Hello, everyone. On behalf of Ambit, we'd like to welcome you all to the Investor Meet of Affle. We have the pleasure of hosting Mr. Anuj Khanna Sohum. Anuj is the Founder, MD, and CEO of the company. We also have the pleasure of hosting Kapil Bhutani, who is the CFO of the company. We also have Karish. Karish heads the Investor Relations for Affle. The format of the session is Anuj will take us through the strategic initiatives and also touch up upon the acquisition that happened yesterday, followed by a Q&A for the participants here, and then we might have some questions on the webinar. Over to you, Anuj. Thanks for giving us the introduction.
Well, thank you for hosting us today for the investors who have taken the time to come in person, a very warm welcome to you. For those who are on Zoom online, a very warm welcome to you as well. It's been four financial years of results that Affle has announced since its IPO in 2019, it gives me, you know, a lot of comfort and conviction that we know each other much better now. You know, we understand the public markets better, public markets, institutional investors, Affle much better for financial years of results and discussions. I think we have about how to be together, I feel very comfortable thank you. In every earnings call, I become even more comfortable and natural to share about our company, about our situation, about our plans.
We have seen enough in these four years, which is the COVID situation. Everybody was nervous. We didn't know how. A lot of the e-commerce people couldn't go home, or advertising budgets were suddenly low, we were not sure what would happen. I think we went through that tide of 2021 pretty well. We started to see some turbulence around FY 2023, the last one financial year, about the macroeconomic headwinds, I think all of us have seen different levels of that, and that's still kind of continuing. We have also seen how Affle has performed through these, you know, various changes, most importantly, how we have communicated through these changes.
The idea is that whatever is going on, let's provide transparency, let's provide clarity, be proactive to make sure that our investors can always appreciate what this team is doing and what we are up to. The last month, April 2023, Affle turned 18 years, which is, in my opinion, a young age. Affle is still a young and a upcoming company. We are a fast-growing company, and when you lead a company for 18 years, I think what matters most is credibility. Making sure, and of course, I'm only 45. By the time Affle is 45, I hope all of you would see what a credible journey this company has delivered, and may that create great disproportionate value for the shareholders as well.
With that in mind, I'm here to present to you Affle's growth strategy and update by 2024, a year that's already started. We are almost one and a half months into the year, and, you know, where there are quite a lot of foundational strategic execution that has already happened and is happening in the first quarter itself, and we hope to deliver great outcomes and incremental, you know, upward lift in what we achieve in this financial year through the next quarters and onwards. Let me take you through that in more detail. These were the five things that I talked about in our earnings call, which was just a few weeks ago, and I will just do a quick recap of that and also give you a peek of how we have done in those since the time I last updated you.
The first is that with respect to developed markets, right? We have already talked about it for last two to three quarters, that there are headwinds there, and we have seen impact there. How do we turn around that situation? This is really where a captain's knot comes in, right? As a CEO of the company, as an entrepreneur who's hands-on building Affle, I take direct charge of the developed market teams so that we can upsell, cross-sell all our platform capabilities on CPCU market in the developed markets. As we talk right now, the event and industry event happening in Las Vegas, it is called the MAU. It's one of the most important industry events for our company or our industry. There are 17 people from Affle who are at that event right now, and they are out there with a very strong message.
We are standing tall, we are standing confident, telling our customers or potential customers, "If you are spending on mobile advertising, you must spend with Affle." Also, our competitors and employees of those competitors, that if you are a strong talent in this company and you want a long-term career growth, work for us. I think we are putting a very strong, confident front in the industry, in developed markets, and I'm directly leading this the business units for this financial year. I think that's a very important message, where when there is a challenge, may we put our best foot forward. I think we're not shying away behind. You know, it's far. You got to travel, you got to travel more actively, and I'm ready to do whatever it takes to make it right.
I'm very confident that we are already seeing signs of that. Second, strategic partnerships that our company has with our publisher partners, with our operators and OEMs around the world, we are also realigning and strengthening and making partnerships, right? Again, that's active and on, and this is not just an impact for this financial year, but in the next three to five years, right? To solidify our position across emerging markets, across developed markets, and leverage those partnerships by giving them stronger visibility of what they can get. Right? You know, there are several things involved with them, technology integrations, data integrations, making sure that there is a deeper connect, people, dedicated teams, and so on. A lot of, let's say, deeper engagement that's involved in it.
In fact, starting on a call with one such partner, you know, we're very close to clinching and, you know, finalizing these things. Whenever we sign a significant material contract, of course, we will notify and inform you all so that you know what to expect. Third, in terms of products and platforms, we are also seeing how we can go higher up in the value chain, which means that we should help us in having a higher pricing.
It means the CPC rate should be helped further, as well as higher margin, because, you know, as you go higher up in the value chain, typically, as is no different, you end up getting better pricing, better margin, and better negotiating power, and very importantly, greater pride within the organization that we are playing in the highest segments, and better respect from the stakeholders in the industry that we are going up. How do we achieve point number three and four? CTV, everybody knows this is an important area, this is an upcoming area, and within the CTV, with a differentiation called Household Sync, where all the people who are within a household, we have to provide some ways of contextualizing the messaging and communications with them, and our advertisers already appreciate it.
Now what we are doing is saying we are gonna marry that to the CPCU business model. When we marry that to the CPCU business model, we become, in my assessment, the only CTV platform that offers CPCU-based conversions and ROI link model to the advertisers. This would give us a sharper penetration point in getting budgets, even in markets where we are, let's say, relatively less or known. In developed markets, we go with CTV plus CPC, we have a seat on the table to have a negotiation, discuss, can we get your budgets? We are offering, A, a differentiated product, but more importantly, combined with a differentiated and a compelling business model, especially more compelling when there are economic headwinds.
This should help us, this is basically going higher up in the value chain, both on the product as well as on the business model in combination. The fourth point is Apple, iOS devices. On Apple iOS devices, I think all of us, we agree, that in any country in the world, developed or in emerging, iOS device users are probably having the higher purchasing power, right? They are the more premium segment. Now, within iOS, we already have a product that delivers solutions to advertisers on what's called the SKAN or the SKAdNetwork of Apple, and we have solutions on that. We're also now rolling out very important touch points on the Apple App Store, right?
They have certain touch points there where you can help apps and products to be discovered by the consumers, and those are unique placements. When we combine these propositions, we are seeing on iOS platform, both in developed markets as well as in emerging markets, we have the right solution for the advertisers to work with us for the highest and the most premium Consumer Conversion segment, okay. Finally, the fifth point, which is about recalibrating our strategy for inorganic growth by focusing on how our customers, which is the advertisers, how can all our customers, advertisers, have their own unique first-party data? How can they leverage that, their own data better, to drive higher conversions across all use cases, across the journey of the consumer life cycle? We are focusing on certain key emerging verticals.
On this particular point, I mean, all the other four points were already kind of rolled out because they were internal initiatives of the first four points, and we were already laying the foundation for that in this quarter. On the fifth point, which is about inorganic, we have also announced yesterday that we have done an acquisition. This was announced yesterday, which is in line with, you know, the growth plan here, which we had outlined just a few weeks ago. We are consistent with that because Affle has acquired YouAppi because it is a global gaming-focused mobile app marketing platform. It's a programmatic platform, which is working very well for the top gaming publishers on the group, especially so in developed markets at the moment.
We think that this is the perfect sort of example of how we will execute on the strategy that we'd already stated to you before. In terms of the transaction details, I mean, most of it is already disclosed to the stock exchange yesterday. We signed the agreement yesterday, and within hours of that, we disclosed it, of course, to all of you. Affle International Private Limited is our wholly owned subsidiary and one of the very important subsidiaries in Singapore. This company, our subsidiary, has now taken 100% ownership in YouAppi based on the agreement that was signed yesterday. The total consideration, and it's paid in some parts, some upfront and some end of year one, is $45 million, of which $35.44 million is getting paid upfront.
Incidentally, for those who are thinking, "How do we come up with these numbers and budgets and negotiations?" This is approximately the EBITDA we made last year. We're saying whatever EBITDA we made last year, we are already having a good cash conversion cycles in our company. It was that in buying this company, is that sensible? Are we stretching ourselves beyond our means? I think they just want you to know we're very sensibly calibrated. There is a contingent consideration, which is paid $9.56 million at the end of the first year, owing to several conditions, performance, handover, both qualitative and quantitative considerations, based on which we would pay that amount, right?
YouAppi at a glance, I think I already gave you some sense of it, but this is a company which has been around since 2011. That is quite credible. You know, over 10 years, the team has been at this business. They have strong ground presence in the U.S. They have strong ground presence in Israel. Both of these places, we have our own teams as well, but of course, smaller teams, now we will combine forces and become much stronger. They have stronger presence as well in Japan. There, again, Affle has a small little team, but, you know, we are basically saying together, we are becoming stronger with better on-ground presence in these markets with them. Their focus in terms of customers or where they run their, you know, consumer-focused campaigns is North America, EMEA, and so on.
They have very strong capabilities in terms of what they have proven to do well for the Gaming segment, with AI and machine learning algorithms that, you know, we hope that we will further augment with, because Affle there, and how we can combine it to make it an even sharper algorithm to drive greater conversions going forward. In terms of the revenues of YouAppi, in the last reported period for them, they've done about $32.8 million. Since they have focused on about how much push for this financial year. What I want to push for a lot more is the fact that YouAppi did a PAT performance or, you know, margin performance, I call it a 7.5% in the previous year.
As I told all of you before, I think in some interactions I had mentioned clearly, that we will only acquire inorganic investments or do only investments where I believe within the first year itself, 15%-20% bottom line performance. I'm very confident that we've done our homework well, and we will, you know, make sure that we drive that margin, number one, and then push the accelerator for much more growth, right? Given what's happening in the market, I think Our focus would be how do we maximize the synergies together within year one and then ramp up for much greater revenue growth. All right, remember this, we had an Investors Day, and it's been a while. We should do another one soon. In that, we have built the Affle 2.0 consumer platform stack.
This actually, the way to read this slide is bottoms up. You know, the foundation of the company is our culture, which is about entrepreneurship and the right balance, tech and innovation, sustainable growth. Comes our strategy, which is about verticalization, emerging markets and emerging verticals, focus and so on. Comes our core, let's say, data platforms, data science, algorithms, capabilities, machine learning, artificial intelligence capabilities, based on which we transform ads into consumer recommendations. Right? You know, this may sound like a lot, but it's just sensibly telling you the qualitative aspect, strategic aspect of that. Comes our technology platforms, and that's where YouAppi fits in as well.
It's one such platform that's focused a lot more on the developed markets and gaming, but we hope to expand that by bringing not only our capabilities to their customers, but also bringing their capabilities to global emerging markets, where we are very strong, and gaming will continue to be a strong growth area, even in emerging markets for many years to come. It's our, you know, important bet with respect to going into the developed markets, because there, gaming is a very large addressable market, and we believe we can now have a much stronger winning position together with YouAppi. There is also a synergistic capability of bringing YouAppi and growing gaming in the emerging markets as well, including India. This is how we look at our consumer stack, and it's consistent with our strategy and how this all fits in together.
Let me refresh you with something one of our investors messaged me, right? I said, "In your RHP, you had quoted YouAppi as well." I said, "Oh, yeah? I mean, I know our DRHP quite well, but said, "Let's revise it." We had a very clear strategic vision in our 2019 RHP quote, where we said that in our industry, there can be hundreds of companies around the world that offer some kind of digital advertising, technology-based solutions, but there are a few companies that operate globally, internationally, such as us, and some of those include, by the way, we named YouAppi there, and we had identified that this could be a good consolidation strategy. That means over three and a half years of watching, quoting, carefully assessing, waiting for the time, knowing their numbers this year, next year, next year.
We saw, okay, 7.5% profit last year. Gaming quality of customers. All right. This makes sense. This is the right timing, given the economics, the pricing, the valuation, the terms, all of that made sense. We took a calibrated move. Also, in the 2021 QIP, we had very clearly given a verticalization strategy, where we said certain key emerging verticals is where we'll focus on, gaming being one of them, clearly identified. Why I'm putting this out here for you is to tell you that we say what we talk about, whether verbally or in documented positions, is actually what we also do, and we follow through with that, and this is what we are doing to show consistency in what we are doing.
This is a, you know, the key capability attributes about knowledge and customers, how we assess inorganic transactions and investments. How do we justify and fit this into our strategy? We look for a few things: People, the team must have domain expertise and capabilities that is complementing to our team. It'll be, you know, that kind of knowledge and team building is, you know, you can't just say we'll go and hire slowly and build. You can do it, but it takes longer. Next is product. What do they have in their technology that is complementing? What algorithms are they working with, and how is it complementing? Finally, the platform. Platform means that they have customers or ecosystem of, you know, publishers, advertisers, what kind of data is flowing through their system? How credible are they in the market, and so on.
Looking at that platform and how are they ranked. All of these parameters, when it fits in well at the right price point, is when Affle does an acquisition. This we have actually presented in all our corporate presentation, I think the first year after IPO, and then, you know, this is something that I wanted to tell you that is pointing towards YouAppi, and it fit in all the criterias, and therefore, we did this transaction. In terms of the value that we will deliver for our shareholders through this acquisition, I think there are a few points that I want to raise. The rationale I already explained to you, we have a Affle 2.0 growth strategy around verticalization.
We have a clear consumer platform stack within which this fits in perfectly. Therefore, we went ahead and did this acquisition to focus with CPCU business on the gaming vertical. In terms of synergies, we have clearly seen both on iOS and Android. Android, more emerging markets, but also in developed markets, with iOS, much more in the developed markets, but increasingly also a very big and important segment for emerging markets, including India. We see deep synergies on those platforms to work together with our algorithms augmenting what YouAppi is doing, so that we can enhance the value proposition and hopefully enhance the margins and then scale up the business, therefore. Deeper client penetration.
Some of gaming publishers and customers, they already have integrated their own apps and products together with the YouAppi platform, including some data integrations that are done, and those are valuable, and they take time. It's not something we can knock on the door of a customer and say, "Hey, guys, we have a solution, let's just integrate." They have a good position there. On that, let's think of it as a highway. Right now, only the YouAppi car is driving on it. Can we drive other Affle platforms on, say, a highway and get a greater value creation? The answer is yes. Our goal would be to upsell, cross-sell, and create possibilities for those customers and more customers that are on Affle's platforms and create a complementing, deeper client penetration.
Financial fundamentals, we could have done this acquisition one year ago when they were losing money. I don't think you all would be too pleased about it. Once you know that they're already at 7.5% margin, you know Affle's strategy acquisitions we have done, where at that time I used to guide you that I'll take three years to bring them to 15%-20%. Given our confidence and experience, our playbook is much more clear, there's no more COVID, so we can actually go and meet and solve things much faster and better, we think within one year. Instead of three years, within one year, they quite a set 15%-20% margin. With that condition, fundamentals are being met and the transaction makes sense.
Finally, FY 2024, the question that everybody is most interested in: What's happening this year, Anuj? Organic growth. Let's look at FY 2023, okay? FY 2023 is a base point. We did about $178 million or roughly $180 million of revenue, about $36.4 million, 20.4% EBITDA. Quick reference, that is the money we are investing to buy YouAppi right now, because that's what we earned last year. Going forward, we expect industry level, you know, even with the dynamics of the headwind and the confidence that we have, that our emerging markets already grew north of 20%-25% for the whole year basis last year with the headwinds that were there. We are confident that the emerging markets growth plan is clearly anchored and is over 80% of our business.
In developed markets, we have taken very strong key measures, and our confidence is very high that as an overall growth, organically, we should be growing 20%-25%. Some investors ask me, "You used to say 25%-30%. Why are you saying 20%-25%?" I said, "Depending upon the backdrop, I'm still anchored around 25%." When I used to say 25% earlier and we were beating it hands down year after year, say, "You are being too conservative. It should be at least 25%-30%." Because last year's backdrop and headwinds are there, I'm still anchored on 25%, but affecting the backdrop of what's happening in the markets, and so I'm saying 20%-25% is a sensible way to calibrate.
What I'm trying to tell you is that we are consistent, we are anchored, we are fighting to get that kind of a growth for our customers. Finally, on YouAppi business consolidation, we've already told you what the numbers were for the previous period. I've told you my focus is on margin expansion first, and then scale up a much better quality of revenue and going higher up in the value chain. All right. The presentation has to a conclusion, but this is the start of the more fun part, which is the Q&A, and we have live in-person interaction. Please feel free to ask any questions you have. We also have a good audience online on Zoom, so they'll benefit from your question if you speak. There's a microphone here, so you can speak into that. Yeah? I think, yeah.
There's a question there at your back. Oh.
Okay.
Sorry to speak then. Excuse me, because they will hear it.
Yeah. Okay, okay. I have three questions. First is around this acquisition. Could you know, give us a little more detail? This company is established in 2011. Now, last three years, only the last year it's made profit. What changed in the last three years that it, you know, that turnaround came in the last year?
This company, used to do general horizontal mobile advertising-based services. Given that it's a relatively small team and had been around for a while, in and around, let's say, late 2019, which is soon after our IPO, they decided to focus deeply on gaming and on developed markets, particularly North America and EMEA. You know, they took that pivot and said, "We're gonna focus our resources all on gaming, and so on." I said, "Okay, interesting." I was interested in seeing that, what they would do, because I also thought that this is great, but we had, of course, much deeper priorities and across emerging markets, and I wanted to showcase that Apple's platforms are successful across the top 10 verticals that we have, and then verticalize deeper. I was watching, and I was connected.
Over these years, they just got more and more gaming customers, one step at a time, improving their product and services to reach that critical mass, where they can make enough revenues and margins to cover cost of 50, 60 people that they employ to make the 7.5% that they delivered last year. I think it's just a natural progression, but their pivot to focus on gaming and on developed markets was interesting. They focused on it, executed three years. We watched it closely. We thought this was the right time to take them on. The company.
I think you have more questions, but basically, the company had a lot of venture capital investors, financial investors owning over 85% or so of the company, and so it was time for them to exit, and this was the time for us to come in.
My second question is, want to understand your strategy in terms of, you know, build versus buy. With this, I think this is the sixth or fifth or sixth acquisition, and I understand by nature of this or by virtue of this industry, acquisitions are important, and I think you've laid this emphasis earlier as well. Can we expect this inorganic approach or an acquisition, one acquisition per annum as a recurring phenomena, or what do you prefer?
Let me clarify first for benefit of everyone. The facts are that since our IPO, which is 3.5 years ago, this is our fourth acquisition, to be precise. The first one was Mediasmart, then was Appnext, then was Jampp. Jampp was in June 2021, almost two years ago.
In that time, let's say, you know, we are going for, let's say, slightly bigger, but still within kind of range. I mean, just to, you know, given where we are in terms of our, you know, scale and stature, we think this is still going to be like 15% of our revenue or something like that on a forward-looking basis and or less, you know. I think it's still within size, right? We're not biting into something that's, let's say, much bigger, where integration and other complexities and the... This is within the scope we have already done. Having done Jampp integration over the last two years, we think we are confident that we can do this transaction now. We have spaced it out enough.
We have made enough profits and EBITDA to shore up our cash balances, say, "Let's go ahead and do that." I think we are very carefully calibrated, first. This is not some, you know, world conquest that we are on, that let's go and acquire here. We're very carefully calibrated. We have a strategy which is well communicated, documented, and we are executing one step at a time on that strategy and delivering enough guidance. I think for the last one year, I've been saying gaming is where we'll focus. Last year, sometime, our board approved, we can use equity to acquire, and we know what has happened to equity. You know, our peak, you know, at peak share price to now, if we compare, there's a 58% upside. I'm not gonna use equity to buy this company. We had enough cash built up.
We said we're gonna use cash and buy a carefully calibrated transaction, which fits perfectly into our strategy of growth. Could we have built this and used maybe less money? Possibly, but it would have taken three years. For me, the value of, let's say, time, because we are a fast-paced company, we're a fast-growth company, and this is the time when the markets are down, when, you know, the confidence of the competitive or tech industry is firing people, easy talent is available. One could have said: Go ahead and hire that talent, it is cheaper. I'm saying, but I want a full team of talent, which is already profitable at the right price point, and that accelerates you further. The message to the industry is very clear. Like I said earlier, there's an event that is happening in our industry today.
What is the message out there at the event? Watch out for Affle. This company is out there in North America to make a dent. Today, in, as you know, Series A, B, C fundings are low. Consolidation is happening. Any transaction in our industry, valuation, benchmarks, Apple is there. We are top of radar for all of these players, customers, competitors, partners, investors, anywhere in the world. Even if Affle is not doing big business, we are on the radar of the world. We are saying that we are confident to accelerate in this time, to take these investments, so that you know that we are not just bullish about our organic growth. We are ready to invest. We love our business, we like what we do. We are doubling down on that. We're not diversifying, we are verticalizing, going deeper into our business.
We're not saying that, okay, we already have a good business here, let's do something else. Let's hedge and invest some. We're not doing that. We know our business deeply, and we're going deeper and more premium and higher margin. That's our game. Still very small. I think we need to play to our strengths, and that's what we're trying to do.
Thank you. That was clear. My last question is more of a, you know, macro sort of a question. You know with the launch of this ChatGPT by OpenAI, so I think the search world, or in turn, the ad search world, that's become more democratized and possibly more competitive. Ad rates might get more competitive, publishers may get better yield. I just wanted your view, you know, since you've spent so much time in this in the industry, your view and outlook now henceforth, what can we look forward to?
Sure. I think this is a great opportunity. First of all, search help productivity fundamentally. I think AI and these kind of personal assistant tools will continue to help and raise our productivity for all of us, right? From, you know, writing emails, writing essays, to, you know, even checking algorithms or code tests or even writing code. There's a lot that you can automate, and I think using that as a tool to enhance productivity, to potentially optimizing, you know, the OpEx increase for a growing company, we'll continue to invest in our operating expenses. Our teams will get appraised, we will grow our teams and so on. That's very clear on where we are headed.
We can raise the productivity so that for every new million dollars of business that we are doing, we need to add incrementally lesser cost, right? To grow. I think that part is one aspect. In terms of, let's say even on app tech, we think certain things that we can use it, AI and ML, we're already using that, by the way. It may not be in a chat format, but we live by that, right? We can also say, let's make our team to make a, you know, simple tool, but that's not our game, right? I think what we're trying to say is that we are using these technologies and capabilities to improve, like when we do creative optimizations. Who do we show which creative to?
Like, somebody likes green better, somebody likes red better, and their response rate on conversions better. A lot of these things are algorithms that we are doing. What I expect is that, yes, search will see some disruption, and that's good for us. Why? Because there is a lot of money that goes into search, a lot of money that goes into search to just one particular industry player, and I think that will open things up a bit more and will allow for all kinds of innovations there. We can also maybe at some point in time innovate. In fact, one of our patents is about improving search latency, in, in how things work and so on. It's not like these are out of bounds zones for us, right? We are an innovative company. We are a, you know, fast-paced company.
We adapt and innovate around situations. I mean, that's as much I can tell you. One of the things that we plan together with our CTO is that there will be all kinds of, you know, automation that will happen, and these assistants will change fundamentally how much screen time happens, okay? There may be a lot of voice-based engagement, especially for the youth and even for the older people, so you may have a lot more vernacular and voice-based solutions that will come up. There are innovations. We have won some patents already granted in the U.S. Patent Office. We are forward-looking, and we are watching, and we have a view to it, and we're keeping ourselves ready. I think for the next three years, we can say this is still very nascent.
It's not going to be, you know, as disruptive or as fast as what you're thinking of. At least the next three years, we would continue to see a natural progression, and even then, I think the mobile device will continue to become the nucleus of, you know, how a lot of these engagements would happen with other connected devices. I think our focus is very clear. Let's focus on mobile, let's focus on connected TV, connected devices, wearables. Let's think of a scenario of more vernacular and voice, and I think we are prepared, and we are timing it sensibly.
We're not over-investing in future use cases. We are securing IP positions, we are creating proof of concepts, evangelizing at the right forums with customers. When the right time comes, either we will build in-house or we'll invest in minority investment, or we'll acquire those companies, as the case might be. We would be, you know, staying relevant at all points. Yeah.
That's it for me.
Yes, please.
I like the, which.
Yeah.
Which is $33 million. In terms of client or users, are they CPC model? The current margin, what exactly are you looking at to take it to 15%, which you said it'll be within a year you can achieve that?
Yeah. That's a great question. In terms of, you know, the quality of the revenue, I think one of the reasons for the transaction is, C, A, the financial fundamentals should be sustainable. Yes, Affle is confident, Affle is pacing along, and I think the industry, our customers, our employees, everybody feels it. We are pacing along steadily, sensibly, sustainably. The first thing is, will the revenue continue? Are they selling because they are worried that something might go away? We are very sure that we have checked it carefully, and it's defensible revenue. Second, can we enhance the margin profile of that within the... Is the 7.5% defensible, or was there some one-off thing going on there? We've checked very deeply. We are sure that 7.5% was honorable, defensible, with proper...
They are audited by Deloitte, you know, I think we have checked, turned it left, right, center, all around to make sure it's proper. 7.5% is also, let's say, defensible. Question is, how do we expand that? There are two, three areas and two, three levers, which are very similar to what we have done in our other acquisition playbooks, right? First is efficiency. Okay? How many servers and thousands of servers are needed to get the job done? You know, can we make it much more efficient? Can we drop their cloud computing costs using Affle's technology, servers, and capabilities to improve their software and algorithmic performance? I think we can do that, and when we do that, we'll get a few basis points of, you know, margin straight away.
It doesn't involve too many people. I just need to get two, three people from my team working with one or two people from their team, and let's say, in a month or two, we should be able to get that going, right? Something like that. There's the CPCU model. Can we go deeper funnel conversions? Could we go for lifetime value improvement? Can we look for higher value users by going more iOS? Some more, let's say better balancing towards premium segments, we can improve pricing and margin, which is what we do day in, day out in Affle's business. Let's give them some of that and make that happen over the course of the year, so you improve that further. Of course, some incremental growth in revenue without necessarily growing OpEx too much.
In OpEx, we are typically very conservative. We don't trim around the companies that we acquire or our own company, and we're very particular about hiring sensibly and, you know, hopefully never needing to fire anyone. You know, I think what I'm trying to say is that there will be some efficiencies there. They may not need to hire incrementally because there are group synergies, whether, you know, across back-end functions or otherwise. In each of these three, four initiatives, you can save a few percentage points and move it up closer to the 15%. That's how we get it. It's nothing rocket science. I mean, it's not something that's. It's not a bet which is risky and huge probability of whether it will happen or not. Otherwise, I wouldn't say it so clearly.
Two more things. This 33, is it also, you know, number of users into rate, how is that?
Well, I think at the moment it is some kind of a hybrid, where it's going for, you know, charging for clicks, but also, you know, some hybrid. We will graduate it to that and normalize it to that with CPCU, and we will get back to you when we are reporting next time onwards. You know, our goal is to make it 100% CPCU business for sure. Like I said before, we like what we do, we believe in what we do, and we are doubling down on what we're doing, going deeper in terms of verticalization, higher, being more premium. I think that's, you know, that's our goal with this transaction as well.
Last is on this company, how many employees does?
Fifty-six.
Okay.
Yeah. Yes, sir. If you can use the mic, then the people on Zoom would also be able to hear you well.
You can go ahead with that.
Am I audible?
Yes, you are.
Okay. Thanks for this, right. I've got three questions. Just on the M&A front, right? Let's say, looking at the business three to five years from now, what are the key gaps that you think, either on the vertical side, either on the technology side, that you'd want to acquire? You've talked about giving, you've already done something on this, but what are the key areas that, you know, will evolve over the next three, five years? Any color on that would be useful.
I think it's still early. Three to five years is a long time. Let's just say that, is there something missing which I am feeling handicapped about, that I need to go out and buy and fill up with? The answer is no. Even here, I mean, this was a choice. It's not a compulsion, you know? I think we are in a very strong position to make choices which make sense at the time and price of our calling, versus acting out of necessity or some kind of a pressure, and therefore, perhaps making wrong decisions, be it in timing or the target or the pricing.
I think we are in a very privileged position that we have a very strong foundation of our own, and we can choose to go slow and say, we will build, or in certain situations like this one, we would say, "No, it makes sense to buy." There is no, you know, obvious sort of gap which I am nervous about filling today. Having said that, the moment we gain clarity about where we think we want to buy, we start communicating that and educating that as part of our strategy ahead of the execution, so that when we execute, you're not surprised that we didn't see this coming.
I think most of our investors would safely say that they already knew, they just didn't know the timing, the candidate or the pricing, which even I didn't know, because we were evaluating quite a few of them and saying, "Which one should we clinch on?" We were evaluating them for three years. I had already started talking about that. When I know something, you would know it as well, is, you know, the kind of promise, unless it is competitively sensitive. If I tell you and the pricing changes for those targets, then I will be, you know, a little bit more careful and calibrated on that, but you would know. Three to five years is a long time. Let's give it some space, and I'll keep you informed.
The other question is, you made an interesting point on the OEM and the operator connect, right?
Yeah.
That's something we've acquired a couple of smaller, or we made smaller investments in.
Yeah, yeah.
-area. If you could just provide us a color on, you know, how big that contract could be. Is there a timeline? I know it typically takes longer.
See, we already work with operators and OEMs, the contract's already there. This is, that's why it's like organic, right? It's an incremental. How do you create a deeper connect? When I say deeper, what does it mean? Deeper in terms of people and relationships, which means my relationship with their top management becomes stronger. It's more qualitative, it's kind of obvious. Tech integration is going deeper. Instead of just doing, you know, I don't know, API connect, let's do a, I don't know, instead of having just five points, let's connect to 20 touch points, right? Things like that. It goes into the length of the contract. How long could it be? The depth of the contract, is it exclusive or they'll work with four, five others? How deep is it? Who can terminate, who cannot terminate?
How long will we stay married? You know, things like that. I think what I'm saying is that these are existing partners, we're already working with them. I'm just upping the game there and trying to make it a stronger position for our company so that, let's put it more like this is not about how much more revenue, this is about how much more multiple. If I do the strategic partnerships better, for you as an investor, you say the quality of revenue has gone up, the predictability has gone up, and therefore, the multiple has gone up. I'm not playing for that, but I'm just telling you in an investor's language. You are thinking about it as a revenue growth. I'm seeing it as a quality of revenue becoming much deeper, better, predictable, and therefore, it's lifting the value of the company for the shareholders.
What I'm trying to understand is, let's say, if you do one of these contracts, could the revenue look a lot higher? Let's say one of these contracts could be, let's say, $10 million, $15 million, $20 million contracts in a single go or not?
It could already be like that. Even without that contract, it could be like that. I'm just trying to say that it's not certain. Let's say if I announce, in your modeling for us, you'll say, "Okay, now let's add another $10 million." Because that $10 million was maybe already there, but when we do that deeper integration and contract, you know that this $10 million is much more sustainable, dependable, reliable for next five years. Something like that I'm trying to say. Of course, I mean, I'm trying to...
I don't want your model to change. Every time Anuj will announce something, I think I'm already quite an aggressive leader about how to grow my company, but I'm just trying to tell you that we're improving the quality of revenue, the sustainability of that growth. What's very important for us is that each quarter that we end, the next quarter has to be. We have to be secure about what we have achieved. It can't be that you achieved so much, but you are on a shaky wicket. I want a solid foundation as we go further because we have a very long-term plan with our company.
This is the last question.
Yeah.
Developed market strategy, right?
Yeah.
What could go wrong, I've asked this question in the past. It's because we are a relatively smaller company, which is trying to make a dent there.
As long as I'm healthy and fit, developed markets will go fine this year at least. I mean, jokes apart, I think the, we are, our base is so small, I mean, there's nothing more that can go wrong, there's already gone wrong. Okay, this is We will grow from here. That's it.
Okay. Thank you.
There has to be something to go wrong, right? The base is so small, what else will go wrong? The addressable market is big. Our products, competence, team is very strong.
It's more about.
That's why I'm saying, I'll be the captain. There's nothing... I'm so sure that it'll be successful. I'll say, "Let's take it on.
Thank you.
Yeah.
Hi, Anuj, thanks. Just on YouAppi, wanted to understand, does this give an in-game purchase advertising option? How does YouAppi essentially work?
Well, that's-
from a customer point of view?
That's a great question. From a consumer point of view, if, let's say, you are a gaming user and you're playing lots of games, most of the game publishing houses have multiple game titles. One of the challenges is that the user who's playing one game may not be playing the other seven games and so on. How do you create that discovery? Second is, if they are paid games, you know, they're trying to make money, so there could be, you know, in-app purchasing and so on. That's also there.
I think, all kinds of use cases are there, whether it's acquiring a new user, getting that new user to buy or play another game of that game publisher, increasing the value and the volume and the frequency of the transactions, in-app transactions that they do, so that you increase the lifetime value. A lot of these use cases are there already in what they do, but what we are trying to do together with them is to strengthen that much more together with Apple's platforms and capabilities.
It won't be I'm playing game X from a provider, and I see an ad in between of a provider Y. That is not what YouAppi does?
YouAppi's customers... What you just said is a case where...
Publisher.
A company's publisher is a gaming company.
Yes.
The gaming company is having users. somebody's buying their inventory to show ads.
Yes.
-to that user. These guys are on the other side. They're more like a demand side. The gaming companies are their advertisers, and they're saying, "Please help me to get these users to come and play my game more and buy more." They may advertise within games. They could also advertise outside games to a gaming user of that customer. I think, so here we are making money from game publishers rather than spending money on game publishers.
Got it. It's basically helping them augment their revenue as well?
Oh, absolutely.
Pretty there.
Absolutely.
Sure.
The goal is to drive more conversions and augment that, but, you know, sometimes the thinking in the business world not as sharpened. How we define it, a CPC, how we contract, how do we sell it to them, I think that embracing and alignment is going to happen very naturally with YouAppi.
How will this new team operate? Do you give them a free hand as to they continue to do what they were doing? That is the most difficult part of integration that we've seen.
Yeah, I give them a free hand, but I put a big hug around them.
They'll continue to operate internally, freely, as they would have been operating otherwise.
I would.
Interactions which are-
I would say we are very naturally members of the family living in the same house, which is Affle. Why? Because half of the team is technology people, which is very similar to how Affle is and how we think. For technology people, the language and the communication, and they are excited by the challenges. They want to learn what's happening: "Okay, what algorithm did you do here?" and so on. That would be a natural marriage, you know. I don't think I'm so concerned. Sales team, they are hungry to sell more. What else can I sell to this gaming customer?
I've got this gaming customer, what else can I sell? Can I sell Jampp? Can I sell Appnext? Can I sell, you know, MAAS? What else can I sell? Can I sell the Apple SKAN and CTV? The sales team is hungry to sell more, the, tech team is hungry to learn, and that's out of 56 people, let's say 45 is that.
Right.
In the management team, for them, there's a charm of, you know, being part of a public company and so on. A lot of there is. Plus, the team is based out of those locations where we already have local teams as well.
Right.
Let's say in San Francisco, in Tokyo, in Tel Aviv, in Israel, these are the three places where there are people, we also have people. There will be a natural fitment there. You know, I will tell a different story to different people. Some will say, "I'm gonna put a hug." I'll say, "No, no, there will be no change." You know, we'll see. Of course, they are, the logo has changed. It's now powered as an Affle company.
Okay.
Their identity has changed. Their... Well, let's put it this way: so earlier they were in the foothills, now they're standing on the, on the top of the platform, which is Apple. I think they can stand taller, they'll be heard better, they'll be seen better, and a lot of that will change. Maybe we don't change them fundamentally, but let's lift them up.
Just coming to, the learnings from Jampp itself, because where there we still would not have hit that 20% mark, which you're saying that we will with these new acquisitions in one year. What is the learning from there? What has changed in your playbook to be confident to say that now we'll hit that mark in a year?
Well, let's say that we will, our playbook was earlier three years. Why was it three years? A, it was COVID times. B, I hadn't done acquisitions, you know, as much as a public company. We're learning to be a public company, we are learning to do acquisitions as a public company, so I wanted to also underpromise, overdeliver. I think we have delivered in Mediasmart and Appnext. In the case of Jampp, the reason we haven't achieved it, because three years is not over yet, not even two years is over yet. It's only there. Of course, we saw headwinds in developed markets, and Jampp was much more in the developed markets. Why am I more confident? I have gone and learned through Jampp, and I'm holding the reins for developed markets in its entirety.
With that, I'm more confident now that, okay, this acquisition, I will be able to deliver it within one year, because we can travel, we can meet, we can fix it. Plus, our own confidence and execution has become better. Let's put it this way, instead of three years, we're saying four quarters.
Got it. The third bit, which is on the OEM partnership. Fair to assume that solves the issue of you continuing to get data on a nonstop basis through these contracts, which in turn improves the quality of data that you see, and that in turn improves what you can offer to your customers as well, even if-
Yeah
Situations are not that tough.
See, data-
Data is tough and campaigns don't keep coming in.
data is a delicate topic. Why is it delicate? Is because, of course, about privacy reasons and so on. What is actually quite a wonderful opportunity is that when you partner with such large, let's say, publishers, customers, even the advertisers who are large enough, they have their own first-party data, which is huge. Our algorithms working to support and help them with our platform to leverage their own data to get their own ROI to be improved, is a huge use case, and we are finding that the more bigger partners that we partner ourselves with, we can actually leverage what they know with the... Let's think of it, that's potential energy. They have data.
When you combine it with Apple's algorithms and platforms and give it, and to empower them to them, that becomes transformed into kinetic energy, and therefore they can see ROI from it. That's a huge combination. I think so, you're right, working with operators and OEMs, there is that advantage, but typically, we wouldn't want to shout out about it too much. You see, I think the way to do it is to say a combination of technology with the right touch points with the end consumer in a way that's differentiated. Like an operator and OEM have a way to connect with you on your device that nobody else has. Finding those touch points exclusively or differentiatedly for many years can be a huge competitive advantage.
In those moments, with those consumers, only our platform and that operator and OEM is able to show, you know, an opportunity to convert you. I think that's a huge competitive advantage.
Just last bit on Jampp, fair to assume low-hanging fruits in terms of what you could do from an efficiency point of view are through and the rest now will come from growth itself?
I think now it's about growth. I think we have done all those efficiencies, integrations, so on and so forth. I think we're in a good place there. This is now about growth. I think we need to solve the developed markets in some of the verticals together. In fact, YouAppi and together, I think we should be able to see a much greater outcome. When I say YouAppi, let's give it one year. By that one year, Jampp would have also done its three years.
Sure.
Margin expansion.
Sure. Thank you so much. Thanks a lot. All the best.
Yeah.
You know, you grow categorically in that market in terms of the category growth and not have the market share gains yet because you are small, does that limit because of the scale?
No, I don't think so. I think we. Scale is a double-edged sword. I mean, there's two types of scale: scale that sustains and scale that only delivers in that particular quarter or year, right? What kind of customers do you want, right? You want to be able to choose. If we calibrate our growth sensibly, let's say 20%-25% organic growth, we think we can exercise choice. We don't have to go for any kind of growth, you know? Could we have delivered 50% revenue growth? Sure. Is there enough advertising out there to pick that? Yes. Will that continue to be there next year? Maybe, yeah. This year is 50%, next year, 25% is gone, because, you know, that came from some, I don't know, whatever, category of customer who doesn't have enough money next year.
I think the idea is to find sensible, calibrated growth, which you can continue to deliver predictably for a long period of time. This is not something that I'm saying because now we're a public company for last, let's say, 16 odd quarters, but because this is how I've always built Affle, you know, ever since we were doing it. I mean, that's why we retain majority ownership in the company still to date, after being 18 years in business with, you know, all kinds of investors, Microsoft, DOCOMO, this, that, but going public, still almost 60% held by the promoter company in Singapore. Why?
We were always having financial, fundamental, sustainable growth, not just, "Let's grow at any cost, never mind what happens to profitability, never mind whether that's there next year or not." I think we are carefully calibrating, and that is why we say that this level of growth is a sustainable, sensible growth. There will be other revenues, which is no margin, this, that, huh, so you just suddenly show big revenue, but margin is bad. That's not the game plan.
Just related to that, then what advantage would Affle get if it's just 2 x the size of what it is today, so what do you think?
We will be 25% EBITDA instead of 20% EBITDA, that's one, so you'll get margin efficiencies, maybe 25% to much... We are a asset-light so when you scale up, your OpEx doesn't go up as much. I mean, you don't need, you know, 500 employees when you go 2x. Maybe you need another 50 or 100. That's it. I think there is efficiency there in terms of, let's say, scale up. That's one. Second is, you know, with each customer, as we work longer with them, we become more important for them, so they're used to getting ROI from us. Somebody else may pitch them something super exciting, but as long as we're delivering to them great ROI, they're not gonna switch out of us sometimes.
I think that's getting deeper with customers, becoming more important to them, more sticky with them, so that's the advantage. This is not necessarily a business where you say the winner takes it all. This is not a business where you say there'll be only one or two players, the rest will somehow fold into it. We want to be in the top, like, top few. We are here to win, we are here to dominate and to lead. That's for sure. Does it have to be within a year or two years? It doesn't. We're not nervous about, It's not like winner takes all kind of situation. We have seen enough. We have seen all kinds of competitors playing, let's go big, let's go big, and they fizzle out, because the let's go big is a funding game.
It was not let's go big because the product was better or the revenue was better. Let's raise $300 million, let's burn it through. Would you not advertise with us? I told you, with us, I'll give you $200 back. That's not the business we are in. In our business, to do 20%+ EBITDA consistently in emerging markets, I can tell you, we are one of the only companies in the world anchored 80%+ on emerging markets that's delivering this financial outcome. I do not know of others.
Okay. Just one thing on the valuation of the acquisition you've done. We saw, you know, acquisition in this space and also, you know, news flows around it. It was much higher than what it was available to you. Is it a distress sell? What is the reason?
I can tell you it's a happy sell for them, for their investors. Could they have asked for more? Possibly. Could there be somebody else who could have offered them more? Possibly. Sometimes not all offers are genuine. Just because, you know, somebody may offer you something, that does not mean that's genuine. It's money on the table. What are the terms? If somebody said, "I'll pay you $120 million, but I'll only pay you $10 million now, I'll pay you $110 million in an equity of a private company that'll probably go public in three years' time," which deal would you take, $45 million or...? I do not know.
I do not know what was offered, what's there, whether the news was right or not. I know that we have the deal. We know the people are happy. 85% of the sellers are investors. Even if they're not happy, it doesn't matter. As long as the 15% who are continuing as employees, they are reasonably happy and they continue, we should be okay. What do you say?
I think we've got a good deal. We deliver value to our shareholders. We should all have a smile for that, unless you wanted us to pay INR 50 million, INR 60 million more.
Just the region quantity.
I, frankly, I don't, I don't want to give credibility to that news. I do not know whether that happened, whether it was real, it was a leak, whether it was a negotiation. I have no idea. All I know is that we have our deal, it's signed, it's done, and everybody we know seems to be happy with it. What?
Sorry.
[uncertain] Well, since, I don't know, last several quarters, we've been sharing three case studies about our customers across countries, across different industry verticals. If I'm not wrong, we've shared how many case studies so far? 25, 21 case is the next quarter, that will be 24, and so on. Basically, you have 21 case studies where you know the customer's name, you know what we did for the customer, what kind of outcome, what were they evaluating us on, which countries, what kind of solutioning was involved, and so on. I think there's a very deep flavor of what we're already communicating back to you. Maybe that would be the best way to answer it versus taking, you know, any further...
We answer it more qualitatively than quantitatively, and we prefer to do it like that because we feel that it'll be competitively sensitive information about which verticals we are targeting. Like, you know, how much slice and dice could we count as, okay, this vertical is so much, the CPC of this vertical is this and that. We will probably give almost like a map of how our competitors will chase after us, which I think at the moment is not easy for them to figure out.
Just trying to understand the customer stickiness with you. Like, what is it, for them, for you know, be with you versus not others?
Let's put it this way. Our business is, while, you know, you would see it as an ad tech company, advertisers are the revenue providers. Fundamentally, we have always defined ourselves as a consumer platform company. Why? Because, yes, revenue comes from the advertiser, but it comes because the end consumer saw something that we chose to invest to present to them with, and they converted with that. If the consumer doesn't convert with something, doesn't matter what that advertiser is paying to Affle. I'm not gonna make money because his business model is calibrated on the consumer. Let's put it this way, that when we work with our advertisers, we are saying, "Look, this is the number of conversions that we think we are going to be getting." The highest bidder takes it all.
If an advertiser, let's say in a particular category, e-commerce or education, or let's say fintech or gaming, is wanting to drive conversions with a particular category of consumer, whoever is paying us a better CPC rate and where we think the probability of conversion would be better, we do our algorithmic maths, and we'll prioritize showing the ad of that advertiser. We are not necessarily on the command of the advertiser. We are a lot of times telling them, "Sorry, I mean, we can't serve you because there's another competitor who is..." Yes, there is a sense of relationship, loyalty, and budget, but it's all consumer-centric. You know, if the consumer is responding to something, it's, you know, it will scale. If it is not, then it will not scale. Does that answer your question somewhat?
Yeah. Got it.
Yeah.
All right. Thank you.
We're trying to not give out much power and keep the power of pricing and budgeting, and it's not a necessary promise that each advertiser's budget would.
This meeting is being recorded.
That's how we maintain our pricing. Any questions from the online forum? Yeah, thank you.
Some questions from the online forum. One of the questions is that our comfort zone is EM, and when we've not necessarily stabilized our acquisition of Jampp, why are we taking more exposure to DM? A follow-up to that is, what YouAppi API do, can it be taken to markets where Affle is and they are not yet there?
Okay. First thing, with respect to Jampp, I think we have stabilized, and it's about turning it around towards greater growth, and this is year three. Our goal within year three is to make sure that we deliver on the kind of outcomes that we had planned for the company. I'm pretty confident that we are on track towards doing that and doing whatever it takes to make sure that we get there. With respect to YouAppi, this is not a... By the way, the answer to your question is in our action of doing the YouAppi transaction. If we were not stabilized as a, you know, in where we were, we would not dare to double down.
Because we are stabilized and we know that we are turning it up, this is the time to accelerate, not to slow down, and therefore we are going ahead with YouAppi. Now, it's not only about developed markets, I think it's much more about gaming as an emerging vertical in developed markets that we are calibrating on, and we think that is part of the core strategy to turn around and lift the whole developed markets play for us. Bringing YouAppi to emerging markets for gaming, this is again a very clear opportunity because gaming is going to grow in emerging markets in India, in Africa, in Southeast Asian markets, LATAM. With our ground presence there, I think we are already going to start calibrating for that and be a first-mover advantage as gaming becomes a much more stronger vertical for emerging markets.
We are looking at it with a global lens and not just one-dimensional.
The other question was in terms of the recently announced, longer-term partnerships with OEMs and operators. Would that entail certain upfront payments? Could there be a risk that if we don't deliver or convert certain number of users, that our margins get affected?
In fact, on the contrary, when we first of all, don't do any upfront, like, payments or something like that, it's strictly a revenue share-based relationship. When we do longer term contracts and we provide deeper quality of integrations or higher, let's say, volume possibilities, in more cases than less, we have found that we can actually negotiate better margin positions than not. Okay? We're providing more predictability, we're providing more clarity, we're providing better, let's say, technology, innovation, integrations, and so on. We are able to see our ability to negotiate better margin contracts with these players. If you do a short-term kind of a thing, you don't get much. If you do a bigger size transaction, you are able to get higher margins.
If we don't deliver, we will lose the partnership. That will not be good for us, and therefore, we go back one tier lesser, where our margins might be worse off. If we do well, which is the premise of doing these deals, our margins would become better than what it is. If we don't do as well, we come back to where we are. Does that make sense? It's more incremental margin. If we don't perform, we can always go back to where we are, which is not too bad. Our goal is to do margin expansion, and to lock in longer-term predictable path.
The other question was in terms of management bandwidth of the leadership team, especially given your involvement on both the Jampp as well as the YouAppi side.
I think the management bandwidth was already there, and therefore, we were doing some of these strategic initiatives. That's what management bandwidth is for, and that's where we are applying it. In terms of, let's say if you look at our leadership team today, you'll find that there's a lot of breadth and depth in the management team. We have probably got one of the most global and most comprehensive management teams in any other company that you compare in our industry and ours, or any other company for that matter. Very entrepreneurial, very capable. Most of them have more than 10, 15 years of experience in our industry as founders, and they are leading our organization's core functions and strategies.
I can choose which areas to take on from a strategic point of view, where there will be maximum impact to shareholders' value. For this year, I think that's developed markets and solving for that and taking our company to a more premium level. The five initiatives I talked about, that's what I'm driving and drilling into the organization. A lot of those are not limited to just developed markets, like what you call CTV plus CPC or iOS-related Apple App Store initiatives. These are product changes that are applicable globally, including all emerging markets. Same way, YouAppi, I think it's, yes, they are anchored on developed markets and gaming, but we'll also be selling and bringing them to, you know, emerging markets. A lot of the initiatives will have application across the board, across all our markets.
Any questions from the participants here? I'll go with one question.
Yeah, sure.
In terms of, like, we've always had some segments which have kind of done well and have kind of compensated for the fall or the deceleration in some others. We had for some time, you had fintech, you had crypto, you had gaming, and then that kind of slowed down. As you go along and as you see the market right now, what are the spaces... Gaming is one of them that you've mentioned, and you've done initiatives in that. As you go along, what are the areas that you think come back or some of the ones which kind of decelerated for regulatory or other reasons start to come back?
Yeah. Look, I think fintech, you know, is an area that we will continue to see how we can grow further in. I see huge potential there. It's a very essential service. It makes sense to do it through mobile and connect through mobile. There will be a lot more traditional, well-established players coming in and spending more and more money in digital, I think. Financial banking is definitely one category. I also see healthcare as another category that will. You know, essential services, education, finance, food, health, all of these categories would be important. We think that we can continue to push and do more in these categories because these should be stable long-term categories.
Then comes, of course, gaming, entertainment, e-commerce, more consumption, entertainment, you know, level categories, where, again, you know, I think to me, these top 10 verticals that we have, they should be at all times evergreen, unless something abnormal happens to them. Like fintech, crypto went through a cycle which was not so good. EdTech in India went through a cycle that was not so good. Fundamentals of these verticals are actually very strong. You know, you wouldn't expect that EdTech will continue to be in the low, you know? I mean, maybe one year... Therefore, having a diversified but deeply verticalized portfolio is super important to Affle. In fact, a lot of our competitive peers, which are either U.S.-listed companies or are well-funded private companies, almost 80% of their revenues is on gaming.
I don't want to be that company. I wouldn't want to be the CEO or the founder of that company, because that's too much on one vertical. At the same time, I mean, as Affle, I mean, gaming is less than 10% of our business, so solving for that became important. I'm looking for a well-balanced, all-rounded growth with a wide base of customers, but yet deeply verticalized products and teams, so that we can maximize margin and value creation. That's how I would like to answer this. Yeah.
The other question was in terms of, like, we always talk about sustainability of growth. From a risk management perspective. -because, we've seen funding winter across a whole lot of areas. How do you kind of manage that risk in your portfolio? We are looking at that sustainable, optimized kind of growth and not necessarily going higher. How do you kind of protect?
It's simple. I answered her question, that, you know, it's not about chasing the advertiser only, it's about driving conversions with consumers, and that's our business. Which advertiser would you prioritize? Let's say there is an advertiser with $100 million funding on Series C or D round, and then there's a well-established player that you know is gonna be around for the next five to 10 years. If they are paying the same CPCU price, I would like to scale that campaign more than this one. Even though both were giving budgets answers, can you not scale both and consume all the budgets? Hey, at one moment of truth, I can only drive one advertiser's conversion. We pick and choose our battles.
When we look at our revenue mix internally, for us, sustainable quality of revenue is quite important. We're looking for those advertisers, and we know that, you know, we're going to collect our money, they're going to be around for next year and next year, and so on and so forth. That's what we mean by sustainability. Therefore, I was also talking about choice. You know, you're not going for every kind of growth that you can get. You can get all kinds of revenue in the market, but, you know, you're going for those which are higher value, you know, higher margin, which will continue to be with your company, the balance between different verticals, not becoming too lopsided, you know, in one. That's risk management, and that's what we do, day in, day out.
Our algorithms do it, in fact, more than we do it. That's how we manage it.
The last one from my side, so, Like, one of the good things about Affle has been that the companies that you have acquired, those founders have stayed on with you, for a long time, and we are now, say, three to four years of, post-acquisition time. How do you kind of... Because the founders typically have that edge in terms of, wanting-
Not all founders stay on. That's a fact that we have to accept. Some will not. Okay, one of the things that is hardest to predict, which I think even we all think we know each other, but I mean, we know ourselves rather. One thing that most people do not know is, how will your behavior change if you're suddenly your bank balance goes up by 100 times? Even though you know yourself, you wouldn't know. I mean, you may think that, "I don't think money will change you," but you don't know until that happens. In an acquisition, when you're acquiring companies or founders, they're like, "No, we love our company. We'll keep running it with you, Anuj. Yes, yes." They also don't know that when money hits their bank account with millions of dollars, how will things change?
It is a risk factor, but then you hedge that. See, as long as you have... There's nobody who can get it right all the time. We have got it wrong before, and we will continue to get it wrong even in future, but we are already fundamentally a very strong entrepreneurial team. We know how to drive this kind of a car. We can afford to change the driver. We would try to keep it, because in some cases, we want to grow our management bandwidth and entrepreneurial bandwidth, but in some cases, if we can't, then we are not handicapped. We know how to do it. I think we are already risk-hedged on that, so we're not over-calibrated on that. To align founders, fundamentally, I think, give them a sense of identity and pride. We typically don't change the names and the logos.
We try to keep that survival so that the legacy and the love for that brand just continues. That's one way. Second is aligning incentives with earnouts, year one, year three, and so on, which is more contractual. If you've liked the money in your account so much, may you want more, so stay aligned. Those are the levers. I mean, there's nothing particularly unique about that. I think we have a good track record. I would say we have a 70% success rate on retaining founders and even in the companies that we have acquired. Typically, also, there are founding team members that are sometimes more important than the founders, in some cases.
Even in Affle's case, I mean, you always think Anuj is the most important, but there's Charles Yong, who's our CTO for 17 years. There's Anuj Kumar, there's Kapil Bhutani, who's been at least the founder of our public company, and many others in the team who are very, very important people, right? I mean, that's how you kind of hedge it. Yeah.
Thanks, Anuj.
Yeah.
There's one question at the back.
Yeah, I had a question. As far as I understand, most of our customers might be digital or new age companies. Are we seeing a shift in traditional companies' mindset, where they have started spending more and more on digital? Is that number meaningful? Because the future is mobile, right? At some point you will see all the traditional FMCG, apparel, or all companies also shift to largely mobile advertising.
See, it's already happening in a big way, which I was also answering earlier, that when you look at the essential services, healthcare, finance, education, food, I mean, this is not indulgence. This is basic lifestyle that everybody would consume, and it will go on mobile. This, I mean, it will be digital. Therefore, you know, schools, hospitals, doctors, you know, pharmaceutical companies, pharmacies, anybody who has marketing budget should spend it on digital, right? Finance, banks, so on. First movers are always the digital companies because they go and disrupt. They say, "Okay, let's create the." You know? The traditional banks are all going digital. I mean, you know, and so on and so forth. The essential services will be I don't think it will see that much fluctuation in FMCG categories and so on.
I mean, you will see stable, consistent patterns of spend coming there. Therefore, digital has a very bright future in my opinion. We are not, as some of you might think, as vulnerable around funding or hot money. That's not exactly my lens about it, long-term lens about it. Even on, let's say, consumption-led services. Gaming is a, you know, it's a digital category, but it's a huge category. We are so small. I think next five years, we'll keep on growing, not to be worried. E-commerce, you know, it's probably become essential now, right? Entertainment has all gone digital, all mobile. TV watching is, of course, becoming more connected TV watching, and so on. Sitting in a living room and watching versus everyone on their own devices doing their own private watching.
A lot of these consumer trends are shaping consumption trends. Those consumption trends are bringing in traditional, or even new age players who have become really large, and they will be stable players. There's enough money in digital to be made from people who you know will be around and are not dependent on the next round of funding.
Just, I'm new to the company, so it's a question that you might have answered in the past.
Yeah.
which is regarding what is really wrong with the developed market piece of the puzzle? Why are we seeing a degrowth there? What gives you the confidence that that has turned around or is on the verge of turning around to that extent?
All right. In the developed markets, we, you know, our teams were very small, and those teams were focused on selling one particular type of a product and proposition of ours and not selling the whole suite of Affle's capabilities into those markets, and that was clearly one of the factors. The second factor was what I was saying earlier, that how the founders behave once they have lots of money in their bank accounts, and sometimes, you know, they're faking it even to themselves that they are as committed, but perhaps they're not. I think those things have been found out and corrected, so I've taken charge directly, and I'm making sure that I fix it. When the issues are external to you cannot sometimes be sure whether you can solve it.
Issues that are internal to you and you have figured them out and you know how to solve them, your confidence goes up. Plus, our base is so small in developed markets that, you know, I think, you know, the shrinking in the developed markets that we saw, I think there's not much more left to shrink there, we will turn it around.
In developed markets, the macro or the regulation is not a big thing?
No, there's no. I mean, there are, of course, macroeconomic headwinds. Some customers did reduce their budget. Let's say 50% or 40% of our problem was external, 50%-60% of the problem was internal. That 60% is sorted out. If I fix that, we will already see a massive positive change. The addressable market is large. You know, we are calibrating. We are picking battles where we know we will win, and we can accelerate. I can see it clearly. I'm confident. Yeah.
Just one more thing on the regulatory aspect. Apple came up with a set of changes.
Yeah.
Google is also talking about a sandbox or something like that. Does that impact our conversion rate? What are the measures that we are taking to ensure that our conversion rates remain the same once these changes, if and when they get implemented?
The changes happened sometime in 2021 in iOS world. In 2022, 2023, we have already taken not only a first-mover advantage, we've built some credibility in the space. To even say that as part of our strategy for this year, iOS is an anchoring, sort of component of that strategy. One of the five things is about how do we go more premium on iOS devices, on, you know, Apple App Store with SKAN, and offer solutions to advertisers not only in developed markets but also in emerging markets and on CPCU business model. What that implies is that we have already solved that puzzle, and it's about scaling it up and making sure that we go more premium, more deeper into that category. I think we have crossed that bridge already since 2021.
The change happened about two years ago, and I think we have we have worked well through that change, and now we are enjoying the growth and actually a competitive advantage because not everybody has solved it. Some people gave it up and said, "Oh, the changes are too many. Let's just focus on Android." A lot of competitors are still, "Oh, when a customer says due to iOS, it's an OB and Android," because we haven't solved it. Those who have solved it, like us, I think it's a huge opportunity. Yeah.
Yeah, we should start and we should get done adding a lot of properties, adding to verticals as well.
Yeah.
Global spenders are interested in a different way, where we can be sort of a one-stop shop for them in multiple geographies to us, multiple verticals, because we try to look at different things.
I would love to answer that with a yes, I do not know. I'm not in their shoes, I can tell you that everyone is taking notice of Affle. This is not just a story of a company listed in India where, you know, it's the investors globally that know us now. I think the competitors, the customers, everybody is taking notice of it, we know that based on the kind of inflow of resumes of competitors, employees, that's coming to us. The customers, of course, I mean, you know, I think we are, A, we already have a large base of customers. We also work with global agency groups, we do, you know, partnerships or trying to see how we can work with many of their customers.
The respect that we have in the industry has grown much higher than our revenues have. I mean, we have grown our revenues over time. Our valuation has, you know, you guys know that better than I do sometimes. I think in terms of respect, stature, credibility, I think we have definitely established our mark, and that, hopefully, is changing that perception. Maybe it's still a few years away, you know, to say. At least in some emerging markets, I would think that, you know, customers are already seeing us like an important part of their strategy, as a multi-touch point, single point kind of a solution. It's still work in progress, I would say. Give it a few more years, we'll get there. Yeah.
I think it will inch up, you know, let me report that to you as we go along. You know, I would think that it should anyways inch up over time. I've always mentioned that, you know, whenever we change our calibration or, you know, the ratio of business across verticals, I think we used to be somewhere in the INR 40-odd to now INR 50+ to, it will inch up. It should. Can I give you a precise guidance to that? Let us report as we go ahead. Region, geographies and region-specific, in many cases, we are verticalizing them. We're saying: Okay, you guys focus on this vertical, you guys focus on some other... We are verticalizing our organization, so it's more verticals and geographies as we go along. That's the direction that we are in.
No, I think it's by use cases. I mean, end of the day, you know, you go to an advertiser, somebody's looking for, "I want to get new users in this geography." Somebody is saying, "I have existing users who are not doing enough. I want to get more ROI on that." Some is looking at, "Well, I have budget for CTV, what should I do?" Some of them are shifting Google, Facebook budgets to the other side, non-Google, Facebook. I mean, there are different pain points of each advertiser at, you know, in each financial year or each quarter of that financial year. The job of the sales team is to make sure that we serve that, and upsell and cross-sell naturally, to fit that in.
There's a centralized management team, and then within those pockets, we have product experts, right? Those product experts would go together with the sales teams to ensure that the right kind of selling is happening. We call them account managers, right? You're doing account management overall, and then your job is to maximize the account. Of course, some people are ace people there, they know how to do it very well. Some are still learning the things. Not everybody is a top performer, therefore, the organizational efficiencies, we use a constant work in progress to do even better account management, better cross-selling and upselling, we're getting there. It's work in progress. Yeah.
We have time for one last question.
Really? What is the time?
It's, 5:30.
Okay.
Thanks everyone for joining in. Thanks, Anuj.
Thank you.
Thanks, Karish and Kapil, for giving us the opportunity to host you. Join us for high tea outside, and I think management will be there for.
Absolutely. I would love to spend time together. This could have been all done on Zoom. For those of you who couldn't meet, in person, I would love to meet you in person as well. I think it's time we start getting together, so I thought it'd be great to be in Mumbai. Thanks for showing up, and let's have a high tea together. Thank you everyone for joining in online. Take care.
We can turn it off? All right, Kapil, over to you. You get to speak as well. I'm sorry, I hogged it completely. Now over the high tea, we can catch up. Nice to meet you, sir.
Yeah. Nice to meet you.
Thank you.