FAQ (Frequently asked Questions)

Welcome to our investors, well-wishers. Since we are a newly listed firm, you could have many queries. Here is a list of FAQs that we thought might be of help. Feel free to reach out with any questions and we will continue to update this section.

FAQ added on Dec 14, 2025

1. What is the AI impact on language and software business ?

2. Why there is a variation in PAT in recent quarters?

3. In your Inorganic growth strategy – what are you looking for?

4. Do you plan to diversify into new areas such as defense, data centers, gaming, fintech, etc.?

Below are the FAQ added on June 2022

5. What is LangTech? What is Localization? Is there a market for it? How big is it?

6. Where is LangTech applicable? Any use cases? What type of projects do you do?

7. How big is a typical project? What is the billing cycle?

8. What is your strength? Or what is your moat?

9. Who are your competitors?

10. How is the next tier team? What is your attrition? How do you retain or motivate staff?

11. As mandated by the exchange, an SME can declare half yearly results. Will you declare quarterly results or half yearly results?

12. Will you sustain next 20 years?

13. Is there a market for this in India?

FAQ added on Dec 14, 2025

1. What is the AI impact on language and software business ?

AI will certainly have an impact on the technology and language services industry, but not immediately and not in the simplistic way it is often perceived. More importantly, AI is creating new opportunities rather than eliminating demand.

In software development and enterprise implementations today, clients are actively talking about AI, but the primary objective is to augment and optimize existing teams and not to replace them entirely (unlike call centers). There is a growing demand for AI-assisted services, where AI improves productivity, quality and speed – while human teams continue to own the architecture, code quality, security and accountability. Clients still need a partner who takes end-to-end ownership and responsibility.

The same applies to localization. Machine translation and AI are already part of the workflow but post-editing, review, domain adaptation and quality validation remain critical especially for enterprise and regulated content. In fact, the localization industry is expanding into multilingual data services such as data collection, cleaning, annotation, modeling, analytics, and testing for AI systems.

So while AI is changing how we work, it has not replaced our teams. Instead, it is reshaping our service mix and improving margins over time, which we see as a structural positive for our business.

2. Why is there is a variation in PAT in recent quarters?

We are still an SME and very much in a growth phase. We have consciously planned for a 30–40% year-on-year growth trajectory and over the last 12 quarters we have delivered consistent growth while remaining PAT-positive. (eg. when we went public, our yearly revenue was 25 CR and in Q2 of FY25-26, our quarterly revenue now is around 23.5 CR INR. So what used to be our yearly revenue – now is our quarterly revenue in 3-3.5 years).

At this stage, our priority is to scale the business meaningfully and not to optimize for short-term margin volatility. As part of this growth strategy, we are also pursuing inorganic expansion through acquisitions in markets such as the US, Japan, and other overseas regions. These are mature markets with lower initial margins and our approach is to optimize operations post-acquisition and progressively improve the bottom line.

Our focus is to accelerate our journey to a ₹100–200 Cr topline while ensuring the business remains profitable and cash-generative. At our current scale, even a small strategic investment – such as adding a two-member senior team to build a new vertical like GCC services – can temporarily impact PAT. However, without investing in new capabilities, technologies and growth initiatives, long-term value creation is not possible.

In the first two years after listing, we tried to balance both aggressive growth and margin protection. We realized that this approach was limiting experimentation, slowing new logo acquisition and creating confusion in the sales motion. From 2024 onwards, we have simplified the strategy: prioritize growth, focus on quality clients, stay profitable and increase business velocity.

As we scale and move towards a ₹1,000 Cr+ market capitalization, we are confident that margins, operating leverage and capital efficiency will naturally align.

3. In your Inorganic growth strategy – what are you looking for?

While we have invested in building an internal sales team and a digital marketing engine, organic growth takes time, especially in international markets. If growth does not come to us fast enough, we are prepared to actively acquire growth through inorganic means.

Our M&A strategy is not just about increasing topline. We are selectively looking for acquisitions that help us:

• Build new competencies
• Enter new geographies
• Acquire strategic clients that Enables cross-selling and upselling
• Strengthen our position across the value chain

For example, our acquisition in the US was focused on an upstream consulting-led business with strong client relationships but no offshore delivery. On the other hand, we had deep downstream implementation and offshore execution capabilities. These two models were highly complementary.

As a result, the acquisition helped us scale our US revenues by approximately USD 3 million annually which would have otherwise taken at least two years to build organically. This is exactly the type of strategic, synergistic acquisition we are targeting going forward.

4. Do you plan to diversify into new areas such as defense, data centers, gaming, fintech, etc.?

Our approach to diversification is disciplined and selective. We do not diversify for the sake of it. Any new area we explore must be something we understand well or where we can bring in the right team, domain expertise or strategic partners to ensure strong execution.

Our primary filter for diversification is client value and strategic alignment. If a new area complements our existing capabilities or adds value to our current client base, we are open to explore it.

For example, while we are not formally in the travel business, we have observed a growing number of Indian companies, professionals and educational institutions engaging with Japan. (in fact one of our investors advised us to look into this area). As part of our Japan–India consulting practice we support such clients with market entry assistance, exhibitions, meetings, and coordination. In a small but meaningful way, this extends into travel-related services that align with our core consulting strengths.

Similarly, while we are not yet a full-fledged GCC service provider but we have recently assisted Japanese SMEs in setting up small teams in India. Building on this experience, we are now actively exploring GCC enablement opportunities which naturally align with our existing technology implementation, staffing and delivery capabilities.

Going forward, we will continue to evaluate new opportunities that align with our core business, leverage our existing strengths and create incremental value for our clients, while remaining cautious and execution-focused.

Additional context on our business

• Our business is mainly export-led – with approximately 80–85% of revenues coming from international markets and 10–15% from domestic business.
• From a geographic perspective, Asia (including India) contributes around 50% of our revenues while the US and Europe contribute roughly 25% each. This mix reflects our strong presence in Asia and steady growth across mature western markets.
• In terms of service lines – the Technology & Consulting business contributes about 50–60% of revenues while Language Localization accounts for approximately 40–50%. This ratio varies year-on-year depending on client mix and project nature but currently stands at around 60% technology and 40% localization.
• Our project portfolio spans a wide range of services, including:
  • Software internationalization
  • Software development, Enterprise solution implementations
  • Creation of multilingual datasets for training LLMs and AI engines
  • Data annotation, validation, and AI output testing
  • Cybersecurity, cloud, and network implementation services
• Our clients include system integrators, end-user enterprises, SMEs, and Fortune 500 companies, giving us a well-balanced and diversified client base.
• Operationally, we have a 20-member mid-level management team that oversees daily execution across functions. As a result, the business is professionally managed and not dependent on any single individual including the CEO or founders.

Below are the FAQ added on June 2022

5. What is LangTech business? What is Localization? Is there a market for it? How big is it?

Many times, customer problems or use cases are solved together while leveraging both the combination of Language (or Linguistics) + Technology. This is referred to as LangTech.

Likewise when brands launch products or services targeting a specific geography or locale, these are localized to suit the local language, culture and needs of the consumers. This could mean change in user interface (UI), user experience (UX), currency, date formats, language support and much more. This is referred to as “Localization”.

Globally this is a 40 billion USD plus market and growing at YoY 10% and above. Refer to the Google report on Indian market for Localization.

6. Where is LangTech applicable? Any use cases? What type of projects do you do?

Imagine few scenarios where the client has –

• An internet banking site in English and wants to localize it in Hindi to target domestic consumers
• To generate multi-lingual reports from their existing ERP software
• To translate their website in 3 Asian languages
• To do linguistic check of different channel marketing material (eg. sms, marketing pamphlet, web material)
• To implement chatbot on their website but it has to understand Hindi /Marathi questions from the consumers
• To translate CAD files from German to English to pass the manufacturing to some company in an English speaking country
• To develop an application that can store different language based data
• To support their users in different languages
• To localize their e-learning or training videos with multi-lingual subtitles or voiceover
• To showcase all e-commerce products in multi-languages on their website
• To develop software products or tools to support system with multi-lingual requirements

7. How big is a typical project ? What is the billing cycle?

Typically our projects are T&M (time and material) based or turnkey project based. The project size is around 20K USD – 80K USD to be delivered in 3-6 months of time.

We also have clients with whom we sign master contract where rates are mentioned. And then per month they give us work which gets invoiced at month end. Here we have clients who give us an annual business of 100-150K USD

8. What is your strength ? Or what is your moat?

• Deep relationships with clients in overseas markets – especially difficult markets such as Japan
• Tighter integration with clients through API connectivity and hence difficult to replace immediately
• Localize and support 100+ languages
• In-house linguistic + technical expertise for 8 core Indian languages and Japanese language thereby can assure fast turnaround time as well as quality
• Strong technical capabilities to handle multiple file formats, different CMS, different technologies (eg. python / php / .net / Java / mysql / NLP / Audio-video technologies) as well as capabilities to support enterprise products and digital transformation initiatives, AI-ML data analytics initiatives.
• Strong partnership with the ecosystem of partners & freelancers due to timely payment and fair treatment over years
• Ability to work with end-user firms as well as system integrator firms
• A team of 15+ mid-level managers who are with the company for 10+ years
• Can manage complex projects involving multiple languages, multiple file formats, stringent timelines, quality orientation
• Ability to upfront invest in a small team of say 20+ members for a single project
• Reputed brand and working in this field for 15+ years

9. Who are your competitors?

This space has product companies, vanilla translation companies, individual freelancers. Globally there are LSP (localization service providers) but this combination of Language + Technology + Consulting is where Fidel has a lead and differentiation.

10. How is the next tier team ? What is your attrition ? How do you retain or motivate staff?

Fidel has a pool of 15+ middle managers who are with Fidel for more than 10 years and capable of managing the operations and business. Last 3-4 years, Fidel asks its senior management to take a mandatory 3-5 day leave to ensure less individual dependency with proper process and workflow.

Fidel has an attrition of 10% which is quite less than other firms. It attracts people who have an affinity towards languages + technologies & consulting, has a good internal culture, motivates them by encouraging them to pursue higher studies, pursue teaching or publishing books or articles, pursue social community services etc. From time to time Fidel has also finetuned its policies while listening to its team members and fellow employees.

Fidel encourages values like humility, empathy, taking responsibility, customer centricity, risk taking and holistic individual as well as corporate growth. This personalized touch and experience has encouraged members to stay longer with Fidel.

11. As mandated by the exchange, an SME can declare half yearly results. Will you declare quarterly results or half yearly results?

As part of good Corporate Governance initiative, Fidel plans to declare its Unaudited Financial Results along with Limited review report of our statutory auditors on a quarterly basis. Initially
we will have to learn many new things but we see all these compliances and governance a positive welcome step to better ourselves further.

12. Will you sustain next 20 years?

Having seen the dot com bust, Lehman shock, Tsunami and now Covid pandemic, we thank our clients, employees and well-wishers who helped us sustain and grow these many years. Noted writer and thinker Taleb coins the term “Lindy Effect” while describing the longevity of the world’s greatest books: “If a book has been in print for forty years, I can expect it to be in print for another forty years.”

Simply put, the Lindy Effect states: The longer an idea has lasted, the greater likelihood it will continue to last.

With already 18+ years of working, we will surely continue & grow for next 20+ years. Offcourse we need the support of our shareholders, our clients, our employees.

13. Is there a market for localization, language technologies in India?

Yes definitely. There are multiple factors at play because of which there is a huge opportunity for next 10 years or so. Offcourse some government support will be helpful to expedite this growth but nevertheless the startups, the consumers will drive the demand.

Indian startups are hungry to go global. These SaaS firms are launching their solutions in different Asian / Latin American / European /Middle Eastern markets where local language UI / UX is mandatory for consumers to make the purchase decision.

At the same time, global companies are coming to Asia & India and want a pie of these markets. These companies need user support, consumer education, branding etc in local languages.

Trading platforms, real estate information, health related information, insurance related decision making all in localized web or mobile applications can also contribute to consumer education and awareness, prevent frauds and establish trust.

Government is keen to bridge the social digital divide by making E-Government services (eg. tax filing, passport application) available online in local languages using innovative technology solutions.

Further if government makes local language support (UI / UX /customer education) mandatory to private companies in the field of healthcare, finance, real estate that affects an individual citizen / consumer, this will open up an additional few billion USD market in India.

Government also recently announced that legal cases or legal information to be made available in local languages. There are 100+ portals such as tracking missing children portal, agriculture related portals which if localized in local languages, it will help in dissemination of information across the country.

Gone are the days where knowing English was the sign of literacy. With the proliferation of smartphones, lowering of data pack costs and growing aspirations amongst common person, there is a huge push and requirement for all services including ecommerce, food and delivery, healthcare, insurance, banking across urban, semi-urban and rural areas. All this if made available in local language UI /UX then it will help in growth of consumption of these services fueling growth.

Hence we are very positive and see that next 10-15 years, surely there is a need for Language+Technology+Consulting, localization services and solutions in India. Fidel is committed to grow and build the required ecosystem for India.