Ladies and gentlemen, good day, and welcome to Control Print Limited Investor Call for result discussion of 1Q FY2024 Conference Call hosted by Asian Markets Securities Limited. This conference call may contain forward-looking statement about the company which are based on the beliefs, opinions and expectations of the company as on the date of this call. The statements are not guarantee for future performance and involve risks and uncertainties that are difficult to predict. Actual results may differ from such situation, projection, et cetera, wherever expressed or implied. Participants are re-requested to express cautions while referring to such statements and remarks. As a reminder, all participant line will be in listen-only mode, and there will be an opportunity for you to ask questions after the presentation conclude. Should you need assistance during the conference call, please signal an operator by pressing star 0 on your touchtone phone.
Please note that this conference is being recorded. I now hand the conference over to Mr. Karan Bhatelia from Asia Market Securities Limited. Thank you, and over to you, sir.
Hi, all. Very good afternoon, welcome on to the Control Print Limited 1 QFY 2024 Carnings conference Call, hosted by Asian Markets Securities Private Limited. From the management side, we have with us Mr. Shiva Kabra, Joint Managing Director, and Mr. Jaideep Barve, CFO. I would like to hand over this call to Jaideep, sir, for his opening remarks before that we open the floor for Q&A. Over to you, Jaideep. Thank you.
Yeah. Hi, good evening, everybody. I'm Jaideep Barve, the CFO of Control Print Limited. Welcome, everybody, to the earnings conference call for the 1st quarter of the financial year 2023, 2024. We appreciate that you have taken out time from your busy schedule to attend to this call. Mr. Shiva Kabra, the Joint Managing Director of Control Print Limited, also joins me on this call. The detailed presentation has already been put up on the website, as well as in the investor presentation notification on the exchanges for this call. I would imagine that all the people who are on the call would have gone through the presentation, so we are open for the Q&A at the moment. Hello? Yeah, Karan.
Hi, Karan, sir. Your line has been unmuted.
Yeah, start the Q&A session.
Yeah.
Operator, please announce.
Thank you. We will now begin the question and answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask may press star and 1 on their touchtone telephone. If you wish to remove yourself from the question queue, you may press star and 2. Participant are requested to use handset while asking a question. Ladies and gentlemen, we will wait for a moment while the question queue assembles. The first question is from the line of Naysar Parikh from Native Capital. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Hi, Shiva and Jaideep. Thanks for taking the question. The first one was on, you know, the new initiatives that we have. Can you just talk about Markprint, Track and Trace, as well as the packaging JV, all three? You know, what is the update and status on that? That would be helpful.
Hello. Yeah, Naysar Parekh. Let me answer this question. The first thing is on the update for Markprint. Markprint BV was a company which we have acquired in the mid of 2022. As such, what we are going to do is that we have imported the machines over here. We are studying the technology, and in the due course of time, we will be able to launch their machines, their technology in the domestic Indian market. That's the current status for Markprint. We have also begun work on the Track and Trace. Track and Trace is a feature or functionality which has actually been mandated by the Board for the pharmaceutical division.
And about 300 bulk drugs have been, bulk drug companies, have been mandated to use the Track and Trace mechanism for the packing. Currently, we are on the verge of, you know, doing the development for a large pharmaceutical company in India, and hopefully we'll be able to build upon that, capitalize on the current opportunity, and spread our wings in the domestic market. Regarding the packaging company, we have already entered into a JV with VShip SRL, way back in December. In pursuant to the JV, we have incorporated a private limited company in March 2023. Currently, as of now, nothing much is happening. We are just waiting for the clearances from the overseas investor.
Once we are, you know, like, having all the clearances from them, we'll begin the operations over here. We intend to manufacture and sell those single dose single pack deliverables, what would come out of the machine.
As of now, there is nothing much to share about the packaging division.
Got it. Markprint, what would be the revenue for the quarter?
Can you just repeat the question? You have gone down.
Sorry. I was asking, what would be the revenue for the quarter for Markprint?
You want it in rupees or you want it as the euros? In INR, it's about INR 2.35 crore.
Yeah, got it, got it.
Yeah.
My second question, second question was that, you know, you've spoken about dairy and that, you know, the traction that you are getting on the dairy side. Can you just talk a bit about that? Like, you know, what kind of clients do you have there, or any of the larger players that have clients and, you know, what is the traction that you're seeing? Also, any other sectors or segments that you're seeing traction in?
Yeah. We would not-
Yes, I can answer that question.
Yeah.
Definitely we are, we, we gained, you know, a good amount of, or at least increased our size of the pie in dairy. You know, that business has grown, and that has, you know, that sectoral focus has helped us in that specific space. As you know, obviously, we can't share specific clients, you know, but largely we obviously work with some of the biggest dairies in India. One, two of the largest ones, you know, the cooperative. Like, it's more of a cooperative sector, largely in India, and we do have some of the big ones also.
I, yeah, of course, you know, it's something that, overall, we are increasing our share, and we have certain cooperators, you know, and we're definitely trying to also work on some more targeted applications where we can get an edge. We actually do have a, a technology edge in some applications over our competitors. I think that that segment is also gonna keep growing, because, you know, there's more increase of packed milk of, you know, I think packaged milk products like dahi and, you know, all, all types of derivative, like ice creams and whatnot, from milk.
Mm-hmm.
That's worked out quite well for us, and we've got, like, a fair amount of references. You know, I wouldn't say we're the leader of that sector as yet, but, you know, we've definitely come to, like, maybe a pretty good stage.
Got it. Shirur, which other sectors are we seeing some traction, you know, in terms of performance, either printer sales or consumable sales?
Yeah. Overall, I think it's been frankly like a, a good market in the last year and a bit. You know, obviously, we've always had our strength in the industrial segment. The overall ratio between industrial and packaging has not changed because maybe that some of those sectors are more cyclical, because essentially a lot of the industrial sectors are based around building materials, and right now I think housing's doing okay. You know, I'm not a big macro India economy type expert, but I think the, the overall housing sector seems to be doing okay. Obviously, when someone buys a house, they're gonna need cables, they're gonna need lights, they're gonna need pipes, they're gonna need paints, they're gonna need, you know, for wood, like plywood or MDF or almost whatever to make furniture or even if they buy furniture.
You know, we print a lot of those secondary, like cement, for example. We print on a lot of those types of materials, so that, that's been a, a, a good driver for us. At the same time, I think our focused effort in two, three sectors, like in pharmaceuticals, like I said, we having a focus, of course, we got some traction. Again, we are focusing more on the Track and Trace. Like I said, you know, Jay, you also asked that question earlier. I think, like, whether it's Markprint, you know, it's something that we are getting parts of the technology and trying to use that to upgrade some of our printers. Some of their printers we sell as is, you know, in specific segments.
That's still a work in progress for us to really utilize any benefits of that, frankly speaking, so far. It's, it's also been a bit slow from our side, so I'm not, you know, saying anything to anyone. We've had a lot of other projects going on, and we have a limited amount of resources on the development side. The second thing is, you know, also as far as the tracking goes, you know, obviously they have Domino, and we have some orders in hand, but we still have to execute them, so there's no billing on that side as yet. Like, on the large way, of course, we've supplied some systems in the past, but now we're at the next level in the pharmaceuticals.
That's still working, so it's still a, you can say, like a negligible revenue contributor yet, but it's something we're expecting to build up over a period of time and, you know, that's a second potential thing that can happen. Of course, the third area, which is the packaging, is something that, you know, we are working with V-Shapes. It's actually a slightly longer and more difficult process, especially the materials that we supply are, are, are a bit of an issue because to import them from Italy was frankly too expensive for the domestic market. You know, we've been working on a couple of guys out here to help develop a local source for the materials, which will be significantly cheaper than importing it from Italy or...
And, you know, that, that should hopefully, not only get the cost down, but decrease the turnaround time, because then obviously, it will be printed with some materials, and then to get something from there, it's a cumbersome process because, you know, it's months. Then in, in the, in the meantime, any information changes on the fact, then, you know, it's not possible to coordinate. Because of all those things, three things, those are like still what I'll say, future sectors, and they remain in the future.
It won't be like nuclear fusion, you know, that will always be the power source of the future, you know, but like, yeah, we are still. You know, I think for it to be honestly contributing to the top line and the bottom line meaningfully, we are like about 12 months away from that, is what I'll say. Like, at the very minimum. You know, for it to be meaningful, we'll see something coming in, but, you know, for it to be meaningful, let's take it as 12 months at least. Now, getting back, like I said, our sectors, we've got a good growth overall. In personal care, we're very strong. We've actually increased our market share there further.
In food, still we are the smallest of the, of the four, but the big four, and of course, that's the biggest market in India, so that's been a problematic place for us. We've picked up a bit of share in bakery on the outers. We've picked up a little bit of share in dairy. Of course, in dairy, we actually picked up a good amount of share. In pharmaceutical, we are getting some traction, but we still have to put into real sales. That's the overall picture. You know, so, so like in the packaging side, we're increasing the types of projects we're doing. We're definitely doing very well in personal care, which we're already doing well in before. We further increase that part of the business.
In food, you know, we're getting some benefit, and especially definitely, like I said, led by dairy and bakery. Yeah, I would say, like, this will, you know, wipe out the weakness in that specific industry, and that's the biggest industry. That's where we really need to look at in the future, you know. We've got our pockets of strength and weaknesses.
Got it. No, that's very helpful. Thanks a lot. Just one last question. This quarter, how many, you know, printers did we sell? You know, how, how, what -- Last year it was 3,200 or something, which we sold in the full year. It seems like on a quarterly run rate basis, we, we are, like, kind of lower than what was in the last year.
Yeah. We sold about 650 printers this quarter.
Versus last year, Q1, that would be?
It was a higher number, I mean, close to about 775, so.
What would be the reason for the decline?
First, there are two issues. We are having some technical problems right now with some of our printer, with one of our printer, of course, the IPA. That's slightly, slightly lower in production because, you know, we switched models from the previous model to the current model. Now, we don't have certain electronics for the previous model. It's taking some time for the delivery. We have some orders which we're not able to execute as a result. We have sufficient stock of the newer printer. Obviously, a lot of customers, you know, they, they go slower because some things are only qualified on the previous printer. We have to test each and everything. It takes months, you know, like, for it to be checked for stability.
We are having some more technical issues in the newer printer, which we're still trying to resolve, and we're working on it very actively. You know, and so there's some stuff like that. Also the other big factor would, you know, that's happened is, you know, we have a limited amount of resources and manpower. What we did do was we asked that, you know, for all our. What happens, a lot of sales guys, they tend to make sales to a lot of, you know, B, C, and D accounts. That takes a lot of time and energy.
What we've been doing is because we have a limited amount of resources available, we want to focus on the C and D accounts, especially, only with our inside sales team, you know, the guys who sit in office and then they call and they generate the inquiries. We don't want to assign more than one sales call to close a printer sale to our sales, the actual field sales person. That's the basic idea. Obviously, so it's obviously like there is a little bit of pain out there because we're getting better quality of sales, and because we're getting more in the A, A+ category of customers, which is our main target market.
Definitely, we are slightly struggling in the C and D because it's still not so easy to sell over the phone, and, you know, BC, and set up 90% of, 80% of the work before the guy goes to finalize the thing. That's where the issue is. We have, obviously, this is something that's also like an issue with our own sales team because they feel like they're also you know, this is what we have to do is what we felt.
Because the, you know, decline is like, you know, volume term is greater than 15%, so I just want to, like, understand that because of technical issues, we'll be losing market share or, because the market is definitely growing and we are declining. You know, so continuing in your view or, like, in this, the last 1.5 months in July, August, you think we are over that and we are seeing growth year-over-year?
I mean, I think that we are not losing any market share meaningfully, if that's what your concern is or our momentum. As of right now, I can only say for the first, you know, 3 months and, and the little part of July that, that went by. I don't think meaningfully we've lost any market share or we're losing any customer. In fact, we're getting, I think, some good key customers. Like I said, you know, there has been a change in sales strategy. Of course, it's not possible for us to keep recruiting so many sales and service engineers and service a lot of small customers who have marginal revenues. Although that's very important for the numbers, and, you know, that's been a major change of our strategy since the last 6- 8 months.
That has led to, like I said, a decline of, relatively speaking, lower value or lower value sales of printers. Secondly, is the mix, which we have not disclosed exactly, between different types of printers. Like I said, the thermal inkjet or something has a relatively lower value of printer of, of the type of revenue we get. Inkjet printers have a relatively higher value. There are different types of printers, but, you know, I think that the sales cycle, if someone asks me, is reasonably good overall. Like, I mean, as of right now, it's not concerning me. You know, I would say, like, at all, that I would say, like, "Oh, we made a mistake by changing our strategy. We've got to go back and target all the smaller customers to make up the number." I wouldn't say that.
The technical issues, these are things in our business that they just keep coming in, like, you know, so it's one of those things we just have to deal with.
Thank you. Thanks. Thanks a lot, Sharath. All the best. Thank you.
Yeah. Thank you.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Tanika Aggarwal from Green Portfolio. Please go ahead.
Sir, I have a couple of questions. Like, I was going through the presentation pretty early this morning, and the company has mentioned about moving forward by way of new product launches, and, you know, also through the organic and inorganic growth. If you can brief a bit on this?
I couldn't actually hear that question clearly. Could it be repeated, please?
Yeah. I was saying that the company has mentioned in the presentation about moving forward by way of new product launches and also, also following the organic or inorganic route. If you can talk about it in brief?
Okay. The organic route is quite simple. you know, I think we've said it in some past calls, that, you know, we believe the market is going to grow at about 1.5x GDP. you know, that's the market rate, so it'll be about $5,000-$6,000 per capita. you know, if India is growing at, say, 6%-7%, the market is gonna grow, like, 9%-11%, approximately. Beyond that, what we grow in our core coding and marking business is gonna depend on our performance, relative to our competitors. obviously, that's a.
You know, that, that, so that's down to, you know, what sort of products we are focusing on, our sales strategy, our service, because, you know, our technical satisfaction and reliability of our customers, and those will play those variations between us and our competitors. The core market is gonna grow approximately 1.5x GDP, but of course, it depends on, you know, how India's GDP is growing, grow. Like I said, just assuming that India is growing at 6%, 7%, someone can multiply between, like, 9% and 11% is the core market growth. That's the organic growth, which we said that we can grow at without requiring any capital investments, or any other type of, of fundamental change in our business.
The second part obviously is that we've, we've taken some new initiatives. I, I think, the previous, they talked about the packaging, that we try to. It, it's an allied business that we've taken a first call with V-Shapes to get into. One was a Markprint, one is that we also started a subsidiary called ICIPL, or rather, we purchased a company, invested in a company, called ICIPL, which is targeted more at the C and D-grade customers . In a way, we are not able to, we don't have that type of level of resource that we can allocate to every single customer.
The, the thing what we've seen is in India is that the smaller customers are, are less sensitive to reliability and breakdowns, so they're more cost-sensitive rather than focused on, you know, purely on reliability and productivity. You know, like we're not a big discount house out here, so, you know, it's, it, it works better for someone like ICIPL, honestly, to target them to some extent, you know? Those are the situations. That's where the growth is. Of course, so this is where the organic growth elements are. The inorganic elements are like, you know, like we purchased Markprint, and obviously, we're looking at developing that business. We are looking at, you know, bought into ICIPL. We're looking at supporting them in their growth journey.
Of course, you know, we started V-Shapes as a partnership. I don't know whether it comes as organic or inorganic or, you know, I guess it comes as organic. Yeah, the idea is we're still looking. It's, it's a bit slow, obviously, because we've already taken three or four initiatives, and, you know, the Track and Trace is something that we've developed organically in-house through our development. We're taking some initiatives to see if we can, you know, grow beyond our core market growth rate. Obviously, one is that what is our coding and marking strategy? That is the market 9%-11%. How do we keep up with the market, you know, what do we do to keep our customers satisfied? Can we do something that can give us something beyond that?
That's one part of our strategy, that's the organic growth. We've taken some other initiatives, like I just discussed right now, which would hopefully help us grow faster than the market rate. I think what Jaideep, you know, mentioned clearly is in, in terms of organic, if, if something comes up in packaging or a digital print coding and marking space, which could fit well with us, obviously, you know, we would be interested in taking a look at it. I think that's the situation. In terms of inorganic. Nobody can predict because, you know, nobody knows what's gonna come up. If, if something comes up, we would definitely be open to it.
Okay, sir. Got it. Basically, we could say that we do not have any proposals on hand for acquisition or going for some inorganic growth for right now, but we apparently can eye them in future, as you mentioned, especially for the packaging and for the digital, right?
I mean, I can't say what we're doing right now or not, like, that's just conjecture, you know? What I'm trying to say is that we are open to it, but, you know, still. I, I think that we are open, like I said, to inorganic opportunities for sure. Obviously, what we are focused on is what, what is under our control right now. We have, I think, some amount of capital available to deploy if that situation arises. If the right opportunity comes, we'll take it. Otherwise, you know, I think in the previous call we've mentioned redistribute to shareholders at a higher rate, you know, that's what the situation is.
Understood.
I mean, nobody can assume that what I'm saying right now or not, nothing. Obviously, whichever talks, try to have anything with anyone is purely confidential, you know? If anything ever happens, which is in different, we will announce it in the due course.
All right. Sir, my another question is, around if you can tell us a little bit about what is, what is the addressable market size for our product in India as well as for the overseas market?
I think as we mentioned in the previous phone calls, us, along with the other three major competitors in India, are about... I think the, the four of us will be about INR 1,400 -INR 1,500 , and the market will be about 20%-25% bigger than that. Maybe somewhere between INR 1,800 -INR 2,000 will be the market, out of which the four of us are between INR 1,400 crore-INR 1,500 . We get the figures for our competitors, significantly later because of the, you know, ROC filing and other stuff coming later. That's an idea of the market size in India. Worldwide, it's about $7 billion, when I last checked it, was, like, what, one or two years ago.
All right, sir. The last question from my side would be, like, if you can give me, what would be the average realization for consumable, like, per printer per annum basis?
Yeah, I think Jaideep would have shared those figures, but he can address this.
Yeah, hello. Yeah, can you just repeat your question?
Sir, what is the average realization for consumables, like, on a per annum basis for, per printer?
See, we, we cannot give you the figures of the average realization, but, all what I can say is that, once we sell a printer, I mean, it lasts for, at least about 5 to 8 years, depending on the operating conditions in any company. The consumer business is a back period of time.
Okay. Like a ballpark number, I know the, the average realization would differ from, model to model, like for different printers, it would be slightly different.
We're not able to disclose this, it's too, it's a confidential matter, I believe.
All right, sir. No issue. Yeah, I shouldn't ask. That's all from my side. Thank you.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Rupen B from RN Associate. Please go ahead.
Yeah, thanks for the opportunity. My question is to Mr. Shiva Kabra. Basically, you know, as you alluded many times in your past calls and even today, that if one were to establish a correlation between, you know, GDP growth in real terms, vis-à-vis the growth of industry, coding and marking industry is approximately INR 150,000. You know, considering the regulatory tailwinds, like, say, compulsory marking on top 300 pharma drugs and other regulatory tailwinds, plus, you are foraying into adjacent categories of tracking and tracing and inorganic growth initiatives, be it in the form of Markprint acquisitions or, you know, forging a tie-up with Mtech.
Going forward, I mean, not immediately, but say over, over the next couple of years, maybe 3-5 years time frame, would it be fair to presume that Control Print can outperform the industry growth by a wide margin? Your perspective, Mr. Shiva.
I think we've given you an idea what the industry growth is. We cannot underperform, we can outperform. I mean, everyone thinks that they're gonna outperform, but, you know, I mean, I'll just be very honest, like, you know, especially, but even Videojet and Markem-Imaje are all, you know, great competitors. There are smaller guys who want to try to maybe break into the big league. It's still not that far away from happening. Nobody can predict, you know, obviously, how things are gonna go down the line. Whoever is there is optimistic. One day we, you know, we have some issues, we are down, and one day when you're doing well, you know, like, you have some big sale, you feel very optimistic. You know what?
Like, really, like, my view is the most people view to take, so I, I don't think that there's any function taking, you know, any functionality in my view. I think really it's for each person to do their own level of research. Like I said, all these other ideas that are there and what we're doing, we're transparent about what we're doing. Whether these things are gonna be successful, whether they'll bring scale, whether they'll be how profitable they'll be, we don't know. As you know, we're just trying to do our best given that given situation that, that is there. That's what the thing is. You know, I can't give any assurance to anyone as to where we're gonna be five years down the line, because I don't know where we'll be five months down the line.
Five years is like a long time, five years. Yeah, approximately this is what the historical, you know, core coding business and GDP growth has been. Second thing you had asked me, some moves that definitely when the government or the regulatory standards change, it can be positive or negative. For example, you know, right now, I don't know, some of you have noticed, like, you have to print the price per gram or per 100 ml or something on, on a lot of packs. That's increased the amount of ink that's being used suddenly. That type of thing is positive for us. There was the, you know, the Track and Trace regulation for pharmaceuticals, and that was actually because we were not ready with our own Track and Trace. That drove some business to competitors.
Now we're ready with it, but the overall size of the end market has increased as a result. You know, now we're getting back into it, we are gaining some traction there. Yeah, of course, definitely the regulatory reasons will obviously be a driver. If, if the regulation increases, that will increase the market at a faster rate. If the regulation decreases, the market could also get affected. You know, we just believe that at least the eight codes, the batch codes, and these other things will always be required, but, you know, nobody knows because it's, it's obviously it's up to the government to, to make that call, you know?
Yeah. Okay. Second question is, you know, regarding Sri Lankan business. Any update on Sri Lanka, Sri Lanka's operations?
Which operations?
I, I think you have some operations in Sri Lanka, so any, any update on that?
Yeah. Jaideep can give you an update on that. I think he'd be better.
Yeah. About the Sri Lanka operations, as you are aware, that the country was in a turmoil. Slowly and steadily, things are improving in the country. Not much of economic development happening, but the stability is happening. What we have done is that since we already have an installed base of few printers over there, and they would require a regular servicing as well as, you know, consumables. What we are doing is that, we are just trying to revise the operations over there. It could take about 2-3 years for the operations to be in full swing. We are hopeful that with the economic turn, our Sri Lankan branch also will, you know, do good business. Right now, it is too early to say.
We've just, you know, started revising the operations over there. We are hopeful of, you know, doing a U-turn, which is complemented by the economic upturn in the country.
Okay. Would you be interested in foraying in, say, other countries in Southeast Asia, say, for example, Bangladesh? I mean, your perspective on that.
We're already working in Bangladesh for distributors.
Okay. Okay. And how is the business progressing over there, and what is the potential of that market?
Definitely the market has potential. We are not there directly, so it, it could be a bit faster growth. We have. We, like I said, we, we only have a limited amount of that we can handle ourselves. Because right now we've got so many new initiatives we've taken and, you know, even some of our existing products, where we have to increase the sales, like I mentioned earlier, that we even, because of the amount of, you know, the amount of effort it takes to hire sales and service people and train them, we felt that we can't service C&D customers at that same level. Rather, we are servicing them, but we can't afford to do it at that same level.
You know, I, I think, like, right now, our, our focus is still a lot more on India, is what I'll say. At least for the next 2, I think the idea would be to focus more on India and develop some of the other initiatives, hopefully, so that, so that, yeah, they're not theoretical initiatives, but they're actually, like, revenue generating and, you know, to some extent, obviously, for the next 2-3 years, the coding and marking business will be the main business, the only... the primary driver of the revenue and profitability, especially on the profitability side. That's, that's sort of where the situation is.
Like, yeah, other countries, it's a lot of effort because like we said, in our business, you have to develop a sales and service network, and it takes time to be in the market before you develop, you know, customers gain that trust to go for you. Like the large customers. We have a lot of business go for you because for large customers, productivity and reliability are the key aspects, and, you know, that, that comes with time. It doesn't come just by going there and selling something, but cheaper.
Right. Okay, thanks. That's it from my side. Best wishes for future.
Thank you, sir. Thank you.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Alisha from Envision Capital. Please go ahead.
Hi, sir, good afternoon. Thank you for the opportunity. My first question, earlier in the call you mentioned that there were some technical difficulties you were facing with some new printer and the older version, there was some electrical component shortage. What is the update on that? Has it eased? Are we expecting this to continue maybe for the next couple of months?
I think... I mean, obviously, nobody knows how long it's gonna take to resolve these issues. There are tech- some technical issues that have popped up recently when we upgraded the software, but it's causing some bugs in some other things, so obviously we are working on debugging some, some things. It, it's a pretty technical thing. I, I can't answer. It could be solved tomorrow, it could take, like, up to 15 weeks to a month, happen, I'm not sure. Yeah, we should be able to manage in the meantime. We should have enough stocks to, you know, and enough leeway to not lose sales, although because we can't send it out, we can't build immediately. As far as the older printers go, there is a, there's definitely a time lag.
I think Jaideep knows, but at least it's a few months before we'll have those components available. Jaideep, if you want to just give a, a slight update on that.
We do have a order pipeline, which we can definitely execute in the Q2. The shortages of, you know, sales will be definitely complemented by the increased sales in this quarter.
Sorry, I didn't get that. Hello? Hello?
Yeah, we are on the line. We can hear you.
Okay. Yeah. I'm saying the issues with the new product is not resolved, and for the earlier product, we still have component shortage. Are we expecting a pickup from Q2?
No, it's like we do have robust procurement strategy. So, you know, like, we, the shortages in stock is an issue which is not material anymore. Plus, we've got a order pipeline, which we can definitely execute and make up for the shortages in sales as well.
On the printer side of our business, I know it's a smaller, part of our business, but nonetheless, will we be able to do any volume growth on full year basis?
I didn't get the last line, Alisha.
I just wanted to know on the printers, like there is about a 15% volume decrease in this quarter. You have mentioned the reasons. Just wanted to know, on full year basis, will we be able to do volume growth on the printer business?
See, as of now, it's too early to say. There are three more quarters to go, so it's too early to say as of now. It always depends upon the product mix and, you know, conditions will wrap around time. We cannot say anything as of, you know, Q2, Q3, Q4, how it will be. Yes, we are quite hopeful of, you know, achieving the numbers. That's not an issue.
Okay. On the Track and Trace in pharma, I believe that the coding and marking has to be applicable from 1st August. Whatever inroads we have to do with clients will have to be the next 1 month?
Yeah, it is applicable from first August. I think there's an extension requested or denied. I don't know what the final result is, although a lot of companies are not ready to go live on all the 300 main products. Maybe they will supply right now from some of the stocks that they've already made prior to August 1st. Yeah, definitely it's something that's there, and obviously we are working to execute those things at the earliest. In these types of system sales, you know, you, you get some advance in some stuff, but you need to. It, it needs to run for some time before the customer accepts that everything is running, because each line is a bit different.
There's a, you know, lot of, lot more integration work rather than just setting up a printer and, you know, getting out of the factory door, giving some training. Yeah. The pipeline is there, but I think right now, like I said, it-it's a longer term game. These are the implementers for compliance as of right now. But in the longer term, because their infrastructure is there, we believe that people will start using that infrastructure to actually improve their business.
On, on the, on the pharma side, have we made any inroads? We have the technology, right?
Yes, we do.
We have the technology. Okay.
I think so that's right now, yes.
Okay. On Markprint, you mentioned that we've done some INR 2 crore on the revenue for the quarter. What is our outlook? How big do we think this market can be in India? When will we see this probably contributing slightly more significantly, or what is the kind of outlook that we have?
Jaideep, are you. I, I think that, you know, Markprint does about EUR 2 million of revenue a year or something, approximately. Looking at the Indian market, like I said, you know, it's, it was something more for future strategic growth. Sometime we might or might not see the results depending on what we are purchasing from Markprint, because we might use some of their technology to upgrade our own products rather than, you know, buy it completely from there. Some of the markets they are targeting, we don't target in India. That's something we still have to explore because some of their sales are around the printing and some specialty type applications. Whereas we, we are more focused on the packaging side.
We still have to develop some specific solutions in conjunction with them, and obviously we're working on that. I think the types of products that we believe which will be most suitable for India. Yes, I, and I know we said that it'll be available sometime at the end of this financial year, at, at the last year, but frankly, we are still, I think, like 6 months away from, from things coming, probably towards the end of this calendar year is what I'd say. In fact, should take about 6 months before, before those things are actually completed and tested at customer site, and we're ready to actually start generating revenue of course. In the meantime, of course, we're looking at selling some of their products as is from the order.
The thing that we feel it should be more, like more, more a bigger, bigger revenue generator in the long term, which is like, you know, some stuff where we've cooperated together to get some, you know, pro-products which we believe right for certain market segments in India. That's still, at least six months away.
Okay. It'll be part of the future, future strategy going there. Just 1 last question, any outlook you'd like to give for this year's revenue growth or margin?
No, we don't know what's gonna happen. I think the Q1 was okay. We'll hope for that. Everything keeps going okay, basically.
Okay, great. All the best. Thank you.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Himanshu Vasani, an individual investor. Please go ahead.
Yeah, thanks for the opportunity. My question is: What could be our max revenue potential at current capacity?
Yeah, I think this. Jaideep, you want to take this?
Yeah, I'll take this call. I take this call. See, for Q1, for the standalone, we've already done about INR 79 crore. Going by this, as Shiva has explained, like, we, we follow the industry trends, so, you know, like, this is about 1.5 times the GDP growth. By and large, you know, like you can calculate it yourself, the kind of revenue what we will expect. Q1 is very good. As of now, we've outperformed, but Q2, Q3, Q4, definitely we'll try to do better, and, we'll try to cross the turnover what we did for 2023.
Sorry, sir, if I if I wouldn't say I want to.
Q1, Q1, we did about
Revenue potential at current capacity.
Yeah, Q1, we did about INR 79 crore, Q2, Q3-
He's asking about factory capacity, I think. I think, like, Himanshu, we covered that before in some earlier calls. I think we said that in Guwahati we can do about, about INR 300 crore worth of, like INR 300 crore+ of. Maybe we're operating at, like, 60% there right now.
Okay.
We have significantly adjacent if we need to de-bottleneck or do anything. In Himachal Pradesh, we already did some expansion of capacity. We might have to add a few people, you know, if, if the sales of printers increases at a faster rate than expected.
Okay.
We're obviously trying to optimize the supply chain. Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
My second question would be, sir, on that Markprint, that we are, you know, kind of, understanding about the technology and trying to bring a similar product into the Indian market. What kind of product would you could, you know, throw some light on that? Will it be a premium product, and is there enough price sensitivity in the industry?
I can't tell you exactly what we're gonna do, but it's. We're expecting to target some segments or, or do some stuff obviously that doing item, we're not able to do with our current power stuff printers. Yeah, that's the idea. You know, it, it's more to. Obviously, if, if we were already doing it with our current set of printers, then we wouldn't need to, you know, upgrade our technology with Markprint and stuff. It's, it's a more niche market what we're talking about, you know? It's more about helping customers who need to, who have more variation in their SKUs. You know, it could be someone, like I said, making, like, I don't know, like batter or something like that, you know.
He's making a idli batter and a dosa batter and a rava dosa batter and, like, something like that. He's making, you know, a similar type of packaging for, like, 12 different variants or 15 different variants and, you know, it could help him, you know, print the ingredients online or some other stuff. The idea is more to work on those customers who have a high number of SKUs. Obviously, the people who have, you know, something like a Nestlé would never be interested in a product like that because they've got huge volumes in the existing products, so they can only afford pre-printed. It's for, it's for certain customers who, you know. That, that's what our target segment is. Again, like, you know, the first risk is a development risk.
Are we actually gonna develop this product? It's, it's still, that's the first thing that's there. Are we be able to be able to develop at a certain, you know, price and efficiency and reliability? I think, obviously, those are, like, all big factors and risks themselves. The second part, is it cost efficient enough for the customer? The third thing, is there really a market there? I, you know, you can only cross this bridge once the product is there, and then we know how expensive this will run, which we have some ideas. You know, so it's, it's, it's. Like, there's no, like, formal market survey because everything seems interesting till you go out and once you develop the product, like I said, sometimes these things work, sometimes these things don't.
Then whether there's actually a market for it, you know, we can only find out when we actually have the product basically out of seven.
Okay, got it. Do we have, like, a target in our mind that by the second, by the third quarter or the end of this year, we want to, you know, develop something, we'll look something for market range?
Yeah, I think so maybe someone had asked this in the beginning, but I, I said, like, you know, according to me, everyone should take, like. Like, I think for this year and even the next year, I think the, the core coding and marking business will be the main revenue, definitely the target. You know, I think it'll be 12 months before we see it starting some significant, or not significant, some semi-reasonable, you know, revenue contributions, like, you know, that, that actually are somewhat meaningful from other initiatives. Obviously, in the Markprint, I think, you know, I've, I've been quite honest that we're still in the development phase. It's taken longer than what we expected.
From what I see, it'll be another 6 months, because we have too many other things going on right now, so we are not able to focus, the limited resource we have on that project. The track has sucked up a lot of our resources also because of the whole pharma thing.
Okay. Thank you, and good luck.
Thank you. Thank you.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Devanshu Sampat from Avendus. Please go ahead.
Yeah, good afternoon, sir. Three questions from my side. As you scale up, should your inventory days come down? You know, because I would assume that the requirement for storing consumables and parts would be less, as, you know, and as a result, would free up capital as you go along. You know, where do you see this inventory number going, say, once you hit once you touch your INR 400 crore kind of a topic?
I didn't hear that question, clearly at all. Can you just repeat that, please?
Sorry, sorry. I'll, I'll repeat this again. I'm asking, as you scale up, you know, should your inventory days come down as the requirement for storing consumables and parts would be less, and, you know, and as a result, it will free up capital as we go along. Can you give a sense, you know, once we reach a INR 400 crore top line, what can the inventory number possibly be?
There are two parts to that equation. You know, one is that obviously, if in our core business, the marketing business, as we increase turnover, you'll see that inventory is not increasing at anything like the same rate. Obviously out there, you know, we don't see that the overall level of inventory, of course, there might be some increases, but at a significantly slower than rate than the, than the, you know, rate of revenue there. What happens is, if we go to INR 400 crore, we're just doing our existing business, maybe, I don't know, if you're doing, you know, the revenue, it might, it might go from INR 100-110, INR 115. That's not a big concern.
It might just increase 10-15%, even if the revenue increases 33% from INR 300 crore to INR 400 crore. If we add more products, like we were talking of Markprint, we were talking of the Track and Trace, obviously, all these things are huge inventory increase, increase type of situations because, although we're not investing in factories and capital, there is a working capital because you need to have the systems ready. When something, in Track and Trace, you have, like, four different types of vision systems and things and conveyors and rejection mechanisms, and, you know, obviously, you need to control them, you have to keep everything in stock, because if, if there's a blowout of any one part, anything happens, it has to be replaced immediately, and, and all those sorts of good and bad things happen.
It, it's a mix, you know. In, in the core growth, in the core business, we are reducing inventory as a percentage of sales. As we add other things like V-Shapes, and we add things like, you know, Track and Trace, you know, some Markprint and certain more other products and, and, you know, which could hopefully, you know, add to our, our longer term revenue potential. At the same time, in the shorter term, they're definitely going to increase the inventory. I, I can't predict where things are going to happen because it's a balance of, you know, of how fast each business scales up, and, obviously, the complexity which, which we're still understanding, still in that process. Yeah, if you look at it.
Got it. Got it.
from the core business, it's decreasing.
Sure. Sure. The second question I have is: Can you give your comment on the business that we're getting from the packaging space, right? I mean, I would expect the business to have been quite good in this packaging segment, given the, you know, increased usage because of regulatory angle, which you mentioned earlier. Now possible, you know, in a inflationary environment, the small pack consumption goes up. I suppose there'll be a lot more usage. I mean, the amount of print on each packet would be the same, but I'm guessing smaller packets being used, so you're using more ink. Can you give your comment on that? You know, will the packaging segment, as a result, continue to grow faster and have a higher saliency in your overall mix going ahead?
It's, it's difficult to say. Obviously, we are focused on increasing our packaging space presence. Of course, you know, our competitor more e-entrenched in some of these spaces, so I don't want to lie about it. It's, you know, in some cases we've got traction, in some cases we've not got that same type of traction. You know, we have to, in our type of business, we have to, we have to, like, wait for spaces to open up where, you know, either they screw up or there's some, you know, different type of requirement that we can push through with a different type of technology. That's the situation that's, there. Yeah, but of course, package, the food is... I mean, packaging is growing and, and industrial is growing.
I, I would actually say right now, industrial is growing faster, but as I discussed earlier, it's a slightly more structurally cyclical business. Because, you know, it depends. A large part of it is developed, you know, around building materials, construction materials, and of, of course, right now, housing. You know, housing can also go up and down. I, I don't know, like I said, I don't know, I'm not a macro expert on all of that, but some of those things go up and down a little bit faster is what I feel, whereas the packaging business is, is relatively more stable. You're still gonna buy milk every day, whether the market is up or down.
Whether the market is up, you might say, "Okay, I want to invest in a new house, or I want to, you know, redo my entire house and buy new furniture or do something like that." You know, those are the types of situations you can imagine. The second thing, yes, there is some growth in volumes, probably in packaging. At the same time, there's a lot of growth that's being driven by, like, the A-plus customers in premiumization, so that doesn't help us. I don't know specifically if I'm seeing any smaller size packs increase or not. Like, to be honest, not really.
If anything, whenever I go to most customers, I feel that they are focused more and more on increasing their premium products, and that's where they seem to be investing a lot of their packaging money, you know, in terms of development and their marketing resources. That kind of at least personally from my own visits to most of these customers. Yeah, I mean, like I said, you know, you've got an idea what the overall market growth is. It, it, it's like about 1.5 times, you know, and that sort of remain reasonably consistent. Of course, it can dip slightly, it can increase slightly, but, you know, that's what we've seen. Yeah. That, that's the situation that's there.
How we grow, like, someone asked me and I said, "You know, in the end, we have ambition, but even our competitors have ambitions, and, you know, it's all gonna come down to everyone's execution, and it's not gonna come down to anything else." I, I think that I, I don't have that feeling to say that, you know, we are, we are smarter than Domino and Marg and Videojet and other guys, and we're much better than them. You know, we'll obviously try, but we'll see. It depends on, you know, what we made three years ago, five years ago, which will give us this benefit now. It's not just what we do today.
Sure, sir, but just, you know, in, in relation to this response you just gave, right? If you look at the entire industry, if I talk about Videojet, Markem-Imaje, or even Control Print, you know, up till FY 2018, all of them look all of you players, all the players are looking at about a 16%, 17% kind of a CAGR growth. If I look at the... I'm talking about a five-year growth. Yeah.
Okay.
Thank you. The next question
I could hear that clearly, actually. What happened out there? Okay. Let's continue.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Richa from Equitymaster. Please go ahead.
Sir, thank you for the opportunity. My question is related to the consumables business. In the last 3 years. Hello, am I audible?
No, I mean, we, we cannot hear you much, Richa. Can you be a little bit louder?
Yeah. Is it better now?
Yeah.
Sir, my question is related to the consumable side of business. I've seen the margins varying from, you know, 30%, 35%, 30% to 29%, 24%. I just wanted to understand, what is our ability to pass on the prices, you know, whenever whenever they go up? Are, are consumers receptive to a price increase? If it also depends upon, you know, the sectors that we are exposed to as compared to competitors.
Just to answer that question, I think our consumables margins have been quite steady over the years. Definitely, I mean, when there's a raw material cost or increase or something justifiable, we increase our cost to the customers. You know, yeah, it can happen with a slight lag or something, but the consumable margin will stay different. What happens is certain types of consumables, like ribbons or, you know, thermal inkjet cartridges, might have a different margin than, say, some of our different inks or something else. We don't give that exact breakup, but the mix can change the, the margins overall of those products. Our overall gross margins as a company, I think have been reasonably consistent.
Right now, offhand, I have the numbers right in front of me, but I mean, overall, on a standalone basis, when we talk of, you know, the coding and marking part, again, I don't know which numbers you all are seeing versus what we see. It's, it's, it's quite consistent. If anything, you know, we're quite comfortable where it is, and obviously, depending on where we need to, we can try to increase that or decrease that. We're still in a phase where we are, trying to make sure that... and everything runs as smoothly as possible for all our customers, not really on for the market expansion, but more on sales expansions.
Okay. Sir, this tax rate, effective tax rate, you know, whatever exemption we are getting from the Guwahati plant, over three to five years, do you expect the tax rate to remain the same or are they going to be changing?
Yeah, over the next two years, our taxation rate would be around 17%.
Okay. Sir, if you could also talk about any new clients that you have added during the quarter, and, you know, if not the names, what sectors they are from?
I can't hear you. I can't hear you very clearly on our side.
Sir, the new, the new key clients that you might have added during the quarter, and if, not the names, but maybe the sectors, key sectors that you have added new clients from?
No, I think whatever product lines we've added, we've, we've, we've pulled it up. It is all available on our website actually, so I don't think any. Like, we keep changing models, and we keep upgrading stuff, but we don't, we don't fundamentally change the product line now.
No, no. My, my question is on clients, the new clients that you have added during the quarter and what sectors would it be from?
Yeah, we can go give the names of the clients, Richa.
Okay.
We, we can't give the names of the clients what we've taken, but, I mean, we've done considerable growth in pipes, food, dairy, wood, FMCG. On confidentiality grounds, we would not be able to give you the names of the new acquisitions of clients.
Okay. All right. Thank you so much.
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, in order to ensure that the management will be able to address the question from all the participants, please limit your question to one per participant. The next question is from the line of Sanket Kapoor from Kapoor & Company. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Namaskar, Shiva sir, and namaskar, Jagdeep ji, and permit me to put forward two, three questions. One question is that if client permits. Sir, firstly, sir, you did mentioned about we growing at 1.5 times than what the GDP growth would be. This is factoring into the consumable segment growth. Is that understanding correct, the growth in the consumable segment?
Yeah, definitely, if the overall revenue increases, then the consumer's revenue would also increase, Saket ji. That proportion, I can't, cannot tell you between the printer and the consumers. It depends on the mix of printers and, you know, the exact area where the new lines are being added. In general, the consumers business is growing slightly faster than the printer business, because obviously the stock of active printers increases, and, you know, our printers have a 8-10 year life.
Sir, if we take this quarter number, I think the Q1 generally, we start with a slightly lower revenue, but I think during the presentation also it was mentioned that this is the highest revenue ever posted. Definitely the factors that are contributing towards the growth are having strong tailwinds. We can, we can look forward to these as the base, base number going ahead. At least that this should be the parameters on the basis of which we can work out the current year numbers.
No, Saket ji, we don't know what's going to happen, so and obviously, we are happy with what-
Okay.
happened in Q1. In the end, it depends on those. You know, we're a, we're a secondary business. We depend on someone like Unilever, you know, making Surf Excel or Marico making Parachute. Then we are just printing on that. It depends on how much they are selling and, you know, and so on, so many factors. We cannot say anything.
Okay.
You know, it, it is going to depend on the market, overall market growth, you know. If, if someone is selling pipes, then only we can print on it, you know, even if the printer is there.
Yes.
We don't know because what I'm trying to say is overall, it's going to depend on, you know, the overall market growth.
So but we, we do-
Secondarily, it depends on our performance within that market. From all angles, you know, are question marks, right?
We do generally get the fillers from, from the people as the, as the stock of consumables getting exhausted. We know the timeline or the return time, the time by which they get refilled. That gives us a sense how the utilization levels for them are shaping up.
Definitely, I think so far
The turnaround time.
The printers we have sold last year are giving us revenue. Further, it seems that the, that, you know, that the utilization rates of some printers, at least in some industries like, you know, things around construction and building materials, has increased, it seems, but we'll see how it continues.
Okay. Sir, two small points. Firstly, on the consumables, what is the utilization levels for the consumable segment? Or what kind of growth can we estimate, what kind of growth can we factor in for the next capacity expansion in the consumable segment?
Saket ji, we are probably operating about 60% of our capacity in Guwahati, so we could grow substantially. We might have to do some debottlenecking here and there. The main issue is not on the producing capacities in the storage of the raw materials. You know, because we have everything rather comes under chemicals and explosives licenses. We have some very specific storage. The, depending on how many days of material we need to store, we have some limitations. If we need to do it, yeah, we have to do it a bit early, but it, it's not a huge cost. Like I said, you know, we've, you know, even if we have to have a brownfield expansion of some area of it, I don't think it should cost more than INR 10-12 crore or something.
Correct, yes. Lastly, sir, I congratulate the board on the, on the buyback part. I think so 18th August has been kept the record date for, for. Also adopting the tender route, so it would give us equal opportunity to participate. In, in contention to that, sir, if you could answer, sir, the, the point. When we have looked at the number of, say, 800, how, how did we cal- put forward that we would be, putting it, at INR 27 crore? If, if you could give us some more understanding, how did we, came, came to this conclusion?
For the buyback part, it was, you did spoke that keeping aside INR 50 crore as a buffer for expansion and also for inorganic activity. You would be setting as less than that, you would be giving, returning back to your shareholders. A small point also here is that, sir, buyback happens in companies for two reasons, I think so. Firstly, if the valuation which the market is giving is lower than what the management or the board feels. Secondly, if they don't have a sufficient visibility for growth, because they are unable to deploy the additional cash generated from the business to grow more of the business. Which criteria have fulfilled that has resulted in this buyback part?
If you could speak something more on the buyback, that would suffice it.
Okay. Akijit, I, I'll try to answer best as I can. The first point is that the reason for the buyback, actually, we've communicated from some time ago that, you know, we had a certain cash balance available with us. I think, obviously, you know, right now we have -- we had a, we have a lot of money lying around, some 40 FD or something like that. Obviously, we, we were giving out the money as dividend.
The problem with increasing the dividends was that, A, it was not tax efficient, and, B, the problem with increasing the dividends was that, you know, sometimes people take it that you have to always keep that same dividend going, whereas a buyback for quite logical reason, is considered as, like, you can start it and you can stop it for whatever reason. The purpose of the buyback is frankly, you know, it was just to return cash beyond what was necessary for. You know, obviously, we also have a facility with ICICI and HDFC, who are our bankers, to borrow. Since we're taking two, three initiatives right now, and obviously we still look for more, but we also don't want to take something that's, you know, beyond our capability in terms of execution.
Between the amount of money we have and the amount of banking facilities we have, we felt that we don't want to invest more than this in the acquisition because it can also be risky. You know, beyond that, like I said, it was more returning money to the shareholders. The buyback should be viewed frankly as a dividend replacement or a supplementary dividend. That's our view. We've I don't, I don't know if we have communicated that clearly to the shareholders or, or not, but that's the experience they should go with. Secondly, we have always communicated what the market growth is approximately. Obviously, it depends, like I said, on how good we are and our execution capabilities, you know, and, and that everyone has to do their own research where the company is heading.
I think at the same time, you said that there's no major capital expansions, you know, on the horizon, and that's not our capability is not there in, you know, running. Obviously, we admire a lot of companies like Cosmo, Polyplex, you know, and even guys like SRF, so even stock in the packaging films and, you know, those types of Parsons and all in the bulk of packaging. You know, that's not where we feel that we'll be successful. Our, our type of thing is more around the technology angle, rather than in, you know, high levels of production, and high levels of capacity utilization and inventory turns. We also admire these companies a lot, but we are not, we don't have the belief that we can compete with them in those types of spaces.
Obviously, that large area of packaging is not open to us. You know, so we don't have, like, large, you know, capital needs in our business. The cash is available. Like I said, so for us, the view as a, you know, the future board communicated, maybe not very clearly, and is that this is a purely a supplementary dividend of source, which could be considered as more tax efficient for some shareholders. You give it out as a straight up dividend. That's the situation. As far as the pricing and the rest of it goes, I can tell you, I know, I know Jaideep will give you the same, but the actual value and the price, because, you know, Mr.
Kabra and me, and the two interested shareholders, you know, we were not part of that meeting. That was decided by the independent directors, and Jaideep might be able to give you some update on that.
See, Mr. Saket, as you would be aware, we are taking the tender route, and we are bound by the relevant sections of the Companies Act. Whatever was available up to 10% of the capital free reserves, we have tried to use that balance and announce the buyback. Of course, we could have, we have made sure that, I mean, it is well within our budget and available cash flow. That was the main thing. We've complied with all the legal requirements as well.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Harsh, an individual investor. Please go ahead.
Am I audible? Hello?
Yeah, Harsh. Can you be a little bit louder?
Yeah, sure.
Yeah.
Yeah. My question is regarding consumables business. I just wanted to understand, like, what is the moat around this consumable business? Like, are we the lowest cost producers compared to our peers, and even the unorganized end players? I know we, we have some RFID solutions for our products. Does that give us a confirmed, consumable business? Just wanted your views, on that.
Yeah, Harsh, all our consumables are only for our printers, and all our printers are proprietary smart card or RFID, so they are locked into our, our consumables only. Our, our consumables that, that, that we manufacture and sell are exclusively for our printers only, and all our printers are locked, at least since 2016, end of 2017, sometime. They only run with our own consumables, and nobody else's consumable would work. That's the situation. Yes. I will say that on a separate note, of course, the consumables are very complex to manufacture. They're very specific to the reliability and the compatibility of the printer. Yeah, irrespective of that, it's not possible for anyone else to sell consumables on our printers because of the protection mechanism.
Makes sense. Okay. Also one more question around this: so does that even apply vice versa to our competitors? Do they also use the same policy for their printers, or we have the opportunity to trap like to share the co- like do more business and consumables for their printer from their client?
We don't sell consumables on our competitors, and neither do they. It's, it's an OEM business for all of us. That will get into some gray areas where, you know, serious people want to start cracking other people's consumers protection. Yes, Domino and Markem-Imaje have also sold consumables sometime, I think, since 2019, 2020. Videojet did have a consumable protection system, which was earlier than all of us, but I believe that that's more of a mechanical type of protection, with some basic electronic, which, you know, was cracked. They come out with something new, I believe, in the last year or two. You know, as of the present moment, I think everyone is protected.
Yeah. Okay. Thank you. I just have one more question, related to Track and Trace product, which we are working on. I wanted to know by when this product would be ready on a high level, like some time duration, and also, wanted to know, like, are there any existing solutions for similar product which we are building on, and what is our right to win for the product we are working on? Thank you.
Yeah. Harsh, are these all questions only related to Track and Trace because-
Yeah, those are related to Track and Trace product we are building on.
Yeah. Our, our solution is ready, and we are already deploying it in certain cases. Obviously, technologically, on a second note, we think we're superior than some of the other solutions in the market, they've been around longer, therefore, because of the reference established part they have, obviously, the majority of sales, even these 300 brands, the vast majority have gone to other competitors. We've got a relatively less than Control Print share. Of course, these competitors are not Domino, Markem-Imaje, or Videojet. They are other people who specialize more on the software side. We believe that our software stack right now is better than what theirs is, even though they're more software-based companies. The second part is that, you know, we have an integration.
The most difficult part of this whole business is, is setting up the printer. The printing part is the most difficult. Because we are that single point of contact for the customer, that is our software, our printer, our, you know, mechanical arrangements around the conveyors and the interlocks with their line systems and the rejection paths and the vision systems. The advantage for the customers, there's only one person. We can't go around saying that: "Oh, this didn't work, or I got from that company, and that didn't work," which is a bit for the companies. I think the most important thing is that for us, this is an entry point strategy into this segment.
Our main focus is more to see how we can use the tracking space and the software to be connected much more to our printers so that we can give. You know, right now, what I say is the tracking space is basically used for compliance reasons because the government has said so. Companies are not really getting a benefit from it. Our focus is, is at a different level, because we focus more on the software part and how does the company get a benefit from implementing these solutions. I think that's where the long-term differentiation will come in, and obviously, we have to prove it in some of the companies where we're doing it.
Okay. What I understand is maybe our top three peers, which we have, they won't have such similar solution, and that would give an edge to Control Print, right?
Well, to be precise, all four of us were providing our printers to other software companies. The support to put our printer in someone else's. In the software person was proposing a full line. He was already using our printers or in some cases, Videojet's printers, or in some cases, Domino's printers, or in some cases, Markem-Imaje's printers, to integrate into the production line. That's the thing. That's there. Those three people are participating in this, but indirectly, the same way that we are or were still, two other software providers. Now, we have taken a stand that we also want to give the entire stack to the customer because we believe that we can give a superior solution to the customer, and, you know, that can give the customer some longer-term benefits.
It was already being done, and we were participating in it indirectly, and now we are participating indirectly, also in a direct manner, where the customer have the option of buying the entire thing from us, rather than buying our printer indirectly through someone who purchases our printer and then gives the entire solution.
Understood. That clarifies. If I can just slip in one more question. Just I was wondering, in a long-term perspective, as a market and, like, only Indian market, if we think of, it's like of a bit small market. Don't we have a good plans to increase our export business? That could, like, considerably increase our market opportunity, right?
Yeah, so I think that, that's what was asked earlier, and I, I think I said that it's a lot of effort because we have to make sure that we set up a full sales and service infrastructure, then only will the top customers be interested, and prove our reliability and productivity in those situations, because that's what the A and A-plus customers are looking for. More than that, we don't have the bandwidth and resources right now to, frankly, target too many things. We are already, like, hands full with our current amount of manpower or capability.
Okay, understood. Thanks for clarifying on all the questions. Wish you good luck.
Thanks.
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, please limit your question to one per participant. The next question is from the line of Deepan Shankar from Trustline PMS. Please go ahead.
Good evening, everyone, and thanks a lot for the opportunity. Just wanted to understand now that the recent government announcement of this QR code implementation for 300... top 300 molecules. What is the kind of market opportunity size for the industry, and what kind of market share we can gather on this pharma regulatory thing?
Deepan, I, I think we this question has been asked extensively earlier, and definitely, the government has there were some view that the government will give a deadline, but they've not extended the deadline, which means everyone is now rushing to implement this. We have got some small part of the business, like I said, not what a Control Print market share should look like, but we have got an in-endowed in this 300 top brands of India apart. We're busy implementing that solution and, in fact, taking what a huge amount of resources of us, because in the beginning, it's always much more difficult. Obviously, the opportunity size is larger.
In these 300, someone will implement something or the other, and we'll have to then look at how we can provide them a superior solution over the long term. I think in, in a barebone solution, you know, which is what is required for compliance, that's the basic. Obviously, that's interesting. It has a lot more revenue than just selling the printer and the consumables. You know, in the long term, as a company, like, we want to do something, provide something that's technologically better for the customer. Not just technologically, but for their business, and that's what we aspire to. You know, these things can only be answered some years down the line, because in hindsight, we'll understand whether we were actually better than if we were able to provide a better solution or not.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Alisha from Envision Capital. Please go ahead.
Hi, sir. Thank you for the opportunity again. Did we do any supplies for Track and Trace in the current quarter?
Fine. Could you repeat your question, Alisha?
Just wanted to know if we did any supplies for Track and Trace in the current quarter.
Alisha, we can't give you the exact breakup, because like I told you, of our revenue by product line, we still don't do that. What I can say is, like, if you mentioned before, that right now, track and trace is a negligible part of our business. You know, we have some stuff underway, and maybe we supplied some stuff in the past, so I can't tell you exactly what we've done. Right now, it's not a, it's not a significant contributor to our, our top line. Forget about our bottom line. It's probably negative right now.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Ashok Shah from LKP Securities. Please go ahead.
Thanks for taking my questions, and thanks for giving a buyback offer also to shareholder. Sir, does the promoter will be participating at full extent?
Yes, I, I believe it's, it's declared. Jaideep?
Yeah, yeah. The promoters are participating to full extent. Yeah.
Sir, second question is that, there's any development on the real estate side or the plot which we, we have?
No, the status quo remains the same.
Okay.
Yeah, Mr. Ashok.
Yes.
The status quo remains the same, and the matter is actually, I mean, sub judice also, so I would not be able to divulge any details.
Okay. Okay. Thank you. Thank you, thank you. That's all from my side. Thank you.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Karan from Asia Market Securities. Please go ahead.
Hi, Jaipreet, if you can share the revenue break up in terms of percentage.
Percentage of, in terms of the, overall numbers, right?
Yes, yes, yes.
As you'll be aware, Karan, we have printer business, the consumer business, the spare parts, and the service income. For the Q1, the printers contributed about 17%, consumables about 63%, the spare parts-
63?
about 7%, and the service income, about 13%.
Okay. and spares? sorry, sorry, marks business?
No, it was very minimal.
Okay, okay. Got it, got it. That's just my mind. Sir, any, any closing remarks you want to make?
Yeah, we are, we are thankful to everybody who participated in the call, and keep up the continued support to for our company.
Absolutely. Thank you, everyone. I think special one, special thanks to Mr. Saket Kapoor for participating in the AGM also. Karan was very happy, that, you know, he was acknowledged, I think the board was very happy with all the people attending the AGM also. Thanks for all the people for taking this time out. I hope we've answered, you know, all the questions to the best of our ability. Again, you know, I just want to point out that obviously, we give some, some feedback. You know, it has to, to understand this to the best of their own extent. It's only to the best of our own idea of where the market is and where we feel things are.
Like I said, a lot of new initiatives, but it's, it's too early to really predict how those things will work out, I think. Yes, that's the situation, and I'm, you know, quite happy to have, you know, done our first buyback to return to all our shareholders. You know, I also want to thank you, Karan and Ashok, and for opening this call, and of course, to all the investors for taking part. Thank you.