Ladies and gentlemen, good day, and welcome to the Affle India Limited Q1 FY 2024 earnings conference call, hosted by DAM Capital Advisors Limited. 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 a touch-tone phone. Please note that this conference is being recorded. I now hand the conference over to Mr. Anmol Garg from DAM Capital Advisors Limited. Thank you, and over to you, sir.
Yeah. Thank you, Ziko. Good morning, everyone. On behalf of DAM Capital, we welcome you all to Q1 FY24 conference call of Affle India Limited. We take this opportunity to welcome the management of Affle India Limited, represented by Mr. Anuj Khanna Sohum, who is the MD and CEO of the company, and Mr. Swapnil Sukani, who is the CFO of the company. Before we begin the discussion, I'd like to remind you that some of the statements made in today's conference call may be forward-looking in nature and involve some risks and uncertainties. Kindly refer to the slide 24 of the company's Q1 earnings presentation for a detailed disclaimer. I'll now hand over the call to Mr. Anuj Khanna Sohum for his opening remarks. Thank you. Over to you, Anuj.
Thank you. Very good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining the call today. I trust all of you are keeping in good health. On Affle's anniversary milestone, we would like to thank all our over 354,000 shareholders for their continued trust and consistent support that inspires our commitment to deliver sustainable, cash flow positive, long-term growth with high standards of transparency and corporate governance. In Q1 FY 2024, we attained our highest quarterly revenue run rate, our highest consumer conversions, and our highest CPCU rate. This performance is a result of the differentiated Affle 2.0 strategy and the consistent execution by our teams to enhance our consumer-centric platform offering, further verticalize our capabilities to the high-growth emerging market verticals, and to leverage acquisition synergies for margin expansion progressively.
I'm pleased that despite the challenging macro environment and our ongoing turnaround efforts in developed markets, we delivered revenue growth of 17% year-on-year and PAT growth of 21.4% year-on-year. On a CAGR basis over the last 3-year period, our growth is much ahead of the overall industry growth trends. Our CPCU business delivered 58.7 million conversions during this quarter at a CPCU rate of INR 55. That helped us achieve CPCU revenues of INR 3,778 million, an increase of 17.1% year-on-year. Our CPCU business continues to be resilient, which underlines the long-term sustainable business momentum.
We fortified our Affle 2.0 consumer platform stack, advanced our value proposition in reimagining customers' business impact point, and expanded our tech use cases to deliver growth across our top industry verticals in EFGH categories, which has increased our moat, enhanced mutual trust with our customers and partners, and our direct customer contributions to that 78% of our revenue in Q1 FY 2024. We've always been strongly anchored in India and global emerging market verticals organically, and we continue to witness broad-based growth in advertiser spend, driven by our unique ROI-linked CPCU business model. Our organic growth in India and global emerging market verticals combined was over 20% year-on-year. The overall market tailwind continue to be intact, anchored on the accelerated consumer adoption of digital and the enhanced organizational shift towards digitally enabled processes.
The recently approved cabinet package towards inclusive penetration of internet across 640,000 villages would further fuel consumer adoption of connected devices in India. Speaking of developed markets, where macro headwinds had impacted our business over the last few quarters, we experienced expected decline in the months of April and May. We bottomed out in June based on the ongoing implementation of our decisive turnaround action plan, as detailed in detail during the last earnings call. We successfully executed a series of tough steps mid-Q1 onwards, that resulted in improved run rate in the month of June itself. I'm happy to confirm that we have rebuilt our foundation for developed markets with the integrated consumer platform approach focused on key verticals, highest number of active customers till date, and the highest number of full-time team members anchored in the US.
This instills confidence in our team to go out, compete, and win convincingly in U.S. from here onwards. Together with YouAppi now, we are stronger than ever before in developed markets, with strong inroads with existing customers in the gaming vertical, where we will up-sell and cross-sell our integrated platform. With this robust foundation rebuilt, we are confident of capitalizing on the improved macro market outlook and the competitive edge of our own CPCU business model, deeply verticalized platform offerings, and the revived inspiration of our team, our own teams. We also continue to fortify the premium use cases in our Affle 2.0 consumer platform stack with unique ad placements across TONO OEM app stores....
During the quarter, we launched our full funnel proposition on iOS App Store, Apple Search Ads, enabling advertisers to drive premium conversions of iOS users effectively. That makes us early forerunners on advanced use cases on the Apple ecosystem, including SKAN. With a key focus on upselling and cross-selling all our platform offerings, we have now rolled out our CPCO model on connected TV with our household ID sync capabilities in India, global emerging markets, and in US as of last quarter. This will empower the advertisers to reach users across screens effectively and derive greater ROIs and customized targeting capabilities across platforms. To reiterate our strength of delivering unique consumer experiences, we have shared 24 case studies in our earnings presentations over the last each quarters that covered many of our key industry verticals.
Continuing to share our success stories this time, we have also included three case studies, which focus on, are focused on tech-enabled recruitment platforms, FMCG, and high-end gaming. We continue to be recognized as an industry thought leader. Our MediaSmart platform was recently awarded Momentum Leader and High Performer as demand-side platform in the G2 Spring 2023 report. We won Gold for various campaigns in the TV category at the creative Digimatics Awards 2023, and we won five awards across various categories at Digix 2023 as well. We are excited about growth opportunities that shape ahead of us. As an AI algorithm-powered consumer platform, we are further leveraging our core R&D capabilities and existing patent portfolio to build new IP, new patents, and innovative use cases for responsible integration of generative AI large language models as well.
Our goal is to apply our new IP to generate better outcomes for consumer privacy protection, new data simulations based on past learning, enhanced efficiency for vernacular creatives and campaigns, plus learning algorithms to detect digital identities and advance fraud prevention in digital advertising. With a clear vision, committed leadership, and ongoing investments in tech, we are geared up to unlock new opportunities for long-term growth and success. With that, I now hand over the discussion to our CFO, Kapil Bhane, to discuss financial results. Thank you, and over to you, Kapil.
Thank you, Anuj, and thank you, everyone, for joining the call. Wishing everyone a good day, and hope all of you are keeping safe and well. Anuj, FY 2024 was positive, and closed Q1 with revenue at INR 4,066 million, a growth of 7% year-on-year. It was a broad-based growth across industry verticals and across Indian international markets. During this quarter, India contributed 30.7%, and international contributed about 69.3% to our revenue. Essentially, our overall revenue increased by 14.3% quarter-on-quarter, contributed to our organic growth and on account of 4 months consolidation of the acquired business. Our EBITDA profit stood at INR 781 million, an increase of 13.7% year-on-year, and EBITDA margin stood at 19.2%, despite aggregated consolidation.
In terms of OpEx, our inventory and data costs stood at 61.1% of our revenue from operations this quarter. This was almost in line with previous quarter, a significant margin improvement from quarter one last year. Our employee cost increased to 13.9% on quarter-on-quarter basis, due to annual appraisals as well as consolidation of business of URP. Our strategic efforts to expand our teams across practices and markets. However, this increase in employee cost was partially offset by cost optimization in international markets on account of reorganization of team structures in developed markets. Our cost after tax this quarter was INR 662 million, an increase of 21.4% year-on-year.
Our effective tax rate was lower this quarter, primarily on account of lower contribution of profitability from select entities in developed markets and due to utilization of pre-acceleration losses of URP. We remain focused on working capital management and have been very extremely prudent on our risk profile, and there has been no material changes in our risk profile collection. We aim to play a big, a much bigger role in continuous involvement of MarTech ecosystem with short-term macro challenges fully embraced and remain confident of the long-term business process to invest further in our business and society. With this, I end my presentation. Let's please open the floor for questions.
Thank you very much. We will now begin the question and answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may press star one on the touchtone telephone. If you wish to remove yourself from the question queue, you may press star two. Participants are requested to use handsets while asking a question. Ladies and gentlemen, we will wait for a moment while the question queue assembles. The first question is from the line of Tushar Molkut from BAM Capital. You can go ahead with your question, sir.
Yeah. Hi, thanks for the opportunity. Hi, Anuj and Kapil. I wanted to understand how much would be the contribution from URP this quarter on an absolute basis? From that standpoint, how much would be the organic growth in the company? Also, if you can share a bit on the margin profile of URP.
Just to elaborate on that question, I would contribution from URP should be looked as consolidation of developed businesses and about a little more than INR 450 million on the top line. It has contribution to an EBITDA of 1% because of the absorbed losses by about 7% margin rate of URP. This is an exercise to consolidate our overall developed market, the businesses along with the jam businesses.
Sure. Thanks. Thanks for the answer.
I think I would just like to add to that. The way to look at our results not only for this quarter but also going forward, that the organic growth is deeply, consistently anchored on India and emerging market verticals globally, where we are growing consistently, as I said in my comments to you, over 20% even in this quarter, year-on-year. In terms of developed markets, because of the turnaround efforts that we were already discussing in the last earning calls and so on, and decisive steps being taken, we were rebuilding and have now rebuilt a stronger foundation for developed markets than ever before.
Together with UAP, as well as the turnaround efforts that we have taken, I would say today our revenue in developed markets, especially US, which is, you know, 80% or more of developed markets anchored on that market alone, our number of customers, our current revenue in developed markets, as well as the number of full-time team members on the ground and the inspiration of the team members we revived over the last several months, my direct leadership, together with Anuj Kumar, to lift it up, has reached a level where we can safely say that our new foundation for developed markets is larger than it was ever before.
That provides a solid base on which we can now build on confidently and willingly, versus where we were before from our several quarters, where both macroeconomic factors as well as the internal issues were pulling us, pulling us down and shaking the foundations there, and we have cemented that. Another positive there is that the macro factors in developed markets seem to be easing out. I mean, on both fronts, the internal issues as well as macro factors, we seem to be now in a more cemented position to build upon.
Hi, hi, Anuj. Thanks, thanks for that detailed answer, and congratulations on good execution on the international, international market recovery. From that standpoint, any kind of guidance that you want to give of a medium term for geography?
The way I see this year is that most of the acquired businesses, whether it's MediaSmart, Hapmix, or even Jam, we completed three years within Affle. These two years we are absolutely consolidating and watching the acquisition strategies. With UAP included within this year, we will make everything much more deeply energized for margin expansion. One of the things that all our investors were consistently, consistently telling us that when you acquire, you know, they average their margin down. We are seeing margin expansion, but because of the acquired entities being lower margin relatively, it was pulling us down. This quarter also, you can see the very strong focus on, you know, the margin expansion.
Even with the consolidation of UAP delivering over 90% EBITDA and team strategies of, you know, even on patch level to deliver over 21% growth on patch year-on-year, I think it is a very strong indicator of how Affle is operating. We are saying we are going for quality customers, we are going for premium propositions in the market and consolidating our group this year, so that there, there's no sort of margin pull-down baggage of the acquisitions. On the other hand, in fact, what we're seeing is now acquisition synergy, upselling, cross-selling, you know, integrating the teams, and especially for developed markets, especially so in the US market, I think we are, we are seeing very clear execution in that strategy. I mean, guidance, generally, we are very conservative in giving, you know, forward guidance, and I would like...
I've been advised to be also conservative. Let me give you the guidance from a tax perspective or a bottom line perspective. I think it would be safe to see 20%+ growth year-on-year basis as a sustainable 10% growth pattern for that, given that this year our focus is going to be on margin expansion to all the acquired entities, making sure we get it up.
Sure, Anuj, thanks for the remarks. One last thing from my end is that can we expect that even with UAP integration, full integration that will come in the next quarter, can we expect that the margins will expand on a consolidated business from here on?
I think the way I'm looking at it is definitely progressively, you know, I wouldn't say this quarter, next quarter specifically, but, you know, I think the goal this year is to make sure that the entire group is energized for premium propositions, higher execution rates, better overall bottom line margin expansion, and giving sensible growth over the previous year, at least from a bottom line perspective, let me show it above 20%. Now, that's the kind of execution plan that the management team is focused on. I said the specific number for you for this current quarter or the immediate quarter, I wouldn't get into that. Let's wait for the results.
You know, our execution focus is strong. We will deliver or exceed the expectations, by quarters like we saw in the last, quarters, because of the, issues we felt, and, and couldn't address promptly enough in developed markets. Now we have arrested the situation, rebuilt the foundation. There is, there is a positive outlook and a positive spirit with which we are now, you know, going ahead. I'm really glad with the way we have executed on the last quarter, given all the challenges that were on hand.
Sure, Anuj. I'll just get back on the queue.
Thank you. Our next question is from the line of Raghav Dehani from Citi. Please go ahead with your question.
Hi, am I audible?
Yes, please go ahead.
Yeah. My question is on the CPCU rates. I see a bump up on a quarter-on-quarter basis. Now, is it because of the contribution from developed markets going up in revenue? As per your opening remarks, the DMs have actually seen some kind of a decline growth in April and May. Any comments on the CPCUs going up, and, you know, what is your sense on if these levels should sustain in the coming quarters?
Yes, I think there are 2, 3 factors contributing to improvement in CPCU. One of the factors is, of course, developed markets contribution, and the CPCU is always higher there. But also because we are taking more premium services into the market, as I mentioned in the last earnings call as well, you know, what we are doing in terms of our strategy, looking at iOS users in India and global emerging market verticals, in developed markets as well, looking at premium positions and placements where the advertisers are seeing that Affle is bringing to some premium use cases to drive premium conversions. That necessarily means that the CPCU rate should, should move up. Now, is... I think INR 55 CPCU is sustainable. We should see somewhere between INR 55-INR 58 CPCU range for the rest of this financial year.
Our goal would be to move towards, towards 58. Yeah.
Okay, thank you. Just one more question from my side is on the appraisal cycle. This time it was 1 Q. Usually, is it 1 Q every year?
Some of the times happen. We typically balance it out between some business units are appraised in April, effective website will come out appraised, first October. We try to keep it balanced throughout these cycles.
Okay, sure. Thank you. That's it from my side.
Thank you. Our next question is from the line of Sanjay Ladha from Bastion Research. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Thanks for the opportunity, sir. My question would be: Sir, it's really great to see that your CPCU model is accepted by all the company across segments, and knowing that previously, when we used to see the history, they are more from startup community. Now it is a mix of startup plus some well-stabilized, 20-plus year company adopting this channel of advertisement. What has been changed in the last three, four years in terms of your approach and companies focusing on this model? Another question would be, most of the time, what we see is it's a one-time revenue deal. Is it possible that we get recurring revenue from the players? Do you share what % of revenue is recurring in nature, and, and how is that plan going forward?
Thank you so much for that question. When you look at our business definition and how we identify our company, we clearly take great, you know, emphasis on the fact that we are a consumer-centric consumer platform. Yes, we make money from advertising, but we make money from advertising, whereas 93% of the business is on CPCU business model, which means that the consumers are accepting, engaging, reacting to those recommendations, chats, and doing deep funnel premium conversions with the advertisers. What I'm trying to put emphasis to is to see that Affle delivered 68.7 million conversions in Q1 FY24, and through those conversions, we had, like, let's say, 1,000 advertiser apps which were being actively promoted as campaigns through, you know, the reach of... Hello? I think Anuj, is about dropped connection.
I will check with the operator that, can we connect to Anuj? I can say he's got dropped. Hello, are you connecting Anuj again?
Ladies and gentlemen, please stay connected while we reconnect the management. Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, we have the management and reconnected. You can go ahead.
Yeah, I'm not sure where I got this connection, and apologies for this aberration. I was basically talking about the fact that we have delivered 68.10 million conversions, and the way our algorithms and AI algorithms work, is that they look for the highest probability of conversion with any particular instance of recommending an ad or a product to the end users. In doing so, we have, you know, let's say, a one particular recommendation that we give to a user at any given moment out of 1,000 advertisers. What that does is, it creates competitive bidding between the advertisers. If they really want their campaigns to scale up, to maybe be promoted to those consumers, they need to have very strong product propositions for the consumers.
At the same time, they need to bid a high enough to bid rate for our algorithms to prioritize them. Therefore, there is always, let's say, the way we create a premium for our platform is to create competition between the advertisers to bid for it.
While we, most of the advertisers are on a recurring basis, working with us for several years, but we do not guarantee to the advertisers that, "Hey, we will definitely deliver you a conversion." What we tell them is, "Please come on the platform and bid, and our AI algorithms will be honest to the consumer recommendation, and as long as the consumer is engaged and converted, you will be invoiced, and you will see a conversion benefit and ROI from it." It is not typically a scenario where, you know, we are trying to get lock in only the budget from the advertisers, and we are getting budgets from the advertisers, and we give them good items and also competitive pressure for them to bid higher on our platform, so that we can give them better volumes of conversion, and that's how the platform works.
What we typically balance is across our verticals, let us not see any customer concentration in any of the markets to pay one particular customer or one particular vertical. Keep it very, very broad-based growth and providing a variety of recommendations to the consumers, so that we can balance out the, you know, the repeat conversions, the new conversions with the consumers. I hope that makes some sense. You know, essentially, advertising is how we earn our money, but the core business model in CCQ is very consumer-centric, which is a core differentiation and a moat for our company.
I just try to announce, you know, we would have all seen that, consumer adoption of online payments with UPI or RuPay cards coming in with lower transaction costs. A lot of business has moved on to the digital payment mechanism, that is helping us to get expansion into various verticals. The payment fund transfer or various payment supporting the different verticals to do online business is supporting growth of verticals and particular penetration with the clients across various verticals.
Thank you so much, sir. Sir, another would be, since last two, three quarters, we have seen that our growth has been slowed down from the previous quarter, and also we see that we are growing faster than the industry. Does it mean that industry growth of 30% plus has been also slowed down, or how should we look at?
The way to look at it is that in the industry, there are, there are, I think, several categories of customers. If we just go by the metric of revenue growth, I mean, you know, there is, there is all kinds of, categories of customers out there. What we do is, you know, very selectively pick those quality of customers who will continue to sustain and grow and be together with us for many years to come, where payments, and, credit risk is reasonably, You know, predictable and controllable. Because when we do this business, we want to make sure that we are getting sustainable quality revenue growth, premium conversions with premium customers, and so on.
I think this is not about, you know, it was about just getting, you know, all kinds of revenue and growing. We may not be as strong a bottom line trend that we have today. When you look at it from a cash flow lens, I think Affle has been very superior in terms of the quality of revenue that we get. We are selective about, you know, which customers that we choose and work with, and you identified that in your question as well, that instead of just taking money off old startups, who have recently been funded, to actually waiting for them to mature out a little bit more till we can absolutely scale. I think those are the factors that have contributed.
In terms of looking at 20%+ growth in India and emerging market verticals globally, I think it is a very, very sustainable and a sensible performance, given that we are doing at least in those markets, north of 20%+ EBITDA. As far as developed markets are concerned, we saw a pull back, and because of that effect, you see that the overall growth might be looking a little bit more subdued. Long-term tailwinds and long-term, you know, moat of our company is intact, and our confidence and outlook remains positive for the long term.
Thank you so much, sir. I will get back to you. Thank you.
Thank you. Our next question is from the line of Ashwin Mehta from Ambit Capital Private Limited. Please go ahead.
Yeah, hi. Thanks for the opportunity. Anuj, one, one, get an update on the OE partnership that we were wanting to sign for a short supply. Has the contract been signed, and when do we and how much should be the benefit from this? When should it start to kick in?
Yeah, I think, we have been cautious about, you know, setting a precedence of announcing every contract that we sign. Having said that, I think we have made very clear commentary about the fact that we are strategically focusing on ONO, OEM app stores. We have highlighted about the fact that, you know, we rolled out the product for iOS App Store and Apple Search Ads. We have remained a bit more sort of guarded about other OEM contracts, where we are introducing monetization for several years on the app stores already. It's a continuing relationship, and what we are emphasizing is that we're going deeper strategically with them. Some of the contracts have already been signed by Affle, and they are still in the integration mode and so on.
When it is the appropriate moment to, you know, to announce it, when the partners are ready and so on, we will certainly come to the market and announce it. At the same time, the business is already on, and the business is already seeing incremental, premium net and, and business as we, as we continue to grow. Please give me, you know, a few more months before we can make any named announcements, but, it's all in good stead, and it's a very, very, solid position that we're in.
Thanks, Anuj. That's good to hear. The second question was in terms of, in terms of India. We've seen some softness in terms of India from a sequential perspective. It's been flat for the last three quarters, and you've already talked about that this will be a, a slightly package year, wherein the holiday season is pushed out. How do we see the remaining, say, six, seven months of the year from an India perspective, and especially in light of the Cricket World Cup as well, what are you hearing from the CMOs?
I think the broad, long-term trends for India, as well as global emerging verticals, that, you know, is really, really, you know, encouraging, and the outlook is very, very favorable and positive. I think I alluded to that in my comments earlier as well. If we are looking at, let's say, very specifically within this year, I mean, there are still a few, you know, macro factors. I mean, the announcement of, for example, the additional tax on some of the gaming, real money gaming, and certain other factors, we are still calibrating what the impact is going to be. There are a lot of positives as well. For example, you know, a lot of the other verticals are really rising and shining, and there is no hangup or any pull-down effect there. There's also the World Cup coming.
There is the festive season in October, November, December. There are, I mean, a lot of positive tailwinds. Let's be conservative. Let's continue to see that we'll defend our organic growth trends in India and global emerging markets and verticals. There is no reason to not afford that and to continue to do, you know, better pricing on CPCU, more premium propositions, even in India and global emerging verticals. I'm very confident that our execution and the strategies and the clarity with which we are pursuing them is very, very strong and very, very robust and defensible. Can I give you any immediate guidance on numbers? I think we will, we will wait for the results to come.
Okay, Anuj, thanks. Just the last one, so earlier, you talked about 20%-25% growth for this year. Now, in the context of the current numbers and some uncertainty, how are we looking at that?
I mean, if you allow me to give you flexibility, I, you know, I would give you that, I would still want to maintain the path of those numbers, let's say, on PAT growth. I think we are more. We are very confident of delivering sensible bottom line margin expansion-based growth this year. And allows room for the company to consolidate, to derive acquisition synergies for the next three quarters and still deliver overall organic plus inorganic, very healthy growth and a robust platform to, you know, to build upon going forward. Bottom line growth of over 20%, in that range, which we have also delivered in this quarter. Of course, there was some tax efficiency involved and so on. That is where we want to be measured.
If you are modeling our company, then you can absolutely take the healthy bottom line, that we will be running for in terms of, delivering growth on the bottom line, about 20%.
Sure. Thanks, Anuj, and all the best.
Thank you. Our next question is from the line of Mayank Babla from ENAM AMC. Please go ahead.
Hey, thank you for taking my question. Am I audible?
Yes, you are.
Please go ahead.
Yeah. Congratulations on consolidating, integrating UFI organization. My first question was to Kapil about UFI. Apologies, I missed the part where, you know, the contribution it had to our effort this quarter. If you could give us some clarity on that.
I previously mentioned that our top contribution to our top line was from UFI was about 11 shared over 11%. UFI is sitting at its own, about share of 10%.
Sure. What can, for, modeling sake, what can we assume for the rest of the 2024?
You see, we are in integration mode. I believe that we are looking at the synergies to drive in, and we have committed already in the previous call that we will be taking it to the mid-teens kind of by the year-end. By the year-end, that means by June or by June of 2024, that is 6 months of integration. 6 months of integration.
Okay, sure. My second question was to Anuj. Connected TV space. You mentioned that it's been rolled out in India and developing markets during the quarter. What sort of, you know, response are we seeing from clients in this space? What is the contribution to the revenue for this quarter and what could be the potential over the next 2 years from the connected TV space? Thank you.
Thanks for that question. When we, when we emphasize that our business is a consumer platform business, essentially the core tenet of that is that wherever the consumer is, Apple's platform should be able to engage with the consumer over there. This necessarily means that mobile and smartphone devices becomes the anchoring point of contact with the consumer. Very quickly from there, we are seeing that within a household, right, within a family, there is a connected TV at home, there is multiple smart devices at home, therefore, there is this very interesting technology capability that we have, which we call household ID. It is household sync. When we show, let's say, when we derive a consumer conversion, okay?
The consumer conversion could have happened when we showed an ad recommendation to the consumer on the mobile device, as well as showed ad recommendation to the consumer's family or household ID on other connected devices, including connected TV. While there is one conversion that has happened with the consumer, the consumer may have been engaged on multiple touchpoints within that household ID. Does that make sense?
Yeah.
Therefore, when we talk about revenue attribution, we are an integrated platform. The ads and the ad format complete. The touchpoint of those ads on these consumer-connected devices is also waiting, and therefore, can be derived to efficiencies of cross-device campaigns, connected mobile devices, connected TV, and so on. We are able to get highest ROI and efficiency, as well as much deeper insights than most of the competitors. What we have done is that we have taken our differentiated business model of CPCO and launched that on CTV as well. If an advertiser is spending budget with us on CTV, we are no longer charging them for just showing the ad. We are saying we will charge you if we, you know, derive deeper level conversions and CPCU-based model.
That is creating a differentiation of how we are going to market with CTV. Especially in India and other global emerging markets, as well as now we have launched this in US market. I think we have seen that the market is receiving it well. We have seen our platform being ranked well in industry forums. We have been seen as a thought leader, winning the gold award in various campaigns on CTV categories that I mentioned about, which is Sematics Award in 23. All of these are indicators that qualitatively we are on the right track. The customers are receiving it well, the industry is taking note of it, and we have a differentiated go-to-market strategy, as well as a product proposition, which is also the TNT, which is being brought to market.
We are, we are very positive about the direction that we are taking. In terms of quantifying or thinking about the segment of the fact of revenue, this is part of-
... you know, the CPCU business and, we're not slicing and dicing, saying, okay, how many-- what the percentage lags are on CPCU versus on mobile. Mobile is by far the dominant force. GPV is an emerging touchpoint for consumers. I think this, touchpoint will be a lifestyle shift, which will happen across most of the affluent households, you know, across the world.
Thank you so much.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Swapnil Potdukhe from JM Financial. Please go ahead, sir.
Hi. Thanks for the opportunity. I have a couple of questions. First, my question is on the international market revenue growth. If I were to slice out your UAP acquisition and then consider that the currency has depreciated, the INR has depreciated versus USD, can you give us a sense of, like, what would be the constant currency growth that you have achieved, ex-WIP, in international markets? That's question number one. Question number two is with respect to the impact of IPL and if there is a Cricket World Cup which is going to come in the next few months, how does that generally affect the advertising budgets, you know, and does it take us a certain boost because of this event, typically?
Can you just help me with that? Thank you.
Just on the currency front, I'll take that question. For 9 months, the currency has been very stable, right? The currency depreciated last in July of 2022 or August 2022. The currency has been very constant. I think so, you need to check your model on that. Last quarter also, the currency was about 82 rupees per dollar, and we have given multiple currencies. Please, that question on slicing UIP in the light of the currency needs to be rechecked by you. Maybe you can answer the second question.
Okay. On the first question, also, I can give you some insight. When we look at India as one and international markets as another, this is at a broad basis, the way we have always reported since we went public or even, you know, when we went roadshows before the IPO. One thing is very clear, that within international there is emerging market verticals, and then there is developed markets. Developed markets is majorly anchored on the US. Emerging markets is, you know, Southeast Asian emerging markets, Middle East, Africa, Latam and several. The, the, the emerging markets vertical is behaving in very similar organic growth trends as India is. We see very similar dynamics in those markets, okay?
Whether the advertisers are, you know, showing stronger affinity to the CPCU business model and the kind of innovations that we are bringing to the market and so on. I think we are also seeing similar competitive forces within, you know, emerging markets and anchored out of India. It comes a competitive advantage for us because we are one of the very few companies in this space that is deeply still anchored. Almost 60%+ of the business is anchored on global emerging markets, India and included in that. When you see that as the lens, then you would find that's very far, okay? From an organic perspective, over 80%+ of our business is India and global emerging markets.
There, the organic growth is very resilient, whether you take whichever currency adjustment or whichever angle you look at it, CPCU, conversion, revenue, customer growth, all aspects, broad-based organic growth is robust in over 80% of our business globally. In developed markets, we have already given very clear commentary for last several quarters now, that we were facing, you know, macro headwinds and internal issues. How are we coping with that and changing for it in order to rebuild our foundation to a bigger base and a bigger foundation than ever before in developed markets? What actions we have already taken, and we have given an update on that as well in this commentary.
I think we will be, we should be assessed based on that, and I am very confident that even in developed markets, the base that we have now is defensible, it's solid and robust, on which we can then build up sensibly with all the product and platform initiatives, the strategies, the team focus and so on. I think we are in a good place today, and also the macro factors have eased down a bit, so we are more optimistic that, you know, we can, we can take this head-on. In terms of the second part of your question, IPL, Cricket, World Cup, there will always be season events, festivals, which will create some boost.
What the advertisers typically do is they plan a budget for the whole year, the whole financial year, the whole calendar year, and then they typically optimize that budget between different quarters and different markets based on each event. For example, if there is an IPL worth happening, you know, some advertisers would go, you know, at that point, some advertisers might pull back because there's already too much noise and too many advertisers, that they work around it strategically. I think we are seeing that for the World Cup, we should see some positive impact from certain categories of advertisers, but that will at least help to hopefully neutralize the impacts of certain budgeting, where the government is introducing, let's say, certain taxation and in Real-money gaming or certain other factors.
You know, we are looking at it in a balanced way. IPL, Cricket World Cup, festive season, these are definite positives. Can we quantify and tell you that, okay, because of this, you know, how much will we do next quarter? I think we would want to wait for the results to come. I mean, this is not a one-off event, right? I mean, yes, the World Cup happens. There are other such events which are constantly happening. In each year there will be this moment, but the overall budget of the advertiser for the year is now being optimized and spent in and around that. There is no sort of dramatic shift in the overall annual budget of the advertisers from there.
Right. Thanks for that elaboration.
Sorry to interrupt. Mr. Swapnil, may we request that you return to the question queue for follow-up questions, as there are several participants waiting their turn. Thank you. Our next question is from the line of Rahul Jain from Dolat Capital. Please go ahead, sir.
Yeah, thanks for the opportunity. Just one or two questions. Firstly, just underweight, which you mentioned for YouAppi for the quarter, suggest that this is like a flat year for them on a YY basis. Any clarity or input on this would be helpful. Secondly, you know, the exposure and potential impact from this new GST taxation norm that has been announced in India for RMG companies? Any, any specific trend in Q2 for domestic business this year, given that the festivals are, are a bit delayed? Do we expect a softer Q2 sequential trend versus past years?
So allow me to take this. So with respect to any acquisition that we have done in the past, typically in most scenarios, our focus within the year 1 of the acquisition is to try and improve the profits and the margin expansion of those businesses. Because since, as you can imagine, in any in any company, which is, you know, pushing for top-line growth, some of that top line is coming from segments that are not profitable, and they're just pushing for top-line growth, and this is wanting to sell the business, wanting to price the business. It's okay if the margin is not there.
To bring that discipline, you know, we are absolutely focused in year one in any acquisition to ensure that we rationalize and say, "Guys, we should only work on unit economics basis, and every campaign and every project, every activity has to, and every region has to have the discipline of bottom line and sustainable sustainable growth." There is some recalibration that typically happens, and therefore, our focus for this year is really to ensure that we bring the entire group in a consolidated way with acquisitive synergies, exactly to progress the margin expansion. It is not to be seen that, oh, it is fluctuation limit.
There is a lot of growth to be had in gaming, but the growth which is sustainable, profitable, needs to be done in a way that let's get it right and then let's scale, right? If we, if we continue to press the accelerator of scale, the unit economics in the margin, you would then see a situation that, oh, you're getting the growth, but you're not seeing the margin expansion. I think we need a few quarters to make sure that the integration and the synergies are consolidated for margin expansion and then press the pedal for acceleration on that new base of unit economics. That's how I would like to answer your question on, on YouAppi, as well as, you know, if they keep that in across our acquisitions.
With respect to, you know, Q2 and Q3, festive season being delayed is one aspect, I mean, delayed as in terms of date. It is normal for the advertisers to peg their budgets for the whole year around certain sort of events, and it might be balanced by certain other events, you know, whether it's the World Cup, whether it's the festive period, the impact of GST, there will be positive, there will be some negative, but I think overall, we remain optimistic and positive on, you know, the longer term trend. Even for the immediate Q2 and Q3, I think, it is fair to expect, you know, at least an upward trend in these two quarters as well. How much exactly?
Let's see how these effects pan out with respect to the World Cup, the festive period, the GST, and so on. Not everything can be could be quantified, but what we are hearing from the market gives us the confidence that we are on a positive trajectory.
Just to add, we just got a clarity on GST with regards to the on the RMG sector only last week, where the metric is not on, it is on the, the wallet into your addition to the wallet, one-time placement of the amount. We will be in touch with our clients over this period and to see how, how they are going to react. We are not seeing an immediate reaction. Yes, let's let me get the patient for the full effect of the GST, which is still not out. It is going to be rolled out out of 1st October.
Right. Right. Your July is quite trending in a usual behavior. There's no very sharp end.
Basically, there was an immediate reaction, but it has got stabilized now. There was many days of an initial reaction, but then it has got stabilized.
Yeah. I know just a small clarification, specifically your color on the YouAppi, your processing, and does it really help all the past transactions that you have done? From a discount point of view, is it that those re-calibration that you're talking about, a big part of it, would be already behind us? Or you think it's too early and you would review each and every aspect over a period of time, so that run rate volatility could still exist for some time, and then we would see the real potential play out?
Yes, absolutely. I think we have to, you know, not be in a rush to, to impress, you know. I think what is important is we are building this for long-term, you know, growth and sustainable, profitable, cash flow, positive growth, and that requires a different kind of a mindset to run. And that mindset to be transferred to the next in line leadership, and that is why it is super important that I am stepping forward and being the CEO of Jampp being the CEO of Appnext, being the CEO even of YouAppi, as the CEO of Affle, driving and leading from the front to ensure that we embrace, consolidate, and derive the acquisitive synergies as a group.
Together with, you know, the management team of Affle, working with the next in line leaders of these acquired entities, they are mature, next in line professional leadership within each of these entities, bringing it together to make it happen. I think we are on a very, very good step. I'm very positive with our direction, and there is, there is, there is no urgency to say, "Okay, let's press the pedal and extract every element of growth, even though it may not have the unit economic sensibility." I think we are being very disciplined about it, because once you allow some room and leeway, then it becomes a bad habit.
We do not want to entertain any campaigns or any budgets which are, you know, not following the unit economic model that we insisted upon.
Much appreciated. Thank you so much.
Thank you. Our next question is from the line of Alisha Mahawla from Envision Capital. Please go ahead.
Hi, sir. Good morning. Thank you for the opportunity. Sir, just on the perspective of the growth guidance, I know that you are commenting on it. Earlier in the call, you just mentioned that your expectation is INR 55, CTCU to INR 58, and the range is between INR 55-INR 58. Even the user trend is helping. Why the hesitation in giving an outlook for the year?
There is no hesitation, ma'am. I think it is just about being prudent. What we are giving you guidance for is, and transparency for, is what we are doing inside the company. What products are we rolling out? What is the focus of the management? Who is managing? Which markets? Are we giving as much transparency as I think anybody could give, including on things that are working well, as well as on things that are challenging, that we are working and starting to turn around. There is absolutely no hesitation in our transparency. When I talk about going for premium use cases and propositions into the market, and in the context of that, it is a very clear trend that the CPCU rate is moving upwards because of two factors: the developed market contribution, as well as the premium use cases in emerging market verticals.
It is, it is, it is not something that I'm giving a guidance on. It is, it is something that one can see in the timeline, that is going to be in the INR 55-INR 58 range. You know, it's, it's not some guidance. I think it's a fact that is reasonably evident today itself. What I'm saying is that it's sensible and it is sustainable. The same thing I'm saying about our profits. We have grown our profits in this quarter, year-on-year, over 20%. Some people would ask and say, maybe there was some tax advantage and so on. Is it sustainable? My answer is, yes, it is sustainable. Why is it sustainable?
There are several areas of growth that we are expecting, profitable, sensible growth that we are expecting, as well as we are beginning to see certain tax advantages for the rest of this year. Therefore, we have also given guidance on the bottom line aspect. In terms of top line, I have given clarity that our focus is on making sure that we take out the acquisitive synergies as a group and do margin expansion progressively. Therefore, I'm not pressing the accelerator or, you know, any areas where let's say the margin is not so high, let's just increase the revenue. Incrementally, it is high. What we are wanting is a disciplined execution from our team, where they know there is no leeway for that, okay? Because where do you draw the line?
You're talking about a 650 people organization across so many geographies. We need to have certain rules for internal disciplined execution. That means that we are giving a very strong message to our sales teams, to our execution teams, on what is allowed and what is not allowed. That is why I'm telling you that, with full transparency, there is absolutely no hesitation whatsoever. We have given long-term guidances all along, and we will stick by that, that overall, the long-term organic growth in India and emerging growth articles, growth verticals is absolutely intact.
In developed markets, we have rebuilt the foundation by doing certain job decisions organically, as well as even keep that position inorganically by adding YouAppi to it, to have at least a critical mass of customers, you know, employees in those markets so that you can build upon that.
Okay. Just one last clarification. For the 17% YOY growth that we've achieved, how much was the organic growth?
I think the answer to that, again, is in my commentary, at least, as far as the organic business, which is over 80% in India and global emerging verticals, has delivered over 20% growth for us. Developed markets, we, we were, we had a degrowth in April and May, but in June, we were able to recover the trends. We were, we obviously had year-over-year degrowth in developed markets, which is where we were before, but we have cemented that position with inorganic growth. What, what we have now achieved is the baseline 100 in developed markets that's higher than it ever was for us. Therefore, you know, that's the new baseline to achieve. The growth is in India and emerging market verticals.
The degrowth is in the developed markets, and we have solved for that, both by taking turnaround steps as well as in organic cementing of the position there.
Okay. Thank you.