Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. I'm Kushal Maheshwari, Head of Investor Relations, and on behalf of IndiaMART InterMESH Limited, I welcome you all to the company's Q3 FY 2023 earning 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, Full-time Director, Mr. Prateek Chandra, Chief Financial Officer. Before we begin, I would like to remind you that some of the statements made in today's conference call may be forward-looking in nature and may involve risks and uncertainties. Kindly refer slide number three of the earnings presentation for the detailed disclaimer. Now I would like to hand over the call to Dinesh for his opening remarks.
Thank you, over to you, Dinesh.
Thank you, Kushal. Good evening, everyone, and welcome to IndiaMART's Q3 FY 2023 Earnings Webinar. First of all, a very, very Happy New Year to all of you. We have already circulated our earnings presentation, which is available on our website as well as the stock exchange website. I am sure you would have gone through the same, and I would be happy to take any questions afterwards. I am pleased to report that IndiaMART has delivered a consolidated collection from customers of INR 283 crores at 28% year-on-year growth and deferred revenue of INR 1,015 crores, representing a year-on-year growth of 29%. The growth was primarily driven by 24% increase in the number of paying customers, paying subscription suppliers, and addition of the accounting software services segment that we acquired in the Q1 of this financial year.
Continued growth momentum in the paying subscriber is largely driven by recovery across the industry and demand for the digital transformation due to accelerated internet adoption that we have seen over the last two,three years. Total traffic on the platform and the resulting unique business inquiries remained stable at 250 million and 222 million respectively. Our 90-day repeat buyer is standing at approximately 53-54%, represents the continued trust on the platform. On the people front, as we continue to build organization, we have added approximately 300+ employees across sales, service, product, and technology in this particular quarter. As the team build-up is more or less commensurate with our scale of operation, we expect further increase in the employee base to be more or less in line with the growth in the number of customers.
Overall, we ended the quarter on an optimistic note and expect to continue to build upon the growth momentum. The growth reflects customers' confidence in our value proposition. We will continue to invest in further strengthening the value proposition in line with our strategy. Now I will hand over the call to Brijesh to update about the accounting business, especially Busy Infotech. Thank you, and over to you, Brijesh.
Good afternoon, everyone. In this quarter, BUSY has delivered a billing of INR 12.4 crores, revenue from operations of INR 10.4 crores, and deferred revenue and advances of INR 24.1 crores. The EBITDA for this period stood at INR 1.6 crores, which is a margin of 16%, and the PAT for the quarter was at about INR two crores. In this particular quarter, we have also generated positive cash flows of INR 4.3 crores. I would like to reiterate that all these numbers that we see here are numbers that have come post shifting towards Ind AS in this financial year post our acquisition. Until last year, this reporting was done basis GAAP.
However, from next quarter onwards, we will be able to give you comparable numbers as we will complete one full year of operations. During this quarter, we also sold 5,000 new licenses, and that takes the overall licenses sold to 3,23,000 till date. We are nearing completion of hiring of our sales team across India. As I had shared with you last quarter, that was a priority for us, you know, post-stabilizing the operations. We have also now started working on growing the partner network, especially to improve our penetration in the under-penetrated geographies across India.
The overall performance of the business is in line with our expectations and we are confident that our objective of doubling the growth rate of the business should be met in this financial year. With this, I'll hand over the call to Prateek so that he can discuss about the financial performance.
Thank you, Brijesh, and good afternoon, everyone. I will take you through the financial performance for the quarter ending December 2022. Consolidated revenue from operation was INR 251 crores in the quarter, registering a growth of 34% year-on-year. Deferred revenue during the quarter stands at INR 1,015 crores, an increase over 29% YOY basis. As these figures includes accounting services segment, which we acquired in quarter 1 of this year, on a like-to-like basis, standalone collection from customers, revenue from operations and deferred revenue were at INR 273 crores, INR 240 crores, and INR 991 crores, representing a year-on-year growth of 24%, 28%, and 25% respectively.
As communicated in the previous quarters, the company continued to invest behind growth, primarily in manpower across sales, servicing, product and technology. During the quarter, we have added 325 new employees, taking the total employee headcount to 4,413. Consolidated EBITDA for the quarter stood at 28%. Consolidated other income for the quarter stood at INR 102 crores. The increase is primarily on account of one time realized and unrealized gain of INR 67 crores on measurement and sale of investment in other entities, primarily ProcMart, wherein our investee company has raised primary capital from institutional investors at a good valuation. Net profit for the quarter was INR 113 crores with a margin of 32%. Cash generated from operations during the quarter was INR 115 crores.
This includes INR 17 crores received as refund of tax paid for the financial year 2019 and 2020. Excluding this refund, normalized cash generated from operations would have been INR 98 crores, representing 35% of collections from customers during the quarter. Cash and investment balance during the quarter stood at INR 2,108 crores. Thank you very much. We look forward to answering the questions.
We'll now begin the Q&A session. If you wish to ask a question to panel, kindly raise your hand and allow camera and microphone access. Questions so that we'll be able to address questions from all the participants. We'll wait for a couple of seconds while the question queue assembles.
Can you already raise hand?
First question is from the line of Vivekananda from Ambit Capital. Vivekananda, please go ahead.
Yeah, hi. Thank you so much for the opportunity. I have two questions. The first one is on the operating metrics like traffic inquiries and the likes. What we see is that for the last several quarters, this number, I mean, I agree that it has increased versus pre-COVID levels, but it has stagnated at a certain level for the last several quarters. My first question is to understand this better. What's really happening here? Is it an indication that the demand environment is very muted, or is it so that we are seeing more competition? I'd like to understand this better. Second question is with respect to the, you know, related to the first one, which is the collections growth.
We have managed to sustain collections growth, at a rate, higher than our long-term 20% guidance. Just wanted to understand the confidence that you have in growing your collections, at the same pace, perhaps next quarter and fiscal 2024. Thank you.
Let me first answer the second part of the question. Because you can see the number of customers acquired or added in the last, three, four quarters has been significantly higher than our historical net customer additions. Obviously, that is starting to result into approximately a 25% kind of a collection growth. As the base effect takes, starts to take place, and as the percentage-wise, number of net customer addition, which is about 8,000 that we have guided, we have been guiding, I think this will trend towards that 20% long term. That's the second part of the question. On the traffic and inquiries, so if you look at the traffic.
You know, you are right, there has been a significant increase from pre-COVID. That significant increase, a lot of that was due to shortages that happened during that COVID time, whether it was medical or whether it was other related stuff. Now, I guess, those have slowly and slowly tapered down while the traffic is still maintained at elevated levels that is coming from the other parts. You may be right that there may be some here and there economical and inflationary pressure that might have some muted demand, but that's not really visible if you see the traffic even in the last quarter of September quarter was 260 million. It's just this particular quarter is the holiday season, too many holidays this particular quarter, so you are seeing a little bit of a downward trend.
I am sure that this will continue to be maintained at INR 260 million or so. Thank you very much.
Sure. This is very helpful. Just one small follow-up. Am I right in inferring that the exports market is very sluggish at present given the global prevalent factors? Dinesh, if you could just comment on the impact of that on our business, if any. Thank you.
Yes. We are typically a domestic B2B marketplace, and 90%-95% of our business happens in for the domestic market. Even the buyer side traffic, if you go and see on some of the external websites which give you less than 10% of the traffic comes from international places. We would not be the right party to comment on the export related business. In general, you know, last entire decade we haven't been very bullish on the export, but FY21, I think, there was specifically some spurt on the export. It is still to be seen what impacts, long-term impacts or a medium-term impact would come on the export.
Thank you. I'll rejoin the queue.
Thank you, Vivekanand. Next in queue is Abhishek Bhandari from Nomura Capital. Abhishek, please go ahead with your question.
Hello, sir. Can you hear me?
Yes.
Yes, sir. Thank you and Happy New Year to everyone. Sir, I just had two questions. One, you know, first is your, on your other income. There is a very abnormal high number on the other income in the consolidated numbers, almost INR 100 crore+. You know, I could not understand the math behind that because the cash balance what we have is only around INR 2,100 crore. If you could, you know, please help me with that.
Yeah. Prateek, hi, Abhishek. You know, as I discussed, the other income was for INR 102 crores in this quarter. It has two components. One is our treasury income, which is a return on the cash and bank balance we maintain. Second is the gains on the strategic investments or any fair value gains that we get on that. In this particular quarter, there has been a one-time realized and unrealized gain of INR 67 crores coming on account of the sale of investments and measurement in other entities in our investments, primarily ProcMart, wherein they have raised a primary capital from the institutional investors at a very good valuation. Roughly around INR 50 crores gain out of the INR 67 crores is coming on account of that investment.
The remaining INR 17 crore is on account of the other investment. No, we still own 19.5% in this company.
Okay. Okay, thank you, sir. The second question is, you know, on the competitive intensity. your peer, you know, which focuses more on the B2C, you know, classified business, has been talking about, you know, aggression on the B2B side, you know, with their field staff and hiring plans. If you could share, are you seeing any rise or any, you know, threat from, you know, any competition of yours, particularly on the classified business? I'm not asking about the transaction, you know, B2B.
I don't think we are seeing any, we are hearing anything from our customers or our sales team. It's been almost more than a year or so, ever since that B2B thing happened. No murmurs anywhere from the customer or anywhere from the sales team.
Thank you, sir. Sir, my last question is, you know, we added around 6,200, 6,300 paying subscribers, you know, this quarter. Are you happy with this run rate?
As I've been guiding that, we will on a longer term basis, look forward to 8,000+ customer addition per quarter, which is about 33,000, 32,000 in a year. This particular quarter, it was a one-off, because there was a Dussehra, Diwali in the same month. There was so many less number of working days. Otherwise, I am still confident that we will still do more than 8,000 in March quarter for sure.
Thank you, sir, and all the best for this year.
Thank you very much.
Thank you. Next in queue, we have Anmol Garg from DAM Capital. Anmol, please go ahead with your question.
Hi, am I audible?
Yes, you are audible. Please go ahead.
Yeah. A couple of questions. Firstly, on the margins levers. We have been waiting for some time on the margin levers, particularly the operating leverage to play out. When do you think that the operating leverage will start to play out in the business? That is one. Secondly, I wanted to ask, is the assumptions right that the current supplier additions that we are doing is more on a monthly basis? In the past, what we have seen is that these monthly suppliers do get upgraded over the quarters. Are you expecting a good amount of ARPU increase as well in the coming quarters as well?
First part of the question is that, margin. As I said, you know, out of these 36 months of COVID, the first 18 months we did not do any investment, you know, whether it is manpower or whether it is. Because there were too many uncertainty, it is only from around the same quarter last year that we started making aggressive investments back in market. I think right, rightly so. Currently the manpower expenses has gone up on two counts. One, we started to hire more people, and two, the average salaries have shot up considerably in the last two years. That is showing up in the from that unrealized, unrealistic margins that was there 44%-45% during the COVID time.
If you look, we are now back to that 28%, 29% margin bracket pre-COVID. Now, if you look at the cash flow from operation versus the collections, the cash flow from operation, removing the some of the one time tax refund is about INR 90, INR 95 crores on a like-to-like basis, which is started to trend in the cash margin slightly towards upwards of 30%, as I've been guiding on a long-term target of about 33% or so. I think we are fine on that side, but it will probably take one or two more quarters before it can start to expand. The second part was?
Same, same question.
Monthly to, yeah. As we have been telling, about 1/3 customer come on the annual subscription and 2/3 customer come from, come on the monthly subscription. The monthly subscription customers have much higher churn. Annual subscription customers have a lower churn. From monthly customers, we typically upgrade over a period of time to annual and gold. When they move up to the annual mode, in the silver annual or silver multi-year, the ARPU does not increase much. However, when they move up further to the gold and platinum, then that's when the ARPU starts to increase. Currently, since the number of customers at the bottom of pyramid is going too much up, so the ARPU increase, you will not see in the overall customer base.
Whatever ARPU that you are seeing increase is that you are seeing in the top 1% and top 10% customer base. In the near term, as long as we increase the customer base by 20%, you will not see the overall ARPU increase. As we start to change the mix of the customers in a slightly longer period of time, then you can expect a CAGR-based ARPU increase of 4%, 5%, 6% that we have seen in the past also.
Sure. Thanks, Dinesh. Just one follow-up on that. That is the number of customers that we are adding right now, so has the mix changed that more than two-third are being added on a monthly basis as compared to earlier, where two-third were added, being added on a monthly basis?
Pre-COVID versus now, I think we are same because during the COVID, the most of the churn happened in that monthly customer. We also did not prefer too many monthly customer coming and going in that time because we could not have signed the NACH form and et cetera. During the COVID time, most of the customer either were acquired on the annual mode or churned out of the monthly customer base had fallen significantly by the end of FY 21 and even in the middle of FY 22. I think we have built up back again and now I think the mix is back to the same level as pre-COVID level.
Sure. Sure. Thanks. Thanks for the answers. I'll join back now.
Thank you, Anmol. Next in queue we have Nikhil from Nuvama. Please go ahead with your question, Nikhil.
Okay.
Hello. Can you hear me?
Yes, please.
Yes.
Hello. Yes, Nikhil, we can hear you.
I want to understand, especially in terms of disconnect between revenue growth and employee growth. Revenue growth has been in last couple of quarter really good. If you see in terms of employee churn, since Q1 of FY 2022, when we started hiring aggressively, employee count, the growth has been much more higher. Just comparison like Q4 of 2022 to Q4 of 2021. Employee count was up 44%, and even the outsourcing cost has been up from 8%-9% on that to 14%. Basically what I want to understand is, the employee productivity or revenue per employee is definitely from recent historical trend. Are you looking to increase it back to the recent trend we have seen or you think this is steady state given we are still hiring?
Okay. Nikhil, if I could understand your question right, your question is more on the employee growth numbers.
Of course, yes.
Last two,three quarters, the growth numbers in the employee is much more than our revenue growth. Second is growth on the outsourced sales cost.
Yeah, sure. Basically, number in last six quarters has increased much more faster than revenue growth. Also the outsource growth cost as a percentage of revenue has increased from 8%-9% to now approximately 13%-14%.
Yes. Do not compare them with the during the COVID era. As I said, if you compare them with during the COVID era, it will not be the right thing. Compare that with the pre-COVID era, you know, Q1 of FY 20, last quarter of FY 20.
Yeah. Nikhil, outsourced sales cost is essentially the cost of the customer addition. You can look at the number of customers that we have added. You know, that would justify maybe the increase in the outsourced sales cost. It's going in line with that. In the terms of employees, you know, as Dinesh also said in his opening remarks, that in the last four quarters we were actually doing the catch up of the growth in the employees that we haven't done in the last two years.
If you go to the margin lever slide. sorry.
Margin lever slide.
Mm-hmm.
Okay. Going forward now we are almost done with that. Going forward, we expect our employees to increase in line with the customer growth only. This year has been an aberration because this year has been a more catch up on the investments that we haven't done in the previous two years.
Yeah, if you see the slide, the dark blue line, dark blue graph remains at that 55%, 56% now. For the last three quarter, it has actually stabilized, and the revenue growth has caught up with the employee growth.
Okay. Okay. Understood. One more question on BUSY. We are seeing decline in the current quarter as well as margin decline in last couple of quarters by like 1,800 basis point. Just want to understand, is it, there's some seasonality or there's some organic element as well? How should the BUSY bill trend in quarter four from seasonality and organic growth perspective? Thank you. That's it from my side.
Nikhil, as we had shared that we would be investing behind building up the sales team.
Recording stopped.
all across India, so that, you know, we are present in markets where we have under-penetrated opportunities. The decline in margin that you see essentially is the investment in building up that team upfront, which will result into growth in revenues over, you know, over the next two, three quarters itself. It is the only principle re-
Recording in progress.
why you really see that decline there. Overall, as I mentioned, the business that we've seen in the last nine months vis-à-vis the nine months of the previous year, we are in line with our target of doubling the growth rate. We are fairly happy and comfortable with that.
Understood. Thank you so much and good afternoon.
Yeah.
Thank you, Nikhil. Next question is from the line of Swapnil from JM Financial.
Hi, can you hear me?
Yes, Swapnil. Go ahead.
Yeah, thanks. I had two or three questions. First on the traffic and business inquiries trends, right? Like, as we discussed earlier, the trends have not really changed in the last few quarters. Is it possible that you would be compelled to spend towards AMP if those trends do not change in the next few quarters? That's my first question.
You will see advertising and promotion.
The second question is like, we were expecting some integration benefits with BUSY. I assume that those benefits are not getting captured right now. So, can you give some indication as to when we would see those benefits coming in? That's number two. And number three is with respect to the cash on the books. What are your plans to use that INR 2,100 crore of cash that is sitting on our books? How do you plan to utilize that? Thanks.
From the traffic side, I've already answered that, currently, the there has been 30-40% gain from the pre-COVID levels. You know, in terms of the buyer and supplier side, number of inquiry and everything, I think we are still comfortable. If things require over the next, I mean, not in this financial year for sure. If things require, we have last done the advertising in FY 16 last time. I think it's been seven years. We will, if at all, we have been guiding that, if at all we will do, we will do the brand advertising. I don't think it will be mostly to do with the traffic or something. It will be more on the brand recall side.
On the Cash, I think we have been doing two things. Mostly either returning money back to the shareholders as per the dividend or buyback, or doing investments into M&A. We will continue to do the, both the things going forward as well. You know, our last few years of cash return to the shareholders has been, you know, INR 33 CR and INR 46 CR, except the FY 2021 when there was a COVID time. I think that is about one third of the profit pool. This year, INR 130 crores. I think that will continue to happen. On the rest of it, last couple of years we have invested into BUSY, we have acquired Livekeeping and also invested into Vyapar.
About INR 660 crore we have invested in the accounting segment. In case we find any other opportunity suitable, then we'll do that. Otherwise, we'll return the cash.
On the question of integration with BUSY, you know, as we had guided last quarter also, this year is a year where we wanted to, you know, smoothen the whole transition of the management that has happened and get better control on the operations of the business. We are actively discussing internally on ways and means of doing it, but this is something that we would be able to start working upon from next financial year only.
Sure. Thanks for taking those questions.
Thank you, Swapnil. Next in queue we have Mukul Garg from Motilal Oswal. Please go ahead with your question, Mukul.
Yeah, hi. Am I audible?
Hello Mukul, go ahead.
Dinesh, I just want to follow up on the previous question regarding the employee growth. Still a bit confused on how we should look at it. Can you just help us the right way we should kind of look at the employee growth? Should we look at the revenue per employee? You know, collection per employee? Or is there another metric, you know, we should kind of think about when we kind of, you know, view how the employee growth will happen over next, you know, year or 2? How operating leverage can play out in the business based on the current employee base.
You know, if I look at, the, you know, the revenue per employee or even collection per employee, you are back to, you know, early days of, you know, FY21. While you obviously had a massive operating leverage gain, in the subsequent quarters, but now it has all reverted back. Should it be the case that, you know, your employee growth now onwards be in line with the revenue growth? Should revenue growth actually lead employee growth generating operating leverage?
Yeah. There are two ways to look at it. One is, look at the employees, you know, sales and service employees as a function of the number of total customers, total paying customers. Approximately, for every 66 customer, including the leaf level service, and customer care person, and including their management overheads, management span, that works out to be something like that, 65, 66 customer, one employee. From that perspective, you see, we were quite low on the number of sales and service employees, because we did not backfill during the COVID, even if there were attrition. Now the customer base has suddenly grown.
I think we have done the ramp up, and we started doing this ramp up about four or five quarters ago. I think we are probably towards the fag end of the catch-up being done. Maybe another quarter, 100, 200 people, we are still less. That's the one is there. Then on, you can probably expect the number of employees to grow in line with, you know, number of customers or collections for some time.
If we do not get a shock of like last year in terms of the re-rating of employee salary by about 25%-30%, then I think we should start to see the operating leverage again, as we have seen in the past, from 71% in FY16 to, you know, 52% in FY20 to 20. FY21 and 22 are aberration because we really did not invest behind employees or anything. From 52%, we are a little bit 4% ahead, but I think we should be able to catch up that in the next 2, 3 quarters.
Sure. Just to get it right, you are saying on a ongoing basis between 100-140 salesperson would be required, assuming 7,000-9,000 customer addition per quarter. You know, as this kind of plays out, assuming again that you don't get another supply side shock in FY 2024, and given the trajectory of your deferred revenue, how should we view the operating margin next year?
I think the way I look at it is, collection from customer and cash flow from operation on a like-to-like basis. On that side, if you see the collection from, you know, the cash margin, had gone down to about 28% and 30%. This 42% is not like-to-like basis because there is a one time gain of tax refund of about INR 15, INR 18 crores. INR 17 crores to be precise. If I reduce that, I think we are now close to 35% cash margin, and that should reflect in the revenue to EBITDA over a period of time.
Great. Thanks for taking my questions. I'll get back into the queue.
Thank you, Mukul. Next in queue we have Manish Gupta from Solidarity Advisors. Hi, Manish. Please go ahead with your question.
Hello, can you hear me?
Yes, we can hear you.
Okay. Sorry. I had three questions. The first question is, could you talk a little bit about attrition of in the number of paid suppliers? If the target is to add about 8,000, I guess that is a net supplier addition target. Can you talk a little bit about in the first 9 months of this year, what is the gross addition and how many have attrited? That's the first question.
Now, Manish, we do not give out the gross addition and churn numbers specifically. We give out the net addition as well as the general guideline on churn. As, as we have said that gold and platinum, they continue to be churn less than 1% per month. However, on the silver annual and multi-year, because we have started to acquire customers majorly in the last four, five quarters, their renewals are started to come from last quarter or so. First year churn is higher, second year churn is lower, third year churn is even further lower. So they are on a average, if the customer mix remains same, it remains about 2% per month, or it goes as high as about 3% per month.
On the silver monthly, again, in the early, six months, the churns are higher and, later on the churns reduce. Here also as, the number of customer has grown up significantly, the churns are little bit higher on the early years, and that is exactly when we were doing, 9,000, 10,000 customer addition. I was guiding about 8,000, and I continue to guide about 8,000. I think that answers all the part of your question.
Yeah. My second question is, could you talk a little bit about how big you think BUSY could be in 10 years? How do you see the size of the opportunity? You know, where is your market share? It's been over a year now since, you know, we acquired the company. You know, if for long-term investors, how do they think about how big BUSY could be and the rest of your accounting portfolio in about 10 years?
When we look at the overall accounting space in itself, and we look at existing players that are there and the total volume of sales that they do right now, you know, the overall revenues of all of these companies put together is between INR 1,000-2,000 crores range, right? That's the current scenario. Our expectation on the accounting piece is that with the improved focus of government on tax compliance, making GST, you know, more friendly for businesses, of course we see that over a period of time, the overall usage of accounting software by businesses will continue to have a good CAGR growth in double digits over the next 5-10 years period.
Therefore, if you look at that kind of a momentum, one, we feel confident that the accounting space in itself, will go ahead and, you know, may actually become something which is of a $1 billion in revenues or more. Second, when we look at the average revenue per customer in the whole industry today, versus the value that is derived by the customer, the ARPUs are very, very low as compared to the value. We will see an improvement in the ARPU also over the next decade, because as a lot of customers will start to adopt cloud solutions, which will be.
Subscription.
at a much higher cost, vis-a-vis the desktop software products that are available. Secondly, there is an increased adoption of mobile apps by these users, you know, allowing for improving the ARPUs. That is another, let's say, key driver of, you know, this billion-dollar-plus opportunity that we will see here in India. We are confident that both on the side of new customers adopting accounting softwares as well as ARPU, that is generated from each of these accounting software customers, both will actually grow and, making this a billion-dollar-plus opportunity. It depends on how well we really go out and execute our plan and what share of this revenue are we able to get for ourselves.
Okay, thank you. Thank you, Manish. Next in queue, we have Sarang Sanil from RW Investment. Hi, Sarang. Please go ahead with your question.
Hello, am I audible?
Yes, Sarang, please go ahead.
Hi, sir. Thank you for the opportunity. I have a couple of questions relating to the engagement metrics and an operational related question. First of all, what is this algo change you've been talking for a couple of quarters, which is affecting the unique business inquiries of IndiaMART? Also, we can see the number of registered buyers are up 15% YOY. The active buyers count, which is essentially the material number which we should be looking at, this has been stagnant over a couple of quarters now, right? Why is this so?
Let me ask the answer the second part of the question, which is the active buyers. Active buyer, if you look a year-on-year basis, pre-COVID, it used to be 29-30 million active buyers, which has now gone up to 37-38 million buyers. It has actually increased by about 30% in line with traffic. Why are they not coming back again and again? Why our repeat rates remain at 53%, 55%? Is that the healthy rate? Is the 80% repeat rate is the healthy rate or that's that's the product market fit that we continue to work upon.
On the B2B side, we believe that, one, once a quarterly repeat on an average of a large base like this is a good number, if it is upwards of 50%.
Second question please.
We are not making any changes in the algorithm to decrease unique business inquiries. We are only making changes in the number of business inquiries that are formed from the unique business inquiry to be delivered to multiple suppliers. That number used to go, used to be about 5.1 in FY 2017. We found that either our matchmaking was not good enough or the supplier responsiveness was not enough, and we needed to introduce almost six, seven supplier per buyer in order for a buyer to receive three odd replies and the relevant replies.
We found that, now with the behavioral based data that we have collected, started collecting post FY19 because of the mobile adoption of the sellers, has given us enough pointers that we are now able to do much more accurate matchmaking between a supplier and a buyer. Number two, the suppliers responsiveness have also gone up significantly, especially post-COVID, that people have adopted to internet and they have seen the power of internet during the lockdown. That gave us the opportunity to reduce certain competition and reduce certain wastage. That is where I think we believe that we should now be able to do with five odd supplier per buyer, which is what we continue to do.
Some changes we do on a monthly basis, which that is why you are seeing some fluctuation from 5.2 to 5.3 to 5.5, but our target is to go to 5.0.
Okay, sir. Okay, sir, that makes sense. One operations related question is that you had mentioned on the media that margins have bottomed out. In Q4, would we still see a pressure on margins coming from the increased headcount and also higher collection that happened during the quarter? Thank you.
Yeah. When you say margins have bottomed out, you should see quarter, as compared to the previous year same quarter, because there is a seasonality in our, you know, collection and cost. The Q1 collection is lower, the last quarter collections are higher. You should look at the cash margin side. I think the cash margin has probably, you know, if you look at the cash flow from operation without the tax refund, it would come down to about INR 95 crores or so. That is probably where I can see that the margin, the margins have bottomed out.
Okay, sir. We can expect Q4 to have EBITDA margin less than 28%, right? Because of higher collections.
Yes. You should expect 2-3% lower. Historically, that has been the trend.
Sure. Okay, sir. Thank you, and all the best. Thank you.
Thank you, Sarang. Next in queue, we have Kushagra from Old Bridge Capital. Hi, Kushagra. Please go ahead with your question.
Hi. Hi, thanks for the opportunity. A few questions. First to start with just a follow-up on what the earlier participant asked. Just want to understand this line, two line items, registered buyer and active buyer. There was a 5 million jump in the registered buyers, right? There has been recent absolute increase in the registered buyers, for the first nine months as well. Your active buyers have not budged at all. Does this imply that there is an equal amount of leakage in the active buyers, or how should we understand the change in these two particular line items?
Yeah, that's exactly what it says, that there has been leakage in terms of people who came. In general what happens when the every now and then lot of non B2B buyers or occasional buyers also end up coming to IndiaMART and post-posting certain inquiry, which is who do not become a regular permanent kind of a buyer. On a B2B buyer side, I think, there is a lesser churn, but on occasional, one time, somebody bui-building a house or somebody, you know, looking for a service or a product one time, there is a churn. This actually points to the buyer side churn.
Okay. If that's the case, I mean, on a nine-month basis, you have almost added, INR 15 million, registered buyers, right? I mean, if I consider that as a churn, that almost means 40%-45% of the active buyers have churned, right? You sort of say that 53% of your buyers are repeat buyers.
Yes. If that if 55% is repeat, then 45% is churn, right?
The churn. Okay. Got it. Second question is on that line item of outsourced cost. Just trying to understand if. Correct me if I'm wrong, is this sort of correct to assume that this INR 32 crore of quarterly run rate, which you have as outsourced cost, largely represents the sales hunting part through which you sort of expect to add 8,000-9,000 paid suppliers? Is that right? If that's the case, how much capacity is sitting in that INR 32 crore line item or INR 8,000 crore-INR 9,000 crore is, like, working on the full potential?
Outsourced sales cost, that is. Outsourced sales cost, yes, you are right. That outsourced sales cost primarily is new sales acquisition cost, whether it is telesales or whether it is this. Now the second question is the productivity at full force level? You can say that we have made 100+ channel partners in the last 18 months or so. Many of those people are yet to deliver better productivity. Most of the channel sales side, we only take the first six months handholding, and then they become on the per sale basis. It is quite variable after six months of the channel handholding.
On the pure, in-house sales, super sales, there, yes, the productivity matters, but there we are not, adding too many people. I think we had, 1,000 odd people there.
Okay. Basically if that's the case, does this also imply that INR 32 crores represents quarterly run rate represents 8-10, INR 9,000 crores of paid supplier addition, and hence, the customer acquisition cost for you guys comes to around almost INR 35,000-37,000, right? Which is almost like 80%-85% of your ARPU. Considering the churn, effectively, not much money is made for probably the first two years, and thereafter, as and when these customers, you mine those customers, the large part of the OCF is made from those existing paid suppliers, and within that effectively the top 10% of your paid suppliers.
Yes, of course. You know, the top 10% contribute about 46% of the revenue and almost 80% of the profits.
Yeah. Also Kushagra, you know, just to add, when you look at the quarterly addition of 8,000-9,000 customers, this is actually net of churn customer. When you look at, you know, from an LTV standpoint, essentially after entering that particular cost which you said, we are getting a customer.
You are paying to churn twice.
Yeah. We are getting a customer who is paying you perpetually because you've already factored in churn in the cost there. That's the only correction to your hypothesis. Rest is fine.
Okay. Okay. Got it. Got it. Shar, last two questions. One, data question, with respect to top 10% customers and top 1% customers. How much of that revenues from those customers come from buying leads, which is basically, you know, they generally, buy leads over and above their assigned package, which forms part of their ARPU or which forms part of their revenues?
So we-
A broad range will be helpful.
Yeah. Kushagra, what we, that's a good indicator. Whenever somebody starts to buy lead additional to the package that they have taken, that's a good indicator that it's a time to upgrade them. 90%, 95%, 98% of the people typically will have the right package where they will get lead cost at a much more reasonable because that comes bundled versus buying additional leads.
Sorry, for the next year, if they sort of go for the renewal, based on the leads they have bought, it's already packaged in their their offering. Is it?
No. Even in the middle of the year, suppose somebody has taken within Platinum a Star Supplier package. Now suppose we have three packages, Star Supplier and Leading Supplier and Industrial Leadership package. Now, Star Supplier package comes with between 3-4 weekly and 50-100. Between Star Supplier it's a three per week, per day and four per day in the Leading Supplier. If we see that Star Supplier is running at the full capacity of his lead consumption behavior, then we try and approach him to say that there might be more leads and you are better off upgrading to a Leading Supplier package.
Most of the people end up upgrading because there they get a certainty of lead as well as the visibility, as well as the direct inbound traffic. Very few people actually purchase leads in the retail manner.
Okay. Okay. Got it. Understood. Last one from my side. Basically, you generally have commented in the past that you evaluate your investments up to one year, and then you sort of see what to do with it. Either go ahead more, I mean, go ahead and invest more or probably, take some more time. On that, just trying to understand, any update on the acquisitions, especially those two,three, Fleetx.io, IndustryBuying, Bizom, apart from the accounting ones, where you have sort of invested more. Any plans to offer them with your existing plans or, any more rounds of funding to happen? With respect to IndustryBuying, any progress or learnings from that investment? Because this is almost your second highest investment after accounting.
Yeah, those were the questions from my side.
Yeah. I think, Bizom we continue to remain very positive because Bizom is a scaled-up business. In the FY 22 their revenues were closer to INR 50 crores or so. They, they are almost operate at a minus 10% EBITDA kind of level. Bizom we have done I think 3rd investment now.
Yes.
hey have, they had, last time they had raised, they are still sitting on good amount of cash. Yes, they are investing also heavily, and their revenue is also growing well. Other than that, Vyapar is one which also has raised enough capital in the last round and continue to grow well. So these are the 3-4 slightly larger side of, I mean slightly scaled-up opportunities which are there. On the IndustryBuying, Monotaro, until last year, because they acquired when they acquired IndustryBuying, they immediately. You know, COVID happened and they could not really come and do much help in the.
Now they have started to come and we have started to visit Monotaro facility and do some cross-learning. On the Monotaro side, I think it's a e-commerce business I know it remains a cash guzzler and that is exactly why we wanted a limited exposure to that.
Yes.
Someone who has the global knowledge on this and has scaled up this opportunity in some other locations and profitably. We believe that it will take some time and it will probably require some more investments every year or so, but not as hi-heavy as the other e-commerce platforms or the kind we did in the Tolexo times. I think they are better than that, but in terms of growth, they are also finding it difficult. All other ones are very, very small and are still less than a year kind of investment.
Sure. Sure. Thanks a lot. Thanks a lot, and all the best.
Thank you, Kushagra. Next in queue, we have Rahul Jain from Dolat Capital. Rahul, please go ahead with your question.
I think Rahul is on-.
Rahul, yeah. Please come in. Please come in.
Can you hear me now?
Yeah, go ahead, Rahul.
Yeah. Sorry for that. Can you share some of the initiatives that the company has taken to ensure that there is a reduction in churn rates over time and also improvement in upscaling of subscriber from silver plan to much more lucrative gold platinum plans? Can you share any metrics suggesting this trend, if you have already done it?
Let me answer first the second part of the question. If you see the ARPU over a 5-year period, ARPU slide you will see that the ARPU had grown from INR 33,000 to INR 45,000, INR 46,000, and now trending at the similar level. ARPU has grown at the 5% CAGR. This ARPU is not only at the bottom of the pyramid. This is typically comes from the top 10% customer, which is the upgrade from silver monthly to silver annual multiyear to gold to platinum. Also, we have been disclosing top 10% customers revenue and for the last so many quarters. If you see that has grown from 40% of the revenue to almost 46% of the revenue.
Their ARPU has also grown from INR 180,000 to now INR 226,000. Top 10% customer. While the customer base has also grown from 15,000 last year, last to last year to 20,000 now. If you compare it with FY18 or FY19, we have grown from 10,000 top 10% customer to now 20,000 top 10% customer, with INR 175,000 ARPU to now INR 225,000 ARPU. On the churn side, that is the main product market fit that we continue to work upon. That is the main job that we continue to do.
There, one thing is the number of buyers that you can bring and the quality of buy lead, or the RFQs that you can generate and the most efficient matchmaking that you can do. If you see the matchmaking slide, we apply the supplier behavior to do the better searches. If, no go to the supplier behavior slide. Yes, this is also fine.
This slide.
What we do is, and I've given this example in the past also. Suppose there are two furniture manufacturers, and if you look at their brochure, they will typically have everything from sofa to chair to tables to. If I look at their RFQ consumption behavior or lead manager behavior, then we will know that they are specifically interested in a particular product, not, though they belong to a particular industry called furniture, but one supplier A is probably more into office chair, where supplier B is probably more into sofa sets. We know exactly out of the 20 items which are listed, who is the specialist of what. Similarly we know that if this supplier is based in Delhi, which all places he has affinity to supply.
Similarly, the price points that he is looking at and the quantities that he's interested in. These are the things that we do so that the effort is reduced for the buyer and seller in terms of finding the right supplier or right buyer. That is the main thing that we continue to do on reducing the churn.
Right, sir, just one or two incremental thoughts to this question. While you attributed that the ARPU is one metric to measure it, I completely agree that ARPU is one way to look at it. I'm sure a lot of your platinum customers were born platinum because they are a very big brands. I don't think they would have gone through a silver to gold to platinum journey, but many of them would have been born platinum on day one. It's not completely addressed that aspect, but I understand that there's not many way to look at it.
Another way to, you know, probably get some, low on this is either if you could share some, cohort analysis over time, that how many of your total user in, you know, year 1 to year 5 has seen a journey in terms of churn versus upgrade over a period of time. If you keep sharing that on a 5-year basis in your annual report.
You are 100% right that some of those. You are 100% right that some of the enterprise customers may be directly born, you know, as a platinum customer, but they are very handful in numbers. Just 200-300 in numbers. Whereas when we are saying top 10% customer, we are talking 20,000 customers, and I'm sure 19,000 of them were born as a silver and then went to gold and then went to platinum. 95% of the customer go through that same journey of silver to gold to platinum. You know, we take a lot of pride in, you know, our upselling systems that we have created over a period of time.
Many of the people have appreciated that this is a very sophisticated system. If you sometimes are here, we'll like to explain it more.
I'm sure. I've been a user, and I can see that how relevant it is, not today, but for so many years. Somehow the behavior of supplier on our platform is not reflecting because, A, I see the price point is very cheap, which could not be a hindrance for a lot of people to sustain on the platform. Then we also see that how matchmaking, how perfect it is, even as a consumer when we try to search something as a buyer. I mean, this very high churn rate somehow is, you know, not reflecting the true, you know, potential, that's what my reading is.
Yes, you're right. You know, the silver monthly and silver annual customer continue to be a problem to be solved better. Despite the such a low ARPU, there is a very, very high churn. However, once they upgrade to gold and platinum, I think their stickiness improves to almost 90%. Their ARPU also goes up to upwards of INR 2 lakh. You are right. At INR 3,000 a month, why there is so much of churn? We are yet to find a better solution there.
Sure, sir. Thank you. That was my questions.
Thank you.
Thank you, Rahul. With this, we come to the end of Q&A session. Now I hand over the call to management for their closing remarks.
Thank you, ladies and gentlemen, for joining our conference call for quarter three FY23. We have tried to address your queries in the time available, if you still have any queries, please feel free to contact our investor relations team. Last quarter is the great quarter for most of Indians. Wish us luck and wish you luck. Thank you very much. Bye.
Thank you, everyone. On behalf of IndiaMART, we now conclude this webinar. Thank you.