Welcome everyone to Wipro's first quarter earnings press conference. For those of us who are joining virtually, good morning, good afternoon, good evening.

My name is Nisha Chandrasekaran and I will be your moderator for today. Joining me on stage is our Chief Financial Officer, Aparna Iyer, our Chief Executive Officer and Managing Director, Srini Pallia, and our Chief Human Resources Officer, Saurabh Govil.

We will begin with opening remarks from our CEO, followed by a financial review from our CFO. Post that, we'll open the floor for your questions.

With that, let me invite our CEO and Managing Director, Srini Pallia.

Thanks, Nisha. Good evening, everyone.

I see a lot of familiar faces. Thank you for joining us today.

Let me start with a quick view of the broader market that we see, and I'm sure you're also following what's going on in the market. The macro environment remains resilient, but of course, there are uncertainties which continue to shape decision-making for our clients.

Technology investments, however, has not slowed. They have become more focused.

Our clients continue to invest in AI, data, cloud modernization, cybersecurity, and also productivity-led transformation at an organization level. Spending today is measured with more rigor and longer decision cycles.

The AI disruption is expanding the market, but not shrinking it. At the same time, conversations around AI are becoming very intense.

You all heard about the tokenization. As that landscape evolves, clients are focused on net productivity and require a tighter linkage between their investments and their outcomes.

Despite selective client spending, our pipeline remains healthy. We continue to see strong engagement across our markets and industries.

We continue to execute a consulting-led, AI-powered strategy to help our clients reimagine and redesign their enterprise around intelligence. With that, I will now share our financial performance.

All numbers are in constant currency. Our IT services revenue for quarter one was $2.61 billion, up 0.9% year-on-year and down 1.2% sequentially.

Our IT services margin was 16.0%, a 1.2 decline year-on-year. Just to give you some color on our markets.

Americas for us remains soft, declining both sequentially and on year-on-year basis. However, we continue to see momentum in technology and communication, and we have seen some good wins in the consumer segment.

As we move into the quarter two, we are definitely seeing momentum build up in BFSI sector in Americas. Our APMEA's revenue grew sequentially and also on a year-on-year basis.

Here, we are encouraged by the momentum we continue to see in this market, particularly in the BFSI and consumer sectors. Europe grew year-on-year with strong traction in BFSI, technology and communication.

However, energy, manufacturing, and resources sector remains soft. We see healthy pipeline across various regions in Europe.

If I were to call out two, it would be UK and Nordics. During our quarter one, order book totaled $3.4 billion, and our large deal booking totaled $1.6 billion.

This order booking include 13 large deals this quarter. I want to take a minute to highlight two of these deal wins, which are very different from the way we have been seeing the deals that we have been structuring and solutioning for our clients.

One, a leading global animal healthcare provider selected us to modernize and manage their digital operations across global network of hospitals and clinics. Using Wipro Intelligence, I repeat, using Wipro Intelligence, we will help transform service operations, improve productivity, and enable predictive issue prevention.

We are helping this client create a more autonomous technology environment. The goal here is to improve experiences for their clinical teams, for their employees, and of course, customers who walk in with their pets, while increasing operational rigor.

In our second deal win, a leading European specialty chemicals company chose us to run and transform their complex application landscape. Leveraging AI-led capabilities through our WINGS, which is actually part of our Wipro Intelligence, we will automate our operations for the client, improve delivery efficiency, provide greater visibility through an AI-powered digital command center.

The outcome is expected to elevate service quality, higher productivity, and lower operating costs. The reason I'm calling out these examples is that they reflect a broader shift in the enterprise priorities.

Increasingly today, our clients are looking beyond technology modernization alone. The focus clearly is moving towards AI-enabled operating models that improve service quality, reduce operational complexity, and strengthen resilience, and of course, unlock sustainable productivity gains.

I can assure you, this is where Wipro is well positioned. Let me now share a few additional updates.

During the quarter, we closed the acquisition of MindSprint and quickly transitioned from integration planning to execution. While we continue to deepen our relationship with Olam Group, we have also started to see good opportunities in the food and agriculture sector.

If you recollect, last quarter, we launched AI business and platform unit. Since then, we have moved decisively from strategy to execution.

We are building AI-powered industry platforms, developing new AI-native business models, and forging strong partnerships across our AI ecosystems. We have laid the foundation, strengthened the team with specialized AI-native leadership talent, defined our roadmap to establish clear priorities for the next phase of growth.

I want to actually take a moment here to highlight a few more areas where we are making progress and growing our AI momentum through Wipro Intelligence. You would have recently heard of our launch of Applied AI Center of Excellence for Claude models powered by Anthropic.

This strengthens our ability to help clients rapidly adopt frontier AI capabilities while maintaining enterprise-grade controls and governance. Capco, our BFSI consulting arm, won the AI Governance and Risk Excellence Award at the OpenAI Partner Summit.

Of course, we had to compete with a lot of our competitors there. Our UK AI lab won the OpenAI Codex Hackathon for an AI-powered banking solution.

These accolades validate our ability to innovate while applying AI responsibly in highly regulated industries. Across markets and industries, we're helping clients reimagine operations by embedding AI at the core of their business, spanning both physical and digital worlds.

I'm excited to share some examples of work we have already done for some of our clients. One, for a global industrial manufacturer, we are reimagining finance and procurement through our WINGS platform, combining agentic AI, intelligent orchestration, real-time analytics, and an AI-powered knowledge management to create a highly automated operating model.

Second, with one of our healthcare clients, we are deploying multi-agent AI system, reducing provider enrollment processing up to 6 70% it has really improved, while automating their manual effort up to 90%. Three, for a leading global technology company, we are improving the quality, reasoning, and safety of their next-generation AI models through expert-led data creation and AI evaluations.

In fact, this is delivering significant gains in model accuracy, which is very important, and reasoning capability, which is very important in the new context of AI. Last one, with a life sciences client, our WINGS platform is transforming pharmacovigilance from a document-centric, labor-intensive process into a completely AI-native safety operations.

This is powered by our autonomous agents and regulatory-grade workflows which we develop through AI and Wipro Intelligence. In fact, one more I'll take.

For a global energy leader, this is very interesting, we are defining their enterprise robotic strategy and roadmap for physical AI-enabled autonomous operations. You can see that you have physical AI now coming into action.

Collectively, these engagements demonstrate our breadth of Wipro's AI capabilities from a strategy and advisory to being clearly a domain-specific solutions company. It also reinforces our role as a trusted transformation partner in helping enterprises redesign how work gets done.

In fact, we have more such examples of the AI work we have done. It's available in our press release it's a good reading for you while you're heading back home today.

With that, let me shift focus to the next quarter. In Q2, we are guiding for a sequential growth of -1.5% to +0.5% in constant currency terms.

As we continue to navigate macro uncertainty and of course, geopolitical instability, our priority is to remain disciplined in execution, helping clients navigate complexity and create sustainable value for all our stakeholders. With that, let me hand it over to Aparna to share our financial performance in more detail.

Over to you, Aparna. Thank you very much.

Thank you, Srini. Good evening, ladies and gentlemen, and thank you for joining us.

Let me share an update on the financial performance for the quarter ended 30th June 2026. After that, we will open the floor up for questions and answers.

Our IT services revenue for Q1 grew 0.9% year-on-year in constant currency terms. Revenue declined 1.2% sequentially in constant currency terms and 1.4% in reported currency terms.

This was well within our guided range. Our operating margins for the quarter was 16%.

The margins declined 1.2% on a year-on-year basis. This was due to the incremental impact of the salary increase.

You will note we gave a salary increase effective 1st March 2026, and we've had two incremental months of impact in Q1. We also had some of our large deals that we had won earlier ramp up, and we are have several ongoing investments in AI.

All of these were partially offset by rupee depreciation benefits and other operational efficiencies that we drove. We remain focused on returning back to our previously stated narrow band over the next few quarters.

Net income for the quarter was 33.6 billion and EPS for the quarter was ₹3.22. Both grew 0.6% on a year-on-year basis.

Moving on to some specific color on SMU and sector performance, all growth numbers that I will share will be on constant currency terms. Americas 1 was flattish year-on-year basis and declined 2.3% sequentially.

Americas 2 declined 7.3% on a year-on-year basis and 2.5% decline on a quarter-on-quarter basis. Europe grew 6% on a year-on-year basis, while declining 0.9% sequentially.

APMEA grew 13.5% year-on-year, while growing 4.4% sequentially. On sectors, BFSI grew 2.6% on a year-on-year basis, while declining 1.2% sequentially.

Consumer grew 0.7% sequentially and 1.9% on a year-on-year basis. Technology and communications grew 0.2% sequentially and 10.8% on a year-on-year basis.

Health declined 3% year-on-year and declined 2.6% sequentially. Energy, manufacturing, and resources declined 3.6% sequentially and 8.9% year-on-year.

I will share some quick update on some key financial metrics. Our operating cash flows was at 98% of net income for Q1.

Our gross cash is at $4.3 billion as of 30th June 2026. Accounting yields remained stable at 7.2% for the quarter.

Our ETR was 22.6% for Q1 versus 21.6% in the same quarter last year. In terms of guidance, I'd like to reiterate what was shared by Srini.

We expect revenues in our IT services segment to be in the range of $2.574 billion to $2.627 billion. This translates to a sequential guidance of -1.5% to a +5% at the top end in constant currency terms.

Lastly, in our recently concluded board meeting, the Board of Directors have declared an interim dividend of ₹2 per share. Including this dividend and the payouts in the last one year, we've returned cash of in excess of $3 billion over this last few quarters, last four quarters.

With that, I will now turn it over to Nisha for Q&A.

Thank you, Aparna. We'll now open the floor for your questions.

For journalists who are based outside of Bangalore who have joined us on Teams, we request that you key in your questions. For journalists who are present here, please raise your hand and we'll be happy to give you the microphone.

Please, to ensure that everyone has a chance, we request that you limit your questions to two, and we will come back to you if we have additional time. Ritu, if you'd like to start, you can introduce yourself and your publication, and then go ahead with your questions.

Thank you. Hi, everyone.

I'm Ritu from CNBC-TV18. Srini, first on the margins.

Even with these wage hikes that you've given that you've said has impacted the margins, it is a 15-quarter low. Your guided range of 17%, 17.5%, does that get pushed further?

Or, what are the levers you have to get back to it and how quickly could you get there? Secondly, even in terms of your guidance for the second quarter, -1.5% to +0.5%, it's quite soft.

Should we expect any meaningful pickup in the second half of the year? Because even when you compare it to some of your peers that have reported numbers so far, TCS or HCL, yours is one of the weakest revenue growth we've seen.

Give us a sense of what you're seeing in the demand environment, and the areas where you think you see some pickup in the second half.

Hi, Ritu. Two questions.

One is on the margins. I think Aparna talked about it, but let me give you a color to that.

There were clearly two reasons why we dropped the margins. One was the MSI impact that Aparna talked about.

Second one is we are making few investments for the future and some of the things I talked about. That's one.

Second, you asked about how it's going to be going forward. We clearly want to come back to the range that Aparna keeps talking about, and maybe she can give more color to that.

That's the idea. This is a short-term volatility because of some of the investments that we have made and so on and so forth.

Now coming to the revenue forecast or revenue guidance of -1.5% to +0.5%. Few data points I want to give you.

One is clearly, the demand situation the market has not changed. If I look at our pipeline, which I called out as healthy, is mostly on the cost optimization and vendor consolidation.

The clients are taking the cost out for a lot of investment going into AI. The discretionary spend is becoming more intense, and it's also something that we're watching out.

That reflects our Q2 guidance, taking that into consideration. Having said that, for the quarter two at this point in time, if I were to give a little bit of a color from a market perspective, Americas, if you look at it, BFSI, we're seeing a good momentum going in.

If you look at Europe, I would call out Europe and APMEA, I would call out energy and manufacturing resources, which has been very soft, which is very specific to Wipro. I'm just calling out what were the two softer sectors that we had.

Those are the things that we are working on. Now, as Ritu, we don't give a guidance for the full year.

We just give a guidance for the next quarter. All I can tell you is that the pipeline, the demand situation is there, but there is also uncertainty.

We have baked that into our quarter two current guidance, Ritu.

You didn't really answer the first question was on margins, the levers you have to get to your guided range, and how quickly can you get there?

Absolutely.

Ritu, you've seen our ability to bounce back on the margins in a very, very weak revenue environment over the last two years. We've actually improved our profitability quite a bit from about 15%, we took it to the range that we had set of 17% to 17.5%.

What has happened is the two months incremental increase of wage hike. This will take a few quarters for us to recoup, and this is in normal business course.

Of course, it becomes a little more challenging in the backdrop of a weaker revenue environment. We have both the traditional levers and AI coming in.

Our fixed-price programs, the productivity takeout, what we are going to take WINGS and Vega to each of the programs that we are delivering, and there will be cost takeout. That's a very, very important lever.

We are very confident about that. Second is obviously the traditional levers, right, that kick in.

We have been investing. Our utilization, if you look at it year-on-year, has dipped because we are investing for some bit of growth.

Over a period, as these deals ramp up, we will be able to take our utilization up, we will be able to work on our pyramid, and we will use the traditional levers as well. There is also a situation with the operating leverage that plays out.

We will continue to optimize some of our overheads in G&A, which we will continue to do. These will be the levers as we look ahead.

We'll have to exercise these levers, but we'll also have to invest for growth, right? Therefore, don't want to put a timeline to it, but you've seen our strength.

We can bounce back and we will bounce back, but prioritizing growth first.

I hope that answers your question, Ritu. Operational improvement, leveraging AI, at the same time, you want to continue to invest for the future.

Can we have the next question from Sai?

Hi. This is Sai Ishwar from Reuters News.

Srini, just two questions. Your Americas 1 and 2 has declined, it actually kind of says that two-thirds of the business is under decline.

Could you tell us what has changed here? Because if you again compare to your peers, both of them had very good numbers in Americas.

I just wanted to ask that. If you could also talk about what percentage of your revenue is from AI, because a lot of the other companies have been calling out that separate number.

If you could at least give a range, if not a specific number pinpointing there. Also, I wanted to ask a broader overall question.

If you see the guidance for this quarter, then for the last two years, Wipro's revenue growth has been on decline. You would have to bounce back even stronger in the second half of the year, right?

Any specific game plans you have there, anything instructions you've got from the board? You've also spoken about the specific AI unit yesterday in the AGM, right?

Any plans you could tell about that which could probably make Wipro stand out and probably make this year stand out and grow? Thank you.

Sai, with your permission, I'll ask Aparna to answer the question number one. I'll take the two and three.

I hope you're okay with that.

Sorry, could you repeat the first question?

Americas 1 and 2. That's a big piece of a business.

How do you explain that?

Yeah. In terms of the growth in Americas 1 and 2, if you look at it, Americas 1 has been growing fairly strongly for us over the last several quarters.

We're seeing a decline because of certain client-specific issues. We do expect Srini referred to a lot of large deal, good wins in the consumer segment, and we will continue to see that vertical grow.

We are also seeing some impact of the budget spend cuts in the healthcare sector that is impacting the work that we do in our HPS platform work in the ACA business. That is also playing out.

Overall, if you look at it, healthcare, we continue to have a very strong presence and a very strong set of solution offerings. We do think A1 will bounce back.

If you look at our technology and communications vertical, you're seeing a double-digit growth that's also powered by our performance in A1. Quite a few bright sparks there.

We do see there are some headwinds, but we're confident looking at the pipeline. On A2, E&R remains our tough spot for us.

As Srini mentioned, BFSI, as we look at the next quarter, we are more hopeful for growth to return, and we are seeing some momentum pick up. Our pipeline is good.

In E&R, the pipeline is good, but we do certainly need to improve our win ratios. When that happens, you will see a more secular bounce back.

For now, A2 has been weaker for us.

Thanks, Aparna. From Americas 1, just to double click, the healthcare as in the US where we have a big presence on payers and providers is going through some kind of a transition.

I think that's also kind of impacted for us in this quarter. Now getting back on the first I'll talk about what we are seeing, our plans, and then the revenue aspect of AI.

If I look at from a plan perspective, right, we clearly said our vision is to pivot to AI. We said it's going to be through consulting-led and AI-powered.

Our execution will be through Wipro Intelligence platforms and solutions, which are delivery and industry platforms and cross-industry platforms. That's where we are heading with.

Second is in terms of the investments that we are making, we are making four key bets. One is a AI-native unit that you talked about.

Sai, where are you? There you are.

Okay. I was trying to make an eye contact.

This light is hurting me. I'll try.

One is clearly our AI-native unit, where we are investing to build next-generation industry platforms across the sectors and industries where we are dominant, whether it's a healthcare or whether it's transportation and so on and so forth. These are AI-native platforms, and there are also certain platforms we will modernize and make them AI-powered.

Second, we are also picking few industries where we actually want to build SLMs for that particular industry, and we will partner with them. That's number one.

The second investment that we are doing is clearly our Wipro Innovation Network. We invested in 10 innovation networks globally, and we are co-innovating with our clients around that.

Within the innovation, one is the biggest theme right now is AI, agentic AI, but we are also working towards digital ledger technology that's moving on, while quantum is way ahead, but we're investing in quantum, space tech, and so on and so forth. That's another very key bet that we have taken.

The third one is what I call as a ecosystem partnerships, right? We're going to bring a very strong partnerships with our frontier AI companies.

Now I mentioned some of them in my speech as well. We are trying to disrupt that market using their AI LLMs industry by industry.

The award that we got from OpenAI is for a very specific banking solution, right, and also the hackathon that we talked about. The fourth one is Wipro Ventures.

It's a half a million dollar half a billion dollar investments, and we're making significant investment into AI, data, and cybersecurity. These are all interconnected, because this is how we can pivot ourselves to AI.

Then I've been talking about consulting-led, AI-powered Wipro. In consulting, clearly, BFSI is our business line for all the BFSI customers from a consulting perspective.

We are strengthening in E&R, telecom and technology, healthcare where we are very dominant with our platforms, right, and also consumer. That's our broad strategy and the plan, and we'll stay focused.

I think very important for us to continue to sense and respond to how the technology is shifting, right? We are investing as part of the AI-native unit on the forward-deployed engineers, because forward-deployed capabilities becomes very critical.

Today, in having a conversation with the client, what is very important is having the client context, understanding the domain and the process, and then making sure you prime the data for the right solution through all that levers. Only then AI becomes really productive.

You must be hearing, right, there are a bearish view of AI, there is a bullish view of AI. I would say that AI in the long run for Wipro and for the industry will create a lot of new AI services.

That's another area where we are investing today, whether it's a sovereign AI, whether it's to do with agentic implementation and management, whether it's to do AI DCs, whether it's to do with tokenization, I can go on and go on. These are the conversations we are having with the clients, and these will be first consulting-led, proof of concepts, then take it.

Also, please understand, we have to balance with the human cost and the token cost, right? It's just not that you bring in AI and everything works.

The world is going to be human plus AI. I think that's where we are focusing on our talent, upskilling our talent, right?

We had basics, we had advanced, or professional. We are actually working with our frontier AI companies to train our people.

More importantly, we are working with the client to have the better client context, process, domain, data knowledge. This is our broad strategy, right?

Like I said, we made good progress on the AI-native unit as well. That's where we are.

Now coming to the percentage revenue of AI. This is a debate we have had quite a bit, right?

We saw the world when the digital came in, right, digital transformation. Suddenly, everyone's revenue went 80% digital, right?

To be very honest with you, if you look at our Wipro Intelligence, whether it's a run and operate, we do it with AI-first conversation. Whether it's a software development lifecycle, which is build AI, or whether it's to do with what I call as a package implementation or product engineering, you do AI-first.

Then the Reimagine AI Services, right, which is the whole aspects of AI advisory, consulting, change management, everything you have to think with AI. Every SOW has an AI.

Every SOW has WINGS or Vega. Every statement of work that we do, we have agent.

You can go other extreme. I'm telling our teams, guys, what is important is what is the return on investment client gets on each of the project and program.

That's why I talked about 2 + 5 examples today, because they are AI and that's going to change the world. I don't know whether I would want to call out percentage of AI revenue.

That's a long answer for your very small, short questions, Sai. I hope I answered it in more detail.

Ritu, see, this is how I am.

Rishabh, why don't you ask? Just a heads up that we are running a bit behind schedule, if you could limit your questions to two, that'll be helpful.

Sure.

Nisha is also giving me a cue of shorten your answers. I'll take it.

Hi, everybody. Hi, Srini.

Rishabh here from Moneycontrol. Two questions for you, Srini.

How has the TCV conversion been, since there's investor worries, concern around this for the entire IT industry? Another one is one of your peers said that AI revenues likely to remain lumpy as most AI engagements are one or two quarters.

How are these AI deals tenures turning out for Wipro? Thanks.

I have a question for you, Rishabh. Where did you hike?

Nethravathi. I went.

Good. I'll ask Aparna to answer the first question.

I'll do the second question. TCV conversion to revenue.

Again, we've said this before as well. There are a few deals that come which are where we take on services from our clients on day one.

Those deals typically convert absolutely as per schedule, immediately, on time, and we've had a large share of such deals which have ramped up. I also mentioned that these deals are also lower profitability in the first two years.

They've ramped up. Some of them are impacting our margins, right?

That conversion is pretty good. As far as there are some deals that we win where we have to build that revenue as our clients consolidate and they ramp up.

They look at newer programs, projects, and that kind of then ramps up over several quarters. Of all the deals that we had declared last year, there've been a couple where we didn't think the conversions panned out in line with what we had thought, but all others have been converting.

In fact, some of the large mega deal wins that we spoke of last year same time have begun to convert and are likely to convert even through the next few quarters. They've been delayed, but they are beginning to ramp up and we are seeing the flow-through coming.

Yes, we've had one or two where the customers had a change of plan and therefore, we've not had those conversions. Those are typically the factors that really impact, but I would say nothing out of the ordinary, right?

The conversions have also been weak over the last two to three years because discretionary spends are lower. As you keep booking the new, some of the existing work that you would typically get quarter after quarter, those spends have come off and therefore, you're seeing in some sense, those not reflecting in the growth immediately.

Sometimes, all of us talk about TCV, which are longer tenor, but what revenues represent it is ACV and that's a different context. Yeah.

Some of those other reasons why it's difficult to draw an immediate correlation between a booking growth and a revenue growth. We remain very disciplined in the way we book and we are also very disciplined about how we track conversion, and I can tell you there is nothing very amiss in that.

I'll keep it short, because Nisha has been looking at a long answer that Aparna gave. I'll agree with my colleague.

Is that a good answer? Do I have your permission?

Okay. Yes, if you look at AI projects, it has also sometimes gets equated to the discretionary spend, which is where our guidance is reflected in quarter two.

Some of these projects are also waiting for cost takeouts in other aspects, because the overall IT budget is not dramatically going up, but the shift to AI is going up significantly. Someone somewhere, the executives have to take the cost out and put the cost here.

The way I see it is that more and more clients are dramatically looking at AI. I think there is this report that says 75% of the CEOs are actually getting into AI decision-making.

Having said that, the CFOs are worried, my token consumption has gone up, but I'm not getting the return on investment. There is a balance that is playing out.

I think it'll stabilize very soon, because like the way the digital happened, right, AI also would happen. I think mid-term to long-term, it'll be very stable.

Short-term, it could be a little bumpy. I'm using the word bumpy.

Go ahead, Srishti.

Good evening, everyone. I'm Srishti from Economic Times.

Sorry?

Hold it closer, the mic.

Srishti from Economic Times. I have a couple of quick questions.

One on the numbers. Last quarter also, we saw sequential decline in BFSI similar to this quarter.

Last quarter, Srini, you mentioned it was because of delayed ramp-ups and specific client-based issues. Want to know if it is the same continuation of those issues and when are we likely to see some improvement in that?

Second question is, I also wanted to understand as far as your partnerships with frontier firms that you mentioned, while that is happening simultaneously, it is also a case in the market where access to a lot of these models, especially the high-end models like of Mythos, Fable, that is very geopolitically constrained and you don't quite get access to that or nations put a cross on it. Do you think that such partnerships will still help you, is it enough to leverage your connection with them?

Third question for Saurabh. I wanted to understand last quarter, you said that there is no hiring targets you've kept or even for freshers.

Is that a continued decision you're making or are we likely to see more hires on board, even as far as freshers is concerned?

She

wanted to take it? Okay.

Sorry.

I'll take the first question on this and

She wanted to take it, Shruti, you hope you're okay. Go ahead.

Okay. I wanted to say that BFSI as a sector, yes, we've had some challenges in Americas, but if you look at the growth across Europe, APMEA, even our Capco business has been pretty robust.

We actually grew year-on-year despite having a weaker growth print in Americas. That said, you're right.

We had called out a client-specific issue that should be behind us in Q1 and that's why we are sounding positive about the momentum that's building up in quarter two.

I also called out specifically Americas BFSI, which is coming back, hopefully, we'll go. Those deals that we have won will start showing results.

Coming to frontier firms, our partnership with them, let's put the client context instead of putting the Wipro context or partnership context. As a client today, right, I need to have the flexibility of which model to use.

Do I use a very expensive model or do I use a open source model? Second, for a particular workflow, a particular process, how mission critical is this for me to use a very high expensive LLM versus open source, right?

These are the conversations that we are having with the clients, because the token costs are dramatically going up. For us, when we have the deeper knowledge of all these frontier firms, we're actually able to go and tell them, hey, what's the right way to do it.

The fact that we are deploying this industry by industry and we are actually talking to the executives and saying, do you really need this? Why can't you look at this, right?

I think that's the biggest role services companies like us can play. That's where it's very important for us to have these partnerships and have a depth of it.

For example, OpenAI, with the hackathon award that we got, and the fact that our lab got a award in terms of the solution that we build, we are now deep into OpenAI, right? Knowing that, when you're having the conversation with the client, you can tell them art of possible and why and how.

Similarly, the Claude Center of Excellence that we've built, where we said we're going to train 10,000 employees around Anthropic models, it's very important because as you talked about Mythos, right, it will come in soon, sooner than later. This team is ready once these models come in.

Let's also be honest. The release cycles of these models were months to weeks to now days.

I'm not so sure it may go into hours, too. You have to be ready with having that depth.

The future world is going to be dramatically constantly changing. Organizations like us, we have to bring in tech depth.

For that, we need to have these partnerships, and for that, we need to build specific industry solutions. That's the direction that we are going.

On the last question on hiring, actually, our stand doesn't change from last quarter. We will continue to look at the demand environment and take a call, we are not calling out any number right now.

Not even for freshers?

Not even for freshers. Otherwise, lateral hiring depending on demand for specific skills continues.

Good evening. Uma Kannan from Deccan Herald.

Srini, you were talking about investments and partnership. I just want to understand, do you have any plans to invest in AI startups, because you were mentioning about it, you have some investment plans?

Are you considering on that front? Then are you seeing any shift in your client spending patterns, due to AI?

Are you able to close large deals as expected?

Sure. Uma, I think, very good question.

We are big into investing into startups, and we do through Wipro Ventures, and I did call out saying this is one of our key bets going forward. If you look at Wipro Ventures today, we have invested into AI companies, into data companies, and cybersecurity companies, and this we're doing it across the world.

The advantage that we have is as an early investor, two things. One is you get to have a seat in the board, you know what's going on, how their technology is shaping.

They are also frontier companies. Their tech is changing.

Every month, the product is dramatically different. However, they're not able to reach the clients, large enterprises.

We actually partner with them and take their AI solutions that they build, to our clients. Because the clients trust companies like Wipro, because we have done it, not a startup company.

We are big into AI startups, I just want you to know. We do it through Wipro Ventures, and that's a dedicated half a billion dollar fund.

Coming to shift in client-specific spends, like I said, the best way for me to reflect is how my pipeline looks, right? If you look at across my sectors, across my countries, like I said, there's a huge pipeline still of cost optimization and vendor consolidation.

Having said that, we are also seeing a good uptick on Reimagine AI, which is around trying to reimagine a customer processes to bring in the benefits that I did talk about it, and that's an ongoing basis. That shift continues to happen, but it is not more subtle right now, because they're not big deals right now, but the big deals are still our traditional deals, but AI-powered.

Thank you.

Go ahead, Mansee.

Hello, Srini, Aparna, and Saurabh. Mansee Dave from ET Now, ET Now Swadesh this side.

Nice to be talking to you again. Srini, my first question to you is on the deal wins and its impact on the revenue growth.

Acche deal wins ke bawajood, in spite of good deal wins, the revenue growth has been in line or let's say a little bit of a concern. Aapke hisaab se sabse badi chunauti, challenge kya hai?

Client decision mein deri, deal ramp-up ki dheemi raftaar, ya global macro environment? Aur meaningful growth ki wapsi kab tak dekhne ko mil sakti hai?

I think you gave me the question and also the answer. Honestly, that's what you did, right?

Yes, we had a 13 large deal wins. We did a $3.3 billion of booking, out of which 1.6 comes from large deals of those 13 deals, and one of them is MindSprint as well.

Having said that, you're bang on. Some of the deals, like Aparna talked about, is taking time for ramp-up.

When you don't ramp up, bookings don't convert to revenues. Some other ones which we are done in the few quarters back, they are suddenly started picking up, especially the BFSI one, which we talked about, the mega deal, we're seeing a momentum go up.

I think discretionary spend is also going slow at this point in time. I would say the demand environment from last quarter of my commentary to this quarter has not changed, okay?

Whenever we give a guidance, because we're the only ones who give quarter-to-quarter guidance, and we give that guidance based upon what we see, right, in terms of the spend and how the clients are consuming. To me, while yes, we're giving a -1.5% to +1.5% growth guidance, but we're baked in.

From a long-term perspective, I think the investments that we are making, and as the market matures on AI consumption, AI implementation, we should be able to hitchhike onto that bandwagon. We're keeping both the current track and the future track together.

Okay. Thanks.

Aparna, hi.

Sorry, Mansee, we'll have to come back to you just so we can have everyone get a chance. We will come back if there is some additional time, yeah?

Padmini, do you want to go ahead?

Hi. Padmini from The New Indian Express.

You mentioned about incremental

Sorry, I didn't get the name.

Padmini from The New Indian Express.

Padmini. Yeah.

Go ahead, Padmini.

You mentioned about incremental AI revenue, right? Is this still coming from reallocating existing IT modernization budgets?

Are these AI projects converting sooner than traditional deals? Secondly, there's a lot happening now in India, right, and your peers are investing in data centers.

What are your investment and growth plans here? Okay.

I think I'll repeat the investment plan, but with specific to data centers you asked, right? I explained to you the four key bets that we are taking.

Now as far as data centers are concerned, our focus is on creating AI DC solutions for our clients. We will design, we will architect, we will implement, we will maintain for our clients in the context of AI DCs.

Second, what's also picking up quite a bit is what I would call as sovereign AI, right? Because every country is now worried about the data security.

That's another solution that we're doing. Our focus is in creating services around AI DCs, creating services around sovereign AI, right?

We'll have partners as we move forward. Coming back to your question on incremental AI budgets.

I think, like I said, the client's overall budgets have not dramatically shifted, but investment into AI is happening. When you say investment into AI, there are multiple ways.

Token cost is one of them, because I'm sure you must be using some AI tool as you're recording this meeting and then you'll have something going on. It has a cost, right?

To me, as that cost settles down, as we redesign the customer processes and implement AI, they will dramatically see the return on investments. Some of the examples that I gave is exactly that.

I think that's where the market is, and I think Sai talked about the lumpy AI demand somebody talked about, and that's the reason why that is. To me, in the next few quarters, that should settle down.

Rohit, please go ahead.

Hi, this is Rohit from Business World. I wanted to kind of ask you about MindSprint acquisition and how that workforce integration is kind of happening.

If there are any redundancy that you see, perhaps retraining or attrition risk from overlapping roles? The second question is on Alphanet consulting deal.

There was a slippage there from June to September. Any reasons if you can give us any impressions?

Let me talk about MindSprint first. We are very excited about this partnership with MindSprint, right?

The partnership is with Olam and also the acquisition of MindSprint. First and foremost, I think we are very happy to have welcomed those colleagues, and they're doing very well.

Thank you for asking. Second, they bring in a very unique capabilities.

They have a very good understanding of entire supply chain from farm to fork, to be very clear. They understand the supply chain, within that agribusiness.

They have a complete view of how the workflows happen from a end-to-end. They also have a good, strong capabilities around trading.

As the world is looking at food security, especially in the parts of the world where agriculture doesn't happen, this is a game changer for us as an organization. To me, personally, I'm very excited about MindSprint, and we can differentiate and provide different value, and they come with a very different capabilities.

I've been to their innovation center last quarter, and they showed me about the kind of AI-based solutions that they have built, especially for agri industry, is phenomenal. Alphanet?

Yeah.

There is no surprise in terms of the Alphanet. I know there was a little bit of a delay, but it's come through.

We are not worried.

Yeah. Go ahead, Poulomi.

Good evening. I'm Poulomi from Financial Express.

Firstly, I'm just curious about the impact that you saw of AI-led deflation on traditional services revenue. Also, can you share the percentage of productivity gains that you passed on to customers?

Also, about fresher hiring, can you disclose the number of freshers hired in the quarter gone by?

To me, first, at a very broad level, AI for the industry and for companies like Wipro is a structural opportunity. I want that the broader context to keep in, because when you talk about AI, people have different connotations to that.

Number one. Number two, the biggest productivity benefit we get is in the software development lifecycle, but it depends on which stage of software development lifecycle you're in.

If it's a completely greenfield using Python, you can get significant productivity benefits, right? If it's a complex program, where you have to modernize, and when you deploy into production, it's complex, the productivity benefits comes down.

It varies. There is no one rule.

If you read the literature, you can ask your AI agent to read the literature and give you a productivity, then it'll start giving you subtext. To me, productivity on software development lifecycle, product engineering lifecycle is dramatic.

Second, again, depends upon what phase you're doing. Second, when we do run and operate, we can bring in more and more agents, agentification.

That's what we do with our WINGS, which is agentic system for run and operate for our clients, whether it's application, infrastructure, or process. You want to talk about fresher hiring?

Yeah. Yeah.

We didn't take any freshers in Q1. We've spoken about it earlier.

Hi. Sanjana from The Hindu Business Line.

I think the APMEA vertical has seen healthy growth, and this is despite the Middle East being part of the overall region. What went right with this particular region?

Are you seeing that the kind of uncertainty because of geopolitical tensions is coming down? Also, I think even as part of the AGM and today, you have emphasized Wipro's consulting-led, AI-powered business approach.

How is Capco playing a part of this, if you could just emphasize how it's central to the strategy? Thank you.

Look, Capco is the strategy for entire BFSI segment, okay? I'm extremely happy by the capabilities that they have built, and I talked about some of the wins that they have had with working with the frontier AI companies.

I think they're a big differentiation for the market, right? I answered that question.

When I look at APMEA, Middle East is just a part of it, right? It's a huge territory.

Whether it's India, or Australia, or Singapore, or Far East, right, there are multiple places, and for example, South Korea, right, Japan. Those are the multiple countries that we have, the growth is coming in from there.

Having said that, Middle East, right now it's holding.

We have time for one final question, Avik, please go ahead.

Hi, Srini. Avik from Business Standard.

Just two questions and one to Saurabh. The ratio between your TCV and the large deal wins, of course, that has gone up over the last couple of years under your watch, but just to understand that is there a challenge in getting those smaller AI deals that sort of keeps the machine well-oiled and keeps the recurring revenue coming with?

I think that's where Wipro maybe struggling, where large deals, of course, are coming in, but we also know that it comes with its own sets of challenges, ramping up, margin pressure. If you can just give me some heads up as to what's happening with those smaller deals.

The BFSI bit, do you think it's going to perform better in the second half, because we heard of the challenges that you talked about that Aparna also talked about, if you can just throw some light there?

BFSI.

Yes. Saurabh, any numbers that you're putting on those FDEs?

That's the flavor of the season. Everybody is calling out numbers.

Are you looking to hire specific FDEs or build specific talents on FDEs? You didn't hire any freshers in the first quarter, but are you still sticking to the conservative tone of not calling out the fresher hirings for this year?

Thank you.

You go ahead and I'll answer the rest.

Okay. I called it out earlier.

We didn't hire anybody so far. We have a good inventory of freshers.

We hired about 7,500 people last year. Depending on the demand environment, we will re-look at it.

We're not calling out any numbers. On FDEs, it's all pervasive.

We don't want to give a number. As a point like Srini said, that AI is in everything.

We don't want to call out AI percentage of AI revenue. Same stands here.

Our intent is to develop our workforce to become more in FDE. How can we upskill our people at different levels, and that's the endeavor.

Keep it short, but that's how we are approaching it.

Avik, I think your question also had an answer, right, and I agree with what you said. For us, it's a two-pronged strategy.

One is the large deals, and large deal takes time to close. Large deal takes time to sometimes ramp up, and that's what we've been talking, right?

Having said that, I would say the single, since this is a cricket country, I can talk about 1s, 2s, and fours and whatever it is, right? Sometimes you have threes also.

There are two strategies there. One is the sales team, as they are mining the account.

Other one is the delivery team trying to look at adjacent areas. Those are the small small deals.

Yes, we look at the large deal pipeline. We also look at the small deal pipeline, because in any account, if you have to cross-sell and upsell, sometimes it's delta.

You land and then you expand, right? I'm absolutely with you, Avik, and that's our game plan.

I wouldn't want to say that that's a weakness of Wipro, because I've been in this industry for a very long time. I love both.

Every dollar, because our colleague Mansi is there, boond-boond se samundar banta hai. Every dollar, improvement in my Hindi.

Okay. Go ahead, Nisha.

Thank you, everyone. We will have to conclude our Q1 FY '27 earnings press conference.

For all follow-up questions, please reach out to the external comms team, and we'll be happy to help you. Thank you all, and we'll see you next quarter.