HRH Next FY26: Margin expansion meets an AI-first strategy with AINA

HRH Next Services Limited closed FY26 with faster profit growth than revenue growth, backed by improved operating metrics and a clearer strategic narrative around AI-enabled customer engagement. In its investor presentation for the half-year and financial year ended March 31, 2026, the company reported revenue from operations of 6,816.03 lakh for FY26, up from 5,784.17 lakh in FY25, a 17.84% year-on-year increase. Profitability expanded more sharply. EBITDA rose to 1,265.54 lakh from 918.37 lakh, up 37.80%, and profit after tax increased to 486.35 lakh from 314 lakh, up 54.89%.

This financial performance is positioned as part of a broader shift in the company’s operating model. HRH Next is pitching itself as an omnichannel customer engagement platform that blends trained associates with automation and analytics. The presentation frames FY26 as a year where the company strengthened fundamentals while preparing for the next phase driven by AINA, its vernacular AI division.

FY26 performance: profitability strengthened as revenue scaled

The company’s operating leverage shows up clearly in FY26 margins. EBITDA margin improved to 18.57% from 15.88% in FY25. PAT margin expanded to 7.14% from 5.43%. The improvement is visible even at the half-year level. In H2 FY26, EBITDA margin was 18.98%, compared with 11.46% in H2 FY25. H2 FY26 PAT margin was 7.74% versus 3.81% in H2 FY25.

While the presentation does not provide a segment-level revenue split, it makes clear that HRH Next’s core business remains contact centre services delivered across multiple channels. It also lists additional service lines such as SEO and omnichannel services, SEO and brand promotion, and advisory and consulting services. However, there is no revenue attribution by these service lines. Investors therefore have to assess performance largely through consolidated profit and loss numbers rather than a segment-by-segment bridge.

A notable detail is the sharp decline in other income, which fell to 12.36 lakh in FY26 from 76.31 lakh in FY25. This makes the FY26 profit growth more reflective of core operations rather than non-operating support, which is generally a healthier quality of earnings signal.

Operating footprint: scale built across tiered delivery centres

HRH Next positions itself as a scaled delivery business with a multi-location footprint. The presentation states the company operates across eight locations and highlights 2,500+ employees. A location-wise headcount table shows 2,375 associates and 315 support team members. Hyderabad remains the largest centre with 1,021 associates and 161 support staff, followed by Coimbatore with 650 associates.

Operational scale is described using call volumes. The company reports 30.63 million calls handled in 2024 and 46.54 million calls handled in 2026 till date. It also highlights language depth, with Tamil contributing 6.56 million calls in 2026.

The expansion story is not limited to current centres. The presentation lists next destinations including Indore, Pune, Kolkata, and Mysore. The stated rationale is practical and talent-driven: Indore for Hindi belt coverage and BPO ecosystem, Pune for tech-enabled talent, Kolkata for Bengali language coverage and cost advantages, and Mysore for Kannada talent depth and lower cost. This framing suggests that expansion is being planned not as a generic capacity add, but as language and cost aligned delivery.

AINA: the strategic pivot towards AI-enabled vernacular CX

The presentation’s defining theme is AINA, described as HRH Next’s vernacular AI division. The company argues that customer experience has shifted from simple query resolution to multi-language, emotion-aware conversations. AINA is positioned as the capability that helps HRH Next bridge scale with local nuance.

AINA’s value proposition is laid out through both operational modules and quantified impact claims. The presentation lists real-time agent assistance, workflow automation, automated learning systems, voicebots, emailbots and chatbots, operational analytics and insights, automated vernacular SMS, automated call audits, AI HR video bot interviews, and automated legal WhatsApp.

On impact, the company provides measurable claims: 10 to 12% annual OPEX savings, 5 to 7% reduction in operational costs, associates handling 25% more queries, and 30% lower training costs. In the Managing Director’s commentary, AINA is linked even more directly to the income statement. Management states it foresees a 7% reduction in people costs, a 5 to 10% topline increase as a start, and a 3 to 4% uplift in margins.

These are forward-looking statements, not audited outcomes, but the specificity is important. It provides investors with clear checkpoints for future quarters: whether cost per transaction reduces, whether margin improves beyond FY26 levels, and whether revenue scales through new offerings rather than only through headcount growth.

Voice intelligence and partnerships: building an AI toolkit around operations

Beyond AINA as a concept, the presentation describes a voice intelligence tool and multiple partnerships that are meant to operationalize AI.

The voice intelligence tool is described as capturing and analysing every interaction with complete coverage. It aims to measure talk ratios, track engagement and sentiment, identify key moments, and detect opportunities such as upsell and payment commitment. The application layer includes 100% call audits, cohort analysis by customer segment or city tier, and behavioural pattern mining across agents and customers. The presentation also describes an analysis framework called Acoustic DNA, positioned as a structured representation of conversations capturing acoustic and linguistic features.

The company also highlights partnerships with Pradhi AI Solutions Private Limited, OARA Innovation Labs Pvt. Ltd., and Aaiyka AI Private Limited. The Pradhi partnership is positioned around AI-driven solutions, voice intelligence insights, and AI-powered quality monitoring. The OARA collaboration is described as supporting vernacular quality audits, conversion analysis, early churn risk identification, and compliance and quality monitoring. The Aaiyka relationship is disclosed as a dataset supply agreement, where HRH Next supplies raw audio data to support dataset creation for AI and ML model development.

While the financial impact of these partnerships is not quantified in the presentation, they do indicate a strategy of building capability through collaboration rather than only internal product development.

Balance sheet movement: growth accompanied by higher liabilities

The balance sheet shows a large year-on-year increase in total liabilities and assets. Total liabilities rose to 9,769.38 lakh as of March 31, 2026 from 5,455.27 lakh as of March 31, 2025. Within that, short-term borrowings increased to 1,301.75 lakh from 645.7 lakh, and current liabilities increased to 3,676.8 lakh from 685.44 lakh.

On the asset side, total non-current assets increased to 4,687.99 lakh from 2,035.04 lakh. Trade receivables rose to 1,759.38 lakh from 1,200.82 lakh, and cash and cash equivalents increased to 300.7 lakh from 59.03 lakh.

The presentation does not provide commentary to explain the sharp rise in current liabilities, so investors would need to track whether this reflects working capital timing, scaling of vendor and payroll related payables, or other factors. The increase in receivables also suggests that revenue growth may have been accompanied by higher credit exposure, though no receivable aging is provided.

What FY26 suggests about the next phase

HRH Next’s FY26 presentation blends two narratives. The first is execution and improved profitability in a contact centre services model that is scaling across multiple Indian locations. The second is an explicit attempt to move up the value chain through AI-led, vernacular customer experience via AINA and voice intelligence.

The financials provide evidence of strengthening fundamentals in FY26, with revenue growth and stronger margins. The strategic narrative provides measurable targets, especially around people cost reduction, topline uplift, and margin improvement linked to AINA. The open questions remain around working capital and liability expansion and the absence of a service-line revenue split, which limits outside validation of where incremental growth is coming from.

Still, the presentation signals a clear direction. The company aims to expand delivery capacity, invest in AI infrastructure, scale AINA, deepen client relationships, and progress toward a 100 crore revenue milestone and a mainboard listing roadmap. If FY26 is the base year for margin expansion, the next phase will likely be judged by whether AINA-linked efficiencies show up in steady-state operating metrics, not just in forward-looking statements.