Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to the Q3 FY 2026 earnings conference call of BlackBuck Limited, hosted by Radh Capital. As a reminder, all attendees will be in the listen-only mode, and there will be an opportunity for you to ask questions after the presentation concludes. If you have any questions, please feel free to press the Raise Hand button. We'll call on you in turn and unmute your line so you can speak. You can also post your questions in the chat window, and we'll try to answer either during the call or get back to you on email. Important note: If you need to ask a question, please ensure Microsoft Teams has permission to access your microphone when you log in, otherwise you will not be able to unmute. Please note that this conference is being recorded.
Kindly also note that the audio of the earnings call is a corporate material of BlackBuck Limited and cannot be copied, rebroadcast, or attributed in the PR media without specific and written consent of the company. Please note that anything said on this call that reflects the outlook towards the future, which can be construed as a forward-looking statement, must be reviewed in conjunction with the risk that the company faces. A copy of the disclosure is available on the Investor Relations section of the website as well as on the stock exchanges. To give you an in-depth understanding of the company and answer all your queries, we have from the management side today, Mr. Rajesh Kumar Naidu Yabaji, Chairman, Managing Director, and CEO, and Mr. Satyakam G. N., Chief Financial Officer. I now hand over the conference to Mr. Rajesh for his opening remarks.
Thank you, and over to you, sir.
Thank you so much for the introduction. Good evening, everybody. Welcome to the third quarter earnings call of BlackBuck. The second last lap into the financial year and, more importantly, the second half of the year, which positively benefits the whole, CV and the trucking industry. We'll walk you through what has been the last quarter, and we can discuss thereafter. So at a broad snapshot level, we did close to about INR 189 crore in total income in the Q3 of 2026, which is a 53% growth on a year-on-year basis. EBITDA of about INR 45 crore, which is close to about 50% growth on a year-on-year basis. PAT of about INR 32 crore. Last year, because of exceptional items, there's no comparison.
So broadly consistent with what we've been talking about in terms of our business model, in terms of our revenue line items, in terms of consistency, consistency in delivering the profitability, I think that's playing out. On the functional metrics side, as we've discussed, transacting customers is one of our North Star metric in terms of how many customers transact with us, how many of these truck owners are using our services. That's growing at about 13% on a year-on-year basis. Users using greater than two services, which is typically our more loyal users, power users, that's close to half of the overall transacting users. That's growing at about 20-20.5% on a year-on-year basis. GTV payments. Payments forms critical part of our revenue, so we keep reporting this.
That's roughly growth of about 23.5% on a year-on-year basis. So a headline, you know, being that, you know, as, as all of you are aware, we are investing, you know, very strongly in newer business verticals like Superloads and Vehicle Finance. Despite those investments, we've been able to keep up delivering consistent profitability and, this story, you know, will continue to play out. Taking a step back, again, playing out our core strategy and core, you know, vision of, what, what we are building, why we are building. As all of you are aware, BlackBuck is essentially trying to recast the whole trucking ecosystem, how it works today, and as we all know, fast-forward 10 years, this would not be really operating the way it is today.
The question of really whether it will change is not there. The question is really when it will take place, right? What we are solving today, towards that particular vision, what we are solving today is the truck operator's life, truck operator's journey, because this is the infrastructure which supports trucking, and we believe that if we can solve this, it makes us like multiple steps closer to really recasting how trucking works in the country. So, as all of you know, we've shown this slide, you know, in probably all our earnings call thus far. We have, like, very simplistic strategy, where we innovate and we create offerings for our truck operators. These offerings range from, you know, enabling their operations to getting them go cashless, to help them, you know, access to their own data easily, to getting loads on the platform.
Then we have our platform, our crown jewel, the BlackBuck App, where these customers transact. And for these customers, this is like, you know, as consumers, if we file, you know, X or we use Safari as our browser, as the platforms where we use, you know, where we input in maximum amount of our time during the day. For a trucker, it's basically the BlackBuck platform and our very unique distribution, right? So, as you know, in offerings, we've like varied offerings, which we, you know, have enabled for our customer, right, from tolling to vehicle tracking, to fuel payments, to, you know, fuel sensor, to Fleet Docs and many of these offerings, and we continue to research and continue to launch these. Our platform, most of these transacting customers that we talked about are spending close to 45 minutes daily.
That's a powerful usage, which continues to compound. Distribution, a very unique, a very omni-channel led distribution strategy, where, you know, feet on street from a sales point of view, from a technician network perspective, from a channel partner network perspective to call center, right? So every, every kind of, you know, methodology which is used to reach to the customers to be able to provide the service and the, you know, know-how of the product, what, for him to really utilize, and we are essentially virtually present everywhere. So through this strategy is how our revenue gets delivered. This is the strategy in which our teams are, you know, broken up, broken out in, in, inside the company.
This has been the same strategy for the last 5 years, and we continue executing, you know, on these fronts as we speak, you know, today. Now, this strategy fructifying into execution is largely the key KPIs. Some of them I've already spoken in the headline slide. So if you can see, monthly transacting truck operators growing on a year-on-year basis at about 13%. Largely, the nine-month numbers are synonymous to the quarterly growth numbers. I will highlight wherever there is specific call-outs there. Gross transaction value of payments, as I mentioned, grew by about 23.5% on a year-on-year basis. Revenue from operations, 51%.
When you look at net revenues, which is basically, you know, below which literally the, you know, most of it flows into contribution margin with an efficiency of close to 93%. In that, the growth is roughly about 34%. And we will talk about the split between the new and the old as we keep moving forward. From a contribution margin basis, we've grown similar to the overall net revenue growth, which is 33%, and contribution margin percentage, as I spoke, 94% are largely consistent, which has led to us delivering an adjusted EBITDA of INR 50 crore compared to the last year, same quarter that was INR 33 crore, which is a 51% growth. Nine-month number is very stark because, you know, roughly about the same timeline last year is when we started compounding on our profitability.
So that's a 130-140 crore on a nine-month number, compared to the previous year nine-month number was INR 64 crore, which is roughly, you know, 118%, you know, 2.2x kind of a growth on the adjusted EBITDA on a year-on-year, nine-month basis. Giving a narrative on, really what's happening behind these numbers, as I spoke, revenue grew by 40%-53%. Within that, the core businesses had a growth of, you know, very healthy growth of 31, you know, 31.5% on a year-on-year basis. And as I was mentioning at the starting of the call, that H2 is the positive season, for the CV industry. That's 11.5% growth on a sequential quarter basis. So the whole momentum of H2 has, you know, essentially picked up.
Underneath the core business hood, which is, you know, growth of 31.5%, tolling business, which is basically one of the core revenue levers, that's you know, that's grown, obviously more than 24%, but the GTV growth is 24%, which also is an important determinant how the revenue in the tolling business essentially grows. Versus the industry grew at about 15%, which continues to, you know, call out that our market share is compounding, and we are able to grow healthily and, continue to accelerate there. Other business vertical of telematics, which is the second business vertical under the core businesses, again, had a very strong quarter this particular, Q3, where the run rate of sales and, like, don't confuse us with sales revenue.
The incremental sales we have done in the last quarter are, like, almost highest ever in all the, you know, product categories, which was a very, you know, good milestone for us. From a growth business perspective, which is again largely led by Superloads and Vehicle Finance, we had a growth of roughly 271% on a year-on-year basis, sequential quarter, roughly close to 25% growth, which is largely led by Superloads. Now, giving a color on Superloads, as we've always maintained, Superloads is in the phase of a very strong playbook building phase, where obviously orders are scaling, and we continue to launch newer cities. As we speak, last time when we were speaking, we were live in four cities. Now we are live in totally nine cities, and, so that's on Superloads.
Vehicle Finance, again, aided by industry tailwinds, we were able to sequentially grow by 35% on the disbursements for our partners on the platform, and that business continues on a healthy growth path. So that's broad commentary on revenue. Getting into adjusted EBITDA, despite continuing to step up investments in newer businesses, as we have spoken, we are aggressively pursuing expansion in Superloads, which is, you know, Superloads and Vehicle Finance are unprofitable categories for us today. So despite investing in these businesses, we are still able to deliver a very strong EBITDA growth of 51% on a year-over-year basis, and we have delivered roughly about close to 20% of EBITDA growth on a sequential quarter-over-quarter basis.
Largely contributed by the operating leverage and the compounding of the core businesses, which basically are of supremely high quality, very differentiated product, aided by a very low cost and low cost, you know, distribution and servicing network is what is aiding that. Which is giving us the firepower to also continue to incrementally invest in our newer businesses and which will be the you know the businesses which will help us really realize our vision you know as quickly as possible. So that's the commentary on you know these numbers. These numbers reflecting in you know the accounting P&L. As you can see, income number, which we spoke about, 53% growth on a year-on-year basis. Revenue from ops, roughly excluding the non-interest income, is growing at about 51%.
Core businesses, as I gave a voice-over, have grown by 31%. Growth businesses, roughly growing at about like 4x, 3.7-4x on a year-on-year basis. On a net revenue basis, all these indexing in roughly growing at about 34%. Direct costs grew a bit, you know, strongly because of the telematics business, by about 56%. And then broadly, you know, similar waterfall as, you know, regular, you know, PNL of our quarters. Adjusted EBITDA, INR 50 crores compared to INR 33 crores on a year-on-year basis, growth at 51%. And you know, that flowing down to PAT at INR 32 crores, which has an exceptional hit of roughly about INR 3.5 crores-INR 4 crores on the wages-
Labour Code.
Labor code, you know, sort of regulations changing. So that's the... And obviously highlighting the 9-month, you know, adjusted EBITDA here again, INR 64 crore, last year versus this year, INR 140 crore, and EBITDA, INR 53 crore versus INR 122 crore. So that's a strong growth on EBITDA continuing to compound. So that's on the, you know, P&L perspective. Summarizing all this from a profitability angle, this is like a zoomed-out view of the last-... you know, two and a half, three years. So if you can see, this quarter, we've delivered our highest ever adjusted EBITDA, despite a very strong, expansion in, new businesses and also investing back in core businesses because we've grown, we've scaled our, distribution network further by 10 percentage points over the last quarter, which means higher investment in distribution, network as well.
At the same time, expansion into multiple cities and super loads. Having said all of that done, still, we have delivered an adjusted EBITDA, highest ever of INR 50 crore. And if you reflect that on a nine-month basis, which is INR 140 crore, FY 2025, we did close to INR 100 crore. This number far supersedes that to INR 140 crore. And obviously, like, you know, the last quarter, we still have to get through. So that will be a good end to the financial year as well.
So again, like, summarizing again, what I spoke in the overall narrative is that, you know, this consistent profitability continues largely based on the, you know, core businesses which are compounding and delivering and anchoring, you know, these results, where the operating leverage continues to hold and continues to sort of, you know, help us deliver the profitability. Summarizing, similar slide, which I used last quarter, thinking ahead largely remains same. I think, you know, I think, it would not be, you know, it would be fair to say that roughly most of the presentation is same. Largely, the numbers are different because this strategy for us has really not changed the last five years, and we continue to execute on that strategy.
So simply, thinking ahead, core businesses, which is, you know, payments and telematics businesses and a lot of adjacencies, which we continue to build, right? We are essentially doubling down, continuing to invest in our distribution network, continue to gain share from a market share perspective, continue to align ourselves to the market tailwinds, and really delivering predictable and consistent and profitable growth. While that growth delivers strong profits, leveraging that and reinvesting in growth businesses, which delivers superior 10x value to our customers by loads, which, and helps them enhance revenues and multiple other new experiments under the, you know, under the hood. So there, I don't think, you know, as a company, after going public, we've really pulled back.
We've actually gone much, once we were public, we were probably testing the waters couple of quarters, and once we knew how to navigate the public markets, we've been actually as aggressive as we were in the private markets from really building new businesses, delivering incremental value for our customers. I think, you know, that's, you know, continuing to, you know, work. So, yeah, so I think I would leave you guys with these thoughts that, you know, core businesses continuing to compound on profitability, continue to deliver on the operating leverage we've always spoken about, and that's giving us firepower to continue to step up investments in the new businesses. And this strategy, we will keep executing as we keep going forward. That's all from my side. I think we will open the floor for questions. Yeah.
Thank you. We'll now open the call for questions. Kindly raise your hand to ask a question. We will unmute your line. As a reminder, we request all participants to re-restrict themselves to two questions and come back in the queue. The first question is from the line of Mr. Sachin Dixit. Sachin, please go ahead.
Yeah, hi. Congrats, Rajesh, on the great set of results. I had a couple of questions. The first one was basically on payments GTV. So we have seen this number growing at roughly 35% Y-o-Y in fiscal year 2025, and gradually now we are roughly in the mid-20s to early 20s range in terms of this number. What do you think is, let's say, two years out, like, where do we position on this piece, right? Because there is some market share gain happening on tolling, but it's also happening in an industry which is growing only 10%. So any views on how do you think this payment GTV should shape out?
Yeah, I mean, Sachin, as you're aware, I again repeat that we typically would not give a forward understanding of really how we look at it. But I think what you're saying is absolutely right, that because as you know, that our market shares are pretty much, you know, closer to that 50% level range, late 40s, right, as we speak today. And as you rightly said, the market right now is growing at probably between 9%-10%, and definitely we will compound much stronger on top of that. But this number, which you just quoted, that the market is growing at 10%.
If you look at the last, you know, like probably, you know, two years of data at every quarter level, sometimes this number has grown between 15%-20%. Sometimes the number has grown at, like, 9%-10%. So I think-
Right.
Definitely, we are. We are indexed a bit to that, but we continue to gain market share in broadly the similar method as, you know, as probably a few quarters back. I think that's continuing to happen. And the second point, which I always mention, that our acquisition market share is actually much larger than our current market share, so, which means that we will still be continuing to compound at a much faster pace than this. So I think that's what I would like to sort of articulate, you know, other than that, but yeah. But whatever points you, facts you outlined, you know, are right. Yeah.
Just to clarify that, right? So and I know that I've asked this question in your, I think, probably the first earnings call as well. So do you think market shares for you can reach more than, let's say, a 65% odd range, or somewhere below that, they will start to plateau out?
See, basically,
I mean, at a high level, obviously, not as a guidance, at a very high level.
Yeah, I mean, like, that whatever number you just quoted is possible because we've been gaining, you know, market share continuously. So but, the point is, the pace to reach there is hard to determine. It'll all depend on basically, you know, how the whole, like, sort of industry sort of models out. And when our acquisition market share, like, let's say, assuming is that assuming that whatever number you said, if our acquisition market share is that number, then we can see this number reaching, you know, reaching the market share number, reaching that number maybe in a 2-3 years timeline. So that's how I think it will work. So we will first have to make our acquisition market share go to that number, then the actual market share starts reaching that number over a period of time.
... Right, fair enough. That's, that's very detailed. Secondly, on the incremental EBITDA margin that we have been getting, right? So obviously, we have seen very good incremental EBITDA margins. This quarter, while you have invested, as you have highlighted in Superloads, you have already reached 9 cities. Our incremental EBITDA margin was not brilliant, but still healthy at 44-odd% QoQ, if I look at it.
Yeah.
So on this number, considering you are already in nine cities, should we expect this to be the worst, probably, incremental EBITDA margin you are going to get, and we should expect slightly better as we proceed ahead?
Yeah.
How should we look at this number, right? Obviously, we have seen 80% numbers for you as well.
Of course. See, basically, blended incremental EBITDA margin, I don't think is the right way to look at this business. We need to basically split this after allocating the HU cost into what is the core business EBITDA margin and what is the new business.
EBITDA margin? Because at the business line, vertical level, there is literally no connection in terms of, you know, both these businesses. The costs are pretty independent, right? So incremental EBITDA margins of the core businesses continue the same story as we've always delivered, point number one, and this is essentially an independent business, which has basically its losses, right?
So the overall incremental EBITDA margin is actually a composite metric of these two factors playing out. More, if we see signs of very, like, let's say, you know, a breakout, signs in our Superloads business, and we really want to out-invest, right? Then you'll definitely, you know, see depression in the overall EBITDA. And like the, you know, then the incremental EBITDA margin loses its, you know, concept itself, right? Because it's-
Right
It's basically two different businesses, right? So, what I'm trying to help you understand is that very hard for me to comment on really whether this is the worst or what it is going to be, point number one. Point number two, the core business has the same flavor of, operating leverage in terms of incremental EBITDA margins, right? Third, the investment into new businesses are very independent decisions, basis the signals we get in the market and basis how that independent business performs.
So, just a follow-up question on that, are you seeing that breakout sort of phase in Superloads yet, or, are you still figuring it out?
I think we're still figuring out. We're building a lot of, like, products inside, you know, and... Yeah, doing a lot of experimentation, doing a lot of, like, you know, I think I would say groundwork at this moment, and, like, yeah.
Sure, Rajesh. Thank you and all the best.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Vishal Agarwal. Please go ahead.
Hi. I want to ask two questions. Firstly, do you have any competition, the market listed or unlisted space, who could be directly competing with you? Like in platform businesses, you have Swiggy, and then you have Zomato, you have Paytm, you have PhonePe. So if you want to compare with BlackBuck, who will be next to you?
Yeah. So as you know, as we've highlighted, right, BlackBuck's basically vision is unique, and hence the whole execution is pretty unique. And the whole avatar of BlackBuck, which you see today, essentially is nothing but a, you know, iterative version of trying to get to the vision. And we've gotten here, which really looks like a payments company intermixed with a telematics company, with a loads company, with a load or like a loan origination company. It's very like looks very different, but when played on a platform and when understood the story, we all know that it's all originating from the same platform. So because of that, literally at broad scale, there is literally, you know, no competition from an overall end-to-end perspective. But if you look at segment-wise, if you look at, let's say, assuming payments, right?
There are a lot of banks which do this, which do this because they have customers, and they do this business for retail, so they also extend this towards, you know, you know, commercial vehicles, right? So definitely, there are banks in the tolling business. In Telematics business, there is a company, you know, there is a private company with which we compete with, like, you know, they do, they do, they do, like, decently well, the Telematics business. That's one competition segmentally, right? Now, from a classified loads perspective, the loads business perspective, there is basically, you know, not much any formidable competition. I think from a market share perspective, like, you know, classifieds, we drive, like, you know, a large number of loads on the platform, right? Let's say where there is literally, not much kind of formidable competition, right?
So if you look at it from this lens, each of these verticals may have some competition. And, you know, in the recent past, there is, you know, one public company which wants to try replicating something what we are doing, but I think, we've still not seen, you know, much execution yet going on. And there is, I think there's one more public company, which is smaller. They are also trying to replicate something, but then still, literally from a meaningful perspective, having something in the, you know, 2%-3% kind of a share also is not there yet.
Just to clarify, the public company would be Delhivery?
Yeah. I mean, like, no comments, but, yeah. No comments on that point, I said. I didn't say yes.
Okay.
Sorry.
Second question is, what's your target for Superloads, in terms of the coverage area, number of cities? Like, you now gone to nine cities, so we'll take it to 30, 100, or what's the potential? How many cities-
Yeah
Can you cover?
Yeah. See, last earnings call, we'd given a visibility. We were live in 4. We decided to open 10, which will make it to 14, and we gave a visibility that by, you know, by end of the second half, by probably June 2026 is when we will be in 14. That's the visibility we gave in the last call. Broadly, that visibility stays, and largely it'll be predicated on how well the business is, you know, performing, and in terms of ability to, you know, really scalably build this business with the right economics. I think that's going to predicate the growth of this business, which we today, like, let's say, you know, don't have much visibility on.
... Okay, thank you, and all the best.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Anil Sarin. Anil, please go ahead with your question. Anil? We'll take the next question from the line of Parikshit Kabra. Parikshit, please go ahead.
Hi, am I audible?
Yes.
Yes.
Great. Thank you. Thank you for the opportunity, and congratulations on another set of good numbers. I think I'm gonna get into the other expenses, and I think a lot of this conversation happened in the last call as well, last quarter, but I just wanted to dig into it a little bit more. When I adjust for the expenses, your cost of goods for your Superloads business, and then look at your other expenses, even then, they're increasing rapidly. Now, I know we are investing in Superloads, setting up offices and teams, et cetera, et cetera, but when I look at it from a year-on-year perspective, it's almost an INR 18-INR 19 crore expense, which is higher on a quarterly basis. Can you help us understand where all of this extra expense is coming from?
See, Parikshit, broadly, if you look at it, there are two areas where this is coming from, other than, like you said, cost of Superloads. One would be manpower, the second would be in terms of, let's say, SIM cost for GPS, et cetera, right? So, SIM cost for GPS, et cetera, you can broadly track from the direct costs that we report. From a manpower point of view, the expansion is across. Even in the last quarter, we gave you flavor around, how we are expanding teams on the, core business side as well. And obviously, we are expanding teams on Superloads. So there are no other significant increases other than, manpower, the GPS-related direct costs, and the, Superloads direct costs.
Right. So, the manpower that we are increasing, we're not putting it under employee cost, we're putting the incremental manpower under the other expenses, is that right?
So there are different models that we operate in. The employees who are on our payroll are reflected in the employee cost.
Okay.
The other models that we operate in might be off-roll, might be other models, all of those are reflected in the manpower cost, in the other expenses.
Would majority of the INR 19 crore, compared to last year, would majority of it be just the manpower cost then?
Yes, majority would be manpower cost, except for what is reflected in the increase in direct costs.
Correct. So then, let me move on to the next part of my question, is that, you know, we have invested... We were in Bangalore, and we were already doing pretty well. From there we went to 4 cities, from there we've gone to 9 cities, and if I recall last quarter, we said from 50 employees, we are going to 250 employees. Correct me if I'm wrong. So it seems like we are investing, and of course, you know, the team takes time to ramp up. But I'm just trying to understand that the growth from Superloads from previous quarter to this quarter probably is of, you know, maybe INR 4-5 crores additional. Are we struggling to ramp up in the other cities? Is it breaking down from what we saw in Bangalore?
Is there a problem in the scaling up of, you know, how we are deploying resources versus how the impact is actually happening?
Yeah. See, broadly, I mean, your point is that there's a, like, sequential or something like a 25% kind of a growth, right? Broadly, that's what you're trying to say, which is a INR 4-5 crore kind of a growth number, right? So obviously, the question is that, can it be faster? The answer is yes. But the question also is that something which really builds out very fast also comes down that fast. So the type of growth is something which I think we very clearly indexed on in terms of high-quality growth. Broadly, at this point in time, what we can share about Superloads is that the operating model, the crux of the operating model, continues to deliver and work well.
The cities which basically have been launched later continue on the similar path as, you know, the first city, which is Bangalore. And day after day, we are able to discover newer insights, which are in the same direction as we speak today. So most of the operating metrics continue to improve, continue to compound well, even in the Superloads business. This is the visibility which we can provide at this point in time.
Got it. And, just a quick follow-up, and maybe you can and maybe you cannot. How's Bangalore doing? Is that also growing in line, or has that plateaued to some extent?
No, it's also growing in line.
All right, great. Thank you. Thank you, Rajesh.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Rishi Jhunjhunwala. Rishi, please go ahead.
Yes, thank you. Rajesh, so just following up on the previous question, right? So Bangalore is where we started first. Can you give us some sense in terms of where we are, you know, in, in Bangalore in terms of, you know, scaling up, either, in the form of number of leads that we are converting on a daily basis, or the overall revenues we are generating? How far we are from, you know, an ideal scale and an optimal scale? And, and, you know, I mean, optimal will, of course, capture the full potential of the TAM there, but ideally somewhere where you would, you know, like you've in, in the past talked about, say, 5% or 10% market share, so somewhere around that.
If you can give some color around that, both on a revenue side as well as on investment side, to just understand, you know, how much time it takes to ramp up, where we are in that. Is it enough success that we have gotten there, which could be then replicated to other cities?
Yeah. So I think, assuming that, if we believe that, you know, we've really built out the playbook, the distance to that is, let's say, 100, right? I believe in the city of Bangalore, we are somewhere in the zone of 50-60, right? And, and this number, probably, let's say, a quarterback would have been at 40-45. This number, another quarterback would have been at 30-35. So there is a continuous, consistent progress in even the first city because we continue to deepen, our costs continue to improve. More customers, like, more customers continue to open up, more customer segments continue to open up. Repeat rates continue to get better. Ability to, like, liquidity of the marketplace continues to improve.
Availability, which is very important, which is a network effects-driven phenomena where, you know, as marketplaces scale, like, it's very hard to beat them on, you know, availability, right? Because there are more trucks, you know, there are more, more, you know, shippers wanting to use it. Like, if there are more shippers, then more trucks will come in. If there are more trucks, then more shippers will come in, right? This whole virtuous cycle of the network effects, I think, you know, in that dimension, it's continuing to compound well. So if—And then similarly, as, as we mentioned, Hyderabad probably was a market which probably was launched, like, you know, a, a year or six, nine months later, is again on the similar path as Bangalore. Like, probably it would be, like, six months, always away from Bangalore.
So that had a much stronger takeoff in the beginning, right? So, so I would say that the playbook, if it is 100, where we can believe that we have significant scale in a market, which is, you know, called as a very, you know, a good, significant business, not the ideal, but the, you know, optimal stage where we can assume that the business is really working, you know, thumping the table. I think we are at 55%-60% level at, you know, building that playbook, and, we are consistently improving, and newer markets are following through, you know, the path which the first market followed. And we are also getting multiple newer avenues to, you know, really accelerate this marketplace, which I think, you know, leveraging technology, leveraging AI, we are able to do that, I think.
Yeah, so I think there's a lot of momentum there.
On the cost or the investment phase side, are we, like, kind of done—largely done the amount of investment we had to, which are largely fixed in nature, at least in the Bangalore side?
Yeah. See, the large fixed costs probably are done in terms of the top line, right? Like, the top levels of people and resources, right? But then the whole context is that, like, because there is, as you rightly said, right, there's an optimal scale also, which you need to hit, right? So for that, you need to keep investing. If we, let's say, assuming we pause investing in Bangalore, right? For example, right? We would break even in, like, few months, but then that's not the objective. The objective is to create a, you know, create a working capacity for that particular number so that, like, incremental profits can be way higher, right? So from an investment perspective, I would say good part is done, but not all.
Understood. Just one question on the tolling FASTag business. On the take rate that we get, you know, on that, I'm not talking about the, the gold programs, but on the take rate, has there been an improvement there?
As in overall, take rate from an India perspective, we're talking about?
Yes, the 18-
Blended-
Or something like that.
Yeah. See, blended because blended mix between partners, because one partner is at a higher take rate, which we get one partner, we get a lower take rate. The mix definitely has changed, so you may have seen some one bps or two bps kind of a change, which is not a material change, but yeah, you may have seen that.
Okay, but there's no major improvement there.
No standard change, no major improvement. Largely same.
Understood. All right. Thank you so much. And maybe one question for Satya. Sorry, so, you know, on the tax rate side, I mean, how should we model that going forward as well? And just want to understand, you know, has there been any change given that we had carry forward losses, but of course, I think, we are, you know, recognizing deferred taxes as well.
Yeah. So broadly, the current tax, you should always model on as 25% of other income. Right? Broadly, that should hold true. And, the deferred tax, you should model it as broadly about 25% of the EBITDA, excluding the other income. That's broadly how what should hold true.
So, going forward, just if we have to build ETR, it still would remain around the 25 for the consolidated overall entity?
That's correct.
Okay. Understood. Thank you.
Thank you.
Okay.
The next question is from Moez Chandani. Moez, please go ahead. Moez, please unmute yourself and go ahead.
Okay.
The next question is from Gaurav. Gaurav, please go ahead. Gaurav Rateria.
Am I audible?
Yes, please go ahead.
Yeah. Hi, congrats on great execution. Rajesh, my first question is on your comment that you made on if the playbook is 100 and we are 50, was it more to talk about the optimal a stage of business where you can say that, yeah, the business has reached a particular scale, or was it to say that you have reached a potential of 50 versus the total 100 is optimal size of the business in some of the cities?
Sorry, both sound similar, no, whatever you said. Can you repeat again, and I-
Yeah.
Let me understand it, please.
Yeah. So one is a bare minimum size, where you start calling out that your business has reached a particular scale, at which you can start calling it out as a different segment, individually in these cities. And the second comment was more to say that, okay, the maximum potential in the city is 100, and I have already reached 50. Means that headroom to grow is-
to just double the size from here on.
It's, it's actually neither of these definitions. It's more like, if we reach and hit that scale of 100, we know how to build this business fully, and, like, after that, it's only replication and expansion. So that's what I meant. And at that 100, we will be under 5% of the market. Sorry, under 5% of act... under 2.5% of the overall market, and of the TAM, under 5%. So it would be, like, big headroom to grow still after that.
Okay. Okay, got it. Okay. And secondly, are we still targeting mostly the transporters? Or there will be a stage at which, you know, we will be directly possibly contracting with the shippers as well, and the scope of the business will expand substantially.
As we've articulated, like, you know, our marketplace strategy, right? The end shippers are two. One is SMEs, and other is basically corporates, right? Corporates are not equipped to work on a platform, a spot, kind of a platform, like, you know, where they can decide on a daily basis the rates. They will never, ever come to a spot platform. And that also involves working capital and involves the old relationship management, which is a little bit sticky and unscalable, right? So we don't believe in that business. SMBs, we've already started working, as we've always articulated. There are various markets in which we are probably doing a good share of the business from SMBs.
So SMBs, we are directly working, which is largely spot and cash and carry, and we will continue to work with transporters, through which the enterprise demand will essentially get channelized. So that's how we will be working, and we will never go to the end shippers because that's not a market, you know, we would want to directly interact with.
Got it. Last question for Satya. If you look at your investments in the growth businesses, is it fair to say that a substantial scale-up has happened in FY 26 so far and not so much in FY 25, and therefore, the incremental EBITDA margin that you see, whatever margin has come down compared to last year is largely due to the investments in growth? And if you were to exclude that, you know, incremental margins would probably would not have changed compared to what you have already delivered in FY 25.
Yeah, so the scale-up on the growth businesses significantly has happened in the current quarter. So, you know, we—as Rajesh has articulated consistently, the operating leverage in the core business continues to be supremely high, right? So, I mean, whatever we used to deliver in the past, so that continues to be the case. So, yeah, whatever dampening has happened on the EBITDA side from an operating leverage point of view is primarily or mostly driven by the investments in the growth businesses.
It's all that.
Yeah.
All right. Thank you, and all the very best.
Thank you. The next question is from Ankush Agrawal. Ankush, please go ahead. Unmute yourself and go ahead. Ankush? The next question is from... From Anil Sarin, Anil Sarin. Can you please go ahead? Immediately. Losing you, Mark. Fuck. Did you time freeze?
Can you hear me?
Yes, yes. Please go ahead.
Oh, fantastic. Sorry, my mic was on mute. So, Rajesh, first of all, very good performance. I'm still not sure about the Superloads business. What I see is a kind of a 21% QOQ growth, which includes vehicle finance also. So, is this the trend that one can sort of forecast for the coming quarters? I mean, is this the pace that you are comfortable operating at? That is one part of my question. Second is that what is the fixed cost currently? And assuming a kind of a certain, you know, rollout, what is the EBITDA margin potential? Suppose you are able to reach your ideal situation, where you said the playbook is 100.
Suppose you are able to roll out all 100 products and, you know, offerings, what is the steady-state EBITDA margin potential of the Superloads business?
... Yeah. See, the first question in terms of, like, first of all, like, the growth businesses are very dynamic in nature, so ability to really, you know, give a guidance on what kind of a growth we can expect sequentially as we keep moving forward is a little hard. But, as you rightly asked, it's a blend of, you know, both. And again, re-emphasizing vehicle finance, like we only-- like, let's say, you know, incorporate the commission revenue, which we get from our partners. The loans are on partners', you know, books, so it's largely a commission-driven business for us.
These businesses are in the nature where we would want to take, if we want to take hard calls in some quarter to really do the right things for the long term, we will do that. So hence, they are in nature, a bit dynamic. So I would, you know, like, we would when these businesses are at a stage where we would be able to give some forward visibility, you know, you guys will hear it from us. At this point in time, I would only, you know, articulate that these are new businesses, and they are very dynamic in nature, and, you know, it's very hard to project them out.
Question number two is, I think in terms of, the businesses we've built, and even what we're building, most of them operate at a very high, contribution profit businesses. Even the Superloads business, from the net revenue downwards, typically has a very high contribution margin because the direct costs to the business are pretty low. And at the productivity levels, which, let's say, so assuming we also operate this business with like, you know, agents and people in our teams. So as the business matures, if we take the matured cohorts today, right, they typically break even in, like, three to four months of addition in our company as well already, right? Number one.
And number two, the cohorts, which are, like, 6, 9 months old, they would already be delivering, you know, an EBITDA of, like, 30%, 40%. So this business can easily be modeled at the same EBITDA as our core businesses, and we believe the nature of the business, nature of the revenue at a net revenue level of the overall company by the addition of Superloads is largely going to be similar as we project out in a very, very long term. And that long term, you articulated that rolling out multiple products. Actually, there are no multiple products. It's only very simple service of, you know, getting a load from us. If the trucker is in the city and we're able to find him a load, he picks the load from us, then we earn a commission, and that commission is our net revenue.
Then, you know, it's we will probably, you know, we'll probably be able to demonstrate that maybe 50%-60% of that net revenue can flow into EBITDA on a long-term basis when the, you know, when the stability sort of comes in. Yeah. So that's broadly-
Sir-
the color of,
Sir, thanks. I just had a small follow-up. See, in the classified side, you make like, let's say, 25 + 12, roughly INR 37 per load that you find on the classified side. However, if one sort of benchmarks against what the unorganized brokers get per load, assuming a INR 50,000 rupee kind of a trip, and these people make around 10% of that, this is my understanding from hearing your calls in the past. So they make roughly, let's say, INR 5,000. Even if you go in at a little bit of a discount and you say, "I make INR 3,000," that's a very, very different kind of a revenue against a similar kind of a cost structure. So two questions, I'm asking, basically. If you were to reach...
I mean, firstly, is this 3,000, 4,000 per trip figure anywhere close to reality? That is one. And second, if it is close to reality, then your EBITDA margin should be much, much higher than what you have indicated.
Yeah. So, you're absolutely right in constructing the whole equation, right? I'll just articulate the difference in both the businesses. In classifieds business, people figure out each other. We manage the communication through only a, like, let's say we record the communication, but we don't have control on what price they are doing, what all, how will they execute the whole in transit, the whole payment flow through, and we are not accountable for even the trucker receiving the money effectively, right? So that's classifieds, which is low touch, and we get a subscription revenue. It's not a per load revenue. So it's whatever you mentioned is more an implied revenue.
So let's say if a shipper is posting loads, we sell him a subscription package for a period of six months for INR 2,500-INR 3,000, and he gets access to, you know, probably posting, two hundred loads or something like that, right? So that's the model in which the revenue gets accrued to us, point number one, and similar concept on the, on the trucker side as well. When you flip this into Superloads, right? Think of it as when you are basically browsing, you know, trying to buy products on Amazon, and there are, like, products which are basically fulfilled by Amazon versus basically third-party sellers, right? So on which there's a fulfilled by Amazon tick, we typically have that trust of converting that, "Hey, the Amazon is doing all of this.
My returns will be easier, everything will be easier." So think of it as on the classified styles only, there is a BlackBuck Superloads style, which the trucker knows that payments, end-to-end execution, everything will be done by BlackBuck, right. Now, to be able to execute this, we typically have built out the whole value prop, which our offline broker does into various teams. A broker in the market, which you rightly said, earns INR 4,000-INR 5,000 a transaction, does his own supply development. In our case, that comes from our platform. Second, he himself goes to the market, does his demand development. We have our own demand team in the market, right? He himself does the whole payments flow, you know, payments, collections, and everything. For that, we have our own, like, payments and execution team, which sort of does that.
Internal to BlackBuck, we typically have an agent who basically, you know, essentially coordinates the whole matchmaking process and is essentially the key account manager for both the shipper and for the trucker, for the whole end-to-end transaction. These are incremental and additional costs to the classifieds model, which we incur, and that is the reason why the steady-state EBITDA number, it will not be 90, 95, but then essentially it will be in the range of that 50%, you know, because there is a cost to, you know, executing all of these aspects.
Okay, fair, fair enough. Only one part you left out, Rajesh. Is a 3,000 per trip a fair ask?
Yeah. So, so in the longer lanes, so whatever you quoted, INR 50,000 is actually national average pan-India. That would be between INR 40,000 and INR 50,000. Today, we operate largely regional lanes where the, you know, ARPUs are much smaller. Basically, we largely do the South-based lanes where we originate, probably in Bangalore, end in Hyderabad, end in Chennai, end in Mumbai, end in Kerala, and end within Karnataka. I think assuming this is the kind of network we have, so obviously the lead distances are very small, right, today, and hence the revenue which you're projecting, an INR 3,000 kind of a number from a pan-India basis, is very highly likely possible. Yeah.
Got it. Got it. And in terms of going national, considering your sphere of influence is essentially southern areas, as you said, intra-state and intra-Southern states, what is the likelihood of success in areas where you naturally do not dominate? Let's say Northern India and Eastern India-
I think-
Central India.
Yeah. I think your question also had certain assumptions. Your assumptions were that we are predominantly a southern-driven company. I think that's not true because our supply, our platform, the supply on the platform is pretty much secular all across the country. In fact, like states like Rajasthan, we enjoy like something like a 70% kind of a market share, like. So, and like states like Andhra, which are still not like fully plowed by us, we enjoy 50, 55, 60% kind of a market share. So our market shares are anywhere in the range of 15%-20% to as high as 70% from a long-haul, big-capacity trucks.
The platform is really widely secular because the fleet management business is present everywhere across the country, in like 80-85%, 90% of the pin codes, right? Our ability to execute is fundamentally desired by the platform we have built. That platform is present everywhere, and we have very high market shares in multiple other cities. It's about unlocking this business, creating this whole, you know, whatever I talked about, right? A particular hub is a composition of all these, like, you know, capabilities which we need to build in that hub. We go there, we activate that market, build all these capabilities, we unlock that business. That's how the entire replication will happen.
So, as you roll out pan-India hubs and spokes and everything, won't the lead distance also increase, and won't the-
Of course
-average-
It will increase.
Uh-
Yes.
Uh, uh, uh-
It will increase.
Anil, Anil, can we
Thank you.
We have, Yeah. Thank you.
Thank you.
The next, next question is from, we'll take the last question for the day from Moez Chandani. Moez, please go ahead. Moez, please unmute yourself. That was the last question for the day. I now hand over the conference to Mr. Rajesh for his closing comments. Thank you, and over to you.
Yeah, I think that's all from my side. I'll just rearticulate that I think we're just consistently doing what we're doing from last two years, three years, and nothing is changing, and we continue to be excited quarter after quarter, because last quarter, actually, we had a lot of good revelations in terms of what we could do and how could we really recraft the journey ahead. Yeah, continue to build. Thank you so much for attending the call and look forward towards speaking to you guys next quarter. Thank you.
Thank you once again for your time and participation. On behalf of BlackBuck Limited, this concludes today's conference. For any questions, please feel free to write to us on the email IDs mentioned on the invite. We appreciate your engagement, and you may now disconnect your line.