Ladies and gentlemen, good day, and welcome to the Saregama India Q1 FY 2023 earnings conference call hosted by ICICI Securities. As a reminder, all participant lines will be in the listen-only mode, and there will be an opportunity for you to ask questions after the presentation concludes. Should you need assistance during the conference call, please signal an operator by pressing star and zero on your touchtone phone. Please note that this conference is being recorded. I now hand the conference over to Mr. Bhupendra Tiwary. Thank you, and over to you, sir.
Thank you, Seema. On behalf of ICICI Securities, we welcome you all to Q1 FY 2023 results conference call of Saregama India. From the management, we have Mr. Vikram Mehra, who's Managing Director, Mr. Pankaj Chaturvedi, who's CFO, and Mr. Pankaj Kedia, who's Vice President, Investor Relations. Without much ado, I'll hand over to Vikram. Over to you, Vikram.
Thank you, Bhupendra. Good evening, everyone. Quarter one of financial year two023 saw operating revenues of around INR 169 crore and a PAT of INR 41 crore, which actually results into around 61% year-on-year increase in our operating income and 52% increase in our PAT income on a year-on-year basis, something we are very, very proud of. Keep in mind, this is in continuation with our last year numbers, which had seen a 31% increase in operating revenue and a 35% increase in PAT. I know I sound repetitive, but I'll again say this. This is not an aberration. Quarter after quarter, you are seeing Saregama's results. They are always moving in action. These are steps that are nothing but milestones in Saregama's resurgent story.
We started rebuilding the foundation of the company between 2015 to 2018, and what you see now is the growth in this beautiful building called Saregama that we people have make. A company which not only thrives on the richest IP catalog that it owns, but also a company which is building the IP for tomorrow. For the 30 and 40 years down the line, Saregama will continue being the number one IP company of India. Our operating income before content charge interest and depreciation was at INR 64.27 crore, which means a 54% growth compared to last year. As you know, right now, our business is broadly divided into three verticals. The most important vertical, which is music business, that grew by 38% on a year-on-year basis in this quarter.
Now, this is significant. Maybe better than most other music labels in India or globally have reported. We grew by 38% on a year-on-year basis as far as music business is concerned. This comprise both of the licensing as well as the Carvaan business. Let me start with licensing. We have been growing at over 20%, on an annual basis for now over three years. This is the fourth year going on, and I'm very happy that the growth story continues. During this quarter, we released all the songs of the super hits movie of Mahesh Babu called Sarkaru Vaari Paata. I'm happy to share that the cumulative audio and video views and streams that we have on the Saregama's official channel for this movie have crossed 550 million, and this movie was released in the month of April only.
It shows multiple things. One, we are picking the right content, and then we are putting the right marketing muscle to go out there and make this content really big. It's not just only large movies that we're picking up. We, in fact, released another small film called Ittu Si Baat, and the great thing about that film was that it had songs from Arijit Singh, Jubin Nautiyal, Vishal Mishra. The who's who of the music industry were part of the smaller films. Our film buying, our music buying is not just based on picking up ten poor properties. A lot of thinking goes right now on the back of data modeling to tell us which of the large, medium, and small size films music that we should pick up, and the success is there in front of everyone.
We continue also our investments in Bhojpuri, Gujarati, Telugu, Malayalam, Tamil, Bengali, and devotional music. I think a song that stands out completely during this quarter, which I like to mention, is a Bhojpuri song called Nathuniya by Khesari Lal Yadav. That song, in this short duration of three months, has already crossed 150 million YouTube views. Now, this is a massive benchmark for a language which is not the primary language of this country. Bhojpuri is spoken by a large belt in North and Eastern India, and their last song in that language getting 150 million is a big achievement, which also revalidates the fact that we are the number one guys now in Bhojpuri and Gujarati. The strategy of investing in new content is clearly paying off.
All the financial numbers I'm sharing with you right now are a testament to that. It's not only allowing us to grow our share in the new content category space, but in fact is also helping the growth of catalog. Because remember, people who start following Saregama's social media accounts, YouTube account, Facebook account on account of the new content or sampling a lot of hits of Lata Didi or Kishore Da on our channel. We had raised INR 750 crore with an explicit mandate to invest in new music content, and we are completely on track. As mentioned, we're using data mining and predictive models to decide what content to invest in.
Many of the films whose music that we people have acquired over the last six months, they hopefully will start really getting released from the fourth quarter of this year, and a large number maybe financially at 2023, 2024. Some of them are Karan Johar's next directorial film, Rocky Aur Rani Kii Prem Kahaani. There's another Dharma film that we will have picked up called Rola. There's a Vicky Kaushal-Sara Ali Khan next film with Laxman Utekar. Chiranjeevi film, which also has Salman Khan's songs in it called Godfather. It's a Telugu film. Prithviraj Sukumaran, who's a Malayalam superstar, his next movie, Kaapa. Ammy Virk, who is Punjabi superstar, his next film, Oye Makhna. There's a lot of content that we will have picked up, and these are just some names.
List is very long across film music in Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam, and now also Kannada and Punjabi. While the company started investing in new content from 2017 onwards, that's the time we started doing experiments at a small level. The real growth that we are looking at is this becomes serious from this year onwards. It's now that we believe with the fundraise that music acquisition is going to see a significant step jump. That is the implications done over the last many months is to reassess our capabilities on multiple fronts. On the content acquisition side, we have gone out there and reinforced the teams in each of the languages so that people sitting in Bombay are not taking decisions on account of what content to acquire in a Bengali language or other language.
It's a strong teams which are deciding on those markets whose mother tongue is that language, who are taking the calls on what content to pick up. The head office gets involved only from the data analytics perspective, giving them enough ammunition about the past track record of the artists whose music they're picking up. A lot of work happening there on building that team, building a data analytics capability, and also marketing relationships all across. Partnerships with radio channels, partnership with TV channels, partnership with digital platforms, partnership with social media influencers, all that work is going on right now. If we need to have the largest share of new content, we should equally be equipped at marketing and monetizing that content in a very effective fashion.
As part of these studies, another thing we tested was this entire useful life of the new music content that we were acquiring. We have been sharing with you guys now for many quarters how the music that we acquired in 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, all of them are still growing at a significant pace. It's not that its revenues have stopped at all. Hence we started questioning our current definition of the useful life of music, which up till now management assessment was six years. The question that was asked is the right assessment of the useful life of that asset. We asked Ernst & Young, EY, to do a benchmarking of how all the global music labels are defining the useful life of their music assets.
The report has come to us, which defines that almost every major label of the world has useful life definition between 10-2five years of the music that they're acquiring. Which is fair. Please remember the life of music as proved by our Saregama's own older assets is much longer than the useful life that we had defined of six years. Basis our own data and the global benchmarking, the management team has recommended that we should change the useful life of our music assets from six years to 10 years. Unlike the global labels who follow a straight line method, we are recommending a more conservative approach, whereby there is a higher amortization happening in the first two years, and then it goes on a straight line method.
To just explain this to you, typically, when we are acquiring content, INR 80 go towards content and INR 20 go towards marketing. Even with the new useful life of 10 years, the marketing cost is going to be charged off immediately, so no change there. Of the INR 80, 20% of that will be charged off in year one to year two, and then from year three to year one0, 8.1% each. The total impact, and this is an important part for all of you to understand. The total impact of the change of the useful life of our music assets in this quarter has been +INR 1.7 crore. That's the only impact it has had.
This is more we have made these reassessment of the useful life, more to prepare the company, keeping in mind that large investments we will be making in future. Whatever we do has to be in sync with the practical reality where an asset ends up getting monetized for a much longer life than our old assessment of six years. Coming to Carvaan. Carvaan saw an upswing in this quarter. We touched 98,000 compared to the 45,000 in quarter one last year. This came entirely on our own. There is no change or shift in our marketing strategy on Carvaan. We are still playing a passive role, and allowing market to create, generate its own demand. It's the opening of the retail seems to be doing the magic and adding to a growth numbers.
In this quarter, we also initiated the test marketing of two new variants of Carvaan, a music bar, which is a sound bar with a karaoke system and a mobile phone. This was done in the last ten days of June. It's still very, very early days. We will keep on assessing the feedback from the markets. We are amidst of that. Maybe make modifications in the products on customer feedback and then look at a proper formal launch of these products maybe in quarter three. We'll keep you updated as we go forward. The good part is that the products we are putting out in the market are already being manufactured in India so that we are not overtly dependent on supply chains emanating out of China. Want to reiterate there is no marketing push in quarter two on any of these products.
This was a slow quarter for Yoodlee. It typically happens right now. The films and series come out in blocks. Last year also everything came out in quarter four. You will find that most of the Yoodlee releases are gonna happen in quarter three and quarter four. The TV serial business continued with steady performance in terms of TRPs. All three programs have delivered. The only downside we saw this time is that a significant amount of our revenues that come from the TV business has come on account of advertising, both on Sun TV channel and on YouTube. You know, we saw some slowdown out there because of the slowdown in the advertising revenue.
We expect this to be a short-term trend and everything to come back on track the moment festival season starts. This quarter, we finally saw the launch of our new business line of live music. We launched it in partnership with the biggest live music star of this country called Diljit Dosanjh. He is the one music-based artist right now who draws the maximum number of paid tickets in India and abroad. In fact, we completed six successful events in this quarter, two in India, Gurgaon and Jalandhar, and four in Canada. Four out of the six shows actually went completely houseful. We are very, very happy with the way this business has started.
With time this business can not only contribute more and more to the top line and bottom line, but also help empower our business in the music acquisition and the creation side. Overall, ladies and gentlemen, a very good quarter for us. Significant growth both on the top line and the bottom line, and growth of new verticals. Music business was the biggest contributor to this growth in this quarter. Take questions from you people.
Thank you, sir. We now begin with the question and answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may press star and one on the touchtone telephone. Anyone who wishes to remove themselves from the question queue may press star and two. Participants are requested to use handsets while asking a question. Ladies and gentlemen, we will wait for a moment while the question queue assembles. Thank you. We take the first question from the line of Savi Jain from 2Point2 Capital. Please go ahead.
Hi, can you hear me?
Yes, please.
Hi. I just had a couple of questions. One was on the royalty expense. That seems to have fallen both QOQ and YOY. Why is that?
The royalty expense is more on account of the past catalog, and it typically depends on the mix, because there is some content where there is a royalty expense and there's a lot of content that we acquire which is only a one-time payment. If the mix changes a bit here and there, this will keep on changing.
It's got nothing to do with that accounting change, right?
No, actually nothing.
Okay.
Right now what we have done is just change the useful life of our assets as newer content is concerned. There is no accounting policy change that we're bringing in.
On the newer content, if you can just again summarize maybe I missed it. What was it earlier? What did you charge in the first and second year charge of earlier and what is it now?
Earlier we people had the marketing was earlier also 100% straight away that in the month one itself. There's no change to that 20%. On the remaining 80%, it was 35% in year one, right? Then 13% for the next five years. Now what we are seeing is it's 20% in year one, 15% in year two, and then goes to 8% for the next eight years.
Okay.
It's a very small change right now. I'm saying the net impact of that on our PAT is only INR 1.7 crore.
I think, lot of the content charge will be backended, so the benefit will come through in the next few quarters. Is that true?
Yes. See, at the end of the day, what we are doing here is because our policies were not in sync with what the global practices are. This was done more to do with our numbers being open out there after the QIP in the U.S. circuit also. We just wanted to come in sync with the global practices.
Got it. On this live concert business, can you give a sense of what is the, like, the revenue contribution this quarter?
Right now, remember this, I said this in my last quarter call also. It's an early stage. The first year is going to be more testing the waters. But in general, events business is a 5%-10% margin business for the next couple of years. We are running the event business for profitability, but more importantly, to reinforce our position on the music creation and acquisition side, because it is the same bunch of top singers who are also contributing to the biggest songs as well as are active on the live circuit.
Yeah, I understand that, but I mean, like eight events, will that, like, contribute to a few, I mean, double-digit crores, in terms of revenues?
Let the year get over. Right now, maybe I give you a better idea. All I can tell you that it will not be a loss-making thing. That's all the comfort I can give you. Obviously, we believe right now it should contribute significantly the top line. This is the first quarter, first event. Give us four quarters, and we will be able to go back and share more specific details with you.
Okay. You know, the last question is on these YouTube views. You know, there's a significant increase every quarter. Is this to do with user-generated content being a larger part of this growth? Or is it the Saregama channel alone contributing the growth?
As the growth's biggest contributor is the Saregama channel, though on both we make equal amount of money. It doesn't matter whether you are generating content on Mere Sapno Ki Rani or Pani Pani or whether Saregama is doing an official upload because we make the same amount of money. In reality, the growth rate now is coming more from our own channels because of the amount of new content that's being put up.
Okay. Lastly, if I may just squeeze in, on this Instagram deal, it was a fixed deal, right? It did not depend on the number of streams that-
That's right.
-that we...
Talk about specific deals.
No, you had mentioned that it was a fixed deal. I mean,
In general, short format app deals are fixed fee deals.
It has not come up for renewal yet?
I cannot get into specific deals.
Yeah, I mean, I just wanted to get into, you know, basically, I think this reel has taken off significantly ever since you signed the deal and because of fixed deal, I mean, do we expect like a significant increase when it comes up for renewal? That was all I wanted to get at, but I appreciate if you don't want to disclose that.
I can't get into specific deals. Please understand, if we are growing at a, our music license, which was over 20% now for over two years, and last year we grew it for 26%. This quarter the growth is even more. Clearly, it's coming out of. We have both. We have variable deals with minimum guarantees as well as fixed deals. All of them get renegotiated in a very big fashion if the numbers are that significant. Numbers are becoming that significant because we are investing in new content aggressively.
Got it. This Gaana thing, you know, is that gonna be a negative because if it gets acquired by someone, you know, there's news about it getting acquired, so there is consolidation on your customer side. That will be a slight negative for you, right?
Let me answer this way. I'll not answer specifically the brand name that you took. In general, consolidation doesn't affect us because the customer is going to listen to a song. It doesn't matter to me whether the customer is listening to the song on platform A or platform B. I get paid on an average INR 0.10. It doesn't matter which platform are you going to.
No, if you have minimum guarantee on both the platforms, then you're not hitting your,
Yeah. I think you asked the right question. No, no, we are. The days of we people not hitting a minimum guarantee were six years back. Now, we people constantly go above in many of the cases. There are overflows coming in.
Great. Thank you, and congratulations for good set of numbers.
Let me add further. If you ask me, this is, if any of the platforms folds, a signal to other platforms that they should think towards paid services now, which is high time. I've been saying this now that it's time that these streaming platforms start making a significant push towards paid subscription. That's going to be great news for their financial viability and also means a lot of money to be made by music IP owners.
Yeah.
I think to be a positive news if this consolidation that happens.
Yeah, got it. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Jain. We take the next question from the line of Saket Mehrotra from Tusk Investments. Please go ahead, sir.
Yes, Saket.
Mr. Saket, your line is in talk mode, sir. Please go ahead with your question. Sir, I think there is, he's muted his line from his end. We will move to the next question from the line of.
Hi, am I audible?
Yeah. Now you're audible, sir. Please go ahead.
Okay. Sorry about that. The first question I have, Vikram, you mentioned this 550 million + impressions of Sarkaru Vaari Paata from April to August. This is across YouTube and other apps, or was it just YouTube? Just want to-
The audio streaming apps. We don't include user-generated content is not part of it, and any of the other short format are not part of it. These are all variable numbers that we get reported on a daily basis.
Okay. The second question I had, Vikram, you know, recently we saw this development, where Meta announced that they are starting monetization of music on their videos. Would you like to comment anything on that? Has that gone live for India or is it just a global announcement that they're going with?
I'll not comment on a specific company, but in general, I'll reiterate what I said earlier. Our deals with short format apps, because they were in their infancy, and short format apps are, so from an Instagram to YouTube Shorts to Josh, Moj, Chingari, all these in general, the deal, nature of the deals is a fixed fee deal, with a clear understanding that as their business model evolves and get into an advertising-driven business, then the fixed fee nature will change right now. It will become a variable with minimum guarantee. We saw how big that became on a platform like YouTube. We believe the other guys will also go in that direction, which means the platforms will make money as well as the IP owners.
All right. As of now, there is, I mean, it's still in an evolutionary phase, is what I understand.
No, that's why we all are protected ourselves with fixed fee, but our deals are structured in a fashion that if they move advertising-driven stuff and they offer a share of advertising to any label globally, we also end up getting it immediately.
Got it. Any timelines on clarity on the demerger? Can we expect it any time this financial year?
Pankaj will answer that.
Yeah, Saket. Pankaj this side. We have been resolving all the queries that come from either the stock exchanges or SEBI. Most of them have been done. During this quarter as well, there were some questions that came in relation to this, and we've done that. We now await the final clearance first from SEBI, post which we will then, obviously, you know, file our application with the NCLT. We can't put a very specific date, but yes, normally, you know, these things do take six to eight months from the time of filing the NCLT. We are pursuing this matter and seeing to it that, you know, any kind of questions or any kind of steps that are involved to expedite are being followed upon.
Got it. Thanks a lot. That's it from my side. Thanks.
Okay, Saket.
Thanks, Saket.
Thanks.
Thank you, sir. We take the next question from the line of Shubham Ajmera from SOIC Investments. Please go ahead, sir.
Yeah. Hi. Am I audible?
Yes.
Yes, please.
Yeah. My first question is regarding the advertisement revenue. As you mentioned in your opening remarks that we are seeing some trend in the downward slopes for the YouTube revenue and advertisement. Are we seeing the same trend in the streaming companies as well?
We have not seen that impact hurting us on our music business at all. In fact, it's only that the TV part, our YouTube number is still very, very small. What's hurting and which has hurt us a bit right now is the fall in the advertising revenue on TV channels. Because my Saregama's TV serial business runs on advertising running on Sun TV itself.
Okay, got it. I mean, if you have any idea regarding the slowdown in the revenues for the streaming companies as well? Like...
We don't see. Our streaming business is based, actually is not dependent on advertising at all. Streaming business on the free side, we have a protection through, a per stream rate, and on the paid side, we get a share of the subscription amount. In fact, the audio streaming business for us, the way our deals are structured, is actually not dependent on advertising at all.
Okay, got it. My last question is regarding your plans for the Carvaan for like next three to four years. Like if you can give me some broad idea regarding like on the margin side, which you are targeting in the next three to four years.
Sir, I will talk about these as I stated, the day we decide that we will now start investing in Carvaan. The call before that, I'm gonna put those numbers in. We are still trying to see, first there was a demand issue with retail networks shut, then there was massive supply because chips were not available. Things are still getting sorted out, because even if we go and manufacture rest of the parts in India, chips are still coming out there from one of these Asian countries only. We wanna first come on top of it. Once we believe that this product is now ready for expansion, then we are gonna talk to you about our investment plans and how the financials are gonna work out.
Okay. Sure. Thank you. Thank you so much.
This time you are not gonna find any investment going from our side on Carvaan. It's just moving at this juncture on its own demand.
Understood. Thanks.
Thank you, sir. We take the next question from the line of Vimal Gohil from Alchemy Capital. Please go ahead, sir.
Yeah. Thank you for the opportunity, sir. I hope I'm audible.
Yes, please.
Yeah. I'm not sure if you've answered this, so sorry if I've made you repeat it. If you can just highlight what are the kind of investments that we're seeing, in content over the next one year or maybe if you have any long-term guidance, if at all.
Sir, our stated aim is that of all the content that comes out in the market on a pan-India level, we want to pick up anything between 30%-35% of that market. The cost of the entire content that is expected to come out this year should be in the range around INR 800 crore. That's the aim that we people have. We don't know whether we'll be able to acquire the entire share in a single go. Even if we acquire, it may so happen that the movie may not get released in this financial year. The deal happens now, but the movie may get released in next financial year. Broadly, this is the aim.
Okay. This year, possibly, you are looking at somewhere near INR 400 crore of content investment. Would that be a fair assessment, if at all, assuming that, you know, the entire you are able to take whatever entire pie that you are looking for?
800 [audio distortion] 30% is 240.
Huh. Okay.
It's really that space right now. Now, this is the first year for a company which has had a single digit share of new content when it wants to move to a 30%-35% share. Even if we have the intent, it may so happen like in Bollywood movies, the music of the film gets sold 12-18 months before the movie gets released. It will take us that much amount of lag right now to go back and build it up. The space that I said, of 200-220, that kind of space that we will be in.
Understood. Thank you very much, sir. All the best.
Thank you.
Thank you, sir. We take the next question from the line of Bhupendra Tiwary from ICICI Securities. Please go ahead, sir.
Hi, Vikram. So my question basically on the web series and movies part. If you could talk about what is our overall, you know, pipeline of things that we are doing, looking to do over the next 12-18 months, number of web series lined up. Because, you know, what is our kind of margin profile that we are looking to get there in this segment? Thank you.
I think margin part, I've always stated, I'll repeat this. This is a business right now which is 15%-20% margin after writing off the entire cost of film and we believe we're not putting any profit from the second round of licensing that happens typically in this business. You license on the first round, it may be three, five, seven, 11-year license.
Yeah.
Then the second round of licensing, the cost is fully written off in year one itself. All that I'm keeping separate. I'm saying year-on-year, as we people go out there for next three to five years, usually business, films, TV, and web series we should be hitting in the range of INR 150 crore-INR 200 crore.
If you could talk about the web series or the films which are lined up for the next,
No, I can only tell you right what has been announced. There is a Suniel Shetty web series that is already been licensed out. We will be making that delivery now, and that's when we are going to be going and recognizing the revenue. That should get released sometime this year. There is a Malayalam film with a big star out there called Nivin Pauly, which is, as of now, is expected to release in September. The number two star there in Punjabi after Diljit is a guy called Ammy Virk.
Yeah.
It's him that we people call Oye Makhna, which is expected to release in the month of November. We have also started to shoot with the Malayalam biggest star called Prithviraj Sukumaran, which may get released this year, may get released next year. These are things in public domain, but we are working on many more, either series concepts and films. All that information is still not in public domain.
Okay. Sure. Thanks a lot. Thanks, Vikram.
Thank you.
Thank you, sir. We take the next question from the line of Gaurav Chopra from Union AMC. Please go ahead with your question, sir.
Hi, sir. Gaurav from [inaudible]. I just had a small question. I was going through your annual report. I could see the revenue from India last year grew just by 4% in the music licensing business, while revenue from exports were obviously up 71%. Could you highlight, like, why would that happen? Like, why would India business revenue growth would be just 4%?
Sir, typically, my understanding is, Pankaj can correct it. Many of the deals that we are doing with global guys, right? I'll not want to take specific names, but if you think of all the major licensing companies, they're all global companies. From reality perspective right now, we just license it through our subsidiary.
Okay.
Correct. Yeah. We do have partners who are based out of India. Just from a classification point of view, it could seem as if revenues in India and outside India. Overall, basically everything remains the same.
Okay. Okay.
If you ask a normal Indian, they will, living in Bareilly and Jodhpur, they will say that YouTube is an Indian company. The reality will be a bit different.
Got it. Thanks for clarification.
Thank you, sir. We take the next question from the line of CA Garvit Goyal from Niveshaay Investment Research. Please go ahead, sir.
Hello. Good evening, sir. Am I audible?
Yes, please.
Sir. My first question is, as NFTs are coming into trend, so how it is going to be an opportunity for us and how it can shape our topline going forward? Any views on that?
We are very seriously exploring it. We believe NFT is a great way to unlock the value of it that we people own. We just want to get our product proposition right because we believe, if we are launching an NFT, it should not be gimmick value. There should be a genuine value being offered to the customer, then only that business is gonna become significant. You will see very soon an announcement coming from our side in this space. For us, it's a serious business opportunity and not a gimmick.
Okay, understood. Okay. My second question is, sir, in quarter one financial year 2023, music segment seems to be muted, if we are comparing it with the previous previous quarter. What are the reasons for the same? Is it due to any downside in the platform revenues like OTT, broadcasting, video streaming, or social media? How you are seeing it to be in upcoming quarters?
Let's answer the part one first. Please look at our numbers for the four quarters for the last five years. You will always see Q1 as the lowest quarter. In general, fourth quarter becomes very, very high because a lot of our international publishing revenues hit us only in quarter four. Lot of society revenues hits us in quarter four, and our policy with these revenues is that we take them only when the cash hits our account. Q4 is always on the higher side. Q3 becomes higher typically because of the Carvaan sale. That's our festival season. If you ask me, we are very, very delighted with the numbers that we're seeing in Q1 because the Q1 has never matched our Q4 revenue ever before. This is the first time Q1 taking a dip. That is matter basic cycle of the music business.
Okay, understood. It's better to look year-on-year, yes, sir.
You have to look on year-over-year basis.
Okay.
That's because there is seasonality in our business.
Okay, understood. What are the developments on the Carvaan platform side? Basically, you were mentioning in your annual report this, we will start getting, advertisement type of revenue model also from Carvaan platform, once it gets commissioned. What are the developments on that side?
Yes. As the new generation, Carvaan is gonna come and hit. That's it, Carvaan, where advertising and ongoing subscription as a thought process is, we are trying to build it in. We are still some time away. Like I mentioned to somebody else earlier, that whenever we are ready with a product which may need investment from our side, we will first come out there and talk to you. It's still some time away. Till that time, there is no marketing or manpower investment going on Carvaan.
Okay, understood. Understood. Sir, basically, we are looking for the new acquisitions from the music side and what is our specific target group when we are acquiring the new music? Are we looking towards targeting a particular age group or what is our basic approach? Like, see, I am 23, so your focus will be on our side or our parents' side. That's basically my question.
See, new music will be all talking to your side. I am the age of your dad. I don't get involved ever in music acquisitions. There are younger people under the age of 30, what to buy, what not to buy. We're very particular about it. Nobody senior is listening to music and taking a decision. In fact, we sometimes joke right now that if I like it at my age, that means the song may not work. It's better there are 20- to 23-year-olds, they only decide.
Right. Understood. Thank you very much, sir. Thank you very much.
Thank you, sir. Ladies and gentlemen, that was the last question for the day. I now hand the conference over to Mr. Vikram Mehra for closing comments. Thank you, sir.
Thank you. We maintain a bullish stance on music licensing. We are projecting a 20%-23% growth year-on-year for the next three to five years. This will happen irrespective of consolidation on the platform side. In fact, if anything, as I said earlier, if there is a consolidation happening, it's good news because that means with less platforms, more and more people will be looking very seriously at the subscription-based business, which is great news for both parties, the platforms as well as the IP owners. The advertising downturn, in fact, the way our deals are structured, I don't think it's gonna go back and impact us significantly at all. I think if at all, it will be a marginal impact. We hold on to.
In spite of the economic downturn, we hold onto a 22-23% growth rate in music licensing business over next three to five years. We'll continue with the investments on content across the multiple languages, both on the film and the non-film side, with the trends being people under the age of thirty. We continue with a cautious approach on Carvaan. The focus is going to be on margins and not on revenue. The film series and TV business should go out there, keep on growing to 25% growth rate year on year with a margin which is more around 15%. Events vertical will slowly build up, in terms of revenue, but in the initial year, we expect it to contribute only 5-10% margin. On the business as a management team, we are very, very bullish.
We have built the right foundation, and year after year after year, quarter after quarter, we are proving it to you that the foundation that has been built is strong enough to keep on sustaining the growth rate that we people have shown over the last three years. Thanks a lot, gentlemen. Good evening.
Thank you. On behalf of ICICI Securities, that concludes this conference call. Thank you for joining us, ladies and gentlemen. You may now disconnect your lines.