Please note that this conference is being recorded. I now hand the conference over to Mr. Rajat Gupta from Go India Advisors. Thank you, and over to you.
Yeah, thank you, Yashaswini. Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to Infibeam Avenues Limited Earnings Call to discuss the Q2 and H1 FY 2024 results. We have on the call with us today Mr. Vishal Mehta, Chairman and Managing Director, Mr. Vishwas Patel, Joint Managing Director, Mr. Sunil Bhagat, Chief Financial Officer, and Mr. Purvesh Parekh, Head, Investor Relations. 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. Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to our second quarter FY 2024 earnings call. By far, this quarter has been the strongest quarter for Infibeam Avenues. Transaction processing volume, gross revenue, operating and net profits are all at an all-time high this quarter. Even the net take rate from payments, they have come in at 9.3 basis points as our India payments and international payments both showed a rise in the net take rate. We are committed to increase our take rates to double digits by end of this financial year. At the same time, we are also focused on growing our international presence.
In this context, it is worthwhile to mention that Vishwas Patel, who is our Joint Managing Director, and his family, through Vybe Ventures, has infused a capital of INR 1.6 billion into the company, and it is commitment to take payment growth to the next level, and the funds will be utilized for the overall payments business of Infibeam Avenues. The company has also made a capital investment of INR 1.2 billion in the first half of 2024 towards international markets. We have a strategy of Country- in-a - Box. The investments were largely towards procurement of data localizations, scaling up of our businesses, intellectual property rights for networking as well as security licenses, and they're all funded through internal accruals. We are committed to growing our international footprint, where we are seeing rising demand and growing opportunity.
Our monthly payments transaction processing volume in UAE grossed AED 1 billion a month, achieving a historical milestone. Currently, our transaction processing volume is consistently more than AED 1 billion and growing month-over-month. We also debuted the UAE market with our offline QR codes to allow customers to make card payments through their mobile phones. UAE is largely a credit card market. About 80% of all payments we process in UAE is done through credit cards. Later this year, we will also be launching TapPay, CCAvenue TapPay, and other features in the UAE market. Additionally, the company aspires to emerge as a key player in the AI-based fraud detection and prevention market.
To quicken and scale up our AI opportunities, the company has made an investment of INR 1 billion by creating a new AI hub as an extension to its GIFT City hub, and this is funded through our internal accruals. Overall, our payments and platform business is now firmly established, and they have become growth engines for the company. I will now hand over the call to Vishwas to give you an update on the payment business, and finally, our CFO, who will talk about our financial performances to all of you. Vishwas, over to you.
Thank you, Vishal. Indeed, the Q2 was a great quarter for Infibeam Avenues. Payment has been at the center of all our execution strategies. I would like to highlight a few developments, specifically in the payments part, from the financial performance of payments that is already shared with you. So during this calendar year, that is nine months ending September 2023, we have onboarded close to 1 million merchants. That is over 3,500 fully KYC merchant every day on an average in the Indian payment business, taking the total count of merchants using the CCAvenue platform, payment gateway, to 2.7 million merchants. We are working towards a plan that can make payments lucrative for our merchants so that they will start accepting credit cards from consumers.
This will lead to the higher sales from them, as the consumer spends more when using a credit card versus a debit option that reduces consumers' cash balance instantly. This will benefit the company with higher card usage and hence MDR-based TPV, and in return, will allow the company to earn more as well as profitably. In the first half of this financial year, the credit card spends has seen a continuous growth. Online credit card spend constitutes 65%-67% of the total spends. With the increasing online spend, CCAvenue also has increased its market share to double digits, compared to 9% in FY 2023.
Since the usage of the credit cards in India about three decades ago, the number of credit cards in India were about 58 million in January 2021, but it is almost gone to 93 million, addition of 35 million cards in less than three years. The usage per card and spend per transaction has also increased phenomenally in this period. We think number of credit cards and the spends will keep increasing despite growth of the non-MDR payment option, UPI. This is because the credit card remains a very lucrative options, with several benefits at purchase outlets, online and offline, and the inherent ability for the consumer to buy high value products or services by deferring payments. And with our large contributions coming from credit cards and other debit options like net banking and debit cards, it allows Infibeam Avenues to earn profitably.
In UAE, at least 80% of our TPV is through credit cards and the rest through wallets. With our debut in the offline in UAE this week, through the introduction of QR codes, and later in the financial year through the TapPay, we will see further rise in TPV in UAE and hence our earnings. Soon, we will implement a similar strategy in Saudi Arabia. And by the way, our take rates and business margins are very high in GCC market compared to India. With a capital infusion of INR 1.6 billion through my family's venture fund, we plan to grow the payments business in India as well as in the international market.
The next main focus area of payments is to further improve the unit economics or net take rates, and through various initiatives that we are undertaking at the merchant and at the bank level, and second, is to grow the international payments business. Tap Pay will certainly be one of the catalysts in both our focus areas. That's it from me. Over to you, Sunil bhai.
Thank you, Vishwas bhai. Good afternoon, everyone. Let me take you through the key parameters of our strong performance in Q2. The rise in the total transaction processing volume can be attributed to both the rise in payments as well as the platform TPV. While payments TPV rose 28% year-over-year to INR 769 billion, the company's largest software platform implementation customer recorded a growth in TPV by 155% to INR 1+ trillion in a single quarter. Higher growth in gross revenue was led by 28% growth in TPV and increase in gross take rate by 36% to 112 basis points. A high contribution, that is 51% from credit payment options, led to an increase in the gross take rates in the payments business.
A total of 0.6 million merchants were added in first half of FY 2024, of which 0.27 million merchants were added in quarter two of FY 2024. That is an average addition of 2,900 merchants daily in domestic payment aggregation business, also recognized by the brand name of CCAvenue. The company's payment net take rate experienced a significant increase in quarter two of FY 2024. That is up by 25% year-over-year to 9.3 basis points, and primarily due to substantial influx of small merchants, who in turn made the most substantial contribution to the surge in the TPV revenues and payment business and net take rates. Payment net take rate is now inching closer to the targeted double-digit take rate by the end of FY 2024.
For the first time, the company recorded a net revenue of more than INR 1 billion due to improvement in net margins, which in turn led to strong operating performance. Both EBITDA and PAT grew sharply, that is by 70% and 191% respectively. Also, EBITDA and PAT margins improved sharply. The cash and cash equivalents stood at a strong INR 4.2 billion, after INR 1.2 billion CapEx in the first half. Further, the capital infusion through Vybe Ventures is going to keep the cash position very strong in the company, which will be used for further expansion initiatives. The company's growth remains in line with the financial guidance issued for FY 2023-2024, during the first half of this year.
We are optimistic about achieving better business growth in the upcoming quarter three results on account of festival and travel season, typically a strong quarter for the company. With this, I now hand over the call to the moderator for question- and- answers.
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 touch-tone telephone. If you wish to remove yourself from the question queue, you 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. We have our first question from the line of Rahul Jain from Dolat Capital. Please go ahead.
Yeah, hi. Thanks for the opportunity, and congratulations to the team for strong performance. I have a couple of questions. Firstly, what you could attribute to, you know, significant improvement in the take rates? Of course, you mentioned some of the thing on the overseas market, but what is essentially driving this up and how we have to see it from a sustainable sustainable sustained basis, especially when you keep talking about double digit basis points. So how... What is the roadmap there?
So Rahul, this is Vishal Mehta here. Earlier in the year, we had actually given a guidance that the company wants to achieve a net take rate of 10 basis points, and, specifically in the domestic market. In domestic markets, we go with a lower take rate compared to international. International take rates are much larger and higher. We go at about 18-20 basis points in the international market. But domestic markets, you know, we're competitive and continue to be competitive. Given, a lot of things that we're doing, including addition of small merchants-
... whereby, you know, we are able to enable the ecosystem. And with financial inclusions, we are also seeing that we are able to get slightly better take rates on smaller merchants. That is another example where we believe that the take rates are much bigger because, you know, the card is present, and when the card is present, we get much better take rates compared to card not being present, given the risk profiles by the card network. So a combination of that, we had guided the investors that we are looking at achieving a double-digit take rate by end of 2024. You know, we are happy with the take rates.
We believe that, you know, we should be around the take rates of double digits, as in 10 basis points, by end of this year. We do have many programs that we have established, where we can try and see how it creates more stickiness, and we can increase take rates, one of them being the instant settlement framework that we have come up with for the fast-tracking of settlements. I think that increases the take rates for us. That is another example of where we believe we can actually improve our take rates. So that between instant settlement and that way, we believe that there's good room for us to continue building up from here onwards.
Sure, that's helpful. Secondly, on the platform revenue perspective, what we have seen that there is a significant almost doubling of the transaction on a QoQ basis while the revenue have compressed. I understand the bulk of the decrease would have happened on GeM portal. So what is the traction in the non-GeM part of it? And also, why the significant jump in the GeM TPV not leading to any revenue accretion? Is it that slab rate would mean that discount rate would imply a similar or lower revenue for us?
Sure. So if you look at the earlier GeM contract that we have, in that, our take rates don't increase linearly with the TPV. So in other words, there are, it's not a linear increase. And so where there are parameters whereby if it's a government-to-government contract, then we don't get take rates. And if it is government-to-business contracts and some of the other activities that are also there as part of TPV, which don't reflect into our take rates. So that is one observation, which is, they don't increase linearly with both. And in specific, I think this quarter, you know, the quarter in question is Q2, we crossed INR 100,000 crore in TPV on the GeM portal itself. So the portal's been able to manage and handle that kind of capacity.
But given the nonlinear increase, based on, if you look at the P value, we can actually give you specifics. It's all public information about how GeM computes the TPV. But the fact is that it's not a linear increase, where our take rates continue being the same as the TPV increases. So that's one. And second is that there are a few exceptions, like government-to-government deals, which may be part of GeM, but which do not translate into TPV. So that's one of the reasons why you don't see the full expansion of what you would expect if TPV had increased so much. As far as the traction of the framework on implementations outside of GeM, they continue to be strong. You know, we continue building up from... You know, we've not added additional clients.
We are reaping the benefits of what we have built out for the other clients. We are adding a lot of interesting modules within our framework through our new initiative on artificial intelligence. We believe that once we add those modules, and we expect that we'll have more to announce in the Q4 timeframe of this year, that we'll be able to pick up implementations which are potentially much larger than what we have done so far. Adding multiple facets to our framework, which perhaps were not there before. So, you know, to answer your question, we've not added additional clients, you know, in the first half of this year. But we continue reaping the benefits of what we've already implemented and going deeper into the ecosystem of existing clients.
Right. And you said what could be the growth in the non-GeM part of it, and what's the plan out here? What is the real potential out here? Because eventually, at some point, we may have to possibly forgo the GeM revenue.
So, we constantly think about it. We think that, you know, when we do have certain options to implement, we've not taken up those options yet. You know, we've got a good amount of traction on what we have and a lot of derivative work that keeps on building up and going deeper into the ecosystem. So we've taken a conscious approach of going deeper into the ecosystem of what we have, as opposed to keeping on adding new clients. As far as, you know, the concentration of GeM and trying to go and figure out what are the other options that the company holds, you know, should, you know, at some point, the revenues from maybe a particular concentrated platform dries out, we have, we have a couple of options as of today also to implement.
You know, we are calibrating that approach. By end of this quarter, which is Q3, we will have more to share.
Sure. Sure. That's interesting. And if I see in this specific quarter and look at any other cost line item, be it cost of services for platform business or the other expenses, which is the non-employee expenses, those have taken a very sharp dip, and is at a multi-quarter low. So is there any specific reason why this number is pretty low in this quarter, or there is a significant cost efficiency or rationalization measures that we might have taken?
I think there is one line item which is, which can be shared, and I think it's there in our presentation, which is the mark to market, you know, notional mark to market, loss and gains on securities held by the company. So, last year there was reportedly a larger expense due to the last quarter mark to market being lower, and this quarter it's recovered. So that's why you see that dip now.
Okay. So you're saying that is part, this mark-to-market thingy which you're talking about, is part of the expenses and not in the part of the other income?
Right. That's right.
Okay. And lastly, if I may, despite a very strong Q1 and also-
I request you to join back the queue, please, as there are other participants waiting.
Sure. Thank you.
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, in order to ensure that the management is able to answer queries from all participants, please restrict your questions to two at a time. You may join back the queue for follow-up questions. We'll take our next question from the line of Anuj Narula from Makrana Capital. Please go ahead. Mr. Anuj Narula?
Hello, sir. Yeah. Yeah. Hi, thanks for taking my question. So I have multiple questions. So first of all, with the exceptional performance of the international payment sector in the UAE, this quarter result primarily from a shift in market share and expansion of business operations. Or is it a broader trend of robust growth in the payments industry within the UAE? And looking ahead to FY 2024, what is our outlook for international business? And what is the anticipated overall revenue contribution to this? So this is my first question. Secondly, what's the progress in TapPay, and how many more merchants have we onboarded this product? I think one of your competitors is also going big here, and what's your take on this?
Lastly, I just wanted to take an update on the AI business. What kind of progress have you done this quarter? That's all from us. Thank you.
Sure. So, Vishwas will tell you a little bit more specifics about the UAE business. But let me answer the, maybe the second half of your first question, which is, you know, what is driving our UAE business? And, you know, what is also potentially the contribution of our international expected to become as we scale up the businesses. We had given the guidance, you know, maybe a year ago, a year and a half ago, and we have said that international should be 30% of our business. Today, it's less than 10% of our business, and we believe that international expansion is, we have much better take rates in international compared to domestic. You know, our agreements with merchants as well as card networks enable us to go internationally.
Our deep integrations into local and international, ERP systems, you know, enable us to actually not just be a payment processor, but actually become slightly more involved in the ecosystem build-up as well. So we think of ourselves as more of an infrastructure, payment infrastructure player and not just a payment gateway. I think we'll continue building up on those lines. So to answer your question, you know, in the next few years, we expect that, you know, international should be 30% of our overall contribution. You know, and that's the path that we'd like to take going forward. You know, as far as the UAE business is concerned, we've, we've had, a few thousand merchants, on the platform. We need to scale that up.
We need to build up more, you know, visibility and presence through the QR code-based implementation that we've initiated. We believe that at least the brand will potentially become slightly more visible compared to what it is at the moment. Today, people and customers, they only use us online, they don't use us offline. And, we also believe that there is a potential for TapPay to build up in that region as well. While we've not implemented TapPay in that region, when we do, we will let you know. But, we think that, the digital transformation is happening not just in India, it's also happening in other places. And Middle East is very ripe for such opportunity.
Given that we are a strong brand and, you know, we've got, you know, a head start and we, we have spent, you know, quite a bit of time, effort, and resources on building that out, we think that, you know, we can propel this, you know, much quicker and faster going forward. You know, Vishwas can add a little bit more about UAE once I... and then I'll talk about AI. Vishwas?
Yeah. So, UAE per se, it's been a very good year, and I think that's been a couple of things that have added to the factor. One is our deep tech, integrating with a lot of local platforms, right? Like, Emirates Auction went live, so the entire platform, we integrated deeply into it. Similarly, a lot of hospitality businesses we've been able to do by directly integrating into their property management systems and other things. A lot of maintenance of all the top builders there in the UAE, Emaar, Nakheel, DAMAC. So maintenance of all the apartments, the deep integration, which is growing this transaction substantially to today now, AED 1 billion a month, right?
So these things now coupled with now further growth we are looking at is going totally offline, which we have not focused till now in the UAE market. So with our partnerships with the local banks there, we're gonna attack around 100,000 local outlets in various malls across the UAE. There's QR codes, there is the TapPay implementation, omnichannel and other kind of tech stuff. So UAE is quite exciting, and we are replicating the same in Saudi now, very soon. So Saudi is at least 8x-10x bigger market than UAE, and it's like the world's largest, with Saudi government targeting 30 million a year religious tourism and 100 million for normal tourism.
So I think that market is also very exciting, and we should go live in the next couple of weeks. So that's the target. So UAE will continue to grow as we go more focused more now on the offline world also, and that is it. So from AI perspective, Vishal, you wanna give an update?
We announced the establishment of AI Hub, and we said that we'll focus on the verticals of fraud, authentication, and risk frameworks. The thing about AI and one of the things that we are doing, we'll share more as we build up, is first, we are making software developers in our own company as customers to our AI models. You know, we have to think of AI more like software development and not, you know, you still have model diagnostics, unit testing. You have the need to build out a framework and a process to be able to deliver. So unless we do that, it doesn't work. And we have to treat, you know, our developers as customers.
So to give you an example, while we think about fraud, authentication, and risk, we are thinking about first, you know, also work on the basics of productivity within our organizations. To give you an example, and this is not unknown to many, but just building out basic models that potentially allow you to code in one language and will translate into another language. If AI models are smart enough to translate it from English to Hindi, they can also be very smart in terms of literally translating your coding into from one language like Python to a Java and vice versa. So you don't need to have specific software developers working on specific line items, and you don't need to hire for a particular language.
You know, all the way from there to actually building out, you know, foundation models across billions of transactions that we hold. We have access to so many transactions, so we can build out our own foundation models, you know, which is specific to payments and transactions. And based on that, if we are able to allow, you know, whether it's a bank or a financial institution, to plug in their own data and tune the models for their own requirements while preserving their IP, which is keep the data that you hold within your own firewall frameworks, but work with our foundation models so that no data becomes compromised in any way, shape, or form. Those are the directions that we are taking. Today, it's too early to tell you more about these initiatives. We need to...
Because I don't think we should be talking about pilots. We should be talking about implementations of pilots at scale. So once we get to that point, maybe in the Q4 timeframe, in the Q1 of first year, we'll be able to share more information about the AI hub. One thing I can tell you, we are building out a whole ecosystem. We are not just building out silos, which means that, you know, we want to work with companies who can actually work at the application layer, while we provide the foundations of those transactions model.
Well, understood. Thank you. That's very helpful. Thank you.
Thank you. We have our next question from the line of Gaurav Somani from Korman Capital. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Thank you, sir, for the opportunity, and congratulations on the good set of numbers. So I have two questions. First one, the promoter stake has come down by 2%. Any sense on when this would be stabilizing? We are not seeing it already low-
Mr. Somani, can I request you to use your handset, please? You are not clearly audible.
Hello. Is it better now? Yes, sir. The promoter stake has come down by 2% in the last two quarters. If you can comment on that, and is there any further selling down the line?
Sure. So, you know, in the last quarter, about three months ago, we had talked about a disassociation within the promoter family. And so the reduction that you see is as a result of that. You know, I think, you know, there's not much more to add beyond that. You know, as far as you know, the promoter is concerned, we are continuously building out for the long term. But given the disassociation, which has been made public, you know, the numbers, the drop in 2% is due to that event.
Okay.
Reclassification, that's all.
Okay. Got it. Got it. So this-
Gaurav, there is reclassification, plus the number of shares have also increased because Mr. Vishwas Patel through Vybe Ventures, he's also converted all his warrants into equity. So the number of outstanding shares has increased, which has resulted into overall reduction in percentage. So that's a very natural arithmetic kind of stuff.
Okay. Thank you, sir. Next question was, any sense on the CapEx and for Cap table, et cetera, for FY 25 and the growth which you're expecting for FY 25?
We will be sharing guidance for FY 2023 and FY 2025, you know, as we go through the holidays. So traditionally, we've been sharing guidance in the Q1 of the year for the remainder of the year, and we'll continue the practice of sharing the same going forward. This year's guidance was also provided in the first quarter of this year, so we expect in 2025 we can do the same. I think what you can do is reasonably assume that international is going to be our focus. We talked about international being percentage of our revenue, you know, to go from sub 10%- 30% of our revenues.
We think that, you know, just the fact about getting into express settlement, you know, that is going to be our focus, and that will help us in terms of, you know, in some ways, maintaining our take rate as well as expanding our take rates. We'll go into verticals where payments... Today we are into certain verticals where we are not active in those verticals. Like hospitality, travel, and many others, we are active. But there are a few verticals we have identified where we are not active. We believe that, you know, with the initiative of AI, as well as being able to go and figure out how we can, you know, partner/build those verticals up, we believe payments can be significant in that space.
Offline just being one component, because I told you we are not into offline today. Every single transaction short of Tap Pay, we were only online. But Tap Pay is also growing out, so that's a vertical we have identified, which is offline payments, without actually, you know, and that is a greenfield opportunity for us we can build up. So those kinds of opportunities we'll continue investing into. You know, we've doubled, you know, we have, you know, in some ways we chose that, you know, we are growing at 60%-70% year-over-year in terms of revenue. So we need to identify, you know, the opportunities and prioritize them based on, you know, a similar growth rate that we should focus on going forward as well.
Thank you, sir. Thank you and have a good one.
Thank you. Before we take the next question, I would like to remind participants to press star and one to ask a question. We'll take the next question from the line of Mayur Liman from Profitmart Securities. Please go ahead.
Thank you for the opportunity. Good evening, everyone, and, congratulations on good set of numbers. My first question is, CapEx of INR 1.2 billion we did, during the first half internationally. Can you elaborate more, in terms of what all verticals have we invested and, how we aim to reap benefit all probably, contribution expected in toppling from this going forward?
Sure. So, you're aware that we are into, you know, naturally Middle East as a geography. We are into Australia and U.S., we've opened up. One of the things that have happened in the past few quarters is that, you know, data localization, you know, as well as licensing, have become a requirement for all the geographies. For instance, if we were in, Saudi, if we are in UAE, there is now a license requirement, and the license has stringent requirements on what you can and cannot do outside of that geography. And in order to satisfy such requirements, which we broadly classify as data localizations, we need to build out our own set of intellectual property, IT infra, software-driven switches, being able to go and figure out how we can scale it up. We've crossed the scale hurdle as well.
So, for example, in UAE, we are at AED 1 billion. We need to be able to invest into those areas which allow us to scale up international, you know, significantly. So in our set up of country in a box, it's reasonable to assume that as we scale up, we will have a INR 3 million-INR5 million CapEx per geography. And we'll calibrate that approach and build up as we go through. What it will do is it will allow us to do two things. One is we will continuously expand the international participation from sub-10%- 30% of our revenues. That is one. Second is that the take rates in international are much bigger compared to what we have in India. They are almost double than what we see in India, and even more.
There are many things that we need to work on in international that enable us to scale up further. So I think that, you know, while we'll continue investing in those opportunities, we don't want to create a situation where we have variable cost for everything. It's much better in certain cases to build up a fixed cost and then reap the benefits as we scale up. And so I think that we've taken a conscious call on those areas. You know, Vishwas just mentioned about Saudi. You know, we have almost completed the whole data localization and every requirement for Saudi, and we'll keep on building up further, going, you know, from almost no transaction to perhaps what you see in UAE. So Saudi is still next to market about UAE. We continue building up Oman.
So, I think those are the areas where we'll keep on investing in, U.S. and Australia being next. So, you know, there's all process of being able to, to enable and to get activated in those geographies. So we'll continue following that approach, but you can expect the returns to show up in the next couple of years.
Thank you, sir. My second question is, INR 1 lakh crore GMV in a single quarter on GeM. Where do you see this going? I mean, what would be the sustainable growth numbers here once, all the departments are onboarded? And how do you see the FY 2024 and FY 2025 in terms of GeM and GeM, GMV?
... See, I can't talk on behalf of the client, obviously, but one thing I can tell you is that there has been a lot of news around in terms of what to expect. In fact, you know, as of today, also, there is some news about, you know, potentially what, GeM can and cannot, you know, achieve. So I think, you know, if they're doing about INR 100,000 crore a quarter, and Q4 still being a large quarter, potentially is significant. But it'll be a disservice to talk about specifics for clients, you know, short of that being public information. You are also aware that GeM has been awarded, the contract for GeM as an MSP has been awarded to TCS.
You know, and TCS has about 18 odd months to be able to build out a new GeM, platform. So while we don't have much information today to share with you in terms of specifics, we do believe that we'll continue, providing services, since e-Marketplace is, something that we specialize in, and that is the core and the heart of the tech framework that we provide to GeM. But we'll have more information to share with you in the next four-six weeks.
Thank you, sir. Thank you so much. That's all from my side.
Thank you. We have our next question from the line of Rohan Parikh from Ohm Stock Brokers. Please go ahead.
Hello. Hi. So congratulations on the numbers, and my question is, since that the current EBITDA, which you guys do, which is INR 70 crores, can I have a breakup of how much of this comes from GeM and how much is from your core business, that CCAvenue space?
No, we do provide segmental, but beyond that, we don't specifically dissect it up to the client level. So, you know, rightfully so, only because I think that becomes very specific in certain cases. But, you know, if you look at the segmental breakout between platform and payments, you'll get some idea.
Okay. One more question is that, the INR 70 crore EBITDA, which you guys have currently done, so, with the GeM contract going to TCS and, after that, do you expect this INR 70 crore of EBITDA to become the new base for growth? And will you continue to grow from here on?
Like I said, we do have certain opportunities in front of us that we can pick up, and we can build up upon. So what we look at doing internally is that while there is some concentration on a client, you know, in the platform business, how do we get into more, you know, opportunities that potentially enable us to switch and grow, you know, given the situation? I think for most companies, they would think a similar way, which is: How do I reduce the concentration, if there is one? And through that strategy, what we know is that we have got, you know, opportunities to sign up and to provide such frameworks to certain companies and institutions. We have not, you know, taken them up, so far. We...
Our strategy so far had been to go deeper into our existing client base, but, you know, like I said, in the next four-eight weeks, we'll know a lot more about, you know, how the engagement will work out. We will share that information with you. But one thing I can tell you is that we'll take up other assignments, and we'll be able to share that with you in the first quarter of next year.
That's all from my side. Thank you so much.
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, to ask a question, please press star and one on your phone now. We'll take our next question from the line of Hemant, an individual investor. Please go ahead.
So thank you for the opportunity, and congratulations on good set of numbers. I actually want to go a little bit deeper on the AI-based fraud detection. I was just trying to understand, like, who are your competitors right now in the market space, whether AI or non-AI? And what kind of moat will you be able to deliver through AI? Like, what will be your differentiator, what they don't have? Because I'm assuming most of the financial institutions, payment system, network players, fraud and detection is, as you mentioned, a huge market, and there will be a lot of servicing players. So how will you differentiate on that, and who are your current competitors, and what do you see as your differentiating factors? You can, if you can share some line of sight, it'll really be helpful.
Sure. So, you're right. I think AI is a very large field, and the pace at which, you know, it's evolving is much quicker than you think. What we realized is that, you know, an engineer can, you know, pick up a problem and come back in two days with a solution, and it works with 80% accuracy. And so the evolution of how solutioning also evolves and the way AI is evolving is pretty rapid, and the clock speed is much different in terms of what we have seen. You know, what would have taken traditionally, you know, maybe months, you know, we can perhaps get it in days. So productivity is one place where we know AI works very well, and every company can potentially see what they can do.
And if you try it on your own employees, you know, to be able to aid them, it's like a co-pilot on whatever they're doing, that becomes a fundamental, you know, starting point for anyone to be able to adapt. So it's not a forcing function, but it's more of an adaptation. That's one. The more important part is, you know, it starts with data in our mental model, and once you have, you know, billions of transactions and data across that, then I think, you know, we can try to figure out, you know, what are the models that we need to build up? So in other words, being able to create.
There's a whole system and a process and you need to build out your own data lakes and figure out what you can do with it. But more importantly, what are the models to build up so that, you know, it is able to identify things, you know, which computers can do much better than humans in frequencies and scale. So I think that that's the place that one needs to work on. And, you know, once you have those, then how do you append, you know, data of third-party companies and provide them, that framework as a service? So what we are not doing, I'll tell you, is we are not doing LLMs, which is what, you know, ChatGPT and others do.
What we are doing, though, is anything which is going to be relating to commerce and payments, both online and offline, and that's the vertical that we choose to build up. You know, so I wouldn't be, you know, too surprised if we go and say that, "Listen, you know, these are all nomenclature, but are you guys working on Visual AI?" If it is going to be important to commerce, we will work on Visual AI, as far as commerce is concerned, because there's frauds that happen even in the offline world, in retail, not just online world. So I think, you know, anything which is online/offline in commerce and payments, that's where we'll work on fraud, authentication, and risk.
With this concentrated effort, which is actually quite narrow compared to the whole realm of what, you know, perhaps AI and AI companies can do, and given the scale at which we operate, we think that we may have an advantage compared to everyone else. So we will have a product as well as we'll build out AI as a service. And both of them become interesting because I think, you know, and since this question came from yourself, I'm assuming you know a little bit more, you know, compared to, you know, traditionally what people would know. But, you know, we will have differentiators. The differentiators will be eventually people and scale, and data. So once you have that, you know, three aspects together, I think it becomes interesting.
In terms of competitors, I mean, I think, you know, in fraud, you've seen international companies like Revolut and others also provide such frameworks. I can name, you know, not one, but 50 competitors in this space. So a lot of companies provide such fraud frameworks at point of sale and many other areas. I think it's evolved, and unfortunately or fortunately, companies that started long time ago, you know, they have a lot of legacy to deal with. And, you know, with, you know, what we have learned, and we are also, to be very candid, and we are, our teams are reading a lot of research papers, because it's not something that we know offhand. Generative AI, we've never known. So we are reading and, you know, the team's also learning.
As much as we would tell you that, you know, we know exactly what we're doing, we are also learning about all the different, you know, opportunities that are coming up and gaining our own knowledge. And we do have the pieces on how we differentiate. But in a nutshell, I think it's with access to data and being able to deliver something at scale.
Okay, sir, thank you. And one last question: Do you believe second half is always better than your first half, right? You would... You should do a better, as you have mentioned it, better revenues, better net payment take rates than first half. Is that, is that a good understanding?
Second, I mean, second half usually has festivals and, you know, in terms of, you know, payments and, and, and many other activities, they kind of scale up in the second half compared to the first half. So we usually, you know, we don't have a typical Christmas holiday effect that you would see in the U.S., but we typically see much better business opportunity in the second half compared to the first one. So you're right.
Yes. Thank you, sir. This is all from me. Thank you.
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, to ask a question, please press star and one on your phone now. We'll take our next question from the line of Ayushi Shah, an individual investor. Please go ahead.
Hi, sir. So basically, I have questions on two different aspects. First is the GeM. Sir, in your investor presentation, it was mentioned that transaction-based revenue model with GeM and license annuity subscriptions, basically other enterprise customers, is basically on a revenue model and other, basically other customers, we are working on a license and fees model. So does this stand true for post-renewal of contracts with GeM as well? And sir, this is the last one. So you had said that we'll, you know, give information about whether or not, you know, we go with GeM and other core solutioning frameworks in the next two to four weeks. Two to four weeks is the timeline you had given last time, and that's the timeline that you're giving this time again.
I want to understand where we are going with this GeM offer and, like, what is the status of it, first?
Sure. So fair comment. I think, you know, unfortunately, I don't have too much to share beyond what I've already told you, on GeM, which is, that we have the contract, we are providing the core pieces of the framework. You know, we, we expect to know more, you know, as we go through and build up. There are some moving parts, but we believe that, you know, the core of what GeM currently holds, the new framework has, you know, a time delay before it gets built up, designed, implemented, so on and so forth. But until that point, we believe that, you know, our solutioning will always be in place. You know, GeM's, you know, whatever solution that we have deployed-...
You know, it is, you know, that intellectual property, that is, for that solution belongs to us. So, you know, post, you know, the renewal, you know, two possibilities will exist. One is that, you know, yeah, it continues being utilized in the way it is, or it gets utilized in a slightly different commercial model. That particular specifics, I'll only be able to share with you when I have that information. I don't have that information as of now. But the usage of that is definitely a given. So that much we can tell you. You know, you know, the other implementations, you're right, is licensing. If you know our, you know, opportunity to license and to grow for the GeM may not look very different than what we have right now.
So I don't see, you know, sitting where I'm sitting today, we don't see a step change. But, you know, like I said, you know, I don't have more specifics to share with you, you know, beyond what I've just said, so far.
All right, sir. So my second, like, area of questioning was about, the listing of the, UAE subsidiary. So you mentioned that right now what you're doing is in one month, we are processing around AED 1 billion, one, billion basically. And if you, you know, you convert it, you get, like, to around around $360 billion per annum. So the valuation of the UAE business should be like, you know, if you're taking into account the valuations of Visa Pay and other comparable fintech, we should be around $300 million-$500 million at least. So this is what, like, you know, back of the paper, calculations that I can do right now. So what is your plan about the listing? Like, would you be, you know, listing at a similar valuation?
Because otherwise, like, we don't want to go for that kind of valuation, right?
So I should be very candid. Internally, we don't think too much about, I mean, we track and we monitor, but we are more focused on building value, and, and, and not just valuation. Now, with that said, you know, yeah, you're right, valuation is very important. And, you know, one thing I can tell you is, our commitment so far is we want to scale up that business, by a factor. That much we can tell you. If you are going to go from a sub 10% to a 30% for our international business, that will mean that, you know, a substantial growth, because it's just not a 30% shift in revenue from domestic to international. It's really domestic growing at a certain pace, internationally growing, and then being able to see some step changes there.
You know, yeah, we will be looking at, you know, scaling that business up. You know, we will have some more information to share then, as and when they become available to us. But, you know, one can expect that, yeah, you should hear more from us in the second half of this year.
So that is very helpful, and I had a few follow-up questions regarding basically there are three follow-up questions regarding what we discussed in the previous earnings call. So one, what is the update regarding the patent we had filed for Tap Pay? Like, I haven't received a reply about that since the Q4 FY 2023. That is the first part. The second part is that in the investor presentation, it is mentioned that the company is yet to receive UPI dues from banks. Like, I want to understand what is the quantum of this amount? Will it be a one-off payment or will it be like continuous receipts going forward?
Yeah, I'll take those. Yeah. Yeah. Regarding TapPay, the necessary application for the intellectual property rights registration has already been made. We've yet to hear because it usually takes a year or two for the final grant or a license, if approved, to come through. We have made that application on the intellectual property side for the TapPay application, the omnichannel and certain functionalities around it. On the second part, on the UPI, yes, the government had provisioned two years back, INR 3,150 crore, and then last year, INR 1,500 crore, which subsequently was increased to INR 2,400 crore for UPI and RuPay debit card benefits to be passed on to the ecosystem.
But, we are right now, we have not received anything from the banks, though we are talking with the banks through whom we process our UPI transactions. But the clarity still remains on, on the way and the methodology, how NPCI is dispensing this on it. As and when we receive it, it will be a one-off payment for the transactions processed for the last 24 months or so. We have not booked it in our books, nor have we claimed it till now. But if and when, if it do happen, and if it, we assume that it might happen, if the banks with whom are parties on some of the benefits to us, then definitely we'll book it in the coming quarters.
Till now, we have not made any provisions or booked any of those profit in our, in our books.
Okay, sir. Sir, and what you said about Gen basically-
I request you to join back the queue because we have other participants waiting. Thank you. We have our next question from the line of Biju, an individual investor. Please go ahead.
Good evening, sir. I have one question. Actually, three years back, during 2020, our operating margin was around 20% with lesser revenue. Now, our revenue increased, but operating margin is hovering around 2%. So what we are doing to achieve 20% operating margin? Thank you.
Thanks. The mix between the, the payment business has scaled up... digital payments business. To give an example, you know, year-over-year also, it's scaling up to almost 70%-80%. As we scale up our business, you know, you will see, you know, changes to operating margins. We have been talking about net take rates there as a barometer, which will help us improve our operating margins. If you look at our net take rates, last quarter it was 8.2, 2.5 basis points. Which means that, you know, you know, on a like-to-like comparison this quarter, you know, we went from 8.2 or 8.25 basis points to almost 9.3 basis points.
We've given guidance that we'll increase it to double digit, you know, through a series of activities that we believe can potentially help us scale it up in this competitive environment. International, of course, is much bigger take rates, and so, you know, part of the argument is how do we scale up international as well? So you will see that with scale, you will have, you know, some good pressure in operating margins, a mix of business as it builds up, that will have an impact to the operating margin. We are actually focused more on absolute cash and not just percentages alone. So if you ask us internally, I think we look at what is the absolute cash generation in the business. And, percentages are important and we want to, you know, perhaps get some operating leverage.
But see, in a competitive world like this, you know, you know, for all practical purposes, we don't work like a monopoly. We have a lot of competitors in the space, and, in terms of size and scale, if there are number one, number two, three in India, we'll be one of them. So, we think that, you know, as far as our business is concerned, let's focus on the absolute cash generation and not just percentages, while we keep on working on the operating metrics that will help us improve our margins. Okay, I hope that answers your question.
Could we achieve that level around one year, within one year or so, around 15%-20%?
We will give you guidance. We've given guidance for this year, we'll give you the guidance for next year.
Just a second small question is, when will the demerger will happen, sir? 60, down-
We filed for the demerger, so we expect to hear back, you know, from the regulators. But, you know, as soon as we hear back, we will update you on the same.
Okay. As I said, we are waiting, our EPS will be increased because it's now below one, so we are hoping that it will increase above one.
Sure. No, we'll work hard for that. Thank you.
Okay. Thank you. Thank you.
Thank you. We have a follow-up question from the line of Ayushi Shah, an individual investor. Please go ahead.
Yes, sir. So basically, what you said about GeM, about deciding whether we want to like, you know, continue focusing on our existing clients or take up new opportunities, is there, like, a conflict of interest, like, can we not use our IP for other commercial customers if you're using it for the government or in marketplace? Or is it... You know, I want to understand a bit more about that.
Ayushi, it's very clear that, you know, whatever marketplace framework that we have provided is intellectual property, which belongs to Infibeam Avenues. So if that clarifies your question, I think our stand is clear.
All right. No, basically, I wanted to understand whether it impacts, like, the new customers that we are onboarding.
No, it's the intellectual property belongs, the base intellectual property of what we have and the one that we are providing to many clients, you know, that continues to stay with us. Whatever we build for the client, which is bespoke or derivative work in some ways, will belong to the client. So as far as the dissection is concerned, it's clear. I don't see any reason why it would have an impact on what we do with other clients.
All right. Sir, what is the reason behind the reduction in current investment from INR 37.5 crores to INR 2 crores? Hello?
That's a liquid investment. Could you elaborate on that, Ayushi, please? What exactly you're trying to understand?
So basically, like, whereas this, whereas these funds being redirected, like, if you're reducing those investments, and it's a substantial decrease, right? From INR 37.5 crore to INR 2 crore. So I wanted to understand the nature of those investments. And, sir, like-
Sumi, Sumi this side. The investment that you're talking about, the 37, say INR 37.5 crore versus INR 2 crore-
Yeah.
That is our current investment. That is, we have invested in the liquid investment. And the actual amount of investment is non-current investment. It is INR 423 crore last year and INR 442 crore this year.
All right. And so basically, the proceeds from Vybe that we got recently, where will that exactly be used? Will it be used for the new AI, basically the Sintex plant that we acquired, is it over there?
Yeah. Some portions will be used for building out of the AI ecosystem. Fortunately, we do have good cash flows, you know, so we build out international and, and building up of the AI ecosystem. We'll also be deploying some capital in terms of express settlement. So we believe that there is also an opportunity to explore further, and we'll continue making those allocations based on what the returns, potentially end up looking like.
Also the acquisition, the INR 1 billion that we spent on this particular acquisition of property, will that be, like, under the IT, ITES policy, that the paper support that we are getting will be, you know, whether we did this or again, that way?
Yeah, that's the perspective I provided in the call earlier, which is, now we will look at the potential of, you know, the IT, ITES. Gujarat government has built up quite a bit of opportunities for us, for IT companies to be able to locate and build up business here. So we'll certainly look at that.
All right, sir. That was really, really helpful. Thank you so much.
Thank you. I would now like to hand over the call to the management for closing comments. Over to you, sir.
Thank you all for joining our second quarter, half year earnings call, and look forward to keeping in touch with you and keeping you updated on the progress. Happy Diwali to everyone in advance.
Thank you. On behalf of Go India Advisors, that concludes this conference. Thank you for joining us, and you may now disconnect your lines.