AvenuesAI Limited (BOM:539807)
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Q4 21/22

May 9, 2022

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, good day and welcome to the Q4 FY 2022 earnings conference call of Infibeam Avenues Limited, 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 now hand the conference over to Mr. Rajat Gupta from Go India Advisors. Thank you and over to you, Mr. Gupta.

Rajat Gupta
Equity Research Analyst and Associate VP, Go India Advisors

Yeah. Thank you, Margaret. Good afternoon, everybody, and welcome to Infibeam Avenues Limited earnings call to discuss the Q4 FY 2022 results. We have on the call with us Mr. Vishal Mehta, managing director, Mr. Vishwas Patel, executive director, Mr. Sunil Bhagat, Chief Financial Officer, Mr. Purvesh Parekh, head investor relations, and Mr. B. Ravi, strategic advisor. 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 risks that the company faces. May 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.

Vishal Mehta
Chairman and Managing Director, Infinibeam Avenues

Thank you, Rajat. Good evening, everybody, and welcome to the call to discuss Infibeam Avenues Q4 FY 2022 as well as the full year performance. We are embarking on this call on a very sad note professionally. We've lost our colleague and our Group President, Mr. R. Srikanth, and his wife yesterday, early Saturday morning, Sunday, in a very unfortunate event. It's come as a very shocking incident to the entire Infibeam Avenues family. Srikanth was a fantastic professional, and he had made significant contributions which had a very deep impact on our organization. He was very instrumental in leading some of our large mega business deals and was always at the forefront of dealing with market participants. Most of you on the call today must have frequently interacted with him. We stand by Srikanth and his wife's family in this time of immense grief.

He will always be missed and fondly remembered. As a mark of respect, we'll take a 30-second pause. Om Shanti. Coming back to our earnings during the quarter gone by, I trust that all of you had the opportunity to run through the earnings presentation, which was shared earlier today. This has been a very landmark year for us, and we are very happy to announce that we've achieved significant milestones this year. Before I discuss the financial performance in detail, I would like to update you about a few business initiatives. In Q4 2022, we acquired a technology company called Uvik, which was into contactless payment space. The technology Uvik brings is transformative, which will enhance the payment experience both for merchants as well as consumers. It will also convert any smartphone into a payment terminal.

We are extremely excited about this acquisition as we believe it can change the digital payments as we know today by making traditional CapEx-heavy and high service point of sale machines redundant by allowing merchants to simply download the app, do the digital KYC quickly and start accepting payments in various ways. Currently, we are the only company in Asia certified for PIN on Glass technology. We have successfully completed the integration of Uvik with Infibeam Avenues payment gateway CCAvenue. We have now branded it as CCAvenue TapPay. We launched TrustAvenue in the last quarter of 2022. A very smart and intelligent marketplace platform with rich analytical data of over millions of merchants that can be used by lenders to expand the lending base.

TrustAvenue will also enable merchants to discount bills and get working capital loans, which would have been difficult for them earlier, as lenders would have lesser credit history or visibility to underwrite such loans for merchants. As we are all aware, despite significant growth in digital payments, the Indian market is hugely underpenetrated, with more than 70% unbanked and underserved population. Looking at this huge opportunity, we along with our consortium partners, have applied for the NUE license to set up a pan-India NUE focused on retail payment systems. This will help us to develop, own, and operate a new cross-border retail payment network. We are awaiting RBI's nod on the new umbrella entity license. RBI in February clarified that NUE plan is on and it is just delayed. We are also expecting RBI to give licenses to payment companies for running a digital payment business in India.

Made mandatory by RBI under the Payment and Settlement Systems Act. Licensing will ensure customer safety and ensure legal payment transactions. The Government e-Marketplace or GeM has achieved a significant milestone last year by crossing INR 1 lakh crore in GMV in FY 2022 and targeting an even higher GMV in FY 2023 with the integration of Indian Railways, public works and other initiatives to bring more business on GeM portal to enhance transparency, efficiency as well as savings. On the international business front, I'm also very happy to report that our international business is doing extremely well, and we are on a run rate of processing AED 8 billion annually from just AED 2.8 billion in FY 2021. We've been able to scale up this business with an extremely lean workforce.

We're extremely happy with the growth prospects in UAE, which is now meaningful, meaningfully contributing to our PAT despite being 5% of our India payment size. Further, we are launching in Saudi Arabia and USA as well as in this financial year we are evaluating other international locations for subsequent launch as well. We have created a unique and differentiated payment business, one that we are very happy about, and we have presented it in the opening slide under company overview section, which I would request Vishwas to briefly discuss. Vishwas, over to you.

Vishwas Patel
Executive Director, Infinibeam Avenues

Hi, thank you everyone for being on the call. I'll just take you through quickly. If you can refer to the company overview section in the earnings presentation. Infibeam Avenues Limited has been, you know, evolved as a payment infrastructure company. It's providing a seamless and a holistic digital payment solution to accelerate its growth.

Operator

Sorry to interrupt you, Mr. Vishwas Patel. I would request you to come a bit closer to the phone. Your voice is slightly muffled.

Vishwas Patel
Executive Director, Infinibeam Avenues

Okay. I'll move from this thing. Past investment in developing digital payment infrastructure has, you know, started fructifying and delivering growth for Infibeam Avenues Limited after the pandemic triggered digitalization of the economies. For decades, Infibeam Avenues Limited has built its digital infrastructure, and currently the company is comfortably poised to capitalize on its digital infrastructure, be it payments, platform and finance. The differential factor in our infrastructure, which we have embedded our digital infrastructure through our white labeling of our digital products, and have given it to the banks like HDFC Bank, ICICI Bank, Kotak Bank, Mashreq Bank, JP Morgan and others. Similarly, JioMart and GeM, the government e-marketplace platform are built on the Infibeam's digital infrastructure platforms.

The company has also given a lending infrastructure platform, TrustAvenue, wherein banks, lenders and merchants can come together on the same platform and do the lending transactions. Infibeam Avenues is also expected to build a UPI-like infrastructure in the NUE licenses if it is awarded to a consortium. The digital infrastructures become an inseparable and indispensable part of any bank, financial institutions, or e-commerce players once it gets embedded into their systems. Thus, with a long-term perspective and Infibeam Avenues has invested and developed its digital infrastructure, which has now started fructifying and delivering continuous growth quarter-over-quarter, especially after the advent of the pandemic and the aggressive adaptation of the digitization in the country and globally. I will now ask Mr. Sunil Bhagat, our Chief Financial Officer, to touch upon the financial and the operational performance. Over to you, Sunil.

Sunil Bhagat
CFO, Infinibeam Avenues

Thank you, Vishwas. Good evening, everyone. Will quickly take you through the financial performance. FY 2022 was the strongest year in Infibeam Avenues' history. We are now at an all-inclusive run rate of INR 3.7 lakh crores, or we can say $49 billion from a TPV of INR 1.4 lakh crore in FY 2021. For quarter four 2022, consolidated gross revenue that we reported were up by 84% year-on-year, down 7% quarter-on-quarter at an INR 369 crore. Within this gross revenue, payment gross revenue is a function of business and payment method mix, which impacts the gross take rate. Higher contribution from fixed fee or low take rate.

Businesses like utility, education, insurance, et cetera, and higher contribution from low take rate payment methods like debit options compared to credit options reduces the gross take rate and hence gross revenue. However, our net revenues were up 15% year-over-year and 9% quarter-over-quarter, and has been growing across all the four quarters of FY 2022. This is on account of gradual improvement in business front from COVID impacted sectors and now improved payment mix also. For FY 2022, our payment method mix was approximately 45% credit cards, including BNPL, approximately 5% UPI, and the remaining were debit cards, wallets, net banking, et cetera. Lower UPI and a mix of bill payments, hospitality payments, express settlement and infrastructure services are the contributing to this increase. Bill payments created a highest record ever.

Bill payments TPV for full year was INR 10,170 crore, up 4x year-over-year. Volumes touched 85 million. This is also up 3x year-over-year. Gross margin in this business is approximately 40%, which is in teens two years ago, just before COVID. Lending update. For FY 2022, company did INR 4,240 crores of extra settlement. We are at an annualized run rate of around $800 million based on quarter four 2022 run rate versus $100 million run rate in quarter four 2021. Separately, during the quarter and FY 2022, the company has provided for the impact of changes in the fair value in case of investment in equity instruments. The net impact of changes in fair value, gain or net loss is disclosed under the head other comprehensive income. This is one of the, h as no bearing on the existing business and margins.

Also, the company has reversed the excess income tax provisions of earlier years and recognized the deferred tax liability on difference in tax base on goodwill and different deferred tax assets on unabsorbed depreciation under the income tax law. The impact of remeasurement of deferred tax on above is accounted in quarter four 2022 and FY 2022. Accordingly, previous period's tax expenses are not comparable. We are focused on creating superior shareholder value, and our quarter four 2022 based ROE on the stand-alone business, excluding investments, is more than 20%. We are now confident to generate good returns through new business initiatives. With this, I will now hand over the call to Vishal sir.

Vishal Mehta
Chairman and Managing Director, Infinibeam Avenues

Thank you. There is a huge headway to grow in our country in digital payments, and there is also a huge opportunity with this kind of innovations that we are building upon. We are gonna continue to innovate, to grow, and to increase our relevance to merchants and banks and continue to create value across digital payments. As our business model has started stabilizing and delivering results, we are now confident of sharing outlook and guidance for the coming year. For FY 2023, we are targeting to achieve the following. We expect to process INR 4 lakh crores in FY 2023. We will be at a run rate at the end of FY 2023 at INR 5 lakh crores. We are targeting 9%-10% market share of digital payments, excluding UPI in India, from current 8%.

Vishwas Patel
Executive Director, Infinibeam Avenues

Gross revenue is expected to be in the range of INR 1,600-INR 1,700 crore. The higher range of gross revenue considers faster than expected growth in new business initiatives like lending. We expect EBITDA in the range of INR 170-INR 190 crore and a profit after tax in the range of INR 110-INR 120 crore. I will now hand over the floor to the moderator for questions and answers. Thank you.

Operator

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 the touchtone 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. Anyone who would like to ask a question, please press star and one at this time. Ladies and gentlemen, we will wait for a moment while the question queue assembles. The first question is from the line of Shrishti from Wellwin Consulting. Please go ahead.

Speaker 15

Yeah. Hi, sir. Thanks for the opportunity. My first question would be: How do you see the payment processing companies losing out on the overall revenues by their shift in merchant payments towards low-yielding form factors such as UPI, and that is coupled with rising competitive intensity across payment modes, which is driving the overall payment fees to be lower across the ecosystem? First is that, and second would be on the broader side of international business. Given that India is a massive opportunity in itself in terms of digital space, what's the rationale of going global and entering more geographies given that there might be competition as well, and how much growth we can expect coming from those markets in medium to long term?

Vishwas Patel
Executive Director, Infinibeam Avenues

Okay. This is Vishwas here. I'll take these questions. First question was on the digital mix of the transactions, right? UPI accounts for 5% of our overall payments that happen on our system, so 95% is through the other options that are there. We have 200+ payment options. There are credit cards, there are debit cards and net banking. There are wallets, and there's a good NDR on, and that reflects in the overall gross revenue and the net revenue increases that we have.

Second thing is on the UPI and on RuPay debit card, there is a plowback from the government also coming in, around INR 1,300 crore a year is a plowback that has been sanctioned by the Finance Ministry to plowback to the players, mainly the banks and us. Those earnings will continue. If you see on a very macro picture, today, digitization is only 21% of our economy. There's a huge headway of 79%, which still needs to be digitized, right?

The market and the merchant growth that comes in. Those kind of a digitization effort, today, when we are looking at so many other payment mechanism, any type of commerce where payment has to be made, product or service delivered and payment made, we need to get in there. So be it via a student paying to his tuition teacher or a tuition teacher going to a kirana to buy something for that money, or the kirana paying that distributor for the goods. So the whole ecosystem needs to be digitized. There's a huge headway, and, I think only four or five focused players like us are looking at that trillion-dollar opportunity here. So there's money to be made on every transaction that is there and, lots of payment options.

India has the highest number of payment options. With this overall ecosystem, you see that we are adding 8,000 new merchants every day, right? There's gonna be a growth in the digital transactions. We are still fighting against the INR 29 lakh crores of cash that is there in the market and a huge scope for to go after this thing. With this and adding more and more merchants, we are making them digital. We are making them credible and giving them a lot of access to our other related services, you know, platforms and finance coming ahead. That's the whole ecosystem, APIA. As far as going international is concerned, there's a newer. As you know, India leads the world in the payment technology that is there.

In multiple markets that are there, we've been 20 years focused, sole focus has been the Indian market. Over the last couple of years, we have seen that the technology that we have evolved is much better even than, say, United States of America or many others, right? When we went and tried it out in a test market like the UAE with a population of around 8-9 million people, and still we can do in 2-3 years around 8 billion AED worth of processing. The kind of technologies that we have built here, those are easy pickings that is there, and we needed to have a global market, and it's good earnings, good, this thing. Similarly, that's the whole effort of then going into a tech infrastructure to banks in Oman or now launching in Saudi.

Today, in a board approval, we have taken for a subsidiary in Australia. We already launched a subsidiary in the U.S. With the new form factors like Tap & Pay and everything, which is a very transformative technology in the payments which will work across the world, right? Anybody right now, instead of putting a INR 12,000 point of sale terminal and then training the merchant, battery problems and giving them printer rolls to print those cash slips, here is a very simple system where you can just download the CCAvenue app on your Android phone. You might be in a village somewhere in Mizoram or Odisha, and as a kirana shop owner, you can just download the app on your Android phone and start accepting payments, cards from credit cards, debit cards, RuPay debit cards from your customers across the counter.

This transformative technology really inspires us to not only focus in India but go around the world where we can be a dominating force. That's the whole proposition. I hope I am able to answer this properly.

Speaker 15

Yeah. Okay. Thank you so much, sir, for the detailed explanation, and I'll come back in the queue.

Vishwas Patel
Executive Director, Infinibeam Avenues

Okay. Thank you.

Operator

Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, you may press star and one to ask a question. The next question is from the line of Sanjay Awatramani from Envision Capital. Please go ahead.

Sanjay Awatramani
Analyst, Envision Capital

Yeah. Good evening and, thank you for giving me this opportunity. For FY 2023, you mentioned that EBITDA to be in the range of INR 170 crore-INR 190 crore and, PAT to be INR 110 crore-INR 120 crore. Is this understanding correct?

Vishwas Patel
Executive Director, Infinibeam Avenues

That is correct.

Sanjay Awatramani
Analyst, Envision Capital

Okay, sir. Next is, sir, you said that you are adding 8,000 new merchants daily which are signing up. The transaction charges are like per transaction basis. What will be these per transaction charges? I mean, will this be vendor pay or the customer pay? How is this transaction going on exactly? If you can help me with this.

Vishwas Patel
Executive Director, Infinibeam Avenues

This is Vishwas here. I'll take this part of the question.

Sanjay Awatramani
Analyst, Envision Capital

Yeah.

Vishwas Patel
Executive Director, Infinibeam Avenues

Basically, the MDR is charged by us on the merchants who accept the payments. Say tomorrow, you go to a Shoppers Stop outlet and you are giving your Visa credit card, right? Buying something for say, an INR 100 shirt, right? Or something like that, T-shirt. What happens is that the next day the settlement goes for a credit card, the average charge is around 1.8%. What that means is that, Shoppers Stop will receive 98.2%. The consumer is not charged anything. You pay INR 100 through a credit card and you get INR 100 worth of value, be it at a kirana store or at a Shoppers Stop, right? The MDR is borne by the merchant. We charge the merchant.

There are, as I said earlier in the earlier question, we have 200 different options with the different price points. The most expensive are the credit cards for a merchant, which is at around 1.8%. Then comes net banking. Net banking is something where, you know, on our checkout page in our website, you'll say, "I want to pay through my HDFC Bank net banking." So it goes to the HDFC Bank page and where you put your net banking login and do the transactions. Those are little cheaper. Wallets have different price points. Different wallets have different price points. RuPay debit cards come under the RBI, this thing. So they go from 0.45% to 0.5%, Mastercard Visa debit cards and others. So all have different price points. So no price is the same.

In credit cards also, American Express is traditionally higher than a Mastercard Visa. These MDRs are borne by the merchants. Is it clear?

Sanjay Awatramani
Analyst, Envision Capital

Yes, sir. This is very helpful. One more additional thing that you said that you are planning to expand in Australia and in the U.S. as well. Is there any major CapEx involved or you are going through the acquisitions or just an expansion phase? I mean, how is this. I mean, you're moving ahead.

Vishwas Patel
Executive Director, Infinibeam Avenues

Most of the technologies, as I said earlier, most of the technology is already built out, right? When we go to UAE, let's take UAE as an example, as a smaller example, right? Where we are doing AED 8 billion a year now. But even if you're going to UAE, if you go on Emirates, you will find CCAvenue PG there. If you're booking a ticket to go to the top of Burj Khalifa, you will find CCAvenue there and so many delivery. The logic here is that if you see a business model, we have doubled our TPV year-on-year. Like, this year if we have reached our TPV to around INR 85,500 crores in Q4, right?

We have almost doubled from year-on-year. Last year, this year our TPV is INR 2.82 lakh crore, right? It is a 100% jump. If you see the total number of resources, the trained people we have, it is 600 people that we service the entire India platform payments, the business in UAE, in Oman, in Saudi. These kind of scalable you will find only in this IT businesses that we are. Our CCAvenue payment gateway is built-in. What we have to do is locally go into any country, tie up with a local acquiring bank and start transacting, right? We just need to put up. Today in UAE there are only 8 people who look after our marketing and local language support.

That's the kind of business model which scales so fast, and there's good business. That's the place where we are.

Vishal Mehta
Chairman and Managing Director, Infinibeam Avenues

To add to this, what Vishwas said, this is Vishal here. Our internal bias is always to build and not to buy. We keep on evaluating opportunities. You had a question about M&A. We keep on evaluating opportunities from time to time, and if you find that it's accretive and it's helpful, then we would pursue them. Yeah, I mean, there won't be any major CapEx. We will forward invest somewhat in each of these regions.

B. Ravi
Strategic Advisor, Infinibeam Avenues

This is B. Ravi here. If I can come in for 30 seconds. This actually is because the entire infrastructure is already in place. It's only a little bit of local support and local employment that is needed. The infrastructure works for itself and therefore it's almost like, you know, annuity kind of a thing wherever we can go.

Sanjay Awatramani
Analyst, Envision Capital

Okay. This was very helpful, sir. Some more questions if I can squeeze in. If you can share me the current market share you're holding domestic and global, and who can be our exact competitors or if you say the players which are into the same business, if you can help me with that.

Vishal Mehta
Chairman and Managing Director, Infinibeam Avenues

This is Vishal here. Basically, if you look at the payment aggregation space, there are a few companies who may compete with us. You know, you may have heard of the name BillDesk, which has now been acquired by PayU, you know, where we compete for merchants. You would have also heard of, you know, companies like say Razorpay, and they typically work in the payment aggregation space. The one place where we are somewhat differentiated is that we work in not just doing an aggregation, but we also provide payment infrastructure to banks. In other words, if you go in our prior calls, we have talked about working with the likes of, say for example, Kotak Bank. Kotak also, if you take a payment gateway, it'll be through us.

Same thing with many of the B2B solutions of HDFC Bank, Mashreq Bank, and many others. If you look at the slides that we have sent out, in specific, you know, there is a slide on payment infrastructure which I would recommend, which is slide number six. In slide number six and seven, you'll find quite a bit about what we do, specifically slide number seven, where we provide payment as an infrastructure solution. Globally, if you look into companies, there is a company called Stripe, which is based in the U.S. Stripe offers payment infrastructure as a solution and not just aggregation. You can imagine that we are somewhat modeled around those with our own nuances. That is landscape in terms of the payment setup is concerned.

Earlier in the call I also mentioned that, you know, in terms of the market share, you know, excluding UPI, because UPI has, you know, a lot of transactions happening on P2P. If you exclude UPI, currently we believe our market segment share is about 8%, and we will attempt to go this year in FY 2023 from 8% to 9%-10%. Based on that projections, we have come up with our own estimates in terms of how we will look for budgeting this year.

Sanjay Awatramani
Analyst, Envision Capital

This was very helpful and thank you for all the answers. Good luck, sir.

Vishwas Patel
Executive Director, Infinibeam Avenues

Just to add on to this one what Vishal said, right? Multiple platforms and multiple competitors. Payments platform, if we exclude UPI, we are at around 8% going to 10%-12%. But if you see BillAvenue, which is the utility payments platform, one of the platforms that is there. On the biller side we have a 90% market share. Even on the volume, we do more than 10,000, INR 170 crore on the bill payments part which has grown almost 4x from last year. There are multiple platforms and multiple businesses. Platforms and businesses you'll have to deep dive in the presentation. If you have more queries, then let us know.

Sanjay Awatramani
Analyst, Envision Capital

Okay. Sir, I mean, as you mentioned that this is the share. I know that we are not a payment bank, but all these Google Pay and WhatsApp Pay will be into the payment banks, right? We are just

Vishwas Patel
Executive Director, Infinibeam Avenues

No, no.

Sanjay Awatramani
Analyst, Envision Capital

merchants who provide an infra.

Vishwas Patel
Executive Director, Infinibeam Avenues

We are a payment.

Sanjay Awatramani
Analyst, Envision Capital

Yeah, yeah.

Vishwas Patel
Executive Director, Infinibeam Avenues

We are a payment aggregator.

Sanjay Awatramani
Analyst, Envision Capital

Yeah.

Vishwas Patel
Executive Director, Infinibeam Avenues

If you look at the macros part, we are payment aggregators. We look on the top part that is where we focus on the merchants and the banks.

Sanjay Awatramani
Analyst, Envision Capital

Okay.

Vishwas Patel
Executive Director, Infinibeam Avenues

Google Pay and others are intermediaries of UPI who provide services to consumers.

Sanjay Awatramani
Analyst, Envision Capital

Yeah.

Vishwas Patel
Executive Director, Infinibeam Avenues

Right? It's a different line of business. Cross-sell them other services like insurance, brokerage, blah, blah. All those other stuff that is where we have business models. They look at the consumer side of giving that and then giving them consumer loans, giving them rail ticket, everything, all cross-sell other services. That's their model. We are focused on the merchants and the banks. Any fintech earns from three players. One is the merchants, other is the banks, and third is the consumers. We are focused on the merchants and the banks. They are focused on the consumers.

Operator

Thank you. I would request Mr. Awatramani to rejoin the queue for follow-up questions. The next question is from the line of Priya Harwani from Perpetuity Ventures LLP. Please go ahead.

Priya Harwani
Analyst, Perpetuity Ventures LLP

Hello.

Operator

Yes, ma'am. Please go ahead.

Priya Harwani
Analyst, Perpetuity Ventures LLP

My first question is on government e-Marketplace license, which is about to expire soon. Sir, do you see any competitors bidding for the same, or do you expect to hold this position for the next term too?

Vishwas Patel
Executive Director, Infinibeam Avenues

If you recollect, we had taken up this project in 2017.

Priya Harwani
Analyst, Perpetuity Ventures LLP

Yeah.

Vishwas Patel
Executive Director, Infinibeam Avenues

We've been on this project for the last 4.5 years. We have built out this system. It's very elaborate. In other words, you know, there is significant amount of work that has happened. You know, last year alone, Government e-Marketplace, they clocked more than ₹1 lakh crore in terms of total transaction volume. This year it's expected to even be higher. To give you a sense, I think in terms of technology and infrastructure, there is significant amount of you know, complexities that are involved in terms of build-out, and we've been able to design, build, implement, and manage it for the past several years.

To answer your question about renewals, we expect that, you know, there's always a process that is followed, in terms of, you know, the government, you know, RFPs. Given the scale and complexity, you know, we're hopeful that, you know, we'd be able to continue with the build-up going forward.

Priya Harwani
Analyst, Perpetuity Ventures LLP

Okay.

Vishwas Patel
Executive Director, Infinibeam Avenues

I think, you know, there are provisions in that that give you extension before you again invite new, you know, bids. You know, as soon as we have more announcement on that, we'll share with you.

Priya Harwani
Analyst, Perpetuity Ventures LLP

Okay. Thank you so much. One next question on the NUE plan. What's the current status of that and when do you think that RBI will announce the winners for this?

Vishwas Patel
Executive Director, Infinibeam Avenues

Okay. Vishwas here. RBI has been pretty busy with lot of applications on different licenses. I know for a fact that now the payment aggregator licenses are being rolled out and there are other digital banks and NUE and all in the pipeline. Right now we have no particular guidance as to the timelines in which RBI and since lot of consortiums have put in a lot of effort to build it and the whole idea was well thought of. We expect that they should pick up soon. The governor was asked, he said the word soon. Let's see how and when RBI comes in. We have no insights into that to comment on that.

Priya Harwani
Analyst, Perpetuity Ventures LLP

Okay. This is helpful. Thank you so much.

Vishwas Patel
Executive Director, Infinibeam Avenues

Yep.

Operator

Thank you. The next question is from the line of Sri Karthik from Investec. Please go ahead.

Sri Karthik Velamakanni
Analyst, Investec

Yeah. Hi, sir. Thank you for the opportunity.

Operator

Sorry, Karthik, may I request you to speak on the handset mode? Your audio is not very clear. There's an echo. I believe you are on speaker.

Sri Karthik Velamakanni
Analyst, Investec

Is this better?

Operator

If you can come closer to the phone and on handset, I think it will be great. You may proceed with the question.

Sri Karthik Velamakanni
Analyst, Investec

Actually, I'm using handset now, so I'll just ask my questions quickly. My first question, sir, is our net take for the quarter has shown an improvement on a YOY basis. I wanted to understand two things. One, is it largely because of the spend mix? And two, are we starting to see any reduction in competitive intensity by some of the private equity funded players, given what we're seeing in the funding market? So that's my first question. Second, when we look at our market share of 8% and you're hoping it to improve to 10%, I'm trying to understand within the larger ecosystem.

Who are the players who've actually been losing market share within the payment space? Those are my two questions.

Vishal Mehta
Chairman and Managing Director, Infinibeam Avenues

Thanks. I'll take the first question, you know, in terms of competitive intensity and, you know, what you raised in terms of, you know, the take rates. We don't expect the competitive intensity to reduce at all. In fact, the way we plan for things is to assume and be slightly paranoid about intensity actually increasing with the funded players. If you look at our past history also, there have been a lot of companies being funded. This is not a new phenomenon for us. We've lived this world for the last five years, where there's humongous amounts of capital which is coming in, many of these companies, and there's a lot of promotions and activities and marketing to try and see if they're able to capture.

You know, with whatever we have, we've focused in terms of ensuring that, you know, we are able to keep on building up in spite of these kinds of intensities, and, you know, continue to build out our relationships, have that, you know, discipline of being able to, you know, work on our plans and, you know, build out, you know, a very strong and defensible tech framework and an infrastructure framework and, you know, continue to create more stickiness with our merchants. So I think, you know, from that perspective, yeah, we don't expect the intensity to reduce at all. In fact, we expect that it should continue, and it may, even, you know, get into more and more, you know, competitiveness. But for that we shall be prepared.

That is, you know, fully. You know, the question in terms of, you know, the take rates, yeah, we have seen that many of the merchants who were slightly, you know, shy after COVID have picked up. The mix is one of the reasons why we've seen an improvement in terms of, you know, the quarter. We think that as and when, you know, we add the quality of merchants and continue to build up, you know, we are not optimizing for the mix. We are more optimizing in terms of, how do we actually create more stickiness and how do we add, you know, more and more merchants, and how do we create our payment infrastructure to become more defensible as we go forward.

That is what we obsess on, you know, not as much of a mix. It's reasonable to assume that the mix will change and update, you know, as, you know, the volumes keep on building up. In terms of payment gateway, and you mentioned that who is losing versus, you know, who is not. I think that, you know, if you look at the Indian ecosystem, we think that we are in the top three, for sure. You know, many of the companies in this payment gateway space and aggregation space in India are unlisted, and so there are a lot of numbers out there. What we report in terms of our processing volume is the ones where we have successfully processed the transaction and not attempted a transaction.

While there may be different practices out there across the industry in the unlisted space, it's very hard to compare, you know, apples to apples, given that the definition may have a different connotation when it comes to unlisted players. In terms of, you know, market segment share, we believe that, you know, there's just recently been a horizontal acquisition, whereby PayU acquired BillDesk. The perspective that we carry is that the number 3 guy in the industry bought the number 1 guy. We still maintain our position as 2. Like I said, I think, you know, as you know different folks in terms of transaction volume, we expect that, you know, there's

Certainly I won't have an exact answer for you on who would be losing market segment share. I'm sure that, you know, there are other payment gateway aggregators also who are out there who may be in the business and, you know. But like I said, in terms of the profitable transaction volume and processing volume, we are definitely out there, for sure.

Sri Karthik Velamakanni
Analyst, Investec

Useful. Thank you so much.

Operator

Thank you. The next question is from the line of Aayushi Shah, an individual analyst. Before we take the next question, I would like to remind participants, you may press star and one to ask a question. Aayushi Shah, an individual analyst, please go ahead with your question.

Aayushi Shah
Individual Investor, Private Investor

Hi, sir. Sir, congratulations on a great set of numbers. My question was that, according to me, like, the business model of Infibeam has been highly underappreciated, and most people have historically not understood it well. I believe this has been, like, a reason for the lack of stock price appreciation as well as, like, major investor interest in the company. Sir, what could be done and, like, what is the management planning on introducing? Like, is the management planning on introducing any means which could mitigate this information gap and create value for the company? Sir, in the last earnings call, you had stated that the company was planning on aggressively marketing to reach its TPV target of $100 billion from the then $44 billion run rate.

Sir, what kind of efforts has the company undertaken in order to achieve this target?

Vishal Mehta
Chairman and Managing Director, Infinibeam Avenues

Sure. You know, in terms of your first question, you see. I think the second one I'll take first. We are committed to achieving a TPV of $100 billion. We are already at a $49 billion run rate, and we expect that we'll continue building up. So far all of our transactions have been online transactions, which means that you have either a web application or a mobile app application. We have a take rate on each of these transactions. You know, we are not in the offline point of sale world at all. We've always focused on online. While online has a huge growth potential, we'll continue focusing on that.

In the offline world with this acquisition of Uvik that we have made, and Vishwas talking about a potential app that converts a phone into a point of sale machine, rather than you as a merchant spending INR tens of thousands and with a printer roll and all the ink cartridges and all of that to be able to support transactions, you can potentially just make every mobile phone a POS machine. With that, not only can the large merchants accept point of sale digital transactions, but even the smallest merchant can do it. You know, the argument is that there is a QR code for small merchants. Well, guess what? The QR code doesn't have credit.

Fundamentally, if you are able to build out an application with the technology that we have that accepts not just QR code alone, but also credit, debit card, all different card types and practically every payment instrument, which is potentially out there, then it becomes a very defensible proposition which we call Tap & Pay, which we are planning to launch. Through those launches, we will expect to have a lot more merchants come down and download the application and utilize it. We've already done a pilot test run, and it is there live right now across 5,900 locations. We think that, you know, in the next few weeks we will want to actually talk more about it, so that it becomes very attractive for merchants to be able to try this out.

Through that we will try to build out more and more, you know, visibility. In terms of your first question, we will of course have certain events. We will try to reach out to more and more, you know, merchants as well as, you know, in some ways investors as well to talk about this model. The first question about, you know, what I mean, how do we actually bring more visibility of our business and business models? I think, you know, we will, you know, the best thing that we've realized is to work with the right set of agencies that talk about and that allow us opportunities where we discuss and talk about what we do.

You know, that is where we start. We've already made certain headways there. We are going to talk about what we do and not necessarily sell and convince, which has been our philosophy. We expect that, and we hope that we will be speaking to more and more, you know, potential investors and talking to them about what we do. Yes, the company has plans to try and see if we are able to get the right investors through execution, not optics. We'll continue to focus on execution as we go through.

Aayushi Shah
Individual Investor, Private Investor

That does answer my question. Sir, just like a follow-up question on the QR code part of things. Sir, are we concentrating on the rural market then, especially for offering them like lending services and basically what was previously met by informal credit?

Vishal Mehta
Chairman and Managing Director, Infinibeam Avenues

Vishwas here. Okay, I'll take this question. We are not looking at only QR code. Look, if you see, understand the technology of Tap & Pay, right? It is transformative and can be used by anyone, not any merchant, also by anyone to collect any kind of payment. It's just not tapping a credit card or a debit card at the back of your phone, but it also has instantly when you're collecting a payment, you put in on a calculator, say I wanna collect INR 125. There are three options on top. Either it is just a Tap & Pay of a credit card, debit card, or there is a QR code specific to the merchant or transaction, which you can just display to the other guy to scan the QR code how it is happening now.

It is a payment link where you can just send a link over WhatsApp and SMS to collect it. Particularly, all 200+ options across multiple instances. This is a very transformative technology which bypasses the entire POS terminal, the QR code and everything, right? It's on a mobile phone of any merchant, any seller. Like if you're in a hotel and you are checking out, the guy who comes to see whether you have taken anything from the room can just ask you, "This is the bill. Please tap on my phone and close." You don't have to go to the reception counter and check out also. It's a very transformative. It bypasses every kind of a POS terminal or a QR code and everything, payment links, everything.

Aayushi Shah
Individual Investor, Private Investor

Okay, sir. Thank you so much for the comprehensive answers.

Vishal Mehta
Chairman and Managing Director, Infinibeam Avenues

Thank you.

Operator

Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, you may press star and one to ask a question. We would also request participants to use handset mode while asking your question. Thank you. The next question is from the line of Amresh Kumar from Geosphere Capital. Please go ahead.

Amresh Kumar
Designated Partner and Analyst, Geosphere Capital Management

Sir, I want to ask a very basic question. When I go to websites to pay my utility bill for some other bills, I see your CCAvenue, and I see other options like BillDesk and Razorpay, et cetera. These merchants or these websites, how easy is it for them to integrate, say, other payment mechanisms like UPI, et cetera, along with yours?

Vishwas Patel
Executive Director, Infinibeam Avenues

Hello. Okay. Vishwas here.

Amresh Kumar
Designated Partner and Analyst, Geosphere Capital Management

Yep.

Vishwas Patel
Executive Director, Infinibeam Avenues

Basically, it's up to the utility to integrate how many PGs they want, right? We can't control that. Ours is an offering based on certain functionalities that we can offer.

Amresh Kumar
Designated Partner and Analyst, Geosphere Capital Management

Okay.

Vishwas Patel
Executive Director, Infinibeam Avenues

Having said that, if they, you see CCAvenue and so many, then there is an alternative bill payment that is BillAvenue that we have. That is. That works on the same concept, where you don't need to go to the biller website. We are getting the entire feed in one thing of all utilities that we have onboarded, or all utilities onboarded and can give it into any interface. Like, you go to a bank interface or you go to, say, a Vakrangee outlet in any small shop across a station in any part of the country. Right? Those kind of services are also there. It works on multiple ways.

As far as it's up to the biller, once they put it through our systems into the BBPS network or integrate multiple PGs on their own website, it is the biller's choice. The integration, it all depends on their tech team. Our integration is very simple. When we say we onboard around 8,000 merchants a day, so our pretty much integration is just like a copy-paste into our system, and they can instantly go live on our payment system. We do one-hour activation and the integration is pretty simple.

Amresh Kumar
Designated Partner and Analyst, Geosphere Capital Management

Okay. Another question on this point only. Nobody's asking this time that net take rates are going down. I mean, actually, they have gone up in your case on a quarter-over-quarter basis. Can we assume that this trend of declining net take rates is over, or will we still see that phase coming back?

Vishwas Patel
Executive Director, Infinibeam Avenues

No, the net take rates, Vishwas here. The net take rates will keep improving. Look, most of those during this pandemic, look, utilities and other transactions went through the roof, education, utility. Now, those mostly take rates are in a flat fee. So say if someone is paying 2 lakh INR, the rate for a typical this thing is only 5 INR or 6 INR per transaction. But in a credit card or something, you're paying 1.8% or 1.9% of a 2 lakh INR, right? So that's why the take rate keeps going down during the pandemic due because of the utility and education going through the roof. All the main other businesses which are on credit, debit, acceptance friendly, like the travel, hospitality, all those were down.

Now if you see why the take rates are increasing, except for the small blip of COVID again in January, February and in March, all the transactions came back. You see all this IndiGo, we power 22 airlines, right? We power all these entertainment came back. We power almost like 2,000+ hotels. All those transactions started coming in, which is more credit card, debit card, and more on a percentage basis take rates, right? That's why you're seeing that the take rates are coming back.

Amresh Kumar
Designated Partner and Analyst, Geosphere Capital Management

Okay.

Vishwas Patel
Executive Director, Infinibeam Avenues

That's the whole reason. I think in the next quarter also you'll see take rates improving further.

Amresh Kumar
Designated Partner and Analyst, Geosphere Capital Management

Got it, sir. Yeah. Got it. Understood. Thank you.

Operator

Thank you. The next question is from the line of Gunmeen Kohli from KRChoksey Shares & Securities. Please go ahead.

Gunmeen Kohli
Analyst, KRChoksey Shares & Securities

Yeah. Thanks for the opportunity. This offline tap-through app system, which you just spoke about, this will be offered exclusively to the current merchants and new merchants, or will you be looking to monetize the same by offering it to, you know, other payment enablers? That's the first question. Secondly, you know, can you run us through the unit economics of this and how similar will it be to the current, you know, POS ecosystem?

Vishwas Patel
Executive Director, Infinibeam Avenues

Okay. I'll take this. Vishwas here. Basically, as I said, if you are a merchant in any village or town or in a city or anywhere, right? You just go to the App Store, the Android App Store or this thing and just download CCAvenue TapPay, right? That is the app that is there. What that enables is that then as a merchant, just 2-3 minutes online onboarding with the eKYC and e-signing everything, and then you become a merchant live. Now, it's a very easy, simple to use. What we say that we have made it a very idiot-proof kind of a solution that even the villager at the very ground level should be very easy to understand.

If you're putting in an amount, say INR 500, it's like a calculator, right? You just enter all the options of TapPay and everything. What does the POS terminal do? POS terminal also does the same thing, right? The POS terminal, you have to swipe the card or do a contactless card and just do the transaction. QR code also is there, the QR code is displayed on a sticker. Inside it will be displayed on this TapPay phone only, where any potential customer can just scan it and do the transaction. The unit economics is almost zero. From a INR 12,000 POS terminal that are deployed by the likes of Pine Labs and many others in the market that is there today, this is a solution that can massively penetrate.

Today, the acquiring side is suffering in India because that's why when you go to villages and towns, you don't find POS terminals in these kirana shops and others right. Where it makes all the benefit for them to, you know, start accepting cards and other things because there is zero taxation for the level of business that is there and this thing. That penetration down to their ground level is not happening. You see many salaried guys at the end of the month going to an ATM, withdrawing cash, and then trying to do a transaction in these villages and towns. The thing is that how do we grow the acquiring base? This is the kind of a unique economics that you just download our app and start acquiring. Hope it's clear.

Gunmeen Kohli
Analyst, KRChoksey Shares & Securities

Pretty much. So, you know, another part of this question was, what would be the percentage of every transaction Infibeam would be keeping, and how is it different from POS, from the current POS ecosystem? You know, my first question, again, if you are looking to monetize it by offering it to other payment aggregators as well.

Vishwas Patel
Executive Director, Infinibeam Avenues

Look, as far as the monetization is concerned, look, the current take rates, whatever that is there in the offline world is the same. It is just the cost of the deployments and everything that comes down. If you are paying, say, 1.8% on a POS terminal, as a merchant, you are paying for a credit card, a Mastercard Visa credit card, then the TapPay also you'll be paying something similar or a little less, right? Because it is a customer presence scenario. Overall, said and done, that is there the unit economics and the earnings and the take rate will remain the same. The cost to the merchant will remain the same. Only thing is the cost of deployment, which is a major factor of putting a 12,000 terminal, servicing it at the end.

India is a huge country. You want to service a small villager in Manipur, right? It becomes very difficult with local language and other support and other things. Here it is something which the phone lines are so well spread out, 1 billion+ SIM cards in the country, right? In every village and town with the connectivity and data. Very simple, just download an app and you can start accepting. The unique economics, the cost is of the deployment, training the charge slip cost and others which you are saving. The end percentage of charging remains the same for the merchant. Our profitability should improve in a Tap & Pay kind of a scenario.

Vishal Mehta
Chairman and Managing Director, Infinibeam Avenues

To add to just what Vishwas said, you need an INR 4,000 Android phone. You know, anyone who has a smartphone, Android smartphone, which is INR 4,000 or higher, will have all the functionality and features that are required for Tap & Pay to work.

Gunmeen Kohli
Analyst, KRChoksey Shares & Securities

Got it. We will be exclusively offering this to our merchants. We don't have any plans to go out to other payment aggregators offer this as an API for them.

Vishwas Patel
Executive Director, Infinibeam Avenues

Vishwas here. The idea here is definitely we have a huge merchant network sellers within CCAvenue, within GeM sellers, within many. The whole ecosystem that is there. You add a new technology and you add a new system and that whole ecosystem on the other side, all the banks relationship and the other side, all these 5 million-plus merchants and the new merchants, they're able to tap instantly with all the KYC agreement done. The first choice is, yes, definitely, we are gonna explore it with this thing, with our, within our merchant base. Like, say, in hospitality, we have Taj Hotels, Oberoi Hotels & Resorts, ITC Hotels, Lemon Tree Hotels, and 2,000 other hotels.

How do we give this kind of a solution to them where, you know, they can have instead. Right now they have 3 or 4 terminals on their checkout counter. They can have 18 and 20 where they can collect it in a swimming pool or in your room or everywhere. That's the kind of penetration with this kind of cost because there is no POS device cost and other things. First, definitely we'll be monetizing within our systems. Our bank partnerships also, we'll be working with some of our banks on both modes, because ultimately even our CCAvenue merchant, we are acquiring transactions in the back end through a bank. Working with that bank, with their network and our network will also be on the plans.

As I said, this is a transformative, revolutionary technology which will transform the current way of offline business. We are taking it international also. Multiple monetization plans are there. You'll see the results in the coming quarters.

Gunmeen Kohli
Analyst, KRChoksey Shares & Securities

Thank you. That was quite comprehensive. Good luck.

Operator

Thank you. The next question is from the line of Anil Nahata, an individual investor. Please go ahead.

Anil Nahata
Individual Investor, Private Investor

Yeah. Thanks a lot. My first question is that I am seeing in Q4 as well as in the projections that the revenues are not being able to keep pace with the increase in the TPV and with the positive take rate, basically. Is this something that is going southwards on the platform businesses other than the payment business?

Vishal Mehta
Chairman and Managing Director, Infinibeam Avenues

As far as the payment business is concerned, Anil, the take rates have improved in Q4 compared to what Q3 was. Right? You know, as you know, in terms of the platform business as well, you know, we've actually given segmental results. If you look at the segment-wise comparison in our results for Q4, you would see that in FY 2022, in March 31st, which is the last quarter. Out of the INR 369 crores, INR 327 crores came from our payment business in the last quarter. Through that, if you look at the processing charge, you'll be able to come up with a take rate on that. Right?

There is a difference between, you know, what we would earn out of a GeM transaction as GeM transaction is built out as well, which we have communicated in the past. You'll be able to get a perspective in terms of what the differential is between the two.

Anil Nahata
Individual Investor, Private Investor

No, no, I appreciate that. I think maybe my question was not clear. See, I am saying on one hand, like for example, in the projection also that the TPV is going to be nearly 50% increment from this year to the next year, right? However, the gross margins or the gross revenue or the EBITDA kind of levels, we are seeing an increase of 30%. So where is this delta of 20% coming in? Actually, I would think that if TPV is increasing at 50% and the net take rate is on a positive direction, the revenue actually and the EBITDA should be like on an even bigger thing with the operating operational leverage and everything else. Why is there not keeping pace with that?

Vishal Mehta
Chairman and Managing Director, Infinibeam Avenues

That's a good question. What we have looked at is that when we want to get into the offline business, that there will be some forward investment that we will make in terms of people costs as well. If you look at the businesses that have evolved in the offline world, the likes of Justdial and many others, that they've essentially forward invested in terms of the penetration. Even if it sounds very easy, we do not want to assume that it is gonna be easy for someone to just download an app and start working.

Anil Nahata
Individual Investor, Private Investor

Mm-hmm.

Vishal Mehta
Chairman and Managing Director, Infinibeam Avenues

We will have, you know, a set of people who will assist in terms of the initial, you know, say, one-day training, if you will. There is a chance that we may work through affiliate networks as well, and incentivize them to be able to penetrate. Vishwas talked about working with banks and bank network. For all the banks who have terminals and terminals that are end of life, you know, are we able to offer the opportunity to them as well to be able to give it into their network. We have accounted for, and you know, like I said, we've done a pilot with more than 5,000 different implementations. We've got a very good insight in terms of what that could potentially look like and how do we incentivize the entire channel.

Based on that, yes, you are right that we have built in that as part of our projection.

Anil Nahata
Individual Investor, Private Investor

Mm-hmm.

Vishal Mehta
Chairman and Managing Director, Infinibeam Avenues

You know, we think that that's a fair way and a reasonable way to be able to think about what the next year for us would look like. You know, there is a chance that, you know, we are able to get a huge penetration from our own internal merchant base also for the same technology, but that would not be additional merchant. That would be the same merchant base.

Anil Nahata
Individual Investor, Private Investor

Mm-hmm.

Vishal Mehta
Chairman and Managing Director, Infinibeam Avenues

The pivot that we are working on is how do we keep on increasing the merchant base. As we go through other channels, we'll increase the merchant base. For the merchants who are already using us, we have our own merchant base. Going after the additional merchant base is where we expect that there will be some spends. We will also spend on marketing and being able to reach out. There was an earlier question around the visibility front, and we will spend that capital in terms of reaching out to the right set of audiences.

Anil Nahata
Individual Investor, Private Investor

Yeah. Thanks for that. The second question I have is in a couple of other things that we sort of announced last quarter, and one of them was TrustAvenue and one of them was also the kind of launch into Qatar, I believe. Where are we on that, and what kind of revenues you believe we can see in the FY 2022-2023? Or what kind of like traction we can see? Revenues are different, but what kind of traction we are expecting on those two things?

Vishal Mehta
Chairman and Managing Director, Infinibeam Avenues

TrustAvenue is the platform that allows any merchant to avail loans and whether it is a small-sized merchant or a large-sized merchant. A company like us who processes payments for merchants have certain advantages because we have real-time visibility in terms of how much they process, not just the CIBIL score and the GST returns. We have a lot more data about the merchant in terms of what is happening on a real-time basis. There is a version which is called straight-through processing, which is called STP. What that means is that if you are a merchant who has been processing with us for the last several months, then based on that, it is much easier to come up with a credit score and a credit requirement for you.

Anil Nahata
Individual Investor, Private Investor

Mm-hmm.

Vishal Mehta
Chairman and Managing Director, Infinibeam Avenues

You know, we are offering it as a platform for all the merchants who are there on CCAvenue and then potentially opening it up to merchants also where we are a platform provider. You know, so to answer your question, we think that, you know, there are two avenues that we are focused on as far as lending or financing is concerned. One is where we say we are going to do express settlement. In terms of express settlement, we are at a run rate of $800 million.

Anil Nahata
Individual Investor, Private Investor

Mm-hmm.

Vishal Mehta
Chairman and Managing Director, Infinibeam Avenues

Which means that when a merchant processes payment through us, we give them money after 2 days to 5 days as per RBI norms. We opened up something called express settlement, where we give the money the same day. It is the same day. If you pay MakeMyTrip, for example, we give you the same day. We give the merchant the same day, the money. We will discount that. You know, fundamentally what that means is that we settle it faster, and that allows us to open up a channel because there is no cost of collection. That is one place that we think is an interesting one we built up upon.

You know, given that the merchant base will keep on improving and increasing, and as we process more transactions, that our appetite to do that because it is, you know, in our opinion a more zero-risk lending.

Anil Nahata
Individual Investor, Private Investor

Right.

Vishal Mehta
Chairman and Managing Director, Infinibeam Avenues

In that, we will continue building up and you know the cost of capital is you know very low single-digit basis points, and we are able to monetize on that. I think you know right now, like I said, we are doing $800 million. We will end up doing more this year. That's one place, and that will scale up with the business because you can understand the flywheel. More merchants, more processing, more opportunity to do extra settlement. That's one place we'll do. The second place, like I said, is that we need to, because we sit on platforms that have merchants, and CCAvenue being one of them as well, you know, we think of this as an opportunity to reach out to all of them.

Merchants across different platforms will have different requirements. Some will have requirements of SME loans, and others will have requirements of bill discounting of orders as well as bill discounting of invoice. Those are two different concepts. We think that if we are able to offer that, there is a good chance of a 50 to 100 bps margin for a company like us to be able to facilitate such transactions. We think that we are in the business of making merchants. We use the acronym internally called DCB. It is making them digital, making them credible, because when you make them digital, that's when they become credible. With credibility will open up bankability. You know, we are in the business of making merchants digital, credible and bankable.

That will summarize quite a bit of what we think we want to do with the TrustAvenue platform. We have not segmented exactly what, out of our projections, what numbers we will deliver out of TrustAvenue in the financing business. If you look at, you know, the earlier comment that I made, you know, we gave a revenue expectation of INR 1,600-INR 1,700 crores.

Anil Nahata
Individual Investor, Private Investor

Mm-hmm.

Vishal Mehta
Chairman and Managing Director, Infinibeam Avenues

The higher range of the gross revenue is expected because of the new businesses like lending. Facilitation of lending.

Anil Nahata
Individual Investor, Private Investor

Got it. Thank you so much.

Vishal Mehta
Chairman and Managing Director, Infinibeam Avenues

Yeah. Thank you.

Operator

Thank you. We'll take one last question, which is from the line of Hitesh Panara, an individual investor. Please go ahead.

Hitesh Panara
Individual Investor, Private Investor

My question is to Mr. Sunil Bhagat, CFO of the company. In the consolidated financial statement, it is mentioned that net change in the fair value of investment in equity instrument. Can you just explain the nature of that entry or that what kind of is this? What is the meaning of that net change in the fair value of investment in equity instrument? Because it's a loss of INR 72 crore. What is that?

Sunil Bhagat
CFO, Infinibeam Avenues

Sure, sure. This is the company. See, the company has invested in certain companies, whether it is listed companies as well as the private companies. These are the companies in which as at March 31, we are supposed to provide the impact of mark to market. This is nothing but the mark to market impact of changes in the fair value of investment, like Suvidhaa Infoserve. Major part consisting of our investment in Suvidhaa Infoserve, where the cost which was booked in the books of accounts, which is much lower than the realizable value in the books of accounts. That is the reason we have provided. This is nothing but the changes in the fair value estimate. It may be positive in the next quarter also.

Hitesh Panara
Individual Investor, Private Investor

It's not a net loss for the shareholders of the company because whatever INR 84 crore of profit after tax.

Sunil Bhagat
CFO, Infinibeam Avenues

It is not a net loss to the shareholders. It is a provision for the changes in the fair value of the investments.

Hitesh Panara
Individual Investor, Private Investor

One more question is that, why our EBITDA's growth is only 2% year-on-year? Because, you know, net revenue is at INR 1,293 crores, and compared to last year, it was only INR 600 crores. Then also EBITDA's growth in EBITDA is only 2%. Can you just explain that, whatever, like, company is getting revenue more and more year-on-year, then also EBITDA is, the growth in EBITDA is only 2%. Why is that?

Vishal Mehta
Chairman and Managing Director, Infinibeam Avenues

This is Vishal here. I'll take that question only because it's slightly strategic. See, as a company, we've made a call that we are going to increase our market segment share, and we are not going to take up transactions where we lose money. But wherever we are slightly positive, neutral and make money, we'll continue building up from there. You know, I think that is part of our conscious call to be able to build up a larger base of merchants and a larger base of transactions in larger volumes. You know, while we are, you know, optimizing our business, we also want to be conscious of the fact that, you know, we should keep on building out the base of the merchant and the transaction volume.

As I talked to you about this earlier, that financing is a very important portion of what you can monetize on and one can monetize on, and we'll continue building upon that. It's a conscious strategic call. We are not just optimizing on EBITDA, we are optimizing on stickiness, on merchant growth in terms of you know the number of merchants. We are optimizing on the transaction volume. One thing I can tell you is that we are not going to add or keep on adding transactions anywhere we are losing money. We've not done that for so many years and will not do it today and will not do it in the future.

Hitesh Panara
Individual Investor, Private Investor

Just my only very small one question is that in the financial year 2021, our gross revenue was INR 676 crore, right? Net revenue was INR 233 crore. Now in the FY 2022, our gross revenue is INR 1,293 crore, but net revenue is only INR 259 crore. That's why EBITDA is only INR 145 crore. In compared to last in FY 2021, it was 142. Now let's say in FY 2023, as you said, like your business or more like our provision is for 190 EBITDA compared to revenue of INR 1,700 or INR 1,800 crore.

Now, is it possible that down the line, 5 years or 4 years down the line, our EBITDA growth is around 15%-10% in whatever kind of model we have in our company instead of 2% or 3%?

Vishal Mehta
Chairman and Managing Director, Infinibeam Avenues

Technology is evolving. We are investing. Like I said, Mancubec is just one place that we've invested. You know, one thing we know is that it is gonna be a competitive market. In a competitive market, we will continue to build out our own differentiators. To answer your question, in terms of growth of EBITDA, it's really about optimizing for the long term. We want to continuously optimize while being very conscious about what we are building out today for the next 18 months. We have to have two lenses while we are building out our future. One is what are we projecting for the next 18 months to 24 months, and then what do we require as a business so that we remain super competitive and work on some transformative technologies going forward.

While I may not have an exact answer for you, but what I can tell you is that based on the initiatives that we have picked up, we feel very confident about what we are building out today, for the future. You know, I think the growth. Like I said, we're not just optimizing on a specific number, but we will continually update you in terms of any changes to the EBITDA margins that we expect to see going forward. Right now, it looks fairly positive to us. You know, we have budgeted for all the activities that we are planning for this year. Should there be any updates and changes, we will definitely keep on communicating that to you.

Hitesh Panara
Individual Investor, Private Investor

As far as revenue is concerned, what is the approximate revenue we earn from the GeM platform particularly? Is it a profitable business? Because, you know, like, whatever the kind of e-commerce platform we have, we can give this e-commerce platform software to any big company also, like GeM also, GeM platform also. These two big projects are very successful. What is the, like, approximate revenue? I'm not looking for the perfect figure, but approximate revenue from the GeM platform.

Vishal Mehta
Chairman and Managing Director, Infinibeam Avenues

We don't segment the revenue. We don't segment it by client. We report it as part of our software platform revenue, so we don't have a segmentation for you. In the past, we had communicated well that we earn single digit basis points between 5-10 basis points on transactions, you know, for the framework. You know, that's all I can tell you in terms of the direction. You know, it's a. You're right. It's a phenomenal platform, one that we feel very proud to be associated with and partner with, because it solves a purpose for the government, being the removal of, you know, bringing a lot of transparency in the entire procurement cycle and being able to deliver on savings.

I think that it's. You will see that in the prior years, GeM has done very well the last year compared to other years. Whatever is required, it. Like I said, it's a platform with a purpose for us to actually build up upon. We'll look at it that way. I know I'm not answering your question specifically on the revenues that we get from a client, but directionally I can tell you that we earn between 5 and 10 basis points on each of the transactions of GeM. In GeM, you can see the transaction volume on the site in terms of statistics.

Operator

Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, due to time constraints, that was the last question for today. I now hand the conference over to the management for closing comments.

Vishal Mehta
Chairman and Managing Director, Infinibeam Avenues

Thank you everyone for joining our Q4 and full year FY 2022 conference call. We, on behalf of management, appreciate your participation and look forward to keeping in touch with you, as we build out the business. Thank you all.

Operator

Thank you. On behalf of Go India Advisors, that concludes this conference. Thank you for joining us, and you may now disconnect your lines.

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