Please note that this conference is being recorded. I now hand the conference over to Ms. Pushpa Mani, Head Investor Relations of Protean eGovernance Technologies Limited. Thank you, and over to you, ma'am.
Thanks, Sejal. Good evening, everyone. We welcome you all to the quarter, to the Quarter One FY 2025 Results Discussion. You must have received the results and investor presentation of the company, which is available on BSE as well as on the company's website. As usual, we will start the forum with the opening remarks by our leadership team. We will then open the floor for your questions. Should you have any queries that remain unanswered during this conference call, please feel free to reach out to us. Management on this call will be represented by Mr. Suresh Sethi, Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer, Mr. Jayesh Sule, Whole-time Director, and myself, Ms. Pushpa Mani, Head Investor Relations.
Before we begin, I would like to mention that some of the statements in today's discussion may be forward-looking in nature, and we believe that the expectations contained in this statement are reasonable. However, these statements involve a number of risks and uncertainties that may lead to different results. With this, I would now invite our MD, Mr. Suresh Sethi, to give opening remarks. Thank you, and over to you, sir.
Thank you, Pushpa. Good evening, everyone, for joining us for the Q1 FY 2025 earnings call of Protean eGovernance Technologies Limited. We are grateful for your continued support and interest. I will start by talking about the financial performance during the first quarter of this fiscal year. The revenue from operations has decreased by 11% year-on-year. This is largely due to the fact that there was a degrowth on the overall issuance of PAN cards across the industry, and this, in turn, is attributable to the election activity during the first quarter of this year. Despite that, the company witnessed significant gain in market share within the PAN business. Our market share improved from 50% in quarter one FY 2024 to 54% in quarter one FY 2025. This largely arrested the degrowth impact coming out of the overall industry slowdown.
The total number of PAN cards issued by Protean in Quarter one FY 2025 stood at 1 crore, and this was equally split between online and offline PAN card issuance. The segment we believe will continue to see momentum in the current coming quarters on account of strong central and state government focus on introduction and saturation of various government initiatives and welfare schemes. Further, India's young demographic continues to add nearly 12 million new workforce entrants every year, which will further lead to continued demand for new PAN issuances. Along with the tax business and other businesses, the pension services business posted a healthy double-digit growth of 13% year-on-year. During the quarter, 2.25 million new subscribers were onboarded for Atal Pension Yojana, registering a growth of almost 25% year-on-year. We also added 0.29 million new subscribers for NPS.
This was a growth of 25% year-on-year. Also, during the quarter, 760 new corporates were onboarded. The pension sector trust was also received from the current financial budget. As we saw in the budget, there was a proposal to include minors into the NPS scheme. This significantly widened the NPS coverage and expanded the market to approximately 40 crore minors coming into the ecosystem. This makes NPS a more inclusive lifecycle instrument, promoting savings from an early stage. There was another initiative called out during the budget, wherein the NPS contribution by employers for private sector employees 40% from 10% to 14%, thus making it a much more lucrative instrument for saving. These developments again clearly show the strong intent of the government in driving the pension penetration in the country.
As stated earlier, we continue to maintain a 100% market share under the Atal Pension Yojana, the flagship scheme of the government for the economically weaker sections of the society. Given the nascent stage of the pension industry in India and the strong support provided by the government, we remain very optimistic about the future growth in this line of business. In terms of our identity services business, again, there was a significant thrust from the finance budget, as we could clearly see that, this business is more aligned with our entire digitization trust across the country, and it's towards making digital payments and enabling digital lending a big opportunity. As a result, we saw significant double-digit growth also in this line of business. There was a year-on-year growth of almost-
27% .
27% coming for this business. We see again, along with India's digitization story, this continues to become a very strong vector of growth for us going forward. Coming to the new businesses. Aligned with India's visionary DPI framework, built on open standards and protocols, Protean continues to expand its multisectoral reach towards e-commerce and transport, coming under the vertical of ONDC, education and skilling, coming under ONEST, which is Online Network for Education, Skill and Transformation, agriculture, and health. Over the last few years, the company has accelerated investments in people, products, and technology, and built centers of excellence in open source and open standards tech stacks, contributing to multi-sector ODEs at an infrastructure and innovation level. During the quarter, we delivered several groundbreaking projects of national importance and launched a series of new products committed to drive economic empowerment.
Let me start by first talking about the AgriStack. The AgriStack establishes a robust framework for seamless data exchange between farmers, government bodies, and private entities. This stack is being created as a DPI, a digital public infrastructure, which is designed to revolutionize the data management and information sharing within the agri sector, leading to enablement of multiple use cases, starting from agri lending to agri marketplaces, to insurance and advisory. Agri being primarily a state subject in India, this also means that data will reside in states in disparate formats and structures. By providing a DPI approach to it, it will empower stakeholders across the agricultural ecosystem to make informed decisions and optimize agricultural practices. Again, as we saw, the finance budget reflected a very strong government intent and continued support for creation of DPIs.
There was a clear call-out on multiple sectors of the economy, ranging from e-commerce, agri, education and skilling, health, law and justice, and logistics. There was equally strong focus on creation of DPI apps and enablement of various MSME services, including credit, leveraging the data DPI. With regard to agriculture, call-outs on land records digitization, creation of crop registries, and issuance of Bhu-Aadhaar, identity linked to and land holding. So all these initiatives therefore become very convergent with the trust that the company has in the area of building and providing and contributing for digital public infrastructure. Along with AgriStack, during the course of the last quarter, we also launched Protean X, which is supporting digitally verifiable credentials. Just like we have verifiable identity, we are talking about now verifiable credentials, which takes it to the next level.
This is a future-ready solution, enabling individuals and organizations to create, verify, and store credentials using blockchain-based technology. Clearly, over here, we are looking at use cases, whether it is with regard to sharing your information in the form of certificates, sharing your information in terms of your land records in the AgriStack. As long as you have verifiable data, you are able to secure and consume services using the digital public infrastructure. So ProteanX provides a very important linkage in creating a verifiable credential DPI, which will work across multiple sectors of the economy. Along with ProteanX, we also launched eSign Pro. The aim was again to strengthen and enhance one of the most critical DPIs, which supported digital signature and stamping products. It is again designed to cater to multiple sectors of the economy.
This looks at sectors like BFSI, real estate, healthcare, education, and enables you to digitize documents like customer onboarding, legal agreements, student certificates and records at a fraction of the cost. It will enable creation of paperless journeys, and we anticipate a widespread adoption of eSign Pro. Our other new business verticals in the space of cloud and InfoSec, data stack, and international business, while at a nascent stage, are also demonstrating early wins and promising growth. Our balance sheet continues to remain strong, with cash and cash equivalent, including marketable securities of more than INR 700 crore, as on end of quarter one, FY 2025, and the company continues to maintain a zero debt status.
To better utilize the cash on books and to maximize return, maximize returns to our shareholders, we continue to also actively seek inorganic growth opportunities, and specifically interested in businesses which provide us a faster go-to-market and provide us with access to cutting-edge technologies and enable us to create a more enabled and tech-ready stack for the various lines of businesses that we are in. We remain strongly optimistic on the Digital India story and will continue to add value to enterprises, consumers, and governments through our unique combination of tech and expertise in e-governance. With this, I would like to hand over to my colleague, Jayesh Sule, Whole-time Director and Chief Operating Officer of the company, for a detailed discussion on our operational performance. Jayesh, over to you.
Thank you, Suresh, and good evening, everybody, and thanks again and welcome all of you to this earnings call. As highlighted by Suresh, highly favorable tailwinds have emerged for us from the Union Budget 2024-2025, and we are in the best position to embrace these developments and make the best use of our expertise into this space to support the digital transformation of India and develop digital public infrastructure across the country. Moving on to our quarterly financial performance. Consolidated revenue from operations for Q1 FY 2025 stood at INR 197 crore, down 11% year-on-year, mainly due to degrowth in tax services vertical, by 28% on a year-on-year basis. While both pension services and identity services continue to grow by double digits, with growth of 13% and 27% respectively. PAN issuances degrew mainly due to election activity.
However, the segment will continue to see momentum in the coming quarters on account of strong central and state government focus on introduction and implementation of various state government various government initiatives and welfare schemes. Moreover, Protean also gained overall market share from 50% in Q1 of FY 2024 to 54% in Q1 of FY 2025. Our pension services and identity services are expected to see strong growth, led by favorable government support and strong growth in overall digital economy of the country. Additionally, our new businesses continue to see early momentum, with Protean delivering several groundbreaking projects of national importance, including multi-sector digital public infrastructure. Coming to our profitability, adjusted EBITDA for Q1 FY 2025 stood at INR 45 crore, with EBITDA margin of 21.1% versus 20.4% in Q1 of FY 2024.
PAT for the quarter stood at INR 21 crore, with PAT margin of 9.8% versus 13.8% in Q1 of FY 2024, a reduction of 404 basis points year-on-year, mainly due to INR 11 crore of provision for doubtful debt. Adjusting for the provisioning, PAT margin stood at 14.9% in Q1 FY 2025, an improvement of 76 basis points year-on-year. As we have highlighted during our past quarterly calls, we are maintaining a provision for doubtful debts against our sovereign receivable from the tax department, in line with our financial prudence policy. Post taking out this provision, the remaining exposure on account of this is INR 17 crore, which, if remains outstanding, would be due for provisioning in FY 2026 as per our ECL policy.
I'm happy to state that our balance sheet position continues to remain strong, with cash and cash equivalents of more than INR 700 crore. We continue to maintain our debt-free status and are looking to accelerate our internal cost lever at a sustainable rate. We continue to maintain strong cash flows while our investment in people and tech to build highly skilled team of full stack engineers. Moving ahead, I am proud to state that we stand on a solid foundation to help drive the development of India's digital public infrastructure and pair that with a robust regulatory framework. Times ahead are really exciting for the company, and I thank each one of you for being our partner in India's journey towards digital transformation. With that, I now open the floor for questions and answer session. Thank you very much.
Thank you very much. We will now begin the question and answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may press star and one on their touchtone telephone. If you wish to remove yourself from the question queue, you may press star and two. Participants are requested to use handsets while asking a question. Ladies and gentlemen, we will wait for a moment while the question queue assembles. The first question is from the line of CA Garvit Goyal from Nvest Analytics Advisory LLP. Please go ahead.
Hello, am I audible?
Yes, sir.
Good evening, sir. My first question is on the ONDC side. So just to understand the revenue model on ONDC in a better way, right now we are doing approx 9 million transactions a month, and which is expected to grow at 20%-30% CAGR, as you mentioned in the presentation. That means by next year, annualized number should be around 50 crore transactions a year.
So right now we are not charging anything, but let's say average transaction value is INR 50, and we charge transaction go to 0.5%, which means the total charges comes out to be INR 7.5 crore. So I have two questions on it. One is, out of this INR 7.5 crore, how much share will Protean get? And secondly, apart from these transaction charges, what is the stream of revenue from ONDC for Protean, sir? That's my first, first question, sir.
Sure. Thanks, Garvit. I know ONDC is a big area of interest for all of us. So I'll just give you a sense on the ONDC revenue model. So currently, we are providing the base technology at the DPI level, which is at the infrastructure level. We are today as a technology service provider, we power the entire ONDC network by providing the gateway services, which is basically the network on which all buy and sell transactions run, or rather, the discovery of the transactions happen. And we also provide the registry services, which hold the records of the buyers and the sellers and the logistics players. So at an infrastructure level, there is one revenue model. At this stage, our cost of infrastructure and whatever tech development we are doing, that is reimbursed by ONDC.
But as we've been saying earlier also, in line with any DPI, this will become self-sustaining, and over a period of time, it will move into a market model, where it will be charged on a per transaction basis. So while I know that you've done an assumption of, say, a 50 basis point, might be a sort of a network fee, we are assuming that around 8-10 basis points is something we can see coming from the network as a, as a transactional charge going forward. And we are benchmarking it with some of the other DPIs which are out there. But we'll naturally reach that point when there's a certain inflection point at which, the market, pricing will come into play.
Currently, the same is being reimbursed by ONDC as an organization for our provision of services as a technology service provider. Other than that, comes the innovation layer, which again, falls into two categories. One is at an extension service level, where you are providing various adapter services, connect services, reconciliation and settlement platform, catalog as a service. The other side is where you're providing buyer and supplier technology. These are applications provided to both the demand and the supply side. Now, these are applications which are being provided underlying, there's an underlying SaaS model in play. So you are largely looking at charging for a one-time fee for creation of the tech or the app, and then you are looking at a transactional model for earning based on that.
Now, depending on whatever is the ecosystem charge being paid by the seller or the buyer application, a part of that will flow to the provider of the technology, so which is again a SaaS model. So these are the three elements of monetization that we see in ONDC. At the infrastructure level, which is again transactional in nature, and at the innovation level, split into extension services and demand and supply technology.
Understood, sir. Sir, any timelines like when this team will start kicking into our top line?
So, see, at the infrastructure level, as I said, we are already being reimbursed by ONDC for the services we provide. It is more about the model moving from being paid by the network facilitator to being paid by the network participants for usage of the network. On the other side, we've had a few customers who we have onboarded, both on the demand side and the supply side, and likewise, we are also working to provide other extension services to the market. So those revenue streams are coming in. But naturally, at this stage, we are again looking at the adoption of the network and whatever we are doing to contribute towards that adoption. This is early stage at this stage, but we are already getting revenue on these lines of business.
Understood, sir. So secondly, on our other verticals, like, Government of India has also passed INR 1.5 lakh per year budget for employment skilling, and we are also working on one of the platform called HONEST. So, I want to understand what is the update on this decentralized network, where we are standing today, and what about the other key initiatives, like AgriStack, et cetera? So, when do you think these will come meaningfully to our top line?
So see, all these are today contributing elements for us into our revenues, and I'll just give you more a sense of, a sense of the stage where we are in these, in these verticals or in these sectors. When we look at education and skilling, as we've spoken earlier, the company is already invested and working in the space of education finance. We've been running for the last seven to eight years, we've been running education financing portals. One at the behest of the government, which is called Vidya Lakshmi, where we provide education loans. And second is, a more, you know, scholarship, ecosystem being created under the product offering of Vidyasaarathi.
Now, when we look at a DPI approach to it, that is where Honest came in, when we decided to move these assets into discovery on an open network, just like ONDC. So you can come in through multiple apps, not just on our website, and you can likewise discover offers of loans or scholarships on an open network. So some of our assets, as such, we've already, in a way, made them discoverable on an open network, and we've had some early distribution of scholarships and all happening on the own Honest ecosystem. The other area, again, to add, just like ONDC, we are also, for Honest, providing the infrastructure technology at the gateway and the registry level, and that is, again, something as you are aware, the Honest ecosystem is now running on the ONDC rails only.
So we again get reimbursed by the network facilitator over here. So we are already getting revenues coming at the infrastructure level for the education and skilling ecosystem, and we also have some revenues coming from the scholarship disbursement on the same. With regard to Agri, as we've been saying earlier, we got the mandate from the central government to build the core AgriStack. Largely the work done by us was in terms of building the protocols of data exchange between center and state, building the consent framework for sharing of data, and that is a work which we were working and continue to work on.
Now the AgriStack is in a stage where almost 13 state governments are in the process of doing POC, where data exchange will be enabled and multiple use cases, as we called out earlier, related to lending or related to insurance or advisory, will start flowing through the AgriStack. Again, for the AgriStack, we have been reimbursed for the work we've done on the core AgriStack, and we continue to see, look forward to multiple use cases coming for us to create more revenue pools coming out of the innovation layer on top.
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, in order to ensure that the management is able to address questions from all the participants, please limit your question to two per participant. If you have a follow-up question, I would request you to rejoin the queue. The next question is from the line of Apurva Sharma from BugleRock. Please go ahead.
Yeah, hi. Am I audible?
Yes, sir, you're audible.
Yeah, thank you for the opportunity. Just wanted, have a few questions. I'll just one by one. Can you, throw some light or color on the opportunity size for eSign Pro? And, I'll ask the next questions.
Yeah, so Apurva, eSign Pro is all about, you know, enabling a paperless journey, your ability to sign a document digitally. And we are also under the eSign Pro documentation suite, we are also offering e-stamping services . Now, the market opportunity is that it can basically be playing a role in each and every account opening. Today, when you are opening an account and you have to submit a form 60/61, it can be digitally signed, so you can enable an end-to-end digital journey.
Similarly, for any sort of loans, especially when you're talking about business loans for MSMEs or, you know, MSME again is a focus area for the government, as called out during the budget also. So all these loans which will get created, where you have to do any sort of contract signing, the loan contract, and you have to e-stamp it. So eSign Pro will again be looking at that as a market opportunity.
So in my mind, the entire ecosystem of digital onboarding, digital lending, account opening, both for the individual and the business sector, is a complete ecosystem out there that is available to us with a product like eSign Pro. eSign Pro is something which, again, for us is a vertical integration. As you are aware, we have a very strong focus on provision of foundational identity. We are the only company in the country today which provides all four facets of it, from eSign to eKYC, to eAuthentication, to online PAN validation. eSign Pro just comes atop that as a digital signature service, and we see a huge market opportunity in that.
So basically, because we provide the entire stack, you see traction on this eSign Pro maturing in some time? Or, I mean, how, how do you see what is the time frame that we are looking at? I mean, I'm not asking quarter- by- quarter, but just, you know, when do you see that?
If I give you a sense, at the foundational level, when we are providing eSign as a service to enable other entities to run, say, an application like eSign Pro, there we almost have a 70% market share. eSign Pro is an app layer built on top of eSign services, so which basically means any corporate can adopt it, and they can digitally start signing their documentation. A bank can adopt it and make sure that the consumers can do an eSign Pro-based signature on the loan or the account opening documentation they are submitting.
So to us, it's a business which we already have some customers, and it's going to be an immediate, you know, sort of, immediate consumption, if you may. So it's not a timeline in which we will be sort of looking at a market getting created. It is happening day in and day out. And as entities like, especially the BFSI entities, they are looking at making paperless processes, this becomes a very core component of that.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Rohan Mandora from Equirus Securities. Please go ahead.
Yes, sir, good evening. Thanks for the opportunity. So just wanted to understand, the DPI announcements that came in the budget, what could be the potential revenue opportunity and what kind of... Like, you briefly touched upon the kind of projects, but if you were to map into the potential revenue opportunity incrementally, how should one look at that?
See, to put a number to it, Rohan, would be difficult. Largely, see, what we are seeing is that as a trust and intent from a government support point of view, the government, in a manner, almost called out, quite a few lines of the business we are in. So there was a clear call-out on digital commerce, on health, agriculture, and education and skilling. Four areas in which we are already contributing, either at an innovation level or at an infrastructure level. The market size opportunity remains the same as we spoke about in each of the areas. When we look at ONDC, it is a digital commerce opportunity, the open finance opportunity. And today, retail penetration of digital commerce is somewhere in single digits, around 6%-7%.
If we look at some of the market data, it is a $55 billion market in the country today, which, by projection, is looking at building five times up to almost $300 billion by 2030. So that is the sort of the opportunity, and with the strong government trust also coming in, supporting an open DPI like ONDC, it clearly means that we would see acceleration of support coming in that space. Agri, again, as we all know, is a national, you know, subject, where clearly the government is looking at enabling agri-marketplaces, agri lending insurance. So that entire ecosystem which is out there today, is a market opportunity, but putting a revenue number to it would be difficult at this stage.
So I think a lot of the statements by the government, while there might be some support coming in from the government, either through policy or through central mandates, or in the form of, you know, monetary support, is going to accelerate the adoption in this space. That is the way we see it, but we are not able to put a number to it as of now, as we speak.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of NGN Puranik from ENAM Holdings. Please go ahead.
I think the pension and identity looks to be a great opportunity. I want to understand which are your solutions and platforms which can, over a period of, say, two to three years, be a 100 million transaction potential. Also, if you can articulate the identity management solutions you have, which are the solutions there, which can take you to the larger item scale?
So running from a pure numbers perspective, we are already into doing, you know, millions of transactions. Let me talk about pension. So annually, if you look at it, we have a good growth rate. So the numbers, if we look at it annually, quarter-on-quarter or year-on-year, during the quarter of this first quarter, FY 2025, we added 2.25 million new subscribers on Atal Pension Yojana, and almost 0.29 million subscribers on NPS. So there are, you know, multiple number of transactions which happen in this space. And annually, if we look at it, these numbers clearly are, you know, strong numbers.
So we almost add 1 crore plus, you know, new subscribers year-over-year, and it has been growing as we move from every year. This business, clearly we see a huge headroom because the pension penetration in our country is hardly 6%, which compared to, you know, developed economies like the U.S. and all, where it stands anywhere above 70%-80%. So there's a huge headroom over there. And if we again look at our economically weaker section, flagship scheme of the government in Atal Pension Yojana, today, the total number of subscribers is somewhere around 5.5 crores. And if I look at a comparison, the Jan Dhan accounts in the country today are almost over 50 cr.
So you see almost a 10 times headroom to be able to grow and penetrate in that sector. Now, the annual growth has been in sort of, you know, has been growing, which, which definitely year-on-year growth is there to talk about. Last year, again, from FY 2023 to 2024, there was a 24% growth, and we already saw that in the first quarter of this year. Within the quarter, there was a 25% growth year on year. So we see this as a strong area for growth. Coming to identity services, as I mentioned, our core businesses are, or at the foundational identity level, are running on four verticals. Which is online PAN validation. This is a line of business in which we at times do almost one cr transactions a day at peak times.
Then we have eKYC and eAuth, which is the account opening using Aadhaar and any transaction authentication using Aadhaar, and similarly, eSign. The numbers again in this space are, you know, running into crores when we look at even quarterly numbers. So our online PAN validation, which we did almost 76 cr transactions in the first quarter. Again, eSign, eKYC, between all of them, but again, another 25 crore transactions. So these numbers are already pretty large, and what we find is that there is significant quarter-on-quarter and year-on-year growth. Online PAN validation in the first quarter grew almost 11%. eKYC grew a very strong 67% quarter- on- quarter, year on year, and Aadhaar authentication grew at almost 18%.
So these, these are again areas which are growing very strongly, and on top of it, since you mentioned products. So at the foundational level, it is these four facets of identity. On top of it is where we have built our multiple products, which we call out under our data stack. So first for us was the launch of the API marketplace, which enables digital onboarding and lending, which we called as Rise with Protean, which we launched somewhere in third quarter last year. We spoke about ProteanX is an attempt to provide verifiable credentials. So if you are taking a loan and you want to submit some document, can it be digitally verified? So you are again enabling a, you know, a digital and a paperless journey.
eSign Pro, again, we spoke about earlier, is something where we are offering the complete end-to-end, digitization of, paperwork and workflow management in terms of movement of that paper during the process of maybe a loan provision or insurance or any of the other things we spoke about earlier. So that is the data stack or the product stacks which we are building on top of the foundational identity services, which is going to be, having a B2B focus for us.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Dhruv Shah, from Dalal & Broacha. Please go ahead.
Yeah, thank you for the opportunity, sir. Sir, my first question is on international market. So we've been quite hopeful for receiving at least one bid from the international market. But so what is taking so long, and is there any kind of delay from the respective government or is it from our end? So if you can throw some light over there.
So international, the areas that we have focused, and we've been talking about it earlier also, our international focus is largely driven by taking India's DPI approach to enabling foundational identity, taxation, Social Security and welfare. The areas which we play in, in the country, that is what we are taking into international markets. So it's, in a way, a replication of the product capability that we've built over here and how do we take it to other countries. Over a period of time, we've naturally, since we spoke last quarter, we've expanded our engagement with more countries. We are now engaged actively with 12 countries, and as far as opportunities are concerned, we are now in 18 active opportunities, and we've also been happy to report shortlisted in two bids.
So most of these projects, being at a national scale, are in the form of government RFPs. They either have multilateral funding or they are being supported by the respective country governments, and therefore they follow an RFP process. So it is a long cycle time to an extent, but we are hopeful of making some inroads in this shortly.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Mehak from Emkay Global Financial Services. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Hi, sir. Thank you for taking my questions. So, recently you launched this new product, eSign Pro. So just wanted to know in terms of the customer acceptance. And secondly, could you give some color on the competition in this market? And my second question would be, like, the government has given a kind of a trust with introduction of new welfare schemes. So how do you see the PAN card issuance shaping up in terms of the channel mix? So currently it is at 50/50, contributed by the online and offline channels. So just wanted to understand how is the channel mix expected to shape up in the coming quarters?
Sure. So in terms of, Okay, in terms of eSign Pro, now, eSign Pro, if you look at it, as I mentioned earlier, we are building on top of our foundational services, and, that is where we are today as an ESP, which is an eSign service provider, which is certified by the central certifying authority. We provide the services as an ASP, and that is where we are launching the product called eSign Pro. But as an ESP, today, we have a 70% market share. So that is where we provide the foundational point on which other Fintechs build their application layer. So eSign Pro is an attempt for us to get into the app layer of it.
So to give you an example, if I'm today going to a bank and pitching an eSign Pro suite of services, then that is where we are clearly giving them the ability to embed a journey into their application. So if somebody is applying for a loan and they want to digitally sign the document, then eSign Pro, as a documentation suite, gets built into the application journey of the bank. But likewise, if we look at the underlying service, we already enable a lot of the market and the Fintech players. And if we look at it from an application provider, that is where we are now entering into the market. And we've also, in our eSign Pro suite of services, brought in the e-stamping service.
It is again, a unique combination, because when you combine eSign with the ability to e-stamp, you are actually able to then create a capability where you are bringing both of them together, and any loan documentation, for example, will always have a stamping requirement and a signature requirement. Other than that, naturally, we are providing a strong ability for people to use it to manage dashboards, so corporate and admin dashboards, your ability to, you know, document, sign the documents in a secure manner remotely, geotagging your signatures. So a lot of new features and a complete suite of services is being offered over there, which in some way are differentiators for us vis-a-vis the competition in the market, and we expect the market to grow well from there.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Bhavik Shah from MK Ventures. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Hello, sir. I have two questions. The first question-
Sorry to interrupt you, sir. May I request you to please use your handset?
Yeah. Is it better now? Hello.
Yes, sir.
Yeah, I have two questions. First is, the remaining INR 17 crore, which we have, when will it be written off? And my second question is, do we have any- do you want to provide any guidance for, say, FY 2025 and FY 2026? Hello?
Sorry. Yeah, sorry. So the remaining INR 17 crore, if it remains outstanding, you know, even in the current year until the next year, it will be provided for in the books in FY 2026. But as per our ECL policy term, anything remaining outstanding for more than three years, we provide for in the books. That's what it is.
Okay, sir. Sir, any guidance for FY 2025 and 2026?
We are done. Yeah, then, the 17 is the final one, you know.
No, no, sir, I am asking about revenue and EBITDA guidance.
Sorry, your voice is not clear. Can you please repeat yourself?
I'm asking for some revenue or EBITDA guidance for FY 2025 and FY 2026.
We can't give a forward.
Yeah.
We are having some mute problems over here. Yeah, carry on.
So it's a forward-looking statement, so we won't be able to comment on this at this stage.
Okay, sir. Thank you.
Thank you.
I think I just missed answering the second part of a question earlier. This was the online and offline PAN issuance. Just adding to that, as we've been mentioning all along, that when we are doing an online issuance, it is, from a margin perspective, far better for us because a lot of the paperwork, storage and, you know, the work involved with it, that goes away, and therefore it becomes more lucrative to that extent. There has been a steady growth in terms of online issuances.
As a split, if we look at it over the last two, three years, from FY 2022 to say FY 2024, it has moved from 30%- 39%- 48%. In the first quarter, FY 2025, we were at 50% online versus offline. That definitely adds to, you know, your EBITDA margins, because then the product becomes a better margin product.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Trisha, from Boring AMC. Please go ahead.
Hi. Thank you. My first question was on Protean. ProteanX, which is newly launched. Isn't it similar to DigiLocker?
No. So Trisha, it's not similar to DigiLocker. Let me give you a different example to put some context. It is similar to, for example, what India did when we issued the CoWIN certificate, right? So we were issuing a certificate which had an embedded QR code. Now, you could go anywhere, and the code could be scanned, and you could verify to say that this is an authentic certificate. So the whole idea is that what we are trying to address over here, for example, when you get an education certificate, right?
Today, when you take it to any entity, let's say you have to get a scholarship, and you have to show your education certificate. Today, it's a very broken process, because when you submit a physical certificate, the receiving entity is not able to digitally verify if the certificate is authentic. ProteanX, in a way, solves for that. So we've created a complete suite of services where to the issuer, this could be an educational institution, we provide a Protean Studio on which they can start issuing digitally verifiable certificates.
We are also provisioning for a wallet to the consumer. So people like you and me, we can actually store our digital credentials in a wallet, and if somewhere we have to give these credentials for sharing, for consuming any sort of service, then the same can be verified. So ProteanX is today built on blockchain technology. So it's a, it's a ledger-based trust which is created in the system, and you can remotely and digitally verify that the underlying credentials are valid. So that is what it does.
Now, I agree with you that DigiLocker has some aspects out of it, because when you are looking at your document in the DigiLocker, it is indicated over there that by DigiLocker, that is an eSign or verified document. But if you have to share that document, then ProteanX gives you the additional ability to get a document which has an embedded verification credential in it. Does that clarifies it?
Okay. And so here, the revenue potential will not be a B2C, it will be a B2B revenue potential, right?
So it actually becomes a B2B2C because at one end you are looking at a corporate push, goes without saying, so we'll be looking at e ducational institutions, hospitals, so it goes to any sector, right? Whichever is today issuing any sort of certificates or, or invoices or anything which can be digitally verifiable. At the consumer end, it becomes more of consumption. So if there's a consumer wallet in which identity can be stored and the same identity can then be shared in a manner that it is verifiable, so there will be a consumer app also. So that is where the B2B2C part comes in. But on the other side is the B2B part, where we are going to the issuers of various certificates.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Sumangal from RARE Enterprises. Please go ahead.
Yeah, thank you for the opportunity. So I have a question on the new business. So can you just explain the current revenue run rate that we have, a sequential decline? I mean, we would understand that with the data segment picking up and, furthermore, ODEs revenue kicking in, it would see a traction. So any comment you can share on the new business? And, you know, in the near term, what are the most visible revenue opportunities in the new business segment?
Yeah, so in the new business, you're right, there's a decline from a year-on-year perspective. It is largely due to the, rather a quarter-on-quarter perspective, because in the last quarter of last year, there was some carryover, revenue from the previous quarter, and that's why the numbers got bunched up. It is, you know, a small number, and that's why you are seeing the difference. So as I mentioned earlier, so naturally for us, there are four lines of business which we are putting under our new businesses. The first business is on the data stack, which is where you heard us talk about the products like eSign Pro, ProteanX, Rise with Protean. And this for us is something, where we are already in the market. We are providing foundational ID services.
We are building the entire stack on top of it. So we have already access to these customers in a way, because we deal with these corporates, and we are just providing a more value-added and comprehensive suite of services. So it's a immediate go-to market as far as the company is concerned. Second comes to the area of ODEs or the open digital ecosystems. Over the last, we have been in this space, invested with open source technologies over the last three years or so. One of the more mature ODEs, as we see, is ONDC. The work being done in the space of education and skilling, agri, health is still more nascent compared to ONDC.
So naturally, with the growth that ONDC is showing, with the almost compounded quarterly growth rate of 60% over the last four quarters in terms of number of transactions, there is huge traction in the market, and that is one area we feel will kick in earlier than others. The others continue to remain large opportunities because of the scale and size of the need out there. The third area for us is cloud and infotech services. Now, cloud, again, is a huge demand, because year-on-year we are seeing that cloud adoption is moving into new sectors. And clearly, looking at the benefits it brings in terms of scalability, resilience, and security, it is something which each and every corporate entity is evaluating.
Now, in this particular space, we've got our own, you know, identification of target markets and niche. Clearly, one part is that it's a Made in India cloud, which again, the government is looking at positively because they want to bring indigenous tech stacks into the cloud technology. And, it is a green cloud. We definitely have, you know, energy conservation parameters built into it, and we are targeting both our own, you know, trust into DPIs and work with, that we do with the government, and also at the startup industry over there as two specific segments in which we want to push the cloud services, business. But again, over here, while we have revenues clocked in, it is early for us, and we will see during the course of this year how this business picks up.
And last but not least, is the international business, where, again, as I mentioned, we have now engagement running with multiple countries. We've expanded our country engagement base and the number of bids that we've qualified, participated in, with two shortlisted bids now in hand. We expect we'll be able to show some results on that, international front pretty soon.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Grishma Shah from Envision Capital. Please go ahead.
Good evening to the management team, and thanks for taking my question. Could you give some color as to how-
Sorry to interrupt you. May I request you to please use your handset?
I am on my handset.
Ma'am, the voice-
Hello?
is very less. Can you come near to the mic and speak?
Hello.
Yes, ma'am, better.
Yeah, thank you. So could you give some sense on the tech services vertical? I mean, we understand that the last year first half was, you know, very strong for us. So I want to understand, why could the market see a degrowth in quarter one, and what were the efforts which [audio distortion]
Ladies and gentlemen, we have lost the connection of the current participant. We will move on to the next participant. The next question is from the line of Srinivas from Avendus Spark. Please go ahead.
Yeah, hi. Just had a couple of questions. One, is it possible to give the bridge between what is adjusted EBITDA and the EBITDA? Because it seems to be, the gap seems to be more than the ECL loss.
Just give us a second. We're just looking at the numbers, please. Because largely the difference is the ECL loss, but just a second [audio distortion] .
Yeah. So it's only the provisioning component, which is the exceptional item, you know? There's no other item. I don't know how you have computed that, but it's only the provisioning which is done for doubtful debts.
I'm assuming other income is included in the EBITDA. That's the only other explanation that works out.
That's right.
Yes, that. Other income is included in the EBITDA number.
Yes.
Okay, fair enough. Thanks. Then, then that adds up. Just wanted to get a sense on the tax revenues. Any broad breakup you can give between what proportion of revenues comes from fresh issuance and what will be other maintenance work on that?
Fresh issuance is almost around 70%. Other than that, the remaining revenue would come for reissuance, for any change request in terms of the PAN data itself, or any reprint of PAN cards and all. That's the way it gets split.
Sure. My last question is: we've taken about INR 38 crores or almost INR 50 crores of write-offs in the last five quarters, or maybe about INR 85-INR 88 crores over the last four years. Just wanted to get a sense, most of these ECL losses are all pertaining to that specific issue we had in income tax, or it's—we've had issues in other aspects also, from an ECL point of view?
Yeah, these are largely receivables for the, you know, tax-related things, and normal business income.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Madhu Gupta from Quantum AMC. Please go ahead.
Good evening, sir. Thanks for taking my question. My first question is just pertaining previous participant question. So in terms of fresh issuances and, in terms of changes, are the fees which are earned total in or is it? And, secondly, I would like to know on the, in the first quarter results, other expenses have grown very sharply. So what has led to that big rise in the other expenses? Could you just elaborate on that?
Yeah. Yeah, the other expenses is largely the professional fees, you know, related to advisory thing. Others are broadly normal business expenses. It's only one exceptional item in that sense in the other expenses.
How do we see that going ahead, sir?
Yeah, some of them are kind of one-time expenses, largely. That's it. We don't see any substantial increase.
Thank you.
On the PAN front, just to answer, the charge in terms of fresh issuance is higher. When you're doing some of the changes in terms of reprint and all, that's a lower charge. But any change request is at the same rate as the fresh issuance. So there is no change in that, so you are earning the same revenue as you would do with the new PAN card issuance.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Amit Chandra from HDFC Securities. Please go ahead.
Yeah, so thanks for the opportunity. So my question is on the eSign Pro. You know, if you can throw some more light in terms of what will be the pricing model here. Is it going to be license, implementation, AMC model, or is it going to be SaaS, kind of a model? And also, now, can we see some cannibalization of revenues, from eSign Pro to our, you know, existing revenues of identity services? And also, you know, on the ONDC side, if you can, you know, just some clarification, are we already charging this 10 basis points, in terms of transaction, or are we going to shift to that? If not, then, you know, when we are planning to shift to the transaction-based model in ONDC as well?
Sure. So Amit, in terms of eSign Pro, it is largely going to be a transactional model of revenue coming over there. So we are basically providing the app, and it's a SaaS model. Technically, you look at a per transaction charge. As far as cannibalization is concerned, I don't think so. I'll tell you where we are coming from, because one is a foundational service, so it is, in my mind, very similar to an ASA and AUA model. Where at one level you are providing the, you know, the certified center, central certifying authority-based certification of the eSign service, with which we power other fintechs to provide their applications. Here we are actually going with our own application to the market. So for us, it becomes an additional line of revenue.
So we are not just providing services to others as a certifying authority, or as a certified authority, we are also directly now competing by providing application at the last mile. So it just becomes a plus over there from that point of view. As far as ONDC is concerned, as I mentioned earlier, the 10 basis point was more, you know, sort of a projected assumption in the sense that when we look at other DPIs, that is what the network provider or the network TSP earns, but that model is currently not there in place.
As of now, considering that, the network mile is going very strong, still at this stage, ONDC as a network facilitator, believe that they would like to not have the friction of charge coming to the network participants, and therefore, currently they reimburse us for the technology services that we are providing. There will be an inflection point, where again, it will be largely, you know, determined by ONDC as the governing organization, at which stage we will look at moving to a different model at that stage.
Thank you. The last question is from the line of Shubham Sehgal from Simpl. Please go ahead.
Hello, am I audible?
Yes, sir.
Yeah, okay. So my first question is that could you, please just explain the pricing structure of your different business segments, like your PAN card issuance, pension and identity services? So what kind of pricing structure do we have in each segment, and how sticky are the prices? Like, are we, you know, like, forced to, like, lower our prices or like, and how will the prices go forward? So, like, could you just, give a light on that.
Yeah. So, largely the pricing, pricing is transaction-based. We have three main sectors, your tax, pension, and identity. If you take tax, we have the PAN services, where the charge is, you know, per application fee, for even for either new issuance or a reissuance of a PAN card. So it's per application. Similarly, we have TDS returns, which get filed. That's based on number of records in the returns. Pension services are, you know, we have, again, three types of charges. You have the account opening charge, annual maintenance charge, and the transaction charge. So transaction charge is for every contribution which is made by a subscriber into the account. So there are typically for a government subscriber, 12 contributions in a year, and then there could be one additional for arrears.
So for every transaction, contribution transaction is done, there is a charge, you know, which we levy on them. So annual fee is at the time of the entry, and then there is AMC every quarter, which is charged on a quarterly basis. These are the three types of charges for AMC. Then there is within NPS pension services, there is Atal Pension Yojana. So we have an account opening fee and AMC there. There is no transaction charge in Atal Pension Yojana. As far as identity services are concerned, we have the online PAN verification service. There is again a transaction charge based on number of records.
There's a per record charge, and then there is a volume-based tariff. Then you have that Aadhaar authentication and eKYC. Similarly, there is various charges which are based on per transaction, and these are largely B2B transactions. We have number of corporates using these services, and the billing is done to these corporates based on the volumes which get recorded during the period of, you know, their usage of transactions.
And then lastly, there are government contracts where it is kind of a RFP, which are RFP-based, and the term, and the pricing there is, you know, as determined in the contract, which could be initial implementation with the development cost, which is charged, and then there is annual maintenance fee for the tenure of the contract. It could be for three years or five years. So these are largely, you know, two types of charging structure which we have. One is transaction-based, and one is a, you know, kind of a project tenure cost.
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, we will take that as the last question. I would now like to hand the conference over to the management for closing comments.
Sure. Thank you very much. As closing comments, we would just like to summarize saying that we currently see our set of businesses being split on seven verticals. As far as our traditional or legacy businesses are concerned, we have three strong businesses which continue to provide strong momentum to the company. These are businesses which traditionally we've been running, and there is strong headroom over there, and the company has a dominant position, and we've shown year-on-year good growth in these businesses, and these are consolidating cash cows for the company. As far as new businesses are concerned, there is early traction.
Again, these are areas which are also very strongly supported by tailwinds, especially coming from the government trust, both on the fronts of digitalization and financialization, and with the budget calling out, again, a lot of support for areas, in the space of DPIs. So strong budgetary support for the new lines of business. And, as an organization, we run a very asset-light model, and there are strong cash inflows into the company. The company continues to maintain its debt-free status, with a huge amount of investable funds, almost to the tune of INR 700 crore, which we, in a way, have available for us to make any inorganic decisions for faster go-to market or investment in cutting-edge technology, and we remain very positive about the times ahead from here. Thank you.
On behalf of Protean eGovernance Technologies Limited, that concludes this conference. Thank you for joining us.