the SEBI LODR requirements and may contain forward-looking statements that are subject to risks and uncertainty.

Let me start with our DA business first. DA continues to focus on making vocational education aspirational, accessible, and affordable through apprenticeship-embedded programs aligned with the National Education Policy.

We have recorded a net addition of about 1,000 apprentices in Q4 FY26. The business maintained PAPM stability, improved productivity, and added 10 new client logos in this quarter.

We have further strengthened our backend technology platforms and operational processes to improve delivery efficiency, learner experience, compliance management, and operating leverage at scale. Apart from manufacturing, BFSI, retail, and logistics, we are seeing a strong momentum for apprenticeship in the GCC segment with increasing demand for building scalable talent pipelines and compliance under the Apprenticeship Act.

Long-term growth is expected to accelerate due to multiple policy and industry developments: 1. Expansion of the Prime Minister Internship Scheme, PMIS 2.0, with an allocated budget of ₹4,788 crore, which is expected to strengthen industry participation.

2. Sustained policy focus on manufacturing growth through Make in India, investments in electronics, semiconductors, EV, and automobile sectors, increasing demand for skilled and job-ready talent.

Moving to the overall financial highlights, Q4 FY26 was a quarter where we demonstrated disciplined financial management even in a softer revenue environment. Let me give you the headline picture first: Operating revenues came in at ₹2,925 crore for the quarter, reflecting a 2% sequential decline.

The primary driver was the full-quarter impact of NBFC insourcing, which we had flagged in Q3. Full-year revenue growth stands at 6%.

EBITDA grew 8% Q-o-Q and 14% on full-year basis. PBT grew 30% year on year for the quarter and 36% for the full year.

Profit after tax grew 22% year on year for the quarter and 33% for the full year. There is a ₹143 crore income tax refund pertaining to assessment year 2024-25 received during this quarter, which includes ₹30.1 crore of interest income.

Excluding this refund and associated interest, underlying PBT growth is about 20% year on year. Our EBITDA margin for Q4 was 1.5%, up 10 basis points over Q3 FY26.

For the full year, EBITDA margin came in at 1.34%, about 10 basis points higher than FY25. Sustained PAPM improvement in general staffing, which moved to ₹689 in Q4 from ₹669 in Q1, a steady trajectory that reflects pricing discipline and our variable markup strategy.

EdTech seasonality billing in Q4 has also contributed to sequential improvement in margin profile. In HR services, full-year revenue and EBITDA grew at 22% and 23%, respectively.

We billed 42 universities in our EdTech segment in the quarter and signed 70 new ones in the full year. RegTech is building its MRR-based steady combined digital and services MRR of RegTech verticals to ₹3.6 crore per month.

We do not expect HCM to be a drag on group-level margins as we scale the platform through FY27. On balance sheet and cash position, which I think is a significant differentiator for TeamLease, we closed Q4 with net free cash of ₹600 crore, following the receipt of ₹106 crore income tax refund for assessment year '24-'25.

Outstanding TDS receivables stand at about ₹149 crore, and assessment year 2023-24 assessments are completed, and we continue to make progress in subsequent years. DSO in staffing business stands at 6 days, and funding exposure is at 14%, both consistent with prior periods and reflecting our receivables discipline.

On the new labor code, we have actioned the compliance requirements for core employees. A provision of ₹5.82 crore has been taken in Q4 FY26, reflected as an exceptional item.

On capital allocation, the board has approved a buyback of up to 25% of free reserves at a price of ₹1,600 per share to be funded from our existing free cash. The intent is clear: we believe our stock is undervalued relative to the earnings power of the business and continued efficiency in cash conversion of EBITDA.

With respect to outlook, there is a planned exit of about 10,000 headcount between our staffing and DA businesses in Q1 and Q2 of FY27, with us revisiting the low-margin mandates. There is no net margin impact from these transitions as the markups are very low.

However, with the pipeline of open positions and client mandates, we are confident of ending H1 FY27 with positive headcount growth. Thank you.

I'll hand back to the moderator to open the floor for questions.

Hi, can you hear me?

Hi, thanks for taking my question. We appreciate the decisive move on capital allocation and a meaningful one.

My question is a slightly broader question on strategy. I think if we look at the ecosystem, there seems to be some of these upcoming startups who are basically positioning themselves as chat-first, AI-first kind of proposition for hiring on blue-collar, gig economy workers and so on.

In that context, someone like TeamLease with its own proprietary data on placement history, attrition patterns, compliance records, etc., on lakhs of workers, just curious, are there any initiatives or thought process you have where you think there is an opportunity to productize your data into more AI-driven analytics or tools where the business could eventually over the long run start to have slightly more platform-like profile? That's my first question.

That's a very interesting question, and it is actually something that we are actively working on in our strategy. Clearly, the idea of spotting some specific opportunities where we can offer productized offerings is very much possible, and there is some degree of work.

We see these opportunities coming from exactly what you've said, which is our large, long experience and which is a combination of both data that gives us indications as well as working knowledge of how it actually happens on the ground. This combination of data giving insights on how one can offer productized offerings along with the operational and on-ground execution is very much something that we are thinking of and working on.

Understood. Thanks for that, Suparna.

Just one question, Ramani. I think we've seen a couple of sort of notifications leading up to the results around some of the old legal proceedings or notices around EPFO, etc.

If you can just sort of give where we stand there. We understand the history and this has been going on for a while, it's nothing new, but just some color would be helpful to the extent you can.

Hi, Mahesh. Yes, we have received a series of notices, one from the PF department with respect to the surrender of PF trust, which happened long back, and there is a demand of about ₹180 crore pertaining to how the process or the offsetting of profits and loss were done in the PF trust levels.

We have sufficient legal opinions. In fact, we also obtained an NOC from the PF authorities at that time during the full and final settlement on surrender of the PF trust.

We are very confident that we can win this case in our favor. Same with few other notices pertaining to GST as well as another one with respect to PF implication on NEEM trainees.

Even these two, as well, we are confident that we have a sufficient legal case on our side, and in the due course of time, we can close these notices.

Thank you. Thanks so much.

Thank you.

Thanks for the opportunity. Ma'am, my first question is on the core staffing business.

Obviously, we have seen some headwinds in terms of insourcing for the last year. From here on, how do we see the next year panning out in terms of volume growth?

Also if you can give some color in terms of how the demand environment is panning out and obviously you have mentioned about the open mandates, but how to see about the growth for the next year in the core staffing business? Also in terms of margins, are we seeing some signs of the margins recover from here, because as we are shifting away from BFSI to the other segments for the growth, which is comparatively a better margin segment, can we see the EBITDA expansion also coming in for the next year?

Thanks for the question. We already called out in the previous...

Thanks for the question. We already called out in the previous earnings call

You can't hear it still?

Your voice is not clear.

Just a minute. Hi, is it better now?

Can you hear me?

Yes. Thanks for the question.

As called out in the previous earnings call, the insourcing was specific to that one client, and we don't really see this as a broad-based phenomenon so far. Also, with respect to our outlook for the new financial year, as we had called out during this call, we are starting this year with more open positions than we had in the previous quarter, and the outlook for now remains quite positive.

That is also reflected in the employment outlook report that we published a couple of months ago. With respect to margins, yes, in the enterprise segment, it's more of a volume play, and with respect to margins, the outlook is a bit flattish.

As called out again earlier in this call itself, we continue to bank on operating leverage, which has already played out in FY26, playing out further on in FY27, which need not necessarily depend on volumes moderately.

Okay. In terms of the margin for this sector, which has been suppressed over last many years, so as you said, it's just a volume play.

In terms of volume also, there is some part of the portfolio which is having some kind of regulatory stress or insourcing that is happening because we are BFSI-heavy, and it's happening mostly in the BFSI sector. What portion of the existing portfolio is still having any kind of issues that can again pop up in the future?

Or you're saying that the existing portfolio is almost safe from any kind of regulatory headwinds?

Hi, Amit. Firstly, the insourcing happened only with one large client, and subsequent to that, we didn't see any trend of insourcing or regulatory headwinds.

If any new regulatory changes coming, that we have to factor in. At this stage, we are confident of maintaining the growth momentum within our staffing business, which will contribute to operating leverage because all of our fixed costs are fully absorbed, and with the investments that we made in our technology and backend processing, we believe that margin expansion can continue to play in FY27.

This is after taking into account couple of planned exits that will happen in Q1 of FY27 between our DA and general staffing business, because these are very low-margin businesses and, in fact, they are to some extent playing negative contribution on the bottom line. We believe FY27, we will be consistently expanding margin in the staffing and DA verticals.

Okay.

On the specialized staffing, obviously, we have seen strong growth from the specialized staffing, which is thanks to the exposure we have to GCCs segment, which is growing pretty fast. Within that, are we also offering some more value-added services which can help us to expand the margins that we get from GCCs?

Because if I see some of the competition which is operating in the same segment is operating at much higher margins versus what we are doing. Plus, in terms of the hiring freeze that we're seeing in the traditional IT services segment, is there any hope for revival there, and what portion of associates are associated to the traditional IT segment within specialized?

Thanks,

Amit. Thank you for the question.

You're right that while we had traditionally started with pure-play hiring and staffing services for GCCs, today we are partnering with many of them on BOT models, which give us higher margins, and along with that, we're also doing models such as RPO. We're working on models like hire, train, deploy, and also AI-led hiring.

There are a couple of new initiatives that we have started to grow our margins for GCCs and other customers as well. Yes, GCCs remain the largest segment that our focus is, and we are looking at a multi-product, multi-level engagement with GCCs going forward.

Okay. Thank you and all the best.

Thank you.

Amit, sorry, you asked a second question on IT services, whether there is...

Is that right?

Yeah. I

missed that, sorry.

Yeah. Amit, while the traditional conventional tech hiring is obviously not scaling, we do see some hiring on those skill sets, maybe a lower single digit, 3% to 4% hiring.

The largest skill sets being hired are in AI and AI-related and adjacent skills. Cloud, data security, governance, AI/ML coding, a large part of AI integrator roles, all of those hirings are happening.

In the past two quarters, actually, we've done about 500 to 600 hires purely on these skills, which give us not just the higher skill set, but also a higher margin and a higher value of the people that we are bringing into the workforce.

Yes, I think that's what is really happening. Not the conventional tech, but anything related to AI, actually the demand is much higher.

Okay. Thank you so much.

Thanks for the opportunity. I'm sorry, but your audio is not clear throughout the call, I may ask something which you might have covered earlier.

First on the revenue growth, if I look, let's say, general staffing remained fairly muted. You indicated some open position higher, but I missed the number if you have said any number on open position side.

Can you provide some sense on general staffing and any further detail in terms of let's say which vertical or which industries where you see traction is picking up versus last year and any incremental data in terms of what is the revenue share, let's say, across industries YoY? If you can provide comparison, that would be helpful considering the NBFC-related challenges which we faced during the year.

That is question one. Second question is on the overall revenue and margin outlook.

Earlier, we indicated 30% kind of growth possibility on EBITDA terms when last year started. How one should look, let's say, in FY27 considering the potential margin expansion as well as revenue growth recovery which you are indicating?

Last is on HR services. If you can provide some detail on that business, because from growth perspective, I think this year Q4 is not playing out to the extent of last year.

Obviously, Q3 was better, but even on segmental result what we reported, performance seems to weaker than last year. Just want to get sense earlier expectation was performance would improve consistently.

It is not showing that thing. Last, more strategic perspective, because now we have new leadership in place kind of thing, any strategy change which we have planned for next one to two-year perspective if you want to highlight some of those changes?

Thank you.

Yeah. Regarding your first question on open positions, we had called out that we are right now at about 20,000 open positions at the start of this financial year, which is about 15% to 20% higher than where we were at the same point in time in the previous quarter.

Like we had called out in many of the sectors, we believe that the trough is behind us. Of course, there are some immediate headwinds because of labor codes, while there is a medium to long-term tailwind that we see.

Also, geopolitical situations are leading to things being a little tentative at this point in time, it's hard to really predict how it is going to shape up. As things stand presently, our outlook is definitely positive.

Regarding the muted revenue growth that you called out, we were sequentially growing until Q3 when this large transition happened, and that led to the dip. Then we do see recovery because we already closed the year almost flattish even on volume.

We recovered 70% of the loss in terms of volume and nearly 80% of the loss in terms of recurring revenue as well. Over to Ramani for the next questions on the overall growth.

Yeah.

Hi, Dipesh. Regarding the margin outlook, while we haven't given exact guidance, now that all of our businesses are on growth trajectory, we are seeing strong quarter-on-quarter additions happening in our higher-margin verticals like specialized staffing and DA.

We will be able to maintain year-on-year EBITDA growth of over 20% for FY27. To your next question on HR services with respect to Q4 performance in comparison with Q4 of last year, again, this is driven mainly by the EdTech seasonal billings.

Last year, FY25, majority of EdTech billing happened in Q4. That's why you can see Q4 HR services EBITDA contribution is higher both in absolute terms as well as margin terms, whereas this year, it is spread between Q3 and Q4.

On a full-year basis, HR services contribution on EBITDA is higher year on year by about 22%. However, if you are comparing only Q4 to Q4, it may appear as if compared to Q4 of last year, there is a slight dip, but on a full-year basis, the vertical has grown 22%.

Ramani, I am referring to the segmental number which we reported. I think so far we haven't received your press release data, EBITDA-related, but if I look BSE, from profit to negative kind of segmental performance is visible for full-year perspective.

That is what I was trying to understand.

Sure, Dipesh. Let me connect to you separately.

Over to Suparna on the strategy question. Yeah.

Hi, Dipesh. It's just been about three and a half months for me, and I'm working very closely with the team.

I think there are two big areas: One is on really focusing on our current business verticals and improving execution, operational effectiveness, focusing a lot more on client relationships and on the sales side. Simultaneously also looking for a longer-range kind of strategy for which we need to do deep dive on what are some of the larger trends in the entire arena of employment, different models, different sectors, different types of companies, where their requirement is, and how do we kind of accelerate some businesses, maybe seed some new ones.

It's still work in progress. I think the starting point has been much deeper engagement and understanding of what clients want, what do our customers want in terms of their workforce, what their challenges are, and how we as a company can leverage our strengths and maybe also develop some new ones to be able to fulfill their requirements for being one of the most prominent and, I would say, impactful people solution partners.

I think that's really the journey, but like I said, it's very early days, and we will start both deploying and communicating new pieces of our strategy in the coming quarters.

Any area of investment based on, let's say, strategy what you might plan to execute in next few quarters which could have implication on your margin trajectory?

It's too early, it's too premature. We are still working on the strategy, after which we will make any investment decisions corresponding to that finalized strategy.

Sure. Thank you.

Maybe...

Thank you.

Sorry, Dipesh, your voice dropped.

Okay.

Hi. I hope I'm audible.

Sorry if I joined a little bit late, and I think the presentation is also not out. Some of the questions might be repetitive.

Ma'am, if you can give us what was the headcount growth for this year? You mentioned it was muted, if I heard it right.

Also what was the PAPM for FY26 and FY25, and what is your outlook going forward? Because this has been kind of trending down.

If you can give us some salience of general staffing and how the PAPM is evolving, and why do you think whether it should go up or down, and the competitive pressure and also the other factors like the inflection point that you mentioned. Give us some color on the PAPM and what are your thoughts on that.

Sure, Hitaindra. Firstly, on the headcount, on a sequential basis, Q-o-Q, we have added about 4,500 headcount, and on a full-year basis, there is a drop of 5,000 5,000 headcount, which is led by the insourcing of the NBFC client.

With respect to PAPM, we've been steadily improving at our overall level. For the current quarter, we stand at ₹689, whereas in Q1 of this year, we opened with about 669.

One of the main drivers of this markup expansion is the fact that almost 70% of our new mandates are being signed on variable markup model. This we have been consistently doing over the last two and a half years, and that has started contributing to our PAPM expansion.

Also, we are focusing a lot more on new logo addition in mid-sized as well as long-tail accounts where our PAPM is relatively higher, and we believe the same trend can be continued in FY27 as well.

Ma'am, the PAPM for the full-year basis, what was it? For quarter ending it was 689, but for FY26, what was the PAPM?

For the quarter, it's 689. We usually don't measure it on a full-year basis.

What we closed last year was about 665.

Got it. The key catalyst you're saying that you're moving more towards the variable markup model, that would kind of accrue to our PAPM.

Yes, also signing up higher-margin or higher PAPM clients.

Ma'am, this in general staffing kind of still drives our overall revenue as well as the bottom line. On the general staffing, what are the kind of roles that we kind of in terms of staffing that we provide?

What is the usual kind of revenue or salary per month kind of scale that we kind of provide in the general staffing? See,

general staffing contributes about 90% of our overall top line, and it will continue to drive the revenue growth in future as well. However, on bottom line, the contribution from specialized staffing, degree apprenticeship, EdTech, these are all the higher-margin businesses, and they've been growing at a faster rate than general staffing.

Overall, at the portfolio level, there will be a consistent margin expansion. While the staffing contribution would be largely coming from operating leverage and slight improvement in PAPM, the big shift will be coming from larger contribution from this higher markup or higher-margin verticals.

Okay. What is it, the general staffing, ma'am, the salary range of the staffs that we provide?

Is it less than ₹10,000 or more than that?

No. In general staffing, our average salaries are about ₹26,000 per employee per month.

For

apprenticeship business, it is about ₹14,000 per month, it's way above the minimum wage level.

Got it. The current kind of, in few states, we are hearing the wage code impact is there.

The minimum wages are getting increased and all, but that won't have a lot of impact on our business, right, since the salary statutory changes are higher for us.

Yes. In fact, we called earlier that labor code for short term may have a kind of negative impact on the headcount growth, because many companies are revisiting their headcount plans as well as revisiting the compliance under the new labor codes, restructuring their CTC.

In the next one, two quarters, it may slow down, or to some extent, it may impact the headcount growth. As we've been saying, in the long run, labor codes will drive formalization in employment, specifically in the staffing segment where 90% of the industry is led by unorganized staffing players.

That is due to the increasing burden of the compliance cost. I assume the unorganized are not following all the rules and the compliance cost, and they don't have the kind of backend to support this, but whereas we do.

In the medium to long term, that would be beneficial. Is that understanding correct, ma'am?

Unorganized is because of multiple reasons. One is lack of transparency and complexity in the earlier labor laws, which are like 44 different labor laws, many contradictions, not rule-based, left to the interpretation of the labor officers on ground.

That led to a lot of unorganized regional small staffing players operating outside the radar. With the new labor codes and once the Shram Suvidha portal goes live, which is expected in the next 18 to 20 months, there'll be a central repository for all the labor-related filings, which is very much similar to income tax or GST.

Even the administration as well as compliance management would be transparent to the end clients as well, because right now the end clients have no clarity on whether their staffing service providers are fully compliant or not, and they have no incentive to work only with organized players like us. With the new labor codes and the digital infrastructure going live, there'll be a lot more shift from unorganized to organized.

Yes, and just to add to Ramani's point, a lot of us seem to be focused more on what is the impact for employees, but not too many people seem to be talking about the impact for employers, because first and foremost, labor codes are positioned towards ease of doing business, digitalization, and centralization of compliances for employers. The impact that we see for employees is completely downstream from that.

If you look at the pace of formalization in India, be it at a corporate level or at an employee level, it has almost doubled in the last 7, 8 years. The percentage of formal employees in India is 2x of what it was pre-COVID, and we are seeing the same play out at the employer level as well.

If anything, this is only going to incentivize more and more employers to choose and stick with large, formal, organized staffing players such as TeamLease, rather than bulk of the industry which is today operating outside the radar.

Okay. Finally, ma'am, any outlook you want to provide in terms of the headcount growth as well as PAPM and EBITDA margin?

Specific to H1, as I said, we have a planned headcount transition in staffing and DA vertical. However, on a half-year basis as well as a full-year basis, we will be positive.

Also on the bottom line, we are targeting upwards of 20% growth.

Ma'am. Thank you, and all the best.

Thank you.

Hey, yeah, hi team. Just wanted to know your thoughts, with what AI is doing to the IT companies.

If I try to visualize it for the staffing companies, say, on the pyramid, on lower level, there could be a lot of reduction in the headcount, at least what we have seen in the past, means that kind of hiring feels difficult given the automation and all these things happening. How do we view this scenario for TeamLease given in specialized earlier we used to hire entry-level jobs for these IT companies?

Thank you for your question. Even traditionally, we've not hired freshers as much as we hired laterals, okay?

That is one shift. The other is that while yes, AI is disrupting a lot of job roles, like there are jobs which are like manual testing, entry-level software developer roles, though those are going away, but there are newer jobs that are getting created.

Also, apart from the IT services companies, there are jobs for these roles, which are AI integrators, AI developers, data engineers, data scientists, all these jobs are getting created in GCCs as well as a lot of large non-tech companies as well. What we see is that while yes, the volume play for IT services will not be as high as what it used to be till, let's say, 3 years ago, this volume will come in from different segments and in different job roles and very different skill sets.

Like we say that the 5 million IT workforce will get to 10 million at some point in 3 to 4 5 years time frame, what will change is who's hiring, where are they hiring, what are they hiring, and what do they want these workforce to do. That shift is very evident.

Already, we've seen a large demand in AI and AI-adjacent skill sets. We believe this will only grow up the ladder.

We do see some traction in the middle-level hiring, which is largely focusing on only people with domain and AI skills. I believe that demand will also increase as we go along, because almost all organizations are now on the drawing board disrupting their AI adoption strategy.

We do see these demands increasing, while the traditional conventional tech demands are clearly going down, as you rightly called out.

That should try to offset what we could lose in volume, but could we gain that on the value front?

Eventually, yes, probably in about 18 to 24 months time frame, not immediately.

Got it. Sure.

Thanks. That's it.

Yeah.

Losing results.

Thank you all for your very engaging questions and overall confidence and in the kind of efforts that we're putting in the strategy and in continued execution. We hope to continue this good run of profit performance along with greater revenue growth in the next few quarters.

Thank you, and see you the next time around.