Allied Digital Services Ltd

NSE:ADSL

Earnings Call Analysis

Allied Digital Services Reports Growth Amid Strong Market Demand

In the first quarter of FY '25, Allied Digital Services experienced a robust 17% revenue growth in India, despite some slowdown due to the general election. The company’s solutions segment surged by 52% year-on-year and now accounts for 23% of total revenues. Looking ahead, management targets a 20% overall growth for the fiscal year and aims to enhance margins from the current 11% to mid-teens over the next few quarters due to improved operational efficiency. With strategic expansions in the Middle East and a focus on AI-driven services, the future outlook remains promising.

Strong Performance Amidst Challenges

In the latest earnings call, management expressed confidence in the company's performance, highlighting a year-on-year (YoY) revenue growth of 17% in India for Q1 FY '25. However, they acknowledged the broader economic environment, particularly in the U.S., where decision-making processes have slowed due to the upcoming presidential election. Despite these external pressures, Allied Digital's Indian market due to its solid structure has shown vibrant activity, especially from enterprise customers.

Segmented Revenue Insights

The revenue growth by segment revealed notable trends: the solutions business surged by 52% YoY, now representing 23% of total revenues. This was largely driven by smart city projects, with revenues from government clients increasing 50% YoY. There is a tangible shift toward emerging technologies such as AI, cloud services, and cybersecurity, which are becoming increasingly central to the company's strategy.

Robust Order Wins and Future Outlook

Allied Digital successfully secured orders worth over INR 150 crores, including significant multi-year contracts in various sectors ranging from real estate to chemicals. The management expects billing from these contracts to start from the second quarter of FY ‘25, projecting a strong revenue realization in the upcoming quarters. They also anticipate a rebound in revenue growth back to historical growth rates of over 20% due to a strong pipeline of business opportunities.

Margin Management and Guidance

The EBITDA margin for the quarter remained steady at 11%. Management indicated that while this may not fully represent potential future performance due to one-off effects from previous quarters, they aim to improve margins through operational efficiencies and better cost management. The expectation is to reach mid-teen margins within the next 1-2 years as the business grows and scales, enhancing the profitability of new and existing contracts.

Strategic Expansion into New Markets

The company is strategically positioning itself in emerging markets such as the Middle East and plans to establish a local presence in Dubai. This regional expansion is part of a broader strategy to tap into the growing demand for infrastructure management services globally. With comprehensive service offerings in data center management and IT transformation, Allied Digital is well-placed to leverage the global market for smart city implementations and infrastructure projects.

Long-term Growth Targets

Looking ahead, Allied Digital has set a target revenue of INR 1,000 crores by FY '27. They anticipate reaching about INR 200 crores in quarterly revenues, driven by their robust customer pipeline and ongoing governmental projects. The management remains optimistic about capturing a significant share of the expected market of INR 50,000 crores related to upcoming smart city and infrastructure initiatives in India over the next few years.

Earnings Call Transcript 2025-Q1

[Operator]

Ladies and gentlemen, good day. and welcome to Allied Digital Services Limited Earnings Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] Please note that this conference is being recorded. I now hand the conference over to Mr. Mayank [ Vaswani ] from CDR India. Thank you, and over to you, sir.

[Mayank Vaswani]

Thank you, Nirav. Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining us on Ally Digital Services Limited earnings call for the first quarter of financial year 2024, '25. We have with us on the call today Mr. Nitin Shah, Founder and CMD; Mr. Nehal Shah, Whole Time Director; Mr. Paresh Shah, Global CEO; Mr. Ramanathan Ramanan, Global Head Strategy, responsible for growth, innovation and partnerships and Mr. Gopal Tiwari, Chief Financial Officer.

We will open with comments from the Chairman following which Mr. Nehal Shah will cover recent developments across the business. Mr. Paresh Shah will then cover the operational performance and order wins followed by Mr. Ramanathan Ramanan, who will speak on strategic objectives. Mr. Gopal Tiwari will briefly walk us through key financial perspectives. Thereafter, we shall open the call for the Q&A session.

Before we begin, I would like to point out that some of the statements made in today's call may be forward-looking in nature, and a disclaimer to this effect has been included in the earnings documents that have been shared with all of you earlier. I would now like to hand over the call to our Chairman, Mr. Nitin Shah for his opening remarks. Over to you, sir.

[Nitin Shah, executive]

Thank you, [indiscernible]. Good afternoon, everyone. Thank you for taking the time to join our earnings call. We continue to see a strong demand for our services. India market is very solid. Nature of contracts are also changing. Customers are evaluating transformative projects, and they are thinking big because the cost of being left behind from their [indiscernible] is very high. Taking big indicates that we are seeing changing scope of engagement towards a greater degree of emerging technologies like cloud, cybersecurity, AI and machine learning.

[indiscernible] our 40th anniversary on 1st of May. In the last 4 decades, we have created a solid foundation and we focus on expedited growth in our [indiscernible]. As all of you know, Mr. Ramanathan Ramanan [indiscernible], has joined our leadership council as Global [indiscernible] of innovation and partnership recently. And I am now handing over the floor to Mr. Nehal to say his opening remarks. Thank you.

[Nehal Shah, executive]

Thank you, sir. Good afternoon, everyone. Thank you for joining our earnings call today. I hope you have had a chance to review our earnings documents shared earlier. This quarter has been particularly encouraging for us with positive growth in revenues and improve profitability on a year-on-year basis. In global markets, customers continue to face pressure from a broader economic environment. In the U.S., the upcoming presidential election has introduced a cautious approach, slowing down decision-making. However, we have seen some improvement this quarter and our pipeline indicates numerous business opportunities.

Nonetheless, further adjustments and expectations necessary on both sides of the value chain for activity levels to pick up strongly once again. In India, the operating environment remains vibrant. As we mentioned in our previous call, the general election in April and May cause a slight slowdown in [indiscernible] making reflected in our numbers. However, enterprise customers' activity have been robust, evident in the new bills and renewals, which Paresh will cover in his remarks. Since the new government is formed, we are confident on -- we are confident of the new contracts being awarded soon.

For quarter 1, 2025, our revenue split by geography shows continuous momentum in the India business, which reported 17% year-on-year growth in quarter 1 FY '25, despite the general elections. Revenues from the rest of the world geography also showed a growth of 1% year-on-year, indicating initial signs of improved traction. The revenue split segment shows that the solutions business grew by 52% year-on-year in quarter 1. Solutions now represent 23% of revenues in quarter 1 compared to 21% in quarter 4, '24 and around 16% in quarter last year driven by our smart city projects.

Consequently, revenues from government customers in quarter 1 increased by 50% year-over-year, now constituting around 23% of overall revenues in quarter 1, '25 compared to 17% in quarter 1, '24. As mentioned last quarter, we see interesting opportunities emerging in the Middle East. We have established a sales office in Dubai and plan to assemble local team of over 50 members for execution as we are in advanced stages of discussion with a few potential customers.

[indiscernible]. We have multiple discussions underway with new customers, including a couple of large contracts. We have made additions to our leadership council and expanded our global network of offices. Moreover, with the recent sluggishness in the U.S. market, the hyperactivity in the IT sector is eased and attrition rates have declined further. Even as we await the firming up of customer activity, we have utilized this opportunity to retrain and reskill our people, making ourselves even more future ready.

With that, I would like to hand over to our Global CEO, Mr. Paresh Shah, to share key insights about the operational performance and key developments during the quarter. Thank you.

[Paresh Shah, executive]

Thank you, Nehal. Good afternoon, everyone. There is a big brief overview of our operational performance and key developments this quarter. ADSL has secured orders totaling over INR 150 crores including new wins and multiyear contract renewals. We have been selected to provide infrastructure management services for a major real estate developer expanding into Northern India's mid-housing segment. We have also secured a contract with the manufacturer of high-performance refractory materials in the glass ceramics and concrete sectors to manage infrastructure services for their offices in East India. One of India's largest integrated chemical companies with an annual revenue of [indiscernible] INR 5,000 crores has chosen us to manage infrastructure service for their West region office and also provide annual maintenance services for their Mumbai offices.

Additionally, we have renewed several contracts in several sectors, including IT consultancy, financial sectors, software and medical devices, shipping, FMCG, food and beverages, mining and also defense and space. A provider of innovative scientific solutions has -- in U.S. has also selected us to manage their IT transformation post spinoff from Olympus Group, including digital workplace management services. We are confident of an increased pace of order wins in the quarter ahead. Now I will hand it over to Mr. Ramanathan, our Global Head of Strategy, responsible for growth, innovation and partnerships.

[Ramanathan Ramanan, executive]

Thank you, Paresh, and good afternoon to everybody. It's indeed a pleasure and privilege to connect with all of you today. As has been pointed out by the Chairman as well as the other speakers today, Allied Digital, over the last 40 years, has built a very comprehensive, very impressive range of services, not only for domestic customers in India but also for customers abroad. And I think there is a tremendous opportunity as I have entered into this organization to penetrate larger markets and to be able to broaden our offerings to different types of customers.

Let me share a little bit about what the opportunities are and our strategies are going to revolve around that. First and foremost, India is a big opportunity. India is a growing market, one of the fastest-growing economies of the world. And Allied Digital is very well positioned. We already 11 to -- 12 to 14 smart cities under its belt, and we got 100 smart cities identified in India. That is a tremendous opportunity for Allied Digital to replicate its successes to multiple smart cities.

Now Smart City projects are not easy projects. They are very complex projects. They require a combination of hardware, software, integration, engineering as well as application management skills. And this actually helps Allied Digital, not just for the Indian market, but also position these services in the global market where smart cities are increasingly being developed, not only in advanced countries like United States, but also in many emerging economies.

The second part is Allied Digital through its comprehensive range of services has penetrated the Indian markets, but not the enterprise market still. And there is an opportunity for Allied Digital to be able to offer its services and its operate. Already impressive range of customers have been acquired over the last 1 year. But I think over the next couple of years, there is a huge opportunity for penetrating. Also, all of you are aware that GCCs are being set up in India, Global Competency Centers.

And every GCC will require the type of services that Allied Digital offers and infrastructure management beyond domain-based competency management. The third is, we are looking at penetrating deeper markets and other markets. For example, I think Nehal already referred to the fact that we have penetrated the Middle East market, but there is an opportunity for Allied Digital to replicate it's successes in the United States in other parts of the world like U.K., Europe as well as in Africa, where emerging economy is very similar to what is there in India.

Asia Pacific also offers good scope for their offerings. The fact that many of the customers of Allied Digital are marquee customers with operations in multiple countries across the world, positions Allied Digital to be able to offer its services not only through partners that it has, but also directly to many customers. And I think that is one of the strategies that we are going to adopt to see how we get it diversified, not only a range of partners, but also diversify into direct access of customers.

Finally, we are all living in a world where technology is rapidly changing, artificial intelligence is making it presence felt. And I think from a market point of view or a positioning point of view, we have already positioned ourselves as an AI-driven intelligent management -- infrastructure management service provider. The Digital Desk solution that has been developed by Allied Digital is very much in this area. So integrating AI into not only infrastructure management, but intelligent application management and be able to value add to our customers is going to greatly benefit Allied Digital in the years ahead.

So these are some of the opportunities we see, but we are also going to be positioning our strategies aligned to the above. Thank you so much for giving me a chance to share a few thoughts today. I'll now pass it on to Gopal, the CFO of the organization.

[Gopal Tiwari, executive]

Thank you, Mr. Ramanathan, and good afternoon to everybody. We will cover the financial highlights for the [indiscernible] review. As you can see from our numbers, there have been positive traction this quarter. While the India business continues to be bound, the pace of growth in revenue on a year-on-year basis in this quarter, is in the mid-teens compared to more robust levels in the preceding 3 quarters. This is largely due to the deferment of decision making due to the general election in India. This is temporary, and we expect it to be rebound back to more stronger levels in the next couple of quarters.

We are pleased to report a slight uptick in the international business too. We have reported an increase in EBITDA of 7% on a year-on-year basis. EBITDA margin for the quarter has been steady at 11% when evaluated on a year-on-year basis. As is evident from the revenue metrics, there has been an increase in the solutions revenue, which has resulted in EBITDA margin at these levels. As the revenue from service picks up through the year, there will be an improvement in the margin.

The mid-term margin in Q1 FY '25 is not strictly comparable with the margin in Q4 FY '24. Apart from the slight shift in the revenue mix, the Q4 EBITDA margin of 14% was aided by one-offs due to reversal of provisions made earlier in that financial year. While the EBITDA margin on a year-on-year basis remains steady at 11%, we have driven improvements in PBT and PAT margins due to better expense management as well as higher other income due to the rising cash balance.

Given our solid financial position, abundant liquidity and adequate resources, we are well equipped to fund our growth initiatives and deliver sustainable value to our stakeholders. Thank you. I'll now ask the moderator to open the forum for a Q&A session.

[Operator]

[Operator Instructions] The first question is from the line of [indiscernible] from [indiscernible] Capital.

[Unknown Analyst]

My question, sir, is on the margin side. Like in this quarter, we have announced the steady margin 11%. So what are further guidance? And on the deal win side, if you can guide us on these smart city side, like we've already completed a number of cities, but what are the future projection on that side? Do we have anything active in the discussion? And also on the digital side, what are the achievement that we have done and what are in the pipeline?

[Nehal Shah, executive]

[indiscernible], I'll answer that question to you. I typically understood that there are 3 questions that you asked, one from the margin side, there from the Smart City future and the third one on the digital desk. From the margin side, yes, you're right. The last quarter was as already confirmed by Gopal during his remarks, the last quarter, there were certain reversal because of which we saw certain high in the margins. This quarter, we feel that this is the base margin that we are at, and we should be improving our margins in the future quarters. But what we are looking at is that while we focus on our margins, we are also making sure that we focus on our top line growth as well. So whenever we acquire a new customer in any new geography or any new places, as you are aware of projects and our business are in the line of 3 to 5 years. We intend -- the intent is during the first 2 years, the margins are a little bit on the lower side. But as we go ahead in the queue with the customer, our margins keep on increasing through optimization and through acquiring and finding new business from the same customer. From Smart City side, so far, we have completed about 12 cities and 2 cities are under implementation as we talk today. There are a couple of smart cities that are there in the offering, which are right now in the bidding stage. One of them is an advanced bidding stage where we feel very confident of acquiring that customer in the next 1 or 2 quarters.

Having said that, since the government of India has not changed, and this is the same leadership coming up everywhere, we feel that the smart cities, which were, right now, the top 100 smart cities might be taken down to the future towns, that is Tier 2, Tier 3, Tier 4 towns, where we expect more such smarter towns coming up, projects coming up. And even in the first phase, the projects that have been implemented, a lot of those projects will undergo renewals and phase 2s of all those projects coming up as well. So while we are discussing and talking, I see a lot of opportunity on that side as well. Apart from that, there are other projects which are typically not as a part of the Smart City things, but we are constantly working on projects, which give us leverage to show our skill sets and show our expertise on doing similar kind of engineering projects. We recently have bidded for certain metro projects as well where we have -- where we would be doing [indiscernible] set up on certain railway stations and all. We are waiting for an outcome once we have some concrete outcome on that, we'll share the news with all of you. Apart from that -- Paresh, if you can just answer on the digital desk that would be great.

[Paresh Shah, executive]

Yes. So let me just address on the Digital Desk. So we had done great enhancements. Last quarter, we released our bot platform, and this bot platform helps customers to bring in a lot of automation and use AI on end user perspective. So we are already implementing this for one of the very large automotive customers in India, and that project is going on. So we are pretty much confident that there will be a lot of more opportunities coming along the way. Also on the Digital Desk platform, we have added a few more customers across the globe, both in India, and also across the globe. So we see that this trend will continue, and we want to make sure we continuously invest into more and more AI-enabled projects, especially AI is going to be part of Digital Desk platform. It will be called as an AI-enabled platform very soon. We are certifying that also in coming quarters. And obviously, we are moving into AI ops, which is more of a predictive analysis in coming quarters. So we already have an exciting journey ahead for Digital Desk, both from the customer point of view as well as bringing a lot of AI features going forward.

[Unknown Analyst]

Just one more question on the digital side, that the deal we won in Q4 and Q1. So we are seeing a revenue booking when we will go to see that?

[Nehal Shah, executive]

So Joti, generally, whenever we win a deal, typically, from a winning of the deal, the announcement of winning to the first bill, the cycle is anywhere between 90 to 120 days, wherein we start the SOW process with our customer, which lasts about 4 weeks. Post that, we go on on the transition phase. And once the transition is done, is when we have the billing start. So any lease that we've won in the last quarter of last year will start billing in the second quarter. So we'll see a lot of billing happening in the second quarter onwards. These that we have won in the first quarter, we might see at the end of the second quarter or maybe at the start of third quarter, those customers being billed for the net new customers that I'm talking. Renewals will continue the way they are, will not have any change in the billing terms.

[Unknown Analyst]

Okay. So sir, that means our upcoming quarter will be very strong as most of the realization will come in the Q2 and Q3?

[Nehal Shah, executive]

Correct. So we see a -- there is going to be an upside on the Q2, Q3 should be better as well. That's how it is right now.

[Paresh Shah, executive]

As you mean -- this quarter, we added INR 150 crores of revenue, okay? So the billings, you will see that in the third quarter of this financial year, where you will see kind of because it's about 90, 120 days as Nehal pointed out.

[Operator]

[Operator Instructions] Next question is from the line of Manan Vandur and from Wallfort PMS.

[Manan Vandur, analyst]

And congratulations on the numbers. Sir, I had a few questions. I just wanted to understand, as I'm new to this company, even as in the data center side, what service would we provide if there is someone who wants to set up a data center, [indiscernible] please explain that?

[Nehal Shah, executive]

So I would take that up. Manan, thank you for this question. Typically, our expertise lies in building up -- so we call it as BOT, build, operate and execute or transfer or maintain. Those are the kind of things. So anybody who wants to build a data center, we have got the skill set to design them, make sure that we implement the whole data center and keep it running and manage it for another 5 years. Typical customers for us are various customers in the enterprise side and all the smart cities. So most of the smart cities that we have done for the government of India, all of the smart cities [indiscernible] data centers and have been built by us. So close to about 10 to 14 cities that we are working on them. We are building data centers for the state governments of different states and managing the surveillance and the other things from those data centers. So our expertise lies in designing, solutionizing, managing and maintaining of those data centers.

[Manan Vandur, analyst]

Okay. Understood. And I just wanted to know, going forward, let's say, like 4, 5 years, what is the total addressable market would be for smart cities for us? And like how much would be able to -- we would be able to capture out of it?

[Nehal Shah, executive]

So a good question, Manan, once again. So typically, in the last call, I had said that we have heard -- we are getting news that the government of India might soon announce 1,000 smaller towns, each town, having a budget of about INR 30 crores to INR 50 crores. If that is something that comes up, we might have an addressable market for the next 3 years of about INR 50,000 crores. Apart from that, what I would want to also tell you is that there are 6 or 7 players largely who are in the smart city arena. And we are one of the pioneers and we were the first ones to make sure that the first city in India that is Pune City live way back in 2015. Apart from us, there are competitors, companies like L&T, NEC, KEC all those kind of companies. So these are typically 6 or 7 or maybe 8 companies that I could count that are competing for this kind of business. So we see the addressable market is very high with the kind of expertise that we have shown the kind of implementations that we have done, we always feel that we are a forefront runner in such kind of projects.

[Ramanathan Ramanan, executive]

If I can add, Ramanathan here. As all of you are aware, the government of India has been investing in infrastructure in a very big way across the country. And all of that infrastructure implies that that is an opportunity for smart district, smart towns and smart villages also. And Allied Digital is in a good position to bid for some of the important and large projects in that day. The fact that there are 100 smart cities already identified by the government of India. And out of this, only about 22 have got implemented so far, and in which around 12 are with Allied Digital. That sort of speaks well about the potential as well as the opportunities that Allied Digital has. And those of you who are familiar with the Indian graph, there about 8,000 small towns and cities in the country. And so even if you are expanding from 100 to 200 smart cities, that's going to be a substantial market -- addressable market for the company.

[Paresh Shah, executive]

Yes. Also to add, apart from smart city projects, we have a huge market for SI-based government projects.

So there several projects we won one very recent one, state of UP. So in terms of real estate development in terms of health care, there's major spend that is happening in the government in terms of building infrastructure, digital infrastructure, various applications were built on that. So we are also pretty much eligible and in the race, a lot of SI projects in the government space.

[Manan Vandur, analyst]

Okay. That was really helpful. So you also talked about some around 1,000 towns, I'm not right, 100 cities and 1,000 towns, if I'm not wrong, correct?

[Paresh Shah, executive]

Yes.

[Manan Vandur, analyst]

And the last question, sir. Like around 8 years, 9 years back, we had margins of around 18% to 19%. So do you feel that around in the coming 3 years or something because we'll be having so much traction from the data center side as well as the smart city side and the towns and all of this coming up, we would be reaching around 18%, 19% in the next 3, 4 years. Would that be possible for us?

[Nehal Shah, executive]

So Manan, that is the intent. You are right. We would want to, very soon or very quickly go into the [indiscernible] the project that we have been doing in India. Our absolute dream is to go sometime in future to reach even 20% with the kind of opportunity that can arise from our software business, the last [indiscernible] so if that happens, I think the numbers that you are seeing are pretty much doable. But the main focus would be to reach quickly to mid-teens.

[Manan Vandur, analyst]

Okay. And one last small question, I'll squeeze in. Around 6, 7 players, which you mentioned, okay, for the Smart Cities that competition is there. Could you name a few of them?

[Nehal Shah, executive]

So yes, I already named 3 of them. [indiscernible] is one of them. KEC, NEC, CMS [indiscernible] and maybe some smaller ones, 1 or 2, which I'm not able to recollect now, but...

[Unknown Executive]

I will talk about prominently, I would put [indiscernible] their skill set. -- just recently about 7, 8 years back. Then [indiscernible] company [indiscernible] is there another strong players. Then there are a lot of local players like KEC International [indiscernible] something, which is [indiscernible]. So we don't see them as a great competitor because they are not seeing anywhere else. So these are the kind of leap as far as the competition is concerned.

[Operator]

[Operator Instructions] Next question is from the line of Deepak Korda from Sapphire Capital.

[Unknown Analyst]

So just I wanted to understand when we say our near-term focus is to reach mid-teen kind of a margin. So what's the timeline we are looking at to reach those kind of EBITDA margins?

[Nehal Shah, executive]

If it comes to me, I would want to do it in another 3 or 4 quarters, but to be realistic, depending upon the kind of projects we close on, we would -- I wouldn't want to give a definite timeline, but I would say that our intent is to go towards that by constantly improving and making sure that our costs are under control to make sure that we reach to those kind of levels.

[Unknown Analyst]

So 1 to 2 years, would that be fair timeline?

[Nehal Shah, executive]

Yes, that would be safe and doable thing, I would say.

[Unknown Analyst]

Okay, understood. And my another question is, I mean, this year, I think this first quarter, again, it was a little subdued maybe because of the election also. So the growth was only 6% on a Y-o-Y basis. So how do we see that growth for this year, FY '25 at a [indiscernible].

[Nehal Shah, executive]

So we are targeting to grow as we have grown in our previous years. If you see in the last 4, 5 years, we'll be growing more than 20%. That's the target that we want to keep we feel that is achievable with the kind of pipeline and the customers that we have. The only question arises sometimes the billing spills over to another quarter. And that's the reason you might see a little bit of things happening here or there. But from second quarter onwards, we are pretty confident that our numbers will keep on improving.

[Unknown Analyst]

Okay. So from second quarter onwards, I mean whatever we are targeting in terms of 20% growth would be visible, right, on a Y-o-Y?

[Nehal Shah, executive]

You will see an upward trend for sure from here.

[Operator]

[Operator Instructions] Next question is from the line of [indiscernible] Individual Investor.

[Unknown Attendee]

So we have been targeting INR 1,000 crores revenue for FY '27, right?

[Nehal Shah, executive]

Yes.

[Unknown Attendee]

So like when are we expecting to go at least near INR 200 crores in revenue? Are you targeting this in this year, FY '26?

[Nehal Shah, executive]

200 as in quarterly 200 you are saying?

[Unknown Attendee]

Yes, yes.

[Nehal Shah, executive]

So 200 quarterly typically means INR 8 crores. Our target is to reach to that probably in this year. There is a possibility of the customers in the pipeline that we have, we might even for that as well.

[Unknown Analyst]

Okay. So -- and what about the margin side? Are we expecting similar margin growth like on the same basis?

[Nehal Shah, executive]

I would say, currently, our margin levels are at our base from year on, we should be able to improve and improvements should be seen in the future quarters. since our business that we are in is not a business which is driven quarter-on-quarter basis because most of our customers are, for a longer period, anywhere between 3 to 5 years. We get a lot of opportunities to improve margins as we go more into the customer in the 1 year, 2 year, 3 year, 4 kind of things. So there is a constant need and the content ask to our operations team to make sure that we keep on improving our margins, optimizing costs, getting AI into our executions and also to make sure that we keep on doing a lot of farming in our current customer base. So I'm sure with all these 3 things put together, we should be able to better our margins in the near future.

[Unknown Attendee]

Okay. So like other estimate would be mid-teens can we expect?

[Nehal Shah, executive]

The idea is to reach there as soon as we can is what I'm telling to everyone.

[Operator]

[Operator Instructions] Next follow-up question is from the line of Manan Vandur from Wallfort PMS.

[Manan Vandur, analyst]

Even as we have quite a few lots [indiscernible] of opportunities ahead. I just wanted to understand even as we are going to look into smart cities and smart towns and all of that, are we looking ahead to taking on debt or it will be more through internal accruals? Or how is the [indiscernible]

[Nehal Shah, executive]

So most of the time, we would want to use the [indiscernible] money that we have with us, but we might keep on taking some project funding loans or something for short term where we would utilize them for doing the implementation and would be able to pay them off after that. Gopal, if you could just add to this.

[Gopal Tiwari, executive]

Yes. So far as working capital funding is concerned, that we are more than sufficient having that. Only thing is project funding in case we win further large projects, we might have to go for a project starting, which will be short term in nature. I mean the dealership could be 9 to 12 months period. So otherwise, there's no such issue with funding [indiscernible] because companies almost -- I mean it's not debt free already, and we are having sufficient cash flow with us to take care of any large projects coming in future.

[Operator]

[Operator Instructions] The question is from the line of Ashish from JM Financial Mutual Fund.

[Unknown Analyst]

During the entire smart city play towns and all, what kind of incremental investments you guys would be to make, say, because it seems to be a 3-year story, with entire smart city and all. So the next 1 year, how much are you planning to spend across?

[Nehal Shah, executive]

So investment, mostly, Ashish, would be done on the skill sets. We would be making most of our people ready for those kind of projects that we've [indiscernible] coming. Our quoting is absolutely intact. We haven't lost any of our [indiscernible] members in the last 6, 7 years. And we are very confident that most of the times, whenever we add on to any smart cities, it is most to do with adding up of more skill sets from a delivery perspective, depending upon the city of the state that we are at. So those are the kind of investments that we see from a delivery perspective. From the skill set perspective, there is a constant search for talent, and there is a constant upskilling and reskilling happening at our end to make sure that we are future-ready most of this talent is announced. So the good part is that whenever we design or we do the solutionizing, the core team is completely announced. We do not outsource any of our projects or any of our core designing to any third party. So that's why we've been successful in delivering such -- all the cities that we have done so far.

[Paresh Shah, executive]

Just to add on what Nehal talked about, even in technologies, we would be looking into making sure we bring in some expertise in terms of creating our own IP and innovation solutions as we have done several smart cities. We want to make sure that we can become kind of reuse a lot of our talent and solutions design that we have done. So that could be another opportunity where we will invest into innovative solutions as well as managing certain start-ups where we can kind of help them to build new solutions that are required for the smart cities.

[Unknown Analyst]

And the entire revenue of Smart City and all, would you guys also be able to do security part, I mean this cybersecurity type of thing?

[Nehal Shah, executive]

Absolutely. Asha, we are doing most of the cybersecurity stuff in some of the smart cities that come to us. It becomes a no banner for us to go and do that. It is a part of most of the RFPs as well, where we have to deploy and we have to manage the cybersecurity for...

[Unknown Executive]

Let me tell you for that matter, cybersecurity is a major vertical for us. And we have been focusing a lot on cybersecurity, while we are speaking right now. There is a section which is going on where our head security is giving [indiscernible] to [indiscernible] and to several CSO in 1 of the [indiscernible] as today. And we have a stock established since 2007, where many few people had understood what it stopped. So since then, we are into this game of [indiscernible] government projects or enterprise. So we are quite active in cybersecurity.

[Unknown Analyst]

Okay. And just to understand your business model better, do you guys have to pitch [indiscernible] via our system integrator or you have your own BD team and then you pitch for project?

[Nehal Shah, executive]

[indiscernible] We are the indicators. Most of this -- so how does this project for most of the state governments opened a consultant, which is one of the big [indiscernible] PwC or KPMGs of the world, and they will put out an RFP and system integrators like us or master system integrators like us would win a bid for them and get projects.

[Unknown Executive]

So we have a policy since many years to completely self line. And everything that we do, we do not want to keep anybody between us and our clients except for the very, very low-end activity like pooling cable or directing all thing, which we might also sit to somebody and they were kind of outsourced to some. But otherwise, we are completely self-reliant when it comes to high in the [indiscernible] to provide solutions, and that's how we have built the organization to be self reliant.

[Operator]

Next question is from the line of [indiscernible] Individual Investor.

[Unknown Attendee]

Am I audible?

[Unknown Executive]

Yes.

[Unknown Attendee]

Sir. So recently, India is undergoing any attacks on cybersecurity front. So do you think -- you guys are working with governments across the nation, do you think that opens an opportunity for our cybersecurity segment to get some business from them?

[Unknown Executive]

Yes, unprecedented, and we are very active in cybersecurity space, but the kind of [indiscernible] not only in India, across the globe, day-in-day-out we keep seeing the new threat coming. So we have a team who will understand the real 0 hours kind of threat. At the moment, our [indiscernible] our people will be able to identify that the root cause of that. So we have a specialized team to understand, but no one can 100% driven that, but we have an expertise once the threat is detected, we know how to combat that.

By the way our people have worked extensively during that Microsoft and Cloud [indiscernible] Why don't Paresh talk about that, what our team has wonderful job that we have.

[Paresh Shah, executive]

Yes. So there were some major disruptions, as you know, about close to a week back. and where every large organization who had a major investment into CrowdStrike had to face a lot of issues and there are major disruptions across the globe, both in Indian customers, we see U.S. customers. So we basically had a lot of exercise to do on that, and we basically not only guided our customers to take up next steps and pull in the right patches many -- like we also had banks yesterday, I was talking to our team. There are banks who suffered most and where they had a lot of custom software and we had to kind of put in emergency people to make sure that the team kind of can clarify and clear the issues and put the right patch for CrowdStrike. So yes, we have been pretty vigilant into this, and our agility has been very well appreciated by the customer, okay? Even in Azure, there was just a day before there was a major breakdown. There was a spike. And of course, it was not our security, but there was a performance-related issue. We were able to quickly act on it and kind of support our customers. So we see this trend coming year and there because cybersecurity is a continuous threat, and it is going to be always in demand, and we are well positioned. And we also see good traction coming forward from a lot of our customers for doing proactive protection in deploying large [indiscernible] platforms on cybersecurity to prevent major issues.

[Unknown Attendee]

Okay. Okay. And one follow-up on this. Sir, do we own some IP in cybersecurity or we are just using products of different with companies?

[Paresh Shah, executive]

Yes. So I won't say we own IP, but we have our own methodology and platform. So we have our Digital Desk platform, for example, right, which is used for a lot of IT infrastructure management. One of the recent customers that we have won, it is a single integrated platform, which will integrate a lot of your services, IT services, infrastructure services. It is more of an ESM enterprise service management. Cybersecurity integration is also part of it...

[Unknown Executive]

I believe your question is whether we use our own platform or we use third-party platform? Am I right?

[Unknown Attendee]

Yes.

[Unknown Executive]

Let me tell you, we use the proven platforms, the world well known. One of them is Microsoft and the other one [indiscernible] about.

[Paresh Shah, executive]

So we use multiple platforms to leverage cybersecurity service. You obviously -- as I mentioned, Microsoft, [indiscernible] IBM QRadar also. So we have a lot of technology. So we are kind of -- can pick up the technology [indiscernible]. And we actually use our own methodology to make sure that we can give a very holistic solutions. Cybersecurity is all about providing holistic solutions to customers. and that's where we build a more orchestrated platform around it.

[Operator]

[Operator Instructions] The next follow-up question is from the line of Manan Vandur from Wallfort PMS.

Can you keep the mouth piece, please?

[Manan Vandur, analyst]

If you could explain why there was like a flattish growth over FY '23 to FY '24 in the revenues, you can, please?

[Nehal Shah, executive]

So typically, Manan, the reason for -- if you look at the overall consolidated revenue, there was a slight sluggishness that you will see or a flat growth. That was mostly to do with the the U.S. macroeconomic which was not very, very customer friendly at that point of time. But if you see the India revenues, the India revenues grew close to about more than 30%, 35%. So in the U.S. at that point of time due to the war that was going on between Ukraine and Russia, there are a lot of uncertainties. Some of our customers had budget issues. Some of -- we lost some of our customers to their in-house [indiscernible] of the business in [indiscernible] rather than going to a vendor. So those are the kind of things that have happened at that point of time, which eventually you have [indiscernible] growth over the year.

[Manan Vandur, analyst]

Okay. So the current situation also going on and [ Israel ] and Palestine side. So do we have any clients in that Middle Eastern part, which might affect us?

[Nehal Shah, executive]

No, we don't have any clients [indiscernible] most of our clients are typically in the U.S. and the European region.

[Manan Vandur, analyst]

Okay. And if you could just tell me the [indiscernible] you have 2 breakup, right, solution and service. So if you could tell me the margins for solution and service individually, that would be helpful.

[Nehal Shah, executive]

Manan, typically solution -- there are two lines of business that we have kept things very easy. Services line of revenue means recurring revenue. any revenue, which is recurring in nature. Any contracts that we signed for 3 years, 5 years and we have either month-on-month or quarter-over-quarter billing, you put all of those revenue in the services [indiscernible] for the typically the is revenues are better. They are in the mid-20s to -- I'm talking about GMV, right? Gross margins are in the mid-20s to late 20s. Solutions business is the other side, our onetime projects. Those are the projects where we do implementation of the smart city projects or do any migration projects, or projects we are doing store expansions for some of our customers. So any billing or that we get, which is for a shorter period of time goes under solutions, which is mostly one-off -- onetime kind of a billing. So those revenues are put into the solutions bucket. In solutions bucket, margins are a little lower because in some of the solution projects, there is a that are product that we need to use, typically in the smart city kind of business projects. So that's why we see a little bit of lesser margin. The margins could be in the range of mid-teens to kind [indiscernible] things, I would say.

[Manan Vandur, analyst]

Okay. And these were gross margins, right?

[Nehal Shah, executive]

Yes, mid-teens, upper teens is something the gross margins.

[Operator]

Thank you very much. I now hand the conference over to the management for closing comments.

[Nehal Shah, executive]

Thank you for your participation and engagement during the call. If you have any additional questions or require further information about our company, please reach out to our team of contact CDR India. We look forward to interacting again in the next quarter. Thanks a lot.

[Operator]

On behalf of Allied Digital Services Limited, that concludes this conference. Thank you for joining us, and you may now disconnect your lines.