Ladies and gentlemen, good day, and welcome to the business update conference call of CarTrade Tech Limited. This conference call is to discuss the acquisition of OLX India's Classifieds and Auto business in India, and the discussions will be limited to this acquisition only. This conference call may contain forward-looking statements about the company, which are based on the beliefs, opinions, and expectations of the company as on date of this call.
These statements are not the guarantees of future performance and involve risks and uncertainties that are difficult to predict. As a reminder, all participant lines will be in a 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 ten zero on your touchtone phone. Please note that this conference is being recorded.
I now hand the conference over to Mr. Vinay Sanghi, Chairman and Managing Director, CarTrade Tech Limited. Thank you, over to you, sir.
Good morning, everybody, welcome to this analyst call. You know, it gives me great pleasure to announce the acquisition of OLX's business in India. We have acquired 100% of Sobek Auto, which houses two distinct business verticals. There's a classified business, which you all know as OLX on our phones, there's a C2B or consumer-to-business automotive transaction business. These are two distinct business verticals of Sobek, we've acquired 100% of Sobek Auto. This acquisition was at a total cost of INR 535 crore. In the company, Sobek itself has approximately about INR 115 crore of liquid assets or cash, which would take our equity acquisition value to about INR 420 odd crore. This acquisition entails acquiring 100% of the shares.
Sobek Auto also signed a business transfer agreement to acquire the entire OLX India classified business from OLX India, it owns the classified business as well. Sobek Auto also entered into a brand agreement, brand license agreement for 20 years with OLX, the global holding company, and entered also into a technology transfer agreement.
All the technology created by OLX in India transfers to Sobek Auto, which will in a way, transfer to our ownership. We're really excited to announce this. We believe that it's a fantastic acquisition for our entire portfolio. As, as I said, there are two distinct businesses. The OLX classified business, which carries an element of automotive and non-automotive. Automotive here is about 50% of the entire business, and the non-automotive side is another 50%.
Non-automotive categories include electronics, jobs, you know, furniture, real estate, et cetera, et cetera. We, we also, we acquired the C2B transaction business, which, of course, 100% automotive. Last year, they transacted almost 50,000 vehicles in that business. So these are two distinct verticals which we acquired.
Just some key metrics. It's the largest used classified platform in India, over 100 million downloads. What we love about the classified business is it's a lot, like our current businesses, where it's a very large amount of organic traffic or traffic that they don't pay for, and that's one of the reasons why the classified business is extremely profitable. They get monthly, 35 million unique visitors per month, almost 32 million listings per year. Very, very dominant in the listing space.
On the transaction side, they inspected 350,000 vehicles for auction, sold at a rate of about 35,000 vehicles a year in the last month. The GMV on the transaction side is INR 1,660 crores. The total net revenue for the company, which is the classifieds and the transaction, this is the revenue on the fee, not, not the, not the GMV. It's approximately INR 285 crores. It's a cash-free balance. The classified business and the financials have been circulated.
The classified business itself has a revenue of INR 177 crore out of this, and it has a profit before tech cost, and I'll come back to tech cost, but before tech cost of INR 111 crore, which is a high-margin business. The transaction business has a GMV of INR 1,600 crore, a net revenue of INR 108 crore, and these are all July annualized numbers, and has a loss of approximately INR 89 crore per year, at a run rate of INR 89 crore a year.
This has come down over a period of time. One of our big objectives, you know, going forward immediately, is to fix the unit economics in the transaction business. The classified business is extremely profitable already.
If we combine these numbers of the transaction business, classified business, we get a GMV of INR 1,837 crore, a net revenue of INR 285 crore, and a profit before tech costs of approximately INR 23 crore, at a run rate of INR 23 crore per year. Which will mean the classified is highly profitable, and the transaction business, C2B transaction business, is of course losing money, but of high potential in the future. What we'd like to do immediately as an action is, you know, is fix the unit economics in the transaction business and bring down the loss there immediately, and of course, keep continuing growing the classified business. There's also a tech transition which is taking place.
The entire technology built for running OLX in India has to be transferred, and that tech transfer or tech transition is going on. We expect it to be absolutely complete sometime between December this year and March 2024, that work is underway. So it's owned, it is all the entire tech in India will be owned by Sobek Auto India, which is the company we acquired.
There will be a cost for this transfer. Approximately, we feel even though the transaction value of the purchase price was INR 535 crore, minus the cash, which is INR 120 crore, there'll be an additional cost of approximately roughly INR 60 crore till March on the entire tech transfer and the migration of the tech.
Post-March, the tech costs will dramatically come down as we completely have it in-house with our own tech teams, to, to, to manage and, and grow the technology and products of this business. You know, these are very high-level amount of data here. As I said, extremely excited about both the classified and the transaction business.
Although the transaction business requires the unit economics to get fixed, as you know, our track record over the last few years of fixing unit economics in businesses, we will, of course, attempt to do so here as well. When we look at the classified side, it's also the, the first time part of this business has got a non-automotive side, which we're extremely excited about, the electronic side, jobs, homes, furniture, et cetera, et cetera.
Of course, we are extremely excited by the automotive side itself, which is 50% of its business. As we said, you know, for us, the next it, it, in many ways, changes the way we look at the CarTrade Tech Group over the next two to three, four years. When you look at the total users, when you add 35 million users here and another 34 million in CarWale, BikeWale and the other platforms of the group, we're almost at 68 million users per month, which is a phenomenal number. Of course, takes our revenues and profitability to another level of scale. This is what I had. I think we circulated a presentation earlier. I'm happy to go into question, answers, and clarify all your doubts on the acquisition.
I just want to reiterate how excited and happy we are to be able to get this done. Thank you.
Should we open the floor for Q&A? Thank you very much. We will now begin the question-and-answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may press star and one on their touchtone telephone. If you wish to remove yourself from the question queue, you may press star and two. Participants are requested to use handsets while asking a question. Ladies and gentlemen, we will wait for a moment while the question queue assembles. Our first question is from the line of Siddhartha Bera from Nomura. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Hi, sir. Thanks for the opportunity.
Good morning, sir. Thank you.
Good morning. On the classified business, I had a couple of questions. First is, I mean, some color can you share in terms of the history, how these revenues have grown, say, in the last couple of years? Given, as you are integrating into our current business, any thoughts you have on next three to five years, where do you want to see in terms of the scale for this business? Second is, I mean, on the margin side, we understand that INR 60 crore will be the one-time cost of tech transfer. After that, say, from maybe Q1 of next year, what can be the sustainable amount of this tech cost, which may come?
What will be the synergy benefits given that we already have a big classified sort of business? How to understand the synergy benefits between this and the new OLX business?
Sure. I think the first thing was the growth rate, right? Over the last three years, some of the data will become clearer in the next few calls we have. Roughly, the growth is about 20% in the last couple of years for the classified business. That's the first question you had. I think, I think over a period of time, the investments from OLX globally has been in the transaction business.
We, of course, believe that the classified business is extremely valuable, and we want to make a lot of attempts to invest in the classified business and, you know, look at catering to all these 30-odd million users. That's the first question you had asked. I think the second one, the tech costs.
The tech costs are being incurred really for a period of six months to transition this, and these costs are global costs are being incurred to OLX with OLX globally to transition the tech and use the services for this period. We believe that eventually sometime between, you know, as I said, January and March next year, we will incur or have our own teams running technology and products for this company. We're in the process of making that transition. At that point, we believe the costs will come down dramatically, maybe by 40%-60%, at least we feel, we believe that. That's the second part. The third question was around margins next year, right? The classified business is extremely high margin.
You can see INR 111 crore trading profit, right, before tech costs. We definitely think these margins will continue in the classified business. We believe that the margins on the transaction C2B business will change, and even we feel pretty confident that we'll bring down the cost to get to a very, you know, a reasonable unit economics in that business. Our attempt is to fix unit economics in one business, grow the classified business and its profitability and revenue, and transfer the tech internally, right? Will be the three basic objectives for the next few months.
C2B transaction business, I think 6.5% net revenue margins are quite healthy. Can you slightly detail in which areas the unit economics is not currently good and we need to address that? And if I look at over the next couple of years, the business scale, as you have said, it has come down from 50,000 to 35,000 now. So for the next couple of years, what will be our top priority? Will it be growing the business or maybe bringing down the losses? Some thoughts here.
Yes, I think there are two, three areas of cost. I think, of course, one is the cost of marketing, right? Which we feel we, with this whole acquisition and synergy, and giving access to CarWale customers also to a C2B platform, should bring down the marketing costs. I think that's the first objective for us. Then the various intricate processes which are being, you know, done in the transaction business right now, a flavor of which we said in the presentation as well, which we obviously want to bring down and optimize, right? Without sacrificing customer centricity, right? You have to remember that OLX and this is a global business, and therefore, historically, there were lots of costs which existed, which we feel we can pull out of the system, at the same time enhance customer experience, right?
That clearly in the transaction business, it is not the focus. On the classified business, I said, highly profitable growth is the focus. On the transaction business, we are looking system unit economics. Even if we sacrifice a little of growth, we're definitely going to fix the unit economics first.
Got it. Marketing costs will be what percentage of, maybe, I don't know, net revenue or gross revenue, and what is a sustainable number you can look at there?
Yeah, we, we feel that, you know, we want to bring it down to, you know, as you've seen CarWale, and you've seen OLX, the classified business, we, we like organic businesses where customers come because of experience and not because we spend a lot of money on marketing. I think it's pretty similar here. We want to make sure the transaction business is really getting customers from OLX, the classified platform, or CarWale, and, and really on, and coming on because it's a superior customer experience we can provide, and not being very strong on marketing costs. We're very clear that we're bringing it down from what it is today.
Got it, sir. Thanks a lot. I will come back and let you know.
Thank you. Thanks, though. Thank you.
Thank you. Our next question is from the line of Sachin Dixit from JM Financial. Please go ahead, sir.
Yeah, hi. I had a bunch of questions. First one, basically with regards to this transaction service, possible to share any data on unit economics, because right now the timing is very, very high level, like, we, we don't know what is happening.
Yeah.
There is almost an INR 200 crore cost item between the net revenue and PBT, profit.
Yeah, we will, we will give you a split up in future calls, and, of course, give a cost build up. But the two basic costs are people cost and marketing costs. Marketing for customer acquisition costs, and people are really for conducting all the processes which are required, even though this is. I, I can, I can elaborate a little bit of the process. The process really involves the customer coming into OLX, the transaction business, and asking for an inspection. The vehicle is inspected at the customer or seller's house, which is you or me. When the vehicle is inspected at the seller's premises, the vehicle is auctioned to a large number of dealers in India. There's a, there's an auction price which comes out.
Once the auction price comes out, OLX also buys that vehicle from the customer, keeps it for a day or two, and then sells, and then collects money from the dealer which won the auction and delivers it to the dealer. It's like a C2B platform, even though there's no risk on the transaction, because every quote given to a customer got a back-to-back dealer quote. It does hold inventory for two to three days in that process, a very low amount of inventory. It's almost asset light, but it does hold it, right? This is the process. There most of the costs are the certification cost, you know, the operating costs of picking up the vehicle, keeping it, giving it to the dealer. That engine or that cost is what the people costs are.
Another cost of marketing is the customer acquisition. Obviously, we feel that in this process, there's a bit of optimization, which we can obviously do, right? That's what we feel.
there will also be some cost of warehousing, et cetera, right? Because if you are.
Sorry?
In the past, warehousing, because-
Yeah, there is some cost, but it's not significant. There is a cost of keeping the vehicle for that three days. There is some cost, that's it.
Okay. my next question is with regards to basically the profit-
That's also that we might see some synergy, because Shriram Automall have 130 auto malls in India, so we might see some cost synergy there. Just in, in stocking the vehicle. Sorry, Sachin, sorry. Yeah, we might see some synergy there in cost.
My next question was on basically the profitability of this entire business, right? Currently, pre-PBT profit is INR 23 crore. Even if we assume that the 40%-60% dip in tech costs that you talked about, which is currently roughly INR 10 crore a month, actually happens, so you still have at least INR 5 crore tech cost a month, which is INR 60 crore of annualized numbers. Basically, combining.
Yeah, somewhere that we'll be saying to bring it down to. That's right. We also see the, the, the transaction losses coming down dramatically, right? That's what we see.
Right. I mean, basically, so INR 50 crore, assuming that the tech costs are coming down and then the transaction unit economics also improves further. Net, net, this entity might continue giving us losses for maybe the next fiscal year, at least. Is that right?
Yeah, yeah, we feel pretty confident that should happen. That's completely right.
No, I meant, like, the, the entity might continue in losses for the next fiscal year.
Oh, no, no, I don't think so, because, if you have 111 cost profit in one business, and you're able to bring the same to the other one, and then your tech costs is now being profitable in the company. We feel pretty confident that next year, post the PBT costs, it'll be profitable.
Understood, sir. Just one final question, this is more on like what differentiates basically CarTrade from some of the peers, right? When you think of OLX, which was running this transaction business earlier, they have a lot of classified or free traffic, as you have mentioned. Your peer CarDekho, which also has a similar business model as a CarWale model, where there is a lot of organic free traffic. They also did this transaction business, and they actually shut it down and then gave a public interview that this business can never make money. What is giving you the confidence that you can actually improve those unit economics if OLX has not managed to do it, CarDekho has not managed to do it? Obviously, we know about CarTrade for now.
Sure. Yeah, you're right. I feel one is the model itself is less asset-heavy. Marketing costs needs to come down. There are tweaks. I think the fact that there have to be tweaks in the processes, to make sure that the economics changes, right? Staying asset light. I feel that 1 of the things we're gonna focus on is sticking to our core principles at CarTrade Tech Group, which is staying asset light, and that's why we've always been profitable. Applying these rules to C2B transaction business, we feel pretty good that we will be able to turn it around, but anyway, bring down the losses. We feel pretty confident about that.
Okay, sure. Thanks.
Thank you. Before we take the next question, a reminder to all participants that you may press star and one to ask a question. Our next question is from the line of Vijit Jain from Citi. Please go ahead.
Yeah, hi. Thank you. Hi, Vinay. Hi. I have two questions. One is on the classified business. If I look at this number, right, INR 177 crore, this is pretty similar to what you have in your standalone business as well, right? I mean, give or take, but a pretty highly profitable business at INR 111 crore. So I'm just trying to understand what makes the profitability here so high, given that, you know, your marketing spend itself also is not especially too high, right? So, how. I mean, the cost structure is just INR 60 crore for OLX's classified business entirely in India. Is that how I, we should understand it?
For OLX Classified, that is correct at this point. You remember that the PBT or the tech cost is kept out of this.
Right.
There will be some tech costs here, which will bring down that INR 100,000,000 crore itself.
Okay.
Beyond that, I think one is to also keep in mind that OLX is a general purpose classified it's a horizontal. CarWale is a verticalized business.
Right.
There is someone like you, and I think that's one of the things we're very excited about. There's someone like you who's selling a car today on OLX, and 100 million people have got it on their phone, and tomorrow, that same person selling, a, you know, a, a phone, and third day selling a furniture item. The user base is, is one of the few platforms in India which has got a very strong listing, 32 million listings a year. That's a phenomenal number, right? There's no equivalent of this marketplace in the country, right? There's so many listings coming up every year. Many of them are paid, so people pay to list their product. Consumer like you and me pay, right?
Right.
I think that the business is quite slightly different from CarWale. CarWale is a verticalized automotive, new car, 80% new car, new vehicle business. This is a used product, all used products are sold on OLX, right?
Mm-hmm.
Obviously, classified is completely asset light, again, very almost zero marketing cost. Therefore, the unit economics are extremely good, and that's one reason we're excited about the whole transaction.
Got it. Vinay, just to clarify, the product and tech costs that you talk about, the $1.2 million a month, which will come down by 50%-60% next year. Just one thing, is this primarily people cost or there's infrastructure costs?
Obviously, people more. It's, it's, it's the cost of the global OLX network to deliver this tech to us. Obviously, it is, it is in their environment right now. It's not in, in our environment, which means infrastructure or every cost is, is, is incurred by them globally. I think for us, we obviously believe that, whether it is people cost, whether it is shared services cost, it will dramatically come down once we take it over in India.
I see. Would that entail, you taking over some of the employees which are currently still within OLX's global entity?
Yes, the intent is, the intent is to do that because they have very, very high quality talent there, number one. These people are actually involved in building the global product. The intent is to do that. The intent also bringing people from out. I think it's a combination of both. There's already a core team of people that will transition internally.
Okay.
from the global team to our, you know, tech team to look at this product going forward.
Got it. Understood. My second question is on this C2B transactions business. Just trying to understand from a dealer perspective, you know, you, you, your whole platform as an offering to, let's say, used car dealers overall, you obviously have abSure, you have Shriram Automall, and there'll be a dealer network for this business you're acquiring as well. So is there, is there a decent level of overlap there? You know, is there a thought to kind of combining your dealer interface here so that, you know, you show a combined unified offering to dealer and, I don't know, maybe optimize how much you can make out of those dealers? Just your general thought on how, how much of, from a dealer perspective, these three businesses overlap.
Yeah, there is an overlap in terms of what the dealer needs to do with all these platforms, or there may be some overlap on the dealers itself. The different way we're connecting with dealers right now, one is, you know, people, dealers, can buy vehicles on OLX's transaction platform. Dealers can. It's also the largest used-car dealer selling network on OLX Classifieds, most, most dealers in India will list their cars on OLX for sale to customers, on some classified side of the business, right? Already OLX caters to dealers who want to buy cars and dealers who want to sell their cars, right, automatically, right? CarWale caters to all dealers who want to buy cars and sell cars as well. And there is an overlap there.
Shriram Automall caters to dealers who want to buy cars in auction, right, as well. There is an overlap in all these three. I think our intent would be to in the, in the, in the medium term, not the short term, is to look at tech, which enables dealers to seamlessly do it, right? I think that's the intent here on any of these platforms. That, that's a, that's a tough job, but I go over to the medium term to integrate tech in a way that is seamless for a dealer to interact with any of these platforms. That would be the intent, just for sheer convenience. If you want to buy a vehicle on CarWale or sell it or OLX, to seamlessly be able to do so as a dealer. That's the intent here.
That will take some time and make it very convenient for dealers, actually. But I also want to stress here that the intent is to run OLX as an independent subsidiary, 100% subsidiary, which is, it's got a phenomenal classified side to it and a transaction side and a very different set of users. As I said, users on OLX are people who have an app on their phone and, you know, use it for multiple things, not just auto.
Mm-hmm. Got it. Got it. Great, thanks. Those are my questions, Vinay.
Sure.
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, you may press star and one to ask a question. Our next question is from the line of Rahul Ranade from Goldman Sachs Asset Management. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Hi, hi. Thanks, Vinay. Thanks.
Rahul.
Congratulations to you.
Thank you.
Thank you. Just wanted to clarify one thing. From a customer standpoint, CarWale and OLX will continue to exist separately, right?
Oh, absolutely. CarWale is, first of all, 80% new, right? OLX is 100% used. The objective is to allow customers the capability of the best of everything, whether it's OLX or CarWale, absolutely. Both will exist, both will grow, both have offered very different value to the user, right?
Suppose there's a person who wants to list, you know, a car for sale, he will have to do it separately on an OLX and on a CarWale as a customer.
We haven't. You know, that, that's the in CarWale and OLX, one overlap is customer listing a used car for sale or dealer listing a used car for sale. The intent will be over time, as I said, in the medium term, make it seamlessly easy. If a user wants to list on CarWale and or OLX or only on CarWale or only on OLX, right, make it simple for them to do so, whether it's a dealer or an individual. I, I think we'll enable at some point the capability for consumers or dealers to do so, but we'll probably leave the choice to the user what they want to do. But we'll try and make tech in a way or, and, or handle the tech in a way that is seamlessly easy.
Sure. Sure. Just one more clarification. If I were to look at this INR 177 crore of classified revenues, you said half is auto. About INR 90 odd crore is used auto in OLX versus around a INR 25-30 crore kind of a number in terms of our standalone used auto. Would that be the right comparison, that OLX used auto is 3x-4 x of CarTrade used auto?
The classified side is, the used classified side is correct.
Yeah, yeah.
The group also has used auctions with the Shriram Automall. It's a 100% used.
Correct. Yeah, yeah, I know.
On the classified side, OLX is much, much bigger on the used car. That also is something that actually excited us when we looked at the acquisition. They've got a sizable used classified business, which is multiple times CarWale. That's absolutely correct.
Sure. Sure, sure. Vinay, then, to your mind, how important is this, you know, asset-heavy, C2B kind of business in terms of OLX perspective? You know, where, you know, if you were to kind of improve the unit economics on that, the effort on that would also in some way, you know, start curtailing volumes in terms of that as well, right? Will that have an effect in terms of the classified fees of used autos in OLX getting impacted in some way?
Not at all. The classified is not connected with this at all. The classified actually is the whole. It's like a universal marketplace, right?
Mm-hmm.
The C2B in some way is an option for a classified user to go through this path. The C2B doesn't affect the classified. In fact, the classified affect the C2B at all. It's the other way around.
Mm.
The classified universe is just so large, and C2B is a fraction, just an absolute fraction of what the classified users are, right? It's a very, very small segment of all classified users come to C2B at all. In fact, one of our attempts is to get more users in classifieds through C2B, but it's, it's actually very small at this stage. The classified is almost like the mother and the C2B like a child, right, in a way, in some way. I think our attempt with the C2B business, see, what we want to do is what we've done with Shriram Automall, what we've done, you know, or what OLX is trying to do, both are auction businesses. We want to enable a seller, someone like you or me or a.
In Shriram Automall's case, it could be a business seller, like a bank. We want to enable a system where they get an immediate price in a transparent, and you get a price in an immediate, you know, in a immediately in a transparent manner, right? Using, and getting some kind of price discovery. Now, the question is: How do you fix the unit economics to do so? For us, it is imperative that when we do something like this, the customer must get fantastic value and the business must make money. I think that's the basic fundamental reason which we want to work through, and we've got to fix it. I think we will make sure that, you know, we first fix this before we, you know, start looking at growing volumes, et cetera, et cetera.
The first goal would really to make sure that we understand how to. Whether it's marketing costs, how do we make sure we fix this first, our processes? I think that's our intent at this point.
Sure, sure. In terms of the non-auto classified, the 50% part of the classified revenue, so over there, should we think of it as a well-oiled machine and no, you know, major investment, et cetera, will be required on the non-auto side, and that will continue to chug along?
Absolutely. I think, I think the non-auto is not requiring cash investment. It will, it will move around, it will keep going, but, but we want to make sure that we take advantage of the categories that exist out there. Many of them are under-monetized, very under-monetized, right? It's probably the largest destination where people sell electronics or other items, right? We want to make sure that we with, with great products, we make it easier for a user to do so and grow those businesses. And, and we are, of course, we're excited about the auto classified side, but we're also excited about the non-automotive side of the business.
Got it. Got it.
But if you're asking, it requires cash investment, it's no, these businesses don't require cash investment.
Yeah, yeah. Anything you do probably will be in the existing categories that you've highlighted, right? Electronics, one, furniture, et cetera, would be another, jobs-
Homes.
Jobs, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Got it. Good. Thanks, thanks, thanks a lot.
Thank you. Thanks.
Thank you. Our next question is from the line of Nishit Jalan from Axis Capital. Please go ahead.
Yeah, hi. Hi, good morning, on, company.
Thank you.
Yeah, just 2, 3, first clarifications, then I'll come to my questions.
Sure.
Number 1, we will continue to be allowed to use the OLX brand in India after the acquisition, right?
The good thing, yeah, yeah, we, we signed up an IP licensing agreement for 20 years.
Will the outgo for this be meaningful or it will be a small number?
No, it's not meaningful. It's a small number. It's not.
Okay. Okay. Secondly, you talked about bringing down the marketing cost. Can you give us a rough idea, if not the actual numbers, or what kind of marketing cost range is OLX incurring? Just wanted to see what could be the, what could be the reduction that you can do from there.
Roughly, it's about at the rate of INR 40 crore a year at this point on the transaction side, at this point. It's higher, much higher.
INR 40 crore.
It is much higher down the road.
INR 40 crore is the total marketing spend of OLX in India? That's, that's the right way to look at it.
At this point, yes, correctly.
Okay, okay. Thirdly, your, your presentation talks about that the tech transfer cost will last till December, and from January it will be completed and everything, but you mentioned March somewhere.
Actually, that project's underway. It's between somewhere in January and March. That's what I said.
Okay. So basically the real, the actual date would be?
It could be January, it could be January, it could be March, yeah, I mean, this.
Okay. basically FY 2020. by end FY 2024, it will be done and dusted.
Yes, that is correct. That is correct.
Okay. Just one last thing on OLX. What I understand is OLX is looking to sell their auto business globally, and this transaction is a part of that strategy which they are following globally. Is that, is that the right understanding? If yes, then are basically, was OLX also looking to sell the non-auto, auto business, or it came as a parcel and you had to buy the non-auto business also? Just wanted to understand the thought process around that.
No, clearly, when we were first told, we were excited about the auto business, because that's what, you know, CarTrade Tech is about, you know, automotive marketplaces. That was the first intent, we were excited about that. As we went on, it became apparent that it's the entire classified and the automotive business. To be honest, you know, the non-auto also excited us, because we saw the data and the numbers. We just saw the categories which are not created and can be created in India, and they were very strong, you know, very, very strong added. It did excite us much and make us actually got a few more excited about the transaction after that.
Okay, okay. The marketing, let's say, channels or where you market to get, to get, traffic for your auto-related customers and for non-auto customers will be very different. Don't you think that? For that reason, basically the marketing cost you will need to continue to incur for at least the non-automotive business.
The marketing costs on OLX is entirely automotive business, not the non-automotive business. First, this INR 40 crore is incurred entirely in the automotive business, entirely in the transaction side of the business, not, not in the non-automotive. I said earlier, if you have, you know, so many downloads on a phone, I think it's the same user putting up a car today, you know, putting up another item tomorrow, right? Using it to buy a home, right, or, or, or rent a home. I think the user is the same, and I think that's what they're excited about. Unlike CarWale, where someone will come to buy a new car or sell a car once in three years, the user actually uses this very often.
I think that leads to, you know, very low marketing costs or almost no marketing costs, because this, the app is used for multiple purposes. The user always just stays on.
Okay, okay. On the classified business, just wanted to understand, I would assume that there are two revenue streams. One would be the advertisement revenues, and second could also be basically the the listing charges or subscription packages which OLX will be charging to the dealers, right? Is that a correct understanding?
I'll give you. There are basically four different revenue streams.
Mm-hmm.
There's one stream, which is used car dealers, classified revenues, right?
Mm-hmm.
The second is listing fees from consumers, like, you know, me selling a product, right? It could be a car, it could be an electronic item, could be anything. The third revenue is ad sales, which is advertisers putting, you know, advertisements on OLX. The fourth stream of revenue is dealers of non-automotives advertising on OLX. So basically, four streams.
Okay. And, while, maybe at some point in the future, I would appreciate if you can share the breakdown broadly.
Absolutely.
Right to assume that the ads will be a bigger part of it, or it will be the fees which will be a bigger part of it?
Well, see, I, I, in the order, the used classified is the largest. The other three are like. I mean, I would say ad sale is the second largest, probably, but similar. All the others are similar.
. Okay. See, if I, if I look at, you also have a used car dealer business where you-
Yes.
-where you allow the dealers to to take subscription packages and, and list their products at your website, right? So there will be-
Right.
The point here is, I think you alluded to this, but at some point of time, if you can, if you can articulate the medium-term strategy, because, see, you have a lot of overlap in the business, right? Your used car business and OLX's used car business. I'm assuming a lot of dealers will also be common between the two platforms who would be listing their products, and they may not want to pay-
OLX is a much larger platform. There is some commonality, but OLX is a much larger platform.
Okay. maybe at some point of time-
Yes
You know, you might want to continue, or you might want to adopt OLX for the used car business and CarWale for the new business, and maybe have a common app.
We're not looking at that, and honestly, not looking at that at all. I think what we want to make sure that the dealer decides. They want to be on OLX or CarWale or both, right? I think we just got to make tech easy for them to do so. Eventually, the dealers got to decide what adds value to them. There'll be some dealers who like CarWale for a reason, and there'll be some which, you know, some will want both or some have both already, in one matter.
Okay, okay. Lastly, the C2B transition is basically also the, kind of similar with Cars24 also do at a, at a business level, right?
It's actually very similar. It is actually very similar. That is correct.
Very similar. What kind of synergies do you see from, from your auction business, to, to this? Or maybe you can use some of your tech, some of their tech to your, auction business, or How do you think that could play out over a period of time? Because this is an interesting business, and you get a lot of, a lot of dealers, who are buying vehicles from, who will be buying vehicles from this auction business, right?
Yeah, the obvious synergies from the auction are the dealers, you know, being able to bid on both vehicles, right? Whether it's an OLX car or Shriram Automall car, that's one. The second is tech synergy, clearly, right? Which platform works better for what purpose, and what are the technologies which, you know, OLX has, which could work on SAMIL and vice versa. The third, I think, massive, you know, synergy is data, right? I mean, we look at the quantum of data between OLX, SAMIL, and CarWale. Just, just data of understanding vehicle pricing to other things like today, for a user, if you could make, with the amount of data we have, make it easier for them to make decisions on what they want to do, to sell a car or buy a car, et cetera, price data, for example.
Or the ability for a dealer to get faster quotes just because the number of dealers on both these platforms. You know, these are all synergy we're working through, but it'll take time. These are medium-term answers, they're not short-term answers. You know, studying synergies like this could take us maybe, I don't know, 12 months, 24 months. And I think the third synergy will be cost, right? Because if, if OLX, the transaction business has got locations where the key vehicles and SAMIL and 130 automalls, can we leverage those locations? So they're all, I mean, they're thinking of cost synergies, they're thinking of data synergies to help users. They're thinking of, you know, obviously, tech synergies, user synergies, consumer synergies, or dealer synergies, all of them, right?
Mm-hmm. Sure, sure. Just lastly, one small point. In C2B business, all the auctions are, let's say, if a, if a, if a customer has to go to OLX to get their car listed, it is completely in online, or do they have small, small stores or small, small, let's say, offices?
Online. You can get on OLX online, and the flow takes you to say, "Listen, I want to sell my vehicle," to OLX Autos, the transaction side. It just goes there, and, yeah, you don't have to-
There are no, there are no offices or there are no walk-in physicals?
You don't need to walk in. No, you don't need to. They have franchise stores for B2C, but they don't have. It's not a C2B store. They feel they do that online. You don't have to come anywhere as a user. You someone come to your house and check your car.
Okay. This B2C business also you have bought in with the franchising stores they have, or that is not part of this thing?
No, no, we bought everything on OLX India. Any franchise store OLX you see is part of the OLX classified platform.
Okay, okay, thank you.
We bought in, we bought in almost, I, I think, I think 120 or 130 OLX franchise stores, if I'm not mistaken.
They also work on, they also work on asset-light model, I'm assuming that they are not-
They're all asset-light. They're all asset-light. Absolutely, yes.
Okay. Thank you, Vinay. Thank you so much.
Thank you. Thanks.
Thank you. Our next question is from the line of Pankaj from Affluent Assets. Please go ahead.
Thanks for taking my question. Just wanted to understand, with this acquisition, where does it take our market share to on Pan India basis? Secondly, as you answered to a previous participant's question, you mentioned that the business model is more or less similar to Cars24. Do you plan to forward integrate into scrapping the vehicles and getting into that type of business?
There are two parts which we acquired. One, the classified side, which is just about, you know, users like you and me and, you know, listing vehicles as consumers. That's one part of the business. It's very hard to look at market share because it's a horizontal, you know, versus some of the other automotive players, so it's very hard to get. Then there's C2B transaction, which overlaps a little bit Cars24. You know, these are two players there. You know, we are not looking at getting into scrapping or it doesn't, doesn't change, you know, scrapping doesn't come onto these exchanges. Really, it's about you selling a car and getting a simple, easy manner to sell it off or a convenient way to sell it off, and that's what the system involves.
Okay. Next, this, in future, timeline, when do you see this OLX business getting completely integrated into our business? Thereafter, what type of growth do you see over a period of years time?
Obviously, we see, you know, the tech side, as I said, take between, you know, maybe four to six months. The growth, you know, we're very bullish about the sector, whether it's horizontal classifieds or the C2B side. We believe that, you know, you have reasonably good growth rates. Of course, I don't want to give a guidance around it, but we've given you what the past growth rates have been. We definitely see, you know, reasonable growth rates in both the transactions side and the classified side.
Any synergies leading to cost savings on consolidation?
Synergy on costs. The obviously tech costs are one, costs of location, physical locations, another one. You know, across the board, we see cost synergies. We're going to be working on it, but mostly around tech and, you know, and physical locations.
How has been the profitability of OLX? Were they better off in terms of profitability margins compared to us or lesser than that, than us?
We've shared the numbers with you. The classified side, of course, is probably a little better than us. On the transaction side, I think SAMIL is far more profitable. On one side, you know, Shriram Automall is far more profitable than OLX transactions, and on the other side, the horizontal classified OLX, and then the margins seem a little better than CarWale, also, I think that.
On overall basis, in classified and, transactions.
It's too early to compare. To be honest, it's too early to compare. I think, it'll take us about six to eight months to get the tech transition, all of them, and then, you know, draw a comparison. Idea is not to draw a comparison. The idea is to make them both grow.
We agree, at this moment, are they. Would the acquisition be margin dilutive in nature?
No, we don't think that we might be dilutive, margin. After the 4-6 month integration, we don't believe it will be margin dilutive at all.
Sure. Thank you. Thanks a lot.
Thank you. Thank you.
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, due to time constraint, that was the last question of our question and answer session. I would now like to hand the conference over to the management for closing comments.
Thank you, everybody, for joining. We're all really excited about this new phase of our journey. As it goes on, we'll keep communicating and, and, and sharing more and more information and our excitement with you. Thank you again, and once again for joining. All the best. Take care. Bye-bye.
Thank you.
Thank you.
On behalf of CarTrade Tech Limited, we conclude this conference. Thank you for joining us. You may now disconnect your lines.