Thank you. Good afternoon.

Actually good evening, and welcome to NIIT Limited's Quarter 1 FY27 earnings call. As usual, we thank you for your interest in NIIT Limited as well as the time that you're spending today with us amongst in the middle of a busy result season, and for joining the the call and giving us your support and suggestions.

Today's agenda is to discuss with you the Quarter 1 FY27 performance highlights. Second, what is shaping FY27 and the actions that we are taking, our priorities, and outlook.

I'm happy to share that share with you as a start that we are starting off FY27 on a strong note, definitely stronger than same period last year, and I think it is increasingly becoming stronger and as we go forward. With both enterprise as well as consumer go-to-market engines showing growth in Quarter 1.

While technology continued to grow well from AI-led investments in skilling, we also have growth from banking financial services and others. Order intake continued to remain strong, vindicating our investments in the new AI programs as well as our go-to-market initiatives.

On the profitability front, our EBITDA is moving in the right direction, with our operating costs growing slower than our revenue. Just to remind that certain parts of the business business have been in an investment cycle, and in Quarter 1, those investments are normally higher than other quarters.

With that, I'll hand you over to Pankaj Jathar, our CEO, to take you through the Quarter 1 performance in detail, and then we'll open up for question and answer. Pankaj?

Thank you, Vijay, and good afternoon, everyone. I will cover the Q1 performance first: the revenue, order intake, and business trends, and then step back to talk about our priorities for the rest of FY27.

Do note that our business has seasonality, we look at year-on-year trends rather than quarter-on-quarter. Revenue for Q1 FY27 came in at ₹957 million.

This is up 14% year-on-year. Enterprise revenue was at ₹618 million, which is up 8% year-on-year.

This was driven by enterprise tech training, which grew 16% year-on-year to ₹498 million. This was as an outcome of our strategic focus on upskilling and reskilling lateral job roles, even as fresher onboarding and training remain volatile.

On the consumer side, the consumer revenue was at ₹339 million, which was up 27% year-on-year. Within that, consumer tech continued to see momentum, growing 15% year-on-year to ₹182 million.

Our direct-to-college strategy is creating a pipeline of job-ready talent, which university clients are increasingly valuing. The recovery that we see in consumer business from BFSI and others in Q4 saw further pickup in volumes in Q1 as fresher hiring picked up pace at partner banks.

The strong growth in the consumer business has led to a shift in the enterprise to consumer revenue mix from 68:32 in the same period last year to 65:35 in Q1 this year. Viewed from a product lens, technology continued to grow well, clocking revenue of ₹680 million, up 16% year-on-year.

Revenue from BFSI and other programs was at ₹277 million, which is up 9% year-on-year, driven by strong fresher hiring, even as lateral training continued to be under pressure. Order intake in Q1 was at ₹953 million.

I now invite Sanjeev, our Chief Financial Officer, to provide an update on the financials. Over to you, Sanjeev.

Thanks, Pankaj. I'll take you through our financial results.

EBITDA for Q1 was negative at ₹14 million. This is a significant improvement from the negative ₹63 million in Q1 of last year.

This is driven by improved productivity and operating leverage, while we continue to invest in GTM capacity and new AI offerings. As Vijay mentioned in his opening remarks, while our new top line grew by 14%, our operating expenses grew 7%, putting us back on the path to positive EBITDA margin.

Below EBITDA, depreciation was at ₹96 million in Q1. Net other income was ₹180 million.

This is primarily comprising of treasury income of ₹175 million and other miscellaneous income of ₹24 million. That is offset by net finance cost of ₹3 million, and there are some exceptional expenses of ₹15 million primarily because of legacy tax matter that has now been concluded in NIIT's favor.

Some part of the cost is pertaining to scheme of arrangement for amalgamation of RPS and IFBI into NIIT Limited. This resulted in a PAT of ₹81 million for the quarter, which is up 85% YoY, and EPS of 60 paisa, that is up 84% on YoY basis.

Now coming to balance sheet and cash flows, cash and cash equivalents remain strong at ₹7,231 million, 7,200 7,231 million, underpinning our ability to invest through the cycle. CapEx was ₹68 million for the quarter.

We are past the peak on capital investment in platform in the current investment cycle, and we expect capital expenditure to moderate from here. DSO was at 53 days in Q1, which is same as last quarter.

Employee count at the end of Q1 was 866, which is down 65 on QoQ basis and 19 number of people on YoY basis. Now back to Pankaj.

Thank you, Sanjeev. Let me talk about what we're doing right now and through the rest of FY27.

We will be accelerating what is working. Right on the tech skilling front, AI and new logos is working.

We are continuing to scale AI programs and WorkPro offerings, which showed strong growth in FY26, and that's where we see demand signals being the healthiest. We are continuing to expand coverage of GCCs and India enterprise companies, and positioning reskilling around role evolution, particularly AI-enabled role redesign through outcome-led programs.

On the BFSI side, we have been recovering. That's the plan.

Our strategy of diversifying beyond the top four private banks to a broader set of financial service players, including NBFCs and insurance companies, is progressing well. In Q1 FY27, NIIT moved beyond its banking anchor to activate four new solution lines across insurance, NBFC, wealth, and GenAI.

These are not pilots. These are live commercial engagements with more than 15 clients outside of traditional bank induction kind of programs, which is generating new revenue for us.

As we accelerate this transformation, we hope to further reduce concentration risk and drive growth through the cycles. In terms of the road ahead, our investment thesis is showing up in new logos, deeper engagement, order intake, and a pipeline that's building.

We are seeing improved consumption of our differentiated outcome-oriented offerings across the technology landscape, with working professionals and job seekers both contributing to growth. In BFSI, the picture is two-speed right now.

Onboarding demand showing early signs of recovery, while upskilling and L&D budget for large private banks remain constrained. We are positioned to capture the onboarding recovery and are actively broadening the customer base, and shifting the program mix to be less dependent on L&D cycles of any individual customer.

With merger of RPS Consulting and IFBI into NIIT, we have strengthened our offerings to address the reskilling and retooling agenda, including deep transformative programs for existing talent. The AI opportunity: AI represents one of the most significant demand opportunities in front of us, and it is happening now, not at some point in the future.

AI is now embedded across a larger share of our portfolio, and revenue from AI programs has grown 9% of total revenue. Our ROI story is becoming sharply defined, and nowhere is this more visible than in our work with GSIs and GCCs.

AI-augmented engineering teams are already running 40% to 70% smaller than their conventional equivalents. One engagement we are aware of compressed a planned 150-person team down to 42.

Across GSIs broadly, analysis suggests that more than half of current task content roles face displacement over the next 36 months in ways that have already begun. GSIs and GCCs are positioning themselves as the change agents of their clients' AI transformation.

The transformation they are driving externally will need to be mirrored internally. A number of current roles are becoming redundant and must transition into new AI-era ones.

That creates a three-part talent opportunity for us: reskilling existing employees whose roles are evolving, retooling staff displaced by productivity gains into new AI-era roles, and onboarding new early-career talent into roles that require accelerated outcome-based programs rather than traditional induction. In-house L&D teams will struggle to scale at the pace this transformation demands.

The existing response, internal AI academies built around course completion and certification, is structurally inadequate. Training is moving from skilling to capability orchestration.

Completion rates do not prove judgment under uncertainty, AI output verification, or agentic workflow design. That is precisely the opportunity for NIIT.

During the quarter, we deepened our AI curriculum with the launch of training programs for forward-deployed engineers, site reliability engineers, AI auditors, and also the AI Prism. These complement our established offerings in AI engineering and agentic AI, and together, they address the full lifecycle of enterprise AI adoption: building, deploying, operating, and governing AI solutions at scale.

What distinguishes these programs is their design philosophy: applied, use-case-led learning journeys built around higher-value AI-augmented roles that enterprises are actively hiring and upskilling for. Beyond broad AI fluency and GenAI capability building, we are now winning specific need-based client engagements covering AI economics, CapEx planning, token optimization, and AI audit, areas where the demand signal is sharp and client willingness to invest is high.

A structurally similar dynamic is playing out across BFSI and India enterprise companies, and our AI programs are well-positioned to serve that opportunity. On the early-career side, iamneo directly addresses the onboarding opportunities.

Through its university partnerships and college-to-corporate bridge, iamneo enables early-career talent to take on roles that previously required years of experience. Our synthetic work platform and the architect on graduation product are purpose-built for exactly this transition.

Let me quickly take you through the guidance for Q2 FY27. We expect double-digit revenue growth year-on-year in Q2 FY27.

On margins, we expect near break-even at the EBITDA level in Q2, positioning us for positive margins in the second half of the year. We expect stronger revenue growth, improving margin, and continued order intake momentum for FY27 as compared to FY26.

Medium to long term, the structural opportunity in skilling remains substantial, and we are fully committed to our strategic objectives. With that, Vijay, I hand it back to you.

Thank you, Pankaj. Just summarizing, we have started the FY27 with a robust growth, a strong order book, broader customer base, and a clear sense of what and where are we winning.

We are responding to the areas of pressure by widening the demand base, accelerating the parts of the portfolio that are working, especially technology and AI, and maintaining cost discipline while continuing targeted investments. Our investment cycle continues, however, our focus has more become on AI and AI programs and usage of AI in every program that we are serving our customers with.

What gives us confidence is that the portfolio is becoming more resilient, strengthening of our product portfolio for working professionals, rollout of new AI programs, go-to-market expansion, and the iamneo initiative are all showing early results. We remain confident of the longer-term structural growth opportunity and are committed to making the investments needed to capture that opportunity.

In addition to investing in new programs and stronger go-to-market initiatives, we continue to follow a disciplined approach to evaluating inorganic opportunities that enhance capabilities, channels, and/or intellectual property, and which offer a clear path to returns and cash payback. I want to pause here and open this line for questions, and then we can take the discussion forward.

Operator?

Hi, a very good evening to you. Am I audible?

Hi, a very good evening to you. Am I audible now?

Yes, very audible.

All right. My first question is basically in the presentation, you highlighted that AI-led programs now contribute about 9% of overall revenue.

Given that enterprise clients are compressing the traditional team sizes, how are pricing realizations and ARPU trending for AI-led capability building compared to legacy IT training?

You said first question. Is there another question, then

Yes, there are a few more questions I have.

Why don't you ask one

by one? Let me answer this one.

All right. Yeah.

The direction you're hinting at is true. AI-led training does have a higher realization than traditional training, but batch sizes will tend to be smaller for AI-specific training than the more traditional training.

Especially for some of the advanced concepts like agentic AI, etc., there is a growing requirement of knowing how to code, knowing Python. Those entry criteria need to be met.

The average realization will be higher, but typically batch sizes would end up being a little smaller.

Okay. My next question is so consumer posted a robust growth of 27% year-over-year, even though your total enrollment saw a quarter-over-quarter dip by around 150,000.

Could you provide some color on the split between early-career and WorkPro learners this quarter?

We used to track early career, WorkPro, but those lines have become so fuzzy that when we are talking of consumer, now consumers also have WorkPros built into them. We're not at this point of time breaking that.

Sufficient to say that the early-career part, if we were to take iamneo's offerings, for example, they service a large number of universities, and those will fall in the early-career part of the business. I think that part has done well, and overall, the mix in early career is increasing, but not at the level at which we would have expected given that the hiring is very, very muted.

Yeah. Just a follow-up on that.

As we have seen that top five IT services firms continue to curtail their freshers hiring, within consumer, has growth primarily been driven by experienced working professionals that are upskilling in AI? Also, I just wanted to know how StackRoute and TPAS are performing in this environment.

Sorry, I heard the first part which I'll answer. The second part, I'll ask you to repeat if you don't mind.

Okay.

Now, let me further subdivide early career into two parts. One is freshers, and the other is 2 to 4 years experience.

Early careers actually includes the 2 to 3 years experience, not 4, 2 to 3, we do 0 to 3, yeah, 2 to 3 years experience. I think that segment, because people are reskilling themselves like our agentic AI programs, for example, the pull for those is higher because current people who have been hired or are working in organizations need to reskill themselves very quickly, A, to retain their jobs, and B, to find growth opportunities.

I think that's where the real push is. The freshers is largely driven by the onboarding requirement of corporates, which has not started as yet.

When we look at IT hiring, we look at the top 10 or top 20 IT services companies. There are a large number of startups and other companies which are also in the hiring, and GCCs, where the numbers are not individually at very large level, but there are very large number of companies.

I think there is a momentum which is building up there.

Okay. All right.

My second part of this question was actually I just wanted to know how StackRoute and TPAS are performing in this environment.

Okay. I think maybe Pankaj would like to talk about.

All those terminologies have now got changed after we merged RPS and IFBI into NIIT. The numbers are still the same, but I think the businesses have got combined, simplified, and I think that's also reflective in how we have managed our costs.

Maybe, Pankaj, you will talk about bits and pieces.

Yeah. We've combined RPS and the StackRoute entities, and we call that the Enterprise Technology Learning Solutions.

We have

both now housed under NIIT, and therefore, you don't have those available separately.

Yeah. We've actually integrated those teams, it's not that we can separate out either.

It's actually integrated into one team. To answer your question on how they're performing in this environment, they are performing very well.

We are seeing robust growth on the tech side, and numbers that I spoke of as enterprise tech is actually those two teams combined together and a few other small contributions. That's the number.

That

business is performing really well. The other side is where we've combined our banking, TPAS, and service and excellence training, all that into BFSI and industry performance solutions.

BIPS as acronym. That has also performed well in this quarter.

Both these significant components of our business have performed well in the quarter gone by.

Okay. I just have a very qualitative question.

Just wanted to shoot it. There's an advent of a lot of IIT and IIM offerings with respect to online certifications, degree programs, specially in this AI, agentic applications, FDE, etc.

How do we position ourselves in this environment, and what are we doing to create an edge in terms of program structure or an implementation point of view with this upcoming courses and programs from so many different educational institutions within the country and also outside, specially targeted to working professionals?

Pankaj, answer that.

I will. Just give me one second to pull together exactly what he asked for.

You're right. There is a lot of different programs that are coming in, which makes it difficult for a customer to actually understand what they're getting for, right?

You have programs which promise agentic AI training from 10 hours up to 600 hours. Therefore, a customer will find it difficult to compare those two things and understand what they should get into.

What we are doing is, of course, trying to provide as much information as we can on the consumer side. On the corporate side, of course, there are differentiators that we bring to the table, especially outcome orientation, right?

One of the things that we talk to customers about on the enterprise side of the business is on delivering outcomes through our training programs rather than completion, right? Therefore, it's not that we will just track how many attended, how many completed.

We will work with customers to track outcomes of the programs we deliver. Those are the areas that we are able to differentiate how we provide this training.

You're right, it is becoming a very competitive market, and people are using buzzwords like FDE, etc., to bring new offerings. It's up to us to keep educating our customers and providing the differentiation we need to do.

Okay. Thank you so much.

No,

let me add one line. I think we at least believe that in the new world that we are in, it is the capability which counts rather than the credential.

We are not running after credentials, we are running after building capability. I think that success is very visible in our enterprise offerings.

Our enterprise offerings are showing a clear differentiation because we are able to demonstrate outcomes in terms of capability, which leads to productivity and effectiveness of the workforce. People are preferring that rather than adopting a credential-based program.

On the consumer side, that awareness is not yet there. Wherever we have access, we would like to focus on that part.

Because I think the long term lies not in credentialing, but in building capability which can be demonstrated. Employers will now hire for capability and not the credential.

Yeah. Okay.

I agree, actually. Thank you so very much.

These were my questions. Yeah.

Thank you very much.

Hi. Thank you for taking my question.

My question is to Pankaj. You mentioned about outcome-based learning, right?

I want to understand more about this because you're right, if you use AI, it is in the end the outcome that counts, right? If you take this into account, then the umbrella of opportunity is far bigger.

It is not just IT companies, right? Eventually, it might percolate down to other sectors as well.

I want to know more about how you're going about this outcome-based learning right now and what are the plans for the future. Thank you.

Aman, actually forever NIIT's been talking about delivering outcomes through learning, right? It's not just now in the AI era that we're talking about outcome-based learning.

We've always believed that there's no point in doing a learning program unless we are able to deliver and demonstrate that outcome. That belief continues in how we approach training, and we build fit-for-usage kind of training programs.

Depending on who it is and what it is being made for, we create training programs that will deliver specific outcomes. We are working across the organization, right?

At the entry level, we deliver boot camp-oriented programs to help new joiners become productive from day one, we deliver that count as an outcome. At the more senior level, we deliver architecture programs which help seasoned architects become even better at their job at managing large teams and delivering outcomes.

We also do some leadership training programs where the final outcome is a change in behavior. The way we do this is by tracking before and after training-related metrics and looking and working with our customers to track the outcomes of our training.

Vijay, is there anything you want to add to that?

I guess outcome depends, as Pankaj rightly pointed out, outcome depends on what is the outcome that you came for. We are firm believers of the fact not getting a job is not the problem, getting the job is the real challenge.

When people join a course, they're not joining it for a job. A job you can get, but the job which is consistent with the investment that you made in that course.

That you will get only if you demonstrate that capability in terms of being able to do and create a live application. I think there are enough and more ways by which employers test you for whether you have that capability, hackathon being one of them.

Hackathons is becoming a very, very standard way by which people hire, especially tech professionals. If you are able to build and solve that problem that is given in the hackathon, then you have a reason.

I'm giving you that as an example. An agentic AI, for example, program, a person who's doing, he may have an agent that he, or a bunch of agents, that he has to create to solve a workflow problem in his organization.

In which case, was he able to do that? In this program, by the end of the program, you could actually have an early part or an early version of that agent ready for deployment.

I think that is not something which any credential-based program typically offers.

Okay. All right.

Yeah. Thank you for responses.

One last question regarding this outcome-based, right? One is the outcome at the personal or the individual level, right?

We see in India a lot of these legacy companies, right, which eventually will have to or will move towards AI. Because a big part of our business, I think I'm not wrong, more than 60% is now B2B enterprise level.

Is there a thing let's say an organization approaches NIIT and then the outcome-based AI learning or the transformations can happen, anything of that sort, is it in the pipeline? Yeah.

I gave you some examples of an early-career person, but in organizations who are deploying, for example, GSIs or GCCs, they have specific initiatives happening where people have to be billable. How long are the people billable after they join that organization is an outcome that is very important to them.

We would like them to be billable in day one, hour one. If we are able to deliver that, then organization would prefer that.

I think that's also an example. How do their realizations improve?

How do their deliverables improve? Actually in an enterprise program, in a running enterprise, when you introduce AI, outcomes are more easily definable.

Yeah. All right, thank you.

That's all from my side, and all the best.

Thank you.

Thank you, Aman.

Good evening, sir, and thank you very much for taking my question. My question is regarding integration of StackRoute, NIIT enterprise business, and also RPS Consulting.

After this integration of these businesses, whether we have fine-tuned our go-to-market strategy, and whether this will also result in easier processes for the company and market improvement? Can you please throw some light on this, sir?

Sure. Thanks, Ganesh, for taking the time to join the conference and for the question.

In one word, yes, integrating StackRoute and RPS together improves our go-to-market. They are both very complementary offerings in many ways.

One used to do OEM-specific training, the other builds long-term solutions for customers based on what they want specifically. Both of those are complementary offerings, and that makes our go-to-market that much stronger.

They also had reasonably complementary customer bases. One was GSI-heavy, the other GCC-heavy.

That also helps us build a stronger market presence for that business. Definitely, the integration has improved our ability to go to market with their offerings.

In terms of easier process, etc., that's an ongoing work that we've been doing, which is to simplify parts of the organization and simplify things how we work. Yes, this integration, of course, helps us simplify some of those things, but it's an ongoing NIIT-wide initiative anyway that we are working on to improve our ways of working and simplifying things.

I hope that answers your question, Ganesh.

Yeah.

Net net, I think what Pankaj is trying to say is that the combination has got integrated in the last few months, right, even though officially it has happened from 1st of July, but it has been in the works before that. I think the combination has got going, as you can see from the enterprise tech results also.

I think we'll see more efficiency and better performance as we go forward. Obviously, the tailwind of the environment is also helping.

Yeah. Sir, my second question is continuation of earlier respondent.

We are now serving mostly BFSI and technology sector, and as AI is now entering all the sectors and is a part of natural progress, are we targeting any other sectors for giving them AI-related training or we are preparing ourselves to market ourselves as a AI leader in training to access other sectors: auto or anything like that, industrial, where we can showcase our AI capabilities and make them AI aware or AI competent? Can you throw some light on this, sir?

Sure, Ganesh. We are actually already recognized as a leader in AI training, right?

While, yes, you're right, the largest part of our business come from these two areas, but we are working with customers in the auto, telecom, India enterprise side. Some of the work we are doing also involves AI.

In fact, we've developed some interesting new AI-based tools which we are deploying with some of the customers from these industries and helping them improve their capability on sales, on service, etc. We are working with customers beyond these two sectors as well, and specifically with AI as the main thrust of our offering in these areas.

Sir. My third question is regarding the opportunity in university sector.

As there are hundreds of universities, deemed universities in India, but they are lacking, I think, AI compatibility, and we are having iamneo as a special division where we can easily collaborate with institutions or universities apart from placement services for giving them content for AI training for in-house capability. Are we trying for this type of businesses right now?

Is there anything like that in our pipeline, sir?

Iamneo is focused on universities business, and they will continue to expand in that area. We will build our presence through the iamneo go-to-market that we have.

AI is, of course, a large part of iamneo's tool set as well, and they launched a couple of new offerings in the last quarter which are very AI-centric for the university segment, and we are seeing good traction from that also. Vijay, anything you want to add to the university segment?

No, I think yes, you are absolutely right. The universities are very hungry to add AI in their curriculum.

However, I think different universities have different level of commitment for that. The solution that we are offering from iamneo is a very, very superior solution and would be suitable only for maybe top 500 or so.

Then, we are looking at solutions which the other universities would like to have. For example, engineering colleges, the level of AI solutions that they need are very different, or curriculum that they need is very different from what let's say a commerce or a liberal arts university would look at, or a science university would look at.

I think defining a curriculum which is for each segment is the next issue. AI is not a magic wand by itself.

AI has to be used in specific situation in a specific manner for best results, and that's what I think our focus is.

Sir, can I ask one more question if time permits?

Sure. Yes, yes.

Sir,

the macro has been very challenging for last entire year. Coming back to our own business, whether the macros have improved from the last quarter or it has deteriorated this quarter, or whether we are in a same mode and there is no improvement in macros and the business is as is, sir?

That's all from me, sir. Thank you very much.

I think you understand macros better than we do, and we all get swayed by the macros by statements of one leader or the other and by some actions. I think the situation continue I would tend to feel the situation remains the same.

There are days when it looks about to be very, very brighten up a lot, but there are days when it it just goes back to And now days, the current days that we are going through are not pointing in the right direction. I think we have to we have to look at the opportunities ahead of us rather than be getting concerned by the macros a lot.

Of course, we have to be conscious of that. For us, the AI opportunity and the role that AI has to play in education, AI has to play in the fundamental business of some of the organizations is an opportunity which will exist irrespective of the macros.

We are focused on that, and I think that is delivering us results. There are parts of the business which are very dependent on how environment works.

We will remain open to that. How do we just spread our risk that we do not get caught on any in any one particular direction is, I think, the challenge that we are all working toward.

We are also opening doors for newer segments that we have not serviced, and we are also looking at inorganic growth, which I mentioned already.

Thank you very much, sir, and all the best. Thank you.

Thank you.

Okay. Thank you very much for joining us this afternoon or this evening for this session.

This is the first time we have switched to the timing of the call to be such. We would love to receive your feedback on how you found it in terms of convenience and, of course, on contents.

Your questions always educate us and open new windows or doors in our mind of the opportunities ahead of us, and we remain grateful to you for giving us your time, for your support, and for your guidance from time to time. Thank you very much, and wishing you the best.

Thank you.