Wipro Ltd (WIT) 2026 Q3 法說會逐字稿

Welcome, everyone, to Wipro's third-quarter earnings press conference. For those of us who are joining virtually, good morning, good afternoon, good evening. My name is Nisha Chandrasekharan, and on behalf of Wipro, we'd like to wish you all a very happy new year.

Joining me on stage is our Chief Financial Officer, Aparna Iyer; our Chief Executive Officer and Managing Director, Srini Pallia; and our Chief Human Resources Officer, Saurabh Govil.

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

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

Good evening, and thank you for joining us. A very happy new year to all of you. Let me start with the broader environment before walking you through our quarterly performance and how we are positioning Wipro for an AI-first world.

Across our client landscape, one thing is very clear: organizations are reshaping priorities as AI influences how they plan, invest, and operate. In fact, AI is now a standing board level mandate led by CEOs who recognized its ability to transform business models, unlock productivity, and of course, create lasting competitive advantage.

We are also seeing the same themes continue from past quarters in terms of our deal pipeline, cost optimization, vendor consolidation, and a clear shift towards AI-led transformation. In quarter three, we also marked two important milestones for Wipro which I'm very proud of. In December, we completed 80 years as a company. And in October, we celebrated 25 years of being listed on the New York Stock Exchange. In fact, these milestones reflect a legacy of strong governance, values, and integrity, a foundation of trust that continues to differentiate us with our clients, our partners, and our investors.

Now turning to quarter-three performance. Our IT Services sequential revenue at $2.64 billion grew 1.4% on a constant currency basis. Excluding HARMAN DTS acquisition, our revenue grew 0.6% in constant currency terms. In fact, growth was broad-based with three of our four markets and four of our five sectors reporting sequential gains.

Americas 1 delivered sequential and year-on-year growth, driven by strong performance in healthcare, consumer, and LatAm. Our Americas 2 saw a sequential decline. Europe grew sequentially in quarter three, led by a ramp-up of the earlier announced mega deal. We're also seeing good traction in the UK and the Western Europe market. APMEA grew sequentially and year on year, led by India, Middle East, and Southeast Asia.

PFSI continues to show strong traction with the ramp-up and new wins. CAPCO revenue was impacted by furloughs and remained flat year on year. Our operating margins at 17.6% expanded 0.4% over adjusted quarter two margin and 0.1% year on year. We also closed $3.3 billion in total contract value and $871 million in large deal bookings.

If you recollect, last quarter, I introduced Wipro Intelligence. You would have seen the video and if you remember that. It is our unified approach to delivering AI-powered transformation across industries that we serve. This approach is anchored on three strategic pillars. One, industry platforms and solutions. We are building consulting-led AI solutions across sectors. For example, platforms like PayerAI in healthcare, NetOxygen for lending, and AutoCortex for automotive. These solutions help streamline operations, improve our customer outcomes, and open up new avenues for growth.

Second, our delivery platforms accelerate AI adoption at scale. I talked about WINGS last quarter. WINGS brings AI into the heart of our operations from application management to infrastructure support and business process operations. WeGA, another delivery platform from Wipro Intelligence, adds AI-driven capabilities across the development life cycle, be it software development life cycle or product engineering development life cycle and from Vibe Coding to model tuning and data pipelines. Together, these platforms help our clients modernize faster, operate smarter.

Third pillar is the Wipro Innovation Network. It connects our labs with partners, start-ups, universities, and deep tech talent around the world. This ecosystem helps us explore new technologies and build solutions for the future. In December, we launched innovation labs in three cities in the US, Australia, and Middle East, expanding our network, growing our global footprint, and strengthening our role as a trusted innovation partner.

We are also partnering with client GCCs to help drive transformation and turn their cost centers into high-impact innovation hubs.

Now let me share two examples of the large deals that we have won, leveraging Wipro Intelligence last quarter. First, a leading global education provider in the UK, which is expanding rapidly across markets, has chosen us as its strategic partner for a multi-year transformation. Their goal was to build a single, secure, intelligent operating model that can scale with their growth and improve stakeholder experience. Using Wipro Intelligence WINGS, we will standardize all their core processes, embed automation, and AI-driven insights and helping optimize costs through their global delivery model.

In my second example, a leading US-based fitness technology company has selected us for a multi-year transformation to accelerate their shift to a subscription-based wellness model, which is actually catching up and support global expansion. Here, we will use both the delivery platforms, WINGS and WeGA, to embed AI and automation across their IT infrastructure and all of their core functions, helping drive efficiency, productivity, growth and of course, customer experience.

These engagements highlight a clear trend. Our clients are bringing us in much earlier and recognizing the step change in the way we deliver and innovate.

I would now like to update you on HARMAN DTS. First of all, a warm welcome to all HARMAN DTS employees joining us. With this acquisition now complete, we have added engineering and AI capabilities that truly complement what we do. This, in fact, strengthens our engineering global business line and helps us accelerate AI-driven product innovation for our clients.

In fact, this integration also opens new regions and high-growth industries and allows us to take on larger and more complex transformation programs. As our teams come together, we look forward to entering new markets, building deeper client relationships, and turning innovation into long-term value.

Finally, the guidance for quarter four. In quarter four, we are projecting sequential IT services revenue growth of 0% to 2% in constant currency.

With that, I will hand it over to Aparna for the detailed financials. Thank you.

Thank you, Srini. Good evening, ladies and gentlemen, and wish you all a very, very Happy New Year. Let me share a quick update on the financial performance for the quarter ended December 31, 2025, after which we will open up the floor for questions.

Our IT services Q3 revenues grew 1.4% sequentially in constant currency terms and 1.2% sequentially in reported currency. It also grew 0.2% year on year in reported currency. Our constant currency revenue growth numbers included 0.8% contribution from the HARMAN DTS acquisition that was closed in quarter three of '26.

Our operating margins for the quarter was at 17.6%, an expansion of 40 basis points over the adjusted operating margins for Q2. It also expanded 10 basis points on a year-on-year basis. I would like to highlight that this is one of our best margin performances in the last few years.

As we move into Q4, we will need to factor for the incremental dilution of HARMAN DTS acquisition. Our endeavor, as always, will be to maintain the margins in a similar band that we have delivered in the last few quarters.

Adjusted net income for the quarter was at INR33.6 billion, and adjusted EPS was at INR3.21. This is an increase of 3.5% sequentially and flat year on year. Moving on to our market unit and sector performance. I will share some of the commentary. All the numbers that I will share are in constant currency.

Like Srini said, this has been a fairly broad-based performance with three of our four market units growing quarter on quarter and two of the four market units growing year on year. Americas 1 grew sequentially by 1.8% and grew 2.8% on a year-on-year basis. Americas 2 declined 0.8% sequentially and 5.2% on a year-on-year basis.

Europe grew 3.3% sequentially and declined 4.6% on a year-on-year basis. APMEA grew 1.7% sequentially and grew 6.6% on a year-on-year basis.

Now for the sector performance. BFSI grew 2.6% sequentially and 0.4% year-on-year. Health grew 4.2% sequentially and 1% year-on-year.

Consumer grew 0.7% sequentially while declining 5.7% on a year-on-year basis. Technology and Communication grew 4.2% sequentially and 3.5% year on year. EMR declined 4.9% sequentially and declined 5.8% year on year. You can note that four of our five sectors grew sequentially and three out of our five sectors grew year on year. Further, Capco growth was flat on a year-on-year basis for the quarter.

Before I move on to other financial parameters, I would like to draw your attention to two specific one-off charges that we have recorded in our P&L for the current quarter. These charges are not included in our IT Services segment operating margins but have impacted our net income and EPS. First is an increase of INR302 crores for gratuity expenses due to the implementation of the labor code. And second is regarding a restructuring exercise that was completed during the quarter and the impact of this is about INR263 crores.

I would like to confirm that we have now completed the restructuring that we want to and do not anticipate any further charges. Our operating cash flow continues to be higher than the net income and stood at 135% of our net income. Our gross cash, including investments, was at $6.5 billion as of December 31. In Q3, our net income -- our net other income rose 15% sequentially. Accounting yield for the average investments held in India was at 7.2%.

Our effective tax rate was at 23.9% for Q3 '26 versus 24.4% same time last year. In terms of guidance, to reiterate what was stated by Srini, we expect our revenue from IT Services business segment to be in the range of $2.635 billion to $2.688 billion. This translates to a sequential guidance of 0% to 2% in constant currency terms.

Our guidance includes the incremental two months of revenue from the HARMAN DTS acquisition. It is impacted by fewer working days in Q4 and delay in ramp-ups in some of the large deals that we had won earlier this year.

Lastly, I would like to share with you that in our recently concluded Board meeting, the Board of Directors have declared an interim dividend of INR6 per share. With this, the cash distributed to our shareholders during the current financial year will be in excess of $1.3 billion, and we've been able to significantly exceed the minimum floor in our capital allocation policy for the block for the year ending 2026.

With that, I'm going to hand this over to Nisha for Q&A.

Thank you, Aparna. We'll open the floor for your questions. For all the journalists outside of Bangalore who have joined us on Teams, please send us your questions on the chat. For journalists present in the room, please raise your hand and the microphone will come over to you. Please introduce yourself before you ask your question.

Rishabh, do you want to go first?

So I know you have increased your guidance better than earlier. You've increased your guidance and your revenue is better than -- better QoQ and YoY. So what are you hearing from clients? And would FY27 be better than FY26?

On the AI front, would you like to quantify as your -- some of your peers have done? And if not, would you like to comment on whether AI revenue is better than your traditional IT work?

Saurabh for you, the restructuring that Aparna spoke of, if you would like to quantify the number?

And Srini, the total TCV and large deals is low -- has declined both sequentially and YoY. Are we seeing an impact from AI on that front? Thank you.

Happy New Year to you as well, Rishabh. I was missing you last quarter. Were you hiking somewhere?

Okay. So as far as revenue is concerned, like I talked about and Aparna also talked about, specifically in quarter three, we had a very secular growth across three of the four SMUs and four of the five sectors. That's data point number one.

Second, if you look at -- I'll just talk about the bookings, and then I'll go back to the -- what I'm seeing coming in, right? Clearly, if you look at the bookings as far as the TCV is concerned for quarter three, we were at $3.3 billion. However, if you look at from a YTD perspective, we were around $13 billion, which is a 25% year on year. So from that perspective, I think the trend of our pipeline continues.

In fact, today, if you ask me, the pipeline is very strong. In fact, it's a combination of both large deals and smaller deals as well. And this is also, again, secular across the markets and across the industries. And if you look at the kind of pipeline that we have, I would classify one is clearly vendor consolidation continues from 2025 to 2026. Also what I see is more and more of AI coming into picture.

And the way I think our clients are looking at AI is more about how do they want to reimagine their process or rewrite their applications. So a lot of companies are looking at how do we modernize their applications and a lot of companies are looking at how do I relook at my entire customer experience, employee experience journeys, and how do I leverage AI to improve our productivity, experience, velocity and, of course, our cost.

So AI is becoming right and center. Every opportunity that we have in the pipeline, it's going to be AI first, be it run and operate, be it change and transform, or if it's any -- of course, any AI-led projects, be it around advisory services, to do with data, AI, security or change management or if you look at specific projects around modeling, data modeling, data curation, right, specific projects to actually infuse AI to change a particular process and so on and so forth.

So I think AI is going to be right and center. So there is no correlation between the bookings that you talked about because it's a healthy trend that we had for this year, and AI continues to be right and center. I hope I covered all your questions, Rishabh.

Restructuring, Aparna called out, as technology evolves, you have to look at some obsolete skills focused on two areas, one geography, one business. One was Europe, where we had taken, and second was Capco. We had done this exercise in this quarter to take actions against those people.

I'm Shristi Achar from Economic Times.

Sorry, name please?

Yeah. I'm Shristi from Economic Times. So building on Rishabh's question, so this is the second quarter where we have seen a sequential decline as far as the TCV is concerned. So could you give us a sense of why that is happening? And also what your outlook is as far as client spending is concerned?

Are they looking forward to making more spends or not? Or what is the demand outlook looking for you? And also secondly, how much -- if you could give a sense of how much of the HARMAN acquisition was based -- baked into the guidance, please.

So one and three, I'll leave it to Aparna. Let me talk about the client spending, right? See, January is the time when most of our clients are doing the budgeting process, and we'll have a much better clarity in terms of the discretionary spend. Having said that, clients are definitely looking to take cost out through vendor consolidation and through, what I would say is, bringing the efficiency and productivity through AI into their existing run and operate situations and use -- leverage that to do more and more of AI projects, whether it could be modernization of their code or it could be anything to do with the data, data curation and so on and so forth.

So to me, from a demand outlook perspective, like I said, very strong pipeline that we have and this pipeline is across sectors and across markets. So I don't see any change in that aspect. But discretionary spend is something we are closely watching.

Yeah. So Shristi, your first question was around the TCV decline. Like Srini spoke about it, year to date, our TCV bookings were $13 billion overall, which is growing well over 20% year on year. Our large deal bookings at $6.3 billion has also grown nearly like north of 50% year on year. So we've had very good -- two very strong quarters.

And typically, large deals tend to lump up, right? So if you look at our earlier quarters, large deals has always been in the range of $1 billion. And that's why you're kind of seeing this like a quarter-on-quarter decline. But if you had to really look at it year to date, which is perhaps the right way of looking at it, our performance is quite strong, and I would not read too much into the quarter performance.

And the pipeline also continues to be --

Yeah. Just one more data point I wanted to add is, we had four mega deals in the first half of the year, okay? That also shows the numbers in that context. So quarter one, we actually had a very strong momentum in mega deals and followed by quarter two.

Yeah. So on your second question of around HARMAN revenues, right, saying for how much of it is a part. We've already called out that for one month, we had 0.8% come in HARMAN in Q3. For Q4, we've said that the entire HARMAN revenues is a part of the guidance. We are not calling it out separately. You can make your assumptions.

I'm Uma Kannan from Deccan Herald. Srini, you spoke about discretionary spending. I just want to understand, given geopolitical uncertainties in the US, so are these uncertainties still affecting your clients' decision-making? First.

And second, your sectors apart from energy, manufacturing and resources, all other sectors have performed well. And when does -- what is happening in this energy sector?

And one more question. So this is regarding AI skills that you spoke about. So going forward, will there be any change in your recruitment? Like are you -- will you be looking at freshers with specialized AI skills? Thank you. And what will be the package that you will be offering?

So when you say uncertainties, what specific?

Geopolitical uncertainties.

So Happy New Year to you as well. First and foremost, I think geopolitics trade and tariff, I think, continues, right? And those are definitely uncertainties that continues to be there. And most of our clients, they are sensing and responding to the situation that's going on.

Having said that, I think more or less, I think the clients and the markets, if you look at -- especially in the US, if you look at the kind of GDP growth that they had in 2025, which is 3.2%. And if you look at the stock market, I think they've steadied and some -- in some -- most of the cases, they have actually performed better. So that obviously reflects on the sentiments of the sectors that we work on and the clients that are part of that.

So I wouldn't see geopolitics to be a big situation at this point in time. But the discretionary spend that I was talking to you about has definitely some of the correlation to that.

Second, the technology disruption that's happening, the second point of your question on AI. So if you want to spend more on the technology, right, you also need to take cost out somewhere else. I think that's a balancing thing that our clients are trying to do. The more cost they can take out, the more they can actually invest into discretionary spend, especially specific AI projects.

Yeah. I think on the AI skills, you want to talk, Saurabh?

Yeah. So from a recruitment standpoint, especially on campuses, what we have done is we have created this Center of Excellence, 50 of them across different universities where we actually work with the university and build a curriculum in a specific area, could be on AI, cybersecurity, data and then and then work with them and then hire people from there. I think that's the approach which we are taking.

Premiums are paid to people who are with some experience, with client experience in that area. So that's how we are progressing on the AI skills. And then there's a lot of work happening in-house to upskill our existing talent in terms of certifications. So we are looking at different levels of certifications and making sure that people are -- the workforce is equipped with the changing environment.

And if I were to give you a broader commentary about what's happening with the workforce of the future, right? There's a huge transformational need that's required for the current workforce that's there in the -- specifically in the IT industry because you're going to be AI plus human kind of a situation. And there are new roles being created by AI. So the educational systems need to start evolving because you need the talent that comes out of this education to be AI-ready, AI-first approach.

So I think the universities need to train that. I think we are giving our own inputs, like Saurabh said, in terms of what kind of skill sets that you need to be in the new world that's coming up.

Avik, you can go next.

First question to Srini. Can you talk a little more about the macro? Because the anticipation was that the second half of the fiscal will be better. So when you bake about 0% to 2% in guidance, which is much better than what you previously had guided. So what are some of the verticals that you actually expect for you to fire considering that energy and consumer has been a bit down?

Do you expect those two segments to sort of rebound? Or do you expect your -- the tech and BFSI actually to fire? So that's a couple of questions.

Aparna, margins have been pretty steady, but how confident are you in terms of maintaining that margins? And if I'm not mistaken, you told me back in July that large deals do take a time to ramp up, and that also creates some pressure on the margin. So have those large deals actually started ramping up? Have you seen the positive impacts there?

And Saurabh, I'll get back to you, they're very old questions. So just bear with me, any updates on the hikes? What are your hiring plans going into the next fiscal? And have you seen any of your employees facing visa renewal delays or problems in terms of renewals where they have to stay back in the India and were unable to actually get back to the US? Thank you.

Thank you, and Happy New Year again to you. So just to give you a context, when you talk about macro environment, if you look at, right, I think I'm sure being a journalist, I'm sure you're watching what's happening in the US, what's happening in Europe and Asia Pacific markets. But from a Wipro perspective, and if I were to look at what happened in quarter three, right? Four out of the five sectors actually grew.

If you look at BFSI, and typically, quarter three is a slow quarter for the banking and financial services, we grew 2.7% sequentially, and this is across all the markets. So that tells you that there are opportunities that are coming in from a banking and financial services segment.

And if you look at healthcare, tech and telecom, right, those industries are definitely looking at reimagining with AI. And I would think because healthcare, especially in the US, if you look at it, they want to actually use -- leverage AI for how they manage the members, claims processing and so on and so forth. If you look at life sciences clients for us, they are looking at how to leverage AI for drug discovery, molecular research and so on and so forth. So from that perspective, healthcare is up and running and very focused on transforming their way of doing business, right?

Consumer, and I actually goes back to Mona's point, consumer manufacturing gets a little bit impacted with trade and tariffs. And I think uncertainties there continues. And we see that in the aspect of that.

The point you asked is energy and manufacturing. Between energy and manufacturing for us, I think manufacturing, we did have a little bit of a slowdown.

Now shifting gears to quarter four, this is this quarter. And like I said, we have a very strong pipeline. And this pipeline, again, is secular across the five sectors that I talked about and across the four markets. I think our focus has to be execution now, win those deals and quickly ramp them up.

Yeah. Avik, to your question around margins, yes, our performance has been quite consistent, and we've continued to expand our margins. We expanded by 40 basis points during the quarter, 10 basis points year on year. If you look at it, we've also stated that this is amongst our best in the last few quarters.

And full credit to the entire team, which has rallied around making sure that operationally we are having that rigor in terms of cost takeout and full credit to the team. And we'll need to continue to do that because we've managed this margin improvement despite a weak revenue environment, despite some of the large deals that we've picked up and pricing pressures in some of the vendor consolidation deals.

But this environment is going to be like that. So it's like we have to be on a treadmill all the time. As we look ahead, we have two incremental months of HARMAN DTS and that comes as a share of dilution. So we will work harder. And our endeavor, like I said, would be to be in the same band that we have done. And that will be the endeavor, and I'm hoping we continue to deliver.

One of the large deals that we had signed in Q4 of last year, which was Phoenix, we have gone live and is fully reflected. It has ramped up to plan and that's fully in. Some of the discounts and some of the productivity that we had to share with our clients, they're all fully in. But as we go through the process, like I said, it's a continuous journey. We'll have to keep working on it. But this margin achievement is despite all that.

Yeah. You're asking three questions. So the first one on salary hikes, there's a lot of questions internally also get asked to me. But we are in the process of deciding, and I think Srini is back and he's traveling to Davos. Once he's back, we'll have a discussion around leadership and take a call. I think we'll communicate as soon as we decide.

On the second, on the immigration in US, I think it's more scrutiny. We haven't -- touch wood, haven't seen any challenge otherwise. We are making sure that people are going well prepared. So that's been smooth so far.

And the third on recruitment. This quarter, our recruitment from campuses was muted. We had only about 400-odd fresh NGAs. But this was a quarter which we wanted to go slow. But next quarter, again, we'll be looking at ramping up to 2,000, 2,500 people from the campuses. So that's the plan. Otherwise, lateral hiring will continue, which is more project-based across the globe and skill-based. So that's how it'll continue.

What was the status of visa renewals. H-1B visa renewals. No employee was impacted.

Not yet. We will see now once the new thing comes up in March.

Okay. And are you applying for new H-1B in the new season?

We are debating that. We'll come to take a call on that.

I'll just take one online question before we come back here. This is from Times of India. Saurabh, putting you on the spotlight. Just is the headcount addition mostly due to the HARMAN acquisition? And how are you rationalizing the workforce you inherit from there?

So the headcount has been -- for two reasons, we have seen an increase in our headcount. One obviously is the HARMAN acquisition. Second is Aparna alluded to that large deal, which we had signed, the Phoenix deal. There was a rebadging of employees. These two led to the larger count. Otherwise, it's been more of a flattish from that point of view. We will see an increase in headcount organically coming through in Q4 as we go on campuses to hire.

Sanjana, please go ahead.

Revisiting the guidance bit, so it has been revised on either end to signal flat to positive growth. So apart from the contribution from the HARMAN DTS acquisition, are there any more factors driving this optimism?

And Aparna, you also mentioned that this quarter has seen one of the best margin performances in the last few quarters. Could you expand on that? What is contributing to this? And also, is there any scope for discretionary spending to return, let's say, in FY27? If you could touch upon that. And is there any impact from the labor code implementation on an annual basis?

And the last question, some of your peers have reported large and even mega deals from public sectors across geographies. So is this an area of interest, something that you're looking at closely? That's it. Thank you.

Oh my God, there's a lot of questions, Sanjana. Happy New Year. So on margins, and I'll take that question, saying that the walk for the margins, right? Like I think we have seen a sustained improvement. If you look at our SMU performance and if you look slice and dice, everybody has pitched in, in order to improve the operating margins. If you look at it, we have looked at levers like sustaining the higher utilization that we've had.

We've also gone ahead and improved our fixed price programs in terms of profitability. We have optimized on our SG&A. That's something that we've been doing. We have also had some of our earlier acquired entities as the synergies are getting realized, the margins are improving. Those are some of the positives that we've been driving.

And the other big aid that came is the ForEx. The rupee depreciated and that has also added, right? And these are some of the positives, and these are some of the things that have helped us in terms of our margin performance.

In terms of the labor code impact, is there any continuing impact of the labor code? Absolutely none. And if you actually notice, our labor code impact is perhaps amongst the least compared to the rest of the industry, that's because we've been gradually and consistently, we've been trying to come closer to the labor code. So we were quite well prepared, and we have taken what we had to. I don't anticipate any continuing impact of it on our financials.

Public sector deals. No public sector deals.

I think that was a question for -- Sanjana for Aparna, right? Okay. You want me to answer that.

So first and foremost, Sanjana, when we talked about our strategic -- five strategic priorities, we said clearly, we want to focus on certain markets and certain industries, which are both.

So that way, we are staying very focused on executing to our five strategic priorities. So if there is anything, there's a different -- if you want to add a new sector or a new market, I think it will depend upon the right to win and the scale and scope and so on and so forth. So at this point in time, we'll stay focused on the five sectors that we called out and the four markets we called out.

Just one clarification from [Reuters] and I'll come to you, Paulomi.

This is for Aparna, does the guidance include inorganic as well? Or is it only organic?

Yes, it includes inorganic as well.

Perfect. Paulomi, would you like to go next?

So my first question is, are we seeing an impact on pricing as deal structures evolve as it's becoming more AI focused? So is that -- can that be accounted for within the fall in deal value that we're seeing?

And also, I mean, recently, there have been reports of other IT companies hiring like specialized freshers who are specialized in AI skills and they paid considerably more. So like how are you looking at the pay scale mix for them?

So from a pricing standpoint, the environment continues to be like we've spoken about how cost optimization and vendor consolidation are the two big themes that dominate our pipeline. And some of these deals are quite intensely contested. But that's been the order of the day for some quarters now, and we've been doing well on it.

And like you said, is there like an impact of AI that's leading to compression of deal bookings? Not at all. Like I said, some of these deal bookings are quite lumpy. Some quarters tend to be even better compared to the others. You should look at the year-to-date performance, which has been growing north of 20% year on year in our total contract value bookings and even -- and led by our large deals, which have grown north of 50%.

So that's considerable growth. So I wouldn't call AI compressionary at all. And it's, in fact, leading to more deals and more decisions.

So go ahead. Go ahead, Saurabh. It's your question.

No, no. Please go ahead. Please go ahead.

I Insist.

I spoke about it earlier on differential compensation. At least for now, we are investing upstream in our campus relationships to make sure that we get people of the right profile we want and make them deployed better. Premiums will come as they get more experience because a lot of clients are expecting. So when we go laterally or we see that they have developed well, we will make sure that they are fast tracked. So that's how we are taking that forward.

Shall we take the last question? Padmini, go.

Unknown AnalystAnalyst

So I know you said you're not looking into any other brackets when it comes to sectors, but some of your peers said that discretionary -- they're not looking at discretionary spending anymore. They're more looking for different sectors like data centers and physical AI. So are these sectors even -- are they under your radar?

And second, also one of your peers called out that they're losing small market share for GCCs. So is that something you're seeing also?

So good questions. First and foremost, on the GCCs, I think our strategy is to actually partner with the GCCs and also help build the GCCs for our clients. So that strategy continues. I think the advantage that the clients have working with us is that we can power their GCCs with our Wipro Intelligence. And I think that's a benefit that they get because the delivery platforms and the industry platforms that we have, we can actually bring it to the doorstep.

So from that -- so that would continue. What was the first question?

I think she had asked a question around GCC, right? Discretionary spends.

Okay. So when I say sectors, they are industry sectors, right, the five sectors that I talked about. So from a data center, I wouldn't call it -- from our terminology, it's not a sector. It's a horizontal opportunity that we have. And of course, yes, because data centers is a big investment that's going on.

If you actually look at -- take a step back, every day, there's a $1 billion capital spend on infrastructure for AI, right? It could be data centers, GPUs and so on and so forth. And by 2030, it's going to be $3 billion per day. So it's going to be $1 trillion investments. I think the space that we are looking at is how do we help build AI data centers for our clients, sovereign data centers.

It's more about the services and the software component of it, not so much on the hardware aspect of it. I think that's where we're going to focus on, and we continue to work with them. And the interesting part is soon there will be data centers in space. We got to think about that, too.

Just one question -- one clarification from Times of India, and then we'll come back to you. Saurabh, is there any change in the bench policy with the changing market dynamic?

None.

Wonderful. Go ahead, Shristi.

just have a quick question. So some of your larger and smaller peers are getting more acquisitive as they go forward. So do you also have such plans in this year? And what kind of geographies or capabilities would you be looking at?

Our acquisition strategy is based on our own five strategic priorities, not what others do, right? That's one.

Second, we just did HARMAN DTS, right? We're just integrating on that. What we look at is what are the opportunities that are there, both on the sector side and the market side, and we will continue to look at those opportunities. And for us, growth includes both organic and inorganic, and it has to fit into our broader strategy that we called out. And we'll stay focused, and we are definitely in for it.

We'll take one last question.

Just one question. It's about Americas two market. I mean, like it has come down compared to last quarter. So what are the reasons? And will growth continue back in the next quarter?

So you want to talk about it?

So Americas 2 typically has sectors that are impacted by furloughs. So this quarter three is a seasonally weak quarter, and therefore, it's impacted by furloughs. Other than that, you would have noted that our EMR performance has been quite soft, which is also part of the Americas 2 market. And therefore, we -- it's also because of some of the earlier programs that have concluded and the newer ones, we need to win more, right? So that is also playing into the Americas 2 performance.

As we look forward to the performance in Americas 2, you'll have to note that we've won a lot of good deals in the first half, and we are hopeful that they will continue to pick up. These deals typically take longer to ramp up given the nature of the wins, but we are very, very confident that they will start picking up and then the growth will come in.

So it's a little bit of a mixed bag. We've won the deals. We have to wait for some of these deals to ramp up. EMR softness is paying, and there's furloughs that should hopefully bounce back.

One just clarification. You said that 400 freshers have been recruited, right, in Q3. So how many freshers have been recruited so far in this fiscal?

About 5,000-plus.

Okay, okay. So by the end of this fiscal, how many --?

We had said 10,000. I think we'll end up between 7,500 to 8,000.

Thank you. We will have to conclude our Q3 FY26 earnings press conference. For all follow-up questions, please reach out to Media Relations team, and we'll be happy to help you. Thank you, and we'll see you next quarter.