Onward Technologies Ltd. (NSE: ONWARDTEC) Q3 2026 Earnings Call dated Jan. 16, 2026
Corporate Participants:
Jyoti Gupta — Investor Relations
Jigar Mehta — Managing Director
Analysts:
Madhur Rathi — Analyst
Dhruvin Doshi — Analyst
Sarvesh Gupta — Analyst
Jayshree Bajaj — Analyst
Buram Shetty Suresh — Analyst
Prasenjit Paul — Analyst
Harsh Chaurasia — Analyst
Abhijeet — Analyst
Amrish — Individual Investor
Presentation:
Operator
Ladies and gentlemen, good day, and welcome to Onward Technologies Limited Q3 FY26 Earnings Call. As a reminder, all participant lines will be in the listen-only mode, and there will be an opportunity for you to ask questions after the presentation concludes. [Operator Instructions].
Please note that this conference is being recorded. I now hand the conference over to Ms. Jyoti Gupta from EY Investor Relations. Thank you, and over to you, ma’am.
Jyoti Gupta — Investor Relations
Thank you, Bhumi. Good evening to all of you. Welcome to the Q3 FY26 earnings call of Onward Technology Limited. The result and presentation have already been mailed to you and you can also view them on our website at www.onwardgroup.com.
To take us to the results today and to answer your question, we have with us Mr. Jigar Mehta, Managing Director of Onward Technology Limited. He will start the call with the business updates and financial performance for the quarter, which will be then followed by a Q&A session. As usual. I would like to remind you that anything that is said on this call that reflects any outlook for future or which can be construed as a forward-looking statement must be viewed in conjunction with the risks and uncertainties that we face.
These risks and uncertainties are included but not limited to what we have mentioned in its prospect filed with SEBI and subsequent annual reports that you can find in our website.
Having said that, I will now hand over the call to Mr. Jigar Mehta. Over to you, Jigar.
Jigar Mehta — Managing Director
Thank you. Good evening, and warm welcome to all of you joining us today for our Q3 earnings call. It’s always a pleasure to connect with you every quarter and share with you the amazing progress our teams are making across Onboard Technologies. I hope you had a chance to go through the press release and earnings deck we released post the Board meeting earlier today.
Let me start with a quick overview of what we are trying to do in Onward about the last nine months and of course in the last 90 days in particular, right?.So from an Onward perspective, we shared at the early part of last year.
Sorry, late part of last year and early part of 2026 that our goal is –.’25, sorry. Our goal is to deliver double digit revenue and double digit EBITDA for the next three consecutive years. And we are building a leadership team in place where we move from a promoter driven, that’s me, to a professionally led, vertical led leadership team.
So let me throw some light about that. So I’m very pleased to share that now the entire team is in place, we have three vertical heads who are leading the business with the largest vertical that we have is the industrial.
A new leader joined us last week and he is settling down. So with that, we have Pratish leading our healthcare vertical and two new leaders each leading our transportation, mobility, and IHM vertical.
We want them to set it down and we’re very happy to introduce all of you to them in the next couple of weeks and quarters and including we hope to plan an analyst day very soon in Bombay. So with that, I take a step back from day to day operations and focus more on strategy and client engagement, while the three leaders will build the entire business.
The focus on the three businesses is very straightforward. In the industrial vertical, it will be completely delivery led growth. We have, as you already know, dream clients and very, very focused on just one geography right now which is North America.
And so the focus is how do we take these 40 odd relationships and convert them into $5 million, $10 million, $15 million, $20 million per year engagements. And number two is how do we expand into Europe which is a completely new territory for us where we have very minimal presence in this vertical.
Number two is our transportation and automation vertical where we had a very strong presence in the GCC market and India and now we added a leader who has US experience, Europe experience and he is building his team across Europe and US and we want to grow and first part is to build a very strong sales organization, transition the relationships that we already have in place into the global market.
And number three is then lead the entire thing to offshore where there will be substantially huge margin expansion. So that vertical continues to remain steady and we continue to focus only on the largest OEMs in the world while we have exited majority or I think all of the tier ones and transactional business that we had.
Third vertical is the healthcare vertical which is a new vertical for us. That’s a vertical where we continue to improve the client, the quality of clients that we have. So we have won some good client engagements and now it’s about how fast we can go in terms of deepening our growth with them.
So I do see the next one to three years, that’s going to be a very exciting vertical for us. Now coming back to the quarter, last nine months has been a historic quarter. I think the best of my career, best for my team, best for Onward Technologies. We delivered about INR411 odd crores of revenue which is 11.7% on an annual basis. Very similar to our budget and our EBITDA margin is much ahead of where we thought we would be. We are at 13.9% for the first nine months, right?.When I said double digit last year, we were expecting to be about 11%, 12% but we are way ahead of where we should be.
Predominantly driven by majority of the new business that we have signed is on the offshore side. Number two, in terms of last quarter. Last quarter was again we surprised ourselves and we’re very happy with what we have delivered. Our revenues stood INR136 crores. We were expecting to be a bit lower. If you remember, same time last year we had got — plus two years in a row we were — most of our customers, especially the GCCs in India and the automotive outside India had huge furloughs. But this time we had done proper budgeting. Our teams were well equipped.
So we knew while customers continued with their furlough, I think we were very well equipped in terms of both an internal budgeting and which was budgeted from an annual perspective. Obviously we’re not doing a quarterly gain. From an annual perspective, we had budgeted that we deliver double digit. So it was budgeted for that. So we’re very happy that we actually a lot of other client engagements, client contracts ramped up and we were very close to Q2 in terms of revenue and in terms of EBITDA, EBITDA continues to grow for us predominantly driven on offshore margin expansion and building amazing capabilities.
In line with that, we had shared earlier part of the year where we expect huge offshore projections, where we have budgeted a massive capex investment in India, where we upgrade our infrastructure in Pune, Chennai, Bangalore, Hyderabad. We have two of us, two Pune and Hyderabad running at full capacity now and with the addition of Chennai opens up another few hundred seats for us. And that’s where we are very excited with starting 2026 and 2027.
So that gives us enough bandwidth to grow several new engagements or expand the current engagements across North America and Europe into Chennai. So yes, majority of the new offshore growth or offshore headcount growth will be in Chennai for us.
In terms of our focus area continues to remain the same. As I said just to summarize on the industrial side it’s very delivery focused and we have got a terrific leader. I’m very excited to work with him and I know he’s inheriting our best teams who again have done phenomenally well and delivered beautiful CAGR for us in the last several years. And the whole focus there will be how do we transition majority of the business towards digital and AI. And that’s the background that he comes with.
On the transportation and mobility vertical, the focus as I said is the GCC business continues to remain strong and steady and I think that will grow double digit every year.
But the realizing for us will be is when we start opening up large OEM clients in Europe and US especially on the embedded digital side. And then that initially will be on site and then eventually it will lead to offshore and we have to find our own little niche in a very crowded automotive space. I think that is we are seeing amazing traction and the team continues to do well, continues to get a lot of meetings, have workshops and I think we will find that niche which will help us grow 5x, 10x from there.
Because keep in mind as we have shared last quarter and the previous quarter as well, we have already signed and the customer OEM customers in Europe and US have already hired Onward as a challenger to some of the large marquee ER&D services companies in the last decade.
So we have new challengers like several other companies as well. So it’s going to be a lot of fun as we find our way with these OEMs. So it’s all about hiring the right people and making sure we have a workforce that works harder and better than anybody else. And I think healthcare is fairly straightforward. I think we just need to keep building, investing and deepening our client engagements. Build the trust, build the credibility and I think we will see amazing runway for us as we move forward in the next couple of years.
So with that, I would like to summarize and open it up for questions. Sorry, from a financial perspective, we also wanted to share, our DSO continues to improve. We are now at 70 days end of Q3. Our abstrision continues to get better or gets lower. We are now at 14.73% and our headcount is at 2,491 employees. So let me explain what that is. So Q3 is a very significant quarter for us as we have shared in the last three years. Q3 for us is while things are slow, there are furloughs. A lot of our key customers are on holidays, especially US and Europe. That’s a time when we do a complete performance check or a reality check across the organization.
And this is where we also focus on reduction of the bottom 5%. So we finish our appraisal process in the month of July. By October 1st this year is we did some increments, very good increments for top performing people backed by client rate increase. And number three is we do bottom 5% with a significant portion of people.
Keep in mind, as a young company, we’re always taking big bets, hiring a lot of people, but not necessarily everybody’s successful, right? They drive their best, but sometimes it’s just not meant to be. This is the quarter where we actually move on from those people.
We take a one time hit if it has to in Q2 and Q3. But that gives them an opportunity to build their career somewhere else. It gives us an opportunity to start fresh as we build a new calendar year. Right? So a significant portion of number of senior people exit in Q3 for us, especially on the delivery side, sales side and equal number, if not double the number of people that come in. So lot of action happens for us in Q3. It’s usually the busiest quarter for us in the organization because we are getting ready for the next year and the next year, getting ready for the next calendar year and the financial year.
Because we’re constantly learning from what went right, what went wrong, which customers we can scale, which customers are looking at us in which verticals — sorry, which LOBs and which product areas so we can go deeper and deeper into those areas driven by customer feedback.
With that, I would like to open it up for Q&A. And we continue to remain committed as I said earlier, for 2026. Our goal continues to remain same while we are ahead of where we want to be as of today. And we are very happy to do that, thanks to all of your support and the amazing work all our employees are doing.
Our goal continues to remain the same for 2026 and ’27 which is deliver consistently annually double digit revenue growth and double digit EBITDA growth from the previous financial year. Thank you very much. And with this, I now hand over the floor back to the operator for Q&A session.
Questions and Answers:
Operator
Thank you very much. We’ll now begin the question-and-answer session. [Operator Instructions]. The first question is from the line of Madhur Rathi from Counter Cycle Investments. Please go ahead.
Madhur Rathi
Sir, thank you for the opportunity. Sir, I wanted to understand regarding our course. I wanted to understand regarding why customers choose Onwards versus their own GCC and so what is, what is the technology capability or the service capability that we have that these old GCGs have or they can’t create? That’s why there’s a stickiness with Onward versus their own offices.
Operator
Sir, can you hear me?
Madhur Rathi
Hello?
Jigar Mehta
Yes, hi. Can you hear me?
Operator
Yes, you’re audible. Yes,
Madhur Rathi
Sir.
Jigar Mehta
Okay. Yes. Right, so I understand you. I hope you understand the GCC model. GCC is nothing but a cost center of a global multinational in US and Europe or other parts of the western world which come to India for lower cost and large supply base. Right? And that supply base over a 5, 10, 15, 20 year process gets built into a capability center where they actually deliver solutions and products and intellectual property. So there are two different parts of a gcc. But just to simplify the answer, customers are all global companies are extremely clear.
The gcc, the cost center that they have created in India is only for a particular area. They are not to do with everything to do with India. Right? So while they might come into India, let’s say for AI and digital engineering, entire embedded and mechanical engineering, while we outsource to tons of other suppliers. So it’s not only Onward, there are always about five or six other suppliers. So we always see the top five, six companies, engineering, ER&D companies that you know of, which are all publicly traded, who are already there for the last decade.
Onward is the company they’ve hired recently, the last five, six years as a challenger. Number two traditional outsourcing models says 70% of the work they do in house and 30% they outsource. So we come as a 30% outsourcing side. And I think that flexibility, agility that they always need from suppliers, right? So 70% of the work they will do in house. So let’s say if they have a GCC of 5000 engineers, 3500 will be their own employees. 1500 will be between Onward and other large ernd service providers because they have the flexibility to end the contract.
They have the flexibility of lower cost, they have the flexibility of agility. They have the flexibility of when a project ramps up and down, they ask the service provider to change the personnel so they are not stuck with the people for next five years. The third part of the question is on the capability side. So the every customer is a unique proposition based on the three verticals that we have and then we have. For each customer we have identified a niche area where we have built an ODC or a managed services desk which is exclusively for that customer.
So we build deep capabilities for XYZ customer based on the RFQs and requirements that for the next three to five years. Hope that answers your question. So it’s three different things, yeah?
Madhur Rathi
Yes sir. So my next question was answer. I read that currently most of our revenue comes from time and material contract. So. So how do we see this mix changing from time and material to either outcome based or IP IP LED contracts? So I understand that LTTS has. A large part of LTTS growth has come from these IP LED contracts where the customer stickiness increases much more than these time and material contracts. So how do we see Onward moving our revenue mix from this time and material contract to the other kind of contracts?
Jigar Mehta
Good question. I guess. I think I did answer this question. I ask this question every quarter for the last few years. As I’ve shared earlier, I personally have no plans to change the mix. I like the time and material to be 90%. Please keep in mind Onward is a young company. Let’s say we’ll end up around INR550 odd crores of revenue. Our goal continues to remain at 90% P&L At least within the time we get INR100 million or INR1,000 crores in revenue. And then we will relook at what the next INR1.000 crores or INR2,000 crores or INR3,000 crores is.
But from where we are today, to get to INR1000 crores, I think time and material is a great business model for us. It’s very steady, it’s very dependable, it’s very sustainable. It gives the customer a lot of flexibility. That’s why customers love us. Our cash flows are very solid. You can see the cash generation that we have done. We have been able to pay dividends to shareholders like yourself for the last 10 years in a row. And I think we’ll continue to sustain that, if not keep growing that for the next several years.
And that’s the business I would like to be in at least in a very sustainable focused where we add value to the customers.
Madhur Rathi
Got it. Sir, one final question from my end.
Operator
Sorry to interrupt, Madhur, sir.
Madhur Rathi
I’ll get back in the queue, sir. Thank you so much, and all the best.
Operator
Thank you. Our next question is from the line of Dhruvin Doshi from NV Alpha. Please go ahead.
Dhruvin Doshi
Yeah. Hi sir. Thanks for the opportunity. Yeah, Jigar, my question to you would be on the long term trajectory path. You know, we aspire to reach INR1,000 crore of revenue. I’m assuming that would also –there would also be a component of an inorganic growth that would come in to achieve this. You know, to double our revenue from currently where we are. So, any update on acquisition that you know, you have thought of, anything that we are evaluating, and just your sense on that, how the inorganic part will play in terms of reaching this INR1,000 crore of revenue?
Jigar Mehta
Absolutely. You know, ever since the PE conversion came in, we’ve always looked at acquisitions very seriously so that we continue to remain open. So the best acquisition for us, as I have shared earlier would be in where we are sort of buying out. We’re getting an opportunity to acquire a customer, a competitor who’s already serving our existing customer. Right. So we have 70-odd customers today. So the best strategy or the best approach, at least from where, at least we come from today, is towards that.
So we are always open to it. As of today, we continue to focus only on inbound, where we get several companies reaching out to us or our customers asking us to look at some supplier which is not doing well or looking at exiting for whatever reason. And we’ve been open to that. We haven’t found the perfect blend yet. But we continue to engage with them, our board is engaged with them, conversion team is, and Harsha and his team are very helpful there as well. So we’re always open about it. Right. So if something comes up where you obviously will be the first persons to know.
But we are not looking at buying just for the sake of revenue.
Dhruvin Doshi
Understood, Got it.
Jigar Mehta
But it can happen there. When it happens, we will give the first person to know.
Dhruvin Doshi
Okay, got it. So there’s no immediate update or immediate actionable on that part at least for now?
Jigar Mehta
Correct, correct.
Dhruvin Doshi
Understood. Got it. Secondly, on the margins front, I just want to understand, I guess it’s of this one time labor code impact cost. We’ve done an all time high EBITDA margin. If you just could throw some more light on the sustainability of these margins and how do you see them going ahead? Was it also because you mentioned about furloughs and a lot of the Q3 being the busy quarter for you, with a lot of layoffs also happening. So was it also led by that? I mean so because of the laid up a lot of employees and just want to understand on that part, I mean, the sustainability of these margins going ahead.
Jigar Mehta
Very different question. I’ll go back to my projections or what we have shared with you and everybody last year, we were at 9% EBITDA last year, and we shared that we will grow double-digit EBITDA. At that point in time nobody believed us, and all the analysts and investors were asking us is it possible, we are a high volume, low cost company. Today, we are now. So our goal was how do we get to a double-digit batch, 11% to 12%, which included a significant portion of investments in the H1B on-site program and offshore. H1B program is gone.
Which means most of the customer engagements have led to substantial offshore work for us. I think our team did a brilliant strategy where we were ready for offshore work. Our design centers were ready. We opened upgrade a lot of our centers, and that led to the margin expansion just to keep things personal. On the furlough side, it was just more about we had already budgeted that from an annual perspective. So we don’t look at in onward quarterly numbers as such. Right. Yes, we are a listed company, and we want to maintain hygiene.
But our focus continues to remain on an annual basis to deliver double-digit. And double-digit, very honestly for us, we started 11%, 12% was the goal for us this year. So yes, 12% is what we are budgeting very well for, and that’s sustainable. Everything else on top is how well our teams execute the strategy.
Dhruvin Doshi
Understood. Yeah, thanks. That was very helpful.
Jigar Mehta
Thank you.
Operator
Thank you. Our next question is from the line of Sarvesh Gupta from Maximal Capital. Please go ahead.
Sarvesh Gupta
Hi sir. Good afternoon, and thank you for giving the opportunity. I had a couple of questions. So, sir, one is a strategy going ahead. So you know, like you mentioned that you are a small company and despite guiding for a double-digit growth is only a little bit lower in my opinion, because you know, the size is such that you could probably grow at a faster pace than this 10%, 11% sort of a growth trajectory. So wanted to understand, you know, what is the constraint when we think about growth?
Why can’t we, for example, double in next three years rather than grow by only 30%, 40% in the next three years. So what do you see are the constraints, why we can’t grow despite having a lower size? And second question is that earlier you had mentioned that you have these 2,500 odd employees, and you had the same number of employees back also. So now think about growing from the current level, what kind of capacity addition in terms of employees you see, you want to do, or what to be required to be done, or will you be able to continue getting to a different scale altogether with the same employee base? These are the two questions.
Jigar Mehta
Sure. So I think I’ve answered this earlier as well. But let me reemphasize or rephrase what I shared earlier. Where we are today is again the best it’s ever been. And when I say we will, the projections that we have given to everybody, to all our shareholders, stakeholders and the board is that we can deliver double digit EBITDA and revenue growth based on so many external factors that are there. Can we grow faster than that? Absolutely, we can grow faster. There are no limitations. I think it’s all about executing towards where we need to get to.
But executing sounds, it’s more about building delivery capabilities and I think everything needs to get into a mature cycle. Please keep in mind we’re not IT company, it’s engineering company. And on the engineering side, if you look at any right, we had some of the best consultants come and talk to us that we are the fastest growing organic based company growing in the last three to four years. There’s no company that’s grown even bigger or smaller or faster than us. Yes, through acquisitions, some companies have grown much more, and they show bigger numbers, but not organically because in engineering, you have to build capabilities, you have to build trust, and only then things happen.
It doesn’t happen overnight. So we are at that stage right now. As I said, we have just gone. We have added a beautiful leadership team in place. They are building the number twos and number three levels right now. While they inherited some amazing talent, they are also going to add a lot more as we migrate more and more towards digital and AI. So it’s going to take. It’s a process which happens, and we want to make sure we are always doing a very high quality job for our customers. Right. So in IT, it’s very different.
It’s personnel, they come, they go. It’s very different mindset. Our goal is to make sure we deliver high-quality engineering solutions for our customers where we own the SLAs, and we ramp up from there. So, double-digit is more about showing the confidence that we have as a leadership team, what will happen in the next three years.
Sarvesh Gupta
And on headcount?
Jigar Mehta
And on the headcount side, I continue to believe we are about 2, 500 odd people. A bit less today, and I think Q4 next couple of quarters, I think is going to be amazing for us.
I see that very strong customer demand. Sorry, very strong demand from our existing customers. And it’s all about again going back to execution. I think we have beautiful teams doing a fantastic job. We spend a lot of money on automation as well. This is simplifying workflows. So, automate headcount-wise, I think by the time we get to $100 million, I think we should be about 3,000 odd people. Because keep in mind majority of the growth is going to come from US business and Europe, of course, but the majority will come from export business, not from INR billing.
So I think about 3,000 is where I think I’ve shared earlier as well, is where we will be.
Sarvesh Gupta
Okay. And sir, when you are competing with other vendors, you know, for various new proposals, what are you exactly competing on? Is it the past work that you have done, or is it the pricing of these contracts or differentiated capabilities? So if you can throw some light on how does the selection of onward vis-a-vis other competitors happens from the customer’s point of view?
Jigar Mehta
So again, we’ve shared this multiple times in the past, but let me again rephrase, right. I think if you see my earnings calls, you will see that it’s consistently what we have shared in the last three years. But let’s say, for example, the first part in engineering business is to become a qualified supplier. To become a qualified supplier to the largest companies in each vertical that we are in, we have to do a lot of delivery work, pilot works, POC work from anywhere from three months to three years, right?
So that’s strictly based on your delivery capability in-house. You’re not allowed to subcontract that, you cannot outsource that. There is no cost angle there. Something that you do, these could be paid, or these could be complementary, where you are investing upfront for the customer to win that customer, win the customer’s trust.
Once you win that, once you do that customer doesn’t only select you only for one particular, let’s say line of business, which could be mechanical engineering or robotics or electronics, or it could be digital and AI.
I’m just giving you a very broad perspective. Now, once the identifier Onward is great on the digital side for this, for this one customer, then there’s a standard rate card which applies to us and the largest three companies in the world. There’s no difference in terms of rate coverage. That’s your standard rate coverage. The customer, which the OEM gives all of us, there is no special treatment for anybody, is what we understand now, based on the complexity of the work, the customer has a preference to increase the rate drastically or reduce it.
Because if that’s the cost of people and personnel, that’s how it works. Whether it is fixed price or time and material doesn’t really matter is what again my understanding is. So that’s where we come in. The number three part is the difference in terms of how you want to. The real differentiation comes in when we start bidding for larger projects is how you want to bid for the project. You want to bid as a managed services, you want to bid as outcome based, you want to bid as time and material.
You want to bid what you can lower your rate in the final cost. That’s your strategy based on that changes dynamically every day, right? So some very large multi billion dollar companies like to do outcome-based. Young companies like mine love to do time and material. And then the customer has a preference, right? For xyz, rfq they might do. They prefer time and material. That’s where we win. For xyz they prefer outcome-based, they might win sometimes it’s a city, customers are very clear. They only want to go to Pune or Hyderabad, and if we are the only supplier from that city, we get a preference.
So it’s very dynamic. There is no fixed thing. But standardization is based on your delivery capability in-house and your ability to continuously invest in the future. Because you could be great in something today. Tomorrow, the customer’s needs will change. You should have that level of cash flows, you should have that level of vision. You should have that level of delivery capabilities to ramp up and invest in new carriers and take that risk with the customer.
Sarvesh Gupta
Understood, sir. Thank you. And all the best.
Operator
Thank you. Our next question is from the line of Jayshree Bajaj from Trinetra Asset Managers. Please go ahead.
Jayshree Bajaj
Hello, sir. My first question is like —
Operator
Ma’, am, could you please speak a little louder?
Jayshree Bajaj
Hello?
Operator
Yes, you are audible.
Jayshree Bajaj
Yeah, so my first question is India is accounting for 50% of revenue by geography. So that means India geography, not India have like we don’t have any domestic customers. So does this indicate that half of our global contracts are being built through Indian subsidiaries of global OEMs, or is this purely a reflection of offshore delivery center accounting?
Jigar Mehta
Actually, a combination of both. India, we do 50% of our invoicing in INR, which includes the business that we do in with the GCCs in India, which is absolutely right. As you said earlier, the global clients have a capital center that’s a subsidiary in India, and they prefer to do it there because that’s where they get the transfer pricing advantage. And number two, we also have an entity in UK, which is a branch office of Onward Technologies, the parent company, not a subsidiary. So that revenue also gets accounted in the India part.
So if you see our last year’s annual report of balance sheets, you will see all the breakup, how we account for it.
Jayshree Bajaj
And how does this impact our desktop optimization and currency hedging strategies?
Jigar Mehta
It does it, right? Because we don’t. It’s just you again; you shared everything. If you look at our earnings decks or if I look at our annual report, everything is clearly mentioned. We are only heading. We are very conservative. I — we — I don’t like to make money on hedges. I just want to make sure I don’t lose money on it. So we are very conservative from that side. So I’ll be hedgehog, which is driven by the audit committee. It’s predominantly we are hedging our offshore revenue from US and Germany. Germany is still very small. Predominantly, it’s not, it’s US.
Jayshree Bajaj
Okay. And my second question is given like we have a cash and bank reserves of INR116 crores. So as and as you have stated today also that we are not focusing on M&A other than competing suppliers for existing clients. So rather than can we look for the acquiring specialized capabilities in high growth areas like cyber security or NLP, where we don’t work right now?
Jigar Mehta
Absolutely, absolutely. It’s an opportunity, an area. Cyber security is a superb area and so is so many other areas. So we are open to all of that. Right. So we have looked at acquisitions, we have looked at the buyback options as well. We have looked at dividend options at the board. We have also looked at multiple other things. Right. Buying more assets, creating a campus in Pune. So we’re constantly evaluating. We have a very young, dynamic team. We have a very dynamic CFO. We have a very strong finance team.
So constantly we are on the go every day. Right. But we don’t want to do anything just for the short term, just to please one quarter of somebody. We want to do it long-term, sustainable. That’s what Onward stands for. We have a beautiful legacy. We want to keep growing, and I know we can keep winning as we have done last five years.
Jayshree Bajaj
Okay, so can we expect something in near future regarding this, any acquisition or anything?
Jigar Mehta
We are all very open. We are always excited. For me, INR116 million sounds a lot of big money. But for me, not anymore. As I said, my bigger dream is I should have six months of payroll cash on hand. So what we went through as an organization and the whole world went through in the pandemic should never happen again. So there are a lot of things we can do with positive cash flow. I think we will easily be at, let’s say double the where we are today, three or two or three years from down the line. So I think it’s very exciting phase for us.
We have to just make sure we don’t do anything short-term just to please somebody. And I mean very fortunate. I have an amazing Board which is constantly guiding me towards that. With the right opportunity, we’ll be ready to strike tomorrow morning. You see a discipline.
Jayshree Bajaj
Thank you.
Jigar Mehta
Yes. Thank you. Progressively thinking.
Jayshree Bajaj
Yeah. Thank you.
Operator
Thank you. Our next question is from the line of Buram Shetty Suresh from Buram’s Financial. Please go ahead.
Buram Shetty Suresh
Good evening, sir. Giving an opportunity. Sir, until you are sitting in cash. But you go for acquisition and go for any dividend — on the special dividend. Or you can use the fund’s expansion plans. But this will — revenue continue next quarter and other quarters also, it will be continue revenue grow around 20%, is possible, sir? Sir, I know little bit English, you can understand. Hello?
Jigar Mehta
It’s going to be a very exciting 2026. If I understood your question well, we have a lot of options which, as I said, the Board and the management team are looking at every day. You can be rest assured of that. And I think it’s going to be very exciting.
Buram Shetty Suresh
Any special dividends?
Jigar Mehta
It’s special only. Right. I think we increase it to INR5 a share two years ago. My job is to make sure I sustain that. If not, throw that, so not looking at anything off one off [Indecipherable] expanding.
Buram Shetty Suresh
Shareholder side, I am asking but you on stock market wise price varies 2, 3 years back INR800 rupees. It will trade it around onwards. But it will be company is growing good. But And I am not asking price increase. But why is that market will take Onward is the price not take good shape?
Jigar Mehta
I’m not the expert on the market. I’m an expert in building an organization. I think that’s what I can focus on. But I’m sure the price discovery will happen. And as me and my team keep delivering good positive progressive results every day. Rest. I will leave it to the management team, obviously, and the Board to guide us in terms of anything that comes up in the Q4 Board meeting.
Buram Shetty Suresh
Any buying — buyback options is there in near future is very good. I have told. But promoters any buyback or any announcements will chances is there?
Jigar Mehta
Everything is open. Every day is a new day. And we are progressively always looking at the best options which is for Onward and all our shareholders.
Buram Shetty Suresh
Okay. Thank you for giving opportunity.
Jigar Mehta
Thank you.
Operator
Thank you. Our next question is from the line of Prasenjit Paul from Paul Asset. Please go ahead. Presentjeet, please unmute your lines and go ahead with the question.
Prasenjit Paul
Hello?
Operator
Yes. You are audible.
Prasenjit Paul
I am audible. Correct?
Operator
Yes.
Prasenjit Paul
Okay. Yeah. Good afternoon, Mr. Jigar. So my first question is regarding the court order. So as you can see in the footnote that there is an ex parte orde order from the circuit court, and there are some frozen cash. So kindly help me to understand, like what are the chances of getting favorable order, and in case of ultimately we receive some unfavorable order, what’s the maximum hit we can take on profit and loss account in any quarter?
Jigar Mehta
I don’t think it’s a quote. It’s a case by an ex employee who left on his own due to non performance. That’s all I know, right? He was a sales guy in my team, in my US team — US organization. That’s the background, and we’re just following the legal process. One of our board members is guiding us. We’ve hired the best lawyers to defend us. We have all the supportings with us. As for everybody on our side of the thing, we have every supporting to show that we have done nothing wrong. All dues have been paid, everything is exactly as per our contract.
Rest my HR team, and my sales leadership is driving it, and they are in touch with the lawyers. So we have not heard back anything. In terms of impact, we will follow the legal course. It’s not about work we can afford or not afford. If we win, we should win. I think, and I think that’ll be great. That’s the right thing to do. We’ve never had a legal case against Onward ever in our history. If something goes wrong, that’s something that we have to figure out why it went wrong and make sure it never happens again.
But so far from where I stand and what I have seen and what the Board has seen and our lawyers have seen, we are absolutely. We have all the supportings to show that we have paid this ex-employee as we have paid thousands of other ex-employees across the world on time, as per very strong documentation.
Prasenjit Paul
Okay. So in case the worst possible outcome. So what would be the hit on the PLN we can get?
Jigar Mehta
I would not know. As I said, it’s too early to say any of these things because we will keep fighting, right? There’s nothing going to be about today or tomorrow.
Prasenjit Paul
Okay,
Jigar Mehta
I can only share what we know, right? This both the lawyers of this ex employee have already quit after we — after our lawyers submitted all the documentation, they thought we will not have anything. We had everything to the final rupee and final dollar. So everything is so far very positive in that direction.
Prasenjit Paul
Okay, next question is. So we are finally at around 14%, 15% kind of EBITDA margin. But just answering to some previous participants, you mentioned you had targeted around 11%, 12%, and anything top of that is a bonus. So, can we expect going forward the margin will come down to 11%, 12% of this 15% kind of range is sustainable?
Jigar Mehta
Again, I’m not playing a daily, weekly, quarterly game. Annually is what I said we projected a year ago or nine months back. And I’m very pleased with my team’s performance. And the Board also acknowledged that they were very happy with our team’s performance, and that’s what we are focusing on. Right. Next year, our goal is to again, let’s say whatever number we are at, we will be — our double goal is to be a double digit again, and that’s what the budgeting is happening as we speak. Budgeting will be closed as we always close by February 15th in Onward Technologies.
So, so far it’s looking very progressive in terms of where we want to be and what we need to do towards that.
Prasenjit Paul
Okay, so that is still maintaining this mix in a kind of margin goal over the longer run, or like instead of [Indecipherable] when you are expecting 11%, 12%, kind of if I consider the long-term goal?
Jigar Mehta
I’m still maintaining for the next for 2000 and for FY25-26, FY26-27, and FY27-28. Every year we’ll deliver double-digit revenue and EBITDA growth from the previous year. That’s what we are maintaining from where we are at.
Prasenjit Paul
Okay. Okay, thanks a lot and wishing you all the very best for the future.
Jigar Mehta
Thank you.
Operator
Thank you. Our next question is from the line of Harsh Chaurasia from Orbit Exports Family Office. Please go ahead.
Harsh Chaurasia
Thanks. Thanks for giving me the opportunity. Am I audible?
Operator
Yes, you are audible.
Harsh Chaurasia
Yeah. So I had a one question, sir. Mainly, I wanted to understand how is the demand environment working broadly in the three verticals which you’re working on, and apart from that, one on the one of the calls in like the peer companies in India, TR&D, they called out like the demand is improving, but it is in some pockets of technology, with the clients are doing the pending.
So wanted to understand in our top 5 or top top 10 clients what kind of spending or area of spending they’re looking out and is Onward well positioned to get benefit out of that? So that was my first question.
Jigar Mehta
So the demand — absolutely, the demand is increasing or improving every day. I don’t think in Onward we ever had a challenge in terms of demand because we are not trying to get a new customers, we’re focusing on existing customers. We are not even one or not even 1% of our customers outsourcing budget today. Right. So you can understand the leeway or the runway that Onward has for the next several years. It’s about building trust, capability, and it’s about building deep domain expertise in the various markets.
Just because I’m supporting a customer, let’s say in US, doesn’t mean I will get the same business from the same customer in UK. You got to build the UK capabilities and the whole process that goes with it. So from Onward perspective, I think demand has always been positive. I don’t think we have seen demand go up or down since the pandemic.
To answer your first question. Number two, in terms of all our 70 customers where we have today, we shared in the press release as well. So, like, just in the last nine months, we won four large preferred vendors.
So I proposed large customers. They were all references from our existing customers. So you can see that these we are adding creating so much value for some customers that they’re recommending us to other customers. But that also allowed us to actually exit 12 tail clients. Some clients we saw, we thought they would be growing, and they had huge demands. But something happened, maybe the tariffs happened to I think couple of customers in Europe. Some customers got affected by the war, some customers got affected by the oil price.
So you know a lot of dynamic stuff happens every day, and our sales organization is constantly evaluating that. So overall, we’re down to 70-odd customers today, and I think it’s a good number to be at. I think 50 is where I always said plus minus is a perfect place to be in because then our best people can focus on the best customers. So demand lot of challenge. I think it’s all about building execution capabilities and moving more and more towards digital engineering, more and more towards AI, more and more towards offshore.
Harsh Chaurasia
Which are 70. Like when I see the bandwidth, current bandwidth of the organizations is like we can’t go to every client and get all the revenue potential we have. So are we targeting a set of customers like top 25, top 30 customers where we are going to to penetrate significantly next let’s say two to three years now. How are we going to do that, and what kind of investments we are doing from a technology perspective or improving a team? And apart from that, I wanted to understand in the top five clients like on an average we have INR50 crores to INR55 crores of revenue per client.
So, how much would be your wallet share in top five clients? And when you look to the client, the opportunity presented to you, do you find any low-hanging fruit like where Onward can do the investments and accelerate their growth in top, top pipeline?
Because historically we have seen in all the R&D companies, there are three to four anchor clients where they do the majority of the lift up. So that’s how the perspective is coming.
Jigar Mehta
So I’ve shared this earlier as well, right. So what is Top 25 clients? Top 25 clients is not a set of 25 names of the same companies which exist the same year every year. So top 25 clients for us has always been or any other services company is every year we do budgeting with customers, right? So we are doing budgeting with customers last quarter with some companies we are doing this quarter based on their cycles and how their governance standards. Our governance meetings are scheduled and then the customer comes back and says okay, Onward Technologies.
We love the work you guys have done in so so so area we didn’t like what you guys did in XYZ area, and in the areas that you guys are doing a great job, we want to make sure you guys can ramp up capacity capability by 30% or 40%, right?
So, like this, you have meetings with, let’s say, all 70 customers. In that you identify which are those companies which are counting on you, which are progressive, where you can grow much faster, which will deliver eventually to what we are sharing to our shareholders, like yourself, double-digit revenue and EBITDA growth and we had a vertical leadership teams as we go deep into that, right?
So we don’t try to win all 70 battles. It’s impossible for us to do that. So it’s always budgeting. Number two again, please keep in mind engineering your engineeringcompany.it. There’s no new day, right? Budgeting happens once, and then you’re part of it. So, within the 70 customers that we have, we are not even probably part of the budgeting exercise in the bottom 20%, 30% because they might be new suppliers. We have to pay our dues, we have to build the credibility, we have to build the presence in those customer accounts.
So we are still transactional there, right? So they just added us as a challenger and said, okay, show us what you guys can do. So that’s where we are at. So for us, that’s how we are structured. In terms of low hanging fruits, there’s a lot of low hanging fruits. If you’re ready to compromise margins, which I’m not, because I want to grow the margins. I think once you get to 15%, 18% EBITDA margins, and sometimes you want to get revenue just to boost up and then optimize or move it offshore, all those things pop up.
But in today’s scenario, I think it’s more about for us to make sure we carefully take the projects where we can add value to the customer. We can differentiate customers appreciates the work we are doing. Which means the next time we get work, the work increases, the rate increases, the stickiness increases, the volume increases. Right. So that’s where we want to get into. So that’s where our sweet spot lies. That’s where my focus lies. That’s where my leadership team’s focus lies at least the next near term, next couple of years.
Operator
Thank you. Harsh, please rejoin the queue for a follow-up question. Our next question is from the line of Abhijeet from PI Asset. Please go ahead.
Abhijeet
Thanks for the opportunity. Am I audible?
Operator
Yes, you are audible.
Abhijeet
Yeah. Sir, you mentioned that the majority of the business going forward will come from US. In this quarter, US accounted for 30% of the revenue. So what is your internal target for this mix over the next two to three years? Are you looking at say 50% contribution?
Jigar Mehta
Abhijeet, that’s why it’s called internal. It will remain internal. From your perspective, from outside perspective, we are committing what we are aiming to do as a team. And I think I’ll be very happy and pleased two years down the line. And I know my Board will be very happy and pleased. Consistently, we deliver double-digit revenue and EBITDA growth.
Abhijeet
Yeah. The reason I asked is because if the contribution increases, the impact on the blended margin will be higher. So is the US margin — does the US margin has higher margin as compared with the other geographies?
Jigar Mehta
No, I have not seen that in Onward so far. It’s just that because I have studied in us right? I’ve done my undergrad there, and now grad recently, I’m more comfortable in the US market. So that’s what I want to go.
Abhijeet
Okay.
Operator
Abhijeet, we are not able to hear you. As there is no response. We’ll move on to the next participant. Our next question is from the line of Amrish, an individual investor. Please go ahead.
Amrish
Good evening, and thank you for the opportunity. This is a follow-up to an earlier question on invoicing — USD invoicing. I’m just trying to understand constant currency growth to look at USD invoicing is on site share a good proxy. Is that something one can track to see what proportion of USDA and what proportion is INR of our invoicing?
Jigar Mehta
Can you elaborate please?
Amrish
Part of our invoicing is in USD and part is in INR, and I’m trying to find a way to track this a bit better. So I was wondering whether on site share of revenue is a good proxy for USD invoicing. At the end of this. I’m trying to assess constant currency growth versus INR growth.
Jigar Mehta
Sure. You know, IR managers at E&Y can get back to you with. I think the question is too many questions in one. To clarify, everything that we do outside India, besides UK which is a branch office, even UK is invoiced in pounds, whether it’s on-site or offshore. It’s just how the subsidiary, how the transfer pricing works. So maybe the specifics, we can give it to you, and E&Y can get back to you right away if you can just email them.
Amrish
Okay, thank you. That would be helpful. Another request, just as a point on the guidance, I know you’re suggesting double-digit revenue and EBITDA growth, and you’ve given a range of in the past of a 10% to 12% revenue number.
If there’s any more color you could provide on EBITDA going forward, because with operating leverage unit, you get double that double-digit revenue growth, we should get double-digit EBITDA growth. So there’s any additional color you can provide when you provide our guidance next quarter that would be helpful?
Jigar Mehta
That’s all we have right now. Right. And we’ve given ourselves enough room to surprise you guys for the positive like we have done last two quarters in a row. But to do that, we also are getting surprised. Right. So it’s all about making sure we can consistently build a beautiful business for the long term. Potential is enormous. It’s all about executing, as I said, can we grow much faster? We have said that, yes. Can the EBITDA be improved substantially more and grow from here? Absolutely, yes.
But at least for a projection perspective, we need to be consistent. We want to make sure we deliver that, and we give ourselves enough room to surprise ourselves and you guys by executing better.
Operator
Thank you. Amrish, please come back for a follow-up question. Our next follow-up question is from the line of Madhur Rathi from Counter Cyclical Investments. Please go ahead.
Madhur Rathi
Thank you for the opportunity once again. Sir, in FY24, we had mentioned that we would like the export business to be 70% of our revenue and the India business to be 50% of our revenue. But that doesn’t happen. So is it because that GCC business that was earlier considered to be export has shifted to India? That’s why this is at 50-50, or we haven’t been able to grow that pie as a whole?
Jigar Mehta
No, that’s not correct. The GCC business, if you looked at the industry reports in 2023 and ’24 was supposed to remain flat, then the US government changed, and the GCC business, the GCC expansion in 2024-25 and ’26 started growing very, very fast. So all our customers in GCCs, which were supposed to be flat on negative growth, started to grow much faster. So we actually grew our GCC business with them, and because of that, all our businesses started growing again. Earlier, we assume that only our US business will grow.
That’s where we were investing. But keep in mind, we already have huge investments in India and in Europe. So it’s all about if all the three geographies grew at the same time, I think all three will grow even faster.
Madhur Rathi
Got it. I’m sure if you can just help us understand regarding the project profile that we are — we have. So I’m trying to understand, sir, the top 10 customers or like 50% of our revenue in FY22 that has grown to close to 70% right now. So if you could just help us understand how the project profile of these clients have changed. And so you mentioned that you would like to move into embedded vehicles software. So more of the software element, more of the electronic sensor capabilities on that front.
So if you could just help us understand how how has the project profile changed over these years and how has that helped us to increase the share of customers or top 10 customers, either on project stickiness side or from the complexity of the order that we are getting?
Jigar Mehta
I just got an alarm that we have crossed our time but I’ll try to answer your question quickly. Post the pandemic, we are a pure play mechanical engineering company started investing on the digital side. That’s where Convergin, the PE firm, came in, and they partnered with us in that journey. Today, a substantial portion of our revenue comes from the digital side in our growth side.
So our entire digital revenue comes from some of our large clients. What has changed and what has led to the margin expansion in the last five years consistently is a lot of our business which when you are starting a new client engagement, all your work is on site at the client premises or somewhere remote or hybrid because it was pandemic. Today a lot of the work that we do for the same clients, especially the top 10 clients or top 25 clients, is offshore.
Right? And I think in the next three to five years, I think if we continue to do a good job and execute very well and keep investing in infrastructure, data security, processes, automation, I think entire growth will only be offshore where there’ll be managed services, ODCs for those clients. So, which will lead to huge capex investments in one side, which we are ready for because we have the cash reserves, but also will lead to margin expansion because the offshore build is obviously much higher than on-site build rates.
On-site build rates are traditionally low single. Sorry, are single digits and offshore are double digits. At least for us today.
Madhur Rathi
Got it. Sir, thank you. So just a final question, sir. What would take our margins towards high teen levels from the 13%, 14% that we are doing currently?
Jigar Mehta
We have crossed 5 o’clock, come over to the office or visit any of our centers. Very happy to show you around and address as many questions.
Madhur Rathi
Sure, sir.
Jigar Mehta
Thank you.
Operator
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, that was the last question for today. I would now like to hand the conference over to Mr. Jigar Mehta for closing comments.
Jigar Mehta
Thank you. Thank you so much again. I hope I was able to answer most of your questions. If there are any factual data which I was not able to give you, please reach out to our managers at Ernst & Young, and they will be able to share that with you right away.
We are very excited with the progress that we have made in 2025, and as I look forward to 2026, it looks even better with the tremendous effort, amount of work, and the quality of team that we have today. So with that, looking forward to partnering with all of you in this journey and excited to chat with you again a quarter from now, where we can show you additional progress that we have made.
Thank you again, and have a lovely weekend.
Operator
[Operator Closing Remarks].