Ladies and gentlemen, good afternoon and welcome to Third Quarter FY 2026 Earnings Conference Call of Edelweiss Financial Services Limited. As a reminder, all participant lines will be in the listen-only mode, and there will be an opportunity for you to ask questions after the presentation concludes. Should you need assistance during the conference call, please signal an operator by pressing star and zero on your touchtone phone. Please note that this conference is being recorded. I now hand the conference over to Ms. Priyadeep Chopra, President, Edelweiss Financial Services Limited. Thank you, and over to you, ma'am.
Thank you, Michelle, and a very warm welcome to the earnings call for the quarter and nine months ended December 2025. Today we have on the call with us Mr. Rashesh Shah, Chairman and MD of Edelweiss, and Ms. Ananya Suneja, Chief Financial Officer, Edelweiss Financial Services Limited. We hope that you've all had a chance to review the investor presentations that we filed earlier today. During our discussions, we will be making references to it. This quarter we've also filed two special presentations titled "Understanding EFSL's P&L" and a presentation on our growth journey. We hope you find them useful. Please take a moment and review the safe harbor statements in our presentations. We will today be making statements that will be forward-looking in nature and hence may involve certain risks and uncertainties. With that, welcoming you all, I hand over the call to Rashesh to begin the proceedings.
Thank you all for being here once again. Over to you, Rashesh.
Thank you, Priya, and good afternoon to all of you once again. Welcome to our earnings call for this quarter and for the nine months. A lot of you have been part of our journey, and these interactions that we have after our results have been one of the high points for us where we enjoy your feedback, your questions, your inputs. So I do hope that today is the same, and thank you once again for being here. To start the call, I think, Indian economy, we know we are in that Goldilocks stage where the economy is doing well, inflation is down. Even the union budget this time was very steady. The least disruptive issues were there. But it also, I think, highlighted one new thing which is the start of the credit reforms and what I call a double barrel Capital Market.
Our Capital Market has been equity-led, and I think equity plus bond because I think we do now need our credit system to also scale up the way our equity systems have scaled up. Good fiscal discipline on the government, and RBI is maintaining liquidity very healthy. And obviously, the U.S. deal and the E.U. trade deal, all these are great boosters. Of course, we have this very paradoxical situation that in spite of things being so good for the economy, the foreign investors have been on a spree of selling. And for some reason, whether it's the rupee or the earnings growth or the valuations, a lot of them have still been selling in India. I was in the U.S. recently, and I still found that unfortunately, a lot of them are still viewing India with a lot of skepticism, India opportunities, a lot of skepticism.
But at least fortunately on this, we are in a good place in India. Our Capital Markets are fairly Atmanirbhar, the local investors, household savings via mutual fund, insurance, SIPs, all of that are actually now the real source of our capital for capital formation. So I think that's the good news for India. I do believe foreigners will be back. They keep on shifting their allocations. But on a long-term basis, I do believe that once there are some catalysts, maybe the U.S. trade deal was one catalyst, maybe a little bit of growth coming back is another catalyst, private CapEx, maybe the rupee which is stabilizing will be another catalyst. So I do hope that in the next three, four months, we'll start seeing foreigners coming back or at least not selling as aggressively as they've been selling.
So with that, let me give you an update on Edelweiss. I think before we go into the business growth and all, some of the strategic updates. First, as you would have seen, we announced today that Carlyle is investing in our housing finance subsidiary, Nido. I think a lot of you know Carlyle is one of the world's largest and most diversified global investment firms. They will totally invest INR 2,100 crore in this deal. They will do a 600-odd crore secondary transaction, and they will invest INR 1,500 crore into the company as a primary investment. So the company already has approximately INR 800 crore of equity. So with this additional 1,500, the total capital of the company will become INR 2,300 crore. By buying secondary, Carlyle will get 45%, and then they will infuse another primary INR 1,500 crore so that eventual stake will be closer to 74%.
The good other news is Aditya Puri, who's I think an icon. All of us respect him a lot. I've been a big fan. He's also an advisor to Carlyle, and he's also in his personal capacity participating with an investment in this. So there'll be Carlyle, there'll be Edelweiss, and there'll be Aditya Puri as an investor, three investors in this deal after closing. Also in Carlyle, Sunil Kaul, who's a partner at Carlyle, who's done a lot of great deals like SBI Cards and YES Bank and PNB Housing, he has been leading the transaction. So for us, the partner has also been very important, and the skill set and capability that they bring truly will allow us to scale up this platform which has been on a steady growth path.
I think with the capital and the platform we have, I think it will be ready for takeoff. It is a win-win-win. I think for Carlyle, they get a good stake in a good platform. For Edelweiss, this allows us to partially get some cash to deleverage our corporate debt, but also we have a stake in this which we think will grow pretty well. Even for the management team, this will be who all have stock options in the business. This will be a way of creating value and also, I think, creating a really very high-value franchise in affordable housing. The second update, friends, is on EAAA IPO update. We have filed DRSP last month. We are waiting to get feedback from SEBI in the regular process, and we do believe that this year we will want to list EAAA.
Again, the idea of listing EAAA has many objectives. One is we have given stock options to our employees, and this IPO and listing of EAAA will allow also those stock options to showcase value. Also, it will allow us some capital for Edelweiss to deliver our corporate debt. As you know, EAAA throws out positive operating cash flow. They are pretty strong. Their growth trajectory has been good. So they don't need capital, but this will allow us to deliver our corporate debt, but as well as also get listed and create value for employees in their stock options. The third is the WestBridge investment in Edelweiss Mutual Fund. The first round of transaction has been done in the last quarter. They bought 10%. They have another 5% they will buy by June. So that is also a steady state going.
As you would have seen in the results, the mutual fund profit has been on a fairly good growth trajectory. So even the mutual fund, which was always growing very well on AUM, is now starting to go well on the profitability curve also. Before I get into the quarterly updates of Edelweiss, as Priya said, we have filed a couple of documents along with this investor presentation. One is on how to understand Edelweiss profit and loss account consolidated. Quite a few of you have given us the feedback that there is a lot of grapple involved. So we try to simplify it, how to understand our P&L and what are the drivers of that. The second is our growth journey.
The reason for that growth journey in charts is the last few years, a lot of our communication, a lot of our conversation has been dominated by NBFC and the wholesale book where we had issues, and we have delivered that and reduced the wholesale book. But that conversation actually did not allow us to really highlight in these five years how a lot of our other businesses, EAAA Mutual Fund, both the insurance businesses, how all of them, even MSME in our NBFC, how they are growing. So there was growth happening in other parts of Edelweiss Group, but maybe it was not highlighted as much. So we have tried to also, to all our stakeholders, showcase the last five-year journey in various businesses and where growth has happened and how we have performed. It's a pure data slide. There is no commentary around that.
So that's a growth journey. On EFSL P&L, what structure, as we have explained, and I'll just try to summarize it out here. The consolidated profit and loss of Edelweiss that we all see has two distinct buckets. One is the operating businesses PAT, the profit after tax of the seven underlying businesses we have, and the holding company and the holding entities, which is the corporate. So we divide it in two parts, underlying business and corporate. The good news has been the underlying business profit has been on a steady growth. Each of the underlying businesses is standalone with a fully dedicated management team, independent board, have their own P&L balance sheet, and they control a large part of the journey. We get involved at governance at board level. We get involved at strategy level, but largely they are very board-run. We are all on the board.
So even entities which are 100% subsidiary are still run as standalone 100% independent entities. The corporate group focuses on supporting this underlying business through capital allocation, investment oversight. We provide treasury support services for their liquidity management. We have a lot of experience on that, some core shared services. And the corporate also is also looking to incubate and invest in new capabilities and new businesses. So the corporate job and the operating business entity jobs are fairly well divided and are very much in harmony. So our PAT is a summation of both this PAT, the business PAT and the corporate PAT. The business PAT is where the heart of the value creation is. That has been growing, and we would like to grow it at 20% a year. That is what we've been saying.
Given the stage at which all our businesses are, the platforms they build, we think it is possible. So the business PAT, a lot of stability, a lot of growth around that. However, corporate PAT will always be volatile because corporate is like a holding company. We have income coming from dividend and stake sale and capital gains, and we have expenses which are interest cost. And also corporate PAT is always volatile. And as you know, in the last few years, we did take a little bit more debt on the corporate balance sheet to make sure the individual operating businesses were well capitalized and did not suffer any lack of resources. So our insurance company, even our asset management companies, even five years ago when they needed a little bit of capital, we were always providing that.
So we didn't allow the NBFC deleveraging to result in lack of resources for our other operating businesses, and that is why they've been able to grow. But in order to do that, the corporate had to borrow some debt. We also made sure the NBFC always had adequate liquidity. And that is the corporate debt we have spoken about that we want to deleverage with stake sales and all. So the corporate has a lot of episodic and volatile P&L. Businesses have steady P&L. And when you add the two, that becomes the consolidated P&L for Edelweiss. So I would be very happy to hear that because we are not one operating company. We are an investment company with multiple businesses at various stages of business. Friends, the scale-up on profit of underlying businesses I've spoken, last two years, we have been growing at 22%.
Our asset management and the alternative asset EAAA and mutual funds have grown at 28% and 58% CAGR over the same period. Our insurance businesses are on track for break-even, and we are on the path for reducing corporate debt as we have seen the Carlyle deal, the mutual fund stake sale, the EAAA IPO. All this is going to help us reduce the corporate debt. Now it is fairly manageable. We are not unduly worried about it, but we want to bring it down because I think that that interest burden itself is a drag on profitability. For Edelweiss update, for the quarter ended December and the nine months, steady growth in profit consolidated PAT is up because of the EAAA stake sale. And there have been a lot of underlying exceptional items in this quarter.
As you know, there was GST impact in life insurance, gratuity impact on Labour Code. Plus in this year, we have implemented ESOP across all our businesses, and each business runs the ESOP cost through their P&L. And we are okay with that because we also think ESOP is a cost that the business is incurring. It is part of the upside that the employees get. So it goes through the P&L, though it's a non-cash item. So alternative asset management FPM has been steady growth, 33% growth in this YoY. We have almost 42,000, 41,900 crore of fee-paying AUM. Our total AUM is obviously much higher because we dry powder and all, but 41,920 is what we look at as a key metric as a fee-paying AUM, which makes us one of the larger alternative asset managers in the country. Mutual fund AUM also grew by 33%.
Equity AUM is INR 83,000 crore now. We have been targeting INR 100,000 crore of equity AUM for quite some time. I'm happy to report that they're getting closer to that. Both MSME and housing in the last year have started growing again. So MSME disbursements have grown by 84% in the nine months and housing finance by 38% on a year-over-year basis. Good growth in disbursement in both the credit business. They're very small, and they've been consolidating for the last few years, but now the growth is starting on that. Insurance, the loss has come down. General insurance loss has come down. Customer franchise is growing at 31% per annum. Our total customer is about 13 million as a franchise we have. Our total customer assets are INR 240,000 crore. That is also steady growth.
So again, as you would have seen, all the businesses are well capitalized, capital adequacy, and they have been growing pretty well. We hold a fair amount of liquidity. Now we are going into surplus liquidity zone. And just a few highlights on the individual businesses, alternative asset management, the business we raised about INR 7,500 crore in the first nine months, which is a growth of 67%. So this is a good amount of fundraising, fresh fundraising that happened. We have an InvIT already listed called Anzen where we did a preferential issue of almost INR 700 crore. The Anzen is very energy-focused InvIT. It's A nzen on energy. We have a second InvIT for which we have filed a document called CTS, which has an issue size of INR 1,300 crore. This will be a transportation InvIT. So our InvITs are not asset-specific but theme-specific.
So energy is one InvIT, transportation is another InvIT. And for those of you who follow InvIT and REIT, they are also becoming a very important asset class in India. We also launched our ESOP 4, the Performing Credit Fund 4, and we're getting good interest from local and international clients. But this year we will raise that money. We'll have to raise that money and close that fund. Mutual fund, as I said, good growth. Our SIP book is now INR 558 crore. It's the monthly SIP book, which is a 55% growth. The retail folios are 34 lakh. So good growth in folios, SIP book, equity, AUM in this. In our ARC, we have recovered INR 842 crore this quarter. So ARC continues to be still a business where recoveries of old AUM is the primary function. We are buying new assets also, especially in the retail side.
And now the retail assets in ARC as a percentage of total capital deployed has gone up to 25%. It was 15% one year ago. So as I said, NBFC and housing, both of them, they've started their disbursement scale-up again. And both general insurance has grown by 47% on a YoY basis in the quarter. And life insurance, our gross premium has grown at 15%. So again, to sum it up, friends, before we open it up for questions, we are on track for all our priorities, growth, reducing corporate debt. But again, it's like one quarter at a time, and the journey is ongoing. But I think India is in a good place, and I hope that Edelweiss also uses the opportunity India has to grow and create value for all our stakeholders. Thank you very much.
Now I'll hand it over to all of you for any questions.
Thank you very much, sir. Ladies and gentlemen, we will now begin the question and answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask questions may press star and one on their touchtone phone. If you wish to withdraw yourself from the question queue, you may press star and two. Participants are requested to use only handset while asking a question. Ladies and gentlemen, we will wait for a moment while the question queue assembles. You may please press star and one to ask questions at this time. The first question is from the line of Kartikeya Mohta from Motilal Oswal Financial Services. Please go ahead.
Yes. Thanks for the opportunity. First of all, congratulations on the deal with Carlyle. Could you please share your perspective on the key strategic synergies and value creation opportunities expected for the business post this transaction? Was there any reason why we did not sell the entire 100%? Basically, I wanted to know the Nido's medium-term roadmap in terms of AUM growth and all after Carlyle being on board.
So yeah, as you know, last three, four years in Nido, we have pivoted to affordable housing. And also earlier, a lot of the origination was through DSS. Slowly, we are doing a lot more direct. So the deal with Carlyle, they do bring a lot of understanding and expertise in housing finance, having done PNB and having Aditya Puri also investing in that. So there'll be a lot more capabilities that they will also bring along with the platform that we have built. So we have a good platform. Last three years, we've been actually building a very robust affordable housing finance business. Also, this will give us additional capital because I think now NBFC housing finance is also very capital-led. And first you need equity, then you borrow and scale up. So I think that INR 1,500 crore equity capital will also transform the business.
So we have a platform we could have grown, but with additional capital, it will be doubly strong. And thirdly, we could have sold the whole thing, but we didn't want to sell because we wanted to sell a little bit, obviously, as I said, to reduce our corporate debt. So if we had sold the whole thing, we would have maybe got another INR 500 crore-INR 600 crore more. But we do think the stake we are holding, the 26%, could be valued a lot more in the future. And you can do the math. With our INR 800 crore of current equity and INR 1,500 crore equity coming from them, equity will be INR 2,300 crore.
If you add up and if you really build a robust business with our team, our platform, their capability, their handholding, and we have seen that Nuvama also, if you saw after getting PAG as a partner, the platform was very strong. The entire management team is the same Edelweiss management team. But giving some independence, some flexibility, some capital does allow the business and the platform to be scaling up in a very optimized manner. So we could have grown on our own slowly, slowly, slowly, but this will give us an opportunity to turbocharge. And I think that 26% that we want to retain, we hope will also be valuable. So our idea was both. It's a win-win. We've got some capital now to reduce debt, but some other to also create value.
That will also be liquid because in two-three years, this business should hopefully scale up well. That's broadly the thinking we had.
That's really helpful, sir. One more question. With most of your subsidiaries, some of your subsidiaries actually, which have either completed or announced as part of the value unlock journey, could you share your thoughts on the next phase of value creation? Are there any additional businesses under evaluation, and what could be the broad time frame for any potential announcement?
As we have said, and again, when we say value unlocking, it is not always a sale of the business or a majority stake sale and all that. It's a combination of many things. Like we did value unlocking via demerger of Nuvama and giving shares in the hands of the shareholders. Even EAAA IPO will be value unlocking because we'll showcase the value of EAAA, get some capital, which will reduce our debt at a corporate level. So the three things we had announced a year ago, that three things we are exploring, one was the mutual fund where we have completed the stake sale. One was housing finance that we announced today. And third was EAAA where we have filed them in DRSP, and we expect to dilute approximately 15% equity. So in the mutual fund, we still will own 85% equity. In EAAA, we'll own 85% equity.
As we finalize any other unlocking plans, we'll keep on announcing it. So this was what we had announced a year ago, and we are just executing. I think we also want to endorse that every announcement we have made, we have followed through on that, whether it was the reduction of debt, reduction of the wholesale book, stake sale. So we have been very consistent in executing what our plans are. And as we make new plans for more value unlocking, so I think value creation comes from building great companies, great platform. And value unlocking comes after that because once you build a good if you look at Nuvama, it was a great platform. And then value unlocking became easier. Same thing with Nido. So I think value unlocking gets easier if you build value.
As I said, the building value is the growth and quality of all our businesses that we are building.
Sure, sure. Thank you, sir, and all the best.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Prabhav Shah from Equirus. Please go ahead.
Hello. Thank you for this opportunity. I have two sets of questions. So the first one is, as you mentioned, EAAA recorded impressive 67% year-on-year growth in fundraising for the first nine months. So could you tell us how do you see this fundraising going forward? And any new fund launches or strategies are there in pipeline? And secondly, you mentioned initially that the geopolitical environment is due to geopolitical environment, the investors are still doubtful about investing in India. So is this affecting our operations in any way?
So I think on the second one, as I said, investors globally are slightly colder to India, and they have been for the last couple of years. But even in that, we've been able to raise money because, as you know, private credit and real assets, infra, business that we have, that still has its attraction. So last quarter, we had announced Energy Transition Fund, which is we got the anchor investor from which is a large European investor. And now we are raising money on the Energy Transition Fund ETF, as we call it. Then, as I said, we have just launched our Performing Credit Fund, ESOP 4. In EAAA, each of these funds in private markets is a four, five-year fund. So by the time you get to Fund 4, you already spend about 14, 15 years in that business. So building track record is very important.
So we have gone through ESOP 3 has been invested, and now we have launched ESOP 4 where we have got traction. So as you know, we are a multi-strategy alternative asset manager. So every year, there'll be a couple of funds we'll be raising. So this year, it's Energy Transition Fund, ESOP 4 performing. As I've said, we have raised money in our InvIT Anzen, but we have filed for raising money in our transportation InvIT CTS. So that fundraising should happen. And as we also have other funds like our special situations fund, which is also three is getting invested. When that gets over, we'll launch four. So all that goes on. So I think every three, four months, we'll be launching a new fund, which then goes on for a year and all.
Our idea here is that if you look at last few years, we have raised about INR 6,000 crore-INR 8,000 crore a year. We invested about INR 7,000 crore-INR 8,000 crore a year, and we have realized or returned about INR 5,000 crore-INR 6,000 crore a year across our strategies. And we hope to continue to grow on that. I think the fee paying AUM has been growing at approximately 21% a year for the last few years, and that is a growth we would hope to maintain.
Thank you for the detailed answer. I have one more question. On mutual fund side, you achieved two new milestones. So one was that Equity AUM is now 50% of the total AUM, and your SIP book, as you mentioned, has crossed INR 500 crore mark with a 55% increase quarter-on-quarter. So could you share some insights on where is this growth coming from, whether it is from tier one or tier two cities, and what are you targeting? What is your target equity AUM mix in the next three years?
I think, as I said, equity AUM, we want to continue to grow. Hard to make a forward-looking statement in this because the industry grows at a particular pace. But I do believe the equity AUM for the industry should grow at about 14%-15% a year. We have been growing faster than the industry because we still have a lot of white spaces where we have not opened branches and not activated distributors and all. So we are doing that. We are opening a lot more branches. I think for the first 10 years, we maybe had 30 branches. We have added 30 more in the last couple of years. We are now on an aggressive expansion of that. It's coming from all, mainly tier two and three is where there is a lot of growth happening, which is where we are opening branches.
We always had branches in the larger cities, but now we are two and three where we are seeing a lot of growth. So it's actually across the board. And equity AUM becoming half of our total AUM was a key milestone. And that we want to continue to grow.
Thank you so much. That's it from my side.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Siddhesh Dharmadhikari from PL Capital. Please go ahead.
Operator, am I audible?
I'm sorry, sir, we lost you. Can you please?
Yes.
Yes, now you're audible.
Am I audible now? Yeah. General insurance delivered a strong 29% year-on-year GDPI growth with GWP of 49%. In Q3, we see GWP stood at INR 404 crores versus GDP of INR 350 crores, implying higher-than-usual reinsurance assessments. What has driven the significant jump? Have we entered any partnership or something like that?
So I think we obviously have been expanding, opening, activating more dealers and our direct expansion and all that. But the last quarter growth is, as you know, after the GST cuts, the industry had a big jump, especially auto sales and all. And we are related to auto sales. Plus, we've been building our market share even in the renewals and all that. So all that effort has come to shape. But I think the key, if you ask me, the key jump has been the auto sales that jumped up post the GST cuts. And as you know, our GI business is largely focused on motor insurance. We are not very big in retail health. We have made a strategic choice that we can't do both. They both are very attractive markets. But all our energy and our focus is on auto and motor insurance.
Last quarter, after a few quarters of very subdued growth, I think motor insurance has also started growing again. Retail health was always growing, but motor was stagnating. Now, last quarter, same motor also has started growing.
Understood, sir. I had one more question. Corporate net debt has remained broadly stable in the quarter. With the consideration received from recently concluded mutual funds TCL, we were expecting to see some downward movement. Can you please explain this? What levels do we expect FY26 to close at?
So as you said, it's more or less flat because there is also interest that goes out every year. And last year, we closed the mutual fund sale only in December. So even that money has come only in December. So I think that interest element and now we have approximately INR 6,500 crore corporate debt, out of which we have earmarked INR 1,500 against the office building and property so that we can keep it because I think borrowing against office and all is very normal, and it pays for itself. So out of that INR 6,500, INR 1,500 is the value of our Edelweiss House and Kohinoor House and other property we have. So we earmark INR 1,500 crore of debt against office and other properties. So INR 5,000 is the debt that we really have, which is against the business that we have.
We do hope that between Nido now and the balance value of the stake sale of Nido in the next couple of years, total value should be INR 1,500-INR 2,000 crores. EAAA, we should get between INR 1,500-odd crores. So between EAAA and Nido, it's about INR 3,000 and 500 crore reduction. And we are now getting dividend of about INR 1,000-INR 1,200 crores in the next two years from the businesses. So if we get about INR 1,100-INR 1,200 crore dividend plus Nido plus EAAA, I think approximately INR 4,000-INR 4,200 crores out of that INR 5,000 will be handled. So broadly, I think the INR 6,500 crore debt we have earmarked in that. Our current target is in the next 18 months to bring this down below INR 3,000 crore, out of which INR 1,500 will be earmarked against the property and INR 1,500 will be the real debt.
Now we have all the businesses. We own a lot of stakes. As we have demonstrated that good businesses, when we want to monetize, it is possible to monetize. We'll still, as I said, hopefully own 85% of EAAA. Even after the IPO, we'll own 85% of mutual fund. We'll own 26% of NEDO. All these are also fairly monetizable assets. That is our math that out of this current debt, we slowly bring in. We are not concerned about it anymore because the path is very clear to us. We still have to execute. As I said earlier, what we said one year ago, we have gone and executed in the last one year. In the next year or 18 months, we will continue to execute on this.
Understood. Thank you so much, sir, and wishing you all the very best.
Thank you.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Parth Chariwala from DAM Capital. Please go ahead.
Hi, sir. Thank you for the opportunity. So sir, in your comments, you mentioned that your FPAM has grown 33% YoY growth. So that's delivered a strong growth. Could you share some medium-term aspirations on the growth here? And what would be the key drivers sustaining this momentum? And sir, second question is that so I have seen your MSME disbursements have grown at a very strong pace of 84% YoY basis. So is there any some strategic initiatives that you have undertaken for driving this growth, any new products or geographic expansions or any channel enhancements that you have done here? Those are my two questions, sir.
So on the MSME, we obviously, as you know, we hired a new MD last year in April, Ajay Khurana, who was earlier executive director of Bank of Baroda, has a lot of experience on MSME. And we had actually staggered our plan to first saying we'll clean up the wholesale book, we'll bring down the debt, which got done last year. So once we reached that point, we said now we can start growing the MSME business. It would have been also possible to grow MSME aggressively and clean up the wholesale, but we are very careful. So we did it very carefully. We said, "Let's do one thing at a time." So that was broadly on the MSME. I think there is a lot of opportunity. We have introduced some new products. We have invested in technology. We opened some 40 branches in the MSME.
There are 3-4 categories of MSME, and we are still very small. But I think we are now hitting about INR 100-125 crore disbursement per month. We used to be at about INR 25-30 crore disbursement per month 18 months ago. So it's a business we maintained for the last few years by cleaning up wholesale and getting a new MD. We have also hired 3-4 key people out there in the first quarter of the last year, and then we have now started scaling it up. So that's on what was your other question?
Excuse me, Mr. Chariwala.
Sorry, I couldn't hear you. Yeah, it was on the SAUM. So what are your medium-term growth aspirations there? And what are the key drivers do you see the momentum sustaining?
So aspiration on alternative EAAA is to be one of the leading alternatives firms. We already are there with INR 41,000 crore of fee paying AUM. It makes us pretty large. And we are a multi-strategy. We are alternative firms which are a single strategy. Some people do only PE, or some do only private credit, or some do venture debt. Some do only equity AIFs. We have about eight strategies in our portfolio. We have dedicated management teams, MDs for all of that. And in a lot of our key funds, flagship funds, we are on third fund and fourth fund now. And this business continues to grow, but each fund is a four, five-year fund. So our idea is, as I've said, our fee paying AUM has been growing at about 21% a year for the last five years.
We would like to maintain that because this is a business which can grow without capital. We don't need to infuse capital. It throws out capital now, pays dividend to us. But it's truly, I think, unique asset management. If you look at alternatives today, the total AUM of alternatives is about INR 2 million crore. The total AUM of mutual fund is about, what, INR 8.5 miilion crore. So the AUM is about one-fourth, but the average profit on AUM is about three times. So on a profit pool basis, the mutual funds profit pool is close to about INR 20,000 crore now, while the alternative AUM profit is about INR 15,000 crore. So I think on a profit pool basis, the alternative market and the mutual fund market as two arms of asset management are becoming fairly equal now. And that is what the excitement is.
While mutual fund is a very different business, alternatives is a very different business. Globally, you have firms like BlackRock are big in mutual fund, while if you look at Blackstone, they are very big in alternatives. Globally, there are large firms like Blackstone, Apollo, KKR, Carlyle. Who are all very leading alternative firms. And I think the market in alternatives in India is starting to come. So we are pretty optimistic. We think it's a 10-15-year story. To give you an idea, Blackstone started in the U.S. in 1984 with, I think, $100 million fund. And then now have close to $1 trillion+ AUM over 40 years. So I think India alternative market should grow. There are a lot of other firms which will also come in. There'll be many players in this industry.
But it is a space to watch from a growth point of view.
Mr. Chariwala, any further questions, sir?
No. Thank you so much.
Thank you. We'll take the next question from the line of Jhanvi Manvani from Arihant Capital. Please go ahead. I'm sorry to interrupt you, ma'am. Your voice is breaking. We are unable to hear you clearly.
Hello. Are you hearing me?
Ma'am, your voice is breaking, but still, you may try.
Okay. So for the office and congratulations on the results, it's still audible.
Ma'am, I'm sorry to interrupt you. Your voice is breaking. I would request you to kindly rejoin the queue, please, and try again. Ma'am, please rejoin the queue. Thank you. We'll take the next question from the line of Aditya Makharia from HDFC Securities. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Hi. So we obviously heard your plans for ramping up EAAA. I just wanted to ask a broad question. What are the timelines for the IPO? I know your DRHP has been filed. Also, are you planning any pre-IPO, anything on the valuations for the same in whatever discussions you're targeting with investors?
We have not announced anything. We just filed our DRSP, I think, about 3 weeks ago. So we'll allow the DRSP process to go on. We have quite a few clients and investors who've been with us for some time. And the IPO process will be like a normal IPO process, which in India is usually 4-6 months from when you file. So we'll follow the same process. As I have earlier also said, this quarter is a very important quarter for us, January-February, because quite a few of our fund raising is going on right now. So I think the IPO, we hope, will be in about 4-6 months from now.
Okay. Okay. Got it. Second is this life insurance business, there was a one-time GST-related expense. What are the mitigation measures we are taking to manage this ongoing impact of the GST regulatory changes? And does this also impact our break-even targets for FI27?
So one is this one-time impact was the carry-forward GST credit you had, which for everybody got extinguished on that day effectively. I mean, you can use it up. It can be carried forward. But as a prudent measure, we have taken a provision against it. So when we use it, it'll come back in the P&L. But as of now, we have said so this is the old GST, which was an existing credit. Ongoingly, as you rightly said, all insurance companies are grappling with this because this has been a cost impact. So there are various measures everybody is following. Some are changing product mix. Some are changing incentive structures. Some are changing what is outsourcing activities to insourcing because outsourcing, you have to pay GST. So we do feel over two years, we will be able to mitigate this impact.
However, our plans for break-even remain the same because we will calibrate other things, and we'll eke out other efficiency. So we are not changing our break-even plan. The other good news on the insurance front for the industry as a whole is the new insurance bill has been very positive. I think it's a good step in the right direction. But along with that, I think there is a lot of movement going on on implementation of IFRS and risk-based capital for insurance companies. So IFRS will provide a lot of relief on the P&L side because you will be able to because your income is amortized, but your expense is upfronted. So that will also get partly amortized. So there'll be some more, I think, balancing of the P&L stress that insurance. Of this upfronting of cost. So IFRS will come.
Whether it'll come in 1 year or 18 months is the only thing we have to see. But right now, it seems like by March 27, IFRS will be rolled out for insurance companies. That will be good for all insurance companies. Along with the IFRS, they will also bring in risk-based capital. And as you know, our business in the life insurance is very heavy on par and nonpar, what are called traditional savings products. We are not very big on ULIP because we do believe that ULIP is actually much easier sold via banks, and maybe customers can do an SIP and a term insurance on the other side. Insurance companies obviously provide risk mitigation but also provide investment and investment service. So the par and nonpar are very investment-oriented products, and we are big in that.
The RBC will give relief to the current reserving that is there on Par and non-Par for everybody, which is a lot more conservative. So RBC will be good for insurance companies which are very heavy on Par and non-Par. Like LIC is also very heavy on Par and non-Par. And once you are not very heavy on ULIP. So I think on that basis, we are hoping that IFRS and RBC happens, but that will be extra. For us, our break-even plans, we remain on the same path as we are now.
Got it, sir. Thanks for the elaborate explanation. Wish you all the best.
Thank you.
Thank you. We'll take the next question from the line of Vishal Setia from Bastion Research. Please go ahead.
Hello. Am I audible?
Yes, sir. Please proceed.
I just wanted to ask regarding the EAAA IPO. How will it unlock value for shareholders? You mentioned unlocking value for employees. How will it unlock value for shareholders? Can you please mention that?
I think it will unlock value in one way, which there'll be a deterministic value to that stake. We can always use that. We can do many things. We can do spin-offs. We can use that to sell some more and do equity buyback. But unlocking for us is what is the value as a private company is now visible in the market to all stakeholders. So employees also, ESOP will get unlocked, and we will still own 85%. And what we do with that is then stage two. I think stage one is to at least get this value visible and be out there in the market. So that is what we mean by value unlock.
Okay. So my second question is on the mutual fund business. How do you ensure growth there in the equity AUM side?
It's like everybody else. Opening more branches, covering more customers. As you've seen last five years, it's a very competitive industry. But I mean, it's a steady state. Our mutual fund is very focused on consistent performance. We want to be quartile one, quartile two consistently. We don't mind being quartile two also, but we don't want to slip into quartile we don't like fund which is quartile one, one quarter, and quartile four, the other quarter. So our position in the market is we are very innovative. We did SIF, and we did Bharat Bond. So we come out with new products. Our international funds are also very popular, our global funds. So we do have a lot of innovative offerings. We do focus a lot on performance, which is more consistent and stable. We don't have a star fund manager approach.
And along with that, we are also opening more branches, activating more distributors, adding more customers. So it's the same, I think, steady bit by bit. To give you an idea, we will not—I don't know the last count of offices we have, but we are not more than 60 offices. A lot of others are 300-500 offices of mutual funds all over India. So we have a long way to go. But I think geographical expansion, product innovation, performance management, all of that are the ways to grow. And as I said, it's also fortunately an industry where equity AUM should grow at 14%-15% a year. There'll be a steady MTM growth of about 6%-9%, and another 6%-9% coming from new inflows.
I think equity AUM for the industry conservatively should grow at 15% a year. We are smaller. We have a lot more space to cover. Hopefully, we are more agile, more innovative to get that little bit of being able to grow a little bit faster. That is good enough for us.
On the AIC business side, how do you?
I'm sorry to interrupt you. Mr. Setia, I'm sorry to interrupt you, sir. I would request you to kindly rejoin the queue for follow-up questions. There are others who are waiting for us. Thank you so much, sir. We'll take the next question from the line of Shreyans from IIFL Securities. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Hi. Thank you for the opportunity, sir. Just a couple of questions. Can you please give some updates on the equity yields in the mutual fund? Have we seen any improvement this quarter or something? And also, what are the key levers you are focused on to drive further yield enhancement from here on?
So as I said earlier, I think we are obviously focused on performance, expanding our distributor reach, expanding folios, direct customers. Also, now we cover a lot of the institution and corporates and all directly. So it's actually the same old thing that everybody has to do. We are smaller. We are more agile. We are more focused on innovation continuously. A few months ago, the SIF category came out. We were one of the early movers on that. We had everything ready at the back end. We worked six months before the actual notification came out. We were quick to launch, and our SIF itself has now got more than INR 2,000 crores of AUM. And it's been three months, but we have scaled it up in that. We have a gold and silver fund that has been doing well thanks to gold and silver.
So I think our products are innovative. Our performance, we try to make it as consistent as possible, which we have seen. And we are small, and we have a lot of ground to cover. Even in distribution, we have not even covered a large part of the market that is also available to us. So there is a lot more room out there. It means steady investment, management bandwidth, all of that. And we continue to do that. And I think our franchise with the distributors is also improving as our performance is consistent, as our scale is going up. We're also investing a lot in managing distributor relationships, managing their needs also. So I think it's a combination of all that. And we do think that, as I said earlier, the equity AUM for the industry as a whole should grow at about 14%-15% a year.
We should continue to plug away at that.
All right. Sir, have you seen any improvement this quarter in our yield in equity yields of our mutual fund?
Yeah. I think as some of our funds have been doing well, which are having higher yield. So we are seeing an inching up of the yield. I think the idea is to continue to maintain that. We are in the 30s in our retention ratio. We are going to ask quite a bit of room to grow in that also. The idea is to add value to the customers, to the distributors, and then announce yield. The first two have to come before you start only working on yield. We are fairly patient, and I think the curve is upward on our average yield, average retention rate over the years. If you see our results, that is also showing the growth. We want to do that only by adding value to customers and distributors.
All right, sir. And sir, on the ARC business, ARC business has continued to report steady profitability, which is encouraging. But however, the equity levels have declined sequentially. So is this because of any dividend payouts? Or is it because of dividend payout or something? And if yes, so can you quantify it? What is the amount or anything?
Yeah. So the ARC business, as you know, the capital adequacy is 85%, which is ridiculously high, as you will admit. So they have a lot of excess capital, excess liquidity. They have almost at any point between INR 500-1,000 crore of cash on hand. So the board of ARC has also been working on by our calculation, they have about INR 1,500 crore of excess capital. They have INR 3,000 crore equity. They need only 1,500. So they have been dividending it out to the extent possible so that they can rationalize their equity. So they have to become lean on their equity side, which will improve ROEs and all that because currently, that extra capital is a drag on ROE. So they have been working on that. And the steady profit is there because, A, the equity is there, plus the old AUM is there.
The acquisition of new AUM has been slow. I do believe it will take another year or 18 months for ARC industry as a whole to start growing with new acquisition because the NPAs in the banking system and NBFCs are not as large as it was a few years ago. So ARC, you must understand, is a very cyclical industry. There are 7-, 8-, 9-year cycles. So I think from 2013 to 2020 was an acquisition cycle. There were a lot of NPAs. You could buy NPAs. You had to deploy capital. I think from 2020 to maybe 2027, 2028 is going to be a recovery cycle where those AUM, you will resolve them, recover them, restructure them, and bring it out. And then again, maybe another acquisition cycle will start.
I don't think the NPAs are going to get very bad, but we are seeing growth of assets in mortgages, in MSME, in retail. ARC is also developing expertise in those areas. Last round, most ARC expertise was on large corporate loans, one big power plant and steel plant and all. Now, we also have actually developed a retail MSME expertise on NPA. The industry has also done. There is a lot of growth that may come in those areas also. ARC will always be cyclical because banking NPAs will always be highly cyclical. You should be patient. When the industry is in down cycle, you will have excess capital. When it goes in up cycle, you can always raise more capital.
Sir, as you have earlier indicated, this business has surplus equity. How we are going planning or something to optimize these equity levels going forward?
So they don't retain too much equity. And they don't retain too much equity. So whatever profit they make, they try to dividend it out every quarter. So it is good for the shareholders also, good for Edelweiss also because it helps us with our corporate debt and others. So they will do everything that is available via dividending it out and all to pay back the excess capital to the shareholders. They need about INR 1,500 crore for the current expected business for the next 2-3 years. But they are also generating profit every year, right? You must have seen they are at about INR 75 crore a quarter. So whatever they are generating, they are dividending it out.
Okay, sir. All right. Thank you so much.
Thank you. We will take the last question from Sujal Chandaliya from Wallfort PMS. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Hi, sir. Thank you for the opportunity. I got a couple of questions from my side. Firstly, over the last five years, we have seen a shift in our FPAUM mix towards real estate and infrastructure from 9% in March 2020 to 52% in December 2025. Can you please throw some light around it and what kind of sub-strategies currently we have? And similar, what are our future plans around this?
So yeah, I think now on FPAUM, I think you have highlighted a very important point. On FPAUM, we are half private credit and half in real asset. A lot of people see this as a private credit business, which is where we started. But we started our private credit in 2011 in EAAA, and we started our infra in 2017. So what we call real asset, it's real asset and infrastructure assets. In our real asset, we have three verticals currently. One is what we call transportation vertical where we have roads. One is our energy vertical where we have transmission line and renewable energy. And one is our commercial real estate where we have office buildings and all. And each of these verticals have many other asset classes. Like in transportation vertical, you can add warehouses, and you can add airports and ports and many other things.
Anything that helps transport of people and goods is the transportation vertical. And asset which have a steady cash flow. So we buy only operating assets. We don't take greenfield risk. We just try to make sure that there is a fair amount of certainty around cash flow. Our energy vertical, we have some transmission lines, and we have renewable energy. And the third one is our commercial real estate, which is our office RYP Fund. So this is, and then we have InvITs and also. We have one Anzen InvIT and one other getting launched, CTS. So I think there has been a growth in that. What happens in private credit is though that has also been growing. In private credit, we have also been repaying to our investors because these are yield funds. So every time the yield comes, you repay it back to the investors.
Unlike a private equity fund, which for eight years has a lot of internal growth, AUM growth, a private credit fund usually is a four- to 4.5-year cycle. So it gets churned very fast, plus you end up paying back a lot of inflows to your investors. So private credit has also grown, but our infra and real assets have grown faster. And we are very happy because there are three strategies in private credit we have. There are three strategies in real assets we have. So on the whole, it's a pretty good mix.
Okay, okay, sir. Sir, also, recently, there was a news article about Edelweiss ARC being one of the contenders to acquire PGIM's India AMC business. So can you throw some light around this? And are we exploring any inorganic growth opportunities?
We are always exploring inorganic growth opportunities. I think we did put in a bid, but we believe there are other higher bidders out there at a higher price. So I think we are always very conservative because unlike a lot of other people who have to buy, we can also build. So our capital can either be used for build or buy. And we look at both. I think if it's a good strategic fit as you know, Edelweiss, in its history, 25 years ago, we acquired Rooshnil Securities, which became an insurance broking business. We acquired Anagram, which became our mass affluent wealth management business. We acquired Forefront, which became our alternatives, part of our alternative business. So we have acquired companies. We acquired J.P. Morgan Asset Management, which is part of our AMC.
We have done about four or five acquisitions in our but we have grown organically also. We have the capability to do both. We will always do acquisition not for quick growth, but for strategic sense if it's a bolt-on acquisition. We do look at opportunities all the time, and we have a team that evaluates it. If we find the right one, we will always be looking for inorganic growth opportunities.
Okay. Thank you for your answer, and all the best for future.
Thank you. As that was the last question for today, I would now like to hand the conference back to Miss Priyadeep Chopra for closing comments. Thank you, and over to you, ma'am.
Thank you, Michelle. Thank you, Rashesh, for the insightful answers. Thank you all for your time today. It's been a joy to have you all and listen in to your questions. Please do write into us at Edelweiss Investor Relationships for other questions and feedback and additional information. Thank you all, and have a great day ahead.
Thank you, members of the management. Ladies and gentlemen, on behalf of Edelweiss Financial Services, that concludes this conference call. We thank you for joining us, and you may now disconnect your lines. Thank you.