Note: This is a preliminary transcript and may contain inaccuracies. It will be updated with a final, fully-reviewed version soon.
Onward Technologies Ltd. (NSE: ONWARDTEC) Q4 2026 Earnings Call dated May. 05, 2026
Corporate Participants:
Pratik Jakta — Investor Relations
Jigar Mehta — Managing Director
Analysts:
Buram Shetty Suresh — Analyst
Madhur Rathi — Analyst
Hitaindra Pradhan — Analyst
Unidentified Participant
Presentation:
Operator
Ladies and Gentlemen, good day and welcome to the Onward Technology Limited Q4FY26 earning conference call. As a reminder, all participant lines will be the listen only mode and there will be an opportunity for you to ask questions after the presentation concludes. Should you need assistance during the conference call, please signal an operator by pressing Star then zero on a touch tone phone. Please note that this conference has been recorded. I now hand the conference over to Mr. Pratik Jakta.
Thank you and over to you sir.
Pratik Jakta — Investor Relations
Good day to all of you. Welcome to the Q4FY26 earnings call of Onward Technologies Limited. The results and presentation have already been mailed to you and you can also view them on our website www.onwardgroup.com to take us through the results today and to answer your questions, we have with us Mr. Jigar Mehta, Managing Director of Onward Technologies Limited. He will start the call with business update and financial performance for the quarter which will be then followed by Q and a session as usual.
I would like to remind you that anything that is said on this call that reflects any outlook for the 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 prospectus filed with SEBI and subsequent annual reports that you can find in our website. Having said that, I’ll now hand over the call to Mr. Jigar. Over to you Jigar.
Jigar Mehta — Managing Director
Thank you. Good evening everyone and thank you again for joining us. It’s good to be back and share our performance for the fourth quarter and the full year for FY25 26. FY26 has been, as you must have seen from the press release and the numbers released earlier today post the board meeting. FY26 has been the strongest year in our history. We’ve delivered record revenue of 550 odd crores which is a YoY growth of 10.5% and a record EBITDA of 71.9 crores. The gross margin improving to our highest in our history to 13.2% in absolute terms, EBITDA grew 16.9% and PAT grew 72.3% by Oy reflecting the strength of the execution and the quality of our earnings.
Again, the performance is driven by consistent delivery like I’ve been sharing for the last several quarters. Better operating leverage, focusing on very few direct clients and disciplined cost control and steady progress across our three by three vertical strategy. This is also Translated to strong cash flows, operating cash flows with net cash now increasing 227.3 crores, the highest in our history. Again, our balance sheet strength continues to give us confidence and the flexibility as we continue to invest for higher revenue growth while continuously improving our EBITDA margins.
Over the last four years since the pandemic, especially since the new strategy has evolved focusing on the US and Europe market, we have delivered a revenue CAGR of 15.3% and EBITDA CAGR of 35.4% in this period while keeping headcount largely stable close to 2,500 employees. Our final headcount end of March 31, 2026 was 2,485 employees who are based between India, Europe and North America which is predominantly US and Canada. For us this is a strong indicator of the operating leverage and productivity level growth that we are seeing including our revenue and employee per growing consistently over the next four years and we believe will consistently grow even higher close to industry benchmark in the next several years.
In Q4 our revenue continued momentum we again rose the highest 139 crore delivering a 6.9% Bio Y growth while EBITDA margins were at 11.2%. Growth continues to be anchored in deep and long term client relationships, predominantly companies headquartered in North America and Europe and our top 25 customers continue to grow at a steady pace which is now at 88% of our revenues. The reflecting strong concentration around strategic clients and increasing relevance within their engineering and R and D programs.
We’re still very very the best part about our business model and where we are today, starting the new financial year FY2627 is we still have a very small percentage of the client’s R and D budget or outsourcing software outsourcing budget which gives us a huge confidence for the next three to five years as we look forward and the growth Runway that we have with our existing clients. Another very interesting development over the last couple of quarters is through our existing clients we got six amazing client references as well.
So in the last 12 months we added net six new clients which are still at a very recent stage, but where we assigned the master services agreement and now started bidding for projects, we started billing for them as well and I think that is a very exciting stage for a young company like us, which shows the confidence our existing large clients clients have in us when they obviously give you references of other similar large companies, especially in the industrial vertical that we are focused on in terms of our vertical horizontal strategy.
Country continues to remain consistent. As we have shared earlier, it’s 3 by 3, 3 verticals and 3 horizontals, IHM being the largest and the other two where we are investing and we hope to continue to make a lot of momentum on over the next several quarters. In parallel we have continued to invest in strengthening our horizontals, especially in our digital and AI led capabilities supported by dedicated budgets. We also believe we also are gearing up for setting up our AI Digital AI lab in Chennai in the next couple of months.
We’d love to welcome all of you guys there to showcase some of the amazing work that our teams and delivery teams are doing for our clients. If I look forward several years from now I think onward we’ll have a substantial portion of revenues coming from digital led AI projects and I believe that will give us both huge revenue growth as well and margin expansion consistently and a very sustainable model Simplification has also actually helped us in a very very big way. I’ve shared that last quarter.
We are now able to execute very very very focused trainings, very focused learning, organizational developments, very focused people based initiatives which has helped reduce attrition to its lowest which is below 15% again a record for us. We are at 14.85% for last financial year and we continue to see a lot of room for improvement and employee engagements and improving customer satisfaction which will keep improving this percentage as we move forward over the next in FY26 27 and in the future as well.
Looking at the overall perspective and the and looking at overall amazing performance of the year and the bright future that we believe we have with what we have seen so far in the client’s budgets we the board has looked at the capital allocation budget as well and increase the dividend recommended to increase the dividend to rupees 8 per share. This will be 11 consecutive year of dividend and this 8 rupees per share will be the highest that the board has recommended which is the shows the commitment that we have to return back to the shareholders.
As we look forward we are increasingly confident about the next phase of our growth as well. We have finalized our roadmap covering both revenue and EBITDA which I’ve shared before. We would like we believe we have everything in front of us today to execute to deliver double digit revenue growth and double digit EBITDA and our newly formed Global GLT or Global Leadership team that we are selling have recently set up comprising of business leaders and corporate functional leaders will drive the day to day operations and execution while the external environment remains dynamic.
The demand outlook for digital and engineering services, especially new initiatives on AI projects, continues to be very positive. With the right clients, stronger leadership, clear depth and a more focused business model. We remain comfortable reiterating again our guidance for sustained double digit revenue and EBITDA overall. As a summary, FY26 was a year of strong delivery and structural progress. As we move into FY27, we are focusing on deepening our role as a trusted digital engineering partner.
We continue to strengthen our teams in US and Europe and we have been very excited in terms of what we are seeing forward with our existing client engagements. With that, I’ll hand it over back to the operator for questions. Thank you again.
Questions and Answers:
Operator
Thank you sir. We’ll now begin the question and answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask question may press star and one on their touch tone telephone. If you wish to remove yourself from the question queue, you may press star and two participants are requested to use handset while asking a question. Ladies and gentlemen, we’ll wait for a moment while the question queue assemble. The first question is from the line of Buraram Shetty Suresh from Buraram Financial. Please go ahead
Buram Shetty Suresh
Sir. Good evening sir all of you sir you are told the business model and your growth is you can present good good sir but stock market side price will be continue decrease the generally investor side I am asking sir I’m so many years I am the shareholder number continue very results will be good but price will be every quarter will be decreased price. Any aware of your stock stock price? I know little bit English you can try to understand hello
Jigar Mehta
No I appreciate hi I appreciate the question. It’s something we are working towards. While we don’t control the stock market and what the reactions are we want to make sure that as onboard technologies management team we at least articulate our story well. We share all the information transparently and we are extremely positive. As I said last four years we have grown both revenue and EBITDA CAGR and I think next three to four years is going to be even more exciting. But on the IR side something we have to do on a much better job and that’s the management team including myself is working on.
We hope to show you improvement very soon
Buram Shetty Suresh
Sir. Actually anthropic cloud tools and your AI developments affect the company’s future business. This is the total industry problem. You can explain that anthropic cloud affect the onward business. We can little bit explain. It
Jigar Mehta
Does not it does not affect us. It affects. It does not affect engineering companies. Not yet but if it does in the next few quarters we will definitely share more information with you. The impact today with what has come out is more for BPO and IT companies again so need to reiterate on what is engineering services company not an IT IT company
Buram Shetty Suresh
And actually anthropic cloud product onward is a product company also Anthropic cloud product companies any effect
Jigar Mehta
Company technologies again just to clarify on the technology the engineering services company we don’t do any product development. We don’t do. We don’t sell products in the market. We are a pure play services company focused on US and Europe clients. So onward.
Buram Shetty Suresh
Companies also. Sir, in 19. Sorry to
Operator
Interrupt. Mr. Puram city leaves
Buram Shetty Suresh
The. Sir, it also please. Anthropic cloud disturbed the product companies. I would
Jigar Mehta
Not. I. I would not know. We are on the technologies is not a product company. It doesn’t affect us yet. As I said we will definitely share with you and all our investors if we see any impact from anthropic cloud and or from other AI platforms or tools in the world. But currently so far we have not seen any impact on us as on a services business. On the engineering services business.
Operator
May I request you to rejoin the queue please. Thank you. The next question is from the line of Madhur Rati from Counter Cyclical Investment. Please go ahead.
Madhur Rathi
So taking from the previous speaker’s question, so I definitely appreciate that you have increased dividend and recent growth is also pretty encouraging. But then if you see our stock price, 21 years back in 2005 the stock was at 120 rupees and today it’s at 240 rupees. So basically shareholders have not really made any wealth. So but this is opportunity because now we have over 125 crore of net cash and our market cap is around 550 crore. So which means that almost a quarter or a fifth of our market cap we have in cash.
So why aren’t we doing a big share buyback so that the equity base can reduce and whatever growth comes in future will get divided on a smaller equity base. So basically the earning per share will increase disproportionately. And recently in the recent budget the taxation on the share buyback has also become pretty attractive. Since the promoter shareholding is in corporate structure then only 22% taxation is there. And if the promoters choose not to participate in the buyback then the shareholding of the promoters can increase.
So any thoughts on that?
Jigar Mehta
Thank you for the suggestion recommendation. It’s something the board has been actively considering. Definitely the price is very Attractive both for the company and for all the investors. Yes, it’s an exciting time and we hope to make the right decision which will create a lot of value for all our shareholders.
Madhur Rathi
Right sir. And sir, again, so now that especially for layman investors like us who don’t have a technological background, if you could just give some comments on reassuring us that what exactly, I mean are we user of AI or AI can substitute our business and maybe the products clawed, etc. That are present in the market right now, maybe they are not impacting us, but the direction that things are moving, what makes you think that we will be net beneficiaries instead of the business going redundant?
Jigar Mehta
So great, great question. This is something that we are actively always monitoring. Today it is AI, tomorrow it could be some other technology disruption. So far I can share with you from our customer perspective AI, especially the new version of Claude and some of the latest version of ChatGPT, we have not seen any disruption that our customers have brought to us, we have not seen our pipeline decrease and neither have we seen any impact where our customers actually asking us to use AI tools. Right?
So to address your point more directly, we are not using AI tools today to deliver client based projects which are delivered. We are not. So far customers are not brought to us or asked us to use any particular AI tool. But what we are doing, I hope I addressed the first question, first point. So so far it’s affecting what we understand. From the same news that you are reading IT companies and BPO companies. It’s not affecting engineering companies. Engineering companies is not about hiring freshers and just doing some basic application maintenance work.
Right? We are doing new product development work within robotics work. We’re doing model based development. It’s a very high end work which needs deep domain experience. It needs industry experience, it needs factory experience, shop floor experience. So you cannot overnight replace that. We all hope it’s coming and I think we will create a lot of value with it once it starts coming. Now on the on the technology side, what we are doing is we have bought a lot of licenses where our delivery teams and R and D teams are studying how we can create value for our customers using the AI tools where we can bring down the number of hours or it can improve the productivity and that R and D is going on as we speak.
We hope to go to the market in the next several quarters with more and more value added solution. When I say market is at the end to our existing customers, which I think will create a lot more value and eventually much Higher revenue for us in the future. Understood. Clarified where we are as an engineering company today.
Madhur Rathi
Understood, sir. So since you made the point that we are not any run of the mill IT company and so if you could just give us some peers on the listed side which are relatively comparable like to like from us. Since you made the point that the TCSS and Infosys of the world are not exactly the same business that we have.
Jigar Mehta
So I didn’t say IT companies are out of the mill. IT companies are amazing companies. Amazing success stories. The best in India. I think they put India on the global map. So they’re the best companies out there. And I think they’ll all do fabulously well with the resources and the amazing teams they have running India businesses. Coming back to Onward Technologies and who are the like other companies in our space that have done a fabulous job? Obviously you guys know L and T Technologies, you guys know kpit, you guys know science.
These are all multibillion dollar companies created amazing engineering services companies which have done amazing work for their clients. The best part about us and all of them is we all don’t compete with the same clients. We all have a niche client that we focus on and we are growing with them. Right. So we are an engineering services company. A recent company, Tata Technologies, which is Pune based, which is owned by Tata Motors. These are all engineering services companies.
Madhur Rathi
Understood, sir. And so lastly, so what kind of okay. Management
Operator
Is. Yeah, thank you. The next question is from the line of Hitan Radhan from Maximal Capital. Please go ahead. Yeah.
Hitaindra Pradhan
Hi sir. I hope I’m audible. My first question is with regards to the transportation, the auto segment. So if the calculations are correct then it is kind of, you know, degrown in this year. So if you can give some commentary on that segment. And when are you expecting the turnaround?
Jigar Mehta
Yes. Hi. So yes, our transportation vertical which comprises of both automotive and rail, we had a revenue or we had a degrowth of 1%. This was due to two main factors. First factor was we exited which if you remember we had shared with you. If you look at our earnings call about a year, year and a half back where we exited all the tier 1s and tier 2s across India, Europe and US. And so that revenue growth. But we were hoping to increase the revenue from our OEM customers enough that we get us to 10, 20, 30% revenue.
Top line growth. That did not happen at the speed that we would have liked for the overall slowdown in the automotive sector and several other factors. But we are seeing the momentum now. We are continuously working on improving the vertical growth. And I think the automotive and the real vertical have enough group for us to grow 5x to 10x from where we are right now. It’s about getting the strategy right, making sure that investing in the future and we have the client engagements already, but we just have to do a much better job in terms of execution.
Hitaindra Pradhan
And so most of the, most of our clients in the auto segment are US based in the EU based OEMs or catering to the Indian.
Jigar Mehta
So we as onward technologies are 100% focused only on US and Europe. So if you look at our revenues, 70% comes from North America and 30% comes from Europe. Right. That percentage can change every quarter. I’m giving you an annual basis perspective. We have zero clients in India.
Hitaindra Pradhan
And so if that, and this is across, all
Jigar Mehta
Across all the verticals.
Hitaindra Pradhan
Right, right. And so when the auto segment, you know, the, the accelerates, is it fair to expect that, you know, the margins improvement will be faster? I mean or you know, that depends on the kind of projects you are doing and you know, the value chain is supporting. I mean if you can give us some kind of, you know, guidance as to the margins and the detail across the segments, basically.
Jigar Mehta
Absolutely. Your point is very valid. When all the three verticals grow at a speed, let’s say at 20, 30, 40% year on year, the overall gross margins, overall direct margins, operating margins will expand as well.
Pratik Jakta
Right.
Jigar Mehta
So today we have one vertical growing, one vertical. We’re investing in one vertical which did not do a great job. We didn’t execute as well as we should have. So it’s still at the highest of 13.2% which I’m still very pleased. At the start of the year. When we started the year we assumed that we will be at 11% EBITDA margins for the financial year. We have a couple of good quarters. Q3 will be a slowdown because of the furloughs and the best in world slowing down. But Q3 was a record quarter for us because a lot of positive things happened and overall we balanced things out and I think it became a 13% plus year for us.
So very excited and pleased with that performance by the entire team. The day all the three, all the three verticals will start delivering as per the potential. I think the margins will keep expanding and expanding and faster from where we are today.
Hitaindra Pradhan
Got it, sir. And so any, any, any comment on the Q4 margins? I mean they kind of, you know, came down so. Anything to call out there?
Jigar Mehta
Nothing in particular. I think it Was a good quarter. As I said for us, we’re looking at annual number. We will have some quarters where there’ll be some peaks from existing clients, some quarters where we are investing a bit faster, but overall very pleased with where we are at. So you will look at onward from an annual perspective and you will see that next year as well. Right. We have amazing visibility, we have a very strong visibility for delivering much better than what we did this year on an annual basis, both on top line and bottom line.
And we expect that to be resulting in our cash reserves as well.
Hitaindra Pradhan
Okay, sir, thank you and all the best.
Jigar Mehta
Thank you.
Operator
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Mehul Panjwani from 40 Cents, please go ahead.
Buram Shetty Suresh
Hello sir. Thank you so much for the opportunity, sir. FY26 margins have expanded to 13.2. How sustainable is this level and what are the key levers that will drive our margins in FY27? Hello, Am I audible?
Jigar Mehta
Yes, yes, absolutely. So from a revenue from a gross margin perspective and an EBITDA margin perspective, I think it’s again, it was a superb year for us. Much better than we expected. Q2 and Q3 was outstanding. And we do believe that these numbers are sustainable. And not only sustainable, I think we can grow much, we can do a much better job as well. There’s a lot of operating leverage that we have with revenue growth coming in and as I said, revenue growth from all the three verticals, which we think we are going to be able to deliver this year.
And keep in mind our GNA costs and other costs usually remains the same. Right. Because we have invested that much in automation, we’ve invested that much in internal systems and tools. So we’re able to scale much faster. So we do believe there’s a lot of room for improvement both in the water gross margin and at the EBITDA level.
Buram Shetty Suresh
So my second question is how much is the current Dean pipeline? What kind of visibility do you have? Do we have for conversion in FY27, especially in our top five accounts?
Jigar Mehta
Very positive like. And that’s where we are comfortable in sharing. We see that visibility from last one year. We saw that last year as well. We see that this year and we see that the year coming, the next two years going forward. Because when we sign a grievance with our customers, they’re usually long term in nature, they’re not transactional. So we definitely see double digit revenue opportunity across all the three verticals and we definitely see margin expansion with more offshore delivery, more better utilization and bench discipline.
And absolutely like any other offshore company focusing on a pyramid organization or optimization so we can deliver value to our clients.
Buram Shetty Suresh
So how much of a FY27 revenue can you say that it is already committed or in advanced stages?
Jigar Mehta
Majority? I don’t have the exact percentage but I mean if I just have to give you a number, how many will come from existing clients? I would say 95 to 98% will come from existing clients as per the budget from the existing 75 live clients that we have. Yes. And not commenting on the deal pipeline.
Buram Shetty Suresh
Okay, great. Out of our top pipelines, how many have we worked for with them for more than a decade?
Jigar Mehta
From our top five clients. I would like to say two or three at least 10 years if not a decade.
Buram Shetty Suresh
Right.
Jigar Mehta
So two or three for last 10 years. And there are the bandit two which have really grown has come post the pandemic. So last four to five years.
Buram Shetty Suresh
Okay. So sir, now I am new to this company so I am just trying to understand a little bit more from whatever commentary I’ve been hearing with the various interactions. So what is it that did we have couple of rough years over the last two decades or so? Because you know I heard that we are, we are doing quite well. So what was it that is which has helped us back? Kind of.
Jigar Mehta
Not much. I mean last four years has been the best years in our history. As I shared earlier, revenue CAGR is 15% now and our EBITDA CAGR for last four years is 35% plus. So it’s been extremely positive last four years for us as an organization.
Buram Shetty Suresh
All right sir. Okay sir, I’ll come back in the queue because I have a couple of industry level questions for especially the engineering services industry. So I’ll come back in the queue. Thank you.
Operator
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Ranjay Popli from Banyan Capital. Please go ahead.
Buram Shetty Suresh
Am I audible?
Operator
Yes sir.
Buram Shetty Suresh
So just a few basic questions. So how do we clog in revenue? Is it based on the hours that we put in or it’s more based on the outcomes?
Jigar Mehta
It’s based on number of hours that we put in. That’s almost 90% plus or 88% 98, 90% of our revenues and the balance is based on fixed price contracts which is based on outcome. That’s how we’re able to predict our revenues much comfortably. That’s why we are confident in giving a visibility as well for last year and for the next two years
Buram Shetty Suresh
The introduction of AI where you know it is able to reduce arcs. So do you think you will be pushing on some of the benefits to your clients?
Jigar Mehta
Again, I clarified earlier, we are an engineering services company. So far we have not seen any impact of AI on engineering services. Please keep in mind in Onward as a business or an engineering services, as a business, none of us are hiring freshers right straight from college and just putting people out there and just billing for hours. Majority of our engineers are 8 years, 10 years, 15 years, 20 years. They have worked on the factory, factories. They all have come from manufacturing experience.
They have deep domain experience, of course, a lot of certifications. So so far none of there’s no impact on the overall engineering business globally is what I understand. At least that’s what we understand from our customers. There could have been impact in the IT business and the services business and BPO business that people talk about, but so far no impact on the engineering business. Now coming on the second part of your question about benefit to the customer, that’s definitely Onward Technologies is doing proactively.
We have bought a lot of licenses invested last year, which I shared. We hired a new CIO who’s doing a fabulous job. You hired a new delivery leader who’s doing a fabulous job. And we are trying to create and innovate in a way that, to see where we can add more value to our customers, where we can potentially bring down the number of hours, number of hours or speed to market for the customer. But I think that’s still several quarters down the line because it has to be tested, it has to be validated and I think it happens at a global level.
So it’s not going to be an overnight thing. But we definitely see huge value going forward in the next couple of years, which will have a huge positive impact on the revenue and the gross margins of the company.
Buram Shetty Suresh
Just a basic question. So since this is a company that use IoT that is Internet of things, so it takes all the data from the sensors and then process it and then analyze it and gives a solution to the client. Am I right in understanding this,
Jigar Mehta
The process of what Onward does?
Buram Shetty Suresh
Yeah,
Jigar Mehta
That’s not so. That’s not what. Yes. Your understanding is right? To a certain extent, yes.
Buram Shetty Suresh
So then the question that comes up is that, you know, if the information is being extracted out of the sensors, don’t you think that, you know, AI would able to process it much better? Of course, with the help of all the industry leading people that you have with eight to ten years of experience. So don’t you think in that particular space it will reduce the billable Hours.
Jigar Mehta
Sure, sure. So in situations like these which you are clarifying, you know, the customer also is aware that this can happen. So there will be no rfq, there will be no outsourcing. Right. Keep a different view about Onward Technologies. Onward Technologies is focused on the same customers where you spoke about one IoT project customers IoT let’s say outsourcing budget is anywhere from hundred million dollars to a billion dollars. Right. So everywhere that AI can be used or where AI benefits can be leveraged today, customers already removed that from their outsourcing budget when they started the budget this year and then continue to reduce that number of hours from those projects and they will start doing that in house or they start doing it directly with Microsoft or anthropic or whoever.
ChatGPT. Onward is focused on the other side of the business where the customer is actively outsourcing the number of RFPs, RFQs. The demand is at an all time high. Right. So customers channelizing or reach analyzing the budget which potentially where they can leverage AI for normal tasks and moving it to more and more domain based tasks. And that’s what Onward is focusing on. So we would not even bid for those projects that you are talking about.
Buram Shetty Suresh
Okay, got it. So would you say that AI brings operating leverage to you rather than, you know, replacing you?
Jigar Mehta
Absolutely. And that’s our job. That’s why we have to make sure that we build the best delivery organizations, best domain experts, deep domain experts. We have a lot of people front ending across US and Europe. We have almost 125 employees now outside India. We’ll take that up to 200 or 300 in the next few years. So it’s very exciting time in what AI can do and how it can benefit our customers, how it can create more stickiness and how we can add more value to the customers. Absolutely. Thank you.
Thank you.
Operator
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Abhijit from psf. Please go ahead.
Buram Shetty Suresh
Thanks for the opportunity. Am I audible?
Operator
Yes, sir.
Buram Shetty Suresh
Yeah. So as AI significantly compresses the time required for development and coding. So are you seeing any renegotiation of contracts and has there been any such instances?
Jigar Mehta
No, I clarified earlier we are not seeing any of that so far. We are actually only seeing our customer engagements which were again, let me clarify or let me sort of reinforce what onboard does. So we have several engagements pre pandemic where we were supporting the customers for more than 10 years. These are all customers that we should support on the mechanical engineering side. Right. That’s the Onward bread and Butter. That’s our DNA. That’s what our history is. All those customers. Now we are more on the digital side and we’re continuously doing more and more quality work for them there.
They’re still in a very, very nascent stage. The moment that expands with the customers outsourcing budget, I think they all have potential to get to $10 million per year. That’s why for me that number is very exciting that you mean something to the customers. Coming back on renegotiating of contracts, the new customers that we assigned since the pandemic are already on the digital side. That’s on data analytics, that’s on just data engineering. And we are trying to make more sense of that and see how we can build more and more capabilities.
Because that’s not onwards expertise for more than four, five years. But the good part there is everybody, all other tech companies much bigger than us as well. The engineering companies have similar capabilities. So Onward has to, we have to keep investing further. We have to keep making sure we are front ending that to our customers in US and Europe and that’s where we will see a lot of leverage. So the opportunity or the discussion of renegotiating contracts does not exist. We don’t have those 50 $100 million maintenance contracts.
The customers are saying okay come now, let’s reduce the cost or reduce the number of hours. We’ve not even reached that stage. And that’s what excites me the most. Our journey from 550 crores, let’s say next three years is going to be very exciting.
Buram Shetty Suresh
Understood. And you mentioned about operating leverage previously. So can we generate a higher revenue from the same set of employees by leveraging the AI?
Jigar Mehta
That’s our hope. We have not seen that yet. For us it’s constantly about. We definitely spend a lot of time in the last two years in training reskilling our employees so we can move the value chain, increase the revenue per person. So if you see the revenue per person is now almost close to 22 lakhs. For us it was at 8, 9 lakhs four years ago. So it’s been a beautiful journey. In terms of what our HR team has done, our delivery organizations have done now we have to go to 30, 40 lakhs per revenue per person.
And that’s what we will keep investing in, will help us there. That’s the hope, that’s the goal. But as I’ve shared earlier, we have not seen it on the engineering business side yet. But we hope to see that as we keep evolving and Keep investing in this area.
Buram Shetty Suresh
And regarding the employee expansion in this quarter there was slight increase that we have noticed. And if we look at the last six to seven quarters it was kind of stagnant. So this increase was because of the high cost hiding or any year end bonus.
Jigar Mehta
So our year end, just to clarify again it’s a quarterly numbers for US 13% EBITDA has been is what we said we were hoping to get 11. We are at 13%. So some quarters the teams and the vertical heads might invest more. Sometimes the onboarding happens in XYZ quarter. It’s not something as we have shared consistently in the last four quarters that we are sort of micromanaging quarterly game. Right. We’re trying to invest, we’re trying to grow faster. Like while the revenue grew 10% I would like the revenue to grow 20, 30% every year.
And we have the potential, we have the clients, we have the teams, we have all the bright investments in place. It’s all about making sure that we execute better. That’s the real goal. Right. On the second part of your question on year end bonuses, we don’t have year end bonuses. Our everything is our commission plans, our variable pay structures, our year end, our bonuses are all quarterly divided and it’s strictly based on the KRAs and KPIs that we have. So we don’t have cyclical payouts for our employees.
Buram Shetty Suresh
Understood. That’s all from my side. Thank you.
Jigar Mehta
Thank you.
Operator
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Aditya Jawad from AK Investment. Please go ahead.
Buram Shetty Suresh
Yeah, thanks for the opportunity. A great set of members. I mean I’m following this company for last five to six years. I feel we have done a good job in transforming and focusing on couple of verticals. Even though we had taken a hit in the revenues and margins which I truly understand. But now going forward next three to five years, I mean we are at a juncture where the AI is there, there can be a chance where a lot of I mean businesses can get impacted. But right now there is no such visibility.
But I just wanted to ask the management should we be aggressive in getting more capabilities and become truly AI engineering services company or to scale a bit more high level have some growth ambitions rather than. I mean I know we are sticking to 10 to 12% of guidance but why not acquire some of the capabilities and use market to get funds and whatever is required but truly go out there and build some capabilities and build some AI engineering service in the company. What is the vision level? I would ask you, for you, for if shareholders want to stay for a long run here.
What is that we are here for? This is my longer term question. Yeah, thanks.
Jigar Mehta
No, thank you for the question and appreciate the suggestion. That’s exactly what we would like to do as well. And I want to assure you that me and the entire GLT and the entire leadership team as well is very focused on it. This is where we spend a number of hours discussing this morning as well at the board meeting. And we are not shying away from investments. It’s more about making sure we invest at the right opportunity which is in front of us. And we’re doing that already. We’re onboarding a lot of good people not to add new clients but to go deeper into our client engagements.
And we are trying more and more and more as you’re seeing in our positioning or repositioning in the last couple of quarters and years is to move from a mechanical engineering company to a digital engineering company. So digital engineering company means exactly what you said and we want to become an AI ready company for our customers and we have to find the right people, invest in the right processes and culture so we can expand more and more towards that. And right. 10% is a great start because the previous year was single low digit.
But we want to grow much faster and there’s absolute visibility and interest for everybody to grow faster. Projection is what we have shared with you, what we believe will happen. But as I said, we are all working towards improving that and growing much faster.
Buram Shetty Suresh
So can we expect this year to clock high teens margin as well as numbers? Is that the visibility we can have with the customers? Because lot of customers are going through a lot of capex because they are in the tailwinds. So can that benefit us this year?
Jigar Mehta
Absolutely. That’s what we are hoping for. That’s what we have seen in the month of April as of now. Yes.
Buram Shetty Suresh
So we can expect this high teens margin and high teens this one revenue.
Jigar Mehta
We are committing, as I said what we committed a year ago, I’m just consistently going to follow that. We want to under promise and over deliver. We want to make sure that we deliver for you guys. We deliver for everybody with 2500 employees working very hard every day. So what we have shared is double digit revenue and double digit ebitda. We will keep focusing on that and improving that. And as I said this year 11% became 13% plus EBITDA. Next year we hope to make it much, much better. There’s a clear visibility, there’s a clear demand as we stand today.
Buram Shetty Suresh
Sure. Thanks. All the best.
Jigar Mehta
Thank you.
Operator
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Arjun Jawar and indojadinvest. Sir, please go ahead.
Buram Shetty Suresh
Hi sir. Hello. Can you hear me sir?
Operator
Yes sir. Audible.
Buram Shetty Suresh
Sir, I want to know on a constant currency basis how much have we grown year on year because there is lot of rupee depreciation which happened in last six months.
Jigar Mehta
I don’t have the number in front of me but please reach out to Eny who’s our IR managers and they can share with you all the numbers, all the breakups because
Buram Shetty Suresh
We must have a lot of benefited in the revenue growth which you are currently showing. So I think you must have some number, right? You don’t have any idea.
Jigar Mehta
Absolutely. As I said, all the breakups that you would need are IR managers. Eny can share that with you, you can email it to them and they can get back to you right away.
Buram Shetty Suresh
Thanks sir. There was a post conference notes arranged by Arihant Capital during March. I don’t know. Some management team has attended that particular conference call and they have given a guidance of 10 to 12% revenue growth for FY20. But in constantly when we are attending the post earnings conference calls, you people are shying away from giving any specific guidances and you are just giving the investors with a double digit EBITDA and revenue growth and. But you are saying you are actually giving this price sensitive information in the other conferences.
I just want to know why we are lacking transparency. Because this is the prime call which are actually which is followed by all investors and you are giving specific growth guidance numbers only in the conference calls of some other investor community.
Jigar Mehta
That’s not accurate. The double digit means 10% plus. So I don’t believe anybody from my team would say any other number. We’ve been very consistent throughout managers. Absolutely. So they must have extrapolated some number. We have consistently maintained double digit revenue and double digit ebitda. We would never share any other information. But neither me nor the board nor any other employer of ONWARD to anybody outside any other forum. Right. We are the most transparent company out there with the highest level of governance attended
Buram Shetty Suresh
By your management, sir.
Jigar Mehta
Sure. That’s why I said double digit means 10% plus so I would not have the exact things. Again you can if you think there’s something which is out there. Please say to me and our manager that our IR managers at EMY we will definitely have a look and make sure we take corrective steps. But I don’t believe it is accurate.
Operator
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Madhur Rati from Countercyclical Investment. Please go ahead.
Unidentified Participant
Thank you for the opportunity once again sir. If I look at our main segment of industrial equipment and heavy machinery between the past four years our revenue has grown at 9% CAGR and there has been some rupee depreciation. So I would expect that constant currency this number would be much lower. And the end segment, all three I think industrial energy as well as off highways, every one the major players have grown or shown some kind of thought on either doing predictive maintenance or new ER and D projects.
So where is the growth lacking for Onward? Because it’s not reflecting in our revenue as our customers are seeing. So if you could just help us understand on that. Sprint.
Jigar Mehta
Sure. You said last four years or you said last two years.
Unidentified Participant
Last four years between FY23 and 26.
Jigar Mehta
Sure. So all the constant currency numbers, every micro detail, my ENY can share that with you or my CFO can share that with you. But on to answer your question more so giving you a perspective, over the last four years Onward Technologies has gone from 250 customers to 75 customers. Right? So we’ve reduced a huge Onward DNA. Being a 30 year old trust company is to we have an amazing team brand goodwill out there to win customers. And our teams are able to get customers build the confidence very easily.
But we realize we are not an IT company. We’re not a product company, we’re not a services company. We are an engineering company. An engineering company is better to be something to someone than be some everything to everybody. Right? It’s impossible to do that because the domains are different, capabilities are different, product development requirements are different, skills are very different. Right. You cannot process using the same, let’s say SAP personure and put them in some other client other domain.
So we realize we have to be something to someone. So in an ideal perspective we should have only few customers. And if you see the best companies that I pointed out before and over the last three years as well in our space have all become multi billion dollar companies by only focusing on maybe two to 10 customers. Right? So any company more than a billion dollar market cap up to 10 billion has two customers to 10 customers which gives them 90% or 95% of their profits and probably 80% revenue. And you guys can study these companies.
So from an ONWARD perspective we have followed that strategy and we have gone from 250 customers down to 75 which will potentially go down to 50 in the next couple of Quarters as I’ve shared before, I think 50 is a sweet spot for a company of our size till we grow 2x3x4x of where we are today. And our customers that we select have to be. And customers who select us have to be customers which have huge outsourcing budgets. So while you are seeing a 15% CAGR or in constant currency some other number we are seeing much much higher internally because the exits of the clients have happened.
Now the exit part is over last year that we shared. Right? So there’s no more exits. Now it’s all about transitioning. There’ll be continuous growth from the top clients while the tail accounts will keep playing out based on where we can win and where the customers love us. So that’s the exciting stage for us. Now the second point. Your question about how some other companies have grown much faster. That’s amazing. They have built much bigger teams with the other or bigger budgets. I am not competing necessarily with them, but there’s definitely an opportunity for us.
And I think the next few years looks even better than the last three years.
Unidentified Participant
Right? Sir, would I understand that our customers, based on those customer pruning strategies that we have done, how do we see our wallet share increasing with customer customer or how do we ensure that the customer stickiness with onward becomes much more than what it earlier was? Because sir, I understand the strategy but as a non technical person I would like to understand where is the company heading with these few customers. Can we expect a wallet share increase with them? Have we created some capabilities because of which we might get more orders going forward?
So just a basic idea would be very helpful.
Jigar Mehta
Sure, that’s an excellent question. Absolutely. Our customer wallet share is continuously improving. If you see our revenue and we are 250 crore revenue. Our top 25 clients contributed 80% of our revenue. Today we are at 500 plus crore revenue. 550 crores. Top 25 clients contributed 88% of our revenue. If I look forward three to five years from now, I think again the top 25 clients will contribute 70, 80, 90% of our revenue. So our market share is increasing, improving. Our gross margins are increasing, improving.
That’s how we have gone from low digit EBITDA to double digit ebitda this year. 13% plus to be more precise. So absolutely, all those numbers are in front of you for you to understand how our wallet share is improving. We have not lost any customers in the last few years. It’s always been progressive. Now to answer your second question, how do we add more value how do we get more orders or get more access to more RFQs? That’s a much better way to look at it. ONWARD was a pure play mechanical engineering company till about a couple of years ago.
Move forward today mechanical engineering is only about 50% of our revenues. The balance 50% is software. And I think ONWARD hasn’t done. I think our teams have done a decent job in investing in new capabilities on the software side. But I think we can do much, much, much better. And now the AI coming our way, I think more and more investments in AI. If we can reduce or bring speed to market for customers products, reduce their R and D budget or reduce the number of hours, there’s so much opportunity that can evolve in the next three years.
I think we are all very excited towards that and that’s what will remain. Create the stickiness. So investing in new capabilities, investing in new markets, investing being present with leadership teams in US and Europe, not just being an India based player. So making sure all the right investments happen and I think all those are behind us. We have done that very well in the last four years. Now it’s all about scaling in the next three years where all of us on this call will see a lot of value in.
Unidentified Participant
Right. So just a final question from Manchur. What I understood was there is this trend towards software defined vehicles as well as predictive maintenance in this heavy engineering where due to using the same asset for a longer period of time you are more inclined towards making your tech more efficient. So if you could help us understand does ONWARD operate projects in this area or provide engineering services to the customers in these areas or this is something that is not, that is maybe not higher for us or this is where we are.
If you could help us understand.
Jigar Mehta
Sorry, can you please clarify that last point?
Unidentified Participant
Yes sir. So I’m trying to understand the software defined vehicle and the predictive maintenance. These two trends keep popping up for heavy equipment and engineering due to just longer replacement cycle of assets. So does ONWARD provide any services in these areas or this is a technical notch higher than what where we are present currently and we would like to move towards this area or this is not a focus area for us. If you could help us understand.
Jigar Mehta
Excellent question again. So SVV is an area which is for the automotive vertical, not for the industrial and that’s today Onward technologies is not present in. It’s absolutely where we would like to go. We are very late again we’re going to play catch up. It’s I think about two or three years late but we are going to play catch up there. So that’s more on the embedded side and hence I’m trying to transition onward more and more straight to the digital AI side while we keep investing in embedded and I think embedded will contribute about between 18 to 30% of our revenues in the next couple of years.
But I would like to transition onward more and more towards the latest disruption where everybody around us including our larger peers and larger amazing successful companies in the engineering space. Everybody has a level playing field, right. So that’s where we would like to go on preventive maintenance on some other projects we have done some, we have capabilities and I think our teams are doing a good job and I think that will keep expanding as we move forward.
Unidentified Participant
Got it. What kind of investments will be doing in manpower and CapEx or maybe next one or two years.
Jigar Mehta
So on the CapEx side we would be doing in the next few years close to just for existing clients and this is more for just setting up the labs it close to about 25 crores. We are looking for bigger opportunities to do that and we hope to do a lot of exciting things as we move forward there. Keep in mind we already done a huge investment in the last few years so this is just more about strengthening. This does not include any new large team that will potentially win that might need more and for that we will go to the board.
Buram Shetty Suresh
Got it sir, that was from mine. Thank you so much and all the question.
Jigar Mehta
Thank you.
Operator
A reminder to all participants that you may press star and one to ask question. As there are no further questions from the participants. I now hand the conference over to the management for closing comments.
Jigar Mehta
Thank you so much everyone for joining today. Great questions. I hope I was able to clarify or articulate where Onward is today. In quick summary. Onward is an engineering services company. 50% of our revenue comes from mechanical engineering, 50% from the software side. We are trying to transition the company more and more towards mechanical engineering. Business will continue to grow and it’s core to our success. We are investing very heavily on the software side, digital side and more and more.
We hope in the next couple of years the entire company will transition towards AI. We had a lot of questions today about AI and how it’s affecting on the technologies today. Again to reiterate or reinforce, it’s not affecting on the technologies today. We are not IT services company. We are not a product company. We are not a BPO company. We are engineering services. Right? So so far we have not seen our customers getting affected. In fact our customers have recorded the best results and the best profits in their history.
Number two, there are a lot of questions about India based customers and what we do again to reinforce on the technologies has majority or 70% of our revenues coming from North America which is US and Canada for US and 30% coming from Europe. We have no customers, all revenues coming from India. The INR billing on the technologies does is strictly based on the GCCs of these global companies or American and European companies in India. And third in terms of the future outlook we definitely see very very exciting demand.
We see very positive demand from our customers where we do believe our top 25 clients will keep growing and there’ll be a lot of other clients from the other 50 customers which will surprise us and move up the value chain and grow much faster. We have an amazing team in place. We are putting very strong GLT in place as well with six leaders who have taken over the day to day operations from me. They’re learning, they’re growing and I think they’ll only get stronger and better every day. Our last year was tremendous and hence the board has recommended increase in dividend to 8 rupees per share and we hope to sustain that and grow that for you guys, for everybody in the next couple of years as well.
Company sitting on very positive cash reserves 127 crores. And we do believe that will keep growing as well. And we’re very excited about how the next one to three years look and we hope to create a lot more value for everybody on this call and the whole Onward Technologies ecosystem. So thank you again and have a lovely day and evening.
Operator
On behalf of Onward Technologies limited that concludes this conference. Thank you for joining us. You may now disconnect your lines.