Ladies and gentlemen, good day, and welcome to the Infibeam Avenues Limited Q1 FY25 Earnings Conference Call, hosted by Go India Advisors. 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 then zero on your touchtone phone. Please note that this conference is being recorded. I'll hand the conference over to Mr. Rajat Gupta from Go India Advisors. Thank you, and over to you, sir.
Yeah. Thank you, Mia. Good evening, everyone, and welcome to Infibeam Avenues Limited earnings call to discuss the Q1 FY25 results. We have on the call with us today Mr. Vishal Mehta, Chairman and Managing Director, Mr. Vishwas Patel, Joint Managing Director, and Mr. Sunil Bhagat, Chief Financial Officer. Also joining us on the call today is Mr. B. Ravi, who's advising Infibeam on corporate and financial strategy as an independent consultant. We must remind you that the discussion on today's call may include certain forward-looking statements and must be therefore viewed in conjunction with the risk that the company faces. I now request Mr. Vishal Mehta to take us through the company's business outlook and financial highlights, subsequent to which we'll open the floor for Q&A. Thank you, and over to you, sir.
Thank you, Rajat, and thank you to everyone for joining us this afternoon. As mentioned by Rajat, for this earnings call today, joining me, to walk you through the quarter is Vishwas Patel, our Joint Managing Director, and Sunil Bhagat, who is our CFO. We are also providing a slide presentation to accompany with our commentary, which is available on our site. Before I delve into the business performance for the quarter, I'm pleased to share that the company has recently appointed Mr. Narayanan Sadanandan as an independent director on our board. With extensive experience in finance and banking, Mr. Sadanandan will play a crucial role in guiding our strategic direction. His appointment strengthens our leadership team, and we are confident that his insights will significantly contribute to our growth and success.
In the first quarter, we delivered a very good set of results, and the year is off to a great start, in our opinion, with year-over-year double-digit growth in net revenue, EBITDA, as well as profits. Our team is operating at full throttle, and we are really starting to get our arms around the growth for this year. You will see in our numbers and the presentation that our efforts are beginning to make a difference. We also see a substantial need for reimagining our company in the medium to long term, especially on how we execute in the world of artificial intelligence and how merchants and customer payment processes get impacted with artificial intelligence. We are encouraged by the progress to date, but remain realistic that we still have a lot of work to do and a lot of opportunity to drive growth ahead of us.
I believe that this is a transition year, where we are focused on execution and making critical choices that will set the business up for long-term success. Some of the initiatives that we have undertaken, like CCAvenue TapPay, which we launched, will have an immediate impact, and other investments may take slightly longer to bear fruit, where we believe these investments will ultimately contribute to the sustainable and profitable growth of the company. As such, we need to maintain flexibility throughout this year to make important decisions to drive the long-term growth of the business. This includes decisions about where we prioritize and reinvest, how we go to market, and actions that can be taken to sharpen our value proposition for consumers and merchants. With that in mind, we do expect the full-year EPS to grow, much similar to what we have given in guidance.
Primarily, we feel confident, driven by our better-than-expected start of the year in the first quarter. Today, we also announced that the board has approved an investment in Rediff.com for a majority stake. Rediff.com, with its diverse services, including cloud-based enterprise email storage, content distribution, and related commerce services, offers a broad digital platform. Infibeam plans to synergize its various digital payment services and platform business offerings and AI solutions with Rediff.com services, creating a very comprehensive digital environment where financial transactions and content consumptions can coexist. This integration is expected to enhance our user engagement and open up new revenue streams. In particular, Rediff.com's substantial user base and data assets with over 55 million monthly visitors, provide a very valuable insight for cross-selling financial products using artificial intelligence.
Coming to our recent business developments on strategic front, I'm pleased to announce that during the quarter, Infibeam Avenues board has approved acquiring remaining 26% in Infibeam Digital Entertainment, making it a fully owned subsidiary. This strategic move aims to leverage opportunities in digital media technology and live events. Additionally, the board has also sanctioned creation of a new subsidiary for artificial intelligence operations, focusing on AI-enabled fraud detection and prevention, particularly within the fintech sector. These initiatives highlight our commitment to innovation and expansion, enhancing our market position and driving future growth. We have entered into strategic partnerships with EDII to advance our AI adoption, and Infibeam will also introduce AI Facility Manager for enhanced campus operation.
Finally, I'm pleased to announce that Phronetic.AI, which is our AI vertical, has filed for a patent with U.S. Patent Office regarding system and methods to implement activity-based man-management using artificial intelligence.... Turning to key financial highlights for the quarter, I'm delighted to report that the company has registered a quarterly gross revenue of INR 753 crores, net revenue of INR 119 crores, EBITDA of INR 70 crores, and a PAT of INR 50 crores. Our take rate in payments has been consistently improving, standing at 11.2 basis points in Q1 FY25, which is a growth of 33% year-over-year. We had previously guided for a double-digit take rates in 2024, and we have already surpassed that during this quarter. This improvement is due to our disciplined execution, optimization, and innovative approach to digital payments, reflecting the collaborative effort across Infibeam's teams.
Looking ahead to achieving our financial guidance for FY 25, we will amplify our strategic initiatives established during 2024. Over the next two years, we will intensify our focus on elevating our international business, aiming for it to contribute 12%-15% of our net revenue income, up from single-digit contribution currently. In 2025, we have projected revenue growth of approximately 25%-30%, EBITDA of around 10%-20%, and a PAT of 20%-35%. Given our strong performance in Q1, I'm confident that we'll reach the guidance. Moreover, our ongoing innovations and commitment to excellence ensures that we are well positioned to capitalize on market opportunities. We believe that our strategic initiatives will drive sustained growth and create significant value for shareholders. With that, I will turn the call and give it to Vishwas. Vishwas, all yours.
Thanks, Vishal, and good afternoon to everybody on the call. So we had a solid start to the year with first quarter results that were way above our expectations. As Vishal mentioned, it's still early in the financial year, and we are looking forward to the holiday and festival consumer spends in the coming quarters. So at a macro level, digital payments in India grew more than 70% in 2023 and is estimated to grow by 45%-50% in 2024 to approx INR 54 trillion. Between 2021 and 2026, the industry is expected to grow in the range of 30%-40% annually. The government and the regulator are also very supportive, given their vision to make India digital and make it a less cash economy.
Our goal for 2025 is to fundamentally set up the business for the future by making key decisions and aligning our investment path for growth. And to do so, we are laser-focused on strategic analysis and decision-making, driving innovation back into the business and executing with excellence. While it will take time for efforts to substantially flow through results, the speed at which the team is encouraging, is moving is encouraging. We are making steady progress. We are getting deeper in understanding both our challenges and opportunities with great clarity. In the second quarter, we added 230,022 new merchants, averaging more than 2,550 merchants every day.
We increased our net, net take rates in payments to 11.2 basis points from 8.4 basis points, same last quarter, same quarter last year, which contributed to growth and profitability. Additionally, we were granted a payment aggregator license by RBI, as the digital payment industry in India is poised for growth. With strong entry barriers and strict compliance requirements, we plan to take full advantage of our ability to onboard new merchants. Furthermore, we are incorporating a company in the GIFT City to start the payment aggregator business within that jurisdiction and look aggressively to do cross-border payments through our subsidiary. For our Bill Avenue business, which is the utility payments business, there has been an 87% growth in the transaction value on the customer operating unit side, quarter-on-quarter.
The total transaction value from the agent institutions this quarter was INR 1,506 crores, compared to INR 805 crores last quarter. We have also seen a 2% growth in the transaction value on the biller operating unit side for BillAvenue, quarter-over-quarter. The total transaction value from the billers this quarter was INR 1,679 crores, compared to INR 1,640 crores last quarter. Through our ResAvenue Hospitality solution, we delivered 467,248 room nights to our hotelier clients this quarter, amounting to a value of over INR 310 crores. The hoteliers benefiting are over 2,000 hotel clients across India and the Middle East. We are constantly developing new cutting-edge solutions, including the new AI-driven revenue management tools for our hotelier clients.
Embedded within our guidance outlook for the year is the flexibility to make key strategic decisions to invest and reinvigorate profitable growth within the components of the portfolio and accelerate go-to-market efforts. For the full year, we expect our other value-added services, including distribution of our financial products, to contribute 2%-4% of our revenue this year, going to around 7%-10% in a couple of years. We have clear opportunities to lean in further, and we are doing the hard work now to position Infibeam Avenues for profitable growth in the years ahead. It has been this incredible energizing to see the team's commitment to this goal. With that, I now hand over the call to our Chief Financial Officer, Mr. Sunil Bhagat, for his comments on the financial performance. Over to you, Sunil bhai.
Thank you, Vishwas, sir. Good evening, everyone. For the first quarter of FY 2025, we have witnessed significant strides in our financial performance... consistent with the approach, our guidance includes minimal impact from the new innovations and investments rolling up this year. Our focus is on execution as well as being moving from test and pilot phases into the launch. We continue to expect our guidance for 2025, as we are off to a solid start. Now, moving on to the results for the quarter. While our gross revenues increased from INR 742 crores in Q1 24 to INR 753 crores in Q1 FY 25, registering a marginal growth. However, our net revenue increased from INR 99 crores to INR 119 crores, which is up 20% year-over-year.
Our higher than expected net take rate has significantly increased from 8.4 bps in quarter one, FY 24 to 11.2 + 2 bps in quarter one, FY 25, registering an increase of 33%. This has resulted in our higher net revenue, higher EBITDA and higher PAT. Our EBITDA grew by 25% from INR 56 crores in Q1 FY 2024 to INR 70 crores in Q1 FY 2025. The EBITDA margin as a percentage of net, net revenue, stood at 59%. Our profit after tax came at INR 50 crores, showcasing a 59% increase year-over-year as compared to the same period of last year. We remain dedicated to pursuing profitable growth initiatives and driving further value for our stakeholders. With this, I now invite the moderator to open the floor for questions and answers. Thank you.
Thank you very much. We will now begin the question and answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may press star and one on their touchtone telephone. If you wish to remove yourself from the question queue, you may press star and two. Participants 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 Pranav Mashruwala from Dolat Capital. Please go ahead.
Hello. Yeah. Hi, am I audible?
Yes, sir.
Yeah. Yeah, hi. Thanks for the opportunity. So one question was on the gross take rates. So we usually share this data, where we provide TPV for calculation of payment take rate. In Q4, it was about INR 6.2 billion, and we had a payments gross take rate of about 102.7. So please, please share for this quarter.
Hello. If you can refer the slide number 10, we have already provided the breakup of payments TPV as well as platform TPV for the quarter. Thank you.
Okay, and, second question is on platforms business. So, any reason for decline on a quarter-to-quarter basis? So now we don't have, GeM revenue, so is there still seasonality element in the Q4, Q4 to Q1?
Yeah, so we've not recorded GeM revenue, much like what we did not do in Q4 of last year and even Q1 of this year. So there's a marginal decline because of that. We believe that, you know, by end of this quarter and in Q2, we should have a pretty good idea in terms of what it means with GeM. We have initiated a friendly arbitration, and we expect that we should be able to get some insights and provide more feedback to you in the next, in this coming quarter.
Okay. Thank you.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Rucheeta from iWealth Management. Please go ahead.
Hello, sir. Good afternoon. So my question was on the side of its TPV, which is excluding the GEM platform. So as per the calculation this quarter, it has grown only by 4%. So, you know, what is the reason for it, and how do we see this going ahead?
We report two TPVs. One is for the payments business and second is for the platform business. So while we have not recorded any revenue from GeM, the TPV that we report has, you know, GeM, because GeM continues to use our platform. So we have not recorded any revenue from the platform, any from GeM platform, which is highlighted in the slide as well as in our numbers. And, you know, there is, there's some indirect impact, you know, but I believe that from a platform perspective, GeM is about INR 1.2 trillion and payments is about INR 0.7 trillion.
Right. So if I exclude that, so, a year before that, it was around INR 65,024, and now it is INR 67,691. So effectively, the growth is only 4% in the payments business other than the GeM. So what was the reason for the same, is what I'm trying to understand?
Yeah. So payments, Q1 is normally a slower period compared to the other quarters in terms of payments. Normally, our festivals in our country, they happen in Q2 and Q3, so that is one. And second is that, you know, it's also a mixed impact. So in other words, we find we are not reporting any UPI transactions as part of our BillAvenue. So, we also see that UPI transactions are gaining traction, but, you know, much like, you know, in platforms, we don't report revenue, but we, we continue to incur expenses, whatever those expenses are. So similarly, we have told the shareholders that, you know, depending upon the outcome of the arbitration, we'll have a one-time gain, should there be a positive impact.
Similarly, in payments, Q1 is even lower compared to the other quarters. But the good thing is that given our take rate and given also that we've not been aggressively going after growth in payments, we are focused on profitable growth, and we had also guided that we need to reach a higher take rate. Fortunately, in Q1, we were able to achieve a much larger take rate compared to what our expectations were. So our focus is going to continue to be on net revenue and not on gross revenue.
Right. So what is the kind of volume growth do we expect, you know, in this going ahead?
In terms of the revenue guidance, we have given the revenue guidance for the year. So in terms of the revenue guidance, we have given that the lower end of the guidance in terms of gross revenue will be... And if you look at slide number 12, 11, sorry, 12, you will see the guidance for gross revenue, net revenue, EBITDA impact that we have given for this year. In terms of transaction processing volume, TPV, you know, we expect that there is going to be an increase. We hope that this coming quarters will be much larger compared to what you have seen in Q1. So we expect that in Q2 and Q3, you will see a substantial increase in TPV.
Okay. And, sir, just one question on the other income side. So, you know, there has been a substantial increase. So what does this consist of, INR 28 crore of other income?
Hello?
Hello.
Ma'am, this is, this is an impact, which is on account of changes in fair value in case of equity shares. This is not-
Okay. Okay, okay. The same was there for March 2024 as well?
Yeah, it was there.
The whole amount is Ind AS impact?
Yes, yes, yes, this is Ind AS impact.
Okay. Okay, understood. Thank you.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Grishma Shah from Invision Capital. Please go ahead.
Yes, hi. Thanks for taking my question. Good evening to the management team. I want to understand, our GMV, is it largely coming in from the merchants or, it is a mix of merchants and consumers? That's question number one.
All GMV that we report is basically consumers paying to merchants. So it's basically we provide our CCAvenue payments framework to merchants, and consumers pay using our aggregation framework to merchants. It is not peer-to-peer, if that is a question. We don't have a-
Yeah.
consumer side of the payments.
Okay. Okay. And, are there any new markets or segments you're targeting with your expansion in the financial services?
We've said that there are certain financial products with our recent investments in Rediff. Rediff has become a subsidiary of the company. Rediff is in the top 1,000 most visited sites globally. They've got 55 million visitors in a month. And, you know, distribution of financial products become a important area that we focus on. So yeah, I mean, we believe that that is going to be important for us in financial products, including insurance and many of the other products, including lending and others. So we believe that that will be, we call it value-added services.
Mm-hmm.
Through that value-added services, we expect that we should be able to generate 2%-4% of the revenues of this year through value-added services, which should substantially increase to 7%-10% in coming years.
If you could elaborate a little bit, what does Rediff do? I mean, is it... Are you also acquiring what we used to use at Rediff Mail, or this is a very different company compared to, you know, the mail services that we used to use, like, many years ago?
No, it's actually all of what you actually see. So it is Rediff Mail as well, and it is-
Okay.
Rediff.com as well. So it is pretty much-
Uh-huh
Everything that you've known about Rediff, which includes-
Okay
all the cloud-based enterprise email storages, all content distribution frameworks, all related commerce services, and all the digital platforms that it offers.
What is the revenue of this company?
It's INR 360 million last year.
INR 36 crores?
That's right.
And profitability?
It is a marginal loss, so it is reported INR 4 crores-INR 5 crores loss for last year.
Okay. So based on the customers that it has and the platform that it has, you plan to scale this business?
... Yeah, we think there's a lot of synergies that we can work on. I think cloud's a very important component to that. If you look at payments also, it's a very large cloud framework that we use. And you'll see a different of that of Rediff going forward. I think clouds, if you look at payments, if you look at emails, they're all very large cloud services. And with significant amount of content, you know, there'll be some synergies with what we are doing in terms of AI. We also believe that, with payments at core to us, payment services that we talked about, which is insurance, lending, and some of the other-
Mm.
In some ways, trading activities are significantly large opportunities. With a large client base, potentially we can, we can work out the synergies and promote them, which increases the product uptake as well as, in some case, generate new revenue streams for us.
Okay. So, if the consumers are paying to merchants, and largely what you report your GMV, MDR generating, how is it that also. So is it fair to assume that you also have less than INR 2,000 transactions, and therefore, your UPI payment is outstanding?
Sorry, I did not get the question. Could you repeat?
Why is your UPI payment outstanding from banks?
No, UPI payment is not outstanding. Typically, MeitY has a certain amount that they give to banks, and banks have to potentially keep for themselves or give it to aggregators. You know, so far, we've not received any amount. So neither we've reported in revenue, or neither we've re-reported in any accruals. What we are positioning at is that, you know, we had an opportunity to still ask for that capital because it was for the entire ecosystem. Vishwas, you want to elaborate?
Yes. So UPI volumes today, there is a mandate from the government to make it zero MDR.
Sure.
Nothing on the MDR like what we earn from credit cards and debit cards and net banking and other options, right?
Correct.
So, but-
Yeah.
However, to promote that transactions of UPI, government does give out incentives to do transactions.
Correct.
So last year, they gave INR 3,500 crore to the ecosystem.
Correct.
Till now, since we have not received it from the bank, any of that incentive or what we have processed, right?
Mm-hmm.
So that we have not recorded any of it, though we do process a lot of UPI transactions, but it's not counted either in GMV or nor have we recorded any revenues on it.
Okay.
Yeah.
So but they would have given it in quarter four itself. Even in quarter one, they have not given?
They've not given right now. We're in talks with the banks. It will come. So-
Okay. Who, who are your partner banks, if I may ask?
Yeah. So I think we should give other guys also a chance to ask questions, so-
Yeah, this is my last question.
Thanks. Okay. What was your last question again? Can you repeat?
I just want to know who are your partner banks?
Our partner banks is HDFC, ICICI, and Kotak Bank for UPI processing.
Okay. Thank you, and good luck.
Thank you.
Thank you. Our next question is from the line of Aryan Oswal, from Fintrust Capital. Please go ahead.
Thank you for taking my question, sir. Hello, am I audible?
Yes, you are. Mm-hmm.
Yes, sir. So, sir, can you provide some more details on the factors that contributed to the increase in net take rates, and how sustainable are these improved net take rates in the upcoming quarters?
So guidance is...
Yeah. Vishwas, go ahead.
Okay. So as Vishal already said that, that our whole focus is on net revenue rather than gross revenue. So there's a continuous increase in that take, take rate that is there, right? Specifically, the UAE, the UAE take rates have increased to almost 19.5 bps . The Indian take rates has also increased from earlier, 7.8, which was there last quarter, to 9.9. So all these factors have contributed in, in growing the take rate to 11.2%. And as I said, as more, more TDR-intensive, businesses go online, which is entertainment, travel, those businesses, the take rates automatically improve. Right?
So, from post-pandemic, it's been a good recovery, from where we were at that time at 7.8. So it's continuously increasing and, and you can see the difference. And we always guided the ecosystem that we'll be going to a double-digit take rate. So currently this quarter, happy to report 11.2 bps as take rate.
Okay. Okay, thank you, sir. And so-
Let me also add to what Vishwas said. We optimize every layer of our payment infrastructure stack. So I think, you know, there's a lot of continuous optimization that we talked about early on. So you literally have to squeeze out every single opportunity to ensure that, you know, you are able to deliver, you know, higher take rates. So I think, you know, that includes figuring out, there's a lot of complexity and detail every single transaction and routing it properly. And so I think those are things that the team has worked on for several quarters, which is now fructifying above there, what just Vishwas said.
Okay, sir. Thank you so much. And sir, one last question. Could you elaborate on your strategy and timeline for foraying into financial services as an aggregator? And what specific services are you planning to offer, and how do you plan to differentiate them from existing competitors?
...See, basically what we think is that, you know, we understand aggregation business very well. In payments also, we are an aggregator. And so similarly, in financial services, you know, it is nothing else but an aggregation platform. If you think of Policybazaar, it's also an aggregator finally, for insurance. So I think, you know, we understand aggregation business and payments. Along with payments, we think financial services and other categories are interesting and equally important, and we think that, that becomes an opportunity for us. Our recent investments into Rediff will enable us to reach out to a much larger audience, and it is just not financial services, maybe beyond financial services as well.
So just to expand on what Vishal said, we're sitting in the middle of the entire ecosystem. So on one side we have millions of SMEs and businesses, and the other side we have all the banks, right? And any financial product that is of interest, mostly to all the businesses that is there, be it lending or many other things that we can do since we have high data of their business performances and everything, and since all KYC and everything is already done to onboard them. And on the other side, we are working with 100+ banks in India and even in the region. So sitting in the middle, a lot of cross-sell across all financial products, that game plan will come out shortly.
With the Rediff, we get that access to almost 40 million visitors who access Rediff.com, Rediff Money and many other of their platforms, email, enterprise email and others. Right? We have access to that now. So all our services on the other side, as we said, we also have the Bharat Bill Payment licenses. So all the bill payments and recharges, and all the things can be offered to our SME customers and to that base also of Rediff. So that's the whole idea of being an aggregator and distributor of financial products. Various products will come out from time to time. We already started express settlement to our merchants who want instant settlements. So that's also a growing one.
We are at a $600 million run rate, and that will keep growing. A lot of other products right now, we are starting off with bill payments and recharges and other things, but and tax payments, what, what a SME enterprise or whatever be to this requires. We will slowly coming out with a slew of other financial products, which are mapped to which are the requirement of this base.
Okay, sir. Sir, thank you so much.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Deepesh Sancheti from Maanya Financial & Consultancy Services. Please go ahead.
Hi, am I audible?
Yes, sir.
Yes, you are.
Yeah. Just wanted to know about your demerge. You're planning a demerger of ODigMa. Can you mention how much sales percentage it is, or what are the numbers of ODigMa?
Sure. In terms of sales of ODigMa and in terms of revenue, is that the question?
Yes.
How much will be the impact to revenue, the gross revenue or?
If you can just mention how much is the revenue of ODigMa right now, and what is the profitability?
ODigMa will be about INR 30 crores, and about, profitability would be about... I mean, this is annual numbers, and profitability will be about, you know, less than INR 1 crore.
Okay. Also that recently we have set up the AI business into a new vertical, into a new company. So, should we expect that there will be a demerger of the AI vertical also? If not now, maybe in the next 2-3 years?
Of course, I'd love to tell you I'm an oracle, I can see the future. But what we know is that AI is definitely a separate company, it is a talent pool. I think, you know, we've been able to work on some very interesting, somewhat hard problems. You know, I can't say that they are mature, because we need to reach the level of maturity by offering it at scale. So that's an investment, and it's a bet worth making. And we believe that, you know, we should be able to... Last time in our call, we said that we have been able to pilot, and the pilot, our pilot phases are now over.
We are now rolling out the second phase, which is not the full roll-out, but partial roll-out with many of our clients. We expect that in the next, you know, 4-8 weeks, we'll be able to share more in terms of, you know, several contracts that get converted. But we are very optimistic about, about the opportunity, and, and we think that, you know, while we may, we may not have an answer for you in terms of demerger, but it's definitely, you know, set up as a separate company for now.
Okay. About the Rediff.com, are we going to leverage Rediff's customer base and brand for our new products, for more B2C products also? Or are we going to invest in Rediff and make it in line with the Gmail and, I mean, you know, a competition for Google?
Cloud is a very important opportunity for us. As you know, you know, I mean, it's very public that data localization cloud is very important. We understand it because of payments, but I think, you know, it goes beyond payments as well. You know, what you know of Rediff, which is Rediff Mail, that you're talking about, we definitely have instant messaging services. They have mail services, while, you know, payments is also working on the cloud. So there's that framework, including the mail set work on the cloud. So we think that, you know, we'll continue building it up. You know, we think messaging frameworks have played a very critical role. You've already heard about WhatsApp wanting to get into payments.
Some of those activities are interesting, and we will continue building it up from there. I think, you know, we understand cloud aggregation will be like an intersection of financial transactions and content which coexist together on the cloud.
Great. And, what is the update of your expansion in international markets? At what stage is that developing in, Saudi Arabia? And, when will we see it contributing to our bottom line?
Saudi Arabia has already started. And Vishwas, you want to take this?
Yes, yes. So Saudi Arabia, we already launched year and a half , two years back, but the local rules changed there. There was a licensing by their central bank called SAMA, the Saudi Arabian Monetary Authority, where it insisted on a lot of changes before we got licensed, that include data localization within the Saudi region and even the DR, Disaster Recovery within the kingdom. So hence, that we had to host it, the entire applications and within the data center in Riyadh and with the DR in Jeddah, and a lot of changes that were done. And post that, we got the Saudi Arabian PTSP license, the first Indian company to get that license there to process transactions there.
Post that, we did a tie-up with the SAB Bank, which is a big bank within Saudi Arabia, which is a merger of HSBC and a local bank. With SAB Bank, we've just signed the agreement and other things. We earlier signed up with Bank Riyad. We had a couple of dozen merchants live, but now there is still some small little licensing formality that we need to close. Post that, we have already the agreement with the SAB Bank and everything is in place. So the transactions and other reporting, I'm sure by the end of this quarter, we should start reporting the Saudi Arabian numbers also.
Okay. So just wanted to clarify one thing, that the previously, in the previous calls, you had mentioned that the international business would contribute to about 30% of your total income. But on slide 28, I can see that, it, you have shown about 12%-15%. So can you please clarify on what is the stance on the international business?
Yeah, it's basically a timeline issue. So this year we are expecting that we should be able to scale it up quite a bit, our international business. And so, you know, we want to achieve a 30% number. As revenues scale up, you know, so does, you know, the percentage that contribution comes from international. So, the 30% number is, you know, pretty much a 2- to 3-year time horizon, and the 12%-15% number is, you know, the, in this particular financial year.
Okay. So Vishal, from with Rediff, again, coming back to Rediff acquisition. With Rediff acquisition, do we inherit any debt or any previous losses of Rediff also?
So there's marginal debt, which is what we inherit. But yeah, I mean, primarily, we inherit a iconic brand, brand which is resonating with, very large audience, which has, pretty massive, you know, appeal. And, you know, if you come to think of it, you know, it's in the top 100 most visited site in India, and top 1,000 in the world, you know, processing hundreds of millions of, mails daily. And, we believe that, you know, with that legacy and the, and the, and the brand that we will inherit, you know, I think there is a lot that we can do with it.
Great. Just one last question. Is Infibeam Digital Entertainment a part of ODigMa, or is it still part of Infibeam only?
It's part of Infibeam.
It's part of Infibeam. Thank you. Thank you so much, Vishal, Vishwas. All the very best.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Rahul Jain from Dolat Capital. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Hope my line is audible.
Yes, sir.
Yeah. So, thanks for the opportunity. Just wanted to understand the strategy out here in terms of getting into some of the newer businesses, and how they are going to create another set of revenue stream which could become much larger over a period of time. Of course, on the platform side, we had that vision, and then, with GeM, it's slightly different now. So, if you could give me a big picture in terms of how this business is going to scale over a period of time across some of the segment that we have ventured into, and individual commentary out there would be of great help. Thank you.
Sure. So Rahul, the way we think about it is payments core to us. Payments scaled up quite a bit in terms of, you know, how we look into it. It's scaling two ways. One is across geography, second is within the same geography. And within that, you know, what we focus on is every vertical within the payment infrastructure, how do we squeeze out every penny so that it gets back into the take rate, if you will. And, you know, one of the things that......
You will also hear from us is that we are launching a device in the market as well shortly with a bank that potentially becomes more of a TapPay and really embedded into it, which potentially enables merchants to be able to utilize, and you will start seeing CCAvenue in some of the merchants hopefully in the coming quarters. In fact, this quarter itself. So I think that those are things that, you know, we think payments will hold. And within payments, if you recollect, what we had done was we worked on express settlement. You know, and that has worked out very well for us.
Now, when we get, since we have millions of merchants and with this particular investment in Rediff, we believe that Rediff has a very large brand value and a lot of consumers and merchants, you know, who utilize some or all of their digital platform. And what I mean by digital platform is whether you talk about mails, whether you talk about consumption of content, whether it means, you know, some of the other things, including emails, that, you know, and, and instant messaging frameworks, there's a fairly large, you know, stickiness and, and, a position there. So we think that when you think about value-added services, we think aggregation again, and not necessarily as our own, you know, particular product. What I mean by aggregation is insurance is nothing else but an aggregation.
Insurance will be provided, there'll be providers of insurance. Given that we sit in the middle of the setup that you know we are able to connect the providers to the consumers or merchants, then I think it becomes a very large opportunity. Through that, you know, for a fintech company, you will appreciate that, you know, while everyone's trying to do, you know, a lot of financial services, value-added services, we also categorize this as value-added services. In that value-added services, we think that we should be able to get slightly deeper into it. In terms of our aspiration, we think it should be 2%-4%. The value-added services itself should contribute 2%-4% of our revenue. That is very high EBITDA margins.
So that's our aspiration for this year. And in coming quarters, you know, maybe in a couple of years, we should reach anywhere between 7%-10% in terms of these revenues generated out of value-added services. So while our revenues are also projected to increase year-over-year and give you a guidance for this year, and hopefully when we reach next year, we'll also provide that guidance. We think that VAS can be a significant portion. You look at a vertical like insurance, and you look at Policybazaar, when you look at the traffic of Policybazaar, vis-a-vis, you know, the traffic which Rediff has, you'll have a much better idea in terms of, you know, one aspect of such the aggregation is solved, which is, you know, consumers and traffic.
I think we prioritize it, and build out, build it out in a way so that it scales on the cloud. We believe the second theme that we'll work on as far as Rediff is concerned, is cloud. So, when we talk about new revenue streams, we think about value-added services. That's our new revenue streams, and value-added services are of financial products and other products, including cloud. And such cloud services become critical and very important, you know, in the age of regulation and artificial intelligence. So we think that if we, if you look at that, that set up for the coming few years, that becomes very large opportunity to go after.
Right. And if you could, complete the part on the other stream, like XDuce or platform, anything more you would like to add? And then I have one follow-up on the Rediff part.
Sure. So in terms of some of the other investments that we've made, you know, you'll appreciate whether it is XDuce or Perimeter, whichever way you think about, they will be providing such frameworks to reach out to users. But it's a trading platform, and XDuce has a lot of relationships and a lot of agreements with large clients in the U.S., where we can provide, our Phronetic products. So, most of our investments, you know, I mean, some of them will have immediate returns, some of them will have medium to long term, but we are just building it out in such a way that it becomes profitable and, and accretive to the shareholders in the long term.
So, you know, whatever we do, we will utilize it to be able to use that as a distribution channel, and once we find that there's a good amount of traction and we feel confident about it, then we double down on it, which is the other investments.
Right. Just last one from my side. You kept on referring to insurance as one of the use case which it seems to is a potential opportunity with the Rediff.com transaction. So are you trying to see it as an advertisement opportunity and is all of the revenue for Rediff today is advertisement? Or you are also trying to take it to the next level, given your capability on the payment side, to make it a transaction website, just like a Policybazaar is? So any perspective on that would be helpful.
Again, sorry to taking you back to the previous question wherein the platform, if you could tell us what kind of seasonality and scalability you see in the current and near future in that business, that would be of great help. Thank you.
Sure. No, Policybazaar was just an example, you know, really, and not necessarily a vertical, only vertical that we expect to focus on. I think there'll be many. And you know, advertising is not the only revenue stream for Rediff. A lot of revenue comes out of the platform, the digital platform that they offer, including enterprise, emails and others... So there's been a mix of revenue. Think of it as like a digital journey or a digital platform, where there's massive consumer, it's a consumer-facing brand. And, and we believe that, with this kind of, you know, catering to hundreds of millions of mails on a daily basis, you know, being able to attend to more than 55 million users, I think, you know, we'd be able to focus on monetization of those, those areas.
So that's one. And second is that, yeah, we are not focused on just building one vertical. We'll build it out as the next version of Rediff. You think about instant messaging frameworks, that itself is very large. So each of these verticals are very large, and we think that there's a digital ecosystem to be built out for, for this country. And so we'll not work only on one vertical, we'll work on the entire digital platform of Rediff.
Yeah. If, if I may, just one last one, which is like, what could be the potential 1-, 2-, 3-year CapEx on Rediff, if things goes well on your mind?
So, beyond this investment, I think, you know, Rediff should be able to build it up from there. So, I think the quite a bit of CapEx we have already incurred so far in terms of building out scale. I think, you know, when we hit the next version of scale, I'd be able to provide you slightly more detail, plus it's very early on to be able to, to talk about it. Our initial focus would be to create the next version and avatar of what Rediff will look like going forward, which you'll hopefully start seeing in the next few quarters.
Sure. Thank you. That's it from my side. And best of luck for the time.
Thank you. The next question is from Delaina Ayushi, an individual investor. Please go ahead.
Hi. Good afternoon, sir. So I had, three, four questions that I wanted to ask, but I want to start with two questions. Should I ask them one by one? Hello? Yeah. So the first one is, regarding your, investment in XD, how has it enhanced the AI abilities and payment solutions in the U.S. market? Are there any updates regarding client acquisitions resulting from this particular partnership?
See, fundamentally, if you want to get into any new market, they already have... You need to have, something called a Master Service Agreement with large companies, pretty much like a vendor relationship. And, you know, in some ways, in some countries it's easier, in others it's harder. And so, you know, these MSAs can take up to six months, one year, to close them on a single level, say. So when you work with companies who already have very large agreements, you can pipe a lot of product of yours, and not worry about new agreements in place. And so it's very common in the software industry to do that. And so that's how, you know, we will position it.
Second is that when we, because local people's presence is important, and as we build out U.S. as a payment setup, we will decide, you know, in U.S. right now, we of course focus on UAE and Saudi initially. But in U.S., one can work like a tech service provider, like a TSP, where you might tech stack for a bank, much like what we do over here in India for Kotak. Or you actually go with your own brand, and in both cases, you need a lot of support services, which is where companies like XQ can play a role.
Okay. Okay, thank you. And, my second question pertains to your ongoing AI initiatives, particularly Theia, the video AI developer platform. So how do you plan to scale that up in the coming quarters?
We are very optimistic. It's a new field, as you know, and, you know, our, if you think about the view of our world in payments, like I mentioned earlier, we think that Uberization of payments is perhaps the way it will work in the future. And so video AI is critical to Uberization of payments. And, one has to achieve a certain level of scale, accuracy, solve a lot of problems. I mean, you know, there are a lot of things in text is solved using Text-GPT and ChatGPT, and you also feel a lot of images are solved. Video is different than images. Visually, people think of images, it's actually videos, which are very different than images, when you have to identify every activity. And so it's a hard problem.
You know, I'm sure there are companies working on it, but it's a slightly hard problem to solve. But I think that that gives us the motivation. We think that we can actually build it up, and so that's why we are working on these pilots. And pilots also have multiple phases. You complete one phase, and then you go into a slightly more larger roll-out, and then eventually it converts into some kind of a contract. So that is what I mentioned that you'll hear from us in the next, you know, coming months, on Phronetic.AI.
All right, sir, that is very interesting. And so coming to GeM, you said that, you know, we haven't recognized any revenue from GeM this quarter, but the company has done business for GeM, like we have been processing their transactions. So the one-time revenue that you expect from them, like, what does that amount to? And sir, in the last call, you mentioned that even if we don't continue with GeM as a client, you had, like, a few big customers lined up. So is there any update regarding that? And like, what are our future prospects with relation to GeM? Are they continuing, you know, going to be our customer? Can you give some light about that?
What I can tell you is GeM is still utilizing our platform.
Right.
The second thing I can tell you is that, we were able to, you know, get a judgment, on the fact that all intellectual property that we are providing to GeM belongs solely to us. I think, you know, those are two important things at that, that we can, definitely talk about. What we do not know and what we are not able to talk to you and tell you is how much we get paid, and hence we have not been able to recognize revenues so far. But GeM continues to utilize our platform. And, you know, that's, you know, all I can tell you at this moment.
But the good news is, like I said, that we are into arbitration with GeM, and we should be able to have some more information in coming months, maybe in the next couple of months.
Okay, sir. And sir, is there any update regarding the Tap to Pay patents that you had filed for?
That is under consideration, so I think, you know, unfortunately, it takes time. So this particular thing about AI patent that we filed, that's also a filing, but we expect that we should, you know... I mean, U.S. Patent Office, it's slightly faster, so we expect that we should be able to get something in the next, you know, six-12 months.
Okay, sir. Sir, and our UAE subsidiary, when we raised money, like we raised $25 million at a valuation of $100 million. But sir, I think the company should be valued at much higher, so will you be able to bring out the IPO at $300-$400 million, which is a much better fair value for the company according to the processing it does?
See, you know, I mean, for any company, they would want to actually get good value for the shareholders. So, I mean, absolutely, we are focused. And I think, you know, having said that, in that geography, it's UAE is just one geography. You also have a lot of Middle East geographies, which are also fairly large. So, we leave the valuations to the valuation experts. You know, what we've always focused on is let's build real value, and leave the valuation. We don't work with valuations. We monitor and we track what's going on, but leave it to the experts to decide, you know, what would be the right valuation for the company.
Okay, sir. Sir, thank you so much.
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, due to time constraint, I request you to limit your questions to one per participants. I repeat, please limit your questions to one per participants. Thank you. The next question is from the line of Pramod Pai, an individual investor. Please go ahead.
Hello? Yeah. Is it audible?
Yes, sir.
Yeah. First of all, congratulations for the great numbers. So I would like to know the reason for investing in the cloud solution company. Mainly, is it because of data localization challenges faced in Saudi, Saudi Arabia, or would that provide any value addition in the FinTech business?
Sir, are you referring to the Rediff.com announcement?
Yes, right.
Yeah. See, yeah, both, you know... I mean, if you think of it, you know, Rediff is a phenomenal, iconic brand, you know, which has a lot of stickiness with users. Even today, more than 50 million visitors go to Rediff every month. And, you know, using cloud and cloud services, they're able to process hundreds of millions of emails on a daily basis. And, you know, I think that it's a pretty large ecosystem, digital ecosystem, that they've created with instant messaging and, and mails and others. And so what we believe in is that we understand aggregation, we understand cloud, we understand AI very well, and then fee, aggregation, payment aggregation as well. And Rediff is very good in terms of users, cloud and others. So we think that there'll be a good synergy, to be able to explore with Rediff.
Second is that it's a consumer-facing brand. You know, CCAvenue is a business-facing brand, B2B, and Rediff is a consumer-facing brand. And so we think that there's a very large opportunity to amplify that message. And whatever financial product or any other service that you consider, you know, it can actually go to business and consumers both. Now we have an ecosystem to target both.
Okay. Thank you.
Thank you. Our last follow-up question is from the line of Deepesh Sancheti from Manya Financial & Consultancy Services. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Just one question. What is the rationale behind this demerger which you are planning to do?
See, in terms of the demerger, we are a payments company, and we've been very clear about who we provide digital solutions to in terms of digital marketing solutions. There are certain areas, you know, whatever applies to payments also apply to other parts of our company. With a lot of regulations, we believe that, you know, digital marketing can be decoupled from payments, and there's a much larger ecosystem that digital marketing can attend into. So, you know, that's the first thing that we think is an opportunity. Second is that we have a domain called .ooo. .ooo is a top-level domain, and, you know, so far we've not been able to build up a lot of monetization, but the opportunity is significant.
And, you know, things like, you know, using domain as UPI handles, you know, it's already started happening in several parts of North America. But again, with payments, you know, there's a question mark because, you know, there are fiat currencies, non-fiat currencies, and use of domains and such can cause certain questions. And so we are very clear that, you know, this makes more sense. There's a massive opportunity to be able to monetize on that. It's very high, you know, margin business. And we also believe that digital marketing can also expand their outreach, and not be getting into the compliance framework, which are limited to payments. So there will be substantial benefit to shareholders, in our opinion.
And so we thought that that is a, that is the main rationale for, for the setup.
Who will be heading this?
It'll be headed by Matt, Matthew. He is the... I'm sorry, ODigMa, and he's going to drive that opportunity.
Okay. Thank you. Thank you so much.
Yeah.
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, we'll take this as the last question, and I'll hand the conference over to the management for closing comments.
Thank you all for joining the call, and we look forward to keeping you updated on the latest developments of the company. Thanks again.
Thank you very much, all, for attending.
Thank you. On behalf of Go India Advisors, that concludes this conference. Thank you for joining us, and you may now disconnect your lines. Thank you.