Exato's call-centre technology business bets on AI and overseas deals

Vijay Kedia was a shareholder in Exato Technologies before its December 2025 listing, when the shares were sold at ₹140. Since then he has kept adding. Between March and September 2026, he and his investment company Kedia Securities raised their combined holding from 7.09% to 11.38%. The company behind that buying is small, growing quickly and changing what it sells, so the useful question is what the business is and where its next revenue is meant to come from.

What Exato actually does

Exato, based in Noida and founded in 2016 by its chairman and managing director Appuorv K Sinha, works on the technology inside customer-service call centres. When a bank says a call "may be recorded for quality and training", the software that records the call, scores it, analyses the caller's words and tone, and plans how many agents are needed at peak hours is the kind of system Exato sells, installs and maintains. Management says its systems support more than 150,000 agents across over 150 clients, including nine of India's ten largest banks.

Most customers are outsourcing firms that run call centres for others. Management named TaskUs, iQor, Diligenta, Inventurus Knowledge Solutions and Big Language Solutions among them. Outsourcing and IT-services clients brought in about 75% of FY26 revenue and banks about 15%.

Much of what Exato sells is other companies' software. Licences made up 76.4% of FY26 revenue, with implementation and consulting at 18.4%. Its largest technology partner is NiCE, an Israeli contact-centre software maker; it also works with Mitel and, for cloud accounting software, Acumatica. Exato earns by reselling these licences, then charging to set up, connect and run them. Its own software products contributed only 3–4% of revenue, by management's count. The promoter family held 54.73% at September-end.

Fast growth, uneven quarters

Revenue more than doubled in three years, from ₹72.8 crore in FY23 to ₹168 crore in FY26. Net profit rose from ₹5.1 crore to ₹16.1 crore over the same period, including a jump from ₹9.7 crore in FY25, and the net margin widened from 7.8% in FY25 to 9.6% in FY26.

The quarters are lumpy because large licence sales are billed when they are delivered. The January–March 2026 quarter brought ₹61.1 crore of revenue, 36% of the year's total, but its operating margin fell to 11.2% from 19.8% in the previous quarter. On the June call, management explained that customers spending their year-end budgets bought licences and hardware that Exato passes through at thin margins; purchases of software and hardware rose to 81% of revenue in the quarter from 67%. It also counted spending on new subsidiaries in the US and Australia, senior hires and industry events.

April–June 2026 was stronger. Revenue rose 50.2% from a year earlier to ₹43.7 crore, operating profit before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation, or EBITDA, rose 81.4%, and net profit more than doubled to ₹5.6 crore.

Management's revenue expectation for FY27 rose between calls: 50–60% growth in June, then "at least 60 to 70%" in August, with profit expected to grow faster. That is a projection rather than a result, and the first quarter alone does not establish the full-year figure.

Why overseas work matters to the margins

Management put Exato's gross margin at 22–24% on Indian work and 30–35% on overseas work. Overseas clients brought in 23.5% of FY26 revenue and 27.2% in April–June. The stated aim is to take that share to 50–60% within two to three years, by selling to large outsourcing firms in the US and UK and delivering the work from India.

So far the UK has carried most of the overseas growth. In April–June, England accounted for about 69% of export revenue and Singapore about 30%, while the US contributed under 1% despite being named the main target market. Exato has set up subsidiaries in the US, Singapore and Australia and moved its revenue head to the US for several months. In August, its board approved reducing the Australian subsidiary's share capital from AUD 75,000 to AUD 35,000, saying the original amount exceeded what the unit needed.

The order book and the concentration behind it

Exato signs multi-year contracts, often three to five years, for licences, support and managed services. Management's running total of signed contract value was ₹348 crore in February, ₹600 crore by March-end and ₹660 crore by August. The March jump included a ₹172 crore managed-services contract with a US client signed on 31 March; the August addition included about ₹60–65 crore from iQor. Of the ₹660 crore, ₹251 crore had been delivered and about ₹410 crore remained to be delivered over the next few years.

This figure is management's own tally, not an audited number, and it spans several years of billing. In June, management said 30–35% of the then-undelivered orders would be billed in FY27. Management describes the contracts as non-cancellable.

The same contracts make Exato dependent on a few clients. In August, management said the top five clients contributed close to 60% of revenue; in February it put the top ten at 85–87%. Two healthcare outsourcing firms alone account for over ₹200 crore of signed orders: about ₹130 crore from Inventurus and ₹95 crore from Big Language Solutions. Management cited client retention of 97–98% and said no client had left for a competitor in five to six years.

The new bets: AI hardware and its own products

Exato is adding two lines that change its mix. The first is AI infrastructure: selling and installing servers, graphics processors and networking with its own software on top, through a partnership with HPE. Management expects this to contribute 25–30% of FY27 revenue, with margins starting at about 10–12% and 60–70% of the revenue one-time rather than recurring. A larger share of lower-margin hardware would weigh on overall margins even if revenue grows faster.

The second is its own software, such as call-centre analytics tools already used by HDFC Bank, Axis Bank and TaskUs, plus AI agent systems, for which it has won orders from clients in the US and UK. Management targets 25–30% of revenue from its own products at 40–50% margins, against 3–4% today. Its timing has moved forward on each call: from FY27's third quarter in February to "this month or next month" in August, with two deals said to be close. No such contract had been announced by the August call.

Building those products shows up on the balance sheet. Exato records the cost of developing its own software as an asset until the product is in use, rather than as an expense. That asset grew from ₹15.7 crore to ₹28.4 crore during FY26, and no amortisation had started by March. The ₹12.7 crore added in FY26 compares with net profit of ₹16.1 crore. Once the products are in use, that cost will be charged against profit over several years.

Management also said it was in talks to acquire a company that would add a region or a product line such as cloud accounting software, with one of the big four audit firms carrying out due diligence, and that any deal could be paid in cash, shares or both.

Profit has not yet turned into cash

FY26 net profit was ₹16.1 crore, but operating cash flow was only ₹1.5 crore. Money owed by customers rose by ₹9.2 crore, amounts owed to suppliers fell by ₹5.3 crore and taxes paid were ₹8.5 crore. With ₹13.3 crore spent on software development and other assets, cash generated by the business did not cover its investment for the year.

The listing filled the gap. The December 2025 issue raised ₹31.85 crore of new money for the company at ₹140 a share, and existing holders sold shares worth ₹5.6 crore. Long-term borrowings fell from ₹8.1 crore to ₹0.7 crore, and net worth roughly doubled to ₹88.3 crore. At March-end, short-term borrowings of ₹20.4 crore sat alongside cash and bank deposits of about ₹41.3 crore. Most of the money owed by customers was either not yet due or less than six months old. No dividend was declared for FY26.

What Kedia's buying shows

Vijay Kedia held 4.57% before the listing, by management's account. By March 2026, he held 5.45% in his own name and Kedia Securities held 1.64%. By September, those holdings were 7.89% and 3.49%, an addition of 432,500 shares across the two. Part of it is visible: on 9 July, Kedia bought 1,01,000 shares at ₹429.20 each in a single bulk deal worth ₹4.33 crore.

Exato reports its shareholders every six months, so the other purchase dates and prices cannot be read from the two lists. The only other large outside holder named was the Nine Alps Opportunity Fund, with 4.11%. The ownership change shows a growing commitment from one well-known investor, but it does not show his reasons.

Price, valuation and trading

Exato's shares closed at ₹279.30 on their first day of trading in December 2025, about double the ₹140 issue price. They rose to a closing high of ₹776.90 on 8 September 2026 and closed at ₹600 on 27 October, about 23% below that high and a little over four times the issue price.

At ₹600, the company was valued at about ₹604 crore: about 37.5 times FY26 profit and about 32 times profit over the four quarters to June. These are dated reference figures, and the trailing number includes one strong quarter.

Exato is listed only on BSE's platform for small and medium companies, and its shares trade thinly; on some trading days, including 20 October, no trade took place. Small trades can therefore move the price sharply, a point an investor raised on the June earnings call.

1. 1
   FY27 delivery

   Revenue growth against management's 60–70% expectation, and how much of the ₹410 crore order book is billed

2. 2
   Margin mix

   Whether lower-margin AI hardware sales dilute margins faster than overseas work and own products lift them

3. 3
   Own products

   First announced contracts, and when the ₹28.4 crore of development cost starts being charged against profit

4. 4
   Cash conversion

   Operating cash flow against profit, and money owed by customers as revenue grows

5. 5
   Client concentration

   The share of revenue from the top five clients and whether new clients, especially in the US, broaden the base