Mid-tier IT firm Sonata Software plans to focus on winning large deals, reinventing offerings and exploring emerging technologies offerings that can be provided to clients to aid growth, said Roshan Shetty, Chief Revenue Officer (CRO) at Sonata Software. 

It will also continue to invest in its verticalisation strategy and talent landscape. The company in Q4 posted revenue of ₹1913.50 crore, a 15.5 per cent dip quarter-on-quarter (q-o-q). Its profits stood at ₹113.77 crore, a 3.3 per cent fall q-o-q. On a year-on-year (y-o-y) basis, however, revenue had hiked 31 per cent and profits had hiked 13 per cent. 

Shetty told businessline that in Q4, the signing of one of the largest deals ever — a $160 million 10-year agreement deal with a US-based retailer — the acquisition of Texas-based Quant Systems for $65 million and the verticalisation strategy helped the performance in the last quarter. 

He noted that winning large deals has increasingly been the focus as it had announced four large deals in Q3 and three in Q4, and even going forward, it will remain the same and the company will aim to proactively go to the clients and build the pipeline. 

Margin profile

In terms of margins, Shetty said that the company aims to be in the lower 20s as it wants to invest the benefit back into the business, and going forward the margin profile will remain similar. 

The company is also looking at real-estate rationalisation. It’s CFO Jagannathan Chakravarthi said, “We are in the process of consolidation. We are reviewing the utilization and identifying the non-strategic locations for consolidation. However, we are not reducing the billable seats available to us now.” 

In terms of the effect of global slowdown on the business, Shetty said the company has seen pain in some pockets of the market. “In Telecom, Media and Technology, specifically on the high tech side, we are seeing some of mid-size to large size clients seeing some challenges. On the BFSI side, only some verticals in the BFSI such as mortgage and lending verticals have actually kind of seen some challenges primarily because of the US market that is there,” he said.