Ladies and gentlemen, good evening and welcome to the CarTrade Tech Limited Q1 FY26 earnings conference call organized by MUFG Intime India Private Limited. As a reminder, all participant lines will be in the listen-only mode, and there will be an opportunity for you to ask questions after the presentation concludes. Should you need assistance during this conference call, please signal an operator by pressing star 10 zero on your touchtone phone. Please note that this conference is being recorded. I now hand the conference over to Ms. Nidhi Vijaywargia from MUFG Intime India Private Limited. Thank you, and over to you, ma'am.
Thank you, Palak. Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. I welcome you all to the earnings call of CarTrade Tech Limited to discuss the Q1 FY26 business performance. Today on the call, we have from management Mr. Vinay Sanghi, Chairman and Managing Director, and Ms. Aneesha Bhandary, Executive Director and CFO. Before we proceed with this call, I would like to mention that some of the statements made in today's call may be forward-looking in nature and may involve risks and uncertainty. For more details, kindly refer to the investor presentation and other findings that can be found on the company's website. Without further ado, I would like to hand over the call to the management for their opening remarks, and then we can open the floor for Q&A. Thank you, and over to you, Vinay.
Thank you. Good afternoon, everybody, and welcome to this first quarter earnings call. I really want to thank all of you for joining this call. We have, of course, put up our presentation, and I'd like to start by recording the slide three in the presentation. As many of you can see, CarTrade has delivered in the first quarter its highest ever profit spend, 106% growth to INR 47 crores, and its highest ever revenue at INR 199 crores. We are quite excited about the quarter gone by and the future prospects ahead, and really feel optimistic about the business situation the way it is today. We have almost more than 150 million users on each of our platforms, CarWale, BikeWale, and OLX that we talked about earlier. That traffic, as you can see in the slides ahead, continues to grow.
If you look at the businesses itself, the consumer group has grown by 32%, which is right in a 79% growth in profit, and achieved a 29% EBITDA margin, which is getting close to a benchmark for the entire industry. Our remarketing business has gained momentum and delivered a 36% growth, which has led to almost a 258% growth in profit, showing the leverage in the business. OLX has achieved its highest ever revenue. There is a 71% surge in its profits. If you look at slide four, I want to reiterate that we achieved the highest ever revenue and profits in the quarter. We are the number one automotive platform in the country, number one used platform in the country, and number one vehicle platform in the country. Approximately 75 million consumers come to all our platforms every month. What is more remarkable is 95% of these come organically.
We have 500+ physical locations. We auctioneer 1.4 million vehicles a year. Revenue is, as I said, INR 199 crores in the last quarter, which is the highest ever. EBITDA is almost INR 73 crores, which is a cash proxy for the company, and profit after tax is INR 47 crores. As you can see, the cash has crossed INR 1,024 crores, which is approximately INR 70 odd crores more than the last quarter. The company continues to be healthy with margins and healthy with its profits and cash generation. If you look at the next slide, slide five, revenue from operations and total income is up 27% at INR 199 crores. If you see our cost base, it's up by only 8%. Normally, as you know, all our increments are done in the first quarter.
This cost increase, which you see in employee cost at 7%, we expect to be quite stable now for the rest of the year, considering all the increments are factored in in the first quarter of this year. EBITDA is up 98% as a result of the leverage in the business, as you can see. EBITDA margin has gone to 25% on a consolidated basis from 15% a year ago. Margins continue to grow. PBT is up by 132% at INR 57 crore, which is our highest ever PBT in the quarter as well. PAT is up 106% to INR 47 crore. The PAT is up 106% in spite of a 5.5% deferred tax. As you know, that's a non-cash tax cost as per the accounting standard. In spite of the tax being up from INR 0.75 crore to INR 5.5 crore, PBT is still up 106% in the quarter.
If you go to the next slide, which is the consumer group, as I said, revenue is up 32%, profit after tax is up 79%. The 32% is on the back of an automotive or a car industry, which has barely grown in the first quarter. It's been flattish. In spite of that, the business has grown by 32%. Costs up 9%, which is mostly on a very low base, marketing cost up a little bit. As you see, employee cost is up only 4%. The one thing I'd like to also call out on the consumer group is again, the leverage in the business. The margins have gone to 29%, which is probably close to the highest ever margins. As you can see, PBT is up 115%. Because of the deferred tax, PAT is up 79%.
The other thing I'd like to call out is normally Q1 is the weakest in terms of revenue. Obviously, we expect this to grow as the season picks up from July onwards. You go to slide seven, and it's the remarketing business. The remarketing business is up 36%. It's something we've been working on for two to three years, as we called out in many, many earnings calls in the past. We had talked about how repossession in the Indian automotive industry had been going down. There has been a slight bounce back in repossession, but also our retail businesses have grown collectively, and that's resulted in this massive 36% growth. Here, you can see the leverage in the business. Margins have gone up from 14%- 23%. EBITDA is up 120%. PAT is up 258%.
In Shriram Automall, also as a remarketing business, Q1 tends to be normally a sluggish quarter. We do expect things to still improve from here as we go on for the rest of the year. If you look at OLX on slide eight, it's up by about 2%- 3%. Operating revenue, total revenue is up by 12%, and profit is up by 71%. We've done a lot of work on product tech in the last quarter. We've seen some early results of the growth momentum, the growth engine starting to fire. We're very optimistic about OLX during this next quarter of the year. We definitely feel that all the product initiatives we're taking are starting to pay off. We launched an Elite Buyer program earlier this month, and we really feel we've got three more launches this quarter itself in July or September.
The existing products have also started to grow. We feel pretty confident about the OLX growth path in terms of revenue or even traffic and other user metrics over the current quarter and then the following quarters in the year. The rest of the segmentation results you can see on slide nine. The only thing I want to highlight there, this question comes often. If you see the share-based expense or ESOP cost, it is also down 36% this year in the first quarter. It's down from INR 6 crore a quarter last year to about INR 3.85 crore a quarter. We've had ESOP costs come down as well. This is what I have to say. I'm happy to answer all your questions in the hour and clarify anything you might want to ask. Thank you.
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 your touchstone telephone. If you wish to remove yourself from the question queue, you may press star and two. Participants are requested to use handsets when asking a question. Ladies and gentlemen, we will wait for a moment while the question queue assembles. The first question is from the line of Siddhartha Dera from Nomura. Please go ahead.
Hi, sir. Thanks for the opportunity, and congrats on a good set of results.
Thank you, sir.
Sir, I'll start on the OLX. Like you mentioned, you have already taken a few initiatives which would sort of start helping the growth momentum going ahead. If you can provide some more color about how to sort of see the improvement, I mean, will returning to that double-digit 15%-20% take some more time, probably a year, because the initiatives will probably take some time to roll out? How do you see in terms of the impact on the revenue from a growth perspective given the initiatives which you have taken?
Sure. One is that we normally don't give guidance on any growth %. The first new product we launched was earlier this month, the Elite Buyer program, which has had really good response. We're launching three new products probably by the end of September or maybe the beginning of October. We definitely feel that some of the initiatives will kick in and deliver some growth to our revenues in the current year. We also believe that the earlier initiatives, a lot of work done on product and technology, are starting to get some results. We do feel pretty confident of a reasonable growth in the next few quarters in OLX.
Got it, sir. In terms of the remarketing business, we have seen a very strong step up in the current quarter. You mentioned that you believe these trends should continue, given that Q1 is generally a seasonally low quarter in terms of revenue. Could you share some more thoughts on where we have seen the pickup and if, in the mix tag, also repo and consumer web was the bigger sort of delta? Some more insights into how the growth has played out.
Sure. The growth has come across segments. It's come in G4, it's come in our retail business. Our retail G4 is about 45% and 45%, it's almost the same percentage of volume. It grows across segments. You're right, normally April to June, normally our numbers are the weakest. It shows the strength of the business. We've done a lot of work. You've seen the last few years, we've talked about this a lot in many earnings calls where we've told you that when G4 comes back, we come out much stronger because the amount of work we did then is actually paying off now. Not only has G4 grown, but other businesses have grown as well. That's the result of this. We're actually quite optimistic about the year in the remarketing business. We see no reason why this could not continue.
If that's the question, as I said, normally April to June is the weakest volume. It should only pick up from here for the rest of the year.
Got it, sir. Thanks a lot. From the back.
Thank you. Thank you.
Thank you, sir. The next question is from the line of Sachin Dixit from JM Financial. Please go ahead.
Yes, JM Financial.
Hi, Sachin.
Thank you for this insight.
Thank you.
On the marketing piece, what we noticed in your latest is that the volumes have actually dipped QoQ, and that too has significant data there, while revenue has grown QoQ as well. Can you explain what is the nature of this? What is happening? How are we driving this?
The volume, actually, if you look at YoY, I think there's a future of YoY in terms of the volume itself, if we see year-on-year. Normally March, you know, if you look at the numbers, March is normally a more buoyant period than any other quarter. Obviously, as we get towards the end of the year, volumes will increase. If you really look at year-on-year, I mean, if you look at the year-on-year, the volumes are up actually, the listing is up 35%, the volume is up 29%. We feel pretty optimistic. You know, as I said, even though the good mix of repo bouncing back and retail growing as well, there's pretty much growth across segments. We see a really buoyant kind of situation.
Yeah, I agree. YoY, the trajectory is easier to see, but I just wanted to understand the QoQ trajectory, right? Is it that I think the way to do either?
There is a little two-wheeler bias, I'll be honest with you, right? There is a little two-wheeler bias. I think that's the make of repossession in India. There is a little bias. To be honest, I think the way to compare volumes is really year-on-year, not Qo Q. I think that's the right way to compare it.
Understood. Understood. My second question is on OLX, right? As you were highlighting that there are certain initiatives that you have already pulled off, three more expected to come in the coming few months, right? Is that the one that is getting reflected in a very sharp, like 24%-25% QoQ rise in employee cost? That's where the investment is going in?
There is some tech product investment, but I'll be honest, there are also increments which have come in April. All the increments are factored in the first quarter. From there, you'll see very little cost growth across the group, not just in OLX. There is an increment which has come in the first quarter as well. Therefore, you're seeing the raised costs go up. If you look at, you know, actually employee costs year-on-year, it's actually the right way to look at it, not Q1 Q2.
Understood. Just to follow up on this one, there is also a rise in other income at OLX, which I think is coming from some liabilities which won't need to be written directly.
That's right. There are some provisions which we had made, which, of course, were not required to be made. Obviously, we've taken that back into income.
That will revert back, that will normalize in the quarter, I guess.
At this point, it would, unless there are additional.
I mean, are there any more provisions or liabilities that need to be written back in the coming quarter?
You want to answer that?
Yeah, we are currently evaluating that. That's some of the cleanup that we've done in this quarter, but we could anticipate another set of cleanup in the coming quarter.
Okay. Okay.
We're evaluating the company.
All right. Thanks, Ken.
All right. Thank you, and all the best for the coming quarter.
Thank you, Sachin. Thanks.
Thanks, Sachin.
Thank you, sir. The next question is from the line of Vijit Jain from Citig roup. Please go ahead.
Yeah, hi. Thank you for the opportunity. Hi, and congratulations on a terrific sort of result here.
Thank you.
My first question is, just looking at the traffic growth, this 7% YoY is slightly lower than the trend we've seen recently. Do you think this is broadly reflective of the overall automotive market in general in terms of the demand trends? I know for you, the business is also a function of whether advertisers and OEMs in this case want to advertise. It doesn't directly flow through necessarily from this immediately. How does this impact you on a more, the rest of the year basis?
Sure. You got to remember, the 7% growth in traffic in India is on a factor of the fact that the industry is actually slightly very marginally grown, right? It is a big factor on growth of traffic. That's really growth of the industry reflection, if you're asking me, on interested buyers. I think two things happen. One is obviously our market share or traffic has grown. It's bound to have considering industry is not grown, right? That's one. The second is if industry is not grown and we've grown 30% or more, it shows that people are shifting from any form of spend to us, which I mean the market share there has grown as well, whether it's digital or total.
That's what we always say, that you know when in industries like this, which are competitive, or when the growth rates, when demand is more than or when demand is less than supply, which is always the case normally in any industry, when supply is more than demand, we price then. I think the last two, three years have shown continuous growth here. Just looking at the industry has grown as well, actually, the automotive industry, even though the growth is reflective, it's at a digital point of scale. We continue to grow with that. I think that's a very good position to be. I think most people are estimating the automotive industry to stay as it is for the next three quarters, right, for the end of the year, maybe 0%- 3%, and we're probably somewhere there.
We feel, you know, that's where we make the most contribution to manufacturers and dealers. That's where we become the most relevant to everybody. We've always said we have the lowest cost of customer acquisition for any manufacturer or dealer. This is the time when, you know, they need us the most.
Got it. Thanks, Sanghi. Now my next question is on the employee cost in general. Two parts to that. One is, a bit higher in OLX versus in standalone consumer. I guess that is in line with the way our product development efforts are going. Second, related to that, the ESOP expenses, is this the new normal going ahead? Because on a total employee cost basis, I think the increase is very modest here, right? I'm just trying to get a sense of whether this is, including the ESOP cost, the comment you made was that this is going to be the main.
Yeah, first, the employee cost on a group-level basis is 7% up QoQ. We actually think now because this is mainly a fact of increments, the chance of it is very unlikely employee cost to go up from here for the rest of the year, number one. There are marginal changes in number. We might hire a few people, etc., but no significant change in employee cost going forward, number one. In OLX, just to correct, employee cost actually is down 5% year-on-year. It's not up, number one. I think that's in spite of increments being factored in. That's the second part. The third is ESOP cost. ESOP cost is, as we always said, it keeps coming down because we don't think it could come down further in the coming years, actually, to be honest.
We don't think that there's going to be any significant ESOP cost. Even now, as we look at 3.8 for the quarter, it's becoming significant in our total cost anyway now. If at all, it'll come down or remain stable, it's not likely to go up.
Vinay, is the ESOP expenses largely being given into the OLX employee base?
No, no, these are ESOP costs. These stocks are pertaining to costs of ESOPs that are granted in the past. They're not current grants. Normally, when you issue an ESOP, you issue it, it's granted in the investment for a four-year period or five. You're amortizing these stocks over a four-year period. Some of these stocks are ESOP granted in the past, not being granted now. I mean, the last part of the cost is partly stock grants. We actually, in the last quarter, and if I think correctly, we haven't granted any stocks.
Okay. Got it. Understood. The last.
That is why we keep coming down because one of the grants three, four years back have now fully vested. The cost will keep coming down.
Got it. Understood. The last question I had was on the remarketing business. I heard your comment on April, May. In general, the seasonality in this quarter is very well understood, and it's still a pretty remarkable set of numbers. Is your optimism being driven by what we see in the industry in terms of, or what is being seen in the industry in terms of, NPAs in used vehicles in the new vehicle space? Is that something that you can see is going to rise given what you see in April and May?
No, I actually can't predict it's going to rise, but I do see NPAs higher than they have been in the past. It's hard for me to predict what might happen in the future, but definitely, repossession is up. The volume coming to us is up. Our market share may have gone up as well. Also, by the way, during the last two, three years, the repossession is down. We built other segments, which have also grown. I think it's a combination of all of that. I would just think repossession would be where it is right now. We are not projecting it to go up or down. We're just keeping it in what it is. It's hard for us to predict whether it'll go up or not.
Got it. If you can disclose those metrics that you used to disclose earlier, the share of repo remarketing.
I think that there are plans. It's about 40.45 regionals, 45 repos, 45%.
Oh, wonderful. Got it. Thank you. Thank you. New and used and, you know, news as any.
Repo uncensored is new and used, repo on car 116. What's the other third one you wanted? What is the third one you wanted?
OEM and dealers.
Is it initial bonuses? I can't remember.
The OEM is about 69% in issuance.
Yeah, 610. Okay, thanks.
Thank you.
Thank you, sir. The next question is from the line of Deep Shah from B&K Securities. Please go ahead.
Yeah, hi.
Hi, Deep.
Thanks for the opportunities. Hi. Actually, I wanted to understand a bit on the nature of our employee cost at ESOP. When I see now, say, consumer business, they have been growing pretty much in single digit bar and wire first, other than for fuel. What would be the threat differences between cost and variable cost shared? I assume some of it would be incentives, business, the kind of.
No, no, it's not. We don't, in the consumer group, actually, the incentives are very low. We've talked this part earlier, a large part of our people costs are fixed costs. If you think about certain techs, that's where you see the employee costs in the consumer group or across the group, actually, I would say. If you look at the last couple of years, the cost estimation is very, very low, and it's because of fixed costs. As revenue grows, almost a large part of it gets added back to profit. I think we've demonstrated that in the margins over the last many, many quarters, that as revenue has grown, a large, large part of it just goes through.
That's the beauty of the model and the leverage we have in our business, that a lot of the cost of wage increase of that 7%- 8% is done in the first quarter. If our revenues were to grow in quarter two, or quarter three, or quarter four, a large part of that would go to profit straight away. I think that's just the nature of our business.
Got it. It would be very logical to assume that the incremental bigger margins for the business as a whole will keep on improving even from these levels, I think, to what typical G1?
We've always said that our margins, and obviously, if you look at the historic last year or the year before, in Q1, our margins are a bit marginal weakest. If you list 25% consumer or 29% of the consumer group, we all, of course, anticipate it'll go up in the next few quarters, absolutely, if revenue grows.
Perfect. Perfect. Now, this is.
The chance of significant cost escalation in the next few quarters is low, the chance of cost escalation.
Perfect. Perfect. Thanks, Vinay.
Yeah, thank you.
Thank you, sir. The next question is from the line of Kunal Vora from White Whale Partners. Please go ahead.
Hi, this is Hardik here.
Hi, Hardik.
Hi, just a question on OLX. If you take out the other income, then I see the revenue from operations is up about 2% year-on-year, and our EBITDA would have probably grown a bit. Can you just talk a bit about when we can expect some kind of momentum on this front and also on the expenses front, where are we kind of investing that?
Sure. We've been running a lot of work on OLX over the last, I would say, like the first 18 months or so or 19 months. A lot of our work has gone in product and technology. As you said, we launched a product earlier this month, and we launched HMO in this quarter. That's taken four to six months of work to bring these products out. We actually have started, first time we're seeing growth in OLX coming around. We actually believe through the rest of the year, we should be able to deliver reasonable growth in OLX and revenues. Of course, if revenues grow, profitability will grow at a much faster pace because the costs are unlikely to go up. I feel very optimistic about it.
I think we also attached, this time, and we of course had put it up to the markets even a few weeks ago, the OLX strategy deck. It's part of the current presentation where you can see the potential of OLX that we think it is and the total addressable market for the used product market for entire new products in India, whether they're cars or electronics or other used products. That gives us a lot of optimism with OLX being a market leader by far, having 180 million people a year coming, entirely driven by brand. We don't advertise at all in OLX. We see 180 million people a year. We've been very optimistic about all out of this. We shared a lot in the presentation we've attached here. We think that the growth engine, we can see early signs of it.
Like we talked about Tamil for the last two years, we feel this is also a place where we're in a reasonably good, stable place. We see a tremendous opportunity in the next three quarters and many quarters after that.
That's awesome. Just to clarify, the EBITDA is not degrown. EBITDA is without the other income. The EBITDA, which is the truth of the key, is revenue from operations minus the cost. The growth EBITDA is exchanging it.
Okay. No, no, it's my mistake. Just to follow up on the OLX partner, I mean, in the past call, we could always talk about how within OLX we want to focus on, you know, just the car opportunity, the used car opportunity which has got a long running for growth and that we would think the other segments like electronics and mobile as, you know, as and when we got things figured out. I just want to understand a bit in terms of your thinking, you know, what kind of was the catalyst for us to now look beyond just the used cars and expand it to other categories as well?
Yeah. Some of the other categories have also grown. The product creation which we've launched is not just in automotive. We've launched an Elite Buyer program early in the market. It's, of course, on cars, but it's also on bikes and electronics and other used products. All the products we launch now are actually aimed at all the used products OLX deals in, not just cars. Those are some of the things we've done here where our first initial objective was to stabilize product and technology, then grow cars, then the other categories. I think we've taken up everything together. As much as we work on cars, we work on the other categories as well.
Okay. Got it. One last question on the traffic front. Somebody already mentioned, on a monthly basis, traffic is growing about 10%. If I look at it even from peak quarters, like from December quarters, it will degrow. I just want to understand how much of a correlation is there between, I guess, industry demand and traffic and how much of it is simply just circular growth given it's still underpenetrated, right?
Yeah, there is not much correlation between traffic growth and revenue growth. We can see that in the results in the last two quarters. Traffic is actually growing, revenues up more than 30%. That itself says something. I think traffic is a reflection a little bit about the industry as a whole, of how many people out there are searching for cars. It's not such a reflection of our revenues. I would not correlate traffic growth with revenue growth in the company. I would not. I think from a.
I was actually asking about, you know, traffic growth with overall automotive industry demand growth.
It's a reflection.
Long-term correlation.
There's probably a reflection. Yeah, the industry grew by 20, the traffic grew by far. The industry has actually been flat over the last quarter since traffic growth of seven, which also means we've gained market share a little bit from others.
Okay. If industry demand was activated, then this traffic growth would go into, like, let's say the IT, like 20% of the way.
It's possible. I think when industry grows faster, the traffic is bound to go faster.
Got it. Okay, thanks so much.
Thank you. Thank you.
Thank you, sir. The next question is from the line of Vimal Gohil from Alchemy Capital Management. Please go ahead.
Yeah, thanks, guys. Hi, and congrats on a good set of review. My question is on the classified industry, which we just discussed. You mentioned the industry may have been weak this particular quarter. It's quite encouraging that you mentioned that we've gained share. Given the fact that, or rather, the size of the industry as such versus the overall spend that our end customers do on other platforms, why should our industry degrow? Shouldn't we be sort of growing at least or remain flat?
Sorry, what is degrown? What is degrown, sorry?
The car classified industry, as you mentioned.
No, the car classified is not degrown. Nobody says that. The car industry is flat, not car classified industry. In fact, car classified has grown. I don't think that's correct. Our traffic has grown 7%. The industry is down by, I think, 1% or something this quarter, right? The car industry itself. In fact, the reality is digital adoption is going up in respect to the industry. Our revenue is about 32%. We show the adoption, actually.
Understood. The second question is on OLX. You mentioned that you are already seeing signs of pickup from new initiatives. This year, could we, you're expecting reasonable growth. Is this growth or confidence of growth coming from the new initiatives that you've taken or the business as it is is showing a good amount of traction? Because the newer initiatives are showing that.
The new initiative is very early. It's only a month old, but we're seeing it across both. We're seeing new initiatives. The first new initiative will come out well. We're also seeing growth or the early signs of growth in our current products and services we already offer.
Understood. On the reported margins for OLX, if my assumption is that once the growth comes back, should we be looking at the margins coming back to the previous level?
Yeah, the margins will keep going up as revenue grows in this company as well. Whether it's OLX or Shriram Automall or, you know, the consumer group, which is CarWale and BikeWale, it continues to grow as revenue grows, of course.
Thank you. All right. Thanks so much. All the very best.
Thank you, sir. The next question is from the line of Huseain Bharuchwala from Carnelian Capital. Please go ahead.
Yes, we can hear you.
I just wanted to understand on the OLX side, that one thing which I wanted to understand is on the real estate front. You have not mentioned how much we can scale it up on the real estate. Can you give some color on real estate? When it becomes big, how meaningful that can be?
Yeah, real estate is one of our second largest categories after auto. We are in a specific place in real estate where we don't, most of the businesses are people's houses or commercial properties or rentals. It is not a new development. A lot of the other real estate players focus on new development, which are new properties and new, you know, sites. We are mostly on people's own premises. In that, we have a reasonable market share. We're very optimistic about, you know, the real estate side as well. It's a high-margin business for us, something which has also, you know, done well in the past for OLX and is very strong in, you know, tier two, tier three cities, especially reasonably medium-sized, low-cost, you know, properties.
Got it. You have focused sales like nobroker.com or the other players which are there in the market. How do you see the competition in this landscape?
We are actually very different because a lot of the NoBroker, and I think some of these are buying and selling properties. They're not doing that. We're a platform where sellers and buyers directly connect. If you're a real estate, if you're a consumer who's got your own house, you'll use OLX. Or if you're maybe even a real estate broker who's got property, we might list them. Generally, OLX is a platform which is an asset-light platform. Some of these others are trying to get transactions done and make money, which they could be even taking positions on them. We don't do that at all. We're just a marketplace.
Got it. Thank you for your answers.
Thank you.
Thank you, sir. The next question is from the line of Rohan Nagpal from Helios Capital Asset Management. Please go ahead.
Hi. Am I okay?
Hi, Rohan.
Hi. Can I ask you to get a number?
Thank you.
On OLX, you talked a lot about the optimism. I mean, you've talked about growth and optimistic. You're thinking about it sort of accelerating from here on. Could you provide some color on the signs of growth that you're seeing? Are you seeing more traffic? Is it more listings? Is it more paid listings or, I mean, advertising on the platform? Are you seeing more people getting signed up really by progressive? Just some flash.
Yeah, these are normally the indications. We normally, the indications we look at are daily active users or, you know, our listing, paid listings, conversion buckets, conversion flows, you know, collections. These are some of the metrics we look at, right? We see many signs of that now, going up. We should be pretty confident that this growth engine will start and start driving growth in revenues in the coming quarters and the coming years, for sure.
Could you provide, I mean, can you quantify some of these? Like, what is this quantified A to a C year- over- year, quarter- over- quarter?
We are not, at this point, we're not able to disclose the exact, all these metrics and the growth rates of, you know, the future. We don't normally give guidance around this. The early signs are, I mean, like we've talked in the past of Shriram Automall, the early signs are that it looks like the growth engine, you know, or the growth in metrics as well as revenue should start from now.
Okay. Got it. Thank you, Sasi.
Thank you.
Thank you, sir. The next question is from the line of Sachin Rajan from Avendus Capital. Please go ahead.
Hello. I'm I audible?
Sure, yeah, I can hear you.
Congratulations. Can you just help me understand the traffic that we are getting from the tier two and tier three cities, the product services and product consumption? Thank you.
As far as this, what's the last part of the question? Traffic from tier two to tier three cities?
Tier two and tier three cities, how much traction we're getting in the car segment and the electronics segments from tier two and tier three cities?
If you're talking about OLX specifically and used products, a large part of OLX's traffic comes from tier two and tier three cities as well. One of the reasons why OLX has remained strong over the last few years is the availability of data or penetration of 5G and 4G in some of these towns, which is what provided some level of growth in OLX as well. That's also some of the growth coming in CarWale and BikeWale because we find that tier two, tier three is driving some of this growth. As we go on, as internet penetration goes in these towns, obviously, the benefits will be platforms like CarWale, BikeWale, and OLX. That penetration already started to happen in the last two to three years, and we're already seeing growth coming from these towns.
Thank you, Vinay. Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thanks.
Come back in three weeks.
Thank you, sir. The next question is from the line of Ankit Kanodia from Zen Nivesh. Please go ahead.
Thank you for taking the session and coming back in the session.
Thank you.
Most of my questions related to the current business scenario have already been covered. I just ask a forward-looking question in the sense that I'm not asking for any number, but how do we see us growing our revenues in the next two to three years? Why I'm asking this question is that because the market we are in is still very, very, very nascent and probably still, if we don't take the OLX part, if we just take our CarWale category, I think most of our traffic would be in metro. In metro also, there would be still a few metros who would be giving us most of the traffic. Any color on how do we long-term approach this and how can we take a market for us going forward because we're still at a very nascent stage.
I agree with the fact that we're all in the early days of this in India. There are two or three growth drivers here. If you look at the industry itself, the automotive industry itself is underpenetrated in India, number one. Number two, the digitization of it itself, only about 15%- 16% of all advertising in India comes through digital platforms like ours. In most other countries, that's 30%- 40%. That's also at a very early stage. If you look at the total addressable market, whether you look at used products or new products, we've got such a big universe. In fact, I think after the OLX acquisition, the total addressable market was almost limitless. Our growth is completely dependent on what we can execute and what we can deliver.
We feel very optimistic about growth in volumes, growth in market share, growth in revenues, growth in profitability, and margins over the next few years and quarters. Whether it is used cars, whether it is new cars, whether it is new bikes, whether it is used products, whether it is auctions, we feel very optimistic about, as I said, the total addressable market for the group is almost limitless. There's a lot to do and a lot for us to work on. There's a lot of new technologies to build. In fact, what we've not talked through is the amount of AI intervention in the company itself at the front end and back end. There's a large amount of work going on, which, of course, is not evident to everybody, on the amount of technology innovation and intervention we're doing on our platforms and products.
As we've talked about, the fact that also the brands, BikeWale, CarWale, and OLX, we're probably one of the only companies in the world which on three different platforms we see more than 150 million customers a year on three different platforms. I think that itself makes us feel really optimistic about all the three brands, OLX, CarWale, and BikeWale. We feel really optimistic about the future because of that reason itself. There's technology, there's brand, there's total addressable market, many, many reasons why we feel optimistic about revenues and profitability and margin growth in the future.
Thank you. The second question would be any color on competition as to where the industry is going, what other players are doing in India, and how we are maybe ahead of them or maybe different from them.
As you know, OLX has no direct competitor. OLX is a very strong market, either used products, which is used cars and other products. Shriram Automall also has no direct competitor, very, very strong in auctions. For us, a lot of what we need to do in the future is just focusing on our execution. I told you already the total addressable market is limitless. For us, it's about building really good technology and products for consumers and continually growing. Competition is not the limitation. Our limitation is our own execution capabilities. As we develop them and grow and build new technologies, obviously keep growing the revenue and growing the margin of this company. We don't think competition is a limitation in the company.
I was not talking from the perspective of limitation. I was just trying to understand as to, as in there are other players also, and there are also fairly large players.
I think most of them are customers of ours. As I said, used products, we have really no direct competitor. Most of the other players who people perceive as competition are full stack players. They buy vehicles, sell vehicles. Actually, customers of ours who list on our platform, they're not really competition for us.
Got it. Thank you so much, and all the best for you.
Thank you. Thank you.
Thank you, sir. The next question is from the line of Anuj Kapil from Taurus Mutual Fund. Please go ahead.
Hi. Good afternoon, sir.
Hi, guys.
I was wondering if you could make color on your current tax position, and if you can put some light on the possible capital allocation plans that you would be having for M&A or CapEx or platform development.
Sure. The current cash position we put in the deck is INR 1,024 crores. It grew on approximately INR 75 crores in the last quarter. There's a pickup on excessive EBITDA, and the cash seems to be a reflection of that mostly. It's all surplus. As you know, we generate cash every quarter, so this is surplus. The use of the cash is likely to be M&A in the future. If we find a target company where we can exploit synergies or where we can grow our current businesses, that would be one use of cash. I think otherwise, obviously, the other use of cash is distributed to shareholders as and when we can, or as and when regulation allows to do so.
Okay, thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you, sir. Ladies and gentlemen, due to the interest of time, that was the last question. I now hand the conference over to Ms. Nidhi Vijaywargia for closing comments.
Thank you, Palak. I would like to thank the management for taking the time out for this conference call today, and also to all the participants. If you have any queries, please feel free to contact us. We are LLC Investor Relations Advisors to CarTrade Tech Limited. Thank you so much.
Thank you, everybody.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you. On behalf of CarTrade Tech Limited, that concludes this conference. Thank you for joining us, and you may now disconnect your lines.