Aurionpro Solutions Ltd

NSE:AURIONPRO

Earnings Call Analysis

Impressive Growth and Profitable Targets Set

In the first nine months of FY '24, the company's revenue rose to INR 641 crore, with EBITDA and PAT growing by 37% and 45%, respectively. The third-quarter results were strong, with a 37% increase in revenue and a 45% rise in PAT. Guidance indicates comfortable EBITDA margins of 21-22% and PAT margins of 15-16% going forward. This strategy supports the company's robust R&D investments, which have risen from 4-4.5% to over 8% of total revenue as they chase global market leadership without capitalizing R&D expenses.

Striking Growth amidst Disciplined Execution

Aurionpro Solutions has demonstrated impressive growth, with Q3 FY24 marking a period of robust growth momentum, characterized by well-disciplined execution and focus across the company. The revenue during the 9 months of FY24 amounted to INR 641 crore, with EBITDA and PAT showing a growth of 35% and 37%, respectively. The third quarter alone saw the company's revenue soar by 37% year-on-year to INR 231 crore with EBITDA and PAT following suit, showing increases of 38% and 45%, respectively. This growth trend is seen as sustainable and is expected to continue, possibly even outperforming the company's targets outlined in its Vision 2030.

Expansion and Strategic Partnerships

The Banking and FinTech sectors have been key growth drivers, with new order wins and the strategic acquisitions of Omnifin and Interact DX which are now fully integrated, expected to further propel this segment. Additionally, Technology Innovation Group (TIG) has maintained steady performance through significant partnerships with companies like Mastercard and Vix. This segment's presence has expanded globally with new wins in Australia, Mexico, and incremental additions to other markets. These achievements underscore the company's capability and dedication which extends beyond the robust financial digits reported.

Optimistic Horizon

As Aurionpro Solutions approaches the end of FY24, the confidence in meeting or even surpassing the year's performance targets is high. This confidence springs from their capability to execute diligently—building industry-leading offerings and engaging in groundbreaking R&D, proactive M&A, and strategic partnerships. With an order book exceeding INR 900 crore and the largest ever demand and deal pipeline, the company's position to sustain its growth trajectory is very well fortified.

Leveraging an Expanding Product Portfolio

The company has been expanding its product portfolio with an aim to deepen its penetration into the banking and financial services sector, particularly in its home market of India. This has been accomplished through both organic growth and strategic acquisitions, such as Omnifin and Interact DX, allowing for enhanced service offerings and an increased share of clients' wallets. Aurionpro Solutions is capitalizing on opportunities in both its banking segment, where it is aiming for a significant market share, and in the transit segment, where it has built what's believed to be one of the most integrated end-to-end offering stacks in the industry.

Earnings Call Transcript 2024-Q3

[Operator]

Ladies and gentlemen, good day, and welcome to the investors' call for Aurionpro Solutions Limited to discuss the Q3 and 9 months FY '24 results. [Operator Instructions] Please note that this conference is being recorded. I now hand the conference over to Ms. Aashvi Shah from Adfactors PR, Investor Relations. Thank you, and over to you, ma'am.

[Aashvi Shah]

Thank you. Good afternoon, everyone. On behalf of the company, I welcome you all to the earnings conference call for Q3 and 9M FY '24. Today on this call, we have with us from the management, Mr. Ashish Rai, Vice Chairman and CEO; Mr. Vipul Parmar, Chief Financial Officer; and Mr. Ninad Kelkar, Company Secretary.

We will begin the call with brief opening remarks from the management followed by a Q&A session. Please note that certain statements made during this call may be forward-looking in nature. Such forward-looking statements are subject to certain risks and uncertainties that could cause the actual results or projections to differ materially from those statements. Aurionpro Solutions will not be in any way responsible for any actions taken based on such statements and undertakes no obligation to publicly update these forward-looking statements.

I would now like to hand over the call to Mr. Ashish Rai for his opening remarks. Thank you, and over to you, sir.

[Ashish Rai, executive]

Thanks, Aashvi. Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to this earnings call for Q3 FY '24. I'm sure by now you all received the investor deck, and I hope you've had an opportunity to review it. We're, of course, quite pleased to see the disciplined execution and focus of our teams across the globe in Q3 and right through the year.

We have sustained the growth momentum across both our segments and pretty much all the major business lines throughout the 9 months ending in Q3 FY '24. The revenue for 9 months FY '24 stood at INR 641 crore. EBITDA is at INR 141 crores and PAT is at INR 103 crores, which is essentially 37%, 35% and 37% growth for each of those 3 numbers, right, compared to the same period last year.

So the 9 months has been pretty solid. These results underscore the robust growth momentum that we are experiencing, slightly exceeding our projections and provides a solid reinforcement for the attainability, the achievability of our performance targets for Vision 2030 that we've outlined before.

Allow me to summarize the quarterly financial performance for your quick reference. Revenue for Q3 stood at INR 231 crore. That's a growth of 37% year-on-year. EBITDA for Q3 stood at INR 51 crores as compared to INR 37 crores in Q3 of FY '23, which is a growth of 38% on a year-on-year basis, the EBITDA margin was at slightly above 22%.

The PAT for Q3 FY '24 stood at INR 38 crores which is a growth of 45% on a year-on-year basis. PAT margins are slightly above 16%, as you have seen.

Moving on to the businesses. Banking and FinTech grew impressively, and we expect this momentum to continue in the coming quarters with the new order wins that we've announced recently. We also announced 2 strategic acquisitions for Banking and FinTech, Omnifin as well as Interact DX. These have now been fully integrated, and we expect them to also contribute strongly to driving the growth in this segment going forward. The performance of Technology Innovation Group remained steady with healthy traction and deal activity happening in the transit segment.

We signed significant strategic partnerships in this segment, which we've announced with Mastercard and with Vix, which will help us consolidate our position in the existing markets as well as allow us to expand in newer markets we've not been presented.

We've been steadily expanding our presence in markets across the globe for transit with further wins in Australia, Mexico as well as incremental additions in our other existing markets, right? So TIG, again, continues to deliver and execute very, very well.

The impressive performance in Q3 and over the previous quarters is really the result of the capability, the focus and dedication of our product and delivery teams across the globe. Our numbers just don't come close to capturing the sheer effort, persistence and engineering focus that it takes to solve the really, really hard problems, our engineering and delivery teams tackle every day.

We are really delighted that we have one of the most talented and dedicated teams in this business today. And with every passing day, we are able to attract more of the best and the brightest in this industry to come and join us in our mission. I feel very, very good about that.

We fully expect our growth trend to continue as demand continues to be very buoyant across most of our key segments in the market, whether it's lending, transaction banking, cloud and data centers or transit payments. We are also seeing significant collaboration with other global tech majors in terms of co-engineering solutions, we've announced that from time to time, and bringing these solutions to markets across the globe.

We are sharply focused as always on continuing to enhance our sales channel, our delivery and as well as R&D capabilities to allow us to capitalize on the significant opportunity in front of us for each of our key business lines. As we approach the end of FY '24, we feel confident in meeting or exceeding our guided performance targets for the year. Our capability to achieve our goals is driven by strong and disciplined execution in building industry-leading offerings through cutting-edge ground-up R&D that we are very good at doing as well as through proactive M&A and strategic partnerships where it makes sense.

Our order book now exceeds INR 900 crores. Demand and deal pipeline is the largest it's ever been. We have the trust of our clients and our partners, and we are incredibly lucky to have one of the most talented teams in the industry coming into work every day and playing to win.

We, of course, can't control every variable that affects us but looking at the picture as a whole, we feel we are very well positioned to sustain our growth trajectory in the upcoming quarters.

Okay, with that, I'll close, and I look forward to an engaging Q&A. To you, Aashvi.

[Operator]

[Operator Instructions] We have our first question from the line of Vimal Jamnadas Gohil from Alchemy Capital Management.

[Vimal Gohil, analyst]

Sir, my first question -- and by the way, congratulations on a very good set of numbers. My first question would be on how -- on mining existing clients. And this is regarding the -- this is regarding the Indian Banking and Financial Services. Now what I want to understand is from the suite of products that we have, how many -- what is the penetration of each of our products to, on a per client basis? As in what I want to understand is what is the extent to which we can mine our existing clients?

[Ashish Rai, executive]

Yes. Vimal, thanks. So good question. Look, in terms of -- I'm not quite clear whether you mentioned India specifically. But look, for us, we are building out a fairly broad portfolio, which over time should allow us to go for a fairly wide share of the clients' wallet, especially in the banking and financial services space. And we continue to add products, as you say, we already do lending, which is useful to a bank. We were strong on the corporate side. We added a pretty strong LMS recently through the Omnifin acquisition that allows us more to sell. We're strong on the transaction banking side. We added in Interact DX as well to us. So we can increasingly service and go after a much bigger share of wallet.

The way the software -- banking software business works, typically, you drive some level of growth from the existing base. So for us to probably grow at -- on the banking side, probably grow at about, let's say, 12% to 15%, you don't really need new logos because you're able to add to the existing base that we have typically to grow at the 35%, 37% rate that we are growing at right now, you do need to steadily keep on adding new logos.

So for us, we believe there is a huge opportunity for us to sort of, for example, go after the lending base in Southeast Asia through with Interact DX, with Omnifin, with transaction banking, go with the Indian banks with a wider portfolio of offerings, pretty much the full bouquet as far as India is concerned, it's our home market, we want to play the full portfolio here, right? So that is banking.

On the transit side, we have built out what we believe is one of the most integrated end-to-end offering stacks in the space, and we will mine the business that we can get pretty much across the spectrum, right? So we already, in some cases, provide partial solutions. We will expand that out into the full chain, but we have the ability to play for the -- for a very, very large share of the wallet, including payment systems and et cetera, where we've applied for licenses and have been receiving some positive feedback, right?

So overall, we will. I think traditionally, it's been a smaller share for us. But increasingly, especially in the Indian space, we work now with pretty much all the large clients, and we are quite significantly expanding our footprint in pretty much most big banks in India. I hope that helps.

[Vimal Gohil, analyst]

Yes. And sir, on the same thing, if you can just give us some highlights on what is -- how much does SaaS contribute to, in the overall scheme of things? And how much do licensing revenues contribute to our total revenues?

[Ashish Rai, executive]

Yes. So I'm assuming by SaaS, you mean software. That is -- so we kind of specifically declare that as a reportable number across quarters, and it will go up and down depending on the licenses we are selling in the quarter, but that's roughly -- I would say 55% to 60% revenue is either software or goes around the software very, very closely tied to it, right?

I mean, SaaS, specifically, I don't like the label because in my head, it's just a progression of pricing models, right? So most large banks for large solutions still continue to prefer term licenses, which we sell. We do sell subscriptions and SaaS where it makes sense and where it makes sense, we also sell pure consumption-based models, right? So I would not put a label on the software saying it's enterprise license or it's term license or it's SaaS or it's consumption-based, we would -- depending on the segment that the client will choose the pricing that makes sense to us.

[Vimal Gohil, analyst]

Right. If I may, just one question on profitability. While you guys have come a long way, what is the number that the group is currently comfortable with where we can balance out growth as well as margins? So any sense that you can give us there?

[Ashish Rai, executive]

Yes. So Vimal, I have mentioned this in the previous earnings calls. So at the moment, our planning number for EBITDA is 21% to 22%, and our planning number for PAT is 15% to 16%, right? I think in the previous calls, I said it's 20% to 22% on the EBITDA and 15% to 16% on PAT. We feel very comfortable with those numbers right now at 20-plus EBITDA, we are already probably among the top few most profitable players in Indian tech. We've been clocking that pretty effectively for the last, I would say, 3, 4 years, and we intend to keep EBITDA at around those levels.

Our intention is not to grow the EBITDA beyond 22% in the short to midterm, and there is a logic for it. Why we say that is the following: as the software business grows, the economics keeps on improving, and we see that in our profitability as it comes in. But we are a very, very R&D-driven company.

To a very large extent with some very minor small exceptions, we have a policy not to capitalize the R&D expense. And what is happening is as the business grows in size and as the economics improve, we pour the excess back into R&D. So the R&D number, for example, has climbed up from 4%, 4.5% of the top line 3 years back to almost about 8%-plus of the top line right now, right?

So the goal would be keep the EBITDA steady at between 20% and 22%. We believe that gives us a good profitable model and pour the excess as the economics increase back into the R&D. The logic being very simple, we are going for leadership in large global segments. These segments have very, very large demand that we can go after, but it needs us to continue spending on R&D to keep spinning off new products.

You don't see the value of those assets in any accounting report because we don't capitalize. But we believe that is what adds the most value to Aurionpro shareholder as we go forward, right?

So to summarize, 20% to 22% on the EBITDA, 15% to 16% on the PAT, short to medium term, that's the plan.

[Operator]

[Operator Instructions] We have our next question from the line of Mr. Ahan from Vimana Capital.

[Ahan Rajgor, analyst]

Ashish, congrats on a fantastic set of results. Just had a couple of questions around the order book that you mentioned. You mentioned you have an order book of over INR 900 crores. What's the division between the banking side and the TIG side? And going forward, I think you just mentioned on the growing R&D. So do you plan to invest in R&D? If so, how do you plan to expand R&D there? Just these 2 questions.

[Ashish Rai, executive]

Okay. Good. Thanks. So the order book, the split INR 900 crores is roughly split 40% for Banking and FinTech and 60% for TIG. It's been roughly the same split over the quarter the last few times. Obviously, the overall order book number has changed, but the mix has actually not changed much. And that's, I think, primarily got to do with the project's duration and the size -- banking is primarily software-driven and shorter duration contracts, while TIG is more execution consumption-driven and hence the change.

So that's roughly the mix, 40% for banking and 60% for TIG. R&D, just to flesh that out a little bit more, we are extremely extremely R&D-driven as an organization, right? So we have been building out the products. Where we are on banking software by and large, the core products we went through a fresh build over the last 3 years. So the core build is more or less done, but we will continue to spend on incremental R&D, especially as we go after newer markets, and there is always a little bit of development to be done around making the product fit for purpose for a specific market.

On the transit side, we've invested a lot in terms of R&D, both on the software side as well as on the hardware side, right? So we -- for example, a few months back, we announced -- we built out our own EMV-certified card reader and the associated devices along with a ground-up fresh R&D. Took us 2.5 years to build it. We are the only firm in India to launch an EMV-certified card reader and it significantly improves the economics of the electronic hardware that we use on the transit side.

So we'll continue to spend on R&D to keep -- to try and become the most efficient player at every single value point when it comes to transit payment side. So by and large, we will remain R&D-focused, we are pouring in -- something to the tune of, I would say, 8%, a little bit above or below in terms of the R&D spend in the firm, and that has climbed up over the years, right?

So 3 years back, it was probably INR 40 crores, INR 45 crores. Now it's probably close to INR 75 crore, INR 80 crores, right? So there's a significant amount of R&D that we'll keep pouring in into the enterprise.

[Operator]

[Operator Instructions] We have our next question from the line of Deepak Poddar from Sapphire Capital.

[Deepak Poddar, analyst]

Sir, I have got 3 questions. Now first of all, what sort of the inorganic aspirations we have in terms of growth that we see? Secondly, on the tax rate front, so what sort of tax rate we see? I mean, currently, I think it's in the range of 15%, 20%. And why is our tax rate low? And thirdly, on the growth part, how do we see overall company as a whole growing over the next 2, 3 years in terms of CAGR, would help? Yes.

[Ashish Rai, executive]

Okay. So thanks. Inorganic aspiration, we have -- so we've sort of always used M&A as well as some sort of strategic partnerships as a part of the strategy. The way we approach it is the following: we typically -- so when we started our pivot into being a global products and platforms players 4 years back or roughly 3.5 years back, we chose a few segments.

For each of those segments, we had a blueprint in terms of the solution footprint that we want on those segments to be able to capitalize on the demand that comes from it. Now these are typically segment like, for example, closed loop, open loop transformation on the transit side; the digital transformation on the corporate loan books on the lending side, et cetera, right? So we said, okay, this is where the demand is. This is where I want to be in terms of the solution and the ability to compete and go after the leadership globally in that specific space.

We obviously did not have the full footprint that we want in the space to begin with, nor do we have the full footprint right now. So where it makes sense, we always -- we will always -- at every point where you need to do something, there is always a choice whether you want to build or you want to buy, right? And in some cases, it will make sense for us in terms of just the return on capital that we can drive, the time to market that we have and the window that we have for the opportunity, it would make sense for us to go and do M&A, and we will go into that M&A.

We announced a couple of those in the past 2 quarters, and we will continue to -- every single value point that we want to expand on, we'll continue to keep asking ourselves, is it something we want to build or is there an opportunity for us to go and partner with some other firm and go and acquire to acquire the capability?

So that is one we've done that in the past. We'll continue to do that. And we've got a fairly strong track record of acquisitions that we've made. Our lending solution came from Integro, which is a Singapore-based company that we bought has done exceptionally well. It's a leader in Asia in that space.

Our transit, a large part of our transit stack -- a significant part of our transit stack came out of SC Soft in Singapore that we acquired and Toshi out in India recently. Omnifin, Interact DX; acquisitions we've announced are doing very, very well for us. So we'll continue to use it.

We'll continue to use it where it makes sense for us and the Aurionpro shareholders. The second part, tax rate -- sorry, so -- and where we will acquire it also in addition to the solution footprint is, in some cases, market access, right? So we do want to be a global player.

We will expand the solution footprint through acquisitions like the ones we've done, and I mentioned, we may also decide to do it for market access at some point, right? So those are the decision points and we'll continue to play it as we go.

Tax rate, we typically plan for something of the order of 17% to 18% in terms of tax rate. I think last quarter, it was at about 15% or thereabouts. And what really happens is for us because we are a global firm and again, Singapore, especially, we had a significant amount of tax relief; Dubai as well, we are in a tax-free zone. So overall, it nets out to, I think, something in the range of 17% to 18%, but it will go up and down depending on the mix of the business, one, between global and India; and second, between various parts of Global in Dubai and Singapore.

There was a third part. So third part was our growth, right? So you were saying, okay, what do we expect in terms of growth going forward over the next 2 to 3 years? So this is how we think about growth. We are -- so for, let's say, last 4-odd years, I think we've grown add a CAGR of something of the order of 32% or 33%.

We typically use over medium- to long-term planning horizons, a 25% to 30% growth as a benchmark for our planning. We believe we are going after very, very large segments where obviously the demand that can be tapped is very significant compared to our current size. I mean we are playing in mostly double-digit billion dollar global segments where Aurionpro as a whole is, I don't know what -- slightly over $100 billion. So you are a very, very small player in very large segments, but we'll also happen to be one of the most competitive players with big ambitions and with an extremely competitive product stack, and we happen to be one of the most efficient producers around, right?

So we will win share. What does that mean in terms of growth in the next 2 to 3 years? I think right now from what we see for pretty much most of our business lines, demand far outstrips what we can do. So we are -- I would say, we'll continue to plan at, let's say, 25% to 30% order growth number, but that doesn't mean every business line will grow at that level, for some business lines.

So like TIG as a whole has been growing at 50%-plus for the last 3 years, right? Because there's just a significant demand for both transit as well as the cloud and data center business, right? So we'll continue to maximize what we can get. I think the opportunity size for each of the segments is just very, very large. And I would not really guide that far forward, right?

But I would say we'll typically plan over short, medium, long term, say 25% to 30% out range. I think the one thing to think about is this: so if it is a pure services business, it's usually a very simple call of demand and supply, right? If I can find demand to grow at 50%, I'll typically hire to grow at 50%, right?

The product business tends to be slightly more complex. There's a lot more moving parts and there is a risk to pushing the pedal too hard because ultimately, what matters in the business is delivery reputation, which we have a stellar reputation, we intend to keep.

And we feel that, that 25% to 30% is the right level to plan to be able to continue delivering client success and continue gaining share. So you have to play for the long term in this business and not try to sort of maximize the short term. Hope that makes sense?

[Deepak Poddar, analyst]

Yes, absolutely. And I think it answers all my queries. All the best.

[Ashish Rai, executive]

Thank you.

[Operator]

[Operator Instructions] We have our next question from the line of Sahil Sharma from Columbus Capital.

[Unknown Analyst]

Congratulations for a wonderful quarter, sir. Sir, for the last year or so, our order book was hovering around INR 800 crore. And in this quarter, it has expanded to INR 900 crore. So we've added orders around INR 320 crores-or-so this quarter. And this is -- this seems to be a step jump from the last quarter where you were adding roughly INR 200 crore-or-so of others.

So sir, just wanted to understand if you can share what has led to this increase? Any kind of qualitative analysis on geography, vertical, if possible, client names.

[Ashish Rai, executive]

Okay. Thanks, Sahil. Look, I think you made a very good observation on the order book. So you obviously looked at it very closely. So there are several sort of aspects to this worth totally getting into. One is the way we look at our orders.

Typically, most of the order book that we declare is executable, I would say, 70%-plus of it is executable over the next 12 months. It's just the nature of business that we do. And also, we typically don't trap long term, for example, AMC style numbers in our order books, right? So we typically add it for the next 12 months and we'll leave it at that.

So what that normally does is, we are consuming -- we are adding and consuming at about the same pace. And you're totally right, for the last few quarters, it's been almost exactly the same, give or take, plus or minus 5% at most. What has been happening to the business, however, is the following: one is our product builds for each of the major pieces of software as well as a large number of pieces on the hardware side as well, our product builds are largely done over the last 2, 3 quarters.

And we have started selling in sort of a much more significant way than in the past. Second thing, and I've mentioned this in the previous earnings calls, we've really expanded our sales channel. It's a much, much stronger sales channel than, let's say, 3 quarters back. Typically, when it comes to sales productivity, sales cycles for most part of our business is 12 to 18 months.

So it takes you 3 or 4 quarters to actually see the effect of adding on sales guide. It doesn't matter what the quality of that sales team is, good or bad, both results, you start seeing only in 3 or 4 quarters, and that's now starting to play out.

So the pipeline that we have today is significantly, significantly larger for lending, for transaction banking, for transit and for cloud and data center, right? So those 4 lines have a much more significant sales pipeline than we have had, let's say, 4 quarters back.

Second, since the product builds are largely done and our products are very competitive now, our win rates have also climbed up, at least on the banking software side, and I think they probably remain steady on transit and [ DC ], which is already pretty good.

So by and large, we've got a bigger pipe, we've got a better conversion, so that adds to the order book. The last aspect I didn't cover was also the size of the orders, especially on the banking side that we are going after now is significantly larger than what it used to be. And that will also increasingly reflect in the size of the order book on the banking side, especially, right?

Because we just -- there were size of deals we are not going after that we both have the balance sheet now as well as the appetite to go after and the products to go and compete well, right? So we've announced some of those wins in the last quarter, we'll announce some more, so bigger pipe, higher win rates, the products are a lot more competitive than we have.

And a lot of the rebuilding we've done, now things are just much more settled, so the machine is sort of firing all cylinders.

[Unknown Analyst]

Great, sir. Sir, in my next question, I wanted to understand, sir, we have announced that we might do a fund raise for up to INR 650 crores. Sir, just wanted to get your thoughts on whether it would significantly dilute existing shareholders? And also given that this is a large fund raise, what are we planning to do with this amount? And what kind of utilization are we planning?

[Ashish Rai, executive]

So Sahil, you're right, the board recommended and we obviously filed the part about the fundraise. We don't yet have the shareholders' approval for it. And as and when we file the placement documents, et cetera, you will get all the details around it. At the moment, we're still pending shareholder approval on that one.

Just the broad picture on the enterprise, what I can paint is, we do see -- so while we've been growing strong organically, I think we do see the opportunity to deploy a much larger amount of capital in the enterprise and continue to drive the high return on capital that we've seen over the last, let's say, 3, 4 years, right?

So we do see that opportunity. As and when the placement document is out, I think you will have the details.

[Unknown Analyst]

Great, sir. Just the last question from my side, sir. 90%-or-so of our revenue is coming from Asia and Pacific region and roughly 8% from USA. So sir, one thing I was wondering is basically, whether in FY '25, '26, '27, when can we see the USA revenue ramping up significantly?

And given that we are building primarily for Indian and Asian clients right now in the sense of the costing and all, still, we have a 20%, 22% EBITDA margin despite spending 8% on R&D. So given all of that, when we are cross-selling or selling these products to the American clients, can we expect better economics or better margins? Or would they be roughly similar due to the competitive intensity?

[Ashish Rai, executive]

Yes. So -- yes, so there are 2 parts to that question, right? Look, one is U.S. is less than 10% of the firm's revenue at the moment. And I think the reason for that, apart from the fact that we've not focused on U.S. in the past in a very organized way. I think the other reason for that is, it is very hard for products to break into. So obviously, as we all know, the services players are pretty big in U.S., and that's a straightforward arbitrage play. Product really needs a lot more in terms of sort of adoption to the market, local references, all that stuff.

So we are being very measured in how we expand. We are certainly focused on it. whether that percentage will change, I don't know in the near term, right? I think we want it to change. I'm pretty sure in absolute numbers, you'll see the growth. So that -- the dollar number, we feel positive about being able to grow at a good clip.

Whether that percentage itself will change depends on whether the rest of the world slows down, right? At the moment, I don't see that. So the India side of the business is also growing rapidly. I mentioned this in the previous calls, my aim was to -- so right now, it's 60% of our business is in India and 40% is outside of India.

My aim that I said in the past was to at least move it to a 50-50, at least balance it out. And while that has been the ambition and we've expanded on all fronts, expand the sales channel, expand the partnerships, all that stuff, I think the challenge for that is India still continues to grow at a much faster rate, right? So I think the percentage moving is a function of -- if U.S. grows 40% and the Rest of the World, including India for us also, grow at 50%, the percentage is not going to go up, right?

But in absolute terms, we feel very, very good about it, and we will keep on expanding. The question on the margins is, look, the realizations in U.S. and Europe are certainly higher on an average than realizations in Asia. But the product business in Asia, as you scale also is a fairly profitable business. A lot of that economics gets driven not so much from Asia versus Europe, a lot of that economics gets driven by scale, right?

So as our software business scales, its ability to extract margins as well as the ability to give capital back to the enterprise will normally improve. And that's a lever which we've used for our growth steadily, right, even while we operate at 90% out of Asia. So I think to the large extent, that one has to keep that point in mind with scale comes economics, regardless of the market that you are in when you're selling software, especially.

U.S., I would expect realizations are typically 50% more like-for-like in U.S. and the developed parts of Europe. But then the cost structure would also go up, right? So you may not -- in the year that we make progress or in the first 2 years that we make progress, you may actually not notice the difference in economics because the cost structure goes up before the economic kicks in.

I mean that's my thought. I think by and large, short to medium term, I would say, expect the firm to hold to its planning guidelines of 20% to 22% on EBITDA, and I would not really look at -- looking at improving it.

[Operator]

[Operator Instructions] We have our next question from the line of Varun Mohanraj from [ Staniva ] Capital.

[Unknown Analyst]

So in the past, we've told that our sales cycle in the Banking and Financial vertical is close to 18 months. So can you throw some color on the product lifetime in this banking space? And also the split in percentage-wise for the R&D spend, which goes to the -- goes into the newer products and the person that goes into the improvisation of older products?

[Ashish Rai, executive]

Okay. So look, the banking software lifetime typically, I would expect that to be in the range of 20-odd years. So the software that we sell, right, it's important to understand, one, we sell lending software, that is a core business for any bank, typically it's sold to large banks, and they would move to it after a lot of thought.

Once you moved into it, it's very -- it's highly mission-critical. It's very, very difficult for a bank to move away if they're live and in production with the system. So with most of our customers -- we rarely see attrition with live customers in the, let's say, corporate loan origination space, same thing in the transaction banking software space.

These are mission-critical systems. Once the bank is in, they would typically buy it with a mindset to stay with it for a very long time, and that's been our experience. Typically, banks don't go away, I would say forever. But if you were to put a number, probably 15 to 20 years at least.

The other question about new product versus incremental improvement. So look, typically, we don't really -- so most of the R&D we are doing is in the offering stacks that we have mentioned, right? So lending, transaction banking, transit, some amount in data center now, we are productizing some offerings and payments as well, a little bit of R&D.

We typically don't class small improvements as R&D. So it would normally be a net new product that we are building out. But you can probably consider most of what we do as incremental sort of additional product inside the same product segment, right? So we're not building out like in a completely random net new area.

But if we -- if we build lending software, we build one more additional module of that software, that is what will count as R&D, right? If we were doing minor improvements or bug fixing and stuff like that, that typically would not be R&D. Similarly, on the hardware side, typically, it would be a net new product that we're building out, like the card reader I mentioned or the payment devices or things like that.

So that's how we really look at R&D. I'm not sure if I answered the question, probably I'll go one down. Does that make sense or were you asking something else?

[Unknown Analyst]

No, no. I think I got it. So my second question is regarding the TIG segment. So we've told in the past that we concentrate more on the design aspect of data centers. And I think in the last call, we were talking about developing a key product in the data center delivery. So I just wanted to know like how are we planning to expand our offerings in the data center business or are we sticking to the original design part alone? If you can throw some color on it. And just one follow-up on it. TIG, we've been historically growing at 50%. And this quarter alone, it has soften around 28% to 30%, so any one-offs you can clarify on it?

[Ashish Rai, executive]

Okay. Good. So look, data centers, we intend to continue to build on what we have. We have one of the best data center design teams in the country. We have one of the best program management teams when it comes to program, managing the build and we work with a few strategic partners. I think that [indiscernible] business will go as it is.

We did say Aurionpro being Aurionpro, we are looking at productizing some parts of the business. We're already piloting it with some clients. So I think at some point in time, soon enough, we will announce probably something in that space. And the hope is to improve the economics of the business more by productizing certain aspects of it, right? And which is our normal preferred approach to any line of business that we take or any particular day, right?

We look at the value chain as a whole, we look at occupying every point on that value chain, then we look at productizing every point becoming the most efficient producer, they have built Tier1 IP, right? So I think data center space is no different. We will go down the same path.

But at some point in time, when we are fully ready, we will probably talk about the productization aspects. I don't want to be giving away trade secrets on an earnings call. So that's that.

The historical growth for TIG. So TIG, you are totally right. We did slow down this quarter in terms of growth. For the first 9 months of the year, though, I think they're still north of 50% on TIG. So it's still -- it's a very strongly growing business for us.

What I mentioned in the either the last earnings call or the call before is, our focus on TIG is going to be to get more selective around certain types of business that we want to do. So we'll keep doubling down on the transit side. That's 1/3 of the TIG business. We'll keep doubling down on the data center and cloud side, that's kind of the 1/3.

But then we do a whole bunch of work around smart [indiscernible] and government work where we will become a bit more selective in terms of the business that we want to do to focus on high-quality deals where we can definitely add value as well as run the business in the way that we really want to run and deliver value there, right?

So I think you'll see some level of that reset. Why now, why not in the past or in the future? Again, this is something I mentioned in the previous earnings calls. We were last year -- so we always look at the balance between banking software and TIG.

In the last year, I was fairly clear we were focusing more on the product build and it will take time for -- so we are slowing down on banking, so that we can focus on the product build so divert capacity there, and it will take time for banking to come back into strong growth.

So last year, for those who studied it, banking as a business grew, I think, 15% or 16% thereabouts. TIG as a business grew at 55%. What I have said for this year is, we would work on bringing the banking growth up, we will work on bringing the TIG growth down. And our hope will be to try and get the 2 to converge something in the middle or maybe not too far off from there.

So that is what we -- and I think I probably mentioned that 2 or 3 quarters back. So that's been a part of a planned strategy to get more selective on TIG as we feel more confident about growth on banking. So if you have seen the numbers on banking, I think banking this quarter grew at 40% plus, right?

And this is after quite some blocking and tackling, building out of products, building out channel, et cetera, that we've done over the last 4 quarters. So now we feel a lot more -- a lot better about growth on the banking side, and hence, we'll get more selective on the other side.

Overall, TIG would still be a 50%-plus business this year or thereabouts. At least first 9 months, I think it's 51%.

[Operator]

[Operator Instructions] We have our next question from the line of Suryansh from BIZX Enterprise.

[Suryansh, analyst]

Sir, my question is that last time in the conference call, we talked about that with the acquisition of hardware capabilities, the company gets opportunities to new businesses. So what are the developments on those new ventures?

[Ashish Rai, executive]

Okay. Yes. So good question. Thanks, Suryansh. Look, hardware for us was always a play into completing the offering so that we can, one, occupy the whole chain, then go after some larger deals as we scale up the capacity. Although hardware -- it takes a little bit of time to work on a few aspects before you can get very confident around scaling it up.

On the electronic hardware side, now we are very, very confident. We have done the requisite R&D in terms of having our own designs for most of the path. We have put in place the manufacturing capacity in Malaysia to go out and scale it, the manufacturing capacity in India to go out and scale certain parts of it.

So right now, it takes some time to get the tooling, right. It takes some time to get the designs right. It takes some time to get the capacity in place. We feel very good about where we are in terms of -- especially on the transit side where we do a bulk of the hardware.

Where -- I think that only sort of additional input I would put in there is just because we have every component of what a transit operator would require, it does not mean we walk into every deal with every single one of those components we will pick and choose depending on where we want to play.

So we will do the transit gate, we will do the validator, we do the card readers, we, of course, do the [ AFC ] software and we're hoping we will have the sort of the payment gateway side fully locked down and operational as well very soon.

So we play a lot of components. We'll pick and choose, depending on the deal. Overall, the business is scaling very, very well. We've started exporting a lot of the hardware out to a lot of places, U.S., Central America, Latin America as well, most recently to Australia.

So I think, yes, I mean, it's scaling pretty nicely. I mean, we've taken some time to put the pieces in place, but we feel good about where we are.

[Suryansh, analyst]

Okay. And sir, my next question is like in transit business, how we get the business like it's tender-driven or capabilities or some relationship or like banking partners? Sir, how do we get that business?

[Ashish Rai, executive]

So it really varies. So we are -- so by and large, we are not going to put -- we're not going to do deals where we have to plant a lot of capital, right? I think so that is pretty clear.

So in India, we are getting very, very selective about the business that we do. We obviously are one of the most prominent players in India, we've got a whole bunch of sites live. We've got not Nagpur, Noida, we did Kanpur together with SBI. we've got UP Transport, Haryana Transport, et cetera.

We will selectively keep picking up some deals in India, but we'll be very, very selective on what we take on. Outside of India, we are -- where there is a situation in which we can go on our own, which would necessitate that it's not a CapEx deal, and it's a pure technology head-to-head. We will go on our own, case in point, California, right?

That was an open global RFP. We went on our own and we won, right? Of course, with some partnerships with Visa helped us out and et cetera, but we went on our own we competed and we won.

Where there is a large deal, especially where CapEx is involved, we will go through a partner, Maldives, for example, Mastercard was fronting us, we are the technology provider to Mastercard. Australia as well, the same thing. Most of the deals in Central Latin America are again through partners.

So it really depends on the nature of the deals. It could vary. The pricing models would vary, and we will -- typically, the only sort of broad guideline I would have is if there is a CapEx deal, we would not put our capital at risk in the deals, we will go through a partner, whether that's a bank or it's someone like Mastercard.

So we announced this, I think, 2 or 3 months back, this partnership with Mastercard, and we're already in multiple sort of engagements with them. We announced this partnership with Vix which is another very large global transit player, and we are going in some select markets together with them. So we'll continue to do those.

[Suryansh, analyst]

Okay, sir. And one last question is that, sir, when you said that we don't like want to do -- like not in that like we don't want, but like you'd leave on the player to basically decide it's SaaS or like licensed deals. So sir, like what I was trying to say is that is that nature of the business or like we don't have those power to influence the customers to get in SaaS or like license deals?

[Ashish Rai, executive]

Yes. Look, to me, SaaS is sort of one of those fashionable words which people try to make a whole category out of. But ultimately, what is it that the firm makes? The firm makes software and we sell that software depending on the right side of pricing for the segment. We typically sell a lot of the lending software to very large banks. These are mission-critical systems for large banks, they are much more comfortable buying it around enterprise license.

I haven't seen too many large banks buying a collateral management system or a corporate loan origination system in a SaaS mode. I think the more you go into the small banks and the NBFCs you'll see that. So the way we do it is, we've done SaaS models with the nonbanks.

We've done SaaS models with some digital lenders. And for the large banks, we typically go with enterprise license because that is the nature of the market. Where we see the industry going typically is, we see more and more movement towards consumption-led models. Eventually, at the end of the day, pretty much a large part of what a bank needs to orchestrate its process can become a simple API call, and we can charge for that on a consumption basis. We are, in many ways, we've gone towards it. I think the reason I don't put down one pricing model is we don't see the point in trying to really straitjacket our clients, and we don't see the industry competing that way.

Most of the large enterprise financial technology players use enterprise license models. Most of the small financial software players use SaaS models. We sort of straddle the spectrum. So we will be across enterprise licenses. We'll be across SaaS. We'll be across -- as the consumption-based models sort of become more prominent, we'll be across that as well.

[Suryansh, analyst]

Congratulations for the results.

[Operator]

Ladies and gentlemen, that was the last question of the day. I now hand the conference over to Mr. Ashish Rai for closing comments. Thank you, and over to you, sir.

[Ashish Rai, executive]

Thank you. So thanks, everyone, for joining the call. We continue to execute the way we say we'll execute. We continue to deliver what we said we'll deliver. We'll stay focused on trying to capitalize on the demand in front of us. As I said right now, demand far outstrips what we can do in the market. So the focus for us would be to keep on increasing our capacity to really be out there in more markets, service the clients and as well as continue to scale the organization for the bigger and bigger scales that we get to, right? So that's the priority for us. I look forward to seeing you in the next call. Thank you.

[Operator]

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