Aurionpro Solutions Ltd

NSE:AURIONPRO

Earnings Call Transcript 2024-Q4

[Operator]

Ladies and gentlemen, good day, and welcome to the investor call of Aurionpro Solutions Limited to discuss the Q4 and 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 would like to welcome you all for the earnings conference call for Q4 and 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; Mr. Ninad Kelkar, Company Secretary.

We will begin the call with brief opening remarks from the management followed by 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 our 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 like to now 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 Q4 and full year '24. I'm sure by now you all have received the investor deck, and I hope you had an opportunity to review it. Our full year performance came in at the high end of our growth guidance of 35%, marking another milestone in our journey to build out a significant global products and platforms player. It's the third consecutive year that we grew the business in excess of 30%, and this remarkable achievement really is the result of the dedication, the work, the resilience of the team that's joined us in this journey right with us as well as the sort of increasing effectiveness of our strategic game plan.

The growth we've experienced was helped to a large extent by a secular uptick observed across most of our businesses, underscoring both the strength as well as the diversity of our portfolio. To recap the performance a bit FY '24 full year revenue stood at INR 887 crores, which is a 35% year-on-year growth and EBITDA stood at INR 193 crores, which is 33% year-on-year growth. EBITDA margins for the full year stood at 21.8%, PAT stood at INR 143 crores, which is a growth of 40% year-on-year. PAT margins for the full year came in at 16.1%, so slightly above the guidance.

Every number came in at or slightly ahead of the high end of our guidance range. I believe this will set us up very well to continue our growth trajectory into the new financial year.

I'm happy to share that the Board authorized issuance of bonus shares at a ratio of 1:1 alongside a dividend payout of INR 2.5 per equity share. This is post bonus. So this marks a significant milestone as we doubled our dividend payout this year, reflecting, we believe, our commitment to delivering value to our shareholders. We're quite pleased to -- amongst the businesses, highlight the significant traction that we observed across the offerings in banking and fintech space.

We've transitioned as I mentioned in the previous earnings call from the phase of rebuilding the portfolio into moving aggressively to capitalize on the strong demand for our offerings. The growth in this segment, especially in the second half of the year is a direct result of the strategic investments that we have been making in building new products, in expanding the sales channel, in poaching key partnerships with global fintech vendors within the wider ecosystem.

Some of the key wins in the banking and fintech segment include the State Bank of India, which was highly sort of India's largest commercial bank for the license implementation and support of iCashpro, our next generation cash management and transaction banking platform. This order was valued close to INR 100 crores as we disclosed.

Also, recently, we signed a multiyear, multimillion dollar partnership with a very prominent U.S. fintech giant, paving the way for significant growth in the U.S. market as well as globally for us. We kicked off this relationship with initial work orders of about USD 5 million to be executed largely within this financial year.

During the quarter, we also had a first successful deployment of our product at a large bank through the strategic partnership with Finastra. These are significant proof points of the effectiveness of our strategy to partner with other global fintech majors that we've talked about in the previous earnings call, and I strongly believe we will start seeing the impact of our investments in these partnerships within this financial year.

The growth in the IT segment also remains strong with the transit payment segment, demonstrating very promising trends. Our strategic partnerships with MasterCard and with Vix are expected to increase quite significantly our order book as well as pipeline, providing a further proof point of the uniqueness and success of our partnership strategy.

The key wins in this segment include some key strategic order wins in DC and hybrid cloud space that we've disclosed and a significant order win from government of Haryana, which covers issuance of up 5 million open-loop cards. That is quite significant. And that transaction can establish Aurionpro as one of India's leading providers of open loop and CMC cards.

In addition to the organic growth initiatives, we've strategically pursued key acquisitions to enhance our offerings, address specific gaps in our strategic blueprint. Our recent acquisition in the AI space allows us to combine Aurionpro's portfolio of industry-leading enterprise software with probably one of the most mature enterprise AI platforms that are tailored to the needs of banks and insurers, this move will allow us to make a significant play in shaping the adoption of AI in banks and insurers globally, both directly as well as through our ecosystem partnerships that we've talked about.

While we take a moment to acknowledge the team's remarkable accomplishments, we'll continue to remain sharply focused on driving the product building agenda, and focus on scaling every aspect of the organization to capitalize on the very significant opportunities in front of each of our businesses.

Finally, we extend our sincere gratitude to employees, to customers, partners and shareholders for their continued support and contribution to our success. We expect to continue our growth momentum in FY '25, plan to deliver a planned revenue growth of between 30% and 35%. And we'll keep EBITDA and PAT margins at similar levels, EBITDA between 20% and 22% and PAT between 15% and 16%. So those are the planning numbers for FY '25.

With that, I will close. And I look forward to an engaging Q&A. Over to you, Aashvi.

[Operator]

[Operator Instructions] The first question is from the line of Vimal Jamnadas Gohil from Alchemy Capital Management Private Limited.

[Vimal Gohil, analyst]

And congratulations on a very strong quarter. Ashish, my first question was on the acquisition -- the latest acquisition that we've made, Arya.ai, if you can just highlight something more on what -- was this driven by some of our existing customers? Do we have existing orders from our -- from customers? That's point number one there.

The second point is, how should we think about the existing management at Arya.ai. Will they be with us once we have sort of bought 100% stake? Or do we plan to buy the entire 100% as and when we go forward? And what is the management's plan over there?

And lastly, on Arya.ai, what drove valuations if we talk about INR 20 crore revenue, but we've paid around INR 135 crores of that, so for the 67% stake. So what drove these valuations for us if you can highlight that?

[Ashish Rai, executive]

Yes, Vimal. Thanks. Great question. So Look, I think just the overall flavor on what we are trying to do with Arya.ai before I get into the specifics, I strongly believe and I think as many of us on the call probably believe we are today going through probably one of the most fundamental platforms shift this industry has seen. So of course, on one side, you have all the investments and all the hype around Gen AI and the LLM and the foundation models, and that's the game that some will play and that's probably all others converge to the same place or there are 1 or 2 large players or a few large players in the space. That is one end of the market. There's obviously a lot of investments going into the infrastructure side of the market.

But we have always been strong believers that any technology as it matures, the ultimate value creation happens on the application layer. That is the layer where large businesses, large enterprises are running their mission-critical applications to run their business processes where they actually make money, that is where bulk of the value creation happens. That is where bulk of the value capture happen as a technology provider.

We've always been very, very strong. We've built out the strength in terms of building of mission-critical enterprise applications. Arya.ai have been sharply focused on building out products platform, extremely mature AI assets for the last 10 years, focused specifically on the banking and insurance space. And the effort we are on is to bring together a very mature offering around AI/ML together with the enterprise workflows that our clients actually use and make a play for every point on the workflow at some point has to be AI augmented or run through fully autonomous agents or have a AI assisted human running it. Whichever way we bring these trends together to create a very unique value-adding enterprise AI offering that can go out to banks and insurers globally.

We feel very strongly about the opportunity. We feel very strongly about the credentials that we carry into the space to build it out. So that's the whole sort of rationale behind the acquisition.

Coming to a specific question, yes, we've been working with Arya.ai for the last several quarters against some existing customers. So we were already into existing deals that we won over the last 6 months with them where Arya.ai had a component going into our offering overall. So yes, it does go out to some existing customers, right? And we believe once we are done with the building of the enterprise AI framework, we will be able to take what we have to.

One, to our existing client base as well as to the a wider ecosystem of fintech partnerships that we've built up over time because the problem that we are trying to solve for Aurionpro is the same problem that every fintech vendor in the world is trying to solve it themselves. So we have some value to create there. So that is one.

Existing management of Arya.ai, at the moment, as you would have seen, mostly, we have bought out all the VC side investors in that transaction, right, the management continues to hold. We believe both Vinay and Deekshith are probably amongst the -- you can count on your fingers the number of actual deep AI experts out there who have been focused on the financial industry for the last decade. So they are very, very skilled, very, very rare and very, very committed to -- and the team that comes in very committed to continuing to build what we said. So we've got a perfect alignment of vision, at least the way I see between me and Vinay and our management team and theirs. So I think that is very crucial for us to do that.

The final count about valuations. Look, I think the business has been growing very strongly over the last 3 years, it went to INR 3 crores to INR 8 crores to INR 32 crores. And this year, we have visibility into a very strong growth. That was one on the core business. Second is, we've been in 2 significant transactions with them where, again, as I said, Arya.ai was already a partner. So there is a value from having Arya.ai being a part of the Aurionpro family there because those are also quite material revenue numbers overall. So from an Aurionpro shareholder standpoint, we believe the valuation is extremely compelling in terms of what it can deliver this financial year and the next. So it's actually -- we got very comfortable around that valuation, right?

And as I said, the management team hasn't really diluted materially at all in the transaction. It's mostly the investors who was quite pleased to pass the baton on to us. I think that probably more or less gives you the...

[Vimal Gohil, analyst]

Just one follow-up, Ashish, if I may. Let us index your number of customers to 100. What is your plan to sort of integrate their products by what -- any time line that you can offer in terms of how many customers can you readily sort of integrate Arya.ai products by next 2 years or 3 years?

[Ashish Rai, executive]

Look, to our products, I would say, anywhere between 50% and 90%, right? So look, I can't imagine, look, we are pivoting -- not pivoting, but we are sort of foreseeing a very strong AI first strategy across our entire enterprise application stack. So over the next couple of years, you'll get to see pretty much every Aurionpro application with AI/ML models either working alongside or embedded deep inside the application stack, right?

So we would basically go 100% on it. But I think the real impact of -- Vimal is not just from that. I think that is obviously a significant upside, but we believe the real impact is the impact we can make on the industry. We don't see mature FSI focused enterprise AI offerings globally today. There is a lot of toy applications. There's a lot of peripheral apps going on. There's a lot of people talking a lot about Gen AI and all that segment, which is all useful stuff.

But the value will get created where businesses run their enterprise workflows, right? And that is where the value gets created. I think we don't see good answers to it. So we believe this can be a very, very significant case for a very, very significant price.

[Vimal Gohil, analyst]

And just one question on the APAC performance. Anything to read into it, APAC, probably we did about INR 50 crores of revenue versus almost INR 75 crores odd in Q3. Was there any onetime project there in APAC last quarter, which is probably not there this quarter? How should we think about that performance? And also if you can comment on U.S. as well.

[Ashish Rai, executive]

Yes. So look, APAC, by and large, I think the way to look at the number is we do have our lending business primarily based out of APAC even where it sells globally, I think the revenue gets represented as APAC revenue, right, we had some material license transactions that happened in Q3. Overall, the business continues to grow fairly strongly. I don't think there is a big sort of change in -- I mean, the number of existing accounts keeps on going. The number of revenue streams are all constant, but you will see, so there was this transaction with the large fintech vendor that we talked about, some part of it was licensing traveling from Singapore into the U.S. entity, right?

So I think that would create a little bit of a skew around the numbers. But by and large, there is no material change to the structure of the APAC business or the growth.

[Operator]

[Operator Instructions] The next question is from the line of Deepak Poddar from Sapphire Capital.

[Deepak Poddar, analyst]

Sir, just one quick question this recent acquisition. So what sort of addition it can have in our top line and bottom line over the next 2 to 3 years?

[Ashish Rai, executive]

So Deepak, look, I think like I said, I think the immediate impact, we expect the business to grow very strongly this year. That's probably double-digit growth sort of addition to the top line. But I don't think that -- and over the next couple of years, I think we do expect the business to keep growing, right? So one side of the business is the AI framework.

The second side of the business is the pretrained models that you sell out as API calls, which are transaction driven and practically most of the insurance industry in India uses it. So as the volumes grow, that growth will come in as well. So over the next couple of years, just organically, we expect the business to be growing at above the enterprise growth levels for Aurionpro, that is the business standalone.

But the real sort of upside for the shareholders and for the enterprise come in with the -- our ability to launch new products in new markets. And that honestly is not a planned number. I believe the current organic growth number justified the acquisition. The real upside from the new market, new product strategy, we will probably take a couple of quarters to do the building that we need to do and then come back with this concrete number.

[Deepak Poddar, analyst]

But just a ballpark number in terms of any -- I mean, will it be possible for you to give in terms of rupees crores, how much it can add, I mean, in terms of revenue, will that be an easy thing for you to share basically at this point in time?

[Ashish Rai, executive]

I think it will continue to grow at, I would say, materially higher number than Aurionpro itself is growing. Aurionpro itself is growing at 35%. So I think that is probably what I can tell you at this stage.

[Deepak Poddar, analyst]

We'll continue to grow at a rate which is higher than Aurionpro?

[Ashish Rai, executive]

Yes, materially higher, yes.

[Deepak Poddar, analyst]

And what would be -- I'm not aware of this number, what would be last year revenue and bottom line?

[Ashish Rai, executive]

INR 22 crores.

[Deepak Poddar, analyst]

And bottom line?

[Ashish Rai, executive]

Bottom line, I mean it's a very high EBITDA business. So I think EBITDA levels are probably, I would say, at least 8 to 10 points above Aurionpro's.

[Deepak Poddar, analyst]

8 to 10 percentage points, so maybe in the range of 30%, 32% somewhere.

[Ashish Rai, executive]

Yes. Thereabouts, yes.

[Deepak Poddar, analyst]

Okay. Fair enough. And secondly, I just wanted to understand, this acquisition, so are we on lookout for more acquisitions that can meaningfully add to our revenue. So what would be thought process there?

[Ashish Rai, executive]

Yes. So the thought process there is fairly straightforward, and I've probably explained this in the past. So we've got a few things going on. We have clearly defined spaces in which we operate, which we've been very transparent about the segments that we are operating in. We have a strategic blueprint for each of those segments, whether it's lending, transaction banking, payments, transit. So we've got sort of a strategic blueprint in that space, which is sort of a product/market overall map.

And we got a number of gaps in that blueprint. So where we find an opportunity to plug a gap in that blueprint, we will make an acquisition. I mean assuming it makes sense for us from a -- the only lens that matters is, is it value adding to the Aurionpro shareholder or not, right? And at a certain level of value, it makes sense. We don't have much form when it comes to deal making. So for all you know, we may not pull the trigger for a long time.

But if we find the right opportunity to plug a blueprint, we will do the deal. We've done 3 acquisitions in the last 6 months. It doesn't really -- it's not really an indicator of how prolific we intend to be. It just happens to be that we had a set of very good promoters, walk in our door and say, we want to join you, we want to build a global business, and we think Aurionpro is doing something good. So let's join together, and it makes sense to us, right?

So I think that is broadly how we think about it. I do see us doing more of it, because every time you expand, it's a buy versus build, right? So we don't normally acquire for revenue. We don't normally acquire -- something, we get very interested in acquiring for tech, right? Because if there's a clear gap and someone has already done a good job of it, it does speed up the time to market for us. And we can load it up on the channel we have, on the partnerships we have and create value for everyone, including the business we acquired, right? So I think that's essentially how we're looking at it.

[Operator]

The next question is from the line of Ahan from Vimana Capital.

[Ahan Rajgor, analyst]

Congratulations on a fantastic set of results. Just had 2 questions. First one, how do you think the data center space is shaping up given that you're catering to that industry? And the second question is just based on what type of opportunities do you see in the data center space to go after whether it's global or in India, any acquisitions that you're thinking of in that space that could further enhance our sort of offerings. So if you could share some color on those, please?

[Ashish Rai, executive]

Yes. So yes, data center is one of those spaces where there is significantly more demand than there is supply at the moment. So of course, from a demand standpoint, it is just extremely strong. The business has been growing, like I've said in the past, have been growing at higher than 50% levels for us now for 3 years in a row, right? So it has obviously been strongly growing.

For us, data center today is where, for example, transit was a few years back, it's still largely a skill-led, services-led business. For us, we really extract value out of any segment when we start productizing and start driving the non-linear economics that comes with products.

So we've been working on some of those areas in the data center side, which you'll see coming out over the next few quarters. We've already been piloting some products in a few places, and we'll come and announce when we feel we are ready. I think that is what will drive the non-linear economic.

From a demand standpoint, we don't see the demand slowing down over the next few years. There's just a massive amount of investment going into the space. We keep blending the design and the program managing the build side of it to make sure that the business for us continues to deliver margins that the enterprise ask level or slightly below the enterprise ask level but not significantly below, right? So that is essentially our pace, it will continue to grow well. We will keep working on some R&D to try and create some non-unit economics out of the business.

We also are selectively exploring global opportunities. But really, I think there is a -- there's only so much we can take on. That business has been growing at a clearing pace, and we really need to calibrate the growth to make sure. We sort of spending enough time on R&D. We are doing a good job of the deliveries, et cetera. So that's where we are. Over the next few years, it will grow quite strongly.

[Ahan Rajgor, analyst]

And just wanted to understand what are the services in the data center side that is the most in demand for Aurionpro sort of focus?

[Ashish Rai, executive]

Yes. So for us, what we specialize in, is we've got one of the strongest data center design teams in the country, we really specialize on a lot of complex work. So like I think we would have announced over the last few months the Tier 4 data center, that's a very, very complex project that we are working on with RBI. The IIT Mumbai high performance computing center, the IIT Guwahati high performance computing center, et cetera, right? So I think that the really specialized complex work is sort of the sweet spot for us. And then we work very closely with a few strategic partners, Web Werks, Iron Mountain being the main one that we've disclosed in the past.

So yes, so for us, that is where the sweet spot is doing the complex design work and program managing the build where it makes sense for us to work together with a strategic partner like Iron Mountain, Web Werks.

[Operator]

The next question is from the line of Anmol Garg from DAM Capital.

[Anmol Garg, analyst]

Ashish, congratulations on good set of numbers. Actually, I had a couple of things that I wanted to ask. Firstly, of the 30% to 35% growth guidance that you are stating, does it include any assumptions from the revenue that we might obtain on any future acquisitions? And if you can indicate how much will be the organic growth out of this 30% to 35%?

[Ashish Rai, executive]

Yes. So thanks, Anmol, it's a good question. Look, we are not really planning any of the 30% to 35% growth coming from any new acquisitions into the enterprise, if new acquisitions happen, we will see what impact it has on model. Typically, we've not done very large acquisitions with any materiality in terms of revenue growth, right? So I can't imagine we will -- if we get into that sort of a situation, we'll come back and message it back to the investors on what it means.

So right now, this is all organic. From -- because if you look at the previous set of acquisitions we did the last year, just to answer your question about the impact, I think the overall full year impact is about 3% to 4% from those acquisitions, right? So it's not -- it's helpful, but it's not like really material from an overall revenue growth standpoint anyway.

So we acquired for tech. We acquire for complementarity of the product stack and then we acquire because with the sales channel that we built up, with the brand that we've built up, with the existing account base that we built up and the partnerships that we've built up, we are able to grow that business manyfold from what we've acquired, and that's where the value gets created, right?

So that's what we're doing. So I hope that answers the question, but there's nothing -- basically, there's zero plan from new acquisitions in the 30%, to 35%.

[Anmol Garg, analyst]

Secondly, I have a bookkeeping question, that -- so if you see this year, then our receivable days have gone up by, I think, 10-odd days. So just wanted to understand that as we are finding more and more government contracts, would this number keep on increasing? Or we are targeting that we want to keep our receivable days at a certain level?

[Ashish Rai, executive]

Yes. So look, I think the receivable days went up for some very specific reasons. I think -- so we're not signing a lot more new government work that actually as a percentage of the business, it's gone down quite significantly, but we have some existing projects which have been running where -- actually, there are 3 specific ones the combined impact, I think, is about 14 days where we more or less addressed but because of elections, because of the temporary sort of situation there, the payments got held up for some reason, which will hopefully get cleared out this, if not this quarter, by early next quarter.

So those are the 3 sort of ones, cumulative impact about 14-odd days, I think, 13 or 14 days, right? The rest of it, I think the DSO -- the problem is when you're growing at 35%, 40%, right? And the banking side grew very strongly in Q4. Then you're just sending a very large number of bills out the door. And at the end of Q4, there really is a lot that will happen, right? So that just automatically pushes the DSO days up. We believe this year, there will be quite a material improvement on that whole situation.

One because the mix of the business is again skewing quite heavily towards banking in terms of banking just growing a lot faster overall, right? And then those 3 specific projects, each of them, we have a very specific path to resolving that over the next few months, right? So that whole thing will come in that. Hopefully, that explains the things, partly -- we're not really -- I think the government side of the business has actually shrunk quite materially overall.

[Anmol Garg, analyst]

And just one last thing. So going ahead in FY '25, which are the segments that we will be keenly focused on. So will it be product services or data center. So just wanted to understand that where our cost is right now? And which segment should we expect to grow the fastest in FY '25?

[Ashish Rai, executive]

Yes, look, there's always a competition between the segments. So like I said, we are making a few large bets. We're not really choosing our favorite between those bets. The transformation in the banking, corporate banking space is a significant bet for us. Digital lending is a significant bet for us. I mean all the transaction banking deals that you saw with State Bank of India, et cetera, that we announced, I think that is a huge growth driver overall, transit, we expect to continue to grow. I think the closed loop to open loop payment transformation is a global phenomenon. And we just signed partnerships with MasterCard, Vix, et cetera, which will still play out.

The partnership with the fintech vendors that we said will still play out this year, right? So I would say the transformation of corporate banking, lending, transaction banking, the transit payments, smartification of mobility, the data center side, each of them, I think, will grow quite significantly.

The only side of the business, which will probably not grow as fast as the sort of government side the work that you -- that we sort of we were talking about earlier, right? So I can't imagine any of those segments not growing, honestly. So it would be hard for me to say that this is what would be. At a segment level, we do feel banking will -- so as you would have seen in the last 3 years, TIG last -- sorry, before this -- before FY '24 the last couple of years, TIG was growing very strongly. And I had been very clear that we had an intention of slowing down TIG strategically to focus on margin economics and focus on productization there. And banking was growing slowly because we were focusing banking on the product building path.

Now the roles have sort of switched, banking, the product build-outs are to a large extent, done. So banking will grow a lot more strongly, as you saw in Q3 and Q4 and you see in FY '25. And TIG side, we will sort of focus more on driving the unit economics and sort of productizing a lot more, et cetera. So that may be a little bit slower, right?

But all segments -- I can't see any segment which doesn't have a strong demand right now. And ultimately, we just need to rise to fulfill that demand.

[Operator]

[Operator Instructions] The next question is from the line of [ Amarjeet ] from Columbus Capital.

[Unknown Analyst]

Great set of numbers, congratulations. Just a small check. How do you measure -- how do we measure the effectiveness of our investment in the R&D space? I remember you were quoting a figure of about INR 100 crores per annum, which is being invested, which is more than about 14%, 15% of your cost. So are there any measures that we are using to see the effectiveness, number of patents, number of products or anything else that you're using?

[Ashish Rai, executive]

Thanks, Amarjeet. Good question. Look, for us -- so okay, just to get the small stuff out. So patents and all are probably significant to a few of our businesses, but by and large, most of the value that we create is around building of products. I think there are some research-oriented businesses where I think patents and all do matter to some extent. But again, the sort of monetization there is something that we still need to figure out, right?

So the primary way we monetize our R&D is through the products and selling those products into the end client, right? And for us -- so typically, we start with a business plan around the build at the 25% breakdown on capital as the bar, which we look at investments for, right, and then over time, we will measure.

The problem with the R&D spend is the returns actually come in over a period of time. So there are 2 types of R&D we're doing. One is the incremental build on the product when you're adapting it to a new market or building a new module, that typically will pay for itself in 18 months or maybe even less than that, right, if it's sort of incremental.

But the big builds that it's sort of like the big payments platform we're building out of, somehow the return comes in over a period of time, right? So we hold ourselves to 25%, and when we are approving a business plan and then we progressively see that the business unit is delivering against it, but it takes 5, 6 years, sometimes for that return to probably play out overall. Does that answer your question?

[Unknown Analyst]

Yes. It kind of explains how you're thinking about it and approaching it. I think I have no further questions and no further points to make at this stage. I just wanted to think through as to how we are processing the -- what is the thought process on guiding investments into specific areas of the business? So I get it, the business plan, 25%, et cetera.

[Ashish Rai, executive]

Thank you for that. It's a good question. Maybe in the next call or something will probably come up with a few -- a little bit formal sort of update around it. Thank you for the question.

[Operator]

The next question is from the line of [ Karthik Iyer ], who is an individual investor.

[Unknown Attendee]

Congrats on a great numbers. I just have one question, like considering the remarkable growth and performance that we've had over the last couple of years. I was just wondering, we're guiding also for about 30% growth next year. Do we have the bandwidth human capital to push forward with these numbers? Or how are we thinking about executing in the human capital aspect of the performance?

[Ashish Rai, executive]

Yes. Hey, Karthik, I think that's just a brilliant question. It's probably the -- the one thing that is maybe the top of the priority list when you look at our thinking or personally for me as well, right? So look, I think that is the primary challenge. Over the last 3 years, we've grown at 34%, 35% 3 years back, it was a INR 375 crores business. Now it's a INR 900 crore business clocking to the run rate of INR 1,000 crores plus now.

So it is not straightforward to scale that quickly, especially in a products business because there's just a lot of moving parts. We have been very, very deliberate around growing capability in terms of both the management team as well as the smaller part in terms of technical tooling and components and all to really see that we scale. I think the way we are looking at managing it and the way we are managing it is to not grow too fast.

I mean, purely from a demand standpoint, if you really press the pedal, I would say there's an opportunity to get another 10 points of growth or 15 points of growth. The problem is it will come at an enormous risk to delivery reputation and ability to scale. So we feel 30% to 35% is the level at which we can scale safely.

I do take your point, and we're not going to -- if we do feel that even at that level, it's going to get hard then probably we will look at slowing down, right now how we have managed slowing down is because we've built out a portfolio for precisely this reason, I think even 3 years back when we came out and articulated our Vision 2030 and the strategy, we said we're building out the portfolio because we want to keep the ability to slow down parts of the portfolio while we retool and build out the part.

So the way we are managing it right now is last 2 years, banking was growing at 15%, right? Why? Because we are reading banking for scale. We're building the products out. We're building the management team, and we're getting ready. Now banking is growing at 40%, 50%, right? So we -- but we spent 2 years at 15% to get ready for that. TIG was growing at 50% plus for 2 years. This year, it grew 33%, and we may slow it down further if we need to.

So I think the way we are looking at managing it is, let's play on the portfolio, let us look at it business by business, and let's see where we feel we need to slow down a bit to get into scale and where we want to press the pedal. So I don't know whether it's that obvious, but we're not pressing the pedal on all the businesses at the same time, right? I think that's how we're managing it. I would not understate the risk that you are mentioning.

I think scaling up for our increased scale across all aspects of the organization is the number one agenda for us to manage this growth. We've also made huge investments in fixed assets and capacity in technology layer. We've over the last 12 months, built out a completely brand-new technology layer in the organization across ERP, CRM, HR systems, all that stuff as well, right?

So we are -- the operating framework as well. So we are trying to be very deliberate in terms of choosing the growth rates we want to go out. We are trying to be very deliberate in choosing these businesses to grow when and at the same time, attract a lot of talent from the global majors. We have people join us from a lot of global fintech majors as you would have seen probably with some of the announcements and all and really built out the team. 12 months -- over the last 12 months, we've added, I would say probably 600 to 700 additional people. That's almost 30%, 35% additional capacity as well, right?

So we will continue to be very cautious. We will continue to really put the delivery reputation of Aurionpro first always in this business, that is everything, and we'll continue to sort of play the portfolio to see that we scale safely.

[Operator]

[Operator Instructions] The next question is from the line of Vimal Jamnadas Gohil from Alchemy Capital Management Private Limited.

[Vimal Gohil, analyst]

Yes. So I think a lot has been happening around Indian banks, Indian banking space around the regulatory pushback. And a lot of these head of banks have come out and -- come out in the open talking of significant increase in the technology spending. What -- do we sense an opportunity here or maybe wallet share gains, better products for some of the CTOs of these banks, how should we see this particular trend playing out for us?

[Ashish Rai, executive]

Yes. Look, I think it's playing out very well. So even this year, just the increase in the order book, if you look at it, banking side has increased quite significantly for the first time in a long time it outpaced TIG and a lot of it is coming from the Indian banking space. I think it is the first time we signed a INR 100 crores plus deal with State Bank of India, for example, we signed with other public sector banks as well as the largest private sector bank.

So we -- I think we see a massive momentum in terms of tech's trend in India, we see a very significant opportunity in terms of really a transformation at a bank level when it comes to their technology stack. So there is a lot of -- there's a lot of transformation, probably in the right word, you needed the overall tech layer within banks when it comes to not just the digital side of things, but being able to use the modern AI assets, being able to really meet the regulatory mandates and make sure everything is integrated and working well.

So I think this has a huge opportunity. We have seen a significant uptick this year -- last year, sorry, in terms of the order book coming in from the Indian banks. And I think this year, we -- I mean, the size of the pipeline itself is just very significant. So we expect it to grow very, very strongly for us.

We are launching some new offerings as well in the Indian market. I don't want to announce that ahead of the curve. But we will have some additional offerings coming out of the Indian banking space over the next, I would say, quarter or so.

[Vimal Gohil, analyst]

So are you saying that this is business as usual for us. This particular -- this entire regulatory overall, that is -- the pushback that is happening for some of these large Indian banks. Was the growth in spend already there for us? And this is nothing -- this may not be incremental?

[Ashish Rai, executive]

No, I think it's both. So there was already an uptick in growth coming in, right? So transaction banking, for example, where we closed a number of deals, I think just the number of pipeline deals has tripled probably over the last 12 months. So there was already a growth in spend happening. I think part of it could be because of the need for technology upgrade and stuff, right? And we sense some newer opportunities, which we are launching some specific offering against over the next couple of quarters. So I think it's also incremental, but we were seeing that growth from the Indian banking space anyways.

[Vimal Gohil, analyst]

Understood. And just on your comment on banking will now grow strong. TIG will probably grow at a slower pace, but will improve on margins. Given the fact that a lot of our licenses are coming from BFSI, this statement mathematically tells me that margins should see an uptick. But your guidance clearly suggests that margin should be in the range, what is the offset here?

[Ashish Rai, executive]

I think offset largely is the R&D, right? I think the size of the opportunity in front of us, Vimal, is just so large. It's just really each of the major segments we have are staring at kind of the size of opportunities we have not seen before. But that combined with the fact that we are super competitive right now from a product standpoint, we are probably one of the most cost-efficient players around, and we have a very grown-up sales channel now going out and competing for deals.

All of that put together really increases that size of opportunity, and we really need to build against it, right? So at the moment, I think this is not the time to optimize margins. I think this is a time to maximize how much we can capitalize on the opportunities in front of us. And probably in 2 years' time or 3 years' time, we'll start looking at optimizing margins, I think. So yes, the delta for the next 2, 3 years, I would expect would be R&D.

[Operator]

[Operator Instructions] As there are no further questions, I now hand the conference over to Mr. Ashish Rai for closing comments.

[Ashish Rai, executive]

Thank you. So thanks, everyone, for joining this call. We had -- like we discussed the 3 consecutive years of 30% plus growth. I don't believe there are many tech players in India or Asia or even globally who -- of our scale, who've been growing that fast. I think the focus that we would have is to continue that growth. We will put more capital to use as we have in terms of really maximizing that growth. And the only lens that we'll use for it is whether or not that use of capital makes sense for the Aurionpro shareholders.

I think the size of opportunity in front of us is large. The team has been executing very, very well. We feel very good about where we are from a talent standpoint, from a management team standpoint, and we believe strongly in what we are building out. So you'll see more from us next quarter. Thank you for joining this call.

[Operator]

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