...So good evening, ladies and gentlemen. I'm Avijit Vikram, Head of Investor Relations. On behalf of IndiaMART InterMESH Ltd, I welcome you all to the company's Quarter Two, FY 2025 Earnings Webinar. 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. Joining us today from the management side, we have Mr. Dinesh Agarwal, Chief Executive Officer, Mr. Brijesh Agrawal, Whole-Time Director, Mr. Jitin Diwan, Chief Financial Officer, and Mr. Prateek Chandra, Chief Strategy Officer. Before we begin, I would like to remind you that some of the statements made in today's call may be forward-looking in nature and may involve risks and uncertainties. Kindly refer to slide number three of the earnings presentation for the detailed disclaimer.
Now, I would like to hand over the call to Mr. Dinesh Agarwal for his opening remarks. Thank you, and over to you, sir.
Thank you, Avijit. Good evening, everyone, and welcome to the IndiaMART's Quarter Two FY 2025 Earnings Webinar. We have circulated our earnings presentation, which is available on our own website as well as both the stock exchange websites. We are sure you would have gone through the presentation, and we would be happy to take any questions afterwards. IndiaMART has delivered consolidated revenue from operations at around INR 348 crores in quarter two, representing a year-on-year growth of 18%. Collections from customers have grown by 6% to INR 356 crores on consolidated basis, whereas the deferred revenue grew by 19% to INR 1,483 crores on consolidated basis. Unique business enquiries grew to 28 million, representing year-on-year growth of about 14%. Our total paying suppliers have grown to 2 lakh and 18 thousand.
We continue to see more than anticipated churn on the customer base in the Silver bucket. As a result, we have added 2,400 customers this quarter, which is a slight improvement over the 1,500-odd customers that we added the last quarter. However, as I said, the anticipated churn continued to be elevated, and we are working on that. Our Platinum and Gold customer base, which constitutes about 50% of our customer base and 75% of revenue, continue to have a very low churn and continue to be very stable. We continue to take measures to refine the matchmaking and enhance the overall user experience and engagement on the platform. Now, I will hand over the call to Brijesh to update about BUSY Infotech. Thank you, and over to you, Brijesh.
Hi, good evening, everyone. BUSY has done a net billing of INR 17.1 crores in this quarter. This represents a YoY growth rate of 17%. The revenue from operations has grown by 19% YoY to INR 15.3 crores. The deferred revenue has grown by 40% to INR 53.3 crores. The net profit for the quarter was INR 2.5 crores. Now, during this quarter, we've sold 8,000 new licenses, and the closing count of total licenses is about 3 lakh 81,000 licenses, and this is at the end of September 2024. The overall performance has been in line, and we are focused on increasing our growth rate in the coming quarters. With this, I'll hand over the call to Jitin to discuss the financial performance.
Thank you, Brijesh. Good evening, everyone. I'll take you through the financial performance for the quarter ending September 2024. Consolidated collections from customers was of INR 356 crore in the quarter, representing YoY growth of about 6%. IndiaMART standalone collections from customers in the quarter were around INR 337 crore, registering YoY growth of 5%. The standalone revenue from operations stood at INR 332 crore, registering YoY growth of 18%. Our growth in revenue was primarily driven by around 14% improvement in realization from paying suppliers and remaining by increasing number of paying suppliers. Deferred revenue stood at INR 1,483 crore, an increase of 19% on YoY basis. EBITDA of IndiaMART standalone business stood at INR 120 crore, representing a margin of 36%.
As we mentioned in our last call, current expansion in margins is primarily due to saving arising from lower customer acquisitions, certain cost optimizations, and operating leverage. As and when there is an increase in customer growth, we anticipate that margin will align with the gradual operating leverage inherent in the business. Consolidated net profit for the quarter was about INR 135 crores. Consolidated cash generating from operations was about INR 103 crores. Consolidated cash and treasury balance stood at INR 2,449 crores as on September 30th, 2024 . Thank you very much, and now we are ready to take any questions.
So we will now begin the Q&A session. If you wish to ask a question to the panelists, kindly raise your hand and allow camera and microphone access. Alternatively, you may type your question in the chat box and we will revert on it. Please restrict to two questions so that we may be able to address questions from all the participants. We will wait for a couple of seconds while the question queue assembles.
... First question is from the line of Vivekanand from Ambit Capital. Hi, Vivekanand, please go ahead with your question.
Hi, Aditi. Thanks, thanks for the opportunity. So, my question is on the collections trajectory. I think till last quarter, 1Q, collections growth was in the range of around 15%-20%. Now it has dramatically slowed down to only 5% on the standalone business. I understand that you are facing very high churn at silver bucket level, and that's been the case for a while now. So why is it that collections got impacted so adversely this quarter, even though it was holding up strongly in prior periods? Was there anything specific this quarter that weighed on collections? And if you can give us some more insights into how to project collections, or how do you yourself look at collections here on, given that churn appears to be a chronic problem rather than something that you can address?
That's question one, very lengthy one, so I'll ask my second one only after the answer to this question.
Hi, Vivekanand. So, as I have been telling in the last couple of quarters, that if the customer increase in the net customer base continues to be, you know, flattish over a longer period of time, it will start to reflect in the collections as well as in the revenue. However, this particular quarter, even we have been taken little surprised negatively on the only 5%-6% collection growth. We still tend to believe that this is one of some of our execution issues, some of our, you know, sales execution issues. And we believe that we will probably bounce back, if not towards 15%-20%, at least try to be in the double digit plus collection growth going forward.
But, you know, until or unless we fix the channel position, structurally, I think, we must not anticipate more than, you know, 10%-15% of the collection growth in the times to come.
Okay, thanks. My second question is on collections again, but a different one. So what proportion of your collections are coming from silver, monthly, and gold and platinum? Is it possible for you to explain that? And is there any color you can give on the growth in the collections bucket across these three tiers? Thank you.
As I said, you know, gold and platinum on the revenue side, they contribute about 50% of the customer base and 75% of the revenue realized. On the collection front, though we internally do track on every segment of the customer what is the collection and what is the average collection per customer per month, but we have not been releasing that data publicly. But in general, if you see our revenue and collection today, if you take a 6-month moving average period, they are mostly in line.
You can safely assume that even the collection from customers from gold and platinum would be in the range of between 70%-80% from these 50% customer because the customer set for the collection and for the revenue will remain the same.
Okay. So does this mean that the ARPU increase that you are seeing on a collection basis... I know that the ARPU you report in that slide pack, right, slide number 31.
That is on revenue basis.
That is on revenue basis, right? So on collection basis, this does seem to suggest that you maxed out potential to increase prices from gold and platinum. Is that a correct inference or?
I would not tend to believe that, immediately based upon just one single quarter of performance. I think, it could be a few clients here and there, where the overall... and obviously, the average collection per customer, if the overall collection itself is 5%-6% growth and total number of customers have grown by 4%, you can assume that the average collection per customer has grown only by 2%. But that simply does not mean that this is the maxed out and this is the trend. So I refuse to believe on that and we will...
If this is the similar trend for the three quarters in a row, then yes, but I think we will try to reverse that next quarter onwards.
Okay. Now, what seems odd to me is that the prior quarters you had collections growing fast, despite your net adds being under pressure. And this quarter, it seems like you, your collections growth appears to be more impacted by upgrades, perhaps getting affected due to-
... persistent churn being elevated. Anyway, the-
Asking the same question again and again will not demand-
No, I mean, it is very perplexing to us because all of us had a certain view of this business. The earnings multiple that we assigned to the business is based on certain trajectory.
Right.
Now it has turned out very differently.
Okay.
Thank you, and all the best.
Thanks, Vivekanand. Next question is from the line of Swapnil from JM Financial. Hi, Swapnil, please go ahead with your question.
Hi, thanks for the opportunity. My question is pertaining to the previous participant's question, where you mentioned that 5% collections growth could be a one-off, and there could be some improvement going ahead. I would want to go back in history and, you know, ask you, and because we have limited history since FY 2020, right, on a quarterly basis, and we have this is the slowest growth during that since your listing, ex of COVID. Have you experienced a similar growth trajectory in the past? Have you been able to reverse that trajectory? How long did it take for you?
If you can give some precedents of similar growth rates, you know.
Sure.
In the past, barring maybe 2008 crisis, I mean, on a stable... when the economy was stable.
Yes, I am giving you. So we're asking this for annual data book. Okay, we'll come back to your answer. I'll give you that answer, but please go ahead with your next question, yeah. I'll come back. We... Because this is a very interesting question, and I definitely want to answer that.
Sure. So the next question would be on your churn rates. If you can just break it down, you know, the way you have been doing of late on a category basis. If you could help us, like, how that has moved this quarter, has there been any increase in churn rates, especially in the upper tier categories?
No, I think we have actually rather improved. So if you really see last quarter, we had dropped. So quarter four is generally very good on the gross as well as renewal. The quarter one last year, I mean last quarter, which was April, May, June, we came down to about 1,600 net customer adds. This quarter it is about 2,400. One day here and there could make a difference of maybe 200, 300. So on a very fractional basis, I think we have improved, but that number is not really significant enough to talk about until we see a you know permanent two, three quarters in a row improvement on that.
The churn continues to be stubborn, but maybe a few basis points it has improved.
Will it be possible for you to give it in absolute percentage terms?
I've been giving you the same numbers. So on the platinum and gold, we continue to be healthy, but at approximately 1%. On the silver annual, about 4%. On the silver monthly, about 6%-7%.
Got it. Got it, and the other question is, with respect to your traffic growth. Now, obviously, different metrics have played differently this quarter. Unique business inquiries appear to be okay, but then if you look at the total business inquiries delivered, they are down 7%. Then your overall traffic growth itself is, you know, flattish. I mean, how should we read this? I mean,
So I have given this answer earlier also. One is this traffic growth. Over time, we have realized that the way traffic is being calculated in the era of, you know, web components and a lot of web crawling happening and search engines and ChatGPT and others. I think the web traffic to differentiate the real user traffic versus that accuracy number is going down and down and down. I mean, while we try to represent as much as possible the real user number, but the number of bots have suddenly increased, and the number of scrapers have suddenly increased. That is why the reliance purely on the traffic number or purely on the registered user number is very difficult. The...
That is where, if you remember, about a couple of years ago, we started to report this active buyer in the last 12 months, that number. So to give you more realistic picture, what is the, real people who are actually making enquiry. Similarly, the unique business enquiry. On the business inquiries delivered side, I have always been saying that we continue to make, changes. Earlier, we used to share a buyer's, detail with almost like six suppliers, on an average. While, we try to, reduce that to towards five, five and a half, now we believe that, since the churn is, very heavily, stubborn, maybe there is a room for reduction of the competition and reduction of the number of suppliers per buyer, and that is why we are moving more towards four, suppliers per buyer.
The number of inquiries, business inquiries delivered, will continue to decline in a shorter period of time. These are the three numbers that we give you, four numbers, to be able to navigate what is right and what is wrong.
But to put it this way, while I get your logic of why you're reducing your inquiries to a limited number of suppliers, will not that affect the actual inquiries that a typical supplier would get? I mean, on an absolute basis.
Sir, it will.
And that-
In the short run, it will, but it should improve his conversion. It should improve his effort to ROI, because currently, what might be happening, and this is a hypothesis based upon certain people that we have met. They are saying that, "Don't give us hundred inquiries, give us maybe fifty, but give us the ones which are more relevant and more converting for me.
Got it. Got it. And any chance of your ANPs spends going up now that we are facing challenges on collections as well as suppliers both? Any remedial measures have you thought about that?
Any chance of?
Increasing your ad spends. Maybe that could be the one that could help you.
Yeah. We are working on that. As soon as we are ready, we'll come back and let you know.
Got it. If you can just answer my first question, that will be helpful.
Yeah, I think I'm not able to find handy. I definitely remember in FY 2019, we were actually at about 15% odd growth rate, 12%-15% odd growth rate. On a quarter- on- quarter, I think we have faced this challenge at least third or fourth time in the history. And this is probably one of the longest eight quarters that it has taken us to because the size has also become bigger. But otherwise, we have always found ways and means.
Maybe we'll take one step back to find a way back, because so many categories and so many such a large business and such a great future ahead of us, if we won't grow. I mean, even Google should not grow. I mean, if there is a strategic issue, because strategically, we are almost a small replica of in our own world for Google. From that perspective, I don't think finding the right niche is important, but I think we will recover, and we are quite confident of recovering. In FY 2017, our collections over FY 2016 was only 13%, and I don't have the real quarter and quarter data.
But I think if the overall year was 13%, I'm sure there was one quarter which was single digit growth percentage. Similarly, sometime around FY 2019, also 2019 or 2020. FY 2020 was 10% growth rate, whereas only last 15 days of the FY 2020 were, you know, pandemic oriented. While even the quarter on quarter, I do remember that third quarter of FY 2019 was also similarly single digit quarter. So I think we have faced this and... No, he is saying that other than pandemic. And even if I remember the entire FY 2012 and FY 2013, we were less than, at that time we were still trying to find the product market fit.
So we will recover for sure.
Oh, got it, sir. Thanks, thanks for giving, giving that detailed answer. Thank you. All the best.
Thanks, Swapnil. Next question is from the line of Sachin from Bank of America. Hi, Sachin, please go ahead with your question.
Thanks, Aditi. Thank you, management. Two questions. First, wanted to understand a bit more on margins. Given that perhaps there's no near-term visibility on churn control, the net adds remain low, and on back of operational leverage, cost control, clearly, we are seeing quarter after quarter, EBITDA margins moving up. So is it fair to assume that margins should stabilize at 38%-39% in the foreseeable future till we see all these issues getting resolved?
Yeah, we have been telling, I think, these are more to do with the numbers, timing of numbers. Jitin, can you highlight?
So, thanks, Sachin. So as you rightly mentioned, that margins are elevated for the last two quarters because of the slowdown in growth. We are not able to add much of net adds, and this quarter collection is also on the lower side, and that's how it is looking elevated. So once we go back to adding customers and, collection will also picks up, we will be, back to our normal margins. Having said that, sustainable margin, what you said, we believe that it should be in the range of 34%-35%.
... and not 37%-38%. So next quarter also, we'll have our salary appraisals, which will have impact on margins as well.
Okay, but let me flip that question around a bit. I mean, during COVID, your margins were as high as 50%-52%. What stops the margins are only at 36%, 38%? Why can't we be at 40%, 45% in the near term? And even the normalized margins, I mean, the way cost control is happening, why should it be at 34% and not higher than that?
You know, we always say that one should take the collection to cash flow margin, and that would be the long-term trending margin would be for the revenue to EBITDA. It cannot be different. So collection to cash flow has been trending at between 35% and 40%. This particular quarter, collection to cash flow is hardly 33% or so. So collection to cash flow is the leading indicator of the margin. What you see currently here, the revenue coming from the past, while the, you know, cost is current. So since the currently the revenue is at 18%, while the collection is at 5%, even during the COVID, I have been telling everybody that this is the worst, worst ever quarter, but everybody said margins are doubling. So...
Okay.
And in COVID, a lot of costs were also cut down because rent were reduced by half, no transportation, no hiring. So they were like that. But these are not the times where we are going to cut cost to sustain the margin. So as I said, we would be happy to report margins at around 33%, ± 1%. But in the interim, while we try to find the growth lever, until unless we find the healthy growth lever, there is no point in spending money. So that is what I'm saying. If we find the handle on churn, I think we will go whole hog aggressive on the gross addition as well. And that will increase our cost big time.
So since we are not able to find the handle on churn, we are also going slow on the gross.
Thank you. Very clear. And my first question, second question is actually on, you know, some of the points you said, but answer to this question or, or to some of the earlier participants. And one of the statements, perhaps you said that, until we fix these issues structurally. So just wanted to understand, sir, what needs to be done from management perspective to fix these issues structurally?
So, one is the execution side, which is the people and process side. The other could be product expectation and product outcome side. What is it that will bring the buyers back again and again? What is it that will improve the word of mouth? What is it that will improve the inquiry to conversion for suppliers? What is it that will improve the fulfillment for buyers? And that is something which we found the product market fit in FY 2018, and then from then on, we have been doing minor tweaks. There may be possibilities that, while doing the minor tweaks, there could be something that we missed, probably.
And one of the things that we realized is that we have been always working on increasing supplier responsiveness, and which is so high today that it may be acting against the buyer's interest or against the supplier's own interest, in terms of he's getting inquiry, but he's not getting conversion. And we have heard this by going to multiple suppliers, that inquiries are there, but I think it is difficult to mature the inquiries. Buyers are also saying that the suppliers are there, but probably it is difficult to decide which supplier to settle with. So this is one of the things, and that structural finding is sometimes in front of your eyes, but you just keep struggling to find the right one.
That point, I understand, and thank you, and I wish you all the best, sir.
So now we'll take a question from the chat box. The question is from Mr. Dhiren Barwariya: "So how do you see export-oriented suppliers and buyers for adding growth to business as China Plus One theme comes to fruition? And how or what are our plans to capitalize on these trends?
Thank you very much. So we just for the context, IndiaMART was an export-import business-to-business marketplace, since 1999 until 2009 . And most of our 80% of our focus used to be exports. Sometime during 2007, 2008, 2009 , we realized that India has become uncompetitive or less competitive in the world market as against China. And we would probably like to focus on the domestic market. It took us some time, between 2009 and 2013 , 2014, to find the product market fit for the domestic buyers and sellers. Ever since we have not been focusing on the export market. Only in 2020 , post the COVID.
Pandemic hit, we found that still there is nobody else who is serving the export market well. And, so we created, a smaller initiative called IndiaMART Verified Exporter Program, and that has done well. But do I see a TAM of, you know, hundreds of thousands of crores there? I still do not see, such a large TAM. While ex- I mean, if you really compare the growth in the export market, that still had been a single-digit CAGR over the last, you know, 10 odd years or 15 odd years. So while there is a opportunity to build, maybe 100-300 crore business, and out of that, maybe we are already, doing 50 crores-70 crores of business, but, will that become a 500 crores or 1,500 crores business?
That is not something that we see immediately. So, I hope that answers your question that we now have a export offering ever since late 2020 or early 2021, and it is probably upwards of INR 50 crores and below INR 100 crores of revenue contribution into our business. But will it grow as rapidly as domestic business? I'm not too sure.
Thanks.
Next question is from the line of Kaushik Suresh from Generation Investment Management. Hi, Kaushik, please go ahead with your question. We'll take question from another participant. Next question is from the line of Nikhil Choudhary from Nuvama. Hi, Nikhil, please go ahead with your question.
Thanks for the opportunity. Just want to understand the collection number a little better. So collection growth for us was 5% YY this time, and while you are attributing it to lower subscriber addition, even the subscriber count, total subscriber, grew 4% YY, right? So subscriber is not the only reason which impacted collection, correct? Correct me if I'm wrong, because at least what we can sense is that revenue per paying supplier must have gone down as well for collection to be at 5%. So can you give color what happened behind the scene and why, let's say, revenue per paying supplier has gone down at such a pace in between the two quarter?
Yeah, if we see the slide number 31, so let's understand the collection, difference in collection and difference in the revenue. So if you see the revenue side, revenue is 4% growth in paying supplier and 14% growth in average revenue per supplier. Total revenue is 18% growth, so there is no calculation difference. On the collection side, 4% growth in customer and only 1% growth in average collection per customer, which is resulting into 5%.
Yes, sir. So why there is decline in average collection per customer?
Mm.
Any reason for that?
I mean, as I said, we have been growing at about 15% odd in the past, despite the fact that the number of paying suppliers have been growing at 5% odd. In this particular quarter, we believe that there could be, you know, execution challenges in the pockets. We do not know if this is something that we can say that the average collection per customer will continue to remain muted. We will see if we can recover that back in the current quarter or next quarter. If that is not the case, then we can assume that this is a structural problem.
Sure, sir. Second thing, given, you know, the churn continue to remain elevated and, since last many quarter, you have highlighted some of the initiative you are taking. Any update, anything which has changed on ground, or we should assume, this remain the case even in coming quarter?
So, coming quarter, I don't think you will see a significant change, but because the amount of changes that we have done around two, three quarters, four quarters ago, they have not yet resulted into anything significant. So I think newer initiatives that we are trying to take on reducing the customer competition or the buyer side competition, buyer-seller side competition, as well as maybe putting some additional checks on spending our time, money, energy in terms of acquiring the customers, which are the more evolved set of customers. That will take another two quarters or so to say if there is any significant result happening on that.
Other than that, I do not have any other information to share with you.
... Sure, sir. The last one is on unique business inquiry, 14% jump. I think first decent jump after many quarters. So, any color, what is leading to that take in quarter two?
So I would say that, there has been some effect of the, you know, if you would have noticed, we have started to collect inquiries also using WhatsApp on our mobile website. So that has given us maybe 1%-2%. And so the conversion from the traffic to unique buyer, that has improved a little. We have also, we used to call the buyers whenever there was a half intent or a dropped intent buyer. That process also, we have moved towards to WhatsApp and RCS. That has lower cost and higher ROI, so that has resulted into some of this.
But this is too small a number to say, because otherwise, if you really see, it used to be in the range of 25 million-26 million and moved to 28 million, whether it will remain 27 or 28, but I'm sure, at least 1 million per quarter growth has come because of the WhatsApp-led implementation.
Sure, sir. Understood. That's it from my side. Thank you.
So we have another question from the chat box. The question is from Mr. Jigar Shah: We are seeing Justd ial being very aggressive in customer acquisition. Also, we see more activity by TradeIndia, your initial competitor. Is competitive intensity hurting our growth?
On the Justd ial side, I think, if you really see the number of customers declined during the COVID time and the recovery, I think they declined for a long period of time during both the COVID period, while we kind of remained more or less flattish during the entire COVID period, only for the first quarter we declined. So I think they recovered that post-COVID. While at IndiaMART, we moved from 1.5 lakh suppliers to almost 2 lakh suppliers quickly. And in the last five, six quarters, we are now stagnating. I would say they woke up a little late, whether they will face the similar challenge. That time will tell.
We are happy with whatever we have been doing and wish all the best to Justd ial for their own endeavor. We haven't heard much about TradeIndia. TradeIndia remains our you know distant distantly respected competition, whether it is Exporters India or TradeIndia, but no significant change that we have observed from them.
Thank you.
Thank you. Next question is from the line of Kushagra, from Old Bridge Capital. Hi, Kushagra, please go ahead with your question.
Yeah, hi. Just two questions. Sorry to hop on the collections again. I'm just trying to understand your response in a better way. So given that gold and platinum are 70%-80% of the collections, so the lower growth in collections actually has to come from lower growth in collections from the same gold and platinum customers, right? So I'm trying to understand one of the reasons which you laid out was more of a one-off, and you mentioned some lapses in the sales execution. So maybe if you can give some more light as to what those lapses were, and what are you trying to do about it so that they don't happen again? So, yeah, that's my first question.
So as I said, you know, in terms of improvement of sales efficiency to improve the collections on the shorter term, some of those things were, we were not able to fill in the vacancies. Some of them are related to even the churn, you know, movement that we are having from silver to gold to platinum. I think the gold side, the lower part of the gold, which we call TrustSEAL customer, there I think we are having certain set of challenges. I would still say that please wait for next quarter or so to be able to really say that what execution challenges have we been able to fix?
Because this 5%, growth rate, that is coming, some of that could also be the regional decentralization that we have been working on. We now have a regional structure, which is reporting into the central structure with the each vertical of acquisition and, you know, customer support and the key client division. But none of that should have resulted into such a sharp drop. 5% growth coming from the customer and 10% growth coming from the collection. Together, they should have been plus minus, anywhere ± 15%. This 5% is definitely not acceptable, but we would only know if this is one-off, because the number of months that we have had is only two months so far.
Sure. All right. Second question is, on, you know, on a different note, basically, you generally don't call out this metric, but, do you sort of track your revenues or the money you are able to realize per unique business inquiry? Like, if we do the rough maths, basically it shows that, it has trended up, but given all these challenges, where do you think, you know, the money which you are able to realize per unique business inquiry, is headed in the future? Like, is there a threat, how much you can monetize or how much you can make per unique business inquiry going forward for all the challenges which you have laid out and which we have been facing since the last seven, eight quarters? Yeah, that's what, that was my second question. Thank you.
So I think on the monetization side, the day we decide that now we have to maximize the monetization for every category, for every location, for every inquiry. Currently, we have been operating very largely as a horizontal marketplace with flattish pricing across the category, across the location, across the quantities. The only thing that we have implemented in the last year, year and a half, is all the newer sales in the platinum segment is being sold in two-tier pricing with the normal and premium, where the premium has been assigned to certain 2%-3% of the categories, and you know, the top-tier cities.
I think there is enough room for a B2B marketplace or for a B2C marketplace once it comes to maximize the revenue per inquiry in different segments. So if you really look at 1688 example, between 2005 and 2015 , their customer base grew from almost a hundred thousand to almost a million, close to a million. When between 2015 and 2025, their ARPUs have grown considerably. But I don't think we at IndiaMART have reached that level of saturation that we need to optimize on every location, every category. I think we are still in a growth phase, and we will continue to do that.
Just like in Google, if you look at the AdWords, every category you can do a bidding on, and do a demand supply-based matchmaking. Whereas in the beginning on the Amazon, whenever a new category is introduced at a flat pricing of 5% or so, but over the time, when the competition heats up, you try to maximize the return per category or sales per category, and then on top of that, you make revenue from advertisement, so I don't think the monetization is per unique business inquiry a problem.
I think the top-of-mind recall and the Net Promoter Score of buyer and seller, that is the key metric for us in the main line of IndiaMART.
Got it. Got it. Thank you, and all the best.
We have another question from the chat box. The question is from Mr. Amrish Kakkar: Can you share what is the current thinking on the strategic investments, either in terms of adding as a service or potential sales? Specifically for existing integrated services like Livekeeping, can you provide some color on what the plan is?
Prateek, you want to answer that, accounting as a service?
Yeah. Hi, everyone. So, on the strategic investments, you know, as we've stated there, that, our core business proposition, that was around the matchmakings and little bit on the conversation side. And the business software enablement for the different SMEs becomes an integral part for the SME ecosystem. And, in order to enhance the value proposition there, we've been trying to, you know, explore different softwares and invested in the different softwares. Accounting being one wherein, you know, we have a very high conviction, and we have taken in huge bets on the accounting segment. One investment is BUSY, and the other investment has been Livekeeping. So it's been roughly around three years that since we made these investments, and two and a half years that since we made these investments.
Both of these investments are moving in the right direction. In terms of Livekeeping specifically, you know, when we acquired them, it was, you know, just a product that was just created. Over the years, we have worked on the scalability of the product, and now it is, you know, being used by more than 10,000+ customers in total. So from zero to 10,000 customers is what we've been able to achieve. However, we still think that in the larger scheme of things, it still continues to be small. As and when it kind of, you know, continues to grow well and becomes little scalable, we would explore a lot more synergistic opportunities with the IndiaMART, which would become visible.
Currently, for Vyapar, BUSY and Livekeeping, all three of them, we are currently using IndiaMART as a channel for sales lead generation. I think it is in the near future that we would start to do a reverse as well, whereas BUSY, you know, BUSY customers or Livekeeping customers can generate leads for IndiaMART as well. On the Vyapar side, we have also integrated on the buyer side, where from within Vyapar, you can submit a lead or an RFQ to IndiaMART for inquiry. Similarly, from Shopify, we have an app where you can submit an RFQ on IndiaMART. So this gives a holistic view of the about 600 crores-700 crores that we have invested in the accounting software side.
On the minority investment side, Prateek can also give you some color. I think if you read the annual report that was released the last quarter, that has a good section on that, but Prateek can elaborate more on as a strategy on that side.
So on the sectors other than the accounting, we still kind of continue to explore. But certainly, if you look at, we've invested in the logistics as, that's we had the three investments there. Distribution management, Bizom, is the another one that's been kind of, you know, doing well, been progressing well. EasyEcom had been more about, the e-com universe of the suppliers who want to do e-commerce. Enabling their order management system, their warehouse management systems, is what EasyEcom does. And, M1xchange is the other one, which has been doing well on the invoice discounting side. So these are, again, if you see, very different areas that, you know, we are trying to explore.
As I said, look, they continue to be small. As and when they grow bigger, we would see a much better synergies opportunities with them.
I think four or five of them, within last two and a half years, have raised multiple rounds of subsequent capital after raising money from IndiaMART as well.
Yes.
So they are continuing to do well on that side as well.
Next question is from the line of Anmol Garg, from DAM Capital. Hi, Anmol, please go ahead with your question.
Yeah, hi. So a couple of things from my end. Firstly, you have talked about that you're not seeing much competition from Justd ial or TradeIndia, Exporters India. So is there any other channel which is from where we are seeing larger competition? For example, B2B, e-commerce or Facebook, per se.
I don't think we have faced any bigger challenge from or any bigger competition from any of the smaller Indian players that keep getting funded time to time. I'm sure each one of them are trying to solve very unique and very different problem for a specific industry or for a specific geography. And we continue to study them and see what we can learn from them, how we can partner with them. But as of now, we have not seen any particular customer who is mentioning that I left you because of XYZ competition. On your other question, whether Meta or Facebook or Instagram or WhatsApp, similarly, whether Amazon or Flipkart or Zepto or Blinkit, and thirdly, whether Google.
You know, these three continue to remain the bigger daddy under which we try to find our own niche. So they are always a competition to anybody and everybody, all these three people. And we continue to find a niche, the kind of problem that they are not willing to or able to solve. And B2B is one such thing that neither Amazon nor Google nor Meta Facebook as a company has solved in a longer period of time. And it is not only in India even worldwide, if you really see very little they have been able to gain.
So I think they continue to be a threat and opportunity, whereas looking at their revenues, you can find that if their B2C revenues is so high, how can you do B2B? But you know, if you really look at the other smaller ones, they are all trying to generate some business, but still nothing has become, you know, anything to worry about us as a competition.
Sure. Sure. Secondly, if I had to break up our paid supplier additions between gross additions and churn in this quarter, then would you say that on quarter-on-quarter basis you have seen some improvement in gross addition or churn has reduced from that perspective?
From the gross side, as I said, ever since almost like seven, eight quarters, we have remained at 90%-95% of the gross addition, and I have not pressed the pedal specifically to meet short-term net customer requirement by pressing pedal on the gross. My thing has been that try to improve the churn first before we go to 120% of our best ever gross addition. As I said last time also, we continue to remain at 90%-95% of our gross addition. Whatever deterioration or improvement that you are seeing, it is because purely because of churn.
Right. And as you have indicated, that churn is more or less the same as the last couple of quarters. So from that perspective, for now, should we assume that the gross supplier additions would remain in the 2,000 odd range, in terms of the additions on quarter-on-quarter basis?
Net, net supplier addition? Yes, currently-
Sorry, net supplier addition.
Yeah. Currently, it doesn't look like we have broken out of that 2,000- 3,000 range-bound figure. You know, if you really look at the last five six quarters, it has remained range-bound between 2,000-3,000 . I would love to go past 5,000 , but we have not been able to. And until as we go past 5,000 on a consistent basis, we will not be unnecessarily putting a lot of money in acquiring new customers to increase our gross addition.
Right. Right, right. And, and one last thing from my end. So if you can talk about ratio of inquiry to conversion for a supplier, then how has it changed over last few quarters? And just wanted to understand here the quality of inquiries that we are having right now.
So that varies significantly from customer to customer, industry to industry, location to location. You know, certain customers are happy with very large order value, like large machines and large projects, are happier with 1% or 2% conversion. Certain customers which are able to do even 20% conversion. So I think that varies significantly across different industries and geographies. I think the NPS that we measure, you know, buyer fulfillment rates that we measure, has remained at 40%-45% of the buyers who respond back to our feedback. That is something as an indicator that it has plateaued over the last two, three years. It used to be 30-odd percent, 25, thirty-odd percent pre-COVID.
It moved to 40%-45%, 40-odd percent, post-COVID, and now trending at 45%. But in the last three years, it has not really made further improvement. And also people's expectation might have changed. So we can clearly say that the importance of conversion is very subjective to each industry and each particular customer.
Sure. Understood. Thanks for taking my question. That's it from my end.
Thank you, ladies and gentlemen. That was the last question for today. I now hand the conference over to Mr. Dinesh Agarwal for closing comments. Over to you, sir.
Thank you very much, ladies and gentlemen, for joining our Quarter Two FY 2025 Conference Call. We have tried to address your queries in the time available, but if you still have any questions, please feel free to contact us with our investor relations team, and we will try our level best to give you answers of whatever we could not answer today. Thank you. Have a nice weekend, and Happy Diwali to all of you!
Thank you, everyone. On behalf of IndiaMART, we now conclude this webinar. Thank you for joining us, and you may now disconnect your lines.