Tata Communications Limited (TATACOMM) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good morning, shareholders, and welcome to the 36th Annual General Meeting of Tata Communications Limited. My name is Zubin Adil Patel, and I am your Company Secretary. I hope you and your families are healthy and safe. In view of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, this meeting is being held through video conferencing and has been convened in accordance with the relevant circulars issued by the Ministry of Corporate Affairs and Securities and Exchange Board of India. The company has taken all necessary steps to ensure that all shareholders are provided with an opportunity to participate in this Annual General Meeting through video conferencing. The proceedings of this meeting are being webcast live on the NSDL platform. In accordance with the Articles of Association of the company, Ms. Renuka Ramnath, Chairperson of the Board of Directors, will chair this meeting. Although most of the shareholders would be well-versed with the procedure to participate through video conferencing means, let me quickly take you through the steps for participation. All the shareholders have, by default been put on mute to avoid any background noise so that the meeting can be conducted smoothly. For the question-and-answer session, the name of the shareholders who have registered themselves as speakers, will be announced one by one. Each shareholder will be given an option by the moderator to unmute themselves and may then express their views and ask their questions. To display their video, speaker shareholders can click the video button once on their device. It will take a few seconds for the video to come on. Shareholders are requested not to repeatedly click on the video button until the video is displayed. If the shareholder cannot activate the video for any reason, he or she may continue speaking through the audio mode. Speaker shareholders are requested to use their headphones with mic, so that they are clearly audible and the background noise is minimal. We also request the shareholders to speak steady and loud so that we can note down the questions properly. Speaker shareholders are requested to ensure that their WiFi connections are not being used for any other purpose and that there are no other applications running in the background. Please ensure proper lighting in order to have a good audio and video experience of the meeting. In case of speaker shareholders is experiencing any connectivity problem at their end, we will request the next speaker shareholder to speak. Once connectivity problems are resolved, the shareholder will be requested to speak again after other shareholders who have registered have completed speaking. All shareholders are requested to limit their speaking time to 3 minutes each. For any technical assistance required during the AGM, the shareholders may contact the helpline number mentioned in the Notice of the AGM. If at any time during the AGM, you lose Internet connectivity, you may log in again by following the same process. We have the requisite quorum in attendance through video conferencing and with the permission of the Chairperson, I call this meeting to order. I would like to inform the shareholders that the representatives of our promoters, Tata Sons Private Limited and Panatone Finvest Limited, have joined the meeting through video conferencing. We also have representatives of M/s. S.R. Batliboi & Associates LLP, Statutory Auditors; Mr. Upendra Shukla, Secretarial Auditor; Ms. Ketki D. Visariya, Cost Auditor, attending the meeting. Representatives of M/s. Parikh & Associates who have been appointed as scrutinizers for the e-voting process are also attending this meeting through video conference. The e-voting facility is open for shareholders attending the meeting who have not voted earlier through remote e-voting and will remain open for 15 minutes after the conclusion of the meeting. Shareholders may cast their votes electronically on the NSDL e-voting platform during this time. There will be no proposing or seconding of the resolutions. The directors of the company are attending this meeting from our office at Bandra Kurla Complex, Bombay. I would like to introduce each one of them. May we start with Chairperson, Ms. Renuka Ramnath. Ms. Ramnath?

Good morning, shareholders. I am Renuka Ramnath. I'm the Chairperson of the Board, and I'm an Independent Director. I chair the Audit Committee of the company, and I am also a member of the Nomination and Remuneration Committee of your company.

Thank you. Mr. A. S. Lakshminarayanan?

Good morning, shareholders. I am A. S. Lakshminarayanan, the Managing Director and CEO of Tata Communications and a member of Stakeholders Relationship Committee, Corporate Social Responsibility, Safety and Sustainability Committee.

Thank you. Mr. Ashok Sinha?

Good morning, shareholders. I am Ashok Sinha. I'm Independent Director on the Board and a member of the Audit Committee.

Thank you. Mr. N. G. Subramaniam?

Good morning, shareholders. I am N. Ganapathy Subramaniam, a Non-Executive Director in our Board.

Thank you. Mr. N. Srinath, Non-Executive Director of the company; and Mr. Krishnakumar Natarajan have sought leave of absence from attending this meeting. Alongside the directors, we also have on the dais, our Chief Financial Officer.

Good morning, shareholders. My name is Kabir Ahmed Shakir, and I am the Chief Financial Officer of Tata Communications.

The notice and the annual report containing the Directors' Report, a report of the statutory and secretarial auditors and the financial statements of the company for the financial year ended 31st March 2022 have been sent to the shareholders through electronic mode. With the permission of the shareholders, I take the notice of the meeting as read. The report of the statutory auditors on the stand-alone and consolidated financial statements do not contain any qualification or adverse remarks. The report of the secretarial auditor contains an observation regarding noncompliance with applicable provisions of the Companies Act and SEBI Listing Regulations on the minimum number of directors and composition of the Audit Committee, Nomination and Remuneration Committee, Stakeholders Relationship Committee and Risk Management Committee. Pursuant to the sale of entire shareholding in the company by the Government of India in March 2021, the 2 directors nominated by the Government of India on the Board of the company, tendered their resignations in May 2021. Thereafter, the second term of Dr. Uday B. Desai, Independent Director ended in June 2021. This led to the number of directors falling below the minimum threshold prescribed under the SEBI Listing Regulations and resulted in the composition of various board committees becoming noncompliant with the applicable provisions of the Companies Act and SEBI Listing Regulations. The company was in the process of identifying suitable directors to be appointed in place of the outgoing directors and had accordingly made applications to SEBI seeking relaxation from strict enforcement of the regulations pertaining to minimum number of directors and constitution of committees. All appointments to the directorship positions in the company are subject to receipt of clearance from Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, MIB. The Nomination and Remuneration Committee, after careful evaluation, identified suitable candidates for appointment to the Board, an application to the MIB were made by the company immediately upon identification of each incumbent candidate by the NRC. Accordingly, upon receipt of clearance from MIB, the Board and each of the committees has been suitably reconstituted during the year. A response from the Board to the observations in the Secretarial Audit Report has been included as part of the Board's Report on Page #132 of the annual report. With the consent of the shareholders, I will take the observation and response thereto as noted. May I now request Mr. Renuka Ramnath, Chairperson of the meeting to address the shareholders. Ms. Ramnath?

Good morning, everyone. It's always a pleasure for me to address this meeting each year. Of course, we have been missing seeing each other in person. Last year, we hope that this year we could do an in-person meeting, but it was not meant to be so. Now, let us hope that next year, we are able to meet in person. I welcome all of you to this 36th Annual General Meeting of Tata Communications. I do sincerely hope that you and your families have navigated the COVID situation and have remained safe and healthy. After battling the pandemic for over 2 years, we saw some normalcy coming back to our lives and the world opened for a better tomorrow. As we stepped into a new normal world, we resumed our offices on 1st of April 2022 with limited capacity to make sure that our employees are safe. With the cases rising gradually over the last couple of weeks, we had to take a decision to convene this meeting in a virtual mode, keeping in mind the safety guidelines issued by the authorities. First, I'd like to begin this meeting by loudly applauding for the exemplary work done by our frontline teams. Teams that have worked on the frontline to do the network management, service delivery and continue to execute and deliver on the projects on time with amidst huge challenges that they have faced on the ground due to the pandemic. It is their relentless effort, which has helped our customers to take a positive step in their digital enablement journey. As the top management of the organization began to travel and meet the customers in person, they have come back with a very positive feedback that our platforms and solutions have reaffirmed the way faith of our customers in our capabilities and our ability to deliver to the highest standards of service despite all the challenges of the pandemic and the fact that in our business in the last mile, there is a physical involvement in terms of completing our services to our customers. So it is absolutely pertinent that we call out the efforts of people who have put their lives at stake to serve our customers and keep the reputation of Tata Communications intact through this highly difficult pandemic situation. Tata Communications reimagined its strategy in 2019. In the reimagined strategy, they put out 4 very important considerations for building the company for its future. The first one was how do we stay relevant in the -- to our customers in the digital ecosystem. And this the management wanted to do with deeper engagement, bringing together multiple products to deliver a solution to meet specific customer needs. It was not just about taking our products to the customer, but actually thinking about the customers' business and looking at what is the suite of products and how do we put them all together to enhance the business of our customer. That was the first big strategic shift. The second was, not to just involved with the customer at a product level, but to create platforms, which can accommodate several products and deepen the impact of Tata Communications to the business of our customers, thereby enhance our revenues and our relevance to our customers. The third was reimagining the customer engagement model to deepen the relationship with fewer customers. And last and the most important is to bring financial fitness to the balance sheet of the company. This has been an area of focus, I can say with absolute confidence that from the time I joined the Board, large proportion of the Board's time was around how do we bring financial fitness into the company. And as I go along, we will talk about how well the management has delivered on all of these strategic shifts that was reimagined in 2019. Despite all the issues around the pandemic, the management has made no excuses, and they have made tremendous progress on each one of these strategic shifts that they identified in 2019. I want to congratulate the management for bringing this exemplary work at play despite the constraints and deliver outstanding results. Maybe I'll just give some time to applaud. And the Board members can applaud the management. Over the last few years, as I mentioned, your company has maintained a persistent focus on a healthy balance sheet. And as a result of these constant efforts, we have seen a dramatic improvement, I would say, in our operating performance. This has helped us to achieve a positive net worth and a very comfortable debt level, giving us the flexibility to compete effectively in the market. We continue to report very healthy profits and equally importantly, very strong free cash flows that allows us to invest for our growth ambitions. Just to put this in context, if you look at the balance sheet of this company 5 or 6 years back, our leverage levels were quite alarming. We had government as a shareholder. We had fair amount of inflexibility in terms of raising new equity for growth and the high leverage, in any case, was making it quite infeasible to raise more debt. So the biggest question for the Board used to be that to change this direction of our sales, build that digital company for the future, how do we get capital to grow. And the company and its management has done a phenomenal job in addressing this huge vulnerability that the company has gone through and put the company in a place where it can now have limitless imagination for future possibilities and the balance sheet will allow them to go ahead and pursue those opportunities. I think this is a dramatic achievement for the company. Any amount of praise would be inadequate for the amount of effort that has gone in to meet your company absolutely fail-proof and the ability to dream for a bigger future by making investments in the appropriate direction. I would, again, want to applaud the efforts of the management for this phenomenal achievement. Your company has also pivoted the business to emerge as a global digital ecosystem enabler. As all of you know, many of you are very long-standing shareholders and you have had this huge privilege of seeing this company from just being a network -- from being actually an infrastructure provider for the telecom space to today talking about a global digital ecosystem enabler. There have at least been 4 important pivotal moments in the journey of this company, which has all been imagined and executed immaculately. We have built to meet these pivotal ships successfully, a very strong capability within the company. We have invested in developing our overlay platforms to enable our customers with more agility, greater flexibility in their network and associated offerings in terms of cloud, managed hosting and security. Today, we offer our customers an integrated suite of services through bundled offerings and service, adapt to enable them to be more productive in their own business to be more efficient and making our customers grow globally on the back of great customer experiences that they are able to deliver relying on our capability and thus, making that phenomenal progress on the strategic objectives identified in our reimagined strategy, as I mentioned a few minutes ago. Your company today is ready and the focus of both the Board and the management is on growing the business consistently and sequentially. Your company is confident that they can pursue these growth opportunities with greater agility on their economic merits. Uncertainties due to the ongoing pandemic, coupled with the challenging geopolitical and economic scenario, continued over the course of last year. Your company has been closely monitoring this situation and has been responding to these challenges with agility. We have been well prepared with a business continuity plan, covering all functions with necessary backup and resiliency. And we continue to deliver on our commitments to our customers throughout the past year and ensured seamless remote connectivity for their ecosystems. Proactive support, quality of service and incidence management by the employees has been very well recognized by our customers. As an organization, your company continues to keep pace with the rapidly changing technology and the ever-evolving industry landscape by engaging in constant innovation. Over the last year, your company launched a vast set of offerings in the network, collaboration, media and cloud services. We introduced our enhanced IZO network WAN offerings, which bring the world's first end-to-end predictable Internet for business to our customer ecosystem. In the collaboration space, we launched DIGO, our CPaaS solution, a cloud communication platform, which helps enterprises deliver customized, converged, contextual conversations. Tata Communications IZO Cloud platform is the most comprehensive platform of its kind available today. We also expanded our product portfolio in the network and the media ecosystem. We launched the IZO Network Edge and eco-Internet to increase our footprint in the connectivity market. We introduced media cloud and media edge offerings to further boost our media entertainment portfolio as it continues to transform the on-screen experience of multiple sports fans across the globe. During the year, we also announced a multiyear strategic collaboration with Formula 1, returning to the sport as their official broadcast connectivity provider to deliver and enhance a world-class technologically advanced experience for fans globally. This collaboration is a reaffirmation of the trust in our digital offerings and the long-standing association with Formula 1. This is really an exemplary achievement. All of us sit in our own lounges and bedrooms and see the magic play out on various screens. And when we sit in the boardrooms of TCL, we really appreciate the huge effort, both in terms of thinking ahead about technology, investing ahead in that innovation and then putting that product together and making the experience come true for the customers. How does it all play out? The amount of foresight, investment, agility and customer focus that is required to deliver on all of these dimensions. And I, as a Chairman of this company is extremely proud of the effort of the team that is sitting behind Tata Communications under the able leadership of our CEO, Mr. Lakshminarayanan, doing this on a second-to-second basis without any failure. All of us know the level of patience we have, even as a retail customer, when things behind our screen fail even for a second. And your company services corporate customers. These are all enterprise solutions where the level of patience and tolerance is even infinitesimal smaller than what we may have as a retail customer. So none of the achievements of the company by any means are small, and this company deserves huge confidence and huge appreciation for the effort in which it has managed its own technological transformation, investment in innovation and pivoting itself to contemporize for the demands that technology places and customers place on our company repeatedly. All of this in the past were still in a question of yes, we are making those investments, we are marching the company in the right direction and the numbers are yet to show. We are very, very proud in the last couple of years to say that all of these efforts with enormous focus on the balance sheet has resulted in exemplary financial results, which is not a question of only the satisfaction for here and now. But for me, what is particularly satisfying is building that option for tomorrow. When your leverage is so low and you also have the ability to raise more equity and you are a positive net worth company with actual free cash flow, you have liberated yourself into another orbit of possibility for the company. All the efforts of the management has resulted in last year, the consolidated revenue for this company turning in at INR 16,725 crores with an EBITDA at INR 4,227 crores. The company generated a free cash flow of INR 2,619 crores. And with this, we could pay down the debt by INR 1,042 crores. The net debt of the company today -- net debt to EBITDA is the calculation that the lenders look at to look at the serviceability of the debt is just at 1.6x, which makes the company a financially very stable company with huge capabilities for the future to use this balance sheet. Moving on to talking about our subsidiaries, both our subsidiaries, Transformation Services and Payment Solutions have had their set of challenges, partly for business reasons and partly because of the pandemic. The TCTS business was affected by certain customer-specific contractual issues. They have fixed it last year. Starting '21-'22, they exited these unviable contracts and they have worked very hard in stabilizing the business. And this exit and bringing back security for the future has had its share of impact in the P&L of TCTS business for the current -- for the last year, the year that ended in '22. TCTS, however, continues to remain focused on strengthening their internal processes to make sure that these mistakes are not occurring in the future and also to package their contracts and win the right contracts for the right economics on a going-forward basis. I'd like to complement the TCTS team to have navigated this very, very difficult solution with great strength and confidence and creating a future for themselves. Coming to the Payment Solutions, this is something most of you can easily kind of recognize. This is our ATM business. And it is also very, very easy to see that during the pandemic time, the transactions at the ATM fell quite phenomenally. The average daily transactions for '21-'22 fell by 15%, even below the previous year. This team, again, did an extraordinary job of focusing on financial health and profitability. They reinvented themselves and instead of investing in the ATMs themselves, they chose to do the franchisee model, which is a unique model that this company developed. And under this model, the response from the market has been pretty spectacular. We have already deployed 1,000 ATMs in FY '21-'22. And this model has also brought its positive impact in our P&L and also in our balance sheet. Again, an extraordinary job by the management in a very difficult business, which has navigated through even more difficult pandemic-related challenges. Despite all of these challenges, I would say, all of the businesses and the teams have really brought their best to fore in reinventing business models, reimagining the future and giving themselves this huge opportunity to generate cash flows from the past businesses and reapply it to future businesses to build a lasting Tata Communications, which will continuously accrue more value to all its stakeholders, including the shareholders. During the year, this is some news that all of you keenly await I know in every AGM, which is what's the dividend. The Board discussed a dividend distribution policy, hugely supported by Kabir and the Lakshmi and others. And we have now agreed upon a policy as a Board, subject to your approval that other than in exceptional years or exceptional circumstances, this company will pay dividend at the rate of 30% to 50% of the underlying consolidated profit that we report each year. We are committed to this sustainable dividend policy in line with the earnings and the cash flow generation, as I said. And for the year ended March 31, '22, the Board likes to propose a dividend of 40% of our consolidated profit, which will translate to a dividend per share of INR 20.7. I'm sure this will make you happy and all of you will vote in favor. And this is again possible because of the huge focus in that reimagining strategy of 2019 on the financial fitness of the company. We are going through a time where there is tremendous long-term opportunity. All of us can easily understand that from this whole digital-enabling ecosystem enablement, which is what TCL is committed to that it is a massive global opportunity for the company. And the business indeed has tremendous tailwinds arising from this technology shift. The pace of digital adoption and the enterprise spend on digital solutions is increasing, which makes us tremendously confident about the future that lies ahead for this company. Apart from business strategy, your company has an equally strong commitment to the sustainability strategy. The sustainability strategy is based on 3 key pillars: people, planet and community surrounded by a robust corporate governance framework. We remain committed to do business in a very responsible way. The Board and the management pay a very special attention to our ESG framework. And I'm very happy to say that we are making steady progress to achieve our financial targets and continue to be a sustainable organization and not compromising that for one or the other. It is achieving the financial targets and yet being a sustainable organization. Lastly, most importantly, I would like to place on record my very sincere appreciation and also of all my colleagues on the Board for the tremendous leadership, our CEO and Managing Director, Mr. Lakshminarayanan, has brought to fore in turning around TCL and giving a very, very bright future for this company. Under his leadership, the company has turned in extraordinary all-round performance, including an outstanding financial performance. The profit of INR 1,482 crores is the highest for this company in the last 12 years. So may I just propose a loud round of applauds for our exemplary MD and CEO. In our journey towards achieving sustainable growth, we have been joined by 3 exemplar Board members last year, all of whom have brought with them a very diverse set of expertise to make your Board stronger to help Lakshmi build that extraordinary company of the future. The 3 new directors bring different expertise to the Board. One of them brings an expertise in technology, another person in finance and the third director in business management, making the Board a very holistically experienced Board, which has the ability and the time to focus in different aspects of the business to make sure that nothing is taken for granted or left to chance and enabling Lakshmi to build the company of his dreams to the best capability of the extraordinary team that he has assembled to build this company. I take this opportunity to introduce Mr. Krishnakumar Natarajan; Mr. Ashok Sinha, and Mr. N. G. Subramaniam, introduced themselves at the beginning of the meeting. Mr. Krishnakumar is traveling today and is unable to join the meeting, and we welcome them to this Board and look forward to their long-term contribution for the betterment of this company. I'm also happy to announce to the shareholders this year, the company has prepared its fully assured integrated report in accordance with the framework of the International Integrated Report Council and circulated to all the shareholders, along with the financial statements and other statutory documents that all of you have received. I must say -- make a very special mention of the extraordinary work done by our CFO, who is present here to my right, Kabir and his entire team in bringing that financial fitness to the company and producing extraordinarily, I would say, comprehensive reporting, not just annually, and each of you have had great delight in reading our annual report every year, you praise the extent of transparency that is there in the content. So the entire assurance, compliance, transparency, and above all, the financial fitness of the company is, of course, thanks to the contribution of all the business leaders, but the entire discipline has been maintained very well by the finance team. In closing, I'd like to express my deep gratitude to the Tata Group for the collaboration, the invaluable counsel that we received from them throughout the year. I'd like to thank the Department of Telecommunications, I'd like to thank Government of India for their cooperation, our customers, employees, management team, partners, business associates for their valuable support and backing throughout the year. I'm extremely grateful to all of you, shareholders, for your continued trust and support in our company's strategy and growing operations. I'm confident that with your support and with the relentless efforts of our employees, we will be able to see Tata Communications reach even greater heights as a leading global digital ecosystem enabler. I now request our Managing Director and CEO, Mr. Lakshminarayanan, to make his presentation to all of you. Thank you very much.

Good morning. And let me first start by thanking all of you, and thanks to the generous comment of the Chairperson. I think the credit goes to the entire GMC, the leadership and every member of my team for the performance that has been turned out in the last 3 years. I would like to briefly summarize our strategy. It comprises of financial fitness. I think financial fitness was both the goal, given the state that we were in terms of the balance sheet and the cash flow. And also, as a strategy, because it helps to -- the fitness helps us to grow. So it is fit to compete and we are making ourselves now fit for growth. And from a growth standpoint of view, we said there will be certain customer shifts that we will make, focus on key segments, which are large enterprise segments in India, as well as internationally. We focused on prime segment in India last year. And we made the necessary changes in our operating model to bring that customer centricity. In the product space, we wanted to give an end-to-end solutions and not go with a single product-centric view to our customers and shift our products with more of our own IP and content to deliver and shift it to a platform. We made the shifts to the right operating model. We are operating across the globe and getting the right operating model was essential to get the right cost structures, as well as the agility and show the customer centricity. Underpinning all of these, we made our commitment to innovation, automation and AI to bring, not just efficiency within the company, as well as embed this AI into our products. And sustainability at the core was another commitment we made as part of our strategy. From a culture standpoint, both shifting the company's entire competency and capability to enable us to make all these strategic shifts, as well as to have that essential focus on the strategy and delivering to our customers. So these are the essential parts of our strategy. We call it a strategy on a page. I'll quickly walk through each of these areas. From a financial fitness point of view, we're very pleased in the last 3 years, we made improvements in all the KPIs and delivered ahead of the schedule, even ahead of what we had planned internally. If you look at the EBITDA margin, it improved from 16.6% to 25.3% in FY '22. The net debt-to-EBITDA from 3.1x to 1.6x and ROCE improved from 8.3% to 26%. So we have a highly strong balance sheet to enable us to support our growth ambitions going forward. In terms of customer shifts, one of the main goal was how can we stay relevant to our customers. We identified 5 important themes in the digital era for our customers that are important for our customers and the 5 being: how can digital help them in enabling growth? How can digital help in enhancing productivity and efficiency? How does digital help in building agility? How does digital help in embedding more intelligence into products and services so that they can improve the customer experience? And finally, how in this digital world, one manages risk? So these were the 5 themes that are important for our customers, and we test all our product and portfolio across these 5 themes to see are we staying relevant. So I'm pleased to say these are 2 examples. One of the multinational media equipment manufacturers. We carried out a large transformation program for them. And all of these 5 themes are touched through these transformation programs. Similarly, a very large international -- a very reputed airlines based in the Middle East. We transformed the entire collaboration portfolio for them and the connected solutions, connected crews, connected pilots. And through that, we were able to touch upon the 3 themes. So we are going with a combined set of products and solutions and seeing how we can make a difference to our customers. And these are just 2 examples. Our effort is to do and be part of the customer digital transformation and make ourselves more and more relevant in the digital ecosystem. That's enabling us to become truly a digital ecosystem enabler for our customers. And secondly, the customer shifts, deeper with fewer was the cornerstone of this strategy. And as part of this, if you looked at the number of $1 million customers that we had in FY '19 to today, we've added 33 more accounts in the $1 million club. In this segment, our revenue contribution grew by 8%. And particularly in our portfolio, which consists of core connectivity and the other part of the portfolio is all about digital platforms and services. and digital platforms and services, the revenues grew by 28% in this segment of $1 million club. And this $1 million club contributes to more than 70% of our overall revenues. The third part of our customer shift was to ensure that the customers are delighted. We had a score of 70 in FY '19. And today, our score is 84. So all the services and improved services that we are delivering to customers is helping them to deliver a more better experience, and that reflects in the NPS scores, which has improved to 84, which is one of the top quartile, not just in the industry we are in, but across the industries. In terms of the product shifts, we have invested continuously on the products to strengthen on top of our -- the core ability of the company, which is the data connectivity, the voice network that we have around the world and the messaging network on the world. In next-gen connectivity, we have launched multiple new products, the IZO Internet WAN across -- we have launched 4 different variants, that is IZO Network Edge, which enables them to connect the multi-cloud connection. So these are some of the investments in the network side that we have made in the next-gen connectivity. Similarly, on the cloud and cybersecurity, we have launched the IZO Cloud across -- for the fin cloud, for the financial services sector, as well as on the security side, we've launched a Cloud SOC, which enables our customers to very easily deploy but bring the best of the security capabilities to our customers so that they can be secure and continuously improve their security posture and keep themselves safe. We launched on the Collaboration Services platform called DIGO, which enables all our B2C customers to deliver the best experience to their consumers. So we want to be the default choice of our enterprises when they talk to their consumers, who is on the mobile to be able to deliver through this platform. We've also strengthened our InstaCC proposition. And similarly, in the Connected Solutions, MOVE continues to march on in terms of shifting that product to a platform play. And we have several very, very good examples of how we are succeeding in this space. Similarly, in media, we have launched new offerings of Video Connect, ability for our customers to do remote production, which helps them to, not just save money, but also save the planet in terms of sustainability. We also are launching several media edge products in the cloud, which is helping the customers to do, for example, remote refereeing. And these are some of the new products that we have launched in the media space. So we continue to invest in our products and elevate our products to the platforms. Also, very pleased to say that all our products and platforms are getting good coverages by the analyst houses around the world. Previously, we were covered by a very small number of analysts. And today, there are 18 analyst houses that are covering Tata Communications products. And this is one of the barometers to see whether our product is differentiated and is being recognized by the analyst community who are influential in helping our customers make decisions. And there are some of the examples that are shown Gartners and these are very reputed analyst communities who are now covering our products around the world. In terms of our commitments, I mentioned that automation and AI is one of our commitments. And there, we have invested heavily internally to bring a lot more automation, which reflects alongside with our operating model shift in the efficiencies and bettering of our profitability. TCX which stands for the Tata Communications Experience platform is a platform that we are launching to bring more agility to our products and give more visibility to our customers using this single pane of glass, they could see across the network, cloud and security and all other portfolios through -- and they can manage their infrastructure through this platform. Similarly, on the -- working on the co-creation with customers, I mentioned how we are -- our teams are engaging with the customers across our products and solutions. And we are also engaging with several universities and start-ups, some of which are embedded in our platforms already. From a sustainability point of view, we are focused on people, planet and community. Our employee engagement score internally has improved, both in India and internationally. Overall, our score stands at 86. We have won several awards in the marketplace for the Best Employer awards. In India, The Economic Times gave us the Best Workplace for Women and a Great Place to Work for Women in India. Similarly, for -- in Kincentric, the Best Employer for sixth year in a row in India. And we have achieved a Great Place to Work in several countries, including Australia, Canada, U.K., Hong Kong, Singapore as well. From a planet standpoint, we are working to save energy and consume less. Globally, 6.2 million kilowatt hours of energy was saved in 2021, and we are constantly striving to improve the renewable energy footprint in what we consume and reducing the water consumption. Similarly, we are strengthening our carbon offset programs through very innovative schemes involving the community as well, and one such project is called the smart cookstove. From a community standpoint, we are engaged in several community initiatives. We have undertaken about 19 projects in 14 states in India. And we're also getting our employees involved through volunteering programs and we've achieved about 20,472 hours of volunteering by our employees across the globe. In education, again, we are collaborating with several partners to take and making the digital enablement possible. In sustainable livelihoods, we are working again on projects like MPowered, where we are taking the projects to underserved communities and especially focus on skills, training and the women in the community. We're also working on the healthcare and disaster relief, and there has been tremendous work that has been done as part of these projects. Overall, across the strategy that we talked about in terms of the financial fitness, focus on growth and focus on our customers, focus on the products to platform shifts, these are the results. And we're very pleased with our commitments through the sustainability, and we are making tremendous efforts, and we will continue these efforts and strengthen our products and solutions, not just to our customers, but the overall community. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. A. S. Lakshminarayanan. We shall now take questions from those shareholders who have registered themselves as speakers.

[Operator Instructions] Over to you, sir.

Our first speaker shareholder is Dr. Arun Kumar Boppana.

Can you see me?

Yes, sir.

Can you hear me?

Yes, sir.

Thanks to Zubin and Ridhi for arranging this VC. I miss meeting all you in person. I'm currently in Bangalore to see you soon. The world battled the biggest pandemic in the 100 years. Tata Communications has moved along, not only the mighty -- moves to the mighty hit, but also aggregate tiny pushes of each honest worker, I complement the management and the honest workers in Tata Communications. And I wish you all the best in IoT, MOVE, eSIM, TX platform, innovation and Formula 1 initiatives. And what are you doing on Modi's big projects like smart cities, economic corridors, international manufacturing of solar power, energy hub, Swachh Bharat, AatmaNirbhar Bharat? And he is expecting a 10% GDP growth. So what is TCL doing in those areas? And 5G, what is the impact on 5G? There is a rumor that it can affect the aircrafts and EVs and EV cars, what is the truth? The price wars were there. They killed the goose in destructive price war in communication. I hope it will not continue in further so that we serve. Now the per capita income is growing, and somehow unemployment also is growing. Only 10% population have access to digital mode, rest have access to brick-and-mortar. How are you going to bridge that gap? And there's a growing concern over the country's agriculture systems, what are you planning to do and social front on that? Today, technology is fast changing and is driven by customer aspiration and demand. Customers will not wait for service, if they get a better service, instead of being guided by selective data. So what are TCL's role? Some of our technology, I think, is overused and abuse to. It is like putting coins in pockets with holes. We have to plug it. Cybersecurity has become a major problem. Jobs are on the rise in 2022, but people want flexible hours maybe 4-day week or different -- partly work from home. What are TCL plans? Lastly, I'm very proud I saw the gratitude of Meghalaya people for your supplying solar lighting and the solar cooking also. I wish you continue. I've been to Northeast, I love that area. They need a lot of support, everything, financial everything. VSNL is -- sorry, Tata Communications is a name synonyms with enterprise, excellence and success. Somehow VSNL is not getting out of my head. In conclusion, what we have to do is to find a way to celebrate our diversity and debate our differences without fractioning of communities. I wish TCL all the best. Thank you very much. All the best.

Our second speaker shareholder is Mrs. Hutokshi Sam Patel.

Ms. Patel has not yet locked in. We could move on to our next speaker.

Our third speaker for the day is Mr. Gautam Tiwari.

A very, very Good morning to our Chairperson, Ms. Renuka Ramnathji, a well-dignified director, Lakshminarayanan -- our MD, Lakshminarayananji, well-dignified and highly eminent Board of Directors of Tata Communications, my fellow shareholders, my name is Gautam Tiwari. And sir, I am participating at this AGM from Mumbai. Dear sir, the company has finished the year with strong numbers. As we have already seen and already listened for this much of the time. And we are very happy about it. And we are fast in moving our business forward very, very -- a lot of congratulations for this since the time we have sold our properties and have made money, we are -- we have done quite a lot improvement in the company. Sir -- madam, best-ever dividend of INR 20.7 basis per share. Thank you very much for this, for the generous dividend to the shareholders. Madam, despite pandemic level continuing, customer level is maintained very high, a lot of congratulations to you for this and a lot of applaud also for this. Thanks for reducing the debt by INR 1,000 crore. Madam, we would like to know as to what is our debt equity ratio now and how much debt is remaining now to be paid to? We are working nicely on sustainability initiative that is very good. And our focused areas are IoT, Internet IP, MOVE, which has been explained very well by Lakshminarayananji, I'm very happy about it. Please continue with that. Now, madam, our company has worked very hard in identifying the areas and project for CSR activities, which are really beneficial to public at large. And we are very happy that the company has worked for the society and community in this way and has returned the -- whatever we have got from the community and society in -- we have multiplied that and we have returned it too. Moreover, the annual report and the notice -- annual report, notice and the balance sheet is very well drafted. It is well designed. It is informative and investor services rendered by our Secretarial department and finance department are very, very lucrative, very, very much shareholder friendly, and they are very much polite and humble and satisfying, make sure that each and every shareholder is satisfied with his queries or with his issue, whatever is there and make sure that their service is always -- and all the time we are on here we are satisfactory. We are very much thankful to them for this. Moreover, the services rendered by NSDL and the WebEx technical team has been very much coordinative and has been very much a shareholder friendly, and they have very much helpful for us to join to this meeting by virtual. So we are very much thankful to WebEx team. I have been attending more than 100 meetings with this WebEx team and very happy with the performance of the WebEx team -- technical team always and all the -- thank you much for selecting such nice service providers, including the whole Secretarial team, under Mr. Zubin's leadership, Ridhi, Dalvi and all other are providing excellent services and for choosing NSDL and WebEx such a good team. Madam, I am a shareholder of your company and all Tata Group companies also that way, right from day 1. And we are very happy being in your company, and we are really happy that the company has grown [indiscernible] under your leadership, and we are very much sure that our investment is in safe hands in your leadership, which will -- and you will keep us rewarding -- keep rewarding shareholders time and again in the days to come. I have a small few queries madam, which if you can answer, I'll be very much grateful. Otherwise, you can answer afterwards also. Madam, the first thing is that, we have reduced the debt by INR 1,000 crores. Now, as it is, how much is our debt equity ratio and how much debt is remaining to be paid? Now, what are our growth opportunities? Then carbon reduction. Carbon reduction, when can we become neutral in our carbon reduction? And how much carbon reduction we have achieved this year? Please enlighten about greenhouse energy gases plan of the company? And madam, a few more things are there, that we have got 55 subsidiaries and plus 3 associated companies, how many of them are profit-making and what is the strategy of the company for reducing the loss-making subsidiaries? We are moving towards digital economy, how it will be beneficial to our company overall? Madam, what are the new products and solutions in cloud and security, which our company is planning to launch? You have explained very few. But I think still more products are in pipeline. You can -- if you can tell us, we'll be happy about it. If not now, afterwards also. When will you reward the shareholders, madam? Very important is that, we are good -- we have got good rich funds. So when can you reward the shareholders with bonus, stock split, et cetera, in their portfolio? And how much -- how many shares have we transferred? And how much dividend has been transferred to IEPF during the year? And how much do we spend on R&D? Madam, lastly, I would like -- I support all the appointments and reappointments of our directors on board. I also support all the regulations, and I already voted in favor of them in advance. I wish you the best of luck and the best of wishes for the time to come in future. And thank you very much. All is well under your leadership. Thank you very much. [Foreign Language] Thank you very much. God bless.

Our fourth speaker shareholder is Mr. Dinesh Bhatia.

We seem to have some technical problems here. We could move on to our speaker listed at number 6, since number 5 has not logged in either.

All right. Our sixth speaker for the day is Mr. Vinay Bhide.

Hello?

Yes, we can hear you. Please go ahead and ask your questions.

First of all, Chairperson, Renuka Ramnath, MD and CEO, Mr. Lakshminarayanan, directors present in today's AGM, company executives, shareholders, good afternoon to all of you. I will not list out the excellent performance of the company. With your permission, I will straightaway go to the questions, which I've listed out to speak at today's AGM. Our request would refer to Page #6 of the annual report, which lists out 5 broad geographies providing revenue for the company. My question here is that, which of these geographies as the business/customer response been encouraging for both IZO Internet WAN and IZO Financial Cloud? And a further question here on this slide, do we have orders for both products in each of the above broad geographies? So that was the first question. For the second question, please refer to Page #64 of the annual report. So this speaks of operating and other expenses. So here, I have a query, repairs and maintenance to plant and machinery is at INR 475 crores to INR 500 crores per year in the last 2 years. The question here is that, what are the major items repaired or replaced here within the past 2 years? For the subsequent question, Page 265. Page 265 covers advertising and publicity expenses, which have increased over the last year to about INR 42 crores. The question here is that, what percentage of expenses have been incurred on digital and traditional channels? I can give you a few questions which I've listed out. I will not take much of time of the Board and other speakers. I'll just close for -- with a comment that the secretarial department and all the support team has taken a lot of efforts to make the participation successful for me and for other participants. So I'll close with best wishes to the Board, to the employees. Thank you for giving me an opportunity to speak.

Our seventh speaker shareholder is Mrs. Celestine Mascarenhas.

Hello? Can you hear me now?

Yes, ma'am.

You can hear and you can see. Yes?

Yes, we can.

Okay. Respected Chairperson, Mrs. Renuka Ramnath; MD, Mr. A. S. Lakshminarayanan, other members of the Board [Technical Difficulty], my fellow shareholders. My name is Mrs. C. E. Mascarenhas, I am speaking from Mumbai. First of all, I thank the Company Secretary, Mr. Zubin Adil Patel and his team for sending me an e-annual report and also registering me as a speaker and giving me this platform to speak. Thank you very much, the whole team. Our annual report is very exhaustive, simple, self-explanatory, adhering to all the norms of corporate governance. Our working is good. Dividend is excellent, very good, INR 20.70 on a share of INR 10 par value. But like thinking is, will this dividend be retained? [Technical Difficulty] was very good, but of late it has gone down. So what I feel [Technical Difficulty] if there is a split of the share, say, 5 or 2 or 1, like TCS and other so many companies now Tata Steel and this is also a data group of companies, the share will be affordable and liquidity will increase. So, please consider, Board of Directors are all there. Okay. Now, I come to the next item, congratulations for [Technical Difficulty] appreciate very much the CSR work as it is Tatas are known for very good CSR work. Also, a lot is documented on ESG -- from there, I want to know whether any rating is done and who are the rating [Technical Difficulty] and what rating we have, it is done? My queries now. We have 2,40,000-plus kilometers of subsea mega connectivity infrastructure, 90,000 km of terrestrial cable, how much of company is planning to increase in percentage will do? Next one [Technical Difficulty] in nature, mostly U.S., how [Technical Difficulty] fluctuations and how my team will handle all this? Next one, how do we take care of failure of infrastructure as our customer [Technical Difficulty] of our platforms and services demand more networking and commuting power? Next one, how many frauds due to our whistleblower policy? And how do we handle them [Technical Difficulty] shareholders have also asked many questions because this is not that easy balance sheet. So I wish the company all the best. I support all the resolutions [Technical Difficulty] plan to spend and with [Technical Difficulty] very much for giving me this opportunity to speak. Thank you once again.

Our eighth speaker shareholder for the day is Mr. Shailesh Mahadevia.

Respected Chairman, Renuka Ramnath; our Managing Director, Lakshminarayanan; and all the other members of the Board. Firstly, let me congratulate the entire Board of Directors and the management team for presenting the first Integrated Thinking Report and it is excellent and it gives us a number of -- lot of information, which a shareholder may expect from the company. Let me also admit right from the beginning that I have not been able to do justice to the excellent report which has been prepared and presented in view of my age related complications. However, I have been keeping in touch with the operation of the company almost throughout the year, particularly as it is presented in CNBC TV18 and their presentations. Then I would also like to appreciate the ratio of women for which we have been given an award by Economic Times. However, I find that only 21.7% of our employees are women employees. We find that in many other companies, particularly IT and IT-related companies, this ratio is much higher. Are we likely to make any effort in this particular direction? Then my next question is regarding the utilization of our assets. We continuously go on adding our assets and I'm sure they are being put to the right use, but maybe we may not be able to utilize them immediately. So if you can share with us information regarding assets utilization. My next question is regarding the data for world economic growth, which was originally forecasted at 4.2%. However, the latest data given about a week ago forecast that the world economic growth is likely to be as low as 2.9%. May I know how such a thing is going to affect our business? Then I would now like to refer to the introduction of 5G. The spectrum is likely to be auctioned and perhaps we will start it within a short period and we are told that 5G is at least 10x faster than the 4G which is being used at present. So may we get some idea as to how introduction of 5G is likely to influence our business maybe immediately or in the medium term? Then my next question is regarding the reference you have made frequently about artificial intelligence although there are a number of other technologies also. But generally speaking throughout the report, you are referring and giving emphasis to artificial intelligence. May I know how this artificial intelligence has such a great impact on our business? Then my next question is regarding the CSR work, which is being done by our organization, which is being very well done. I'm sure it has a very high multiplier effect compared with the cost incurred by the company. Further, about 20,000 employee hours are also being given by way of CSR services. So my question is that have we studied the economic impact of our CSR work? This is being done by some of the companies already and likely to be done. Such a figure will give us a much better idea about the exact impact of our CSR work. Sir, my next question is that we have started improving our economic balance sheet on various other parameters. Sir, I would like to know whether we have worked out our economic value added and in arriving at such a figure, the rate of interest which we may have taken into account as the opportunity cost. And sir, lastly, throughout the report I find that we give great emphasis to sustainability comprising of ESG, all the 3 components, and as our Chairperson has assured us at the last AGM that you will find this approach throughout the working of the next year. And you have been able to achieve this to a very great extent and my particular congratulations to our Chairperson who was part of the first convened webinar on this particular issue. Having come to this, you may also share information if you have regarding the ESG rating, which is being done by various international organizations. To the best of our knowledge, CRISIL is not yet permitted to give ESG ratings as they are waiting for some regulatory authorities permission. With this, I would like to conclude that our organization has made good progress. It will continue to make good progress in the years to come.

Our ninth speaker for the day is Mr. Kirthi Shah.

[Foreign Language]

Shah, you have gone on mute. Please unmute yourself.

[Foreign Language]

Our 10th speaker shareholder is Mr. Bharat Shah.

Chairperson, Ms. Renukaji: MD, CEO, Sri Lakshminarayananji, or Directors. [Foreign Language].

Yes, Mr. Shah.

[Foreign Language]

Our 11th speaker shareholder is Mr. Yusuf Rangwala.

I'm very happy to share [Technical Difficulty] We are having many clients, sir. For example [Technical Difficulty]. There are so many others, all the big, big companies are clients. And sir, I'm very happy to see we have a balance sheet of around -- we have a balance sheet [Foreign Language] balance sheet, which is very excellent. [Foreign Language] so what will be the ratio of merging ratio, sir? My first question. And when will it be completed? [Foreign Language] And when is your position will completed. In Page #75, our [Foreign Language] Seeing this photo, I'm very happy about the excellent company and this meaning Tata Group. [Foreign Language] Sir, we are having 2,000 channel partners, 60,000 of live event as you mentioned on Page #56. [Foreign Language] We're having a very excellent team. [Foreign Language] May God bless our company. And one more thing, I will thank our company secretary's team for giving me a link and also calling me, sir. [Foreign Language]

Our 12th speaker for the day is Mr. Mahesh Kumar Bubna.

Mr. Bubna has not logged in. We could move on to our next speaker.

Our 13th speaker for the day is Mr. Naveen Bothra.

Naveen Bothra attending the meeting [indiscernible] company from Delhi. Congratulations to the Tata Communication team and especially to our MD, Lakshmi sir, for achieving highest ever operating metrics in our company's history despite of all the challenges of pandemic and also geological flare ups. And also congratulations to the team for various awards and decommission received during the year and the finance team and secretarial team for presenting the first-ever integrated annual report despite [Technical Difficulty] annual reporting going ahead presented in a very nice way. Sir, I have some points for consideration. Number one, Lakshmi sir, in your message to shareholders, you said that in view of the financial fitness achieved, we are poised for next level of growth. So in this view, I would like to know our capital allocation CapEx for the next couple of years. What will be the ratio towards the CapEx in the networks expansion as well as towards our asset-light platforms and cloud and all these things? What will be the ratio between all the businesses in coming 2 weeks so as we achieve the accelerated growth aspirations? Second one is regarding the payment business, ATM business. In her speech, our Chairman -- our Chairperson madam has already elaborated about the point ahead. We would like to know your views for the medium to long term, what will be our growth in this payment business because the capital employed has come down to INR 6 crores as of March 2022 and the losses and revenues have also come down compared to last year. So what is our medium-term view about the payment business going ahead? Will it be further impacting or in an asset-light model we'll be continuing this payment business. Third one is regarding the 5G in general will provide us lot of opportunities. But my question is regarding from the point of view recently cabinet has allowed 5G private network opportunity. So in this 5G private network opportunity, what scale and scope for our company Tata Communications we will be playing and the scale and scope of the contract. If you can tell about this, it will be quite helpful, sir. And the final one is regarding our growth aspirations, we will be needing huge capital for networks also and also cloud and all the asset-light businesses also. So going ahead, what will be our strategy to invest capital from surplus line asset monetization, if you can tell about that. To conclude, I wish the management team all the very best in the coming times, which looks quite exciting and presenting the opportunities as we are moving towards 5G era. Wish the management team all the very best in its accelerated industry growth trajectory. I propose a word of thanks to the Board.

Our 14th speaker for the day is Mr. Anoop Nambiath from EQ India Fund.

Can you hear me?

Yes, we can hear you. Please go ahead and ask your questions.

Yes. So this is Anoop Nambiath representing EQ Fund and the clients of Equity Intelligence PMS. Thank you, Madam Chairperson and the Board, for giving us this opportunity to speak. We also thank the Company Secretary and the secretarial department for smooth conduct of the AGM. Coming to the questions. Madam, would it be fair to say that our company is undergoing a major internal transformation in terms of people, products and processes and that we are poised to capture significant external opportunities and that growth is a matter of when rather than whether? Also can you share some of the lead indicators that we investors can keep an eye on for tracking the company's growth or progress? Next it will be great if you can share some insights into the competitive landscape of our new age data businesses that is digital platforms and services and incubation verticals. What differentiates our offerings or rather defines our right to win in this space? Finally, in the last AGM, you had said that certain properties have been planned for disposal and that Board is working on it. Can we expect any monetization of land holdings this year? Wishing all the best to CEO, Mr. Amur Lakshminarayanan; CFO, Mr. Kabir; and the rest of the management team. We are confident that they will take the company to new highs in the coming years.

Our last speaker for the day is Mr. [ Ravi Kumar Naredi ].

Sir, I have 2 questions. So first one is our main competitor is a telecom service provider. What is the impact on our company regarding to 5G auctions? Any cost structure changes or any major CapEx? Just want to understand. The next question is regarding data service center. Company has any plans regarding data center services? Any more color on that? Next one is as per the presentation now, our data service business we have 80% volume from traditional services, which has significant better margin than group services. So my question is there any scope to further the growth in margin in group services area? And the last one is just want to understand sector-wise revenue share like automobile, manufacturing -- manufacturers, banking and financial services and which sector you see more projection for growth in next 2 to 3 years?

Moderator, can we check if Ms. Hutokshi Patel or Mr. Dinesh Bhatia or Mr. Adil Polad Irani have joined again?

We're trying to connect with Dinesh Bhatia at this point in time.

Mr. Bhatia, you have been placed in the conference. Please go ahead and ask your questions.

[Foreign Language]

Ms. Patel and Mr. Irani have not yet logged in. So with that, we come to the end of those who have registered to speak.

Thank you. I request the Chairperson and the Managing Director to respond to the queries raised by the shareholders.

Yes. So thank you, shareholders, for asking very pertinent questions. I will request our MD CEO, Mr. Lakshminarayanan, to answer them and I'll step in if I feel there is a need.

Thank you, Renuka, and thank you all shareholders for all your comments. And at the outset, I would like to thank all the speakers for the compliments across the multiple areas that you mentioned, particularly on the financial fitness, on the integrated report as well as the CSR initiatives. Me and my team and the entire Board are working very hard to continue these initiatives and thank you for all your compliments. To take some specific questions. Dr. Arun Kumar Boppana, in terms of the -- I think there were many questions on impact of 5G on the company and the upcoming 5G auctions. The company had invested in 5G in building the competencies and capabilities. We are focused on 5G private network, which is where we think the enterprises are going to benefit the most. We think it is an extension of what we already do in terms of our Connected Solutions platform. Today with our IoT solutions, we deliver connected workers in many factories and mining locations to ensure safety and health of the workers to improve the productivity. We have extended that IoT solution to also do connected assets to track within the campus. Now 5G is yet another access technology, which will enable a lot more of use cases to be implemented by the enterprises and we have created a lab where we can showcase these capabilities to enterprises. The most important thing for enterprises is to see what kind of business benefit they will get and we are working on all these use cases to show what business benefits it will deliver to the enterprises that we work with. So we are focused on that area. We're building capabilities. We already have labs. We have working examples to showcase and we are doing pilots with a number of customers and we'll be focused on this both in India as well as in the international markets. There was a question on cybersecurity. I think we are focused on security. Firstly, making sure that our own operations are secure and we are very pleased to say that we have a very, very strong governance and activities that ensure that everything that we do is highly secure. And in terms of products and platforms similarly, we are ensuring that they are secure by design and making sure that our products and platforms are secure. And thirdly, we are helping our customers to become more secure and manage these risks through our set of offerings in our managed security services offerings. I talked about an example of the cloud SOC that we launched. Our security offerings go all the way from the device and the edge and with MOVE platform, we are ensuring that right from the chip to the SIM all the way to the cloud, we will make it secure. So our security offerings are very powerful and will enable our customers to become more secure as well. There's a question on work from home. As we mentioned initially, I think the Chairperson mentioned in her address that the company resumed from April 1 this year officially to work from office. We are taking very calibrated efforts both in India and internationally, watching the movement in the pandemic that is happening now. Our employees are coming back to the offices, but we are promoting a hybrid work culture where people will come to the office and some of the essential people will be there and some of them will continue to work from home. And we will continue to see how this hybrid work model evolves and we are very committed to ensuring that we continue on this hybrid working model. There was a question on some of the government projects on smart cities and solar energy and Swachh Bharat, et cetera. I think we -- as part of our CSR initiatives, clearly we are working on some of the initiatives I mentioned about the smart cookstoves and afforestation and other things that we are doing. But more importantly through our products for example for smart cities, we are doing projects in India as well as in the Middle East on the smart lighting through our IoT technology and that is helping in the smart cities not just in India, but also in the other parts of the world. As well as there are projects that we are doing in terms of metering, smart metering and so on. All our technologies are embedded in that and we will continue to spend our efforts to ensure that they can contribute to these projects. Mr. Tiwari, I think the questions on debt-equity ratio and how much is outstanding debt. Our debt-equity ratio is 8.26x and the gross debt today is INR 7,897 crores and the net debt is INR 6,744 crores. The debt-equity ratio is high because of low net worth and as it turned positive only recently. I think there was also a question on when we will become carbon neutral. I think as the Tata Group, there is a huge commitment on the entire sustainability and we being part of the group will follow those ambitions. And we have set ourselves fairly ambitious targets in reducing the emissions year-on-year and we're also working on a target date year by when we will be carbon neutral. We will be discussing that with our Board and we'll soon publish our targets around that area. Mr. Vinay Bhide, I think the questions were around geographies we work. I think the 5 broad geographies as you referred in the report. And the question specifically was which are the geographies we offer the IZO Internet WAN and which are the geographies we are offering the IZO Financial Cloud. The IZO Internet WAN we are offering in all the geographies. There is a variant for India we have introduced now. The IZO Internet WAN broadly is applicable to all the geographies that we operate in and we are seeing very, very good momentum in that offering across the world. As far as the IZO Fin Cloud; as part of our cloud offerings, IZO Fin Cloud is focused solely in India and we are -- we have launched the product recently and we have won customers and onboarding those customers in our Fin Cloud. There was a question Mr. Bhide raised and I think Mr. Kirthi Shah also had the question on operating and other expenses. Repairs and maintenance of INR 475 crores to INR 500 crores in the last 2 years and the question was what are the major items repaired and replaced. Our major repair and maintenance goes towards all the costs incurred on cable repairs, the cable cuts both in the terrestrial cable that we have as well as the submarine cables that we have around the world. All the maintenance, makeup and maintenance in all our landing stations and PoPs and other areas as well as the IT support and various IT infrastructure that we do along with our vendors. There was a question referring to the advertisement and publicity expenses. It increased by INR 42 crores as mentioned by Mr. Bhide and the question was what percentage of these expenses increase is towards the digital and towards the traditional channels. I would say all of the increase, if not -- most of the increase that we are seeing is towards digital channels as well as we are beginning to participate in various industry events as the world is opening up. And these are the 2 main categories of the expenses that we have in the advertisement. Ms. Mascarenhas, the question was will the company be able to retain the dividend rate in the future years and suggestion to split the shares. On the dividend policy, as outlined by the Chair, we are committed to a sustainable dividend policy and the Board decided to have a range of 30% to 50% of the consolidated profits to be distributed as -- and that remains the policy of the company. And thank you for all the compliments on the CSR and the ESG work. And there was a specific question on what are the awards. We participated in the EcoVadis in the CDP 2021 awards last year and they have won the silver medal in EcoVadis Sustainability Achievement with a score of 55, a 72nd percentile, which means our score is higher than or equal to the score of 72% of all the companies rated by EcoVadis. There was a question on the extent of our network and the terrestrial cables -- the submarine and the terrestrial cables and how much percentage we plan to increase. All I think we can say is that forms the foundation. All the fiber that we have, submarine as well as terrestrial, forms the foundation on which we build our other products and platforms and we will continue to invest on all of these products, including infrastructure as we go forward. There was a question on if there are any frauds reported on the whistleblower policy and how they were handled. No frauds were reported under the whistleblower policy. All the cases are investigated as per the internal company approved process with investigation by forensic experts where necessary. Each and every case is reviewed by internal ethics committee, which comprises of myself as well as the CFO and the Chief Legal Officer as well as the Chief HR Officer on a regular basis, and we provide these updates to the Audit Committee. We have very well-defined metrics based on the consequences and the seriousness and the actions are taken as guided by the committee as well as the Board. Mr. Shailesh Mahadevia, thank you for all your compliments. Particularly you mentioned about the ratio of women and the awards that we have won. Again thanks for the compliments on the awards that we have won for the Best Place for Women to Work. You also pointed out that we have only 21% and we need to take efforts to increase. The point is very well made. I think we have a program for diversity called Winning Mix, which focuses on diversity as well as inclusion with specific focus on women. The program pillars includes increasing women participation in Tata Communications workforce, career and development of women employees and mitigation of any unconscious bias that we might have in the system. With its inception in FY '14, we started with 19% new hire mix and this has now increased to 26.4% in FY '22. We have industry leading practices like masking of resumes at recruitment stage to eliminate any unconscious bias, tie-ups with various forums and platforms to attract women participants and aspirational hiring targets for business leaders. These are further supported by our flexi and care giving policies thereby creating an enabling environment. We will continue to increase our efforts to ensure that we can reach the benchmarks that we have outlined. I think there were questions on 5G, which I have already answered in the earlier remarks. You also touched upon the AI and referenced the AI in our reports. I think like sustainability, we have made a commitment that we will focus on automation and AI. And in line with our commitment, we are increasing both the skills and the competencies within the company to be able to make use of data, understand the data well and use the data to implement machine learning and AI projects so that we can improve our own efficiency as well as embed AI into our products. There are some examples. For example in our voice business, AI and ML helps in fraud detection, which saves millions of dollars for our customers. There were questions and compliments on our CSR work and sustainability, I think I've referred to and answered as part of my previous remarks. Mr. Yusuf Rangwala, thank you for your compliments on the balance sheet. You asked specifically the questions on margin ratio. Our EBITDA margin is 25.3% and PAT is at 8.9%. There was a question on payment of INR 431 crores to the government on Page 51. These payments are towards income tax. And you had a specific question on Tata Teleservices and any potential merger. At present there are no plans before the Board. Mr. Kirthi Shah referring to other investments, you asked the question what is the reason for reduction. Surplus cash was invested in liquid debt funds. Other income has doubled. How much is the recurring income? Other income includes INR 214 crores interest on income tax refund, which is not recurring and INR 50 crores which is recurring. Noncurrent liabilities borrowing has reduced, when will Tata Comm become debt free? Why are you not increasing the promoter holding? The Board and management are constantly looking at the growth and sustainable profits and serviceability of debt and committed to keep the debt within the manageable levels. We will use the funds available for reinvesting in the business in our platforms and products and whatever is available cash, we will take it towards reducing the debt and maintain at the manageable levels. There was a question on why you can't give convertible debentures to the public. At present there are no such proposals before the Board. If and when the Board considers any such proposal, necessary disclosures will be made by the company in accordance with applicable laws and regulations. Where is it being used? How will you use in future? All our CapEx, we have a clear policy on where we spend our capital on sustainable maintenance and recurring expenses. The other class of CapEx goes towards specific customer-related projects. And the third is focused on more growth and we will ensure that our CapEx is spent efficiently towards more on growth both on infrastructure as well as platforms to be able to deliver consistent returns. There was a comment made that the company should respond to investor queries promptly as you seem to have not received some response. We will strive to reply to all our shareholders in a timely manner and we will answer all the questions to all your remaining queries promptly. Mr. Dinesh Bhatia, Mr. Bharat Shah, thank you for all your comments and compliments. And Smita Shah, similarly we thank you for your compliments. You mentioned about future plans and highlights. I think I mentioned in our presentation that we are investing in our products and platforms. The company is looking at all the avenues by investing in these product platforms to see how we can grow sustainably. Mr. Naveen Bothra, so you specifically asked a question on as my remark on we are prepared for the next leap of growth, where will we spend our money. And I think I mentioned we have a CapEx outlay. We will increase this outlay as necessary in order to fund our growth ambitions and we will continue to invest both in our infrastructure, which is the submarine and the terrestrial cables which is for network, as well as invest in the platforms as we go forward. There was a question on the payments business, the way ahead on this business whether it will be an asset-light business and you referred to the EBIT losses coming down and so on. The TCPSL business has been impacted severely due to various reasons in the past few years. However, the business has taken all the necessary steps to ensure that it got out of some of the onerous contracts as well as changing the business model to a franchisee model and the results are already beginning to show. At present, there are no proposals before the Board for exiting this business. And the questions on 5G, I've already answered as part of the earlier remarks that I made. And there were questions from you, Mr. Bothra, as well as other shareholders on surplus land and asset monetization. We have a well-articulated real estate strategy that we presented to the Board and has been approved by the Board of Directors. We will continue evaluating our monetization opportunities in order to fund our future growth and ambitions as and when the opportunity is right. And all these assets are also -- there are complications with respect to the titles and other paper works and we are working through all of them. And at the right point in time in line with the strategy approved by the Board, we will execute on the monetization. Mr. Anoop Nambiath, you remarked on the transformation that we are going through internally both on the competencies as well as the investments that we have to make in order to make our products more relevant and shift our products to MOVE platforms. All these investments are underway. You also mentioned that we need to see what are the key indicators that we can keep track of. We are focused on the digital platforms and solutions. In that set of products, we are focused on growth. We also talked about in the presentation the focus on the Deeper with Fewer and in that respect, we talked about the $1 million customers that we have and the growth that we have achieved in the last 3 years in terms of the number of customers that we have increased who are more than $1 million of revenues to the company and that is, in my opinion, a key indicator. In the medium term our focus is on improving that NPS scores which shows the satisfaction of these customers, increasing the number of customers in this million-dollar club and these would be some of the indicators. In terms of new age data business, the incubation verticals, we are currently focused on MOVE -- which is MOVE on IoT, which is the connected solutions and there we are seeing significant progress that is being made in the last year and we have published the data points on those. And we are also expanding the segments which this MOVE on IoT can address. Besides the auto segment and the airline segment we were focused on, we are also addressing other semiconductors and MVNO segments and we will expand these segments and growth for these incubation businesses. And secondly, we are also investing in newer areas. I talked about the 5G private network and the capabilities we are building. We are focused on how the network and the security space is evolving including Edge. I gave an example of how the Media Edge Cloud is gaining prominence. That is one example of the edge offering. But in the media -- in the overall network and security, we are again investing in that space to transform the network of our customers to ensure that they have a flexible, agile and secure network to be able to operate from anywhere and connect from anywhere. Again there was a question on the real estate strategy, which I responded as part of my previous question. Mr. Ravi Kumar Naredi, thank you for all your kind wishes and the compliments. Your question was more on specific industry segments and which industry segments we see growth. We -- our products and offerings are more horizontal and we are taking it across to all the industry segments. But particularly, we see a lot of the prime segments for us being the IT and IT-enabled sectors who use a lot of technology and connectivity, manufacturing, banking and financial services. These are major segments where we are focused on and we see the growth. And besides the media segment of course, which we call out specifically on the efforts that we're making in that segment. Asked about the data center services. Does the company have any plan regarding the data center and adding more color? We exited the data center business in 2016. However, we continue to maintain our 26% stake in the SCT GDC in India and make continuous investments there. And we also provide cloud services that make use of these data centers. There was a question on data businesses. We have 80% of the volume from traditional services, which we have significantly better margin than growth services. Is there any further scope in growth services margin? So now we classify rather than traditional and growth, we have core connectivity and digital platforms and solutions. And in digital platforms and solutions, it is an evolving portfolio which will help us to drive our ambition to reach the double-digit profitable growth in data services overall. And as we continue to scale and onboard more customers in this digital journey, we will continue to see margin improvements in the medium to long run. And we are already seeing a steady progress in the margin in the digital products area and we will continue to improve on that. Again there was a question on the key indicators to track the success of the company. I mentioned as part of the previous remark, our focus is on all of the data services. The core connectivity especially in India with the explosion of data centers that are happening, the core connectivity will continue to fuel a lot of growth for us. And in India and international markets: our digital platforms and solutions, the next generation connectivity, the collaboration, connected solutions as well as our cloud and security portfolio. That's largely our digital platforms and solutions. We are focused on these digital platforms and solutions for growth and investing on the products and platforms as well as increasing our sales force in the international market and rejuvenating the sales force in the international market to be able to grow these faster. In terms of what are the KPIs that we track. We track on our relevance to the customers, the number of projects that we get where we can say that we are addressing all the 5 themes and I mentioned a few examples like that. The second we talk about is the NPS, how satisfied our customers. That's another important KPI for us. The third is how are we adding more in the million-dollar club. And again I gave out the data in terms of number of customers that we have increased there. In the last 3 years, we've increased 33 customers and the contribution increases every year. These are some of the key parameters that we track. There are many, many other factors like in terms of how many large bids that we work on, the contribution of large bids in our funnel, what is the funnel addition and so on. These are the things that we track internally to drive our business. I think with that, we have answered all the questions. And if there are any questions that are left and remaining to be answered, Zubin will come back with more details. Thank you. Can I turn this over to you?

Thank you, Chairperson and Mr. Lakshminarayanan, for addressing the queries of the shareholders. In case the shareholders require any further clarifications, please write in to us on [email protected] and we will be happy to respond to all your queries. The 15-minute period for e-voting is now open. I request the shareholders who have not cast their vote to please cast their votes now. May I request Ms. Renuka Ramnath to please close the meeting with a vote of thanks. Ms. Ramnath?

So once again thank you, shareholders, for your continued confidence and support to the company and its management. Thank you for attending this meeting and asking questions. And I take this opportunity once again to thank Lakshmi on behalf of all shareholders and the Board and his entire team for the stellar performance and wishing the company a great success in future. See you next year. Thank you.