Persistent expands 35% to almost $1 billion in FY23
Persistent Systems reached $1 billion in income in the 2022-23 fiscal year, expanding 35.3% year-on-year. Its revenue grew 3.9% repeatedly to $274 million in the March quarter.
Sandeep Kalra, CEO of Persistent Systems, said, “Fiscal year 2023 was momentous for Persistent as we achieved several key milestones including attaining $1 billion in annual revenue and inclusion in three key indices of the National Stock Exchange of India including the Nifty IT index.”
Sunil Sapre, executive director and CFO of Persistent Systems said the growth is broad-based. He said despite the turbulent times, the company was able to grow in banking and financial services, healthcare and hi-tech. "We have got top client revenues to improve. In the previous quarter, there were some ramp-downs that had affected us. But we were able to reverse it,” he said.
Sapre said an e-commerce deal that it closed in the December quarter, ramped up in the March quarter. “We had headwinds in the hyperscaler business, which was offset by growth in top clients and ramp up in deals,” he said. The order booking for the March quarter stood at $421.6 million in total contract value and at $310.4 million in annual contract value.
Sapre said the sales cycle is longer now, and it’s not RFP-driven but proactive selling-driven. “This environment will remain for 1-2 quarters. No one knows how deep the recession is going to be. There is a growing requirement of making PoCs and making pitches more compelling,” he said.
Employee attrition dropped to 19.8%, from 21.6% sequentially. "Last year we hired over 3,000 freshers. We plan to hire 800-1,000 this year. Lateral hiring might have to wait a little while," he added. The company added 4,290 employees last year, taking the total headcount to 22,889.
