Ladies and gentlemen, good day and welcome to Protean eGov Technologies Ltd's Q1 FY26 Earnings Conference Call, hosted by Go India Advisors. As a reminder, all participant lines will be in the listen-only mode, and there will be an opportunity for you to ask questions after the presentation concludes. If you do need assistance during this conference call, please signal an operator by pressing star then zero on your touch-tone phone. Please note that this conference is being recorded. I now hand the conference over to Ms. Pushpa Mani, Vice President & Head of Investor Relations from Protean. Thank you and over to you, Ms. Pushpa Mani.
Thanks, Amshad. Good afternoon, everyone. I welcome you all to the Q1 FY26 results discussion. You must have received the results and the investor presentation of our company. It is available on BSE and NSE, as well as on the company's website. As usual, we will start the course with the opening remarks by our Managing Director, followed by CFO, and then we will open the floor for the question and answer session. If any of your questions remain unanswered, you may reach out to us afterwards. The management on today's call will be represented by Mr. Suresh Sethi, Managing Director, Mr. Sandeep Mantri, CFO, and myself, Ms. Pushpa Mani here. 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 these statements are reasonable.
However, these statements involve a number of risks and uncertainties that may lead to different results. With this, I invite our MD, Mr. Suresh Sethi, to address all of you. Thank you and over to you, sir.
Thank you, Pushpa. Good afternoon, everyone, and many thanks for joining us today. I am pleased to share that Protean eGov Technologies Ltd has started FY26 on a strong note. We have delivered resilient financial and operational performance in the first quarter. We continue to work closely with the government and the society in building inclusive, mission-critical, and citizen-scale digital public infrastructure for the welfare of the citizens. Let me start with the overall financial overview for the quarter. I am pleased to report that our revenue from operations grew by 7% year -on -year to INR 211 crore, driven primarily by the strong performance of our Central Record Keeping services business for NPS, APY, and the UPS platform. We had continued gains in market share in our [tax] services business, and there was a strategic mandate that we received during this quarter.
Our EBITDA grew by 31% year -on -year to INR 45 crore, translating into EBITDA margin expansion by 24 basis points to 18.8%. Profit after tax also demonstrated healthy growth of 13% year -on -year to INR 24 crore, resulting in a PAT margin of 10% in Q1 FY26. Our financial position remains robust, with a strong balance sheet that provides us with significant flexibility to drive future growth. As of 30th June 2025, we have over INR 800 crore in cash and cash equivalents and a net debt-free status. That gives us agility to invest strategically in opportunities that align with our growth objectives while maintaining a prudent approach to capital management. Coming to key business highlights, I'm delighted to share that Protean continues to strengthen its position as a trusted DPI builder for the nation.
We are pleased to share that a significant achievement for the quarter for us was an initiative by IRDA to create a unified digital marketplace for insurance in India. We secured a INR 100 crore mandate from Bima Sugam India Federation. This initiative will pave the foundation for the first of its kind insurance digital public infrastructure for the country. We have received the mandate to develop, integrate, and maintain the Bima Sugam platform. This win again builds on our legacy of delivering mission-critical national platforms and significantly expands our footprint into the insurance domain. Protean issued a statement of intent with NITI Aayog on 15th July 2025 to strengthen its financial inclusion by promoting literacy and APY adoption. This again marks the beginning of a key strategic alignment to further strengthen pension penetration, specifically among the marginalized sections of the society.
We'll steer the initiatives to educate shareholders, stakeholders, and conduct targeted outreach programs in 64 aspirational districts. Tax services continue to perform well with a 2% year-on-year revenue growth. We gained approximately 80 basis points in market share, increasing from 58.2% in Q4 FY25 to 59% in Q1 FY26. During the quarter, we issued 1 crore PAN cards, with 54% issuances being paperless. We continue to build our leadership in the CRA business with a 16% year-on-year revenue growth in Q1. Importantly, we added 32.4 lakh new subscribers, capturing 98% share in new additions, and also onboarded 753 corporates, further expanding our reach. Our leadership position remains robust, with a dominant 97% market share across NPS and APY, reinforcing our position as a trusted CRA partner.
In line with our proven ability to deliver at scale, we successfully developed and deployed the Unified Pension Scheme platform for the central government in record time. Launched on April 1st, 2025, UPS offers an assured pension option under NPS, and as the primary CRA, we've been managing its end-to-end implementation. As of June 30th, we've onboarded 19,000 accounts, demonstrating our ability to deliver large-scale projects efficiently and effectively. Our identity services segment saw robust volume growth across most products, driven by increasing demand for digital identity solutions. However, revenue was impacted by flat-based pricing and competitive pricing pressures at the foundational level. Despite this, we are encouraged by the growing traction of our value-added offerings, such as eSign Pro and RISE with Protean, which are well-positioned to benefit from the next phase of Digital India. These innovative solutions are designed to meet the evolving needs of our customers.
We are also pleased to report that our RFP-led business pipeline is gaining significant traction, with our current order book exceeding INR 300 crore. This order book constitutes of CERSAI, CKY- CRR 2.0, Bima Sugam, and other mandates in ID services and other businesses. We are also thrilled to have received industry recognition for our branding and communication initiative, winning two awards at the ET Brand Disruption Awards 2025. These accolades position us as a leader in the DPI space, reflecting our commitment to excellence in branding and communication. In conclusion, I'd like to state that Protean has a strong positioning across core citizen services and emerging digital public infrastructure.
We continue to contribute strongly at a foundational level, at the identity level across KYC, and this combined with our robust balance sheet, strong cash position, growing RFP pipeline, and strong execution capabilities position us well to drive future growth and create long-term value for our stakeholders. I'd like to thank our team for their dedication and our investors for their continued support. With this, I would like to hand over to Sandeep Mantri, our CFO , to share the financials with you.
Thank you, Suresh, and good evening, everyone. As I begin, I would like to take a moment to highlight the broader trends shaping the digital infrastructure landscape in India. The government's continued focus on digitization with Digital India Initiative, Atmanirbhar Bharat, and the rapid adoption of digital public infrastructure, coupled with significant investment in emerging technologies, is driving demand for mission-critical digital services. This macro backdrop presents a favorable environment for companies like Protean, with expertise in delivering population-scale e-governance projects and building digital public infrastructure for India. I am pleased to share that our Q1 performance aligns with this trend, with growth across our key businesses. We have maintained healthy margins and delivered consistent profitability, driven by the sustained growth in our trends in our CRA and tax business and initial contribution from our strategic win in new businesses.
Let me now take you through the financial performance for Q1 FY2026. Revenue from operations stood at INR 211 crore, which is an increase of 7% year -on -year compared to INR 197 crore in quarter one of FY2025, which is last year. EBITDA for this quarter stood at INR 45 crore, which is 31% growth on a YoY basis from INR 34 crore in quarter one of FY2025, and up 30% QoQ from INR 34 crore in Q4 FY2025. EBITDA margin stood at 18.8% in quarter one FY2026. When we talk about profit after tax, profit after tax stood at INR 24 crore in Q1 FY2026, which is an increase of 13.1% on a YoY basis with a trade margin of 10%.
Moving to business performance, tax services revenue stood at INR 100 crore, which is 2% growth on a YoY basis, while we gained 50 basis points market share from 58.2% in Q4 of FY2025 to 59% in Q1 of FY2026. I would also like to highlight this on YoY basis. The market share gain has been a whopping 5% from 54% in last year to 59% in this quarter. Around 1 crore PAN cards were issued during the quarter. When we talk about CRA business, the revenue increased by 16% on a YoY basis from INR 66 crore in quarter one FY2025 to INR 76 crore in quarter one FY2026. As you know, mentioned by Suresh, we added 32.4 lakh new subscribers during the quarter, capturing more than 98% market share in the new subscribers, and our cumulative market share is also more or less equal to the same numbers.
When we talk about identity services, we recorded a revenue of INR 24 crore, which is down 14% on a YoY basis and flat on a sequential basis. However, the number of transactions saw robust growth across most of the ID product. The decline in revenue was primarily due to place-based pricing and pricing pressure to some extent at the foundational level. If we talk about new businesses, the revenue is stood at INR 11 crore, which is up from INR 6 crore in quarter one FY2025. We have started booking revenue from some of the key RFPs we won in the last year. As mentioned by Suresh , a key development this quarter was our strategic INR 100 crore RFP mandate from Bima Sugam India Federation to build the first of its kind digital public infrastructure in the insurance sector.
These RFP mandates are a significant milestone in our journey, and our order book from such mandates is stood at about INR 300 crore. These RFPs give us healthy forward visibility and will begin contributing meaningfully to revenues in the coming quarter. Additionally, we have a healthy pipeline of these RFPs in the digital public infrastructure space. From a financial position standpoint, we are extremely strong. We have a pipeline business model with a strong cash flow, and we have cash and cash equivalents of more than INR 800 crore as of 30th June 2025. We continue to operate with zero debt, no debt on our balance sheet, which gives us the flexibility to invest in emerging opportunities while maintaining the financial stability. With that, I conclude my remarks, and we would be happy to take your questions. Thank you very much. Over to 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 touch-tone telephone. If you wish to remove yourself from the question queue, you may press star and two. Participants are requested to use handsets while asking a question. Ladies and gentlemen, we will wait for a moment while the question queue assembles. The first question is from the line of Prakash Kapadia from Kapadia Financial Services. Please go ahead.
Thanks for the opportunity. A couple of questions from my end. If I were to look at revenues, they are up 7%. This is despite the low pairs of last year. If I were to look at the last year pairs, the rest of the year also has very muted revenue growth. For FY2026, can we expect this revenue momentum to continue and revenue growth to some color? If it could be, it should be high double digits. It could be very high double digits. What kind of a revenue growth looks possible for this year? Secondly, employee expenses are up to 40% this quarter. What does it mean to this increase? Is it just the number addition for these employees? Is it annual hikes? It could give some insight. Thank you.
Prakash, thank you for your question. Your first question on revenue, what kind of growth we are looking at for the year, you know? While we will not give guidance, we see a healthy, you know, revenue growth in quarters to come because the reason I'll tell you is because RFP-based revenue, which is the INR 300 crore order book which we won this year, is yet to, you know, play in the, you know, revenues. That will deliver a significant growth to our revenue, you know, book. Another thing is that even in CRA, which is a more annuity-based revenue, if the subscriber base grows, the revenue, you know, is start picking in, and it is a loyal revenue which will remain, you know, for a foreseeable future.
As far as revenue is concerned, we are pretty confident that we will deliver a good growth in this year for sure. To answer the second question on employees, there are two, three reasons which is basically resulting in this employee expenses, growth in employee expenses. One is the project-based hiring, which is basically for these RFP-led businesses, which is the revenue for those businesses are yet to kick in, but we have started hiring, you know, to deliver those projects, and therefore, there is some increase in revenue, to some extent, because of that. Second thing is because of increment, which we delivered in this quarter. Therefore, you know, you will see some increase because of increment. Third is, last year, we started strengthening our leadership team for the company. Now we have a very robust, stable leadership team.
Because last year it was partial, this year it will be, you know, full course for some of those leaders. These are the three primary reasons for our increase in employee expenses. Having said that, I think the level will remain more or less the same, except the RFP project-based hiring, which we continue to do so depending on, you know, winning various projects as we are in, you know, various stages of discussion for many of the pipelines as we talked about. I hope this answers both your questions.
Sure, Sandeep. Thanks, Sandeep. I'll go and verify more. Thank you.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Kamlesh Bagmar from Lotus Asset Managers. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Thanks for the opportunity. Sir, one question on the part of your reporting. Like, if I see last year, your presentation, then you were, I think the EBITDA number was INR 35 crore or INR 45 crore. This time around, it is INR 35 crore. I know that you have to put that ECL provisioning. If I adjust for that, then your EBITDA without other income is down 37% year -over -year. Your margins are 7.8% if I exclude the other income. On the net cash price, these net cash are like cash that has been there for the last three years. Even three years back, it was INR 800 crore. Entire of the EBITDA, the report of EBITDA based on your presentation is driven by the other income. If I see net of other income, your margins are 7.8% vis-à-vis 13.3% last year.
I think, you know, I kind of agree with you that our margins are a bit low, you know, as compared to whatever we see. If you see last year, if you remove, basically, it is not 13.3%. Ultimately, whatever ECL provisioning we are doing is also part of business. I would not exclude that when I'm computing EBITDA. More or less, I think our EBITDA remained in the range of between 7.5%- 8% for last year's quarter and last quarter and also this quarter. While we are putting a lot of measures to bring the EBITDA, bring the growth in the EBITDA percentage, that will start delivering the results maybe in one or two quarters. There are many automation efforts that are going on in the company. You would see some sort of increase in EBITDA percentage going forward, probably from Q3 or Q4.
I'm just referring to your presentation, last year's presentation. Last year's presentation clearly mentioned that adjusted EBITDA is INR 45 crore. This quarter, you are showing the same EBITDA at INR 35 crore. There could be consistency on the report.
We will be consistent with this approach now. We will not be changing any, you know, calculation as far as EBITDA is concerned. I think this is the number calculations you are going to see going forward.
Last year on the growth side.
Sorry to interrupt, sir, but I may request you to.
Thank you, please.
The question queue for follow-up questions. Thank you. The next question is from the line of Rohan M. from Equirus Securities. Please go ahead.
Good afternoon, sir. Thanks for the opportunity. Sir, just want to understand on the international business. We had won a couple of projects earlier. Any further updates on the project wins there? How should one look at the revenues in this year from the international business?
Rohan, we had indicated earlier that we had started executing an education DPI in Morocco. We are doing part of the execution, and the revenues which are accruing from that project are getting accrued, and they're showing in the numbers. They will continue to show in the next quarter also. The second project for us was Ethiopia. Again, the project is under implementation, and revenue recognition will be coming through. As Sandeep mentioned, just like domestic, some of the international businesses will also start reflecting the numbers in the coming quarter and on. Other than that, we are at a stage where we have around three or four projects in which we have been shortlisted and are at the final stages. We should be able to give you more visibility on the same by next quarter.
Sure. In terms of the new business initiative that we have, and INR 300 crores of pipeline at least that is there, what is a realistic revenue that we can book in FY 2026 and 2027 out of these?
Out of, you know, INR 300 crores pipeline, which is more a project, 20 project pipeline. To new, I'm just setting, you know, keeping aside the new businesses. I'm just talking about the order book which is pertaining to, you know, 20 projects. Out of INR 300 crores, I guess, you know, about a third of that revenue should be booked in this, which is current order book. If we win, you know, more orders in future, then it will be, it will be, you know, added to the revenue pool.
On the processing charges, how should one look at it incrementally? PAN business clearly contributes a good amount of the processing charges, but with the new businesses coming in, what proportion of the processing charges will flow from new businesses? What kind of metrics should we compare it with? Would it be fair to have a certain ratio of total revenue, or only certain businesses will have a contribution to processing charges? Some clarity around that would be helpful.
It will be, you know, business to business. I would not, maybe when you do modeling, you can, you know, one-on-one talk with our IR team, and they can, you know, give a better guidance. It will be varying from business to business. On an overall basis, you should assume more or less, you know, about the same kind of processing, you know, direct expenses to revenue. It is about 37%, 36% of my revenue. You should assume more or less same if you're doing a modeling on an overall basis. If you are doing modeling for, you know, individual businesses, then you should get into that system.
Sure. Thank you. With the PAN 2.0 projects allocated already, the announcement is there in the media. Any further clarity we have on the role that Protean can play?
I think. I think we have iterated enough in the past also. This is the clarity which we gave earlier remains, you know, we are where we were earlier also. I think it will be more or less the same. PAN 2.0, we have talked a lot in the past also. I think it is the same situation right now. We are not, you know.
Thank you, sir. Thank you, sir. On the distribution part of the distribution leg of it, we are still waiting for the details.
No, Rohan, we are there. We continue to run the business. As we said earlier, the mandate given by us to ITD remains as is. There is no change. The distribution business and today the insurance business as is continues to be run as is. There is no change to it.
Great. I was more on asking from the point of view, once the PAN 2.0 goes live, what happens then?
As we said earlier also, it will depend a lot on the business behavior and how distribution plays in. I don't know. That is the visibility we had in the past. We have the same visibility. Having said that, as we stated, we are bidding a lot of DPI-related projects, which can be far bigger than many other DPIs. I think we are looking more on a forward basis and focusing more on businesses which can lead up to next step in that level.
Sure, thanks. Thanks a lot.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Shubham. Some Simpl, please go ahead.
Hello. How did you?
Yes, sir.
Yeah. My first question was, should the order we receive for Bima Sugam and CERSAI , and the whole order book that we have, which is kind of management, when we start commercializing, and I think only hope to come revenue in this quarter when we start booking the revenue in the financial year. What kind of margins can we expect from these mandates? Will the margins be, like high single -digit, mid-teens? What kind of margins can we see there? Similarly, what are the other areas or the mandates that we are actively pursuing right now to drive growth? That is my first question.
Okay. Okay. To answer your question, in this quarter, there is no, I mean, no significant revenue from these large projects. I think from Q2 and only from Q3 onward, we should start booking revenues in these projects, and therefore, you will see uptick in revenue on account of that. To answer your question on margin, I think these are government projects, and margin will be mid-teen type, mid-teen digit, which is what we are expecting.
To your last question, Shubham, we continue to look out and participate in large-scale DPI projects, as I mentioned earlier. Our core focus has been at the foundational level. Anything to do with identity, which is where we are seeing the play we have today with CERSEI, because it effectively is the central KYC pool for all the four BFSI regulators. It is a very foundational construct and a foundational step that we are working on. Bima Sugam is a big foray into the insurance industry, again, in the BFSI space.
Other than that, we are doing work and looking at allied work in the space of data sharing, whether it is the business we run as a B2B business under the accounts aggregator or some of the work we've done while building the every DPI for the government of India, where we built the entire consent and the data sharing framework and architecture. These are areas we continue to remain focused on and looking for future growth.
Okay. Got it. My next question was that historically, we used to own operational margins around 20%. Since we year -on -year gradually switched by 18, it has just been decreasing, and it has dropped to almost 8%- 10%. My question was that what has changed in the last 5- 10 years that our margins have significantly dropped? Is it just mainly because we are not able to see scale and the revenue growth, or are there other factors as well that have eroded our margins over these years?
I think, Shubham, the margin story is basically we are building, as you're aware, we are building a lot of new products. There is a lot of investment which is going into these new products. That is one of the primary reasons because the revenue is yet to kick in, and we have spent a good amount in developing some of those IPs. Once the revenue starts kicking in, then you will see that the margins also start improving.
Okay. Apart from, let's say, our identity services business where we are facing pricing pressures, are there other businesses also interesting in the last 5- 10 years?
Pricing pressure, we are in a competitive industry, so pricing pressure is going to remain. Having said that, that may be one of the reasons that.
I just need to ask for our other businesses also, in 5- 10 years, is it like realizations have gone down, or, you know, like some pricing pressure has been there?
I don't think the primary reason is because we are putting a lot of these new initiatives or new projects and new products, and we are putting a lot of technology expenses in those products. Therefore, for a short term, you will see some contraction in margin. On a long-term basis, once the revenues from even a couple of these products start kicking in, you will see immediate uptick in margins.
I will also further add to it that when you look at the product lines that we've chosen, which are very closely working on the app layer above the digital public infrastructure, which is basically providing consumer and corporate, enterprise solutions for consumption of various governance services. Most of these, including in the ID space, are going to be very SaaS-driven businesses. They will have an MRP component to it, and they'll be recording revenues, and they are not like turnkey projects. If you see, the company is working on two fronts. On one side, we will keep looking for large-scale national projects, which will come under RFPs, where you'll have turnkey revenues coming in. The other side is building the strong muscle of creating product-based solutions, which are equally important because one leads to the other.
As you get capability and competence in building the national infrastructure, your ability to then expose APIs and build solutions on top is further strengthened. That is where we are investing in technology and people. As Sandeep rightly said, it's more an ahead-of-the-curve investment, which will lead to a very well-defined SaaS-based revenue for the company going forward.
Okay. Oh, just a follow-up on this that I can ask.
Sure.
As you mentioned, we have been investing, and we have also been making a lot of investments in the open digital ecosystem that we have been building. I just wanted to ask, I think just two years ago, we were mistaken about the ONDC 12th. After that, when the fees will start on ONDC, we will get additional revenue or at least a recurring revenue from there as well. How confident are you that instead of different ecosystems where we are putting forward investment, in the next three years or five years, can it become a significant part of our revenue stream? How confident are you of that, and what is our model around it?
I think, Rohan, if we put 10 products on the block, not all the products will go on the same path. We are very confident, and we were saying this again and again that our new businesses, out of these products, will deliver what will, as of now, it is very premature to say. We are reiterating that our new businesses will contribute at least 25% -30% in the next three years' timeline. We are committed to that.
Yeah, I may just ask about all the digital ecosystems because those have not really been started monetizing. Apart from the fee that we get, you know, like the platform fee or the Bima Sugam market, it has not started for any system. I was asking per se, what do you think about that?
I think if you look at it, we'll have to take both a macro and a micro view over here. Initiatives like ONDC are national initiatives. We've seen the success of UPI as a payment DPI for the country, and it has its own cycles. I'm not comparing cycles also. At times, you might find that the growth to create a national adoption and consumer behavior change will take some time. We do still believe that whatever journey India is taking in building strong DPIs across multiple sectors will have significant opportunity of unlocking the digital economy. Today, we clearly know that our digital economy is growing at twice the rate of our regular economy. These are large bets. Wherever we are working on a turnkey basis, yes, we are getting the turnkey RFP revenues kicking in as we deploy the solutions.
When you look at adoption and actual use of these digital rails by enterprise and consumers, that is something on which the ecosystem will have to play. That is a slightly longer-term game where we rightly said it will be a timeline of two to three years where you see these scaling up.
Okay, thanks a lot for the in-depth answers. I appreciate it.
Thank you.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of [Raneet from So Bank]. Please go ahead.
Thank you, sir, for giving me an opportunity to ask the question. First of all, I would like to congratulate the management for delivering a very steady and a strong set of performance in a challenging environment. In this regard, I would like to ask you a question. My first question is that you have won some RFPs, like telephone RFPs like eKYC 2.0 and Bima Sugam, which seems to me to be a very path-breaking kind of step. If you can elaborate the kind of potential these initiatives can bring to the company, maybe five years' time, ten years down the line, because these are new areas of growth, that would be very good for me if you can give some light on this.
Sure, [Raneet]. As I earlier said, these are, again, very foundational DPIs that have been built for the country.
CKYC clearly is a big intervention which was done a few years back by the core regulators coming together. The intent at this stage is to revamp the entire tech stack for creating a much more seamless central KYC database. The best of technology in terms of data matching, data deduplication, face authentication, and other areas is being put in place, which will create a very, very huge economy for the entire economy and efficiency for the entire BFSI sector. We see this as very foundational. It's a turnkey project for us at this stage where we are revamping, designing, and putting it across the new stack. It will unlock a lot of value because you will be seeing that the way financial institutions do KYC and onboard customers, this will give it a significant uptake.
That is another area we will see as an allied and related area in which we can then build enterprise solutions to leverage the central KYC stack. Bima Sugam clearly is, I think, the first large-scale foray into building a digital public infrastructure to support the entire insurance industry, right from insurers and insured and the entire ecosystem coming together on one strong digital vein. We know there are multiple insurance products which are out there. Creating that transparency, bringing the entire ability to put it together, digitization of policy, and the ability to link the entire insurance DPI into an open network where you are also supported by other foundational DPIs of identity, of health, because all these will become input parameters into an open network to provide better and more customized and personalized insurance. Ultimately, the consumer will be a huge winner based on that.
Once these rails are in place, we will naturally see a plethora of enterprise products and services coming into play, which will leverage the central stack to be able to provide a better insurance experience and better insurance computation in terms of whatever premiums you are paying. They will be far more personalized and customized going forward. We see huge opportunity at an ecosystem level. These are not products or stacks that are created just as an RFP, but they actually unlock an entire ecosystem. That is where we are wanting to play in both the infrastructure level and the app level for the country.
For clarity, just an add-on question in this. If you can help me also to understand the kind of pipeline which is there in the RFP stage and how well Protean is placed to capture that set where we are very strongly placed and we are confident on what stage of those RFPs we are at, either bidding stage or we have already won. If you can give this color to that, it is very useful for us to map it out.
Thank you, sir.
Thank you.
[Reneet], if we have an RFP in hand, we would be able to confirm to you. Anything which we are bidding for or in the stage, difficult to put that information out there. As we've earlier said, focus for us is always in the space of foundational DPIs. Domestically, when we look at it, we are focused on any identity-related RFP, anything to do with taxation, social security. These are areas we are going after. Today, a lot of work which is happening in the digital space, whether it is in terms of eKYC, eSign, which is primarily the stack which gets built on the foundational identity stack and enables payments and transfers. There are multiple state-level RFPs which come into it. We are actively participating in all of these.
That is where we are talking about the fact that overall we have almost an INR 300 crore order book, as Sandeep earlier mentioned. That is really where we are seeing the trajectory. Globally, if you see, we have been very consistent in maintaining that our focus from a geographic perspective today is in Africa, Southeast Asia, and Middle East. These are countries which are looking at identity, personal security, and taxation-related infrastructure getting created over there. That is what we are bidding for. That is a constructive RFP scenario for us. We are actively participating in multiple RFPs of all these things.
Okay. Thank you, sir. That's all from my side. Thank you.
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, in order to ensure that the management is able to address questions from all participants in this conference, please limit your questions to two per participant. The next question is from the line of Siddhartha Prakash from Avendus Spark. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Hello, thanks for the chance. I just want to ask one question. With the PAN 2.0 project consolidating all PAN and PAN services into a single unified platform managed by LTI Mindtree, what is the anticipated impact on Protean's existing revenue streams and long-term role as an intermediary?
As I earlier mentioned, this new project is primarily looking at the tech stack, which is currently run by the IT department for issuance of the PAN number after they do the deduplication of data within the database. Therefore, this is different from the mandate we currently run, which is for largely collating the citizen information, doing the KYC, and securely sharing the data with IT. Subsequently, once the PAN number is issued, we go ahead and do the issuance of the card and delivering it to the citizen. While we see our process flow, us providing the capabilities of collation of data, processing, and issuance, the tech stack is where today IT works. That is what has been mandated out under this PAN 2.0 RFP. As far as impact is concerned, we don't see any immediate impact because this RFP clearly talks about two years plus of deployment timeline.
The other question which clearly comes is what mode or mechanism will the citizens be choosing going forward while applying for an identity like PAN? That is where we see that today 70% of the citizens in the country go through an assisted mode of application, which is where our nationwide network of 400,000 agents comes into play. Clearly, it's taking the sort of view going forward. The assisted behavior is very, very dominant in our ecosystem. We see it being played out even in the other DPIs we are building because, at the end of the day, the attempt is that no citizen should be left behind. While you provide them direct to service portals, you also make sure that the people living in rural India, people who are not that digitally savvy, are equally able to access the digital platforms and the digital rails of the nation.
It's a difficult one to predict that two years down the line, how will the citizen be consuming services of identity issuance and application? That is where we are currently. No immediate impact to our business.
Okay. Yeah. Thanks for that. Just one more question. What's the plan to offset tax services volatility? Are Pension or Identity Services scalable to become major contributors here?
Absolutely. Because see, one is when you look at the DPI space, I will take a couple of approaches to this which we are doing. One is we continue to remain focused on DPI-based businesses. These are most of the time central and state government project-led turnkey businesses. As you know, we are providing, naturally, when I look at the Central Record Keeping Agency business, we run with a dominant market share of 97%. That is in effect the social security DPI. Pension penetration being at a mere 6% in the country, there's a significant headroom over there to continue to grow it. The pension regulator is clearly very committed to expanding this penetration. If you look at the weaker section pension product, which is the APY, we are talking about in all in our country around 8 crore plus subscribers.
Whereas the number of people having Jan Dhan accounts, which are, again, very relevant for the weaker section of the society, stand at almost 55 crore plus. We see significant headroom in the pension space with the government putting a lot of trust by launching programs like NPS Watsanya, which was for minors, pension for minors, which is launching programs like the Unified Pension Scheme platform, which is assured pension, sort of product design for the central government employees. There's a huge upside over there. Other areas like Bima Sugam and all open a completely new sort of part of the economy to us, like the insurance sector. Identity continues to grow very strongly in the country because, as we are saying, all these DPIs and rails coming together are unlocking immense value for people to consume these services digitally.
Identity becomes a core factor when you are looking at doing KYC with any regulated entity. You are looking at things like digital signing, which means you are removing paper-based documents out of the ecosystem. These are, again, four foundational products that we are offering. More importantly, as we offer these products, I would reiterate we are also building the app layer. We are today not just, for example, a certified entity for providing eSign authentication based on Aadhaar. We are also building applications where we are building end-to-end digitization workflow suites for companies which we can offer to enterprises for providing them efficiency in paper management and workflow within the organization. These are very allied areas, but definitely, it's a growing space and clearly getting unlocked in more and more different sectors as we go forward.
Further to raise, we are expanding all these DPIs to the international market as well, which will also give some sort of mitigation to the revenue leak which may arise because of online behavior.
Okay, thanks. Thanks, sir. It's all the best going forward.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Kunal Bhatia from Dalal & Broacha Stock Broking Ltd. Please go ahead.
Yes. Thank you for the opportunity. Sir, I just had a question on the PAN services business. This time around, on a YoY basis, we have gained 500 basis point market share. There is a 2% growth in this. If you look at it in terms of volume, the volume has remained almost the same, which was 1 crore last year. Even this year, we are at the same 1 crore. What was the reason of this 2% rise? About later or better realization. Secondly, how do we see this trajectory going forward now that you have a higher market share?
There are two parts to it. One, see, the growth clearly comes because, as I mentioned, distribution plays a very strong role. Secondly, the journey that you are providing both at the agent level and at the direct level. For example, if an agent today is enabling a PAN application journey, we have today also created provisions where the agents can actually enter into a completely paperless journey. You are able to create an assisted digital journey. All these investments into technology, into creating a very secure pipe for submission of data to the IT department, and creating a better agent experience, create a better and a sharper distribution out there. Other than that, naturally, we look at, from a distribution perspective, getting the maximum reach and therefore working towards increasing our market share in this space.
As I earlier mentioned, 70% of applications still are coming in the assisted mode, but still the 30% which get catered to on online channels. Again, we are taking measures to ensure that our online journeys don't get dropped. We are able to give the right nudges and information to the person looking for a PAN card issuance to be able to complete the journey. These are some of the investments which go more from a technology and an agent enablement perspective. That is how we see the growth in market share coming for us. It goes without saying, the trust that the company's name carries as a provider for the last 22 years plus is itself a strong endorsement for us to be taken as a preferred partner.
In terms of overall numbers, on one front, clearly, as we've been saying, and if you look at the Aadhaar PAN linkage data, PAN penetration in the country is still thereabout 40%. We do see continued PAN application and issuance. As we've been earlier mentioning, PAN clearly is being used for more and more purposes today. The PAN as an identity, whether it is government schemes, some of them have mandated that the person should have a PAN card. Your bank account opening with the PMLA guidelines is now a mandatory requirement to have a PAN card or submit a Form 60/61. PAN usage is increasing. PAN usage at both Tier-1 , Tier-2 , and then 3, 4, and 5 is increasing because of things like DBT. Therefore, this will continue to be a consistent requirement year on year.
What we are generally seeing is that there is a normal around INR 6 crore to 7 crore PAN card issuance, new PAN card issuance every year. There have been years where the numbers have spiked due to certain events like the Aadhaar -PAN linkage and the deadline that was provided. Similarly, if there is, you know, incremental government schemes getting issued and people in bulk go for PAN card issuance to be able to, you know, subscribe to them. There are events which at times have spiked it, but on the average, this is the number which is there. For us, it's important that, one, we have a continued stream of new issuances happening and second is to improve our market share, which we are focused on.
Okay. Sir, basically, in this quarter in specific, the volume is the same, but despite that, the 2% growth, what was the reason for that?
You know, this tech services business is consisting of some allied services as well, which is TIN services. There is some increase in the TIN transactions, and that has resulted in 2% growth. While you are right that number of PAN is more or less the same, how come, you know, 2.2% increase in revenue? This is because of the allied services we provide to finish, you know, tech services.
Okay. This is a.
It is not a significant portion, but it's not.
A portion of a total.
Got it. In terms of, just if you could give us some sense on how has the INR 8 crore business gaining traction, how have we seen the ramp-ups on a month-on-month or a two-or-two basis, and where do you see this run rate ending in the current year?
I think there should be already contributions from the business this year, definitely. Because as we speak, we have a pretty deep pipeline where we have, and it's not just the pipeline. When I look at the funnel, we have secured mandates. As I mentioned earlier, it's a SaaS business. Once the revenue starts peaking, it will be running on a SaaS basis. The timeline which is taken, clearly, we have not shown very big numbers or large numbers in the first quarter. There's an integration timeline, but we definitely see these upticks coming in the second quarter and onwards from there.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Prem Luniya from Astute Investment Management. Please go ahead.
Hello. Yes, I'm taking my call. Sir, I had a question about the new business's growth. As we have been talking about a few businesses like the ONDC business or the AgriStack business in the past, it seems like they have not turned out as we thought of. I just wanted to understand this view of having 25%- 30% of the business coming from the new businesses, which would be the major things which you see as of now, who can contribute to, let's just become a INR 50 crore or INR 100 crore business because that is the scale they'll have to reach to contribute around INR 25 crore, INR 30 crore to the overall company.
Also, sir, this is on the background of that we have grown our employee excellence from around INR 75 crore to now around the run rate of from this quarter, as we take the run rate of around INR 200 crore plus. How is this contributing to the top line? Is the view to understand?
I think there are two aspects to it. If I look at the new business and the diversification that we are seeking, one focus has clearly been to continue to strengthen, from a digital public infrastructure contribution perspective. We are clearly keeping our sights on large national projects. We've seen that is where we talked about them and as they're stepping very quickly, whether it's CKYC or insurance DPI or further strengthening of the pension DPI by schemes like the UPS and all. That one focus remains. That is, for us, looking at multiple state and central level DPIs. Some of the turnkey projects which we've also carried out in sectors outside BFSI are projects like the AgriStack. These have all been turnkey projects.
What we are presently building as a business plan outside the turnkey project adjacencies and the digital unlock which happens because as you build a digital public infrastructure and you build the ability for information sharing digitally, to provide or consume services, you need to build applications. This could be enterprise applications for enabling B2B journeys, or it could be a B2B2C journey where consumers use applications to share data and then receive services, be it a loan and advisory, health, insurance, so on and so forth. That is where we are investing on the other side in building our entire data and analytics stack. Along with the products like eSign Pro, API RISE, which we are talking about, and API marketplace, these are areas which we are investing in the app space. These are for us the two streams of business.
One is clearly project-led RFP business, which is turnkey and definitely requires investment in people for building on these projects. As Sandeep mentioned, some of the numbers as we see this quarter also is coming from these teams which are getting created to service the large-scale RFPs. The other side is an ongoing product capability where we are, again, we extended our technical and product and domain specialist team to build technology in the spaces that we are choosing, which are allied with the digital public infrastructure we are building. That is where the investment is going on the other side.
Sir, just a follow-up on the product businesses like Protean RISE and eSign Pro. Can you see in the next one or two years, these can contribute around INR 1,500 crore? Do they have that opportunity? Do you think that adoption will happen on the customer side?
I won't put a number per se, but the opportunity size is very large. As far as the eSign Pro type of product is concerned, the opportunity size is like running into billions of dollars. I guess we are at a very strong position. You know, in the next three years, we should see strong revenues coming out of a couple of these products.
Sure, sir. Will it be margin accretive for that, or will it be largely on the same line?
No, of course. These are product or SaaS businesses which will definitely, you know, be margin accretive to the company.
Sure.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Sumangal Pugalia from RaRe Enterprise. Please go ahead.
Hi. Thank you. I have a follow-up on the previous question. How many customers do we have for eSign Pro and Rise with Protean? If you can share some trends, recent trends on PAN tradition. Thank you.
The number of customers keeps growing every now and then. I don't think it will be appropriate for now because the product is still at an initial stage. Maybe if you want specific details on the number of customers in each segment, we could just one-on-one and we can provide some details which we can provide for you understandable amount.
Sure. But.
The pipeline is growing. We have a healthy pipeline of customers, and the pipeline is growing with each passing day. You should see very good revenue or a strong revenue coming out of these products in time to come.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Ladies and gentlemen, due to time constraints, this would be our last question for today. I would now like to hand the contents over to the management for closing comments.
Thank you very much, again, for all the support and the questions which also help us to think through our strategy and become more and more clear about this. We are happy with the stage we are at currently, and we clearly see a good trajectory for the company, both on the project-led businesses and the product-led businesses. We are looking forward to keeping engaged with this community. Thank you very much.
Thank you. On behalf of Go India Advisors, that concludes this conference. Thank you for joining us, and you may now disconnect your line.