Ladies and gentlemen, good day and welcome to the Protean eGov Technologies Limited Q2 and H1 FY 2026 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. Should you need assistance during the conference call, please signal an operator by pressing star, then zero on your touch-tone phone. I now hand the conference over to Ms. Pushpa Mani from Protean eGov Technologies Limited. Thank you, and over to you, Ms. Pushpa Mani.
Thanks, Ikra. Good evening, everyone. I welcome you all to the quarter two H1 FY 2026 results discussion. You must have received the results and the investor presentation of the company, which is available on BSE and NSE, as well as on the company's website. As usual, we will start the forum with the opening remarks by our Managing Director and 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 would be represented by Mr. Suresh Sethi, Managing Director and CEO; Mr. Sandeep Mantri, Chief Financial Officer; and Ms. Pushpa Mani, myself, Head Investor Relations. Before we begin, I would like to mention that some of the statements in today's discussion may be forward-looking in nature, and we believe that the expectations contained in 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 evening, everyone, and thanks for joining us today. Just a sort of quick update on our business and where we are this quarter. As we've seen, as we continue to navigate the complexities of the global economy, the IT industry clearly shows how innovation and collaboration can shape a smarter and more connected future. I'm very proud to share that Protean remains at the forefront of India's digital transformation, aimed at driving inclusion or innovating and creating impact at scale. With that purpose guiding us, I'm glad to share our robust performance for quarter two FY 2026. Our revenue from operations grew 19% quarter on quarter and 14% year on year. This was largely driven by our CRA services and also the rising contribution from our new lines of business.
Our EBITDA stood at INR 44 crore, reflecting a margin of 16.6%, while PAT was at INR 24 crore with a PAT margin of 9%. Our balance sheet continues to be strong, with zero debt and over INR 800 crore in cash and cash equivalents, including marketable securities. This financial strength clearly enables us to invest confidently in new opportunities. In our tax services business, Protean continues to lead the market with over a 58% share. We issued more than 1 crore PAN cards during this quarter, which is a testament to the trust citizens place in our systems, the reliability of our processes, and our deep expertise in delivering at a national and population scale. The CRA services, again, delivered a very strong double-digit growth. We onboarded 41 lakh new subscribers.
Over the past year, India has seen more than a 12% increase in pension subscribers, yet the total coverage remains below 6% compared to nearly 70% in OECD nations. Therefore, there is a massive opportunity, a headroom in this business. I'm further proud to add that Protean continues to hold a dominant market share of 98% of the total pension subscriber base and an equally strong share in new subscriber onboarding. Our third vertical, identity services, continues to our business. We are the only company in the country which is offering all four facets of digital identity. With focused execution, we continue to leverage on the capacity and scale we've built, and we are focused on getting incremental market share and growth in this business.
Again, happy to report that on an overall basis, the identity business grew at a market level, and it's really a clear reflection on the digital India growth. Our new businesses are now beginning to make a meaningful impact. We are very happy to report that the new businesses, for the first time, contributed in double digits to our operating revenue. For this first half of the year, we had a 12% contribution in operating revenues from the new businesses versus 4% last year for the same period. We have expanded across multiple open digital ecosystems, and that has been a strong contributor in this contribution. As you are aware, we are operating across insurance, health, agriculture, education, sustainability, digital commerce, and mobility. This diversification has been very critical in this significant contribution coming from new businesses.
We also currently, as mentioned earlier, have an order book which is almost twice our annual revenue at INR 1,600 crore, which is again coming from projects which are largely in the space of ID and BFSI services. We would further like to share that this quarter we achieved a major milestone by securing an INR 1,370 crore mandate from UIDAI to set up and operate district-level Aadhaar Seva Kendra across 188 districts in the country. With this mandate, Protean becomes the only organization to manage and scale both foundational IDs, be it Aadhaar or PAN, which are clearly an anchor for our digital nation. Beyond the business impact, this win also underscores our commitment to advance India's digital transformation and improve access to secure, efficient Aadhaar services nationwide. Very important to highlight that once fully operational, this initiative is expected to generate INR 200 crore of annual recurring revenue for us.
Further, this quarter was also critical for the fintech industry as a whole, with the Global Fintech Fest, which is one of the largest fintech festivals across the globe now, having taken probably a poor position from a point of participation and span of coverage across multiple countries. At GFF 2025, Protean also unveiled two pioneering innovations, which were clearly testimonial to our work in emerging technologies. One was in the space of Quantum Safe Data Vault, and secondly was for showcasing an AI-in-a-Box solution, both powered by Protean Cloud. As we all know, with the growing sophistication of cyber threats, data security has become mission-critical for financial institutions, government agencies, and healthcare organizations. Our Quantum Safe Data Vault offers the next frontier in cybersecurity, protecting sensitive data through encryption that remains resilient even against future quantum attacks.
We are currently engaged with RBI to conduct a POC on this protocol, and our white paper is currently under evaluation. Naturally, this will open up significant opportunities in the BFSI sector and wherever there is a requirement to safeguard citizen and national data for governments. The second innovation, AI-in-a-Box, again empowers organizations to harness the power of AI with complete control over their data models and infrastructure. I think it is important for us, both for internal and external transformations, to leverage this capability.
[audio distortion] models for building our subscriber base in the pension ecosystem. We actually unveiled an express onboarding journey that enables new subscribers to join in a matter of 90 seconds. Other than that, this year is our 30th year as a company. Celebrating that, we also released the state of digital public infrastructure in India, a report highlighting how DPI is transforming the economy, deepening inclusion, and powering India's $8 trillion economic vision. This was launched in partnership with Indian Institute of Management Bangalore. To conclude, Protean is poised for sustained growth. We again clearly believe that our work in the area of strengthening DPIs, working in the app layer, and powering enterprise infrastructure will remain our continued focus areas. As we look ahead, we remain steadfast in our commitment to advancing inclusive growth, strengthening India's and the globe's digital infrastructure, and creating long-term sustainable value for our stakeholders.
Thank you for your continued trust and partnership as we build the future of India's digital economy. I will now hand over to Sandeep to take us through the financials and further details.
Thank you, Suresh. Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining us today. India's digital public infrastructure continues to be the backbone of inclusive growth, innovation, and governance efficiency, built on India's stack spanning digital identity, payments, and data empowerment. The DPI network today covers a substantial portion of India's population, firmly positioning the country as a global leader in digital transformation. India's DPI model is now being viewed globally as a template for inclusive digital transformation, inspiring similar Digital Public Infrastructure initiatives across Asia, Africa, and Latin America under the G20 DPI Task Force and India's global program. With this backdrop, Protean has delivered another resilient quarter, continuing the momentum built in Q1 and reinforcing its position as an interstate execution partner within India's expanding DPI landscape.
This quarter, revenue from operation for quarter two FY 2026 stood at INR 251 crore, reflecting a robust growth of 19% on quarter-on-quarter and 14% on a YoY basis. This performance was primarily driven by strong momentum in our CRA services and continued traction across our new businesses, as well as on a quarterly basis, there was a spike in tax revenues as well. For the quarter, our EBITDA stood at INR 44 crore, translating to an EBITDA margin of 16.6%, which reflects a year-on-year decline of about 280 basis points. Profit after tax comes in at INR 24 crore with a margin of 9.1%. This moderation in margin was primarily driven by investment in RFP-related businesses, setting up our new offices at One International Center and setting our international offices in Dubai, as part of our effort to strengthen our international presence.
While these initiatives have had a short-term impact on profitability, we believe that this will position us well for sustainable growth in the quarters to come. Our balance sheet continues to remain strong, supported by a healthy cash and marketable securities balance of INR 800 crore plus and a completely debt-free status. Now, breaking down the segment-wise performance or business-wise performance during the quarter, tech services contributed INR 107 crore to revenue, growing 8% sequentially after a soft Q1. The segment continued to benefit from rising PAN-linked compliances and use cases across 200+ financial and government services. When we talk about CRA business, we reported revenue of INR 78 crore in this quarter, which is 3% sequential growth and a 12% YoY growth. This performance was driven by our continued expansion across the National Pension System, Atal Pension Yojana , and Unified Pension Scheme.
With the government's strong focus on enhancing pension penetration, we are well-positioned to benefit from the widening pension coverage in time to come. Coming to identity services, revenue for the quarter stood at INR 22 crore, which is a 6% decline on a quarter-on-quarter as well as year-on-year basis. This is due to slate-based pricing and price rationalization at the foundational level. Although we continue to be the market leader and volume continues to grow across most of our identity products, our value-added products like eSignPro and RISE with Protean continue to gain momentum, which will support future revenue growth. Turning to our new businesses, revenue for this quarter is at INR 43 crore, contributing 17% to our operating revenue, which was just 4% in last year. The growth was primarily driven by the execution of recently awarded RFP-led mandates and the steady ramp-up of our new digital infrastructure project.
As India's Digital Public Infrastructure continues to evolve into an open digital ecosystem across sectors such as insurance, health, education, and mobility, Protean is leveraging its deep technology and compliance capabilities to play a pivotal role in enabling these next-generation platforms. A key strategic highlight for this quarter was the award of INR 1,370 crore from UIDAI to establish and operate district-level Aadhaar Seva Kendra across 188 districts in the country. With this order, our RFP-led order book now exceeds INR 1,600 crore as of September 30, 2025, providing strong visibility for growth. The Aadhaar Seva Kendra project alone is expected to deliver annual revenue of about INR 200 crore once fully rolled out. Implementation is progressing as planned, with commissioning set to begin in quarter three FY 2026 and fully scaled through FY 2027. I would conclude by saying quarter two reflects balanced growth, disciplined operation, and diversifying revenue streams.
Around 1/3 of our revenue now comes from annuity-linked streams like CRA and cloud services, which carry high operating labor. This gives Protean a stable cash flow and strong earning visibility. As our new businesses mature, we expect a gradual margin expansion over the next few years. With this, thank you so much for patiently hearing us. I will now pass on the call to operator for question- and- answer session. 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 touchstone 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 [audio distortion] f rom Dalal & Broacha Stock Broking Private Limited. Please go ahead.
Yeah, thank you for the opportunity. The processing charges for this quarter were at about 33%. I mean, is this a one-off or can we expect a similar trend to continue? Was it on account of a higher share of online PAN issued? That's my first question. Secondly, system support and maintenance expenses have risen about 96% YoY . What is the reason behind that? Thirdly, any international RFPs that we have won, particularly this quarter? Lastly, the new business, I mean, the increment, is it on account of Bima Sugam and CERSAI orders that have been grouped over there, or what's it? Yeah, these are the four questions from my side.
Yeah. Let me answer your question one by one. With respect to processing charges, I guess these are at 32% or 33%, which is, I think, same in line with the previous quarter as well, which is quarter two of FY 2025 or quarter one of FY 2026. More or less, it is same. System support and maintenance charges, we have given a note also that it is increased because of the cost we accounted for these RFP-led revenues. These are accounted under this head, and therefore, you will see an increase or a spike in system support and maintenance charges. With reference to RFP, I mean, the new businesses, what it consists of, it is basically CERSAI and Bima Sugam RFP plus other data estate businesses, which are basically part of this new business stream.
CERSAI , because it is a data-led project, data estate-led project, and Bima Sugam is also a marketplace-led project. Therefore, it will be categorized into new businesses.
Sir, any international RFPs that we have won?
Yeah. We are still in advanced stage of negotiation for a few RFPs. Still, we have not won any major actions which were announced earlier.
Okay. Got it. Thank you. That helps a lot. All the best.
Thank you so much.
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, I wanted to understand the ECL expense. Why has it come in this quarter? Because I think the tax services-related ECL was already taken care of earlier. What led to this ECL?
Yeah. ECL, as you see, it is a very insignificant expense, like INR 6,000,000, and it is based on accounting practices which we follow based on expected credit collection. We follow a model, and therefore, it is not pertaining to any specific business, but overall, when you see data and their expected collection trajectory, based on that, some modeling is done, and we have to provide as per that model.
Right. Because other than the tax businesses where we had the receivers from the government, for most other businesses, are B2C sort of?
B2B too. There are B2G also. In pension, you'll have many state governments or central governments as part of our customer base. I mean, it is not a major expense. It is hardly INR 6,000,000, I guess. We have to provide as per accounting norms because accounting norms clearly provide, IFRS clearly provides that you have to have an expected credit loss model built in your receivable mechanism, and therefore, whatever comes out of that model, we have to provide.
Sure, sir. Secondly, the RFP business-linked revenue that we are seeing in 2Q going into the second half, should we expect a similar quarterly run rate, or will there be a further increase on the quarterly run rate on the revenues?
Yeah. Right now, we have three actively running major RFPs. One is Bima Sugam , second one is CERSAI , and third one is Aadhaar Seva Kendra , which is UIDAI. I think we should see some increase in Q3 and a significant increase in Q4.
Got it, sir. Next question, sir. On the identity services, we've seen a Q1Q decline in this quarter again, and it's been flattish in the earlier quarters. Just want to understand, how should one think on this business going ahead? Will this remain a similar run rate in terms of absolute revenues, or when will this start showing growth?
I think there are two parts to it. One would be look at this from the foundational perspective. The volumes are growing. I think one healthy indicator is that overall, from a Digital India perspective, month on month or quarter on quarter, the volume shows an uptick, which means more people are using the foundational trails of digital authentication or signature. We today have built significant capacity to be able to play in this and increase market share. Our focus is on increasing market share. At times, with large deals and also with government, there are RFPs which also come for this business, in which case, naturally, some of the price compression happens. We do see this steady to growing business going forward.
For us, the other critical aspect, as we've been calling out, is to then build on top of the foundational rails and introduce our products like eSignPro , which have an element of e-stamping and e-sign both, and other value-added products which come on top of the digital rails. They will basically provide us the revenue stability and the growth. If we look at it, all these would fall under our identity sector in that case.
Right. Sir, from eSignPro and RISE with Protean, when can we expect the revenue streams to start coming in?
We already have revenues taken from these businesses. Currently, naturally, I would say they are still early stage, as we explained last time in detail. Both these businesses have healthy pipelines, but there is a period of integration in products like both RISE and eSignPro . It also then is linked to how much the organization starts using the digital journeys. For example, if I'm giving an enterprise solution for e-sign, the entire organization needs to start adopting and moving away from paper-based signing. That adoption curve is also there, where you need awareness, where you need training, where you need process remapping. There is always a little bit of journey over there, but we are glad to report that we have a healthy pipeline on both the businesses, and revenues have started coming in already.
These, naturally, all flow into our new business vertical as well.
Lastly, the new initiatives which we have unveiled at the Global Fintech Fest, GFF, what is the timeline that one should look at for them to go live, and what kind of revenue potential do you expect for the next two years?
I would say these are at early stage because some of them will naturally become our extended differentiators or competitive offerings. For example, on one side, where we talked about the Quantum Vault, we are clearly looking at embedding it as part of our InfoSec business. These will be incremental capabilities and competencies that you build within your overall practice that we are showing over here. We will be guided more by the overall projections we are putting on these businesses, but these will definitely give us the edge and also open new markets for us. Currently, no numbers at this stage, but definitely, this is an investment in the future and will also give us the differentiators.
AI-in-a-Box is very clearly it will one leverage or enhance our Protean Cloud capability because you are building further models on top of your core infrastructure service and adding value. That, again, will be focused on both enterprises and large projects where we can add that capability. Most of these are distinct or differentiated offerings which will ultimately assimilate into our existing lines of business and further enhance our competitive edge. We've not done any specific, I mean, a very focused sort of additional market computation against them, but they are largely aligned with what businesses we are already running and what targets we are achieving over there.
Sure, sir. Lastly, one data-giving question. What's our market share in identity services?
In identity services, in all 4% of identity services, we are in top five in each of the categories.
Sure.
It's very difficult to give a market share for various products.
Sure. Sure. Thank you.
Thank you. Before we take the next question, a reminder to all, you may press star and one to ask a question. The next question is from the line of Tanmay Jhaveri from Finterest Capital. Please go ahead.
Good afternoon, sir. My question was that there has been a significant increase in the creative achievements during this half year, which might have led to a sharp set in the cash and wager cycle. Can you just throw some lights on that, whether it is structural or temporary in nature?
There are two types of receivable. One is receivable which is not built as part of RFP businesses, and second is the normal receivable which we built, but we have not collected. I think both are temporary. In this quarter, there were certain discussions with the customer, and there were certain process changes with a few major customers, and that has led to delayed collection. I guess by December or by March, we should be in line with our annual receivable guidance.
Will there also be CFO positive by the end of this financial year?
Yes.
Okay. My next question is, I see a noticeable change in other financial assets. If you can elaborate what exactly this includes and why there has been a sharp movement in these other financial assets?
Other financial assets, there was a reclassification from, I guess, long-term to short-term because for RFP-led businesses, whatever guarantee they give, we have to keep that as a security. Therefore, there is a reclassification only, not a real reclassification.
Okay. Thank you, sir. My last question is from the new age business. If you could just outline me what exactly will be focusing or what kind of revenues or growth are we looking forward in this line, and what are the kind of margins that we can expect from these core operations of new age business?
You are talking about new businesses?
Yes. Yes.
New businesses, we have classified as data-led businesses or cloud and OD-led businesses. These are the three categories in which new businesses will come. Any business, any VIN which is affiliated to these businesses will be classified as a new business. Like a CERSAI will be part of your data estate, like a Bima Sugam will be more part of OD, and so on and so forth. Therefore, whenever we win any order, we will classify in a relevant category and put that in respective business. Regarding the question on margin, I think we have to see long run and short run because we are RFP-led businesses, and we have just started. In the short run, you see some increase in cost, but I think in the long run, we should continue growing healthy margins.
Sir, if you can quantify that in number terms?
As of, I will not give any guidance or quantify the margin, but the only thing which I can say is that margins are going to improve.
Okay. Thank you so much, sir. Wish you all the best.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Rishi Maheshwari from Aksa Capital. Please go ahead.
Thank you for taking my question. Sir, there are a couple of questions that I wish to understand, one from the strategic level. A couple of quarters, until about a couple of quarters ago, we've been speaking largely on the digital public infrastructure that you've been building, one on the insurance side, the [ONGC], AgriStack, health, and education. For the last couple of quarters, we've not spoken about it. I wish to understand what your position over there is because I believe these are government-led initiatives, and therefore, this is a large stack-building opportunity that you perhaps would have been involved with. If there is something over there which is actively being pursued, if you can throw some light on it, it would be helpful.
Yeah. Sure. So AgriStack, as we mentioned earlier, this was a project we received from the Ministry of Agriculture at the central level. The entire idea was to basically build an architecture for center-state data exchange and the entire consent layer for sharing of data. The whole idea was that you build a standardized central stack against which then various service providers can plug in, and services like loans, insurance, advisory can then flow in a standardized manner to each state. Being a state subject, the actual data or the actual user will actually be sitting at a state level. That was the project. It was a turnkey project. We were awarded the mandate for the first phase, and then we subsequently won the mandate for the second phase also. We are in the process of delivering against that.
More importantly for us, naturally, is that as we unlock value in these ecosystems, it also opens up opportunities to then build in the app layer, which means creating interfaces for institutions, providing credit services or insurance services, and so on. We clearly are looking at further opportunities which are more than enterprise or B2B-led. From a government perspective, these are turnkey projects, and AgriStack, we are in the process of delivering, closing on the phase II. With regard to health, again, as we had shared earlier, we have built some assets which are in the form of HMIS systems, and there is a PHR app, patient health record application. We have received a mandate from the government of Maharashtra to roll it out, and that is an ongoing project, and we are doing the same.
These, naturally, in this case, in the second case, it's more transactional in nature. The revenue, it's not a turnkey project, but actually an on-ground execution, and then you are getting some sort of revenue streams more on an OpEx model over there.
Sir, all put together, what is the contribution from these initiatives onto our total revenue?
We are not giving, Rishi, we are not giving a specific revenue contribution, but what we are saying is our contribution from these new streams is about 12% to the total revenue.
I see that. It's a very vast scope of work, which also includes some cloud work, which will also include some data analytics. Therefore, there will be multiple users of the same. What I was more interested to understand is that since we've, from what we collect out of the last couple of years of conversation, the last one and a half years of conversation, there's a significant time that you have tried explaining in terms of your strategic initiative and your digital prowess towards these initiatives, which can grow in scale, just like how Aadhaar and Aadhaar Kendras have grown. I'm trying to understand from that perspective, are we looking at these large- scale, or have we already got meaningful introductions?
If this is already within the 12%, which means that this will be a marginally lower proportion of that 12% itself, which means that it's a single digit. Are we looking at scaling up this in a manner to say that at some point in time, this can become 20% of revenue?
That is what we are saying. In the next two to three years, our aim is to get this total of 12%- 25%, and most of it will be basically contributed by data estate-related projects and also OD-related projects, which is what we talked about: education, health, insurance, all these things.
Just to add over there also, see, the point is that the new business, we've always been indicating we want to diversify and have more lines of business contributing. Actually, this is the quarter or this is the half year where we are saying the new business has started contributing in a meaningful manner. To your first question, to say, as this becomes substantial, we will then give some level of more detailing on the vertical-wise information. The second is from a materiality and from a visibility point of view, as I said earlier, currently, we have an order book which is almost twice our annual revenue, which is already, in a way, signed and sitting with us and in the process of delivery. We see some consistent revenues getting added quarter on quarter coming out of these flows.
Aadhaar project, for example, as we said, on full deployment, that will be INR 200 crore of incremental revenue coming annually. These are the things which will go into this cohort, and we will start giving more detailed information on it once it becomes substantial within the overall picture.
That's helpful, sir. Is Aadhaar part of the new deal of UIDAI that has been awarded to you? Is this a part of the order book?
Yeah. Yeah. That's the one I was mentioning. That's right.
I see. What is the executable period of this order book? In that case, this is a multi-year executable period of the order book because Aadhaar itself is about INR 1,370 crore of order book, right?
Yeah. Yeah. Aadhaar will be a six-year project which will be delivered on a yearly basis. Some projects are like turnkey projects, wherein the major portion of revenue comes in year one or year two when you deliver the project. There is a maintenance phase of five to six years.
Yeah. That's right. In our remarks to another participant, you mentioned that margins is going to improve from here on. When we speak of margins, this quarter, you've done about 12% margin. Do you believe that it can improve from 12% that we've registered in this quarter going forward?
Yes. Yes. That is what we are saying. Margins are going to improve once the other revenues start kicking in. You have at least on a contribution level, you are contributing in absolute value more and more, and therefore, the overall absorption capacity becomes richer.
My rough estimate is just about 15% revenue growth is how I should build in for at least a conservative perspective. At that, above 12% margin is how we should think about from a growth financial perspective. Am I right on this?
No. I would hesitate to give any indication on revenue growth, whether it will be 15%. What we said, and we are again reiterating this, is that our new businesses will be about 25% next three years, and the core businesses continue to grow at 8%-10%.
Right. So thank you so much. Wish you great luck.
Thank you. Thank you so much.
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, you may press star and one to ask a question. The next question is from the line of Prem Luniya from Astute Investment Management . Please go ahead.
Hello, sir. Sir, I specifically had questions on the Aadhaar project which we have won. The other player, which has won a significantly larger portion of the same project, has mentioned that this can be a 20% EBITDA margin business once it scales, once the centers are open. What would you like to say on this number, and do you think it is achievable, or is it a high guidance?
I think what our competition says is that it is 20%. I think it is achievable. The only thing is that this is a volume-linked project, so we have to see how the volumes rise in this business. Depending on these volumes, margins will be determined. While we have rough estimates which indicate more or less same level, ultimately, it all depends on the volume it is kicked in, this business kicks.
Right. Sir, I wanted to understand how will this business work? Will it be on transaction basis? If it will be on transaction basis, can you give us a number? Is there any fixed amount which Protean will receive out of every transaction?
Yeah. This will be a transaction business, and we will get revenue per transaction. Some of the revenue we'll get directly from the ultimate consumer, and some of the revenue we'll get from the government of India. We are under a confidentiality clause, and we can't disclose how much we will get from.
Right. Is there any minimum number of transactions which are in a way assured by the Aadhaar UIDAI?
There are certain minimum number of transactions which are assured, but the market is far bigger than that.
Okay. Sure. Sure. Sir, I wanted to understand the large part of the new business growth which we have seen this quarter has come from the new orders which we have gotten and not from the in-house capabilities which we have developed. You have been saying that 25% would be the revenue. I guess in the AGM, you have mentioned that out of the 25%, 10% would be from the order book, and 15% would be from the new businesses which we have developed. Can you say that this 15%, at what stage will that actually contribute? I believe it has not grown as much in the last few years, and your employee expense has been growing quite well to grow these businesses.
See, end of the day, this is a continuum. As we've always maintained, as we even build on projects, there are ancillary and parallel revenue streams that get unlocked, right? If we are doing some work in Bima Sugam , and we enable the digital infrastructure of the insurance marketplace, it gives us likewise the ability to play the role in the app layer as a TSP and create SaaS products. I don't think we are distinguishing a 10% and a 15%. I don't recollect having made that distinction. For us, the whole idea is that new streams of business, whether we are contributing to the digital infrastructure at a foundational level, or we are doing productization, or we are expanding to international markets, we are putting that cohort together.
As I said earlier, when it becomes substantial, then we will start giving more inputs in terms of what is coming from which stream. Otherwise, these are very closely linked. The whole idea over here is you want to expand across the value chain. Otherwise, you restrict yourself to doing a turnkey project, and you're not able to play the value-added services play beyond that. That is where we've sharpened our capability to be able to do both. Now, as far as teams are concerned, our investment into people and whatever tech competence capability we've built, be it in emerging technologies, be it in our own development and full-stack engineering teams, those play an equally important role in winning turnkey projects. It's not just about developing products. It applies both sides.
Creating core competence and knowledge and IP of open-source technologies is pretty much as a baseline. Then you can either have a project win or a product win coming against it.
Sure. Sure. Thank you so much.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Prakash Kapadia from Kapadia Financial Services. Please go ahead.
Yeah. A couple of questions from my end. On the PAN services, we issued around 1 crore PAN cards during the quarter, and the revenues from the segment are down, I think, 10% on the year basis.
Sorry to interrupt, Prakash. Your voice is breaking.
Yeah.
Could you please check your network connection?
Yeah. One. Yeah. Now is it better?
Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. I was trying to understand the PAN service businesses. We've issued around 1 crore PAN cards during the quarter, and still revenues are down 10%. Can you explain this decline better, and what kind of revenue growth can we estimate in the next few quarters? That is on the PAN services.
Yeah, Prakash.
Yeah. Yes, Sandeep .
Okay. PAN services, if you see, sequentially, we have grown about 8% compared to last quarter. If we compare last year, there were a little bit more number of PAN cards issued in last year's same quarter. Therefore, the revenue is a little bit high, which is 10% compared to last year's same quarter. That's the reasoning I can give. It is more a transaction-based revenue. If PAN cards, while we have improved our market share from 53%, 54% to now 58% in this first half of the year, while industries have grown a little bit more, we have continued to capture more and more market, and therefore, arresting the degrowth, basically. That's it.
Okay. Incremental PAN cards issued shouldn't lead to this decline, right, Sandeep, from a year-on-year perspective also?
Yeah. One-time revenue. You issue one PAN card, you get fixed revenue per transaction. I mean, there is no revenue for past issued PAN cards. Whatever number you issue, you get revenue corresponding to that.
Okay. We'll take it offline. On the CRA services, obviously, we have the leadership, and that is doing well. From a potential perspective, is the registered EPFO users a good benchmark to identify the potential? On the UPS, how large can that become? I think it is around 6.5 million state and central government employees. Is that the kind of potential which can lead to further growth in that segment? Similarly, on the Atal Pension Yojana, what is driving this, and what kind of revenues can we expect?
Yeah. Prakash, basically, in the pension space, as we said, at an overall level, pension penetration in India is just 6%. If you look at most of the OECD countries, they are sitting at some 70% penetration. There is a huge headroom. Today, if we look at the even sheer numbers, let me start backwards. First, if you look at APY, we are talking about basically around 5-6 crore APY subscribers. APY scheme came pretty much in conjunction when the Jan Dhan program was launched. Today, the Jan Dhan accounts are sitting at around 55+ crore . You see almost a 10x headroom, even if you are assuming that the Jan Dhan account holders are from a similar profile where they would benefit from an Atal Pension Yojana equivalent sort of product. There is significant headroom over there.
Now, if we come to the other fact, since you mentioned EPFO, today, the pension regulators, as you are aware, there have been a lot of new initiatives being taken. There is a clear thrust to say, "How can we further expand the private sector pension penetration?" There are a lot of initiatives like the Multi-Scheme Framework, similarly, ease of onboarding, various things are today being called out. That is where the ambition is really to grow it up to 30 crore subscribers in the matter of next three to five years. There is a strong thrust in that business. Currently, naturally, we have a very dominating market share, but we are likewise being agile in looking at our products, concepts, and technology. We will definitely be focused on this particular line of business going forward.
Got it. Got it. Suresh. Lastly, if you can share some kind of metrics we need to build in for the Aadhaar Seva Kendra project as we scale maybe in the coming quarter, that will help us understand the dynamics of that business, what kind of CapEx is done, what is the OpEx, what kind of margins are possible. If you could highlight now or maybe next quarter, that will be helpful.
Sure.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Divij Punjabi from Banyan Tree Advisors. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Hi. My question was regarding the other businesses or the new businesses. You mentioned that the CERSAI and Bima Sugam business have accrued in this quarter. Going ahead, the Aadhaar Seva Kendra also will start accruing. The system support and maintenance cost that is there, will that continue to increase sequentially, or is this the figure that we should expect going ahead, and the one-time expense is already done?
No. This will be in line with the revenue recognized, right? Because these are project-based revenue. The cost incurred to deliver this project will be part of the P&L. The more revenue earned, I think the cost also will be sitting in one of these heads.
Okay. The office setup of this will be a one-time, or will that also increase going ahead?
No. I think that will be more one-time than every quarter because there are certain one-timers, and there are certain costs which will be recurring.
Okay. Is it possible to give any indication of the cost breakup of the system support and maintenance?
What kind of breakup do you need?
The one-time versus the variable.
I think in system support and maintenance, it is more variable in line. There is no one-time per se in system support and maintenance. It will be more variable in line with if you are increasing your revenue, then the cost also will shift in one of these heads.
Okay. Sure. Thank you.
Okay.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Pratap Maliwal. from Mount Intra Finance Private Limited. Please go ahead.
Hi. Am I audible?
Yeah. Pratap.
Yeah. Hi. Thanks for taking my question. Just wanted a clarification. There were some news articles during the rounds that there's been a change regarding the Aadhaar Seva Kendra. What facility will be provided offline in the Seva Kendra, and then what will be done online in terms of demographic changes and things like that, as well as there might have been a change in the pricing structure for related transactions? Can you give any thought on this one?
I don't think there is any change in pricing structure of the services which will be provided by the Aadhaar Seva Kendra. It remains as it is.
Okay. Secondly, I believe that there's been a new deadline issued by the government regarding Aadhaar PAN linkage. I think that is to be done by January 1. Are you seeing any uptake in terms of that?
Sorry, could you repeat your question?
I believe that there's been a new deadline issued by the government in terms of linking PAN with Aadhaar. Does that kind of benefit you in any way?
Yes. If there is a deadline, it will definitely benefit me in terms of if there is a linkage of Aadhaar and PAN. If people are not having Aadhaar, then they definitely compulsorily need to get Aadhaar done. These kind of initiatives definitely help in upping the volume.
Okay. So have you seen any of that benefit coming through? Because I believe the deadline is with January.
We are yet to start Aadhaar operations. It is not yet started. We are in the process of setting up the Aadhaar Seva Kendra.
Okay. Understood, sir. Thank you.
Okay. Thank you.
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, this is the last question for today. I now hand the conference over to Mr. Suresh Sethi for closing comments. Thank you. And over to you, sir.
Thank you very much. We continue to remain confident about our contribution to the Digital Public Infrastructure, especially the Digital India Trust, and equally important, India's role on the global platform to provide DPI-related knowledge and knowledge transfer. These are areas we are looking forward to building our own strength. Thanks, everybody on the call, for your support all along. We will catch up later. Thank you very much.
Thank you very much, sir. On behalf of Protean eGov Technologies Limited, that concludes this conference. Thank you for joining us, and you may now disconnect your line.