Ladies and gentlemen, good day and welcome to National Securities Depository Limited, NSDL, Q1 FY 2027 earnings conference call. 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. Please note that this conference is being recorded. I now hand the conference over to Ms. Aarzoo Khandelwal. Thank you, and over to you, Ms. Khandelwal.
Good afternoon, and welcome everyone. Thank you for joining us today to discuss NSDL's Q1 FY 2027 financial and business performance. The recording of today's earnings call and the transcript will be uploaded on our website under the investor relations section. The financial results, investor presentation, and the press release are also available on the website. For today's call, NSDL is represented by Mr. Vijay Chandok, 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. Rajiv Gupta, Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer of NSDL Database Management, Mr. Abhijit Kamalapurkar, Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer of NSDL Payments Bank, and myself, Aarzoo Khandelwal from Investor Relations.
The leadership team will give us a brief overview of the operational and the financial performance of the quarter gone by, which will be followed by a Q&A session. With this brief introduction, I now invite Mr. Vijay Chandok for his opening remarks.
Thank you very much, Aarzoo. A very good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, and a very warm welcome to all our shareholders, investors, analysts joining us today for our Quarter 1 2027 earnings conference call. I sincerely appreciate the continued trust that our 8.9 lakh valued investors and shareholders have placed with us. Since our listing almost a year back, we have remained focused on delivering sustained growth, strengthening our market position, and creating long-term value for all our stakeholders. I am pleased to have all of you with us today as we discuss our performance and progress for Quarter 1 FY 2027. Let me begin with a brief overview on the market environment, because I believe it is important to understand the performance of the company in the context of the environment, very specifically to the environment that we operate.
Starting with the market update, the West Asia conflict, as all of us are aware, eased during Quarter one of FY 2027, supporting lower oil prices, stabilization of the rupee, and improved market sentiment. In such a context, Nifty 50 rebounded strongly, gaining 6.6% during the quarter. Renewed hostilities in July have revived geopolitical and crude price risks. During the quarter, what stayed consistent was that who was buying and who was selling. FPIs remained net sellers for the third consecutive quarter, and DIIs remained strong buyers with continuing to provide support to the markets. Amongst all this situation, the investor base continued to expand as far as our market is concerned, with nearly 70 lakh new Demat accounts getting added in Quarter 1 FY 2027 versus 67 lakh that got added in the same quarter of the previous year.
With this addition, the total Demat count for the industry has now crossed 23.16 crore, which is up on a year-over-year basis by 16.3%. After a relatively muted IPO market, in Q1 of FY 2027, activity is expected to pick up for the remaining part of the calendar year if one were to go by the pipeline that we see. With that context set, let me turn specifically to NSDL. During the quarter, we continued to make progress across our key focus areas of operational efficiencies, investor experience and awareness, and accessibility. Let me highlight a few notable developments.
On the business front, our YUP, the youth plan, and the women's Demat plan, where we have made the settlement charges zero for the first three years for a new entrant for an NSDL account, continue to gain traction, and together they stand at about 18%-20% of our incremental Demat additions in Quarter one of FY 2027. NSDL also enabled a special tagging of SWAGAT-FI, a single window automatic generalized access for trusted financial foreign investors framework for FPIs and FVCI in NSDL. It's basically focusing on ease of business through simplified onboarding, reduced compliance burden, and 10-year registration validity for foreign investors. A lot of easing was carried out during this quarter. NSDL conducted investor awareness programs online, offline, and in hybrid formats in association with corporates, defense services, education institutions, and women-focused forums covering a very diverse set of investor segments nationwide.
In Quarter one FY 2027, NSDL conducted over 157 IAPs or investor awareness programs, reaching more than 8,000 participants across 10 states and union territories in multiple languages. The focus during the quarter was also to increase the utilization of the 40-plus APIs that we launched for DPs during the previous quarters. I think we had briefed this to you earlier. This helped us improve our customer experience and increase market share in Demat accounts, which I'll talk about in a bit. During the quarter, the board approved an investment in IIBH, which is a subsidiary in the GIFT City, which is an associate, I'm sorry, in the GIFT City, with NSDL holding 20% stake in that company. We also, during this, recently welcomed Mr. Subhash Kelkar as our Executive Director, Critical Operations.
He brings nearly 33 years of leadership experience in technology and capital markets, and most recently served as the CTO of the Bombay Stock Exchange. He joins us as an executive director on the board of NSDL. On the operational front, during the quarter, the total number of Demat accounts for NSDL reached INR 4.56 crore. We also crossed 317 depository participants with DP additions, the depository participant additions in Q1 of FY 2027 alone being six. Last year, we had added 21, which was a record, and in Q1 of FY 2027, we added another six. We provide services to these investors through 57,000-plus service centers and branches in more than 2,000 cities and small towns. As we speak, we hold about 86% of the value of custody, managing about $5.7 trillion U.S. dollars.
That is about INR 535 lakh crore of securities, of which 80% is equity. Our incremental market share in net Demat account addition for Q1 of FY 2027 increased to 17.6%, up from Q4 levels of about 14% or so, and Q1 of last year at about 15.5%. Both sequential and YOY basis, there is clear improvement. This improvement reflects a steady pickup in accounts addition and the various works that we've been doing to add new DPs and improve our customer experience and add APIs. With 12.4 lakh net additions of accounts during Quarter 1 of FY 2027 compared to 10.54 lakhs that we added last year same time. We continue to expand our issuer base, and we have now crossed 115,000 issuers within the NSDL ecosystem.
Our e-voting platform has helped many leading companies to offer e-voting services to their shareholders, empowering them to exercise their voting rights electronically, with the number of events conducted during the quarter increasing to 900 compared to 794 that we did same time last year, same period last year. Our e-voting market share, as a result, increased to 64% in Q1 of FY 2027 from 61% in Q1 2026. I'll now take you through some of the key financial outcomes, which is anyway readily available in our website, and I'm sure all of you have seen it, but I'll just highlight a few aspects. At the outset, I would like to mention that NSDL performance is best assessed on a YOY basis, and not actually on a sequential basis.
This is because of the seasonality inherent in our business, which includes products like e-voting and dividend income from subsidiaries, which are concentrated in specific quarters. In such a context, if you look at our performance, our total income stood at INR 219.7 crore compared to INR 190.4 crore last year Q1, up by about 15.3%. Profit after tax stood at INR 89.1 crore compared to INR 82.6 crore Q1 FY 2026, up by 7.9%. I wish to highlight that our standalone margins have seen some moderation compared to the previous periods. This is largely on account of the investments that we've been making across our focus areas, which we've been talking to you about, which is strengthening technology resilience and cybersecurity, enhancing customer experiences through greater operational automation, and increase in talent pool by addressing certain skill gaps and other leadership requirements.
We have front-loaded these investments in manpower and technology to strengthen adequacy of resources and to support infrastructure and future growth. As these investments mature over the medium term, we expect operating leverage to support normalized margins going forward. On a consolidated basis, the total income stood at INR 560.5 crore compared to INR 346.8 crore last year, Q1 FY 2026, up by 61.6% on a year-over-year basis. Profit after tax stood at INR 98.3 crore on a consolidated basis compared to INR 89.6 crore last year Q1 FY 2026, up by 9.7% on a year-over-year basis. At the consolidated level, the Payments Bank continues to focus on growing its transaction-led business and expanding its retail customer base. The bank margins during the period was impacted by the upfront onboarding revenue sharing associated with a specific partner project that the bank won and started implementing during that quarter.
As these acquired customers through this initiative pivot to transactions and also start availing associated banking services, we expect profitability and margins in this segment to gradually stabilize and improve. Let me now talk a little bit about our subsidiaries. The bank continues to gain traction in digital payments ecosystem and is currently among the top 34 banks in India on UPI remitter bank transactions. As of June 30th, 2026, the bank is ranked sixth as a pay PSP amongst the top 15 banks in the ecosystem. Retail customers have increased by 1.7x from INR 28.3 lakh Q1 FY 2026 to INR 49.5 lakh in Q1 FY 2027. Coming to our database management company, our other subsidiary. During the quarter, NDML welcomed Mr. Rajiv Gupta as the MD and CEO, succeeding Mr. Gupte, who completed his full term as MD and CEO of NDML.
Mr. Rajiv Gupta brings nearly 28 years of experience, and most recently served as Executive Vice President and Business Head at Religare Broking. At NDML, we continue to focus on scaling and strengthening our diversified businesses. Pursuant to IRDAI's guidance, the company is in the process of transferring its Insurance Repository business from existing SIU unit to a separate subsidiary dedicated to this activity. The work on this transition is currently underway. We remain totally committed to delivering high standards of investor protection, building trust, and promoting financial literacy to encourage responsible investments across capital markets in India. With these opening comments, I hand over to Jigar, our CFO, to talk a little more about our financial highlights.
Good afternoon, everyone. Thank you, Vijay. A very warm welcome to everyone once again, and thank you for joining us. Let me now take you through the standalone consolidated financial highlights for the quarter ended 30th June 2026. On standalone basis, to kick off with, revenue from operations for Q1 FY 2027 stood at INR 182.2 crore, a growth of 13.2% on a year-over-year basis. Sequentially, it grew by 6.8%. The total income we have registered a growth of 15.3% year-over-year to INR 219.7 crore in Q1 FY 2027 versus INR 190.4 crore in Q1 FY 2026. Our EBITDA margin for the current quarter stands at 57.8%. Our EBITDA for Q1 FY 2027 is at INR 126.9 crore versus INR 115.3 crore in Q1 FY 2026, registering a growth of 10.1% on year-over-year basis.
Net profit after tax for quarter one FY 2027 grew by 7.9% on year-on-year basis to INR 89.1 crore versus INR 82.6 crore in quarter one FY 2026. Our PAT margin stands at 40.6% for the current quarter. On the technology front, we have capitalized INR 7 crore-INR 8 crore during the quarter one FY 2027 versus full year capitalization in the previous year of INR 106 crore. It is worth noting that NSDL standalone profit contributes approximately 91% of consolidated profits. I shall now move on to take a brief note on the consolidated highlights. Revenue from operations for quarter one FY 2027 stood at INR 516.6 crore, registering a growth of 65.6% on a YOY basis, and sequentially it grew by 12.7%. This is primarily aided by the growth in banking services revenue.
Total income we have registered a growth of 61.6% year-on-year to INR 560.5 crore in quarter one FY 2027 versus INR 346.8 crore in quarter one FY 2026. Our EBITDA margin for the current quarter is at 25.9%. Our EBITDA on consolidated basis for quarter one FY 2027 is at INR 145 crore versus INR 129.5 crore in quarter one FY 2026, registering a growth of 12% on year-on-year basis. Net profit after tax for quarter one FY 2027 grew by 9.7% on YOY basis to INR 98.3 crore versus INR 89.6 crore in quarter one FY 2026. Our PAT margin on consolidated basis stands at 17.5% for the current quarter. That concludes my opening remarks with regards to the financials. Thank you once again for joining, and I will open up the floor for Q&A.
Thank you. We will now begin the question and answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may press star and one on a touch-tone telephone. If you wish to remove yourself from the question queue, you may press star and two. Participants are requested to use handsets while asking a question. Ladies and gentlemen, we will wait for a moment while the question queue assembles. The first question comes from the line of Prayesh Jain with Motilal Oswal Financial Services Limited. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Hi, good evening, everyone. Just wanted to understand, on the cost front, on a standalone basis also, we've seen almost a 40% increase in employee cost. You had kind of indicated that we would be very close to peaking out. We just wanted to understand, are we close to the peak run rate? In fact, if you could also give us some understanding as to where is the employee count getting added on the standalone side, wherein in which departments and where is the cost getting increased? That's point number one. Point number two is on the banking side, you kind of mentioned about a arrangement wherein a large set of customers have come in, and that as they adopt the services of NSDL Payments Bank, we will drive more revenues and profitability.
Is the current quarter run rate is sustainable and will only increase from here? That will be my second question. Last question would be on the IPO activity momentum now that it has picked up. What's your traction on the I think you extended your relationships with six or seven BPs in this quarter, if I'm not wrong. What is the status on new additions with respect to the large discount brokers or any new player that has started operation, which you can highlight a bit? Those would be my questions. Thanks.
Yeah. Thank you, Prayesh. Thank you for asking this set of questions. On the first question with regards to cost, we had indicated earlier in our conversations that most of our hirings we have done in the last year. If you look at our net hiring in the previous year was about 98 employees. With regards to this quarter, and that's why you see there is an uptick and the cost is now coming in this financial year. As far as the peak is concerned, we are now going to go very cautious in terms of our hiring. You will see during the current part of the year, the employees which have been recruited, those costs will come into these upcoming quarters. Yeah, broadly, we have done with the kind of adequacy that we wanted with regards to hiring manpower.
With regards to the other question, where we have recruited the manpower is largely in the technology and the cyberspace, because this is a space where we have strengthened and we believe this is a very critical space for us considering the type of company we are and the kind of business we are in as far as market infrastructure and institution is concerned. That's the second part of question. Can you please repeat the bank question once again, please?
Yeah, I think Vijay mentioned in his opening remarks that there was a new arrangement that has happened in the banking business, which has brought in a lot of customers. As that scales up and the customers adopt new services of payments bank, the EBITDA profitability and revenue will go up. Just wanted to understand what is this arrangement and do we see that the run rate of the revenues will only get better from here on banking services?
Firstly, it's a very specific project, so we don't want to take names. It's a project which is giving us some card business. As the transactions are onboarded, customers are onboarded, there is a joining fee of sorts. That is what has sort of ramped up the revenue. This joining fee has a significant sharing with a partner who's working with us on this project. It's virtually a pass-through. Therefore, the margins are low there. Once this is settled, obviously the turnover then doesn't need to be so spiky. Thereafter, the transaction-related turnover comes in, and the transaction-related profitability comes in, which is better than the joining-related profitability ratios. You have to see this in that context rather than something which is a permanent scale-up of operational level.
It is giving you customers which will add a fair amount of heft, both on CASA as well as transactional revenue, which is more the traditional banking revenue. This is more as a front-loading of an opportunity, which is project-related opportunity, which has got a pass-through with a partner at the time of onboarding. That onboarding journey actually peaked in this quarter.
Got that. Basically, from second quarter onwards, it will be back to normalized rate and probably to the levels of Q4. As the volumes pick up from the customers, you'll see better revenues.
Yeah. Broadly right. I think we have completed the significant part of the onboarding process in Q1.
Well done.
Coming to that IPO. The IPO question that you had, I think we already mentioned the total number of accounts that got opened in the industry was about INR 70 lakhs, and we also mentioned that the total Demat accounts that we opened was about INR 12.5 lakhs, approximately, higher than what we did last year, at a slightly higher market share. Our market share increased sequentially as well as a year-over-year basis. About 17.5% it came in. The benefits of IPO will be in a sense flowing as a consequence of the increased number of shareholders and accounts. That is how it plays out. Compared to the past, we do expect if the volumes are good, we should earn more because number of customers have increased.
That said, we have added a fair amount of new account addition that is happening is now started coming from fintech. In fact, just for information, that number a few quarters back was about 2% of our total addition was coming from fintech and 98% was coming from non-fintech. Now that number of fintech too has gone to almost 20%, and the numbers have increased. That's the sort of change in the sort of color of the onboarding new customers that are joining us. With regards to, I think you were trying to allude to certain very specific customers. I don't want to get into names, but there is progress. While no accounts are attributable to the specific customers, but I would say that there is progress in doing some technology integration there.
Great. Just one follow-up on the first question.
Having said that, Sorry, just to complete, I would just augment that this progress does not mean anything till we see the outcome in terms of numbers.
Absolutely.
Please don't take it away as any kind of a guidance. I want to make it explicit.
Yeah. Agree there. Just on the first question on the tech investments, we see that both you and your competitor are investing heavily in terms of tech. Is there something that is also regulator-driven or is it the need of the hour that we are investing? Also, if you could elaborate a bit more there on that front.
Yeah. Actually, if you look at the assessment of technology investments, we have made investments into four broad areas that we have assessed. It is purely based on internal assessments. One of the themes is from our technology resilience. Technology resilience is an expectation from regulators, at the same time, it's an expectation from the market. To say it is purely regulatory-driven may not be accurate. At the same time, to say it is purely market-driven is not accurate. I think both legs are sort of overlapping in this particular theme, that's a sizable area of investment. The second is improving customer experience. Almost entirely it falls in the domain of market expectations. From a regulatory expectations, they expect that you are doing a quick job of solving customer complaints and escalations, in general, keep investor complaints and escalations and grievances down.
From that angle, there is some element of overlap, predominantly it belongs to the customer market domain. The third theme is automation, which is purely internal compulsion because our business is very amenable to automation and use of AI, use of ML, in matters like processing, in matters like surveillance that we do as a part of our job. That is purely in the domain of operational efficiency. The last one is a complete refresh of infrastructure and hardware that is driven by the circumstances where we are, because after a certain point in time, we need to upgrade our technology because of end of life and end of support.
As a consequence, that's the fourth theme that we have picked up, which is, I would say, domain of compulsion, that we need to upgrade our technology periodically, which is typically once in five years to seven years to eight years, depending on the policy. We are somewhere in that kind of a mode at this point in time, that's what has led to this four areas of technology spend. As I said, it's a combination of outcomes that it is supporting. It is not purely regulatory. There is a fair amount of overlap on regulations, but at the same time, there is a fair amount of market expectations and market benefits that will accrue as a result of these investments.
Thank you so much. Wish you all the best. Thanks.
Thank you.
Thank you. A reminder to all the participants that you may press star and one to ask a question. Next question comes from the line of Sanketh Godha with Avendus Spark. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Thank you for the opportunity. Sir, my first question is on your annual custody income, which has grown by 30% year-over-year. I think in the past you called out how much of this growth is driven by folio count and probably new unlisted companies coming on board. If you can give us whether it was driven by folio count, and if you can call out that folio count, it would be useful, sir.
Yeah, sure. Primarily, I'll come down to the folio count, Vijay which also mentioned in the previous call. How the custody fee growth has coming is primarily because in the last couple of years, we've added and sort of enabled the market with regards to moving a lot of these companies into our NSDL fold. If I have to give you a number in number of companies that we have onboarded in the last couple of years, the kind of bench that we created is about 33,000 in FY 2025, 30,000 in FY 2026. That's about 60,000 companies that we've added in the last couple of years and in the last one year itself, and that's where you see the growth is coming from. How are these companies helping us? These companies are helping us in increasing our folio count as well.
While the folio are not increasing in large because these are all unlisted companies, so they have a finite size of folio. I have given this number in my previous commentary as well. The folio count as we speak today for NSDL is about 14 crores. This is where we stand in terms of our folio.
Okay. Jigar, last time that number was around INR 15 crore, right? If I remember the number right.
We had mentioned about INR 14 crore, we can discuss it. I think we have mentioned about INR 14 crore in our previous call. We were 11.8 and then it moved to 14.
Understood. This means that a large part of the growth came from more and more unlisted companies coming on board with NSDL. That's the way I need to understand, right? That was the bigger driver for--
Yeah. If you see our market share in unlisted companies stands at about 70% plus.
Yeah.
That's where we are.
Understood. My second question is also want to understand the color of pledge income growth. Your pledge income has also done meaningfully very strong on year-on-year basis and quarter-on-quarter basis. Will you attribute this strong growth largely to the strong growth what brokerage industry is witnessing with respect to margin trade funding book? There is some other reason that maybe the brokers which we are associated with, largely the bank brokers, they are consistently gaining market share in the cash segment and that is getting reflected in our probably pledge income. Just wanted to understand, is it because of the MTF book or in general you are seeing any traction why it is leading to strong growth?
Yeah. Thank you for asking. The way the pledge income is, we have a lot of traditional, and also a lot of fintech brokers who also avail a lot of our services. Largely, if you see this is the way the market is moving the last three months and the last six months. We are also getting the benefit of the way the market is moving with regards to the MTF book. We see that in terms of our count also. The way we earn our revenue increases sometimes count. The count has also grown in the last year-on-year by about 15% count in terms of the pledge and unpledge. That's where it is helping us to this line of revenue.
Jigar, is it fair to say structurally, if people hold this margin trade funding book for a shorter duration, which is the current trend based on the brokers disclosures, then it invariably will benefit us? Is the fair way to understand this revenue line item to grow going ahead?
The way it is right now, yes, it benefits us because we have large custody presence and we have better quality customers.
Understood. Two more questions, sorry. One is on KYC income. As we all know that KYC charges on fetch was cut by 20% by regulator or all depositories took that call, KRA agencies took that call to reduce it by 20%. Still our decline was just 2%. Just wanted to understand, is it because we had volume growth or we managed because we are gaining market share on incremental Demat accounts, so number of KYC accounts with us increased and that led to the growth? Because the number what you told last time, if I remember it is 1.98 crore account you had on KYC. What is the current number and what led to that growth or marginal decline on sequential basis?
As we had explained to you, Sanketh, the NDML business is more diversified compared to our competition. To measure us purely and solely on the behalf of the performance of Demat account and KRA downloads may not be a very accurate way of looking at it, because we have about five businesses there, which includes SEZ Online, which includes your KRA business, and which includes Insurance Repository, amongst others.
Having said that, whatever sort of decline would have attributable to the price decrease in the KRA business was in part offset by the increase we got in the SEZ business. On a composite, things are what it laid out rather than our singular dependencies as maybe with these generics.
Understood.
Yeah. This diversification has helped us actually.
Sir, if you can give a broader color out of the total revenue what we make in NDML, how much is KYC and how much is others, if you are okay to share that number?
Yeah, Sanketh, at this stage, we are not sharing our subsidiary details. Let things scale up and mature a little more before we start providing color.
Understood. Last one. See, typically we understand that e-voting is seasonally very strong in second quarter in India. Still we witnessed a strong growth in 1Q. Is it like some business of 2Q got preponed in 1Q and that's the way the growth has appeared? Or it's a sheer market share story?
Yeah. Actually, just wanted to give a perspective there. Actually, it's eAGM which is seasonally concentrated in quarter two. E-voting is more need-based rather than completely having a seasonal impact.
Okay. There is nothing like, means people started maybe preponed their activity and they did not drive the revenue.
No.
It's more normal kind of a trend itself.
It is a normal requirement that have come up maybe a little more in this quarter by companies. The concentration is typically for eAGMs, which is in quarter two.
Understood. Yeah. That's it from my side. Thanks for answering my questions.
Thank you.
Thank you. A reminder to all the participants that you may press star and one to ask a question. Next question comes from the line of Rushabh with RBSA Investment Manager LLP. Please go ahead.
Thank you for the opportunity. If I recall correctly, I think you mentioned earlier in the call that the share of fintech and incremental Demat opening has gone from 2% - 20%. I just want to know, like in the last six months or one year, what has happened or what are you offering now in the technology and the service front that has led to this package share increase? That maybe was NSDL was not offering earlier. I just want to maybe get some sense here.
Yeah. Thank you. I think that's a great question. Actually, it is not merely the work of the last two quarters. I think we've been working for the last several quarters, I would say, in trying to convince the market, particularly newcomers, to join us. In that context, a lot of work was done with going and meeting customers. First, our own existing customers, addressing their pain points, addressing their technology expectations, reducing friction, and using that platform for spreading more positive word of mouth in the market. Because this market moves a lot with the comfort and word of mouth of an existing player. We also engaged, I would say, a fair amount of work with the back office vendors.
Back office vendors, when we conducted workshops, gave us a very interesting perspective on things that needed to be done, which will make onboarding easier and attract new sort of fintechs to us more easily. That was also done. I would say a combination of customizations, combination of investment of relationship building with the fintech brokers, rather I would say the new fintech brokers as well as some of the features that we've added and the work that we've done with our existing players to get a positive word of mouth and positive endorsements from our partners meaning the back office vendor partners, which combination of all this has helped us increase and onboard new fintechs. These fintechs have been getting onboarded, I would say, for the last 4 quarters. Typically, the onboarding effort takes about four months or so.
Typically, they take one or two months of testing and various CUGs and pre-production scenario testing, et cetera, before they feel comfortable to ramp up. The ramp up is gradual. A lot of this ramp up has now started taking shape. We are still, I would say, in the process of ramping up more. There are multiple new fintech brokers who have started journeys with us as a consequence of that. The ramp up in these quarters are a little more than the ramp up that was seen in the earlier quarters. That's what has led to this kind of an increase.
Okay. Sir, the whatever solution that you're providing right now from the fintechs, they are in the early pilot stage, or they are fairly happy with the product that we're offering, and we can expect significant ramp up in the next one or two years from them in terms of business from them? In terms of the offering that we Hello?
Yeah. Correct.
Just to add on to that, just in terms of offering that we wanted to offer to them, how satisfied are we with the product? Is it okay or a lot of tweaking is yet to be done? Is this like ongoing process, at least broadly, are we done at least 70%-80% with the product that we wanted to offer and the customer is happy with the product that we're currently offering? I just want to understand trajectory of that journey.
Yeah. We put out some numbers for your comfort. Last year we onboarded 21 new DPs. Okay? Many of them are in the process of early stages of integration or early stages of scale-up, either meaning in different stages of integration or early stages of scale up. That benefit should logically start flowing to us. That's what we expect. It is obviously contingent on how the market also plays. Caveating it with what market plays out, one will have to see how the future will play out. Our effort is on increasing number of DPs. Even in the current quarter, we have added six new DPs on top of that 21 which we added last year. Very high effort on going into the market, meeting new DPs, trying to convert existing DPs into our DPs.
Even our shared DPs, we are trying to increase market share there, market penetration and wallet share there. A lot of effort is going on through combination of better product. I think today from what we engage, the product gaps are not there really in the market. In fact, many people have said some of the APIs that we have launched are not available with competition. I don't see product gap as a showstopper anymore. It is about more positive word of mouth endorsement, more positive comfort that the market will get from other players. Our sort of relationship building that happens and some tactical pricing interventions that we can do through these YUva Plan, the youth plan, as well as the women's plan that we have launched. It's a combination of these things which will help us attract more and more customers in future.
We remain optimistic about the future subject to market conditions.
Okay, sir. Understood. What will be the main priorities for the next one year apart from I understand when Mr. Vijay took over one and a half years back, there would have been certain targets for the next three, four years for the company. Just want to understand what are the major hits and misses so far in the way I think we are one and a half years into the journey, and what are the key priorities for the next one year?
Yeah. Thanks. You're talking to Vijay only, so I'm answering your question. When Vijay took over last one and a half years back, we laid out four thematic priorities. The first one was technology modernization. That was the first theme. I've already explained that we subdivided that into four areas, which I explained in my earlier response. The second theme was on skill gap and leadership gap. Adding people, adding resources, fitting up adequacy. That was the second one. I think that is more or less now complete, you could say. Significantly completed at least. At least leadership is completed. A little bit of gap filling is taking place below the leadership level. The third area that we picked up is market penetration. I've already explained that there is good progress.
The fourth area we had picked up that time was to complete the IPO, which was completed in a record time of seven months after Vijay joined. Now that one and a half years is over, I think the effort is to complete the residual part of technology modernization. More work will happen in automation. More work will happen on ensuring that whatever has been launched gets refined because typically technological offering requires continuous upgrades, continuous feedback loop session taking from the customer and improving and adding either new features, new capabilities, or defrictionalyzing or just making it more efficient. A lot of time will go now more in making things more sophisticated, making it more mature, making it more sort of frictionless. I think the basic work to a large extent is completed. Two things I expect on technology to take center stage is resilience.
I think that's a very important area, and the second area would be customer experience related enhancements. These are the two areas. Automation I mentioned. These three areas will take center stage. Market will continue to remain a very high focus. Technology will help us feed market in a better and more sharper manner.
Thank you for the detailed response. It's quite helpful, and wish you all the best.
Thank you.
Thank you. A reminder to all the participants that you may press star and one to ask a question. Next question comes from the line of Ritesh Goel with Axis Capital. Please go ahead.
Hi, sir. Thank you for taking my question. Most of the questions have been answered. Just two data keeping point. What's the count of the unlisted companies added during the quarter? The second one is, out of the other transaction charges of INR 21 crores, what proportion is the joining fees?
In terms of the first part of the question is the number of companies that joined this quarter was 3,600 companies. In terms of the component of the joining fee, we typically charge INR 15,000 per company as a processing charge at the time of joining. INR 15,000, let me just look at the number here. That should be in the range of about INR 5-6 crores.
Okay, sir. Thank you so much. That's it.
Thank you.
Thank you. A reminder to all the participants that you may press star and one to ask a question. Once again, a reminder to all the participants that you may press star and one to ask a question. Next question comes from the line of Prayesh Jain with Motilal Oswal Financial Services Limited. Please go ahead.
Yeah, just one quick question on what would be our folio count?
Yeah, Prayesh. The folio count is approximately 14 crore folio we have today.
14 crore, what was that in the previous quarter?
Previous year. We do year-over-year. It was about INR 11.9.
INR 11.9, which has gone up to INR 14 crore. That's it. Thanks.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, as there are no further questions. We have a question that is from the line of Lalit Mohan Deo from Equirus Securities. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Hi, sir. Good evening, and thanks for the opportunity. Just two questions. One, in the annual custody fees, there's a component of distributed ledger DLT charges also. Could you just quantify that amount as well? Sir, just as you had highlighted that in the last one year, we have onboarded 21 DPs. Just wanted to understand in terms of the incremental engagement with those depository participants, how do we ensure that we get Demat accounts from those DPs as well? If you could give some color on how the Demat accounts are shaping from those incremental 21 DPs which we have added.
Yeah, Lalit. Thank you for asking those questions. In with regards to giving us color on DLT. DLT is a relatively new line of revenue. We are not giving any specific numbers with regards to the DLT. Overall, we have right now about 600 issuers on our platform. That's something which I can give you an additional information. As far as the second part is concerned.
As I said, typically the process of onboarding is a four-month affair. I would say about 12 to 16 weeks. Various people sign up, go through documentation, go through technology integration, testing, pre-production testing, soft launch, and then final launch. Many of them are in various stages. Some of them have already gone into a proper production mode. Most of the DPs who have joined us, these 21 are exclusively with NSDL. Whatever accounts get opened typically will flow with NSDL only. After onboarding and after integration, it's only about account opening. Every account that opens naturally will flow to us because we are the only depository there. The effort required is to actually get the client onboarded, integrated, tested, and start production. That's the effort that is required. Thereafter, the work of the DP flows into the depository.
Most of this has happened in the last, I would say, because five quarters back, if you would have measured this number, it was hardly 2%. Today it is 20%. A lot of it has happened only because of all the efforts that have been happening during these last four quarters and a few quarters before those that got onboarded. A few had got onboarded before. All of that starts contributing to this.
Sure.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, as there are no further questions, we have reached the end of question and answer session. I now hand the conference over to Mr. Vijay Chandok for closing comments.
Yeah. Thank you very much. Thank you all the investors, shareholders, analysts who took the effort and trouble to join and ask the questions. We really appreciate your presence and all the questions that you asked. In case after going through our numbers in detail, you still have follow-up questions, please do not hesitate. You have Aarzoo, our IR person. You have Jigar. Both are available for you to connect with them. We'll be very happy to respond to your queries. Thank you very much all of you once again, and continue to support us. Thank you.
Thank you. On behalf of National Securities Depository Limited, NSDL, that concludes this conference. Thank you for joining us. You may now disconnect your lines.