Gentlemen, good day. Welcome to the IRIS Business Services Limited Q4 FY 2023 earnings conference call. As a reminder, the participant lines will be in listen-only mode. 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. S. Swaminathan. Thank you. Over to you, sir.
Thank you. We have with us today my colleague, Balu, who is CEO of the company, we have Deepta, and we have Thomas. Thank you very much for joining the call. We made our filings with the Bombay Stock Exchange and National Stock Exchange. We basically have made the filings with the BSE, you see that where you can download our filings, we also issue a press release, which also should have been filed by now with the stock exchanges. That will summarize the reasons of our performance. I think on the whole, we are quite happy with what we've achieved in the last one year. We are happy for the increase in revenues, we are happy for the profitability, we are for the improvement in profitability.
We're also happy for the financial situation we are in. Before we go any further in terms of providing an overview, Balu will just do that, and then we can take questions after that. We're going to leave as much time as possible to take questions. To start with, over to you, Balu.
Thank you, Swaminathan. Glad to meet all of you once again after, I hope, six months. I hope that, you know, some of you at least might have seen the investor presentation that we did upload on the exchange websites at around 4:00 PM . I would dwell on the highlights of the financial year, FY 2023. Of course, we can have a question and answer session. Let me now quickly run through the highlights of the financial performance for the year ending March 2023. Like in the previous meetings, I will dwell more on the movement of our annual numbers, because we have mentioned this in the past as well. The quarterly sprint might not really reflect the business dynamics, the underlying business dynamics.
Now, coming to the numbers per se, you will see that we moved pretty much in line with our nine-month trends for this 12-month period as well. Over the full year, our top line has moved up by around 11% compared to the corresponding period. Now, you should see this in the context of our overall trade growth trends over the past six years. We have been talking an average growth of 18%-20%. Except for FY 2022, when, you know, affected by the, you know, COVID pandemic and the poor demand conditions, we could only grow at about 8% in FY 2022 or FY 2021.
This year, you know, we have come back to our so-called regular growth trend, what all we have performed at this point, up to till now. You know, correspondingly, you know, with increasing growth, our profitability has improved as well, because this kind of business has a good degree of operating leverage. You will see, you know, our EBITDA moving up by as much as 38%. Of course, PBT and at a much higher levels on a proportionate basis. Going back to the, you know, P&L, while the revenue moved up by 21%, expenses, overall expenses increased, outside depreciation interest, moved up by 18% as well, within which employees costs moved up by around 17%.
The employees costs, you know, we have been, you know, spending a little more than what we were in the initial years. Of course, the tech environment, you know, was bit tight over the last two years since we're raising now. We have been investing to make sure that we get the right people. We both secure, we both get and retain the right people within the company. That process is on, and that has paid us, you know, a good dividend as well. I just also want to mention that from a five-six year time frame, right from the IPO days, our top line CAGR has been at around 18%, while the expense growth has been hovering between 11%-12%.
That we are maintaining this year as well on the whole. Let me look at the segmental revenues. You will see that happily, the Collect segment is strong back to the growth zone. We closed about 15% growth in revenues in the Collect segment, where we serve regulators with our regulatory platform, license and implementation offering. The Create segment, which has been the bulwark of the company, has continued its robust performance and has talked about 23.1% in terms of growth. On the whole, the annual recurring revenues also moved up by about 17%-18%, while the share of recurring revenue is at about 75%, a bit lower than 78% in the previous year.
That's because when the collect revenues start going up, there is a bit of one-time implementation revenues also coming in, which at times lowers the proportion of recurring revenues. If I look at the revenues for this year, for FY 2023, from a geographic perspective, I would say that our Indian revenues this year have dipped compared to the previous year. We are at about 38% this year, compared to about 45% the previous year. On the whole, revenues across all geographies have moved up. Maybe India, not so much, but other geographies, more than in India, more than, you know, with respect to the Indian growth.
Before I move further ahead, I just also want to mention in the context of the revenue growth, some of you might have noticed in our balance sheet, our receivable levels are little on the higher side for, I think, March three. I think we are about 64 odd crores, compared to 50 odd crores in the corresponding period. One reason has been that, you know, we did raise a couple of, you know, I would say, literally substantial invoices in the Collect segment in the month of March, because we did get a couple of wins, and there were, you know, invoices raised against those wins. Most of it, you know, money which was, you know, raised through invoices, that's coming to the company.
Now the receivable levels, so that, you know, the data levels are more or less at our, you know, normal numbers. That is another point I thought I'll mention in the context of our results. Now, another very important, you know, development this year has been, or I would say, the late into the financial year ending. We did win a couple of important orders in the Collect segment, due to which our order book has, you know, is much more robust compared to our previous numbers.
I would say that, you know, we are at a point where we need to execute well, and if you can do that, I could say that our revenue growth could enter into a new trajectory as well. That is a quick summary, and we can, of course, look at, you know, different aspects of the business as we, you know, get the questions into the, you know, context.
Thank you, Balu. Before we take any questions, there's one interesting little bit that you would have actually seen, or maybe you've seen. How is it that with the 20% growth in revenues, there's a fourfold increase in profits? That's where the magic of products lies. When you win these two contracts overseas from those central banks, and you license those products to them, and you book those revenues, it's the magic of the product revenue, where there's no corresponding increase in costs.
You license the product, because in all our implementations, the first thing that we do consistently is to first license the product to them, and get the payments for the license, and then start implementing the product at the on-prem implementation of the product begins as far as at the central bank. Whether it be the Bhutan Central Bank, it's called RMA, or whether it be the Central Bank in South Africa, which is called, let's say, RB, South African Bank. I think the licensing of the product and the building of the revenues against that is what happened in the last quarter, which is what led to the disproportionate increase in profitability for revenue. 20% increase in revenues and a fourfold jump in profitability. Obviously, I'm grateful.
The reason I'm stressing this is because many of us in the course of IT are used to looking at services companies, where often there's a linear relationship between the two, between the expenses and revenues. You have billable resources, which you bill out, which you. And that's how revenues actually grow, and that's not how this business actually grows. What it also means is that the increase in the revenues from Collect also means that if going forward in the next one year at least, if you're looking for quarter-on-quarter the growth, it will not necessarily be the right way of looking at things. You should look at the year as a whole, because that's how billing actually happens, and billing is based on certain milestones.
While the segment that we have called BH, where we sell IRIS CARBON, may lend itself more easily to a quarter-on-quarter comparison. In the case of Collect, it's more an annual comparison that's more appropriate. Keep that in mind going forward. The best way to compare is to basically say, you know, what happens during the year versus next year? It's an important way of looking at it. That's how we look at it within the company. I'm gonna go silent now and take any questions, because I'm sure there are things that you would have seen, which I have not seen, obviously, you want a lot of clarification going forward. Lisa is available to take questions. Tom is also available to take questions. Please, by all means, the floor is yours.
Thank you very much. We will now begin the question and answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may press star one on their touchtone telephone. If you wish to remove yourself from the question queue, you may press star 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. Reminder to the participants, anyone who wishes to ask a question may press star one at this time. The first question is from the line of Rohit, an individual investor. Please go ahead.
Thank you for the opportunity, and thank you for the presentation as well. It's exciting to see the numbers that the company has published this time around. I, it would be great if you can start with the Collect segment. I mean, we're carrying up to three years right now, particularly on the Bhutan and the South African deals. Could you share what is what you can share in all, I mean, keeping the competitive dynamics as well, on what is the tenure of the implementation of the deal? What is the size of the deal in revenues? How is revenues recognized? That would be great.
Sure. Balu, over to you.
Hi, Rohit. Individually, you know, contract. The size is difficult to divulge. Having said that, you know, I would say that the South African Reserve Bank implementation is much, much larger compared to the Bhutan implementation. Bhutan is typically our normal size. It is about, you know, $1 million-$2 million. That Bhutan implementation, which is a collection platform and analytics for the Reserve Bank of Bhutan, we plan to execute in a year's time. Actually, we could extend little bit if, you know, certain requirements don't come in in time. On the whole, I think that is our plan to execute that in about, let's say, 12months-18 months.
The second part, the second win, which is a risk of special win from the South African Reserve Bank, is a much larger project. Here, we are still in the contracting stage. We have a partner as well. That is going on. My current estimate is, this could be a three-year to four-year implementation in its entirety. Of course, there are different parts to the building, there is a license part where we, where we license out our iFile platform, along with our automated data, which software as well. There is an implementation for customization and implementing for every specific requirement. It's not completely supervisory, data collection.
This is a combination of supervisory and operating data collection. This I would say, you know, over the next, you know , three years-four years the revenues should be equally spread out. You know, there is a milestone-based revenue, of course, but there also, I'm hoping this contracting is not complete, so the pattern is not fully visible. I would say that broadly, you know, we could see, you know, it evening out over the next three years-four years' time. From a size perspective, the size of this contract would be, you know, I would say a multiple of what is there in Bhutan.
Rohit, part of the reason we're not being difficult with the numbers. Please appreciate one thing, we have a local partner as well. While we are working on this implementation here, and I can tell you what an iFile will actually cost and so on and so forth, the divvying up of the work between us and the local partner is still going on right now, and that's taking a bit of time. Which is the reason why it's difficult to come up with a precise estimate as to what the proportion for each of us would be going forward. There's a local partner who will be responsible for local implementation.
While it would have been easy if we had the local partner not doing very much, here, the local partner will actually be performing a substantial role in the whole implementation part. That's the reason why it becomes difficult to come up with a very precise estimate. But we have, we will. As I said, I think hopefully by the next quarter, by once it's signed, we will have a very good idea as to what the total share would be. Because what I certainly don't want to do is to give you a number, which I have to recalculate a quarter later, because the contract did not go in a certain way. The implementation is started. The iFile has already been licensed.
It's a deposit insurance system that the central bank wants to build out, and once it is done, it has applications across Africa and across the world. You know, in the context of the recent bank failures in America, the need for a product which looks at deposit insurance is huge. We're actually using it to use iFile to create a deposit insurance system. The value of this to us is basically goes beyond just the South African implementation, but the possibility of creating a product, a deposit insurance product for central banks globally. So that is the value. By next quarter, hopefully, I will give you a very precise answer, a much more precise answer. Actually, I'm not giving you an answer.
I'll give you an answer which is reasonably precise in terms of what our share of the total, the total thing would be. Secondly, you see, the nature of the contract here with SARB, is while we have won the contract on the basis of certain bids, once the discussion actually started, the scope of the work also started getting expanded to some extent. It's moving in one direction as opposed to another direction, which again, leads to a situation where precisely coming up with a number becomes difficult. Let me tell you, it's attractive and it's. If you- I mean, you know fully well, the typical contract, for example, is about INR a billion and a half in terms of implementation, as it is in the case of Bhutan.
This is like a four-year project, evenly, relatively evenly spread out, and therefore, the numbers will certainly be much, much higher than a single-year implementation. I hope I've answered you, answered the question to some extent, but as of now, that's the best I can do.
No, no, this is very, very helpful, and thank you for providing the overview to other as well. Effectively, a normal implementation like Bhutan is between INR 1 million-INR 2 million plus, that's including the license fee as well. Here, the total license and implementation amount would probably be much higher over fou years. That is helpful, and we, is that right, the conclusion that I drew from your answer?
Yes and no, but it's not that one year revenue will be spread over four years, but it would be revenues of a similar order every year of four years.
Sure. So that was helpful, sir. I guess to follow up on this, if you could, like, what about connecting, are other regulators coming up with new centers, and how is the pipeline looking there?
There are about four or five regulators around the world who've actually gone down this path and have started expressing their interest in moving this direction. The answer is yes, and we have four or five proposals that are currently pending and which are being evaluated by the three countries. It's taking its own sweet time. I think some countries are making up for lost time and trying to move very fast. Some countries are moving at their own sweet pace. There is no uniformity in terms of the speed at which they actually move. We are also trying to evangelize and make certain things happen in certain countries. We're offering creative solutions.
As I said, I think the good news is, the flow of business which used to be there before COVID, has now reached the same stages before COVID. If earlier, and, you know,three,four,five countries would basically go in the direction before COVID, we are now reaching the stage where we can reasonably say that there will be three,four,five countries going in the direction post-COVID.
Okay, great. Like before, I mean, I'm not saying that we'll win everything, but will we see the four, five countries you're referring to this year? Will we see resolution to these tenders in this financial year, or do you think it will spill over? Just to see if we will win more Collect deals. That was a broad question in general.
We will win more Collect deals, and we're also looking at other markets, like in the U.S., as you know, the whole GHG reporting is moving in the direction, there is a need for a Collect product. There are increasing opportunities across the world, and we are as good, if not better than most of the others who are actually getting into it. Competition that we have as before, is from a preference that customers have for bespoke solutions. We need to surmount that. Therefore, we're also looking at building up more partnerships to be able to license iFile to people. We also have developed what I, for want of a better phrase, call it iFile in a box, which we actually airdrop into a country with some and with minimal implementation, get them started.
I don't know. We've not sold a single license of that. I don't know. If countries will have a very simple implementation, something like that can actually work. There are some creative solutions we're actually looking at to be able to get to speed very quickly. I think budget is still a constraint for many countries. I think the COVID has actually left many, many countries broke, and COVID actually cost a lot of financial distress across the world within governments. I think we have to be flexible in terms of pricing, and that's what we are. I'm reasonably confident that we will have a price create that's no inferior to what we used to have earlier.
Fair enough, sir. That was very helpful. just want to move to Create and, I mean, I think, given what happened in the last quarter, I just wanted to hear your thoughts on ChatGPT and just if a company can file in XBRL using the ChatGPT that is out there.
We did a little pilot a few days ago, and, you know, I think it offers possibilities. It offers tremendous possibilities. I think it's too early to basically expect ChatGPT to replace human intervention. I think it's too early to basically expect that everything can be automated. We are still playing with it, so maybe what I will do is Thomas, are you on the line? You can actually take that question, please.
He might be on the line.
Is Thomas there?
Try him.
Thank you. Should we move on to the next question?
One second, wait. Thomas, are you there? I know Thomas is there. We did a little pilot a few days ago, Roy, and what we actually found is that while it works about 85%-90% of the time, there is a 10% where it does not really work. When it comes to filing, you can't be 90% accurate, you have to be 100% right. I think it offers interesting possibilities. It does not mean that self-filing will start. It does not mean that companies won't need products. It just basically means that we have to tweak our products to offer a higher level of automation. I think if we do that, I think it's quite possible that tomorrow people might actually ask for a lower cost. We are well positioned for that.
I'm not terribly concerned about it, but it's an uncertain territory where the uncertainty is something that we need to go through. I don't know what the final answer will be. I'm hoping that we're running some pilots here. We're running some experiments within the company, we also have a team that's working on what does it basically mean? It means more automation. We have people in the company who are playing with it to see what the outcome could actually be. We are confident that the impact that it will have is not on losing a customer, but perhaps on price.
Understood. I'll get back into the future. I'll get all the details. Thank you.
Sure. Thank you. Anyway.
Thank you. Participants, to ask a question, you may press Star and one. We'll take the next question from the line of Prashant, an individual investor. Please go ahead.
Hi, thanks for this call. I had that ChatGPT on my mind just as well.
Prashant, we... The audio is not clear from your line. Request you if you can use the handset mode, please.
Is it better now?
Please go ahead.
Yeah. One thing is, what are we doing at cores? What are we doing in terms of filing, just like an extension of the previous question, to accelerate our, you know, the deals that come through, especially with a lot of change that's happening in the way everything being covered by ChatGPT? It's a mix of both questions that was trying to be getting covered in the previous question. how we plan to get it? Collect is doing well. How are we going to get it, you know, supply and Collect being everywhere? With reference to competitors also. If not, you made the statement, we are as good as them, if not better.
Yeah, we're ready to work on our pricing, but maybe more into the other range that we are trying to do to get the deal as quickly as possible. I also heard the statement at the beginning that we might get on a different growth trajectory. What are the strengths that we're trying to leverage on? What are the pluses that might work in our favor? How is this creative solution that is all about cloud or, I mean, automation, cloud, innovation, are different areas that I want to hear. I wanted to see, I'm asking you questions with the intention that either it grows with time, constrained what it has gone through. Some different perspectives that can give the strength to the investors to hold on and also think through.
I think we are going through different times now. Everywhere we hear strategy is going to change everything. Every day, everybody is looking at it. That's what I want to ask.
You know, there were a lot of questions in there, so I'll try to see how much of them I can answer with some reasonable degree of understanding. I think the way we look at the whole thing, and we had an internal assessment, what automation will actually do will not take away the need for your product. What automation will do is that the features of automation, the service of automation, have to be incorporated into the product. That's number one. Number two, what automation will do will also compel people to basically go out and create their own filings, which are more of an increasingly do-it-yourself situation as opposed to a service-oriented thing. Third, what automation will actually do is not to get rid of the domain expert.
The domain expert is still very required, and many of these automation depends on some kind of learning algorithms being built in, which may then lead to benefits to the customer in terms of productivity, enhancement, and so on, so forth, which is why I said part of the automation will lead to a pricing issue going forward. I don't think it will basically mean that people don't need a Carbon. I don't think it means that people will not need any of the other products we're actually using. It basically means that every product has to constantly keep abreast of technology, stay ahead of technology, and incorporate the technology that's meaningful in order to be able to deliver a customer experience that meets with the best in the current is available today.
As far as Collect is concerned, which is where we work with regulators. What does that mean? This is what we're talking about. We are talking about the context of the filer. In the context of the implement, the context of the regulator, what we believe in automation will actually do is it has to ultimately lead to productive efficiencies and regulatory efficiencies, oversight efficiencies, as far as the regulator is concerned. Where all will it play out? How will it play out? These are all questions that we need to ask.
When you look at embedding deep AI into regulatory environments, what we should try to do is to basically empower them in the regulatory even more, so we can ferret out problems before it happens and try and spot problems in the market before it actually happens. I think it's inevitable and imperative that every one of us in this space leverage these technologies and incorporate them in our respective products. I don't think the products will just be used in demand, and I think the products will basically need to be enhanced and be able to turbocharge these products with these tools, with these technological advances, to be able to stay relevant. I think Balu might want to add something here.
I just want to add that, you know, my sense is with automation coming in a big way, which I think is around the corner, the adoption across countries also would accelerate significantly. From a regulator perspective, more and more regulators would start looking at, you know, collecting structured data and through documents where, you know, they can convert the data into the structured format much more easily using a combination of information standards and this kind of automation tools, such as LLM models.
I think what Balu is also saying, Balu, correct me if I'm wrong. We're actually saying at the end of the day, that the complexity that often has been found wanting by regulators will actually go away with automation.
The regulators might feel more comfortable, you know, expanding the mandate across large and small companies. Now, they're doing in a much more gradual fashion.
What is the business that we are in? The business that we are in is basically delivering a solution that creates structured data for consumption by the regulator. That is still the basic premise. You use better automation to deliver better structured data, faster structured data, and structured data in more formats than otherwise. That's basically the answer. Thank you for a great question.
Yeah, thanks.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Rohit, an individual investor. Please go ahead.
Thank you for the follow-up. I just want to continue on to Create. One observation was that I think the first time in many quarters that you've seen a year-on-year decrease in the Create revenues as per the end quarter, the 40 numbers are concerned. I'm talking about the annual basis, but this quarter, revenue decline on a year-on-year basis, the Create numbers have come down. You just briefly allude to it that the India numbers went down. At least in the previous calls, my impression was that with all the things that are happening in the India frame, where we've been focused on the IRPs, we are doing e-invoicing, et cetera. I mean, the impression I had was that this is a geography which will grow rapidly in the years ahead.
If you could speak about that a little more, why it impacts us and what is happening in Create in terms of growth going forward?
I think one of the things that happened, which we actually mentioned even earlier, is the drop in the number of companies the clients are servicing in the U.K. market. There, for example, bulk of the customers, all the customers actually came through one partner, and that partner is increasingly deciding to take those things in-house. With that happening, I think more and more people are now moving away from the product. There's been a drop in the number of companies that we're actually servicing in the U.K. market. That's one very important factor. The second thing I want to mention in the context of IRP and all that, those revenues, it is starting off in a small way, and the basic IRP offering itself is free. It's the value-added stuff that we can actually charge for.
The generation, the e-invoice has to be provided for free because that's the condition of the license itself. We can offer value-added stuff, which I think will kick in over a 12, 24, 26 month period. I would not hold my breath to expect significant growth in terms of revenues on the GST front or the, or the e-invoice. The number of GSPs in the country has actually dropped, and that offers interesting possibilities. Some churn happening in the market, so that something will happen. The e-invoice impact, which will lead to offering of value-added offerings, whether it be in the form of credits and other things, you will see that happening over the next five months , 24 months, 36 months. Balu will add to what I've just said.
Yeah. On the question on the Indian revenues, I would be hasty to add that Indian revenues, you know, haven't hit the growth. The absolute increase is, the increase is small compared to other geographies. When you talked about the drop in Create revenues this quarter, I suspect it could be two reasons. One is that, in the IRIS CARBON segment from Europe, there are a few companies this year which could be filing in Q1 instead of Q4, because, you know, they're taking the time to do their, you know, their annual filings. This has shift from one quarter to another. Last year we had very disproportionate number of companies filing in Q4.
Secondly, last year we had some revenues coming from the e-invoice mandate, where there's a one-time component, and e-invoice mandate up to INR 10 crores was rolled out in, you know, March and April. There were some, you know, revenues coming in through that route, which is a one-time nature as well. These two could have played a role in the margin drop from a quarter-to-quarter point of view in the Create segment.
There's also a drop in the number of companies filing in South Africa. The number of companies currently mandated to file in South Africa has actually dropped, but we've got a bigger market share. Having said that, the mandate has shrunk to some extent. I think COVID led to some kind of rethinking in different countries in terms of who needs to file and so on, so forth. It's not very, very material. You know, we are so small as a company, it's not very material for us, but that's also been a factor that's led to some kind of rethinking of these things.
Okay, this was helpful. Just want to understand more on the U.K. bit. Like Tata of India, USP has always been that we provide high quality offering at a very low price, right? Which sounds like a very unbeatable combination. How is it that a U.K. player, through whom we were getting all these customers, how are they taking it in-house? Because I would have thought it would be more expensive for them.
It's obviously not a very low price at which we offer it. They would offer it at a much lower price. They're one of the big four, and I think they also have a center in India, which they probably are using to read the documents. They probably have spent some time developing a software of their own. It's not rocket science. It could be multiple factors. This company, one second, please. This company initially had multiple vendors, and they've been rationalizing the number of vendors, and they've come down to, I think, two, if I'm not mistaken. Deepta, you want to take that question in terms of the rationalization of the universe of vendors that this company was working with?
Actually, they came down to just one. Over the years, they had kind of, you know, they had started consolidating. They didn't see this entire, you know, the HMRC, IHT, DRN layer being as good as it possibly could be. You know, they had built their own team apart from working with several high vendors outside. Over time, they started kind of a consolidation strategy, this is really it just lined up with them, and we were the only ones. They are kind of, you know, not gonna focus too much on the business. They also have a team based out of India at this point.
They wanted to take whatever they want in-house, and therefore they started to transition from us as well.
I want to dismiss you of the notion that we are primarily competing as a low-cost provider. That's not the case.
No, no. I'm not saying we are a low-cost provider, but getting out of India with our costs, we have the ability to build very high quality products, at a price that will be difficult to match, while making enough profit for us. That's how I think of the offerings that our company provides.
This particular kind of customer of ours really had a presence in India. They had to actually take that contract. They didn't kind of, you know. Like I said, they weren't looking at business in this area, investing and growing the business in this particular area. They had the capacity to do that kind of over the years. Can you have on the math difference?
Okay. we use a partnership approach to bring customers in Europe and the U.S., right? I believe some sort of a similar risk played out with BFI and who we partnered with in case of the U.S. power industry. Is this partnership approach that we follow or does it have an inherent risk that the partners could take them in-house?
Uh-
Go ahead, Deepta. Go ahead.
Yeah, sure. Sure. In most cases, no. Because in most cases, the partners we have actually don't have the kind of like, you know, they don't have the... They, they don't offer or they don't have the capability to kind of offer XBRL, either as a solution or a service, in Europe or in the U.S.. In most cases, the answer is no. Also, our partner, also our partner network is also more diversified. In the case of the U.K., we had one partner, and that partner was kind of like Tony mentioned one of the partners, who was offering a service.
We had a certain amount of capacity and we were ramping up to the need of, you know, other people basically. I would say the U.K. case is kind of a little bit more of an exception than, you know, than what would expect from another partnership. In the U.S., I think you referred to, Rohit, kind of the energy and some partners over there. In that case, that was a partner who had, let's say, connects in the energy space, but had kind of aspiration to build solutions also. Most of our partners don't have such aspirations to build solutions at all, therefore, the partnership works.
We actually landed up transitioning or retaining almost all the customers, bar one. But we don't think this as a, as in, I mean, we don't know an incident of that across any of the other partners that we have. We have also some mix of partners across the U.S. as well.
Okay. Yeah.
Can I add to that one second, Rohit? I think there is. We are constantly living in paranoia about the possibility of losing customers because of these things. It can happen. you know, Deepta has her ideas closer to the ground than I do, but it's a question that keeps bothering me constantly. I think there are certain kinds of partners who believe that they should take it away and create capacities and do whatever. There are partners who don't believe it's worthwhile, worth their while to do it. I think this is why the entire strategy of ours, which is on partnering partners and staying as close to partners as possible, at the end of the day, and being nice to partners, they actually pay off. It's worked for us, but it's inevitable.
It's inevitable, we have to basically keep track of these things. Which is also why we have a blend of a strategy where we, even when we work with partners, we should have some kind of a direct connect to the customer, because the customer is the one who needs to make a decision in terms of which product to use. If the customer is the one making up his mind in terms of which product to use, a partner cannot disrupt that relationship.
Which is how, for example, in case of the energy market in the U.S., even though our local partner has had an aspiration to venture out on his own because he saw the market being much bigger, the customers, all of them, except for, I think, one or two, decided to stay with us because of the visibility of our team to that customer. I think building that visibility to the customer and saying, keeping the hook tight is where the approach to take to ensure that the customer stays loyal to you.
Okay. Now, if you could talk about growth and Create. We spoke briefly about Disclosure Management in the past and the ESG mandate and the expansion of the power industry mandate in the U.S. and bringing newer customers on the old PCC mandate, which has been existing for a long time from our competition out there. Could you speak about what are you excited about in terms of scaling up Create over the next two, three years?
Deepta, one more question for you.
Sure. Rohit has talked about all of them. In terms of the FERC mandate or the, you know, the energy sector FERC mandate, for example, you know, there is an element of timing, in the sense, you know, the mandate has to be officially announced. Date has to be set by the regulator. Of course, there's a lot of early marketing, pre-seeding, kind of engagement to get, you know, get your name out and even get some early pilots out and, you know, those kinds of things. There is definitely excitement about this.
Over there, however, a question of the timing, you know, when over the next few years or, you know, some years, which mandate will start kind of rolling out both in the U.S. and in Europe. With Disclosure Management also we are excited, and our Disclosure Management offering has been rolled out in the market, especially at the beginning of this year. We have already kind of enhanced, this is how we always, you know, get early customers, get feedback, do agile development, kind of, you know, enhance, build a roadmap, each service provider orders.
The advantage on the Disclosure Management side, this time, we already have an existing customer pool and a partner pool, we can basically, of course, build new, you know, customer and partner networks. Disclosure Management can actually go beyond mandates. It doesn't have to restrict only to file in XBRL, it can be anyone. We are excited about that. Actually, we have also, you know, kind of in earnest. We're super excited about all, you know, working to make our lives in all of these data. We are a large disclosure company.
One thing I must add to it is we already have about, I think, 50, 60 customers for our DM offering. This whole thing works on a freemium model, which basically means you offer it to the customer at a throwaway price or even free for a certain period of time, get them hooked onto it, and try and move them to a priced model going forward. With about 6,200 customers that we serve monthly, we see that as a catchment area. A lot of customers come to us for adjacent offerings. You know, for example, there are customers in India who come to us and said: "You know what? We're using a product for RMC filing. There are these new requirements on pay-related file transactions.
Do you have a module just for that? There are people who come and said, "Can you look at some of the modules for us?" There are adjacent products that people are willing to use, and once you win the trust of a customer with one core offering, the customers are willing to do more. The whole DM thing will actually work with multiple modules, where people can pick and choose which module they want to use, depending on what situation they're in. We see that as a huge possibility going forward.
The initial trial that we're running with about 50, 60 paying customers, not a lot of money, but paying, they're still paying customers, is actually huge in terms of learning for us and trying to deal with different sets of requirements from different sets of people. As you rightly said, you know, DM is going to be a very important thing for us in terms of going forward. Leaning on the 6,200 customers we have and offering it to them is where, is where our starting point is.
This is very interesting to hear. On the Disclosure Management, this reminds me of the semi model, I think you did it ESMA also. Just wanted to get a sense to confirm that we got the 50, 60 customers in the beginning of this year, they are at freemium model right now, which means the price increase will kick in from next year. Also just to get a sense of how the pricing for Disclosure Management product would be in comparison to the IRIS CARBON that we sell for the ESMA filing.
Sunny, you want me to talk about it?
Okay, sorry. I wanted to hear more about the Disclosure Management platform. It is in the sense of the ESMA offering that we did with IRIS CARBON, where we started with the first gift for a lot of the small customers and then started purchasing them. In that context, do you think the 50, 60 customers we have, the major revenue portion will start from next year onwards? Is this how it is working? What is the pricing of the Disclosure Management software versus the IRIS CARBON for ESMA filing? Is it comparable, is it higher, is it lower? It will be great to get it as well.
First of all, price discovery is still some time away. I don't think we have enough points to come up with a reasonable price discovery, algorithm, to figure out what people would be willing to pay for. We are in the process of getting those answers. I think we will be wiser over the next six months from a lot of people using it. The model that we're actually looking at following is to basically say, you have a basic product for which you pay a certain amount of money, and then for each additional module that you take, you pay a certain extra amount of money, and that's really the model we're gonna still follow. It will be comparable.
It will be comparable. It'll actually lead to increased revenues, because currently, IRIS CARBON does only one kind of filing for people. By adding more and more modules, we expect that the revenue per customer will actually go up significantly. We will charge separately for ESG, separately for RUC, separately for capital markets, separately for something else. That's the model we will follow. I think it will be comparable, if not, if not better.
Okay. Okay, understood. Understood. Okay, so this will not be sustainable for the IRIS CARBON offering. This will remain a separate offering, is that right?
look at IRIS CARBON offering as a module of DM.
Okay. Okay, good. Okay, IRIS CARBON will be a module under DM. Okay, understood.
This is why it is also called IRIS CARBON. DM is also called IRIS CARBON only.
Okay, understood. Understood. My last question, could you speak about U.S. in general, on the winning customers from the competition in terms of ESG filings and the muni opportunity which we have referred to in the last couple of annual reports, the municipal filing opportunity that was exciting that last one year-two years?
As far as the mini bond, mini opportunity is concerned, Deepta, you take the question. ESG filing, let me just tell you that, we've not even started attacking that market at this point in time, and, we need to start attacking that market. As you know, we're still not well-funded enough to be able to attack that market. We don't have the muscle to do that. We're working on a few creative ideas to figure out how to do that. As far as the municipal market is concerned, Two of my colleagues have been traveling extensively to the U.S. and talking to attending various conferences, and, we've already done pilots with about four different states. We get invited to all the states, so we are already visible as far as five,six states are concerned.
We're also working with XBRL US, which is the agency which is promoting this whole offering. There is resistance from with various states. Deepta, you want to take it forward and give a more detailed answer?
Sure, sure. Rohit, on the actual opportunity of the municipal, you know, state and municipal opportunity, we still remain excited. There is, like we mentioned in the past as well, this will roll out state by state. It's also kind of coming under this larger ambit of the Financial Data Transparency Act. Like everyone else in the, in the world of mandate, one has to basically manage to share amount with our clients, which happen ahead of time, whether it's, you know, outreach and marketing. As we have already mentioned, even in the past, that we have a U.S. team which IRIS CARBON is equal to-
When they then switch to the latest date, as Swamy mentioned, we have just had events, actually events in the U.S. right now, you know, where, government, you know, government-related, we have, you know, different state governments and municipalities have also come together. The marketing activity is going on. You know, the competition is going on. Early pilots are kind of being done, but much like in the case of the ESG opportunity, or, you know, or in the Fox issue, we're waiting for the official mandate to roll out. As said, we now know how the system works even before the early, kind of even before the early mandate roll out.
It's important to, you know, be there in the market space and start getting the name known and start doing the early pilots and so on. That's what's happening there. Just to add to what Swamy said, both on SEC and on the, you know, the muni market opportunity, the Disclosure Management module. If you think of IRIS CARBON now as IRIS CARBON Disclosure Management and IRIS CARBON XD added, right? With both of them kind of connected or independent, as the case may be. The Disclosure Management offering is also something that we can sell both to the muni market and, of course, to SEC filers as well.
You know, once we launch the Disclosure Management, the flavor for U.S. SEC reporting, we think, we think this will be an inflection point going deeper into the first-time US SEC, you know, the US SEC external market, right? We have been adding customers, but like Swamy said, the speed has been slower because the, it's, you know, it's a market that you need to see, you know, from other vendors, for example. Our offering certainly needs to have the Disclosure Management component specifically for the US market, for us to ramp it up. Once that comes in into the roadmap and that's available, we think that will be like a, like a point of jumping for the deeper into the SEC market as well.
One more data point I'll give you, Rohit, which is useful in the context of SEC filings, is most companies look at switching vendors only towards the end of the calendar year. When they need to prepare their annual report, the 10-K's, that's when Once they finish the 10-K's for the year, that's when they start switching vendors. By looking at the numbers in terms of companies switching, we actually find about 1,000 companies look for a new vendor every year. We are actually looking at the churn and saying, "Which of the churn can we actually bring in?" You know, fighting for a customer to replace an existing vendor is always more difficult than where there's a new mandate. We have to come up with some creative ways.
We now know which companies are in the habit of constantly churning vendors and so on and so forth. We're gonna attack them to start with, and that's really how our growth will happen with that market. It's very heartening from our point of view, that there are at least 1,000 filers who change vendors every year. The fact that we are ranked very high as a VM provider. In fact, in the chart that you might have seen, although you've seen it, we will have it in the annual report for sure. We talk about the Workiva is ranked number one, and we rank number two.
I think being number two in that market is good enough for us to be able to capture a significant portion of the business going forward. You know, it's like, it's like a marathon race, where you need to be running constantly ahead, but you need to stay upstate with the front runner. If you stay with the front runner, I think finishing number two is not a bad situation to be in. We're actually trying to see how we end up in the consideration set of any buyer, who then basically any buyer, when he buys any product at all, will want to see more than one product. As long as we are in the consideration set, our objective is achieved.
Thank you, sir. Sorry, one last question. If you could speak about the fundraising in general and where it comes in?
I don't have any update as far as fundraising is concerned at this point in time. I think, while we have not completely abandoning the right to issue over idea, because that's only for the board to do, that's only the board can decide that. But I think we are in that direction. There are, there are options that we keep getting, keep discussing. You know what? I don't want to stick my neck out and say what will happen finally, but we obviously need to raise money. The fact that we are throwing up cash, makes it slightly easier. It means that some amount of marketing can actually happen, some amount of brand building can actually happen. But it's something that we need to do.
I know it's almost like a bad joke, the amount of time that we have spent in raising that money and talking about raising money but not doing it. It's something that we need to do sooner than later if we want to get onto a much higher growth path. Otherwise, we'll be stuck with this 15%-20% growth every year.
Well, thank you so much. I mean, as always, my job is easier than yours, I really appreciate the amount of time and detail with which you answered all the questions. Thank you once again, and all the best to all of you.
Thank you, Rohit. Thank you.
Thank you. The next question is on the line of Rahul Bhansali from Bhansali and Company. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Hi, sir. I wanted to ask whether the barriers to entry for somebody, you know, wanting to compete with us, has that decreased or can that decrease going forward because of the developments that have happened in artificial intelligence over the last one year or so? Whether, you know, some big player, like, let's say, a Zoho or someone, can just offer our kind of services just for free or something, you know, as one of the products that they give as a package. Is that possible at all, or do you think our cloud services and our software is still indispensable for our customers?
... I think it's a great question, I must tell you that we constantly, even paranoia when it comes to competition, we're always looking over our shoulders to see who's coming along. Zoho already has some offering which competes with us, in certain areas. I think there's a market for everybody. The market's big enough for everybody, quite literally. Technology by itself will not miss out. I think what we need to do is to be mindful of how technology could actually affect us. As I said, even earlier, what I think technology will do is to basically change the way we engineer our products. It'll also cause a pricing, pressure on us. That's where we think it will happen. I think if we are blind to it, I think we will end up being swept up.
We'll end up getting knocked out of the market. We're not unmindful. We are constantly evaluating what the impact will be, and having people like Thomas available, as CTO of the company, allows us to do that. I'm, if a big player come and do whatever, you know, very often, big players have a certain curve to protect, and when new developments happen, big players try to get into it, but don't necessarily always succeed. Zoho is a fantastic company, and Zoho is the example we actually used, has offerings similar to us in certain areas. They've had some success, but we've never encountered them in a manner in which, in a manner which would actually scare us.
What I think will happen is, at the end of the day, it's quite possible that a big company which I want to get into it, may actually make an offer to acquire us at some point in time. If we get successful, I think a big company would actually come and say, "You know what? Are you up for sale?" It hasn't happened, but I would never rule that out.
Thank you, sir. That was really helpful. Just one question finally, that, you know, we made a statement that our state growth would be significantly different from what it has been for the last two, three years. Which segments and which geographies are you the most excited for, you know, going forward? You know, which parts of your business do you think would this growth coming from?
All of them, actually. Also the other thing that's pretty interesting is our GST business, conceived in conjunction with the compliance filing business of the sort, when you look at them together. I did not think, for example, that a lending opportunity, no, we will not be, we will not become a lender. Enabling lending through APIs could actually be something so exciting. I think every business that we are in, is exciting in its own way. You know, sometimes we actually think that when I look at my segments, I say each segment is capable of being a multi-billion dollar segment. If not, you know, it's easy to say that when it is implemented, but I think every segment excites us in ways that are different for each other segment.
I think the GST is a huge opportunity, the banking segment is a huge opportunity, and not just carbon and not just I5 Connect. I think they're all equally great opportunities to get into. If you meet a colleague of mine who works on one segment, you will think that's the be-all and end-all of the company, and that's the way it should be. We have very committed people working on each segment, each of whom will tell you that their segment is the one that's going to drive everything going forward. They're all exciting.
Okay.
My job is to allocate capital resources, and that's exactly what we do. Trying to see where to allocate capital resources to get the maximum benefit about it.
Sure. Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you. Participants, to ask a question, you may press Star and One. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may press Star and One at this time. We do not have questions in the queue.
I'll just close by saying that when you look at a company like IRIS, don't take a quarter on quarter view at this point in time. We're not at that stage yet. Take a yearly view. I think if you take a yearly view, you will get a much better appreciation for what we are doing as opposed to taking a quarterly view. That's one lesson I certainly want to leave you with. Having said that, we are one very big thing that's actually happened in the last one year, is our customer concentration actually come down dramatically. Earlier, we used to have the top customers contributing to a significantly high proportion of revenue, and that's basically because our Collect segment was much bigger than the Create segment.
Today, when you take a look at the whole thing, the Create segment is much, much bigger. Smaller ticket, but larger number of customers. Our customer concentration coming down bodes very, very well for the company. It also ensures that we don't end up, you know, literally, so the law of large numbers will actually work for us. Even if a few customers leave and a few customers come in, I think we are all, we are set. That's not a major issue at all. We also found that, the question that Rohit asked earlier, the dependence on partners, we are very, very mindful of that, and which is why building direct hooks to customers is a very important thing. Which again, is possible when it comes to.
If you deliver good customer services, we actually do. Again, the overarching message, don't look at us on a quarter on quarter basis. Look at us for a whole year, and look at what we do in the course of the year. I think what we have done, and I think now that we are completely out of our crisis mode, now that we are financially strong, I'm hoping that it'll become easier to raise the capital that we actually need to raise, to be able to fund better, and get onto a much better growth path than we were on until now. Because, you know, marketing requires deep pockets. All of our competitors have deep pockets.
I was loath to raising money earlier because of the kind of, because what it would cost to raise money at that point in time. I think there was also a much lesser appreciation for our business than it is now. I think more and more people are beginning to appreciate the value of our business. You will hear more about. There are Indian states that are thinking about implementing XBRL, which will again lead to a significant visibility for what we actually do. The IRP things will kick in, I think, in the next 12 months, 24 months, 36 months, which again, will be very, very valuable. I think all in all, we are confident that we are in a good place. We are actually in a very happy place. That's where we are.
I'm happy, I'm grateful to everyone of you for being part of this call. I also found out that all of the people who actually came in live view, most of them continue to be shareholders. We owe them a deep sense of gratitude, we also need to rise up to deliver on the faith that they have in us by holding on to the stock. We need to deliver on the promise that we made to them at that point in time. I'm hoping that we don't have a control over the price of the stock, but we have control over our performance. I think what we will do is control our performance of the company, which is where we are, we are completely focused between Balu, Rita, and me, and Thomas.
We also have a few other recruitments happening going forward, to strengthen the leadership team in the company. I'm hoping that with all this stuff happening, we will be able to get the company on a higher growth trajectory going forward. As and when we get more details about the ACR, we think we will certainly talk about it. As and when any good news comes out, which has a significant impact on revenues, we will also talk about it. I'm grateful to each one of you for participating in the call and the questions that you actually asked. Rohit, obviously, tells a special thanks. I'm sorry for the short notice that we had today for our, because of the filing of results and the, and the conference call.
We have some travel coming up, so we had to finish it off today. Thank you once again, and we'll meet again at the next call, which will happen six months later. The reason we don't do a quarterly call is because we believe a six-month call is more appropriate than a quarterly call. On that note, thank you very much for being part of the call today, and have a fantastic evening. Bye-bye.
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, on behalf of IRIS Business Services Limited, that concludes this conference call. Thank you for joining us. You may now disconnect your lines.