'Rs 5,000 Cr By FY30': Aurionpro CEO Ashish Rai Reveals His Plans To Grow 30% Annually

Ashish Rai joining in. He's Group CEO OrientPro Solutions. Ashish, great to have you on and thank you so much for your time to us today. Let's start with the latest orders coming in from a large BFSI player. What are the details that you can add on this and give us and how significant it is?

Good morning. Thank you for having me. Yeah. So we announced over the last couple of weeks two large wins. Most recently there's a corporate lending transformation win. As you know, we are one of the leading corporate loan origination providers in Asia now expanding into Europe and us. This is with a large top Singaporean bank in terms of transformation across their global subsidiary. So that's a very large win for us, a very prestigious win for us. The second we announced, I think a couple of weeks back was on the transaction banking space where again we have probably the top transaction banking platform, which is across cash trade, you know, all the various components of transaction banking. And we announced a win with a very large bank in India that more or less establishes us as the platform of choice.

Are you at liberty to tell us which Singaporean bank and which Indian PSU bank?

No, no, we are not. I think we typically announce the client names only after we take the clients live. We don't normally announce client names at the point of winning the deals.

Now, just as far as the large PSU banks are concerned, what is that order size? And just put it into context for us, why do you think that this is a significant win? Because obviously you are well established now in that space and you have quite a few clients.

Yeah. So transaction banking, we are pretty much the number one platform out there. I think if you look at the wins over the last couple of years, most especially in India. Right. Most of the large Indian banks who've gone in, we won those deals we announced from time to time. This one also, I'm sure will come out in the public space. But we've announced wins with many Indian public sector banks as well as private banks. It's a pretty significant win. Typically we announce wins of this stage when they are north of 40, 50 crores. Most of these wins are pretty large in size and normally delivered over 12 to 18 months.

Large deals that we're talking about in the PSU bank, you're talking about the Singaporean global modernization deal as well. Now to add to this, you have made a couple of acquisitions also. What are the synergies that you're seeing from these acquisitions to help deliver on any of these deals? Because you're talking about Escrow management via Fintra. If you could quantify that aspect and the cross selling opportunities that you get.

Yes, look, when we pivoted the business four years back roughly to move away from what was a fairly diversified services model to build out a global products and platforms player, we identified a few areas in which we want the solution footprint where we believe we can create a large global play. So most of the acquisitions that we've done over the last, I think 2, 3/4 that we're talking about are in spaces where we wanted to expand. So Fintra helps us in the trade finance, space trade digitization. Trade finance is a massive area of transformation for banks across Asia, increasingly in Europe as well. We acquired Infra Risk which is a fairly strong, high quality product and team based out of Australia gives us a footprint in the lending space in spaces we were not in. So most of the acquisitions that we do is around deploying cash towards where we have gaps in our strategic blueprint. And the other thing is also in terms of building out the AI native application stack, it gives us a much larger surface area to play with for the game which is about to come on the AI space.

Ashish, Good morning, Neeraj. The last time that we spoke to OrientPro the belief was that growth numbers will likely look very, very solid, not just for FY26, but for the next three or four years on a compounded annual growth rate basis. You reckon you're on track to deliver what you would call a solid year in FY26 and that the growth expectations still remain the same?

Yeah, thanks for the question. I think we spoke several quarters back. I think we were growing strongly then when we started the Pivot Back in FY21, Neeraj, we were, I think we finished that year at 375 crores. We are guiding to finish this year at between, let's say 15, 1600 crore. So that's sort of quadrupling the business over the last four or five years. I think the size of the opportunity for each of the OrientPro businesses in front of us is so large and we've done all the hard work around methodically building the ip, methodically building the channels, building out an AI play that I would be very surprised if we can't really keep on the growth momentum and accelerate it over the next four or five years. I think that's the mission we are on and we feel good about where we are.

The one thing that has happened is that there has been growth with consistency in margins. You would expect that to continue in These times for the better part of FY26 yet again, I presume.

Yeah, so that's the game plan. Right. So over a long term, I suppose a product business can be much more profitable. I mean very high Ebitdas are pretty normal in the business, but we've been very transparent on this over the last three, four years that as the operating leverage comes in, the business will keep increasing the R and D spend to build out more products, going to more markets and keep margins more or less at the same level. I think that is the broader plan. Businesses are built over the long term, so we may make a strategic choice which is different and we'll communicate then. I think each of our businesses now is at a place where it can do significant R and D and build out a global leader globally. Whether that's the data center space, whether there's a transit payment space, whether the banking software space. And we intend to sort of keep doubling down on R and D and more or less keep margins at a healthy level.

You know, a quick question on this. You have a first half revenue growth of around what, 26, 28, 28%. If I'm not mistaken, your target is around 5000 crores by FY30. With the current and recent order wins that you've got, will the momentum be enough to actually then exceed this 30% plus CAGR growth over the next, say what, two years? Or you think you will need something more?

Yeah, so you know, I think the cagrade for us more or less has been around the same level. I think give or give or take a couple of percent roughly at 30% odd for the last four or five years. I think that is the right level of growth. The key constraint in the business is not so much these wins. I think for most of the platforms we build, we are more or less established as the most competitive player out there. I think as banks get more serious, operators get more serious around buying an AI native application stack. I think the technology stack is more or less proven now to be the number one choice. The constraining factor is the capacity. How fast can you grow while keeping the delivery reputation that Arianpro has built out around making sure its customers succeed with us. So we feel good about the 30 odd percent level, give or take, plus or minus 2, 3% in either direction. And over the long run I think that is the right pace of growth. As things get more productized and there is an ability to scale faster, I think we'll come back and talk about it. At the moment, I don't like setting the expectation that, you know, there is a, there is a way to go faster without risking the delivery reputation.

What are the biggest headwinds to your mind, Ashish, as we're speaking at the close of the calendar year and of course, things looking up, it's a great way actually to close the year in two weeks. You've had two good orders to talk about and deal wins to talk about. So that's fantastic. But on the flip side, if I were to ask you that, what are sort of the challenges that you're penciling in for 2026?

So I think we look, I think typically Q3, Q4 is our heaviest quarter in terms of signing. So. So hopefully we'll sign a few more before the year is out. The look, I think the biggest movement is what, what we are all sort of living through. Right. I think we are going through probably one of the most fundamental technology shifts, one of the most fundamental transformations all of us have seen in our lives, in technology space at least. And I think the question is how do we make the most of the opportunity? We believe the size of the opportunity has significantly expanded because of the impact of AI compared to when we pivoted three, four years back. And we are methodically putting in place what we need to compete in that. I mean there are multiple races when it comes to AI and what it needs for us to win each of those. I think that's probably 26 is all about both internal as well as external world. How do you leverage the trend the most and make the most?

Will there be more acquisitions apart from the one you've done last year? I think Aria, I.

So we've been very clear on, on the fact that acquisition is a key part of our strategy that we found find that. So the way to look at it is this. For a product oriented firm like us, I think acquisitions is probably the best deployment of cash that we're generating in the business. So where there is a gap in the strategic BluePR, we will go and continue to acquire. As long as it's a team that's high quality, it's founders and CEOs who want to continue running the businesses. And it's available at a good value to us. So I think we've done six of those in the last two years. Probably we'll probably do many more of those as it comes in. The other thing that happens is also when it comes to so most of the technology shifts, I think bulk of the value from the shift towards AIs is going to come on the application layer, we have built a fantastic set of capabilities too to really take advantage of it. So the larger the surface area, the more value we can create. Right. So I think that again makes a lot more sense for us to do to acquire like minded products and teams who want to go on this journey with us.

Ashish, just one quick question. In terms of your cash flow timing, do you think that comes in as a concern when you're trying to one, scale up? Two, you're looking at acquisitions as a part of the strategy and the way the model is built. I think you'd mentioned that almost, what, 80% or more of your EBITDA converts to cash only by the fourth quarter.

Right.

And payments usually askewed towards go lives. In this kind of a scenario does this become a major concern in terms of scaling up and execution and if so, what's the way to maneuver this to achieve this kind of growth?

Yeah, I would not quite phrase it as a concern more and more as a, as a factor of the business to manage. I think it's less of an issue now than it was four years back. But product businesses will always come with seasonality. Bulk of our projects get sold in Q4. Typical implementation times are 12, 14 months. So bulk of the cash flow sort of comes in the queue for the next year. And I think now it's a lot easier to manage. We are sitting on a fairly large cushion of cash. So I think some sort of cash seasonality is not really the biggest concern for the business. Having said that, if you've been scaling at 30, 35% for four, five years, you do need to be careful in terms of managing it. And we are. Right. So any businesses which don't fit the economic profile, the cash collection profile that we are used to, we try to stay away from so that we manage the business prudently. We manage the business well.

Thank you.

Thank you so much Ashish for speaking with us today and wish you a very, very happy New Year.