Please note that this conference is being recorded. I now hand the conference over to Ms. Pushpa Mani, Vice President, Head of Investor Relations, Protean. Thank you, and over to you, ma'am.
Thanks, Shreya. Good evening, everyone. We welcome you all to the Q4 and Fiscal Year 2024 results discussion. Management on call would be represented by Mr. Suresh Sethi, Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer, Mr. Jayesh Sule, Whole-Time Director and Chief Operating Officer, Mr. Sudhir Bhatia, Chief Financial Officer, and myself, Pushpa Mani, Head Investor Relations. Before we begin, I would like to mention that some of the statements in today's discussion would be forward-looking in nature, and we believe that the expectations contained in these statements are reasonable. However, these statements involve a number of risks and uncertainties that may lead to different results. With this, I would invite Mr. Sethi to give opening remarks. Thank you, and over to you.
Thank you, Pushpa. Good evening, everyone. Many thanks for joining us for our quarter four and Fiscal Year 2024 earnings call. We are, as always, thankful to you for your continued support and interest. Let me begin this call by taking you through a quick overview of our unique business model, especially for those who may be new to our journey and are joining this call the first time. Just to give a quick introduction to the company, Protean eGov Technologies Limited. As a company, we have been a pioneer and market leader in building digital public infrastructure, a journey which has run over last three decades for over 28 years. We have been one of the cornerstones of Digital India evolution, right from creating population-scale e-governance platforms for taxation, social security, to enabling digital identity through foundational DPIs across identity, payments, and data.
Going forward, aligning with India's visionary DPI framework, which is now built on open standards and protocols, Protean continues to be one of the leading contributors towards multi-sector open digital ecosystems that are coming across various sectors of the economy. We are today contributing in the area of e-commerce, in transport and mobility, in agriculture, in education, and in health. Our business can broadly be classified under four pillars. Right from the inception, our first pillar has been towards building e-governance platforms. That is where our journey began in modernizing India's direct tax infrastructure and building a robust tax information network for the country. We also got the mandate to issue India's first digitally verifiable credentials, what we all know today as the National Tax ID, the PAN card. Subsequently, we developed the central record-keeping infrastructure for the National Pension System and the Atal Pension Yojana.
We are proud to share that we host the national PAN database of over INR 76 crore PAN records, and today enable the entire BFSI sector for providing various citizen-centric services. We have more than 63% share in PAN issuance since inception, and in the Social Securities business and the pension business, we have a 97% share in NPS and a 100% share in APY, Atal Pension Yojana. Moving on from building e-governance platforms, our second pillar focuses on digital identity and provisioning of the same. In this space, we continue to be uniquely- positioned as the only company in the country that is offering all facets of digital identity, covering the four key areas ranging from eKYC, e-authentication, which is our Aadhaar-based authentication, e-signature, and online PAN validation. We have a diversified customer base, and today provide services to over 1,500 corporates.
We are one of the top five authentication and KYC service agencies to UIDAI in providing third-party identity services. Currently, these first two pillars account for almost 90% of our revenues. Our third pillar is more aligned with the current vision of the country in building open digital ecosystems. We term it as the work we are doing in enabling democratic access through ODEs, i.e., Open Digital Ecosystems. Aadhaar and India Stack have been a watershed moment for India and have contributed significantly to the design and architecture of our DPI. This has led to creation of multiple open and interoperable stacks across diverse sectors. We have made a conscious choice to build competence, capacity, and IP in open-source technologies.
We are actively contributing and supporting open digital blocks for creating use cases across sectors like e-commerce, transport and mobility, which we are all familiar, comes under the umbrella of ONDC, in healthcare, in agriculture, and in education and skilling. Education skilling, again, coming under the umbrella of ONEST, Open Network for Education and Skill Transformation. Our fourth vertical, which sort of, you know, brings our complete business 360-degree, is powering enterprise digitization. While our first three pillars are at a foundational level, where we power various entities, the fourth pillar leads us into enterprise digitization. Over there, we work on two levels: we have an application level, and we have an infra level. At the app level, we power enterprises by extending our service stack of comprehensive APIs to enable end-to-end digital onboarding and data verification capabilities.
This is a comprehensive RegTech stack, which helps financial institutions to reduce risk and time to onboard customers, improve data accuracy, and empower them to create seamless digital experiences. We have also got awarded, during the course of last year, an account aggregator license by RBI. With the launch of Protean's Raksha account aggregator, the company is now committed to drive economic empowerment and inclusion by enabling digital lending, onboarding, and various other journeys to enable a digital India at a corporate and consumer level. On the infra side of our enterprise digitization, we provide cloud and InfoTech services. While we have been at the forefront of establishing DPIs at a population scale and managing large central databases, we have extended this competency to suit lines of business in the area of information security advisory and cloud services.
Protean Cloud, again, is a made-in-India, energy-efficient cloud, which is in synergy with the government's Atmanirbhar Bharat mission, and seeks to enable digital transformation and adoption of homegrown technology in citizen-centric, IT-enabled services. While these are the four pillars which define our lines of business and our, and our product and services footprint, it is equally important for us to call out that we are looking at taking the India Stack global, and there is a clear plan which we are currently enabling through geographic expansion. We are focused on moving into overseas markets, and over here we want to extend our experience and expertise in implementing large-scale, nationally important and data-intensive projects, with a specific focus on tax, ID, social security, digital identity, and ODEs.
Are very relevant for countries which are at an early stage of building DPI, and we've had a lot of focused attention, especially in the geographies of African subcontinent, in Southeast Asia, which is where we see that that the journey in building DPI is very much at an early stage. Coming to our performance in Fiscal Year 2024, we are happy to share that our revenues grew 19%, led by double-digit growth across our core business verticals. During the year, the tax services, which is one of our main pillars of revenue, grew by 12% year-on-year. During the course of the year, we crossed INR 5 crore PAN card issuance, which this was compared to INR 4.1 crores last year in Fiscal Year 2023. We are also proud to report that the overall growth in this segment during the year has been significant.
Compared to last year's year-over-year growth in the same quarter, there has been a degrowth. But to address that fact, we would like to share that this was primarily owing to the fact that during the same quarter last year, there was a one-off spike in PAN issuance, mainly due to government's push and certain regulatory deadlines. We expect the PAN issuance to continue to grow at the current levels, especially on the back of the fact that we have a young demographic contingent in our country, and we are looking at almost INR 1.2 crore youths getting added to the workforce every year. Equally important, we do realize that PAN is not a foundational ID as Aadhaar, and therefore, it is not given at the time of birth, and today more than 35% of India's population still doesn't have a PAN card.
So we do see the headroom, we see the growth coming in this particular area. Our second line of business on pension services, there was a 14% growth during the year Fiscal Year 2024, with more than INR 1.37 crore accounts opened, as compared to INR 1.22 crore in Fiscal Year 2023. As on date, the company has a very diverse customer base. We serve more than 16,000 corporates, and along with that, we are the sole CRA for all central and state governments. Protean is again the first, and continues to remain the largest central record keeping agency, with more than 97% market share in NPS and 100% in Atal Pension Yojana, the flagship scheme of the government for the economically weaker sections of the society. Even today, as we see, there is significant headroom for growth in the pension business.
India has a very low pension penetration, which is clearly evident from the fact that if we look at the number of EPFO accounts in India, which stands at INR 28 crore, the NPS and APY accounts combined is less than 8%. If we compare with other developed countries, in our country, just around 6% private sector employees are covered under pension. If we compare it to U.S., over there, almost 70% private sector employees are covered under pension. So we see a huge headroom for growth over here. Likewise, on the identity business, we are delighted to report a staggering growth of 62%, which is mainly driven by the entire Digital India growth. It is driven by rapid adoption of digital payments, enabling regulatory norms, and increasing penetration of digital processing of documents across government and private organization.
All these create multiple use cases for the four facets of identity I called out, be it e-sign, be it eKYC, online PAN validation, Aadhaar authentication. Because all these services are pressed in, the moment you are opening an account, you are doing a digital lending, you are doing a high-value transaction in the capital markets, you are doing any jewelry purchase, you are opening or you are purchasing or registering any property. So all these services are getting pressed into providing and enabling one or more of these use cases. During the year, we have onboarded over 200 business-to-business clients and won contracts from various state governments to make their processes more digitized. Our new businesses, which largely, if we can segment, comprise four verticals.
They include the open digital ecosystems, the work we are doing on the data stack, cloud and InfoSec, and the expansion into international markets. While all these businesses are having early momentum, we especially see that open digital ecosystems are gaining traction and there's significant network adoption, especially in ONDC, which is probably one of the more advanced ODEs as we look at the areas in which we have contributed. In terms of profitability, the company reported a PAT of INR 97 crore. We are down 9% year-on-year, but this is clearly due to our investments in developing new business verticals in line with our strategic goals.
Our key investments over the year have been in people and technology, and this is important to call out because the company has pivoted into getting competency built in all open source technology stacks, in centers of excellence on new areas of technology, which means emerging technologies like AI and blockchain, which we are introducing in a lot of our contributions in building open digital public infrastructures, ecosystems. And last but not the least, the fact that we are moving beyond the BFSI sectors and contributing in multiple sectors, we are investing in sector specialists who lend us their expertise to work on these multiple open, digital ecosystems. Equally important for us to call is that since we work on open source stacks, these tech stacks are fungible across different DPIs, and that gives us the ability to carry the same stack and invest and build multiple ODEs.
We believe that these new business lines will be very critical for our business going forward, and we are doing our best to nurture them and help them achieve their full potential. The second reason I would like to call out, which, which again comes to a dip in our margin, is based on the provision that we've created and we spoke about it the last quarter. This is something we have been managing and, you know, putting aside over a period of time, and this is related to a sovereign debt which we have on the projects we do with the income tax department.
While this money, we are very clear, is definitely going to be coming back to us, but in cases, some of this debt is outstanding for a long period of time, and as part of very prudent and conservative accounting practices, we are today starting to maintain provisions on these long outstanding debts. Post taking this provision, in this quarter, we have provided for INR 13.5 crore during the quarter. Post taking this provision, the net remaining provision will be around INR 28 crore, which will come through over the next two years.
And while we expect this money to be recovered completely from the government, we are also would like to share with you that part of this provisioning that we are doing or part of the money that payable to us also passes through as payable to our vendor partners, and therefore, whatever provisions we are making do not have a full impact because they do have a pass-through element attached to them. Lastly, our balance sheet, again, just to reiterate, continues to remain very strong. We have more than INR 700 crore of cash and cash equivalents, including marketable securities, and as has been the history of the company, we continue to be a debt-free company.
To better utilize the cash on books and to maximize the return to our shareholders, we continue to actively seek inorganic growth opportunities and are especially interested in investing in businesses which bring in cutting-edge technologies and provide us a faster time to market. During the course of the year, the company again forayed into multiple new businesses and products. Specifically, I would like to call out that in open digital ecosystem, there was a strategic expansion into two new ODEs. One was in the space of agriculture, where we worked on the Agristack, the core Agristack for the nation. And second was in the space of education and skilling under the Open Network for Education and Skill Transformation, ONEST. ONDC, as I mentioned, has shown good traction, and we can definitely see numbers in terms of adoption and network expansion showing very promising growth....
During the course of last year, as I already mentioned, we got our account aggregator license, and we launched that business. Equally important for us on the data stack front, we launched Rise with Protean. It is a comprehensive multi-sector API marketplace cum sandbox that aims to provide over 300+ APIs across digital onboarding, credit verification. It also supports various DPI-related APIs in the space of OTP, agri, health, and ONEST. And last but not least, we also launched an AI-powered eKYC solution. I'm very pleased to announce that the board of directors has recommended a final dividend of 100% on the face value of INR 10 per equity share for Fiscal Year 2024.
Going forward, we remain strongly optimistic on the Digital India growth, and are committed to pioneering transformative technology that is collaborative, that is equitable, and democratizes opportunity at a population scale. We continue to remain one of the very few companies which have worked and built platforms and digital ecosystems at this scale, at a population scale. We will continue to likewise add value to enterprises, consumers, and governments through our unique combination of technology and expertise in e-governance. With this, I would like to hand over to Sudhir, our CFO, for a detailed discussion on our operational performance. So thank you very much for listening to me, and, Sudhir, over to you.
Thank you. Thank you so much, sir. Good evening, everyone, and I'm pleased to welcome you all, and thank you again for joining us for the full year results call. Currently, India is witnessing massive digital transformations, the foundation of which lies in building a ubiquitous digital infrastructure. Protean is privileged to be at the forefront of this dynamic ecosystem and continues to be one of the cornerstones of the digital India evolution, laying the foundational pillars in creating the ecosystem across the sectors. Let me take you through the financial highlights for the year. In financial year 2024, our consolidated revenue from operations grew to around INR 882 crore, growing by 19% year-on-year, led by noteworthy performance across our core business lines, with tax services, pension services, and identity services, registering impressive year-on-year growth of 12%, 14%, and 62% respectively.
Additionally, we are seeing early momentum in our new businesses as well. Adjusted EBITDA for the year stood at INR 196 crores, reflecting 11% growth year-on-year, with current margin of 12.6% in financial year 2024, mainly on account of the continued investments that we have made in the new business verticals. Profit after tax for financial year 2024 stands at INR 97 crores in Fiscal Year 2024, and this is after the provisions of around INR 39 crores that we have reported in the books of accounts. I'm happy to state that our balance sheet position continues to remain strong with cash and cash equivalents of more than INR 700 crores. We continue to maintain our debt-free status and are looking to accelerate our internal cost levers at a sustainable rate.
Our well-established business model, coupled with strong cash flows, multiple strong businesses that have delivered results over the last more than two decades, has resulted in a net cash balance of around INR 151 crore at the end of the year. Looking ahead, we continue to strive for growth opportunities and championing the vision of a digitally empowered India with a regulatory framework. Our journey has just begun, and we are excited about the endless possibilities that lie ahead. With that, I am... and discussions from the floor. Thank you.
Thank you very much. We will now begin the question-and-answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may press star and one on their touchtone telephone. If you wish to remove yourself from question queue, you may press star and two. Participants are requested to use handset while asking a question. Ladies and gentlemen, we will wait for a moment while the question queue assembles. The first question is from the line of Sumangal Pugalia from RaRe Enterprises. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Hi. Thank you so much for the opportunity. So my first question is, when we talk about the high pace in the last year, can you elaborate on that? Like, what can be the normalized sort of PAN issuances and the impact specifically for this quarter due to that?
So largely, if you, if you look at it, the PAN issuance, on the average, if you see it over the last few years, is around INR 6-INR 7 crore new PAN issuances every year. And as I mentioned earlier, PAN not being a, in a way, a saturation identity, because you don't generally get a PAN card when a child is born, unlike Aadhaar. Today there is a huge population out there, maybe over INR 50 crore people in the country, who don't have a PAN card. So as, people come into, either their first employment or they are opening their first bank account, the PAN card becomes a relevant document for issuance. And we are consistently seeing this happening.
As I mentioned earlier, while at times there have been, you know, certain initiatives or deadlines, like Aadhaar-PAN linkage or, you know, some other DBT cases happening, where number of PAN cards has spiked. Around INR 7- INR 8 CR is what we are seeing as a growth factor for PAN card issuance year-on-year.
Okay, sure. And my second question is on the new initiatives. So while I'm in the commentaries, quarter-over-quarter also, we've seen revenue actually go down. So can you just talk about, you know, some of the actual revenue lines and specifically on ONDC. Right now, what is the revenue structure, and when do you see it getting linked to the GMV of ONDC?
So the revenue structure for us today is basically, I would say there are two tracks to it. One, at one level, it is we are providing the entire digital public infrastructure on which ONDC sits. So this is just like, to give an example, just like you have UPI being run by NPCI to enable the payments in the country, we today provide the registry and gateway services to enable the ONDC transactions. For these registry and gateway services, as of date, we are directly compensated by ONDC as a market institution. And this is something which naturally, at this stage, is done at the ONDC level. This could very well, like UPI, become a market participant compensated model going down the line. So that is one stream of revenue.
The other revenue is more on the lines of a SaaS model. I would split that part into two sorts of, you know, services. One is where you are providing buyer and seller technology. It could be to enable digital commerce for buyers and sellers. To enable open finance on ONDC, it could be lenders and borrowers. To enable transport and mobility on ONDC, it could be riders and, you know, taxis or transport services. So in all these cases, it's a SaaS model where we provide, you know, buying and selling technology, and this is given to corporates in all likelihood. And over here there is an AMC model, and then there's a SaaS model which plays with it. The third part is more like an extension services.
So as you look at various other enabling requirements on an ONDC platform, you have extension services like reconciliation and settlement modules. You have issuance and grievance module. You have catalog as a service. So all this technology is again something we built and adapters to plug into the ONDC ecosystem. And these, again, are provided to various, you know, network participants who want to engage with the ONDC ecosystem, who want to enable payments or completion of payment for a buyer and a seller. So that is where we provide our technology, which again runs on a SaaS model. So this, in a way, is the two-tier structure of our revenues coming from ONDC. And as I mentioned earlier, some of the ONDC numbers you would be familiar with, which again from ONDC are getting published today.
ONDC itself is showing very strong growth in terms of the network, in terms of the growth of the network. Today, we have almost, you know, 280,000+ sellers who are there, and these are the- this is the ecosystem that has got created. Similarly, the number of transactions in ONDC are growing significantly. So these are the various cases where we are seeing that ONDC adoption and penetration is growing in the country.
Sure. So currently for the gateway services, we are, we're not getting a percentage of the transaction as of now. You see that, in the future, that is some kind of a revenue model that Protean will pursue?
Yeah. So that is something which we expect to happen, you know, in the long run, because that is largely the way the, you know, the digital public infrastructure gets compensated. Well, ultimately, the infrastructure is created for the common good, and all common good is ultimately made sustainable by the participants who are using that to, you know, consume services or get value out of it.
Sure. So last question, maybe I'll come back later. On the depreciation for this quarter, there seems to be a quarter-on-quarter rise also. So is there some explanation you can provide for that?
That is basically, you know, from time to time, we do the, you know, the physical verification of these assets, and there are certain assets which are basically out of their life, and on that, we have booked this depreciation. This is only a one-off entry.
Sure. Thanks.
Thank you. Next question is from the line of Rohan Mandora from Equirus Securities. Please go ahead.
Good afternoon, sir. Thanks for the opportunity. So coming to that, the easy explanation that you gave, and also if I refer to the explanation in AQ. Out of the total write-off that we take, around 20% was going to be a net impact on Protean. However, if I look at this quarter, almost INR 13.5 crores seems to be a net impact. So just wanted to check if there's some change in the assumptions here, and what is the incremental net impact that we expect from the INR 28 crores that will be written off, over the next two year?
Yeah. So I, I'll just mention that when we are taking the reserve, we are doing it at a gross level, right? So that is just one clarification. And, as I mentioned earlier, at a gross level, the impact over the next two years is going to be in the thereabouts of INR 28 crore. That again, is the worst case scenario, provided we don't get any payments during the course of this period. And this again comes in because it is outstanding over a certain period of time, which we've taken as a call to say while it is sovereign debt and very much recoverable, we do realize that provisions should be made. On this gross is what we had indicated, that whatever we get paid, a part of it flows through to our vendor partners.
So there is, you know, anywhere between 50%-80%, which goes out as a payable. So therefore, you know, there is a payable concept which goes through. So in a worst case scenario, let's say there's no recovery, then INR 28 is a gross, but then the payables would get adjusted at that stage, but which we don't envisage, as I mentioned, because we expect this money to come through. And historically also, we've seen that, earlier on also, we have got our payments as delayed as, you know, 7-10 years after the due date. So money always comes through. It is only a matter of, you know, process and, procedure that needs to be followed for that to happen.
Just to mention that as we speak, over the last maybe one quarter or thereabout, I mean, I'm just referring to the most recent conversations directly with the government. The seniors in the department themselves are monitoring this, and they want to make sure that, you know, any any overdues and, you know, any of these backlog get cleared on priority.
So essentially, the payables are not getting reduced in this closing that you're creating right now? It's only the receivables that you are adjusting. That would be the correct understanding.
Currently, yes. That's right.
Okay. Sir, second question was, if I look at the cash flow statement, there's an increase of around INR 47.6 crores in other financial assets, year-on-year. So just want to understand, what is that? So this is under the changes in working capital. So what is this increase referring to?
So these other financial assets, basically these are some of the investments that we have made. And yeah, again, in... I mean, this is, these are routine items. This is not something that, you know, we expect to continue, so some of the intangibles.
Okay. So because under investments, you're not looking at under, it's under other financial assets. So just want to understand, is there some lien on these? Is it fixed deposit given on some, some business purposes, some project level? That's a big amount, INR 47.6 crore.
No, we haven't given any of these liens. No.
Okay. So thirdly, of the total receivables that we have, what would be the amount attributable to business as usual receivables? And what is the remainder of the remaining amount, how much provisions are we carrying against the remaining receivables?
Okay. So in total, if we see, I mean, the business as usual receivables are in the range of about INR 130 crore. Majority of that, 95% of that will be, I mean, about 92%-95% of that will be within less than six months. And of the remaining, you know, of course, there are certain provisions that have been made. The provisions, majority of or maybe 99% of these provisions relate to the, you know, these government dues with respect to the income tax statute and the receivables coming from the income tax department, nothing else. In terms of the overall provisions that we are expecting, as we've just mentioned that, you know, apart from this remaining INR 28 crore exposures, there is nothing else, I mean, in the entire book.
Got it, got it. And sir, coming to the newer businesses, sir, on ONDC, like sir was explaining, on the SaaS-based revenue streams, because there are already, certain network participants who are already present. So have we entered into some relationship with, the, the network participants on setting up of a buyer or seller technology or something on the enabling of reconciliation services? And by when can we see the monetization or revenue streams to come in from that, that line item? And overall, for Fiscal Year 25, what kind of a revenues do we expect from cloud ONDC, businesses?
Okay. So in terms of engagements with network participants, yes, we are actively working and have enabled multiple buyer and seller apps. As you would have noted, we've also got into some key partnerships with large institutions, where we are providing them ONDC technology, if you may, in a box for enabling their, you know, their ecosystem partners, customers. These partnerships have been done with banks. Banks like Citi, HSBC, ICICI, Standard Chartered, where we are building not just buyer-seller tech for, in some cases for them, but we are also providing them provisions to enable their supply chain and their systems onto the ONDC ecosystem. We are likewise working with corporates and foundations.
We today have enabled our distribution partners, like, say, a Spice Money or a Vakrangee with the buyer-supplier technology, because this could be B2B models or B2C models, and we are similarly working with some FPOs. So these revenues are already accruing, though naturally, you know, since it's a SaaS-based model, as adoption grows and more transactions happen, we expect these streams to improve. But these numbers are already flowing into our numbers, so you would see them as part of the numbers already reported. We naturally expect promising growth on, you know, ONDC and the various categories that ONDC is today enabling, because it's not just digital commerce. There is also open finance, there's transport and mobility, there is, you know, similarly, B2B ecosystem of supply chain management, which is coming through.
So we do see, you know, promising growth, which will be led by the network adoption. Would be difficult for me to give you a forward-looking number as a commitment at this stage, but we definitely see growth over here. And if we see the underlying network growth, ONDC, as you've seen, has grown significantly. We are almost talking about plus transactions now happening in a month, and there's almost a 20%-30% monthly growth that ONDC is seeing from an orders perspective. So these numbers are critical to bear in mind, to say what sort of possible SaaS revenues can come out of this business.
Sure. On the cloud business, any updates with respect to the new client conversions on the government side, on the financial entity?
Business, where I said, where I definitely said, right, there's early momentum. Today, we are, you know, having customers, so we have, booked orders, and we have, what I would term, not as annuity revenue, but contract revenue, which is coming through. And, we have key clients, who are already... So we have around, you know, more than double-digit clients at this stage who are availing our, services. We are working in a number of sectors, ranging from e-commerce to aggregators to SaaS vendors to manufacturing sector, public sector, where we are providing our cloud services. Similarly, equally important for us is that last year also went into getting a lot of critical certifications in place. So we are now a MeitY certified cloud.
We have PCI DSS certification, SOC 2, SOC 3, and ISO certifications, which also give us, you know, a lot of ability to participate in more mandates as they come out.
Gotcha. Actually, last question I had, if I look at Slide 7 of the presentation, and the proportion of online PAN issuance has improved sharply in the last couple of years. As I understand, the contribution margins that we make in online is better than offline, but this is not getting reflected in our numbers. Just if you can help me understand, like, how should one look at this mix change in impacting the profitability?
Right. So basically, yes, the online PAN issuances are definitely increasing, and as part of the, you know, the previous explanation that that or impact the projections also that we had provided. The overall online, you know, opportunity is definitely growing, while the physical issuances are almost staying flattish. So the entire growth that we are, you know, observing over the last few quarters is actually coming from online PAN issuances.
You would anyway see the aggregate in terms of the operating margin, but, within the tax business, this definitely has a positive impact. As you rightly said, the margins are better as you do online, because there is some cost in the infrastructure, and what you are doing does not have the requirement of an assisted model over here. So the margins are better, but naturally, there are various other things which go into the overall, you know, operating margins, which you are seeing at an aggregate level. But for this business, this is definitely creating the positive impact.
Sure, sir. Thanks.
And, just also on your questions on this, on this, INR 45 crores. So basically, there was a, you know, on, on the last date, there was, money that was, received from CRA and, also, I mean, from the government, and also there was a FD maturity on that very day in the evening. So that is how, which is reinvested. So no other reason, this is a one-off, as I said.
Gotcha. Thank you.
Thank you. Next question is from the line of Dhaval Parekh from IIFL. Please go ahead.
Thank you so much for the opportunity, sir. Hope I'm audible.
Yes.
Sir, in your opening remarks, you highlighted that the investments that you are going to make in your newer businesses can have some bearing on the margins going ahead. So can you quantify what is the amount that you have budgeted for expanding on newer businesses and the nature of such investments in Fiscal Year 25?
So, as you can see that, you know, while our existing business verticals, which are the core pillars, you know, as stated in the commentary as well as, you know, as well as the press release. So the three businesses are actually, you know, deliver growing by, I mean, 19% year-on-year overall top line. But at the same time, you know, you will appreciate that the similar result is not sort of coming in at a profit level. So the whole reason over there is essentially, you know, the investment that we have made in the new business verticals in order to sort of make sure that, you know, they have continuous flow of investments and the capital is going, you know, in the technology.
Basically, that means that first you need to hire people, and these people then create technologies. These technologies are sold in the marketplace, and that is how the recovery happens. So, I mean, these are, in the over the last 18 months or thereabout, there are these significant investments that we have already made. We are hoping that, you know, or the expectation is that in the coming 4 quarters, you know, these, businesses should start yielding sort of revenues to take care of their, investments that are going further here. But I think eventually, you know, to recover all the investments that we have made, there is, we expect that it should be 18-24 months trajectory for a full payback period.
Okay. So, I think we made 10% EBITDA margins in Fiscal Year 2024. So you expect that to continue or improve going ahead?
Well, I wouldn't like to give a, you know, a forward-looking guidance, but I would say that, you know, I would like to split it into two parts. The EBITDA margin on our existing three businesses, which deliver more than 95% revenues, is maintained. And whatever you see in terms of the reduction, et cetera, that is largely coming out of the investments that we have made in the new businesses. So you can do a, I mean, back of the hand calculation. So we expect that, you know, the investments, obviously, you know, will continue to some extent, but at the same time, the recoveries, you know, or the revenue lines from the new business verticals, we expect these, these should grow from here.
Okay, that is very helpful. My second question is on the newer businesses, which we include the international account aggregator and all the other new businesses. So, for Fiscal Year 2025, what from which segment do you expect improving revenue visibility going ahead? And are there any new projects that we have won recently or are expected to and we can start monetizing it within this year?
So as I mentioned to you that during the course of last year, we actually, one, expanded our open digital ecosystem footprint. So beyond ONDC, we built the Agristack in the space of agriculture. And that is something which the Agristack is now going to power various use cases in the space of lending, advisory, you know, agri-related insurance, crop insurance, so on and so forth. Again, related very clearly to leveraging digital public infrastructure or consent-based data sharing enablement, and pilots are being established with multiple states across the country. So that is a line of business which we naturally see, you know, that foray happening over there in the space of agriculture. The second area we expanded it to it was in the space of education and skilling.
This is where, just like today, ONDC is connecting buyers and sellers. In this space, So there are four verticals or pillars to education and skilling transformation. One is in the space of education financing, then there is learning, there is skilling, and there is jobs. So when we look at all these opportunities, that is, again, we've created an open network around which, we bring together the providers and the seekers, in enabling these journeys. So that is another new line of business that is, that is trending in terms of the open digital ecosystems. Equally important for us was the fact that we launched our complete, open source API stack, where we are looking at enabling digital journeys.
So this becomes a very closely aligned business to the ID business that we already run. As I mentioned, we are one of the top five service and, sorry, ASA and KSA, which is our authentication and KYC service agency to UIDAI and providing third-party identity services. We see these services becoming a value-added service stack, whether you are offering eKYC, you are offering e-sign. You are building a stack on top of your foundational DPIs, and that is going to be very critical. And the entire Rise with Protean, which is our API stack and our AI-powered eKYC service, will enable various digital lending journeys and onboarding journeys.
So these are the new lines, or I would say, under the space of data and in the space of ODEs, which we expect next year to add, you know, further momentum to our new ODE space and data space. Other than that, our focus remains on, you know, international and cloud, and those. International is, again, a business where we are engaged with multiple countries. As we mentioned earlier, this is about taking the India Stack global. So we are focused in, you know, areas in the space of identity, foundational identity projects, taxation projects, social security, and welfare projects. We are today engaged with a host of countries in Africa, Southeast Asia, more than 12... and we are today actively participating in multiple opportunities and have submitted bids.
That is another line of business which should contribute in the course of the year as we go forward.
Okay. Thank you so much, sir, for the elaborate answer. I just-
Hi. Ladies and gentlemen, in order to ensure that the management is able to address questions from all participants in the conference, please limit your question to strictly two questions per participant. Should have a follow-up question, we request you to rejoin the question queue. Next question is from the line of Garvit Goel from Invest Analysis Advisory LLP. Please go ahead.
Hello. Sir, my questions are all answered. Thanks for a very clear explanation.
Thank you.
Thank you. Next question is from the line of Dhruv Shah from Dalal & Broacha Stockbroking Private Limited . Please go ahead.
Thank you for the opportunity, sir. So my question is, so if I look at the data released by the government, so in terms of NPS and APY, the new subscriber base has not grown significantly. So if I look at APY, the growth rate in terms of new subscriber used to be average around 15%, and this year it's kind of flattish. And in terms of NPS also, it used to be one point six million new subscribers, and this year it's almost half, around point 7 million. So can you explain what has led to this degrowth for Fiscal Year 2024, and why we haven't been able to show new subscribers, add more subscribers?
So just to mention, I mean, two facts. First, for Atal Pension Yojana, Protean has been, you know, the 100% market share. And of the total account, new accounts opened under the Atal Pension Yojana, so this was around INR 1 crore accounts, now growing to INR 1.2 crore accounts. So there is definitely a close to a 20% growth over there. The second is in terms of the NPS accounts. So there also, we have, you know, seen almost a similar growth in terms of, maybe around 15 lakh new subscribers which, who have come. And if you look at the overall end of period accounts, the overall accounts have grown to around INR 7.2 crore total accounts. So I mean, we are... I mean, is there something else that you are referring to that we should mention?
So sir, I'm referring to the new subscriber base. So if I look at NPS in Fiscal Year 2023, there were 1.6 million new subscribers. For Fiscal Year 2024, it's just 0.7.
So NPS was. So well, if I look at the total, you know, that is contributing to the revenue, was INR 1.2 crore growing to INR 1.4 crores. And within that, the Atal Pension Yojana account, as I said, this has certainly grown from INR 1 crore- INR 1.2 crores.
Okay, okay. Yeah, and my second question is, so in the last quarter, you had mentioned about 13 bids in the international market. So can you shed some light, what are the status over there?
So currently, most of these are still in the process of processing at the end of the, you know, the governments or the institutions which are managing the bids. So currently, there has not been any further progress from last quarter.
Okay, sir, I have some more questions. I'll join back to you. Thank you.
Yeah.
Thank you. Next question is from the line of Viraj Mithani from Jupiter Financial. Please go ahead.
Yeah, thank you for the opportunity, sir. And, my question is regarding this gateway service. You talked about the stream of revenues. Can you elaborate more? So I couldn't understand it. You know, we are making any money in transaction-based revenue right now on the ONDC platform?
Yeah. So the answer is yes, we are making money on the transaction-based services, which I mentioned was more in line, in line of the B2B or the buyer and seller tech that we are powering today. Where, if you remember, I spoke about some of the exclusive arrangements we have with banks, where we are powering, offering them ONDC in a box. We are offering them, you know, B2B or B2C applications for enabling their supply chains. Similarly, we are working with other partners like foundations or the distribution partners, where we've got buyer, buyer technology out there. So those are transactional models. Your question with regard to gateway was that, gateway today, and I was giving an example, is something like you can look at UPI today, right? UPI today becomes the network around which, you know, all banks are connected.
And when you move money from, say, a bank A to a bank B, it goes through the UPI rail. So ONDC works similarly. So when you get onto a buyer application and you place an order, it is the gateway which is used to broadcast the order to the various sellers who can possibly give you that particular, you know, good or service that is being sought. Likewise, you know, all the buyers and sellers, or what we term as the network participants, are today registered onto registries so that they are available on the ONDC network. So the underlying gateway and registry tech is provided by us.
Now, this is at an ecosystem level, and today, whatever tech we are providing out there, ONDC, as an institution which is managing ONDC or the Open Network for Digital Commerce, today pays us for that. And down the line, since this is a public good which has been created to enable, say, a digital commerce and open finance, the expectation clearly is that at the end of the day, the market participants will start paying for the services, basis which they are able to enable their commerce or enable their, you know, financial services. So very much like today, banks pay NPCI for utilization of the UPI network, we expect this model to, at some stage, become a market-facing model.
Okay, sir. So the SaaS model and all is on other side of the ONDC, that's on the way of doing it, is it? With,
So the SaaS model is on the B2B side, where we are offering buyer and seller technology or lender and borrower technology, or we are offering any of the extension services, like reconciliation and settlement or, in terms of catalog as a service. So all those services are working on a SaaS model. The gateway works more on actual infra, you know, compensation at this stage.
Okay, sir. So my last question is, you talked about your presentation about cybersecurity, education and agri and education this thing model. So would agri and education would be sort of a government-based revenue, like some coming from government, or it will be like from the transaction-based coming from the consumers and be more of a transaction in nature and market-based revenue system? And what do you do in the cybersecurity side? What kind of cybersecurity you will be doing and what kind of revenue will be coming there?
Sure. So let me address both of them separately. So when you look at agri and when you look at education and skilling, so see, both these businesses also have the equivalent of creating the digital public infrastructure. So DPI is like today we have ONDC. In the space of agri, what I termed was we built the core AgriStack. So that is where we got the mandate from the government in that case. And under that, we built the ability to, one, create the architecture or the framework for Universal Farmer ID, so that each farmer can be uniquely identified. And subsequent to that, when you provided the foundational identity, then whatever assets the farmer has, whether it is land records, whether it is crops that they have sown and, you know, data around that, so all that data is digitized.
And the ability to share that data based on farmer consent, to be able to consume various services like, say, a loan or insurance or advisory, that is what is enabled. So today we have built the, I would say, the digital good, which is the, which is the core Agristack. Various use cases will run on top of it. So I would again, you know, equate it to the ONDC. So the digital goods, naturally, initially the government invests, the government creates the initial good, and then the network participants pay for it transactionally. So at this stage, naturally, the mandate came from the government. But down the line, when we are looking at enabling farmers, farmer organizations, food producing organizations, we expect that they will be the participants who will be paying on a SaaS model.
So most of our contributions in the digital public infrastructure will always run on this two-tiered sort of equation, where the digital goods will maybe be, you know, covered in terms of cost reimbursement initially by the central agency, which could also be the government. Down the line, it becomes a network model. All work which is done on top of it in terms of consumer and corporate tech, where the application layer comes in, will always be a SaaS model, chargeable to the people who are consuming this digital good. So same will happen in education and skilling also. Does that address your question?
Yes. If I'm allowed to ask one more: regarding this exports, when we export this kind of tech stack to any other country, what will be the revenue model there?
So I think most of the countries, since these interventions are at a, at a digital public infrastructure level, so most of these, most of these engagements are today working through the government or through multilateral entities, so they are coming in the form of RFPs. And RFPs generally have a, have a portion which is more connected to deployment of technology, which is building the core technology and deploying it. So there you get paid, you know, upfront or in a staggered manner once the deployment is completed. And then you have a managed services, where you are running that particular stack for a number of years, and it forms a part of an AMC. So there are two components.
One will be the straight payment for the tech that we deploy, that we develop and deploy, and second will be an AMC, which will stretch over a... Generally, we've seen it's a three-five-year period.
What will be the size of this project, sir, if I may ask?
Different projects have different sizes, but they can range from anywhere, $8 million-$10 million- $20 million. That's the sort of, you know, range we are seeing currently. It again depends on the country, the complexity, you know, currently what is the stage of development within the country, the sort of population that we are trying to address. Various factors come in which define the, you know, the size.
Thank you, and all the best, sir.
Thank you so much.
Thank you. Next question is from the line of Sarvesh Gupta from Maximal Capital. Please go ahead.
Good afternoon, sir. Sir, for the, you said 95% of the business is being contributed by the existing business. So 5%, around 5%, which is like INR 45 crore of revenue is coming from new businesses. And against that, sir, what would be the losses?
Against that? Okay. So, you know, at a contribution level, we do this because underlying the entire infrastructure, technology, people, I mean, then after that, there is only math. So essentially, at a contribution level, you know, we are able to, you know, compute. But after that, you know, the entire thing, because the same servers are also being used for, say, for instance, you know, for a project A versus project B, or even, say, for tax or CRA. And therefore, it is, you know, even if I try to apportion, that will not reflect, good picture or a-
No, fixed cost can be apportioned in the percentage of revenue basis, right?
Well, if you try to do that based on revenue, so just, you know, just try to imagine there is a INR 200... So I'm just taking hypothetical number. There is a INR 200 crore revenue coming from, say, the existing business, and there is, say, a INR 10 crore revenue coming from the new business. And, you know, the entire cost, if you try to do an apportionment between INR 200 and INR 10, then all of a sudden, I mean, this entire thing will look very awkward. I mean, we can do that, but at the same time, the company has currently not adopted any segment-level reporting. So in future, as soon as, I mean, we start adopting this segment level, then I think there should be an audited way to publish these results also.
At the contribution level, are you losing money, and what was the amount?
At a contribution level? So in the overall financial statements, if you see, so there is a top line that is already published, and then there is a number in terms of the processing charges. So that will give you the contribution level, contribution margin.
No, no, for the new businesses, sir, what will be the losses for the identifiable cost for these, the new businesses?
At a contribution level, we are not losing money. So for instance, if I am charging any revenue and, you know, the point in time cost is obviously less than the revenue. But yes, then there are the, you know... Let me try to explain. The investment in the technology team who have built this technology, that is, you know, that is, that is largely say, dedicated to these new platforms or new sort of business verticals, that technology cost is largely the, you know, the expenditure. Also, there are certain platforms, you know, which, for instance, have gone live, and on that, the depreciation which is coming is you can also, you know, allocate towards the new business line.
Understood, sir. And sir, on the old debtors, so understood that this is how you have accumulated it and you're provisioning. But going on a going basis, let's say last year, how much of these you know long dated debtors are you building in every year now, going forward?
There is no accumulation of this. So this is basically a nice, you know, an isolated set of data. So this is sovereign debt. And while we deal with multiple governments, municipal authorities, and all that, so what we are talking about is overdue, you know, or say, long overdue debt is only coming from one particular project, and that is pertaining to the income tax department. So there is no accumulation of this. There is a history that some of these dues get paid only after seven, eight, nine years. So for instance, for the entire period from 2004- 2015, the entire money was paid in 2017.
Starting, you know, again from that period, so these are the overdues where, you know, we are trying to recover on our priority.
So, the current new debtors which are being made with the same department or same project, similar projects, they don't have, you don't fear that it will go beyond, let's say, three months, four months, or what is the usual debtor days are?
No.
Okay, sir. Thank you, sir, and all the best.
Bye-bye. Thank you so much.
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, due to time constraint, that was the last question of the day. I now hand the conference over to Mr. Suresh Sethi, Managing Director, Protean, for closing comments.
Thank you very much. As we mentioned, and I think as part of the conversation we just had with regard to the questions, we do see ourselves in a sweet spot here, because with the growing focus on, I won't, won't even say growing, but the continued momentum that we see in the Digital India story, the large macro environment. The fact that our core businesses continue to have strong growth prospects and also have a lot of headroom for growth. The fact that our new lines of business, be it Data Stack, which will complement and strengthen our identity business, our work in the open digital ecosystems, where there's a strong government push and there are enabling regulatory norms coming into place across multiple sectors.
Cloud and cybersecurity, which as you know, more and more data and digitization happen, becomes a very critical complementary infra play. We see strong opportunities, and global markets continue to be looking at the India DPI story with a lot of interest, and there is equal interest in the way the India DPI framework has been created in these countries for them to build their DPIs. So all areas look you know sort of on a positive trend, and we are looking forward to a good Fiscal Year 25 as we go forward. So thank you very much.
Thank you. On behalf of Protean eGov Technologies, that concludes this conference. Thank you for joining us, and you may now disconnect your lines.