Q4 25/26

May 2, 2026

Ladies and gentlemen, good day, and welcome to the National Securities Depository Limited Q4 FY 2026 earnings conference call hosted by ICICI Securities Limited. As a reminder, all participant lines will remain 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 the operator by pressing star then zero on your touchtone telephone. Please note that this conference is being recorded. I will now hand the conference over to Mr. Ansuman Deb from ICICI Securities Limited for opening remarks. Thank you. Over to you. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. On behalf of ICICI Securities, we welcome you all to this Q4 and FY 2026 results conference call of NSDL. We have with us the senior management represented by Mr. Vijay Chandhok, Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer; Mr. Jigar Shah, Chief Financial Officer; Mr. Sameer Patil, Chief Business Officer; Mr. Kothandaraman Prabhakaran, Chief Technology Officer; Mr. Prashant Vagal, Chief Operating Officer; Mr. Sameer Gupte, MD and CEO, NSDL Database Management; Mr. Abhijit Kamalapurkar, Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer of NSDL Payments Bank; and Ms. Ojasvi Bhandari, Investor Relations. I now hand over the call to Mr. Vijay Chandhok, MD and CEO. Over to you, sir. Thank you very much, Ansuman. Ladies and gentlemen, a very good morning to all of you. A warm welcome to all our shareholders, investors, analysts, joining us today for our Q4 and FY 2026 earnings conference call. I truly appreciate the continued trust that now over our 8.9 lakh valued shareholders have placed with us. I'm truly pleased, particularly considering that we have a long weekend and some kind of a holiday season, that all of you have taken the effort to join this call. Much appreciated, as we close our first full financial year since our listing. Let me begin by giving a little bit of a perspective of the environment, because I strongly believe that it is important to understand our performance in the context of the environment in which we operate. The financial markets, over the year, reflected an evolving interplay to our mind between resilience and disruption. The first half was broadly constructive, strong domestic consumption and an improving macroeconomic backdrop, keeping the sentiment somewhat positive, somewhat cautiously optimistic. The second half, however, proved to be considerably more challenging. The West Asia conflict, which erupted in quarter four, doesn't seem to still have any clear resolution ahead of us. During quarter four, the external macro pressures intensified, particularly towards the end of the quarter, with crude prices spiking sharply in March 2026, rising over 40% on a Y-o-Y at peak levels, while there's been depreciation of the rupee quite sharply on a Y-o-Y basis. All this, reflecting geopolitical supply disruptions and sustained capital outflows. Indian equity faced sustained pressure throughout the year actually, especially at the end of quarter 4, where Nifty declined by 11.3%. Market activity remained subdued through January and February, March a decline as well, driving overall quarter into what one would call some kind of a decisive weakness. The defining story of quarter 4 was the divergence between the FIIs and the domestic flows. The FIIs have been net sellers for most of the quarter, with March seeing a record monthly outflow of $12.7 billion. Domestic institutional investors, however, were I would say a very decent stabilizing force. In fact, the net DII inflows were at INR 1.4 lakh crore in March, which was the highest ever. SIP flows in March 2026 took that record number INR 32,000 crore. The monthly SIP run rate, this was about INR 25,900 crore in March 2025 a year ago, reflecting resilience of retail participation even during difficult times. On the investor base, new Demat account additions slowed, and slowed considerably. Slowed to about 3.2 crore in FY 2026, down from 4.1 crore in FY 2025, with March 2026 seeing the lowest monthly addition in nearly a year. This moderation came even as the investor ecosystem continued to deepen with NSE unique registered investors base approaching a 13 crore mark by March 2026. The IPO activity remained at record levels during the first 9 months. Extremely good activity in the current quarter. The quarter four was somewhat sluggish, impacted by geopolitical headwinds. Overall, these trends point to a market that is consolidating and strengthening rather than losing depth. Near-term volatility and moderation in incremental activity, investor participation is becoming broader and more structurally anchored, supported by resilient domestic engagement and a shift towards longer-term investments. This evolving profile provides meaningful headroom for renewed growth as external conditions stabilize and confidence normalizes. With this in context, now let me talk a little bit about the performance of NSDL during the quarter and some highlights of the year which spilt into the quarter and will spill beyond in the future. During the quarter, and over the course of the year, as I mentioned, we had several initiatives. I will highlight some of the key ones. As I mentioned, March 2026, we enabled the digital submission of Form 121, which was erstwhile Form 15G, 15H. This is a form that investors file for nil tax declaration using compliance, one-stop shop at the depository front, convenience for the investors, ease of business for the investors, and supporting capital markets growth in the more medium term. Effective March, sorry, effective April 1, we launched a women Demat plan offering a 3-year settlement waiver to promote greater participation of women in capital markets. Earlier, a few quarters ago, we had launched the Yuva Plan, similarly, with a 3-year settlement fee waiver. We have now seen the Yuva Plan maintaining strong momentum, and today it contributes 21% of incremental Demat sourcing. That has taken good wings. We do hope that the women's plan will also take good wings over the quarters ahead. In October 2025, we had launched a revamped digital portal for FPI and FVCI, simplifying onboarding and improving turnaround times for foreign investors. I think that is something which is gaining traction, and we do expect that to continue to consolidate our position in the FPI market. NSDL continued to advance its digital transformation initiatives during the quarter, including digital onboarding, API enhancement and enhancing customer-facing services. Everything to do with customer experience is being attended to get scaled up with, I would say, constructive and positive results visible to us. During the quarter, the API interoperability was expanded with clearing corporations and bond platforms. Earlier over the few quarters, implementation such as direct payouts, common contract notes, margin pledges were completed. All this is strengthening operational consistency, investor protection, and it's certainly helping us scale up our business growth and revenue numbers. In fact, at present we have more than 40 APIs launched, which is perhaps ahead of everyone in our competing market space. System resilience and scalability were further strengthened, further enhanced through upgrades in the core system. The infrastructure capacity was enhanced. Observability and cybersecurity stance was significantly scaled up during the year. Further, NSDL consolidated its investor awareness program because we believe investor and informed investor will really help the capital markets in the more medium term. This is across online, offline, and hybrid forms of communication and training to them, across corporates, across defense, across educational institutions, women-focused forums, so that we are able to cover a diverse set of customers across the length and breadth of the country. NSDL conducted in the whole fiscal about 2,700 programs reaching 1.7 lakh almost participants across 37, sorry, 34 states and union territories in 16 local languages. During the quarter, the total number of Demat accounts for NSDL reached 4.44 crores. We also reached 311 DPs. During the year, we added 21 DPs, which is a record for us. These 311 DPs provide service through 57,000+ service centers and branches in more than 2,000 cities and small towns. At present, we hold about 86% of the total value of custody, managing about roughly INR 477.29 lakh crore of securities, which is approximately $5 trillion, and which is close to 80% of the equity market share. Our incremental market share in net Demat account addition improved in FY 2026 and reached at 15.4 for the full year, compared to a much lower level that was there last year. This improvement reflects the strong pickup in account additions, which came in at about 49.4 lakh accounts in FY 2026 compared to 36.8 lakh in FY 2025. I'm sure all of you appreciate that the number of accounts sourced in FY 2026 was far lower for the industry compared to accounts sourced. In such a context, we have actually seen a clear divergence. We've grown even compared to our last year in absolute number of accounts sourced. This was thanks to our digitization efforts, thanks to our ability to onboard some new fintechs and, you know, some impact of the 21 DPs that got added during the year. Only partial impact is visible. On a quarterly basis, the momentum strengthened with incremental market share on quarter 4 coming in at about 14%. It was higher compared to quarter 4 of last year, which was at 9.6, but it was marginally lower compared to the previous sequential quarter, which was at about 14.5. This is attributed to a specific large IPO that happened during this quarter. We find that whenever a specific episodic large IPO happens, it tends to benefit competition more than us. The second aspect during this quarter that has to be kept in mind that many of our large DPs are bank-based DPs. The bank-based DPs tend to be very careful about not working with inoperative and dormant accounts. There's a tendency during the quarter which ends the year to close such accounts. On a net basis, you would have seen that little bit of a reduction in market share. We believe it is episodic. Otherwise, the undertone remains constructive and positive. When we measure ourselves on gross basis, actually we are holding market share well. It is the net basis where there has been a little bit of a marginal decline in quarter 4 on a sequential basis. Although Y-o-Y it is clearly up. As we continue to expand our issuer base, we have now crossed 110,000 issuers. Our e-voting platform has helped many leading companies to offer e-voting services and, with 5,287 e-voting events conducted during the year, which is significantly higher compared to what we did last year. There's also been gain in market share on that front. I'll now take you through very briefly the key financials, which is already available on our website, and I'm sure all of you have already perused through it. I would like to just mention and highlight that NSDL's performance is best assessed on a Y-o-Y basis given the seasonality and inherent nature of our business. Because some of the businesses, like e-voting and dividend income from subsidiaries, happen in specific quarters. Accordingly, I will focus on the quarter and give you a brief update on a Y-o-Y basis. On Q4, total income came in at about INR 195.4 crore. I'm talking standalone now, compared to INR 191.9 crore, which is up by little under 2%. PAT came in at about INR 79.7 crore compared to INR 75.8 crore last year, which is up by about 5%. For the full year, PAT stood at about INR 360 crore on a standalone basis compared to INR 321 crore, which is up by about 12.1%. On a consolidated basis, the total income stood at about INR 486.8 crore compared to INR 393.8 crore, which is up by about 23.6% on a Y-o-Y basis. PAT stood at about INR 90.3 crore compared to INR 83.3 crore, up by about 8.4%. This is consol number for quarter four. The PAT for the full year, as you all would have seen, has come in at about INR 380 crore compared to about INR 343 crore last year, which is up by about 10.8% on a Y-o-Y basis. I'll talk a little bit about our subsidiaries because there have been some interesting developments. We have our two subsidiaries, which is the Payments Bank and the NSDL Database Management Limited. The Payments Bank continues to gain traction in digital payments ecosystem. It is currently amongst the top 33 banks on UPI. UPI acquiring volumes have grown 6x over the past years, driven by multiple tie-ups. As at March 2026, the bank is now ranked seventh as a PayU PSP App. This is amongst the top 15 banks in the ecosystem. As at March 2026 deposit balances, and we are very happy about this, has now crossed INR 500 crores, coming in at about INR 521 crores with over 4 million customers. We have 43.5 lakh customers to be precise. Additionally, as far as NDML is concerned, it recorded strong momentum, adding about 33.5 lakh insurance policies over the year. The SEBI pricing got revised in the month of February, and this is expected to support and provide momentum to the operational performance and business as we enter the new financial year. I would also like to highlight an important development that happened in NDML, which has just been announced. The demerger of our insurance repository business into a new company, which is in accordance with IRDAI's directions. The process has been kicked off. We continue to invest strategically in people, in technology, and the benefits of these investments to some extent is already visible in form of improved customer experience, in form of record DP onboarding this year. We do believe that as these initiatives scale up, operating leverage, which we have spoken to all of you in the past, which is inherent in the business model of our company, will increasingly kick in and will increasingly strengthen our business model and financial outcomes. With these few comments, I would now hand the call over to Jigar, our CFO, to take you with little more detailed analysis of the financial outcomes. Jigar, over to you. Good morning, everyone, and a very warm welcome. Thank you, Vijay. Let me now take you through our very first standalone and consolidated financial highlights for the quarter and financial year, 31st March 2026, after our public listing that happened in August 2026. Beginning with I'll take you through the standalone highlights for the quarter. Revenue from operations for Q4 FY 2026 stood at INR 170.6 crore, a growth of 2.4% on Y-o-Y basis and sequentially by 1%, driven by subdued capital market activity in Q4 FY 2026. Total income, we have registered a growth of 1.8% year-on-year from INR 191.9 crore in quarter 4 FY 2025 to INR 195.4 crore in quarter 4 FY 2026. Our EBITDA margin for the current quarter stood at 57.2%. Our EBITDA for the quarter 4 FY 2026 stands at INR 111.8 crore. Net profit after tax for quarter 4 FY 2026 grew by 5.2% on year-on-year basis to INR 79.7 crore. Our PAT margin for the quarter stands at INR 40.8 crore. I take you now through the full year financials, full year profitability. Our revenue from operations for the full year FY 2026 stood at INR 704.7 crore, a growth of 13.9% on year-on-year basis. Notably, I want to highlight 1 point with regards to recurring revenue. This constitute about 50% of our total revenue from operations in the current financial, that is FY 2026. Total income, we have registered a growth of 14.2% on year-on-year basis, up from INR 731.4 crore in FY 2025 to INR 835.1 crore in FY 2026. Our EBITDA margin for the current year for a full year stands at 60.8%. Our EBITDA for FY 2026 stands at INR 508 crore. Net profit after tax for FY 2026 grew by 12.1% on year-on-year basis to INR 360.6 crore. Our PAT margins for full year basis stands at 43.2% for the current financial year. As far as the expenses and the capitalization is concerned, I want to make one, you know, highlight with regards to the technology front. As Vijay mentioned, we continue to invest strategically in, you know, manpower and technology. During the current financial year, we have capitalized INR 106.1 crore during FY 2026, and the technology spends in the current year has gone up to INR 91.4 crore. NSDL standalone profit forms now about 90% of the total consolidated profit. That is because substitutes have started contributing higher in terms of profitability compared to the last year. This has gone from 95%-90%. That's one important highlight with regards to the consolidated. I begin with the highlights on the consolidated accounts. For the quarter, revenue from operations for quarter four FY 2026 stood at INR 458.3 crore, a growth of 26% on a year-on-year basis, and sequentially by 23.4%. Total income, we have registered a growth of 23.6% year-on-year from INR 393.8 crore in quarter four FY 2025 to INR 486.8 crore in quarter four FY 2026. Our net PAT for quarter four FY 2026 grew by 8.4% on year-on-year basis to INR 90.3 crore. Our PAT margin on a quarterly basis as far as consolidated accounts are concerned stands at 18.3%. With regards to full year, our revenue from operations stood at INR 1,530 crore, a growth of 7.7% on year-on-year basis. Our total income, we have registered a growth of 8.1% on Y-o-Y basis from INR 1,535.2 crore in FY 2025 to INR 1,660 crores in FY 2026. Our net profit after tax grew by 10.8% on Y-o-Y basis to INR 380 crore. Our PAT margins on consolidated basis stand at 22.9% for the current financial year. That concludes the overall financial highlights from my side. Thank you again for joining us. I'll now open up the floor for any questions to take this session forward. Thank you. Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, we will now begin the question and answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may press star 1 on their touch-tone telephone. If you wish to remove yourself from the question queue, you may press star 2. Participants are requested to use their handsets while asking a question. Ladies and gentlemen, we will wait for a moment while the question queue assembles. We take the first question from the line of Amit Chandra from HDFC Securities. Please go ahead. Thanks for the opportunity. My first question is, you know, for the full year FY 2026 and also for the quarter, we are seeing that the annual custody fees has seen a very phenomenal growth. This has been, you know, partly, you know, because of the unlisted, you know, for the full year, but it has like tapered down in the last two quarters. How do you see this annual custody fees growth for the next year, you know, especially from the perspective that quarter 1 we have a reset in terms of the, you know, total number of, you know, folios that, you know, is, it is being reset. How do you see that folio number for the next year? Also from the pricing perspective, obviously, because we are spending on technology, and we have mentioned earlier that, you know, we have a case with the regulator for an increase in the annual issuer fees. Any update on that? Yeah. I can come to the second one first and then maybe, Jigar, you can talk about the first one. Sure. Well, you know, conversations with regulator tends to be, you know, bilateral. When anything happens, we will let you know. Mm-hmm. Nothing happened on that front. Custody fee growth that we've seen and, you know, the outlook to a large extent is rightly, as pointed out by you, the reflection of the way in which the unlisted company grew during first half of the year and then there was, you know, a relative slowdown on that particular front, which is reflected in the custody fee. I would believe that the future would again, you know, most of this growth tends to be fairly secular and linked with the account sourcing that happens over a period of time. As we've already mentioned to you, the account sourcing is dependent on two factors. One is our ability to give a smooth experience, good customer experience to our customers, and also onboard as many new accounts, DP accounts as possible. Particularly high growth potential DPs and dislocate some DPs from competition if it is possible. Our efforts on that direction has been very, I would say, focused. I'm happy to also tell you that there has been progress because we have dislocated or moved on all fronts. We have digitized our existing experiences, improved experiences. Actually in a declining market, most of our old, particularly the bank-based pack, has shown actually a growth in number of DPs in a declining market. Growth in number of Demat accounts, sorry, in a declining market. Also, we've been able to add some fintech brokers. Only one of those few fintech brokers we've added during the year, numbers are visible in quarter four. The others are still getting integrated and will start scaling up. Early days of scale-up. One just started in the last bit of quarter 4, so their numbers are not really visible there. As these numbers come in and kick in, and, you know, we do believe that the custody fee will be a reflection of that. Yeah. Efforts on that direction, which is on our control, is very, very focused and very, very intense. What is not in our focus, or rather not in our control, is how the market behaves in the uncertainty in the market and customer behavior as a result of that. You know, that is a little bit out of our control. So custody fee to aspects that are under our control is in full, I would say, intense focus and attention. Aspects which are outside our control is something that we will only we can only do things like investor training and stuff to try and get, you know, investors' confidence built or give them a robust environment and get confidence built. Which our efforts will be on. I would say custody fee, difficult to predict the direction, but past trends show secular growth. Okay. On the incremental share, obviously, you know, we have been there at around 15%, 14.5%-15%. You said that you have added, you know, some of the added DPs also. Are we seeing some incremental, account additions from the, like, new DPs that we have added or still the addition is coming from the old banking channel? In terms of the incremental, you know, what is the contribution from these new DPs and, you know, whether we are, we are, you know, still to see the benefit of that, you know, coming in the numbers. Because we are not present in 70% of the market, so any, like, material progress that we have done there, that would be helpful. Actually, some numbers scale-up is already visible. Without naming the DP, but I can tell you the DP pack, last year gave 70,000, this year gave 700,000. There's been a 10x scale-up from this segment. We are quite hopeful that the scale-up from 700,000 accounts will go up more. Clearly, fintech brokers, which otherwise were historically not coming to us, have started coming to us, visible. One specific broker which was attached with competition has completely stopped and moved to us. It's a fintech player. Again, a very, very large group, Pune-based. They've started. Their numbers have scaled up. They have already crossed, I would say, a very good run rate and their projections are even more promising for the coming year. That number should start coming. Some of the other large guys are expected to start only during this year. One large DP has just started in the last few days of quarter four. Their numbers will start getting visible only in the coming year. I think, some numbers are already visible, but I would say more to come in future. Okay. My last question is on the cost part. Obviously, you have mentioned earlier also that, you know, you'll be spending on technology, and also the employee cost has been on the Y-o-Y basis when talking for the full year has been, you know, up. Where we are in terms of the, you know, investment journey, so to understand better that how to see the expenses panning out for the next year. Is it also from the point of view of the, you know, the technology expenses, where we are in the journey of revamping our technology? That is the main core of our offering, because employee and technology is the only two, like, you know, the main pillars of the business. Where we are in terms of the, you know, tech revamp scale and whether for this year also we are going to see a similar rise in the technology cost? Yeah. No, I think a great question and rightly put across and our rules, our thoughts completely resonate with your, you know, process of thinking. You know, one thing I will highlight as I talk about technology cost and people cost, we are very confident that this is an operating leverage business. If you do not invest in technology and people, I think we will be left behind. Under investments in the past is something that we needed to correct. We mentioned that. We started the journey last year. When we started the technology spend journey, we said that this is going to be maybe 2 to 3 years kind of an affair, maybe two and a half years affair. 1 year clearly is behind us. Second year is underway. Last year's spends are visible in the PNL and balance sheet, you can see it. We believe this year is also going to be a very similar number as far as tech CapEx is and OpEx is concerned. Broadly similar, there could be some marginal increase in our tech OpEx, but CapEx is going to be very similar. Which means that, Last year and this year together is our peak year. The next year we will definitely expect the decline to happen in terms of CapEx, because we would have completed our entire, you know, CapEx spend story. As far as manpower is concerned, last year was the peak addition. This year there is going to be a much lower addition. In fact, we will start the process of now, expecting productivity coming in. We also will start from people because they would be a little more experienced and trained in the system. Definitely this is a period of now asking back from the employees. This is also a period of expecting returns coming because of automation efforts, some of which we just started off, and but a lot of it, automation has happened this year. I think the process of tightening the employee band is going to start from this year. In fact, I would say the month of April, we've already started that exercise. Technology, one more year. People cost, I think, we have done a substantial part. Now the process is to expect returns. There could be one year more of elevated technology and people cost, which is the current year. Thereafter, we expect plateauing. Okay. Okay, thank you. Amit, just to add, the original question that you asked regarding the custody part. Just to add, you know, As Vijay mentioned, you know, there has been a change in definition in the third quarter as well. You know, there is going to be a moderation with regards to the unlisted space. If I have to give you an example, you know, the opening of unlisted, which used to be typically in the range of 4,000 companies, we've started adding 2,000 companies. There is some amount of, you know, change with regards to the kind of unlisted space we were in. There's some moderation there. With regards to the overall folio, the exit folio has gone up by about 15%-16%. The exit number is about 14 crore folio we have. That's where we are with regards to the custody space. That will give you know, some sort of color in terms of where we are. Okay, sir. Thank you and all the best. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. We take the next question from the line of Prayesh Jain from Motilal Oswal Financial Services Limited. Please go ahead. Yeah. Hi, good morning, everyone. Just firstly on, you know, the banking services revenue, right? We've seen a very sharp sequential increase. What is that attributed to? Yeah. Two factors that have really helped on our banking side. One being a very, very clear, persistent attention on quality account sourcing. And that's something that I probably mentioned to you even a year ago, that we Yeah. will focus on the account sourcing. I think that's a persistent effort on ensuring that we get quality customers, meaning customers who provide, who are providing float, really helped. You would have noticed that our float has increased quite substantially, the CASA float. That has crossed INR 500 crore now. Obviously CASA float gives, we believe, sustainable revenue input. We've also introduced certain types of transaction charges for our customers, which has now crossed INR 43 lakh. That has also kicked in. Finally, I would say payments, digital payments, particularly UPI acquisition is a business that we've added with expanded partners, that has started giving fees. I think these have been the factors which has really helped. What we sort of do hope as we move forward is to, you know, hope that the regulations do not come and change force us to change any aspects of our business. We continue to tread very carefully, focus on quality, focus on risks, and gradually and surely grow the, you know, digital bank business. That's how we are looking at our bank business. You rightly pointed out, I think there's been a big scale-up in profit this year, so it's gone up. Yeah. Quite substantially, yeah. Right. Is there any change in reporting? Because it appears very, you know, like from the, from a operating statistics perspective, whatever you shared in the PPT, I don't see any major kind of sharp increase in Q-o-Q. We've seen a very sharp Q-o-Q increase, almost like a 40%, 50% increase in the revenues. Is there any some restatement here? No. I'll help you. There is no restatement. In the quarter 3 to quarter 4, if you're looking at those numbers. Yeah. Largely couple of businesses within the Payments Bank, you know, they have a transaction banking model. Some of this business did a large throughput during that. As you know, you know, the Payments Bank has a big revenue with when it talks about the gross level of accounting that is earned. Yeah. expense that also gets built in. That's why we always, you know, request that you look at the number from the results perspective rather than the revenue perspective. Oh. That's where some of the uptick has happened in the throughput of some of these businesses. Got that. Vijay, you know, like you were mentioning about your incremental account, incremental market share in terms of Demat accounts, you know, coming in from some of the fintech brokers. You know, we're still lagging behind our overall market share. In a way, we're still kind of a bit of losing market share. Even if I look at on a gross basis, it's like about 16%, 17% that what you've mentioned in the presentation. You're still like of running behind what our overall Demat account market share is. You did mention about, you know, some fintech players that you've got attached with where you have some exclusive relationships. Like a 2-part question there. One is, you know, what's getting you into this, into these companies now, which you weren't earlier being able to get into? Second, you know, there are some large companies coming on board, coming into the broking businesses, right? How, how do you see them kind of selecting the depository participants between the two, between the two industry participants? Where do we stand in terms of getting some inroads into that? Because I think that would be a big one if we get exclusive to any of those. Those are my questions. Thanks. Yeah. Yeah. First and foremost, you know, about a year and a half ago when we went into the market, there was a lot of adverse word of mouth, right? The word of mouth was, you know, not favorable enough towards us. We had to really work with a lot of industry players, talk to them about Initially, we had to talk to them about our plans. We also had to hear their pain points, and commit to them that, you know, this is the track we are going to take. We worked with back-office vendors. We conducted a number of workshops with DPs with one-on-one, in groups, city by city. All back-office vendors, you know, we spent time understanding their pain points, understanding what is, you know, required for us to differentiate. We came out with a clear list of things that they were expecting. Systemically, we have been quarter-on-quarter delivering those. As I mentioned, in my commentary, we have now 40-plus APIs, which I believe is ahead of what competition offers, which is really helping ease, you know, a lot of experience in a positive way. It is also giving real-time ability for upload of information and getting a reverse feed, which improves customer experience and also helps the DPs manage their costs because early pains, etcetera, today are, you know, getting done, you know, very smoothly. I would say that in turn gives you a positive word of mouth that spreads to the other brokers. I think it's a combination of all this which has really started helping us. Most of the new DPs that have come to us are fintech DPs now. I think that initial resistance that I had, we had rather, NSDL had, of bad word of mouth is very certainly and gradually fading out in the market. I believe it's a combination of focus on technology, meeting customers, hearing their pain points, addressing their, you know, digital expectations, on a persistent basis and a committed basis, and being there for them, reachable, accessible. I think Sameer and his team have been fully at it, doing several workshops, several sessions, one after the other, acknowledging if there are problems, accepting it and addressing them. Yeah. Prakash, does that answer all your questions? Has he dropped out or? He is showing connected. Yeah. I'll reconnect. There's some problem from my side. I'll reconnect. All right. Okay. I wonder if he heard it. Yeah. Okay. We take the next question from the line of Ravi Kumar, who is an individual investor. Please go ahead. Good morning, everyone. Sir, my question is, our intangible asset is double on Y-o-Y basis. Our intangible asset under development is double on Y-o-Y basis. I want to know what are we doing related to intangible asset which show that much growth in intangible assets. Yeah. Jigar. Sorry. We had some, you know, some iPhone alerts which is going on. Can you just repeat the question? A sudden alert that came on everyone's mobile. Can you just repeat the question, please? No, I think this is a national drill which is going on. A national drill. Correct. Correct. I just believed. Sorry. Yeah, please repeat your question. Yes, sir. Sir, our intangible asset double on Y-o-Y basis and intangible asset under development is also double on Y-o-Y basis. I want to know what we are doing related to intangible asset which show that much growth. As Vijay mentioned earlier, you know, we are focusing on, our focus area is the technology, and we have spent about INR 106 crore this year. The INR 106 crore has 2 splits. One is the infrastructure, which is like, making the capacity more resilient and capacity augmentation part. The second part, which Vijay mentioned earlier in our conversation, is the making the journey for DPs more seamless and ensuring the integration is better. That's where we are spending a lot on the licenses, getting the software, the application up and running to ensure that, you know, when we partner with any of these DPs, this is much more seamless. That's where you see the intangible assets coming in in terms of licenses and application costs. The third area where we are spending is with regards to cybersecurity. Recently there was a SEBI circular which also mentioned that we need to have a clean air gap, you know, between the DC and DR. We need to have one more layer of security. There is a lot of spending that happens there with regards to hardware as well as the licenses requirements. That's where we are spending, and that's where you see there is an increase in the intangible, you know, assets for us. Okay, sir. Sir, my next question is, are we write off INR 20 crore of bad debt in FY 2026? Yeah. This is with regards to the internal policy that we have. Anything that is about 3 years, we identify some of these, you know, receivables and as part of routine exercise, we write it off. However, the right to recover continues to be with the company, and we make efforts to ensure if there is any recovery, we'll continue to report in our accounts. Sir, what are the reasons for that bad debt? We also make provision of INR 50 crore. What are the reasons for bad debt, bad debts? How much bad debts we see in upcoming future? No, so bad debts, if you see, this is a policy. We have an, you know, expected loss recognition policy under which the relevant provisions are made. The provision that you're talking about, the INR 50 crores with regards to the general provisioning, so that are different from the bad debts. Bad debts provisioning has happened about INR 7 crores during the year. As you rightly mentioned of INR 20 crores have been written off, which was already provided in the past. Okay, sir. Sir, my last question is, like you mentioned earlier, a broker moved from CDSL to NSDL in this year. Is there like when our depository participant moved from CDSL to NSDL, is they face any problem, restriction, like they can move whenever they want? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, go ahead, Jigar. Please go ahead. Yeah. It's a seamless transition. It's not there is any teething issue. It's the broker can be with any of the depositories. It's a normal action. We have a lot of brokers which actually deal with both the depositories as well. Okay. Thank you, sir. Thank you. One point I would like to make with regards to Prayesh's question, if there is an opportunity, Prayesh is there on the call. Last year with regards to, you know, the kind of brokers that were registered, you know, all new age brokers which are registered were onboarded as DPs with NSDL. One important point, and that's where you see the shift of adding 21 DPs in the last financial year. Thank you. We take the next question from the line of Sanketh Godha from Avendus Spark. Please go ahead. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you for the opportunity. Sir, my first question is that, our pledge income hardly grew year-on-year, INR 53 crore to INR 55 odd crore, in the year. If I look at margin trade funding book, it has grown by almost 60% to 70% for the entire year. I just wanted to understand, there is any correlation between these two line items or is it that, the margin trade funding book incrementally seems to be grown by the brokers who are associated with CDSL, and that's why we don't see a commensurate growth in the revenue? Just a clarification on that part, sir. The difference is that, you know, the margin pledge for us is a steady business for us. It's been growing at about 5%-7%. With the recent focus that has happened at the MTF, what we have seen is that from the value terms, there is a large, you know, MTF book that is getting built. In terms of transaction count, this has remained a steady state. Our revenue model is on transaction count rather than, you know, the ad valorem. That's where you see, you know, the uptick is, you know, in a steady state, 5%-7% growth. While in terms of value, this might have grown. Understood. Understood. At the industry level, you don't see that there has been significant increase in the transaction level, but it was more due to ticket size going up in margin trade funding book. Correct. Especially with us, the traders or the brokers who are associated with us, the DPs. Understood. Understood. Understood. Second thing, Jigar, is that on corporate action and IPO income, last quarter, 4Q FY 2025 was also weak when it came to IPO, but we still registered INR 34 crores of revenue last year and this year it is INR 16 crores. Just wanted to understand the decline. Is it because we had a kind of one-off in 4Q? Or if you can give a color whether it was more to do with CA or IPO in the current quarter. No. Last year we had, you know, couple of IPOs are, you know, in a way, very unique to number of counts again. While, you know, the IPO activities have remained subdued, last year we had couple of IPOs which had a large bonus issues and right issues in the last quarter of the year, that's why you see that increase in the corporate actions. This year, you know, while the number of mobilization in terms of IPO has remained about INR 18,000 odd crores, the count has gone down or, you know, has remained static. That's where we see this is specifically a very sporadic to 1 or 2 instances where we would have a larger, you know, folios with us and the bonuses and the right would have been declared last year, and that's where you see a little spike last year compared to this year. Is it fair to say that in 4Q FY 2025, the GeoDM merger played a role, that's why it was a bumped up number, this year we don't have that kind of a figure? Sanket, we are not getting into specific, entity level IPOs, but you get a directional thought, right? We are not getting into details of. Understood. Understood. Okay. Yeah, got it. Got it, Jigar. Sorry. The another question was on the other expenses. See the other expenses, even if I look it from full year point of view, from the standalone point of view, it has come down from INR 117 crores to INR 100 odd crores. Any cost-cutting exercise or what is this seemingly related to and whether it is sustainable going ahead also? Just want to understand that color. Broadly, see, Sanket, our cost has remained the same on the other expenses line. However, last year if you see our, you know, DRHP documents as well as the disclosures, we had settlement charges which we had paid to regulator, and that has been disclosed as part of our disclosures as well. That's why you see last year, if you know, you see the past, that's where was a part of that other expenses. Otherwise, our, there is no cost reduction. It remains stable and year-on-year the cost has continued in the same range. Understood. Lastly, on UR account, as you rightly said, sir, we don't earn on UR account. Out of INR 44.5 million, how many are UR account and how much they contribute or potential revenue loss we had. They did the transaction, but we did not earn it. But honestly, it's a pipeline for 2 years down the line. If you can give a color that how much if they would have paid INR 4 per debit, what was the potential revenue we could have earned? That revenue will get added 2 years down the line to our P&L. Actually, we don't measure it like that or track it like that. We just found that, you know, when we took this decision, the UR customers were a very, very small part and were an insignificant part of the custody, or not custody, but insignificant part of the settlement contribution. To start with, there was no material base that, you know, was at risk. But specifically, we haven't segregated it from that manner as to what is a loss of revenue because of the settlement. I just want to add one nuance that to say that we earn nothing from UR accounts may not be accurate because custody we do earn. Yeah, I understand, sir. I was more referring from settlement fees point of view, that INR 4 per debit what we charge. Maybe it's a initiative to add more people. Naturally it's adding to the custody fees. In future they will naturally add to the settlement fees as the 3-year schooling period gets over. Yeah, yeah. For the old one. Yeah. Yeah, go ahead. Go ahead. No, no. I was just wondering if potentially how much it could add maybe 2 years down the line to our revenue if they continue to do as many debits what they are doing today. I understand, sir, you might have not quantified that. Maybe if you can probably maybe in offline can quantify that number, would be useful to understand the potential revenue, which we can earn 3 years down the line or 2 years down the line when we'll see a sunset clause on these cuts. Sanket, I'll just give you an This is our right now focus is to encourage and improve and penetrate the market participants into a larger ecosystem. We are right now, as Vijay mentioned, not looking this from the lens of revenue plus or revenue minus. You know, these are important services and market infrastructure. We've taken the initiative to provide, you know, to the, as part of the nation building exercise. As the time progresses, we'll be in a better shape and we'll continue to monitor internally. This encourages the youth to, you know, participate more in the ecosystem. That's the thought right now. The outcomes, we'll wait for the outcomes and there will be a time where we will be able to discuss these outcomes as well. Got it, Jigar. Lastly, if you can quantify NSDL revenue or India, NSDL for Insurance Repository revenue in the current year. We have disclosed as part of a footnote the overall top line from the insurance business is about INR 5.5 crores. Sorry, you said five and a half crores, right? Yeah, 5.5. Okay. INR 6 crores. That's it from my side. Thanks. Thank you. Sorry, 6 cr... Oh. Yes. Top line, yes. Yeah. Understood, Jigar. Thanks. Thank you. Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, if you wish to ask a question, please press star and 1. We take the next question from the line of Prayesh Jain from Motilal Oswal Financial Services Limited. Please go ahead. Yeah. Hi. Sorry for the. I don't know if you heard it or no. No, I couldn't hear the last part. There's some emergency message that has come from the government of India with respect to the launch. If you all- I kind of got. Yeah, that's why I couldn't hear that. If you could repeat that is just the last bit. Happy to take it offline also if time is a factor. Yeah. Maybe, Prayesh, on this question, since I gave a very elaborate answer, we can take it offline for the benefit of the others. Sure. You could come and meet our CBO and have a detailed discussion with him on, you know, efforts he's doing to win new customers. There was one data point. Great. Great. I'll do that. which, Jigar added. Jigar, maybe you want to just repeat that last data point on the new age- Prayesh. Yeah. Prayesh, what I was trying to add with the message that was given by Vijay Chandok is that, you know, all new age brokers which are registered last year in, into this business were all onboarded as DPs with NSDL. That's where this will give you a color in terms of the shift at which our approach has been getting built in. That shift is also backed by the investments which we are doing in technology. Lot of emphasis on. Got that. To change image. The short point is that. Got that. And of course- Yeah. The other thing which I had was on, you know, if I have to think about NSDL, say, from a previous stand, do you think that NDML, you know, can compare NDML or Payments Bank, the contribution that they have today in the overall profitability anyways, do you see that, you know, these could be, say, double from this year, from the current levels today? How should we think about these subsidiaries and, you know, the growth going ahead? One point out there which is kind of wanted to also check was on the KYC bid, and the new pricing, how does this kind of impact us? Yeah. You know, Paresh, I don't want to double guess to this question because honestly, we've seen so much of regulatory interventions that have kept coming both on the banking side as well as on the NSDL side. You know, banking has been fraught. Mm-hmm. particularly payment banking industry has been fraught with several regulations that have kept on coming, which has sort of required us to do course correction, course changes. We have to view our future in the context of such regulatory, you know, changes that can happen. Even on NDML side, we've seen, you know, last year there has been an intervention from the regulator, which is requiring us to reduce the charges. Our effort on all aspects of the business is to actually focus on quality and diversify as much as possible to minimize this impact. You know, unlike competition on the NDML side, we are far more diversified in terms of revenue because we have at least four different lines. We have an Insurance Repository, we have a, you know, SEZ, we have a KRA, some other revenue streams as well, national skills and so on. You know, our attempt and our attempt is really to do as much diversification as possible to minimize changes and focus on quality business. We do believe that there is a scope in the market, penetration can be improved. I think we are working towards that. Got that. Thank you so much. Contribution. I think our focus will be to keep growing all the businesses. There is a lot of opportunity to grow Hindi language. We'll just continue to keep growing. Yeah. -in a stated manner, risk-free manner. You know, the opportunity will keep coming to us. Do the right things is what we want to do. Right. Wish you all the best. Thanks. Yeah, thanks. Okay. On that, I just want to give a wrap up. I think last year the contribution of NSDL to subsidiaries was 95 is to 5. Today it is 90 is to 10. You know, that's the trend we have seen. Let's just see what happens in future. Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, as there are no further questions from the participants, I now hand the conference over to the management for their closing comments. Yeah. First of all, once again, thank you very much for taking all the effort and coming to us on a extended weekend in a holiday type, you know, sort of situation. Much appreciated. I'm sure there are going to be a lot more questions that you want to ask. We are always available to reach out anytime, accessible to you. Please reach out for any clarification questions that you may have, and we'll be very, very happy to attend to them. Thank you all of you once again for taking the effort. Have a wonderful rest of the week, weekend. Thank you. Thank you very much for joining. Thank you. On behalf of ICICI Securities Limited, that concludes this conference call. Thank you for joining us, and you may now disconnect your line.