More Stories

Informist, Monday, Jul. 13, 2026

 

Please click here to read all liners published on this story

--HCL Tech: Q1 new bookings well balanced across verticals
--CONTEXT: HCL Tech management's comments in post-earnings call with analysts
--HCL Tech: Window to lead in small AI model for single industry open now
--HCL Tech: Q1 EBIT margin impacted by revenue decline in engg, R&D svcs
--HCL Tech: Negligible aid to FY27 revenue growth from mega deal won in July
--HCL Tech: Current macro environment continues to be same as in March

 

By Rajesh Gajra and Eshitva Prakash

 

MUMBAI – HCL Technologies Ltd. is reluctant to change its revenue guidance for 2026-27 (Apr-Mar) on the robust new deal wins of $2.41 billion in the June quarter, and one mega deal win it reported early this month. Addressing an analyst's query in this regard, the management of the company said while it was happy to report this strong growth in new bookings and mega deals, the 1-4?nd in its guidance for FY27 revenue growth in constant currency terms was already "broader".

 

"We would like to see how things pan out in the next quarter (Jul-Sep)", a senior official of HCL Technologies management said. On the mega deal win early this month, he said the "transition is expected to start in a couple of months (and) the steady state is expected to be reached only in April of 2027." This meant the deal will have a negligible impact on the company's revenue in FY27.

 

The official said the company commanded execution premium in mega-deals and had "a strong track record of executing mega-deals with excellent client satisfaction and to the planned business case."

 

HCL Tech had on Jul. 3 announced a large-sized $1.14 billion deal it signed with a major European company to establish an artificial intelligence-driven operating model for their digital workplace and enterprise networks. The initial tenure of the deal was till December 2031, the company had said in the announcement.

 

The company has also not included the revenue contribution from recently concluded acquisition of JasperSoft, a business unit of Cloud Software Group in its current guidance for FY27, but HCL Tech's consolidated top line for the September quarter and onwards will include the company's contribution. It completed the asset-carve out acquisition from Cloud Software Group in the first week of July.

 

The company's management expects that JasperSoft will contribute around $10 million-$15 million in quarterly revenue from the September quarter. HCL Tech expects JasperSoft's acquisition will plug in the visualisation layer gap in its data management portfolio.

 

On investments in the setting up of data centres in India, the management said the company will invest INR 35 billion through a mix of debt and equity to set up data centres in India. The company's long-term plan is to build a 50 megawatt data centre. The INR 35 billion "is actually representing only a fraction of that capacity. That is the initial investment that should get us started," a senior official said.

 

The company's internal consumption and its consumption partnerships with other companies will lead to the full utilisation of the data centre quite quickly, HCL Tech's management said, adding that further investments in the project will depend on return on invested capital and free cash flows in the first phase.

 

The company's management said it would use the 50 megawatt capacity of its data centre primarily for deploying small language models, which it believes will generate more enterprise value per megawatt than raw hyperscaler capacity would. "Our value isn't a full stack of AI, high-margin services, which we wrap around that capacity... it would be deploying efficient SLM-led models to address industry and vertical needs," a company executive said.

 

A 50 megawatt capacity data centre is good capacity to build a large business "if you want to do small-language models and not frontier models," the official said. Small language models are specialised AI systems that have fewer parameters and run with lower costs and computing power than frontier models.

 

On HCL Tech's recent strategic investment of $150 million in Sarvam AI, India's full-stack sovereign AI company, the management said it will combine "Sarvam's research depth in multilingual, India-focused AI models with HCL Tech's global enterprise relationships, engineering expertise, and software IP," to create a differentiated, full-stack AI platform for governments and enterprises. "This is clearly an early-stage market opportunity to build industry-and client-specific SLMs... These models are faster, more cost-efficient, and more accurate where it matters, and the window to establish leadership here is open now," a senior official said.

 

On the overall global macro environment, the official said some of the deal client-specific challenges that the company talked about in the beginning of the June quarter are playing out and the company had planned for it. The current macro-related situation is the same "what we saw in March," he said. This meant the company was not able to visualise anything different in terms of impact on revenue guidance for the full year, he said.

 

For the quarter ended June, HCL Technologies reported a consolidated net profit of INR 46.24 billion on revenues of INR 345.79 billion. Monday, shares of the company closed nearly 5% higher at INR 1,221.20.  End

 

Edited by Deepshikha Bhardwaj

 

For users of real-time market data terminals, Informist news is available exclusively on the NSE Cogencis WorkStation.

 

Cogencis news is now Informist news. This follows the acquisition of Cogencis Information Services Ltd. by NSE Data & Analytics Ltd., a 100% subsidiary of the National Stock Exchange of India Ltd. As a part of the transaction, the news department of Cogencis has been sold to Informist Media Pvt. Ltd.

 

Informist Media Tel +91 (22) 6985-4000 /+91 (11) 4220-1000

Send comments to feedback@informistmedia.com

 

© Informist Media Pvt. Ltd. 2026. All rights reserved.