Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. This is Ravi Gothwal from Churchgate Partners, and on behalf of IndiaMART InterMESH Limited, I would like to welcome you all to the company Q4 FY2021 earnings webinar. As a reminder, all participant line will be in the listen only mode, and there will be an opportunity for you to ask questions. Joining us today from the management side, we have Mr. Dinesh Agarwal, Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer, Mr. Brijesh Agrawal, Whole-time Director, and Mr. Prateek Chandra, Chief Financial Officer. Before we begin, I would like to remind you that some of the statements made in today's webinar may be forward-looking in nature and may involve risks and uncertainties. Kindly refer to slide number three of the presentation for the detailed disclaimer. I would like to hand over the call to Mr. Dinesh Agarwal for his opening remarks.
Thank you, and over to you, sir.
Good afternoon, everybody. Welcome to IndiaMART's Quarter Four FY 2021 result conference. I hope you and your loved ones are staying safe amidst this going second wave of the pandemic. We have already circulated our earnings presentation, which is available on our website as well as stock exchange website. I'm sure you would have gone through the presentation. I would be happy to take any questions afterwards. I'm pleased to report that IndiaMART has achieved consolidated revenue from operations of INR 180 crore in the fourth quarter, and INR 670 crores for the full year, representing a year-on-year growth of about 6% and 5% respectively. The first two quarters of the fiscal year were clearly impacted due to the pandemic. The growth momentum in the last two quarter helped us close the financial year with a modest growth in the revenue.
Collections from customers declined marginally on a full year basis from INR 738 crores in FY20 to INR 711 crore in FY21. However, the deferred revenue has increased from INR 635 crores as of March 2020 to INR 726 crores as of March 2021. Both collections and deferred revenue were initially impacted due to the subdued first half of the year, but delivered good growth in the fourth quarter, which has resulted into overall growth at the annual level. The financial performance was driven by growth in the key operating metrics, buyer side operating metrics, which results into the customer's confidence in our services. In the quarter four, total traffic grew by 42% to 257 million, reflecting approximately 85 million visits every month.
On a full year basis, the platform saw approximately 80 million visits every month as compared to 62 million visits per month in FY20. In the Q4, business inquiries delivered also increased by 29% to 150 million. On the full year basis, 610 million business inquiries were delivered, representing a growth of 31% year-on-year from FY20. At the beginning of the fourth quarter, we were able to reach pre-COVID levels for our paying subscribers. At the end of FY21, there are approximately 4,000 net addition to the paying subscribers, resulting in the overall subscriber base of 152,000 customers at the end of the year. During the quarter, we have successfully closed the QIP and raised INR 1,070 crore.
The proceeds of that would be utilized for both organic and inorganic growth opportunities, we will continue to invest in the companies that have synergies with IndiaMART. In line with the same objective, we have recently invested in three companies. 11% stake in legistify.com, for INR 1.2 crores. Legistify offers a great product called LogisTracks, which is a SaaS-based tool that allows enterprises to manage their legal workflows and track the legal cases around them. 25% stake in Truckhall, which operates superprocure.com for INR 11 crores. It offers, again, a SaaS-based tool to businesses, large businesses generally, to manage their supply chain and operate real-time freight sourcing and collaboration platform. Another 26% stake in shipway.in for INR 18.2 crores, which is the business of developing a SaaS-based software solution for businesses to automate their shipping operations.
Overall, we are happy to close the financial year with a modest growth and are cautiously optimistic for the new fiscal year. With a strong balance sheet and clear strategy to invest in the building further on our core value proposition, we remain confident of strengthening our leadership position and remain India's leading online B2B marketplace. Before I conclude, I would say that these are very challenging times here again, and we are once again in the middle of a rapidly growing pandemic. Many of the people are affected by that, and I wish you all that you stay safe, and request each one of you to use every precaution to stay healthy and safe. Now, I would like to hand over the call to Prateek to discuss the financial performance in detail. Thank you, and over to you, Prateek.
Thank you, Dinesh, and good afternoon, everyone.
I'll take you through the financial performance for the fourth quarter and fiscal year 2021. Consolidated revenue from operations were INR 180 crores in the quarter, a growth of 6% year-on-year due to marginal increases in ARPU and paying subscribers year-over-year. Consolidated EBITDA was INR 85 crores, representing a margin of 47%, and net profit was INR 56 crores with a margin of 29%. Net profit is impacted due to one-time charge of INR 11 crore on account of derecognition of deferred tax asset for goodwill in tax books pursuant to the amendment in the Finance Act. Cash flow from operations during the quarter was INR 165 crores. On a full year basis, consolidated revenue from operations stood at INR 670 crores, with EBITDA of INR 328 crores, representing a margin of 49%.
Net profit for the year was INR 280 crores, and cash flow from operations during the year was INR 323 crores. Board of directors have recommended a final dividend of INR 15 per share for FY21, subject to approval from the shareholders. During the fourth quarter, we have successfully completed QIP issue of INR 1,070 crores, and the proceeds will be utilized for company's future growth and expansion. Consequently, the cash and investments balance stood at INR 2,365 crores as on 31st March 2021. Thank you very much. We are now ready to take any questions.
Thank you, Prateek. We will now begin the Q&A session. Please allow camera and microphone access if you wish to ask a question and use the raise hand option. You may type your question in the discussion panel, and we will revert to you if any question remains unanswered. Please introduce yourself and 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 Amit Jeswani. Please go ahead with your question.
Hi, Prateek. Congratulations on a good collection number. My first question is, today we are at INR 700 crores of revenues. Am I audible right?
Yes, Amit, you are audible.
Dinesh, we are at INR 700 crore of revenues today. Where do we expect ourselves to be in the next five, seven, 10 years? The opportunity size that you have is massive. You've got eight crore website visitors a month, and our collections are INR 700 crore. We are delivering basically five crore RFQs per month. That means per RFQ in a year, we're just charging INR 10-INR 12. How do you, sir, expect yourself on IndiaMART to also scale for the next five, seven, 10 years?
See, internet growth has started only in the last couple of years. It has become mainstream only in the past three, four years. Before that, it was a very small base and growing at that base. Now, even if we assume that past performance can be the barometer for future growth, we have been growing at the range of anywhere between 25%-30%. Last six years, revenue from operation has grown at 22%. Even if you take a 20%-30% operational growth, I am pretty sure this would lead us to anywhere about 5x-10x growth over next 5-10 years in terms of revenue. However, a lot would be dependent on how are we able to execute in terms of our vision of providing access to market, access to technology like business enablement, and access to finance.
All these three things remain as our focus. As you know, we can't imagine 10 years down the line anybody not using internet, five years down the line, anybody not using. We cannot imagine anybody five years down the line or 10 years down the line trying to do any B2B business and not having an internet presence. I am pretty sure that the first mover advantage and the data science that we have built, the behavioral data that we have built, all that should help us with the help of network effects, and continue to grow.
Sir, my second question is, why aren't we advertising aggressively in places like IPL and all other events? Sir, we are at just 150,000 customers. We are very small with INR 700 crores of revenues. Why are we not aggressively investing in building an even larger brand that we already have? I also want to thank you because your stock has done well for our customers at Stallion. You've done well, sir, but the only thing here I keep thinking about that why focus on cash flows so much? We don't even need money. You've already raised money via QIPs. Why not spend money to build something which is even 10, 20, 30x larger than where we stand today?
If you look at the buyer numbers, the buyer numbers have grown significantly, and we are already touching lives of about 10% of Indian internet population every month. Being a B2B website. By advertising, you will probably get more buyers. I think when it comes to supplier, it is only the B2B sales, which is one-on-one sales, which will work properly. They need to be understood. I think on that side, we should expand more sales and service operations, and that is where we should focus on. Since last one year, we have not been able to do all of that. I think as soon as things open up properly, we should be started doing that. The money has been raised only in the February, two months ago, and it has to be deployed in various initiatives of inorganic and organic growth over the next two, three years' time.
We have already done three investments in this quarter. Obviously, a lot of that work has been going on in the past. I think we will continue to build a large sales force whenever needed for the purpose of branding. Whenever we need to build more buyer traffic, we will do that. For the purpose of monetization, since we monetize through sellers, I am not too sure if advertising is the right channel right now.
Sir, your new verticals like finance you speak about, or you speak about other new areas like payment gateways or whatever? Since you already have a very large customer base, what size of the revenue the new vertical should become in the next few years? Like, that is where I want to be. Because you have a platform, now we have to get into newer place like taxes and all other places. How do you see that journey, and how much are we investing there? Are we going to do it via the startup route? We keep buying startups, small stakes, and then trying to integrate on our platform.
Yes, you are right. I think some of that is happening organically within our company. For example, we have our own payment gateway. We have seen that the need of the payment gateway has fallen over the period of time because UPI has become a great P2P payment provider. As you can see, Vyapar has done very well by way of our investment. Our internal CRM and Lead Manager has been doing very well, but it's not a monetization product. It is only increasing the ARPU of our customers over a period of time, which you can see ARPU has increased over the last two, three years. We will continue to invest in smaller companies, smaller or bigger, any size of the companies, and integrate them as we understand them better, as we nurture them better.
In terms of size, I think it is too early for us to peg any size as of now. Over the period of time, I am pretty sure if we do many of these things, some of them might fail, but some of them might succeed as well.
Thank you, Dinesh. I look forward to it. One last question, sir. You keep speaking about the 4,000 to 5,000 customer addition number per quarter. What do you think we'll have to do if you want to accelerate this number? Why are we not using that strategy to go from, let's say, 150,000 customers to 4 or 5 lakh customers, probably at a lower ARPU, and then slowly, once they get used to the platform, increase the ARPU? What is stopping us doing that?
Yeah. We have done one step on that. We have reduced the entry-level fee. Earlier, we used to sell only annual packages. About five years ago, we decided to offer a monthly package with INR 5,000 upfront charges and INR 2,000 monthly. Now, we have dropped the INR 5,000 setup fee, and now there is only a monthly fee which is there, which is going to help us definitely sign up more customers. At the same time, a lot of trial customers do come in. These SMEs, especially in the last three, four years, ever since demonetization, GST, and pandemic has happened, they themselves are going through a lot of churn. That is where keeping pace with the net customer addition has been difficult.
As you see, last year, we had to drop almost 15,000 customers in the first quarter, and then slowly and slowly we recovered from there. We were on the path of good recovery, then again, the second wave has struck. I think when all of this settle down well, I am pretty sure the platform is useful enough for people to realize and pay for it. In terms of the existing customer, they continue to pay higher and higher, as can be seen in the ARPU per customer.
I wish you all the luck, Dinesh. Thank you so much.
Thank you.
Thank you. Next question is from the line of Anmol Garg, Motilal Oswal. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Hi, good afternoon. Thanks for giving me the opportunity to ask the question. My first question is that in this particular quarter, we have seen a very high increase in the collections. What can be the reason for the same? Are we signing more annual contracts? Have we signed more annual contracts during the quarter?
Sir, this is a common last quarter of the year, especially March. In general, every year has been the bumper in terms of collection. Last year it was not because the corona-led problems started to happen from the second week of March. Otherwise, last quarter of the year has always been like this. Many of the SMEs and many of the companies, they try to complete their budget before the fiscal year ends. Many of the companies want to do that. This is the similar case, I think Info Edge also reports a bumper quarter in the March month. I don't think there is any unusual activity there. What was your second question?
Yeah. Thanks, sir. My second question is to Prateek. If you can highlight why the other income was lower during the quarter?
Sure. Anmol, other income is essentially a mark-to-market reflection of the investments that we've made. As on 31st March, we have INR 2,365 crores, and this entire money is parked in the liquid investments. It's only probably, I think, a notional element, depending upon the market prices. I'm sure as we go along, it will certainly tend to come back.
Okay. Sure. Lastly, just one last question from my end is that in terms of the QIP money raised, are we looking for any bigger acquisitions or our strategy would revolve around tuck-in or smaller acquisitions in next two, three years?
No, as I have reiterated in the past also, that it will be a combination of all three segments. We will continue to invest behind our own organic growth strategy. One or two items we may want to build internally. Second, we will continue to do these adjacency-led investment, which are very adjacent to IndiaMART, such as Vyapar, such as Shipway, or in the small business segment, or such as Bizom and such as SuperProcure or Logistify in the large business segment. At the same time, we would continue to look for a larger ticket size acquisition or investment, which may happen one or two in a year or maximum. I think the way you can expect is maybe one large investment in a year and multiple smaller investments, and apart from the organic growth opportunities that we continue to do.
Okay. Sure, sir. Thanks a lot. That's it from my end.
Thank you. Next question is from the line of Kushagra Bhattar from Old Bridge Capital. Please go ahead with your questions.
Thanks for the opportunity. Couple of questions. I just wanted to pick your thoughts on scalability on volumes front and on the client onboarding and client mining strategy. First of all, is this understanding correct that to get more paid suppliers on IndiaMART's platform, you kind of need more relationship managers? Let's say in future, when you say you are targeting 5X- 10X, you would need significant increase in your relationship managers as well. I've got this wrong and you guys are doing something different to increase the number of paid suppliers without any increase in relationship managers. Can you throw some light on this client onboarding as well as client mining strategy? That will be helpful.
Yes, sir. First, let us look at two sides of it. One is the new client acquisition.
Yeah.
For the new client acquisition, earlier, 100% of our clients used to come when there was one-to-one meeting with the customers, and all of them on the field sales, and all of them were on our rolls, our employees. It was more of a concept sale. Over the time, two things have happened. One, people have started to come on the telephone and people have started to come online. Second, instead of having our own employees at all the places, we are able to now have channel partners who are able to work with us, either on tele mode or on the field sales force mode, to acquire the customers. I think currently about 25% of our sales, new customer acquisition, has already started to come beyond the channels which were there pre-pandemic, which were by and large, our own people and our own sales force.
Together in all of those channels, approximately 500 people are already deployed. However, their productivity is still much lower than the people who have been working with us for longer period, but I'm sure that will catch up. Secondly, as we moved from annual to monthly to removing of the setup fee, there is some level of increase in the productivity, which is also not linear. When we acquire the same number of customers, we will not need as many number of people. The second part is the servicing of the customer, which works at renewal and upsell. Yes, for that, we do need customer relationship management people. However, as and when more and more people are getting adept with how to use an online B2B portal, I think, if I remember correctly, there used to be a time when we had to deploy almost 1% for every 50 customers.
Now we are almost at 1% for every 100 customers that we are in, because the way multiple automations have resulted over a period of time. I think slowly and slowly, this linearity will remain, but this linearity will actually taper down with respect to the number of people.
Sure. This is helpful. Just a follow-up on that, I'll ask my second question. Why do I see then, given the broad good outlook or the strong growth outlook, there has been a dip in the sales? Possibly, I would have been able to relate it in the first half when there was a significant pressure. When things are now, the outlook remains strong, why there has been a decline? Also when you mentioned that there are two types of sales team, one is the hunter kind of, and the other one is the farmer kind of servicing clients. Can you throw some more highlights on the incentives and the targets and the attrition rates you possibly see in your relationship management team? That will be helpful. I'll ask my second question. Thanks.
The sales attrition and targets and incentive are very similar to what you will get in any sales organization, whether it is banking, whether it is telecom, or whether it is insurance, or whether it is education, edtech. Very similar. Typically, there is early attrition, which is higher, and then there are people who stay on, they stay on for long period, and they also become very productive. To your question on why the growth in the client has not been coming, because as you know, more than 50% of our customers had signed up for more than three years. Many of our customers had signed up for annual subscription. Only one-third of our customers are on monthly subscription. The monthly subscription customers, immediately as soon as the pandemic set in last year, they immediately realized that they cannot survive for now, and they went away.
They immediately came back as soon as the December quarter happened, and they immediately started to come back. The annual customers, many of them could not survive the pandemic, and many of them had to change their business model completely. Their renewals are coming in December, January, February. I think this whole churn that has happened because of the pandemic, the industry churn which India is going through, until that stabilizes, the new customer acquisition and the net customer addition will remain a little volatile. Having said that, there are people who understand IndiaMART as a platform, and they know how to take out value from such platform, and which is what you are seeing in the collection from customers or ARPU from customer, which is increasing rapidly when the market was open in December, January, February, and March.
This has again come under a lot of pressure now because there is a second wave of the pandemic which is much more stronger and much more fatal than the previous one. However, the previous lockdown was very strict. I think there is a mixed bag uncertainty on that side. We are hopeful that as long as buyers are coming on our platform and they are getting their work done, we will be able to monetize, sooner or later, more number of customers.
On the sales team, we are seeing the reduction in the sales team as well.
I already said that, one, in the first two quarter-
Okay.
In the first two quarters, we did not hire anybody because.
We were completely focused on uncertainty was there. We did not want to increase any headcount at that point of time. After the first two quarter, it is the only third quarter. Initially, we thought that let the office open and then we should start hiring. That didn't happen because cases started keep coming here and there. By December, we decided, okay, let us start hiring. We started to hire in good numbers in January, February, March. Again, looks like this is not a very good time to go out and build a team. I think it is time to focus on health and safety of the existing set of people, health and safety of the customers. Currently, we are way too busy in managing the health and safety. As soon as there is time, we will again start to work on that.
We have already said that about 500 people who are now working with our channel partners, they are also working. That number was not there one year ago.
Okay, sure. Last question. When you have been announcing small ticket acquisitions, but at the same time, it's minority stake. Just wondered to know your strategy behind acquiring a minority stake and not going for a majority. Also, if you can give some examples in terms of how these are helping IndiaMART. I know you mentioned Vyapar in your earlier calls, but let's say how IndiaMART is targeting in charging the SaaS offerings to their clients, for example, INR 500 per month or so. Is IndiaMART also setting up a separate sales team for these SaaS offerings?
Too early to say, sir. I think let us first build 5-10 such portfolio of such offering. Then we see if we can bundle them together, cross-sell them together. As I said, most of the mobile SaaS has started three years ago. That is, mobile SaaS as a story is just three years old story. I think it is early stage. You will have to invest in that sector, nurture the sector. Then look at bundling, integration, cross-selling, anything. I would say that for the next one or two years, we'll continue with this strategy and at the same time we'll keep evaluating how do we bundle, how do we cross-sell, how do we lead gen for each other.
Sure. Thanks. All the best. I'll get back.
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, reminder to all the participants that you may use the raise hand option on your screen if you wish to ask a question. Next question is from the line of Kapil Agarwal from [Max Life Insurance] . Please go ahead with your question.
Hi, sir. My first question is, in March 2020, you had INR 895 crore of cash in your balance sheet, and this was not allocated over the year, and yet, an additional INR 1,070 crore was added through QIP. Could you tell me what your capital allocation plans are? As a minority shareholder, what should we expect going forward?
At the time of QIP also, last year also, we had given you this, but let me reiterate that.
Okay.
One, we have about INR 675 crore of deferred revenue on our books. Now about INR 726 crore of deferred revenue. If we had about INR 950 or INR 1,000 crore of total cash, there was INR 700 crore of deferred revenue. We had only INR 300, INR 400 crore of free cash, which was available for us to deploy in any risky item. Given the size of our company and scale of our operations and expenses, I think that was not enough. Though we had done three investments by then. Given this rapid internet adoption and rapid digital adoption, I think we felt that there is a need for rapid deployment of capital in Software as a Service, payments, and commerce related activities. That is why we raised another INR 1,070 crore from the QIP. From our perspective, as I said, the capital allocation will remain threefold.
One, continue to invest organically in our own business by building payments, by building lead management, by building more marketing, by building more going closer to the commerce. Number two, building sales and service operations, product and technology operations. Number two, we will continue to make significant minority investments in the strategic adjacencies just like Vyapar or just like Logistify or SuperProcure or Shipway or even Bizom. Third is look for a possible large opportunity where we can acquire or invest a larger amount. I think the capital allocation will continue to remain threefold.
Okay. My second question is, every business has an inflection point for growth. I felt that COVID, the pandemic last year would have helped your business a lot, but I see the top line growing only at 6%. What is your take on this and on a long-term scale, not a short-term scale, where do you see this growing?
Sir, there are two kinds of top line. One is the buyer top line. Buyer top line has grown at 42% on a quarterly basis. We used to be at 60 million visits per month, now we are at 250+ million visits per month. Which is not monetizable, but IndiaMART is free for buyers. The second comes is the advertising or sales side, seller monetization. On the seller monetization, again, the top line what you see is collections from customer and number of customers. On the number of customer side, we had said that we had significant setback in the quarter one, and it took two quarter for us to recover from that, and we have grown by over 4,000 net addition in the last quarter. In terms of collection, the last quarter I think we had 37% collection growth, which will go into deferred revenue.
From deferred revenue it will go into the top line that you measure on the revenue from operations. As I said multiple times that our revenue from operation is typically 20 months moving average of deferred revenue.
Okay. I have one follow-up question on this. I see even the number of suppliers growth, that hasn't grown as much as the paying subscribers have. Right? The paying subscribers haven't grown as much as suppliers have. I see a bit of concern here, I see the waning ability to convert the suppliers into paying subscribers. What is your view on this?
Earlier we used to acquire any kind of supplier.
Yeah.
We have become very stringent in the kind of suppliers that we acquire. There are minimum X number of completion that somebody has to do. One, the mobile number has to be OTP verified. Supplier must have an email, which is an OTP verified email. A supplier must have a GST number. GST number is compulsory. We take the lat-long location of the supplier, that is also important. I think we have become stringent in a way, the kind of suppliers that we acquire. Supplier growth has slowed down. This should help us increase the average revenue per customer and this should help us contain the churn. Otherwise, a lot of suppliers, they are fly-by-night operators. We do not want our platform to become more like a classified platform.
Our platform is more like a commerce platform, though it is still an advertising platform, but we do not want to become a classified platform.
All right, thank you.
Thank you. Reminder to all the participants that you may use raise hand option on your screen if you wish to ask a question. Next question is from the line of Kushagra Bhattar of Old Bridge Capital. Please go ahead.
Thanks for the opportunity again. Just one question. How do you gauge entry of Tata Digital and Amazon into providing digital enablement tools to SMEs? Does it pose any challenge to IndiaMART? Also, I read a couple of news articles which mentioned that the deal between the Tatas and the IndiaMART didn't go through. Exactly, what happened out there? If you can help us understand this, it will be helpful.
I also read in the newspaper. If you come to know anything about that, do let me know. My wife was also asking the same question, "What are you doing without telling me?" On the general thing that how the entry of different people are in the B2B, let us try take another question from Somil Shah. Can you try and draw a picture of the B2B landscape? B2B and SME are two very generic words. There can be B2B between the normal dealer distribution supply chain. There can be SME, which is old economy SME. There could be new economy SMEs, there could be service-oriented SMEs. If you look at the entire B2B and SME market, there are multiple businesses which operate and which say that they are serving some or the other section of the B2B and SME.
For example, there are directory and product catalog like us, who help software as a service, and who help transaction, and who help access to market. There are companies which are purely and purely working on access to finance. There are companies which are purely and purely working in the FMCG sector, such as Walmart Wholesale or Metro Cash and Carry. They are B2B, and they are purely and purely in the FMCG category. There are certain category and industry specific B2B. For example, you might have heard companies like Bizongo, Infra.Market, Zetwerk, which are in a very different sector. I'm pretty sure when somebody like Tata, or when somebody like Amazon, and when somebody like Alibaba or IndiaMART, they plan, they definitely have studied a particular sector properly.
Their entry will at least bring some more innovative solution and will bring some more people on the ground and will bring some more capital to the industry, which will in turn help the entire industry grow. In terms of whether it will be advantageous for us or disadvantageous because we are at the leadership of the position, I feel that it will be advantageous for us because currently it is not that the entire market is saturated and we would lose the market share. The market is developing faster than what we can actually chew on. I think it will actually develop the market bigger, and being a leadership position, we should be able to take better advantage of the innovation or processes that happen in the market if more people come in.
Sure. That's great. Thanks. Yeah.
Thank you. Next question is from the line of Sanjay Ladha, Concept Investwell. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Hi. My question is that what IndiaMART is doing, which is going to be different than its peers to stay more competitive in this field?
I think, Prateek, if you can put up the last slide again. Yes. First of all, we continue to focus on our discovery part because we believe that within the B2B, there is so many categories and so much of work on digitization need to be done. I don't think basic digitization helps there. You need a lot of category domain knowledge. Verticals do not help there because there is not enough buyer and supplier threshold. As a horizontal, there is a lot of challenge, and a lot of problem-solving that is there, by way of solving the discovery part. We started with simple products, the listings, and today we have products, specification, photos, videos. Now we have reviews, ratings, quotations, invoicing, buyer-supplier chat. All of that we continue to build.
I think these light blue color items, which are more related to business enablement and commerce, I think we will continue to build partnership and solutions in the area of payment, logistics, and tracking. Somebody said that why are we investing in the logistics side? I can see his question on the comment box. Yeah. Anand Shah. I think shipway.in is very important on that side. If many of our supplier and buyer interact with each other after they have interacted on the platform, and then they want a very good Amazon-like service or very good Shopify-like service, or B2C-like service, even for a B2B product tracking. They would want to utilize a tracking system which Shipway has developed. Also larger corporations, they want more procurement management system or transport procurement management system is like SuperProcure.
I think what we are trying to build is the jigsaw puzzle, slowly and slowly building, and I think, trying to create an ecosystem and become the operating system for the small business. Which is very different than many others are doing. I think everybody is a very different company. As I said, the market is too huge and too much evolving right now. It will require multiple companies to help SMEs to help different industries and to help different transaction pieces within the B2B and SME segment.
Okay. My second question is on where do you see the potential for the future growth? I mean to say like, if I divide the boundaries, means the geographical areas into metropolitan cities or the Tier 2, Tier 3 cities, as per you, where do you see the future potential? We are targeting 5,000 new additions every quarter, and going forward also, we think we can grow at that pace. Where do you think that this numbers growth can be possible for us to come from?
I think, if you look at the slide paying subscription suppliers percentages, the 50% growth will keep on coming from the metro cities only. Currently it is 57%, maybe it can go to 55%, 50%. Tier 3 cities mostly contribute towards. They are buyers, they are not sellers. Rest of India is only 10%, 15% in terms of seller base, but very high in the buyer base. I think Tier 1 and Tier 2 monetization is the maximum going to happen. Over the time, I guess, it will remain 60-40, or at best it will become 50-50. 50% growth will continue to come from metro cities.
Got it. Thank you.
Thank you. Next question is from the line of Amit Chandra, HDFC Securities. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Thank you, and thanks for the opportunity. Can you hear me? I'm audible?
Yes, Amit, we can hear you.
Yeah, sir. My question is related to the churn rate. What has been the churn rate, especially in the gold and platinum package? Have we seen any increase in the churn rate, especially in the premium packages over the last one year? I know that there has been increasing churn in the entry packages because of the pandemic. Because over the last one quarter, most of the premium packages came for renewal. What has been the experience there? Also in terms of the paying supplier mix, as you said, around two-thirds of our paying suppliers are on annual package. What is the aging there? If you can throw some light there. Within the annual paying suppliers, how many of them are on the platform for more than one year, three years, five years?
I just want to understand the long-term stickiness on the platform.
Yeah. In terms of churn, as I have already said, let me give you renewal figures rather than giving you churn figures. In the platinum customers, we had less than 6% or less than 0.5% monthly churn, where the customers left us. However, the renewal of platinum services has deteriorated by 10% ever since the pandemic set in last year. Similarly, for the gold customer, the churn is about 12% per annum, about 1% per month. Even there, I think the renewal rates have fallen by 10%. If earlier 80% of the people used to renew, currently about 70% of the people are renewing. Similarly, now coming to the silver annual, there we used to have a churn rate of about 2% per month, about 25% per annum. There we are definitely seeing about 10% increase in churn.
It could be short-term because many of the businesses have gone out of favor. Now that there is a second wave, it can be even more difficult. In terms of monthly, as I said, there is a higher number of customers joining in and a higher number of customer leaving out because on one side there is not enough business in the market, on the other side, there is not enough survival only on the internet. I think people are trying the platform. Some of the people finding the platform very useful, and some of the people are leaving the platform. Overall renewal rates have, in general, gone down by 10%. If they were 80%, they've gone to 70%. If they were 70%, they've gone to 60%, and so on.
Sir, also on the aging of the premium suppliers.
Yeah. Sorry. Out of the total 158,000 customers, 152,000 no?
52,000.
52,000 customers. About one third of the customer are less than one year. Between one to three years, about 30% of the customers are there, and about 40% of the customers are more than three years with us.
Okay, sir. Sir, on the investments also, I know that we are not planning to step up investments, but do we think that we are adequately invested to fuel around 20% growth for the next few years? If required, then what are the areas where we are planning to increase the investments also? Is it mostly sales, technology or which areas are in the focus in terms of investments? Also in terms of competition with a lot of new competitors coming in. How do you view the market? Is there a scope for a large player coming in and IndiaMART also growing along with them? Is there enough scope in the market for a dual player? Also, your views on the recent launch of JD Mart, and have you seen any increased competition from there?
As I said earlier, let me first answer your second part of the question. As I said earlier also, that entry of multiple people into different areas of B2B or different areas of SME or different areas of whether transaction or whether discovery or whether financing, will only help the ecosystem and only help the market grow. Coming to a specific question about Justdial entering into this particular space, I think this particular space is driven by network effects. Obviously, anybody who comes in will definitely get some market share, but they will also help educate lot more number of customers, and that should help us. It is very early right now for us to see any significant or any even insignificant. Not a single customer has come back and told us that we are leaving because of JD Mart or something like that.
I don't think that is any near-term problem. In the longer run, I guess those who execute well, those who have a better network effect or better behavioral data they will probably prevail. On your second part, which you asked first about the investments that we are making. First, we will continue to make inorganic investment in the inorganic opportunities, which may not add immediate revenue to our consolidation, but I think they will build the ecosystem around our consolidation, and at some point of time, we may find some acquisition or revenue consolidation opportunity there. On the organic side, I think a lot of investment has gone into developing the CRM and buyer profile side. That is paying good returns right now. Our investment in the payment gateway, when it was made, at that point of time, UPI was almost not there. Now UPI is everywhere.
I think the need of that particular payment gateway is reduced only to the trust-related item rather than the actual payment processor-related item. In terms of other areas, we continue to evaluate what are the other areas that we can look into. A lot of our money would be invested in category development, because as I said, every category need to be understood, domain knowledge need to be built. Category development would be definitely an area of investment. Some of the business enablement software we may want to build internally as well, and we may want to invest and acquire as well. These are the areas of investment will happen. Whether they will result into only a 20% growth, I don't really like a 20% growth. Historically, we have been more than 25% growth company.
There could be one year here and there where we are growing lesser than that. Frankly speaking, I prefer a better growth over a longer period of time.
Just one last question from my side. I just want one clarification.
Yeah.
You mentioned that for being registered as a supplier, you need a decent GST number. Out of these 6.5 million suppliers that are registered on the platform. In India, we have around 12.7 million GST payers. These 6.5 million suppliers are all GST registered? Or if you can provide the mix out of the 6.5 million, how many are GST?
We haven't yet provided the exact number of the GST-verified customers. We are in the process of doing that.
We will be able to provide that some point of time. As of now, we have not provided. I will note down your suggestion and maybe try to cover this as part of our annual report.
Okay. In terms of paying suppliers, I am aware that without a GST number, you cannot become a paying supplier. For a free supplier.
Yes. Almost 99% of our paying suppliers are now GST registered, or 98%. There could be some older suppliers who are GST exempt, so that we take. You are correct. On this 6 million, I can give you the exact number after looking back, because there are cases where we have GST available, but we have not been able to verify. There are cases where GST is available, and we have been able to verify. I will clarify that maybe in the next quarter or in the annual report.
Thank you, sir. Thanks for the opportunity. All the best.
Thank you.
Thank you. Next question is from the line of Ajay Modi, Piper Serica A dvisor. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Hi, Dinesh and team. Help me understand this. I am a little confused, and I am trying to summarize my thoughts of the last one-hour call so far. We are in a building mode where we are trying to do or enable a lot more transaction, enable a lot more of logistics and ease of doing business with a lot of SMEs. At the same time, if I look at paying subscriber as a percentage of total suppliers to France, it has dropped from 3.1% in FY 2016 to 2.3% in FY 2021. If you say that your target is 5,000 additions per quarter, which is about 20,000 subscriber additions per year, and the ARPU remaining at a growth of 5.5%, we are looking at annual growth of not more than 20%.
If you say 25% growth is your aspiration, the annual subscriber base has to be about 28,000 subscribers to 30,000 subscribers. Even if I rule out the last one year, which was a struggling phase for most organizations, most SMEs, what I see is that conversion rate has gone down from 3.5% kind of conversion to 2.5% kind of conversion, while we are delivering a lot more inquiries. Inquiries have grown at a very higher rate. Seems like there is low pricing power or adaptability is still low. That's a brief of my first question. I'll have my second question later.
Yeah. I think you have got it right, that adaptability is still low, and adaptability will happen. The adaptability will happen over the period of time and as the product evolves. Especially, in the last two, three years, there has lot been many different hiccups for the economy, be it demonetization, be it GST, or be it the pandemic. You are correct that the growth formula that we have for 25% is 5% quarter on quarter on the customer addition, and 5%-10% coming from the ARPU. You are right, Deep, that we need to do a net addition of about 30,000 if we want to have our aspiration at 25% or more. Given that the last couple of quarters and last couple of years, we have not been able to do more than 20,000 subscribers per annum.
For example, in the FY 2019, we did about 22,000, which was high. In FY 2017 also, we did about 24,000. I think we should be looking at 25,000-30,000 net addition. As the business and economy stabilizes, I'm pretty sure that our platform can deliver and will deliver value for 25,000-30,000 customers.
My second and quick question is that globally, there is a model where a lot of internet companies give a free one-month premium subscription for subscribers to take a look and feel, understand how technology can add value to their business. Have we tried something of that sort?
Pardon me. Can you repeat that question again?
What I'm trying to say is that globally, there is a model where lot of internet companies give one month free subscription. One month free for a premium service. What that does is basically it gives the subscriber a feel of what they will get, how paying money will add value to them. Have we tried something of that sort?
Sir, ours is basically a freemium model. 98% of the people who do not pay, they continue to get some value. Unlike in the SaaS, they do not have a freemium. They offer a free trial. In our case, anybody who is not paying is a freemium. People can come and try the platform, how it works in their category, what kind of leads are there in their category. People can use individual buy leads to check what kind of buyers are there in their category. I don't think acquisition is a problem. The problem is the longer-term retention. Some of it could be because of our own platform or pricing, and some of it because of the external factors of the SME and the Indian ecosystem, the way it has been evolving.
Simple question here. One, is it possible for us to go to a conversion rate of 5%, meaning 5% of paid subscriber as a percentage of total store plan?
Out of the total supplier, 6.4 million, we have to look at only the GST-enabled supplier. That's why I say that the total supplier base, let us not look at this 6 million. Let us look at the 10-12 million total supplier, GST supplier that we have in the country. Out of that, I think the product-oriented, B2B-oriented suppliers should be anywhere around 2-3 million suppliers. Of that 2-3 million suppliers, we should be able to get 10%-20% penetration.
Okay. Understood. Thank you for your time.
Prateek, can you take this question from Mr. Wall, W-A-L-L? One of the acquisitions, SuperProcure, has its revenue drop from INR 10 crore to INR 1.5 crore. I think they used to be a logistics GP.
SuperProcure, when it started, they started with a very different model in which we're trying to pretty much provide the logistics services to enterprises, and that's the year in which you see a much higher revenue. However, if you look on the profitability side, they made losses there. During the course, they've decided to turn to a completely software service provider. That's why you would see that while the revenue is declined, however, the profitability is somewhat better.
Also, just to add to your question, this INR 1.5 crores revenue is FY 2020 revenue. Which is one year, last to last year's revenue. I think it is not correct. It would be inaccurate to say 30x of the sales. They are growing at more than 100% year-on-year.
Dinesh , due to time constraint, we will like to take one last question from the line of Anand Trivedi, Nepean Capital. Please go ahead, Anand.
Thanks, Dinesh . I have a quick question on the margins. In the fourth quarter, your margins have gone up from 31%-48%, and similarly for the full year from 26%-49%. From what I can see in the presentation, that's because the manpower cost and the other costs have gone down. The question I have is, how sustainable is this? Where do you see your margins in the coming year?
We have been giving this guidance earlier also, that we were a 25%-30% margin company, EBITDA margin company. Of the certain temporary and permanent measures that we took during this pandemic and lockdown and work from home, the margins are looking like 45%-50%. Those are not sustainable. Almost half of those margins will come down, and we will probably become a 35%-40% kind of a margin company when it all settles down, rather than a 25%-30% or 45%-50%.
Okay. Thank you.
Thank you. With this, we come to an end of the Q&A session. Now I hand over the call to the management for their closing remarks. Dinesh , for your closing remarks, please.
Yes, I'm coming. Thank you, ladies and gentlemen, for joining our quarter four and full year conference call. In the end, I would like to assure you that we will continue to support and stand by our customers, vendors, and employees in these trying times, and we will emerge out stronger from this crisis. We have tried to address most of your queries in the time available, but if you still have any of the queries, please feel free to contact our investor relations team, and they would be more than happy to help you on email and on con calls. Thank you very much. Stay safe. Take care of your families and let us pray to God that this pandemic ends soon. Thank you.
Thank you, everyone. On behalf of IndiaMART, that concludes this webinar. Thank you.