Thank you. We start the call. Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. I'm Kushal Maheshwari, Head of Investor Relations. On behalf of IndiaMART InterMESH Limited, I welcome you all to the company's Q4 and FY 2023 earnings webinar. As a reminder, all participant lines will be in listen-only mode, and there will be an opportunity for you to ask questions after the presentation concludes. Joining us today from the management side, we have Mr. Dinesh Agarwal, Chief Executive Officer, Mr. Brijesh Agrawal, Whole-Time Director, Mr. 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 earning presentation for the detailed disclaimer. Now, I would like to hand over the call to Mr.
Dinesh Agarwal for his opening remarks. Thank you, over to you, Dinesh.
Thank you, Kushal. Good evening, everyone, and welcome to IndiaMART's quarter four and FY 2022-2023 earnings webinar. We have already circulated our earning presentation, which is available on our website as well as stock exchanges website. I'm sure you would have gone through the same, and I would be happy to take any questions afterwards. I'm pleased to report that IndiaMART has delivered a consolidated revenue from operations of INR 269 crore in the fourth quarter and INR 985 crore in the full year, representing a year-on-year growth of 33% and 31% respectively. Collections from customers for the entire year grew from INR 934 crore to INR 1,219 crore on the consolidated basis. Deferred revenue as on March 31st stood at INR 1,162 crore.
This growth was primarily driven by increase in the average revenue per customers and the increase in the number of paying suppliers. In addition to this, the acquisition of the accounting software services segment in the first quarter of the last financial year has further contributed to this growth. Continued growth momentum in the paying subscription suppliers is largely driven by recovery across industries and demand for digital transformation due to accelerated internet adoption, as well as our product market fit. Total traffic on the platform and resulting unique business inquiries remain stable at 252 million and 22 million respectively. Ninety-day repeat buyers also standing at approximately 53%, represents the continued trust on the platform. On the people front, we continue to build the organization.
During the last year, we have added almost 900 new employees, taking the total employee headcount to 4,583. Going forward, further increase in employee base over the next year will be in line with the growth in the number of customers at IndiaMART, as well as other businesses. Before I would conclude, I would like to say that we are happy to close the financial year with good growth on almost all important metrics, and we are optimistic about the next year. Improving macroeconomic environment, increasing internet adoption by businesses, and our strengthening value proposition will support the growth momentum of IndiaMART. 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.
Hi, good evening, everyone. BUSY has delivered a billing of INR 17.7 crores in Q4 and INR 54.6 crores in the entire FY 2023. This represents a year-on-year growth of 16% and 18% respectively. The revenue from operations was INR 11.6 crores in Q4 and INR 43.3 crores in the entire FY 2023, representing a year-on-year growth of 9% and 22% respectively. The EBITDA for Q4 was at INR 0.7 crores at about 6% margins. For the entire year, this was INR 10.3 crores with 24% margin. The net profit for the quarter was INR 1.4 crores and for the entire year it was INR 10.3 crores.
BUSY also generated positive cash flows from operations of about INR 6.2 crore in Q4 and about INR 20.6 crore during the entire year. As all of you are already aware, we had adopted Ind AS post our acquisition of BUSY. Hence, to facilitate comparison of FY22 and FY23's data, we have restated FY22's data also as per Ind AS. The earlier numbers that you saw were reported based upon GAAP. During the quarter, we also sold about 8,000 new licenses, and therefore our total count of licenses sold is at about 3.31 lakh at the end of March 2023. The overall performance has been in line with our expectations and what we've communicated.
We've met our goal of doubling the growth rate of the business in our first year of acquisition. We hope to continue to do better in this year. With this I'll hand over the call to Prateek, so that he can talk about the financial performance here. Thank you, everyone. Prateek, please.
Thank you, Brijesh, and good evening, everyone. I will take you through the financial performance for the quarter and fiscal year ending March 2023. Consolidated revenue from operations was INR 269 crores in the fourth quarter. On a full-year basis, INR 985 crores, representing year-on-year growth of 33% and 31% respectively. Deferred revenue for the year stands at INR 1,162 crores, an increase of 28% year-on-year basis. These numbers include accounting software segment, which we acquired in this particular year, on a like-to-like basis, standalone revenue from operations for the quarter were at INR 256 crores, and for the year at INR 939 crores, representing the year-on-year growth of 28% and 25% respectively.
Deferred revenue were at INR 1,134 crores, representing a year-on-year growth of 25%. On a full year basis, consolidated EBITDA was INR 268 crores, representing a margin of 27%, while net profit was INR 284 crores with a margin of 24%, and cash flow from operations was INR 476 crores. As of March 31st, 2023, cash and treasury balance stood at INR 2,335 crores. Board of directors have recommended a final dividend of INR 20 per share for this fiscal year 2023, and further recommended a bonus issue of 1 is to 1, that is one new share for every one existing share, subject to the approval from the shareholders. Thank you very much. We are now ready to take on questions.
Thank you, Prateek. We will now begin the Q&A session. If you wish to ask a question to the panelist, kindly raise your hand and allow camera and microphone access. Alternatively, you may type your question in the chat panel and we will revert on it. Please restrict to two questions so that we may be able to address questions from all the participants. We will wait for a couple of seconds while the question queue assembles.
First question is from the line of Vivek Anand from Ambit Capital. Please go ahead.
Hi. Thank you so much for the opportunity. My two questions. The first one is on the collection. What we have seen is for the standalone business, the collection growth has been accelerating in the last three quarters, and it's now 26% year-on-year. Just wanted to understand how to think about collections here, and I understand that fourth quarter has a lot of renewals. Could you please help us understand the way the renewals have moved from your top 1%, top 10% versus the overall customer base? That's question number one.
Second question is on the margin side, we saw that the margins are still getting, you know, getting hit because of investments. I just wanted to understand how to think about margins as we head into FY 2024. Thank you.
All right. Thank you, Vivek Anand. On the renewal side, as I've been guiding, we are probably about 90% of pre-COVID levels. The good part is that platinum renewals and gold renewals continue to be very good. Gold and platinum renewals are... the churn is less than 1% per month. However, between the silver side, the renewals would be split between monthly and the annual. While on the annual side, we are running at around 30 odd % churn, which is about 3% per month, and on the monthly side, about 5% per month. That's the typical journey of a SME.
We have seen that ever since the COVID has hit at the bottom of the pyramid, while there is higher adoption for internet, the churn continues to be high. As the people move up the value chain and learn about internet and move to the gold and platinum subscriptions, the churn continues to actually be reduced. If you see our top 1% customers contribute about 17% of the revenue, which is about 2,000 customers giving us about INR 9 lakh per year. Top 10%, which is about 20,000 customers, this has moved to now INR 2 lakh 36 thousand. I remember very distinctly this number used to be INR 1 lakh 80 thousand at around COVID time.
We have moved from INR 1.80 lakh to INR 2.36 lakh in less than 2 years or two and a half years or so. Even, if you remember, the top 10% of the customer used to contribute around 40% of the revenue, which is gone up to the 45%, and then 46%, and then 47%. Despite the fact that last year we have had the highest number of customer additions at the bottom. We used to do about 20,000-22,000 customers per annum, if you see historically. Last year we have added about 33,000 customers in the net customer addition. I think if you look at overall basis, I think we are doing well.
rgin, quarter Q4 is always because from the first of January we do the annual reviews. So there's a sudden jump of 15% odd on the salary bill, as well as since there is a higher collection, there's a higher incentive and higher expenses which go upfront, and that is why the margin is subdued. Otherwise, I think we will get back to that 28% margin soon. Then as I have been guiding, we will try and target to reach 30% by the end of this year.
Sure. Thank you. Just one follow-up on the first answer. Dinesh, on the renewals, you said they are 90% of pre-COVID levels. Is it 90% in platinum and gold or overall? I'm just trying to understand, you know.
Yeah.
How to look at renewals?
Platinum and gold is, I think it's all recovered well. More or less, same as pre-COVID level. It is only the silver customers where, if you remember correctly, pre-COVID silver annual and multi-year renewals, we had gone to the best ever level of about 24%. Now we are still, you know, at least 10% higher, 30%, 35%, 4%. Similarly, on the monthly side, we had gone to best ever of about 5% or 4% monthly. Now that is again trending at 5%. These are the two differences that you can see at the silver level. On the gold and platinum, we are, I think by and large, best ever or near best ever.
Okay. Last one on the on the renewals, top 1% disclosure that you've been doing for the last four quarters. Here we have seen that your top 1% ARPU has gone up from INR 790,000 to almost INR 880,000. Is this a result of price hikes or higher usage? How to think about this?
We haven't done any major price hikes in the Platinum. What happens, people buy more city category combinations, and that is what, you know, is bringing this change. People are probably using more city category combinations in the Platinum. Also, as I said, as people get to Gold and Platinum, they get more comfortable on how to spend money and how to. I think that is why you are seeing the top 1% ARPU on a quarter-on-quarter basis is no indication of any significant movement here or there. You should look at them more on a yearly basis. I would say on a 3-year basis, how things are trending.
Great. Thank you. I'll rejoin the queue.
Thank you, Vishal. We'll take the next question.
Thank you. Next in queue is Anmol Garg from DAM Capital. Please go ahead with your question, Anmol.
Yeah, hi. Thanks for the opportunity. I had a couple of questions. Firstly, wanted to understand if you can highlight some. Among our investee companies, it's been almost a year since we acquired them. If you can help me understand that how have IndiaMART helped them scale up by providing by cross-selling them through our sales team or by providing them access to our supplier base? If you can help me understand that how that has happened.
You will see in our related party disclosure, we are working closely now with Vyapar for almost 18 months or maybe two years now. Whereas, with every new customer onboarded at IndiaMART, we give them an option of free trial of Vyapar, anywhere between you know, earlier it used to be 1 year, and now it has been reduced to six months. That helps Vyapar acquire a good number of customers every every month. That is one we definitely do. On the Bizom side, I think we are still. You know, first year I didn't want to touch too much and wanted Bizom to be digested well.
Now I think we will do some more possibilities of, you know, cross-data selling and things like that. On other businesses, MobiKwik is the only bigger business where there's enough size. Apart from that, M1xchange, We have tried doing few things, not yet something not yet to be, you know, good enough to be talked about. All other businesses are very small. We haven't yet done any cross-selling together. But we do a lot of, you know, mentoring to them through our board meetings and through our monthly and quarterly interactions, as well as, you know, what kind of MIS do we maintain, what kind of, you know, board meeting practices do we follow.
These are early-stage startups, and they need to be nurtured and mentored, properly. One more thing is the, on the MonotaRO industry buying side, I think we have started to do some experiment, but those are very, very early, and I think, because they have started to advertise on IndiaMART, get some buy leads and RFQs, and, then, you know, call their customer base and try to sell. We have also tried to do some deeper integration where their products could be visible on IndiaMART. Those are very, very early, today.
All right. Thanks, Dinesh. Just a follow-up on the same. Do we provide access of our supplier database to these companies?
Our supplier database anyway is openly there on the website. All of our supplier database, it's openly there on the website. If we provide any service to anybody, it has to be completely on the arm's length basis. Whether it is any kind of an advertising, whether it is any kind of a email marketing or whether any kind of a cross-selling. Everything has to be on purely and purely arm's length basis.
Sure. Secondly, from my side, is that just wanted to understand if there has been any change in the duration of collections to revenue convergence. As earlier that we have highlighted that we have been moving more towards monthly customers. From that perspective, has there been any change from collections, how the collections are getting converted to revenue?
Yeah. Kushal, can you open that slide where there is 81% have come deferred revenue to...
Yes.
No change actually if you really see. I mean 64%, 63% is, no change.
Okay, sure. I'll join back in the queue.
Thank you. Next in queue is Swapnil from JM Financial. Hi, Swapnil. Please go ahead with your question.
Hi. Thanks for the opportunity. I had two or three questions. First on the traffic side. For the last three, four quarters, we have seen that the numbers have been quite kind of flattish. I understand that initially there was the impact of COVID, but now in, even in four Q, the things have not improved significantly. Do you think like if the traffic trends do not improve, say, in the next two, three quarters, there could be a challenge on the supplier side additions also?
See, our supplier base was already 1.5 lakh before COVID. Then traffic jumped to almost 1 billion from 750 million. We are currently on the same run rate, 252 million per quarter. Traffic has gone up by 33%, and it is only very recently that we have added some 50-odd thousand suppliers. I don't think, you know. It's one follows the other, because traffic is coming because there are enough suppliers, and suppliers are coming because there are enough buyers. Now that we have added these 50, 60 thousand suppliers, I'm sure in times to come, the traffic should further improve. Also, the relevancy of matchmaking has improved. It's consistently improving.
That is reflected in our upsell towards gold and platinum, as well as improving renewals in the matchmaking also. If you see unique buyer to supplier, unique buyer to the total inquiry is. During the COVID, we had almost opened it up because we didn't have suppliers, and we wanted every buyer to be served. Now, we have done a lot of intelligence on the classification of buyer and classification of suppliers and products. You know, how to do intelligent matchmaking. If you type words like Hindi-English mix, or Hindi written in Roman or those things are also recognized. I think our effectiveness is improving, so it is not the number of inquiries that will drive.
I was expecting the traffic to be actually, you know, stabilizing, because if the entire traffic which went up because of the medicine demand and because of the safety products demand, could have died down by now, and still the traffic is pretty much maintained. That is because of the supplier base addition. I'm not worried in the short run. Yes, if the traffic does not increase even after a year or two, then yes, obviously we will need to worry about it.
Right. Thanks for answering that in detail. The second question is on the supplier addition side. Now, you have been guiding that we will add around 8,000-9,000 suppliers every quarter. My question is, like, 4Q is typically the best quarter for you guys, and this quarter also you have added only 8.3 thousand suppliers. Would you continue to stick to the guidance for the next year as well or, I mean, given that you did allude to the fact that the suppliers at the lower packages, the churn at that range is significantly higher even now, just wanted to get your sense, like, is that 8,000-9,000 additions per quarter maintainable even in a scenario like this?
Yeah, I think 8,000 definitely should be maintainable and, you know, because we are also expanding our footprint in terms of new acquisition. We had significantly reduced our footprint during the entire COVID time, whether it was our own people or whether it was the channel people. All of that has been done in the past year or so. We continue to open new branches and new locations. I think I would still try and see that anything upwards of 8,000 should be maintainable at least for this year.
you know, for next year when the supplier base, the base of the supplier becomes 240,000 or 250,000, we'll see how to address the overall churn because the churn happens on the total supplier base. I think this year we will try and maintain 8,000+ for sure.
Right. Just one last question on BUSY integration. Now, you did allude to the fact that the growth in the business has doubled. My question is more on the margin side, because last year your margins were skewed, because 1Q being at around 42%, if I'm not wrong. Rest of the year, the margins were pretty lower than your company average. How are we trying to, A, bring in incremental growth and maybe cross sales and all? Secondly, what are our targets for margin improvement in BUSY? It's been more than 12 months, so I think, we should be fairly be able to have some visibility on that side.
Yes. On the margin side, I can guide you because we have no targets on the margin side on the BUSY. We have acquired this business by investing INR 500 crore, I think our guidance to the BUSY management and Brijesh and everybody is that don't lose money, don't worry about INR 5 crore versus INR 3 crore versus INR 7 crore. I don't think we should measure. Over the next two, three years, as long as they are cash positive and continue to improve on product and improve on sales, margin side we should not be worrying. On the sales side, Brijesh, can you help me?
Look, if you look at Swapnil, one, overall, we adopted Ind AS in the last year. When you look at margins, et cetera, on a Q-on-Q basis, we're still in that phase where we are trying to grow the business. The growth in the overall collections will result into growth in the revenues in the times to come. We have made investments behind, you know, people specifically. Team costs, our customer support costs have all gone up. We've also been able to see, you know, we've been able to double the overall growth in the billings in this year alone. We are confident of improving upon this growth rate even this year also.
Our principal focus is on looking at those under-penetrated geographies where we are still not present significantly. We will continue to, you know, spend behind building our strength in sales and distribution across all of this. I am sure that, with more sales coming in, with higher growth rates being achieved on the billing side of it, we should really go ahead and be able to achieve our, you know, overall objective of, you know, building up a valuable business behind which we invested this INR 500 crores.
Thanks, Brijesh.
Just to add, Brijesh, please highlight on the how we are going to be the first desktop company to have, you know, native mobile version.
Yeah.
No other desktop accounting software has a native mobile version.
In fact, you know, as we talk about this, let me just also share with everyone, couple of things which are beyond these numbers that we are able to see. In the last year itself, we have now become the only desktop-based accounting software company in India.
Which has a official mobile app that connects with your desktop accounting software. Now using this mobile app, you would be able to view data which is residing in your desktop online. You would also be able to look at different kinds of reports that are available. The users will also be able to now create quotations, sales orders, invoices, and receipts in the mobile app, which will again sync back to the desktop. This was launched in February, you know, 23 itself. We think this is going to become a significant driver of customer actually looking at BUSY over the other competing products.
Number two, in this entire year, if you also see, we've now become the only company worldwide, in fact, in the accounting SaaS space, which offers 24 by 7 customer support. You can, you know, call on our helpline any time of the day, except for those 10 gazetted holidays, there will be somebody to assist you with all your requirements there. In fact, we are building upon these individual, fundamental pillars, in the business, which will help us, drive better growth, in the business.
Right. Brijesh, thanks a lot for that response. Just one clarification. In the beginning of the call, we mentioned that you expect margins to move towards 28%, very quickly, and then by the end of the year, 30%. Well, for a full year basis, would it be fair to assume that you would be somewhere between 28%-29%, the EBITDA margins in FY 2024?
Yeah. It would be difficult to comment on, you know, the specific percentages that we would achieve a year later. Our endeavor is, you know, if you see in this particular year, the margin primarily declined because we were in a growth investment phase. In fact, we were catching up on the investments that we haven't made in the previous few years. Going forward, we expect that, you know, we would be adding manpower in line with our customer growth. Certainly, you know, given the growth in the revenues, the expenses will also, you know, go up in proportion to that. Certainly, you know, from here on, you know, you could start seeing the margin improvements for sure.
Whether it happens 1%, 2%, depends upon as to what the revenues are and what the expenses are in that quarter.
Sure, sure. Thanks a lot, guys, for taking my questions. Thank you.
Thank you. Next in queue is Ruchi Mukhija from Elara Securities. Hi, Ruchi. Please go ahead with your question.
Yes, go ahead.
Hi. My question is kind of building on earlier participant's question regarding the traffic and the unique inquiries. Here, if you look at the ratio total inquiries delivered to unique inquiries have changed the direction. It's been increasing for last three quarters. This year, if you look coupled with about 20% plus growth in your paying supplier base implies a diminishing value of the platform for each paying supplier. Is that the right way to look at? I have a, I would say, a related question here. Pre-pandemic, this ratio of your total inquiries delivered to unique has reached a top of about 6.4.
Is that optimal or is that a, I would say, a peak ratio where one need to get worried about the traffic metrics?
Hi, Ruchi. I've already answered that the same thing. As the effectiveness is increasing, our target is to bring this unique inquiry to the inquiry delivered to about 5, less than 5, maybe 4.9. We continue to make small changes, and that is why you see currently between 5.5 ± 10% or so, quarter-on-quarter. Our target is to bring it to less than 5. Because there's a relevancy and competition go hand in hand. As the relevancy increases and supplier responsiveness increases, you know, if you do excessive matchmaking, the competition can play counterproductive to the relevancy. That is why, over a long period of time, in fact, it should rather trend down to maybe four.
Because the important part is to measure what is the buyer conversion on the platform. If the buyer came and gave one inquiry and what is his probability of actually buying it from the supplier who was introduced to him through the platform, either by he himself called or by way of RFQ. That number has been slowly and slowly going up. Actually, it fell down a little bit during the COVID both the waves, but it has been slowly and slowly going up.
I see.
We believe that, you know, at the buyer level, if we can get to almost 50% conversions, where every buyer who comes and inquires on the platform, every other buyer ends up purchasing from the platform.
Yeah.
That should, rather solve this whole problem. That would also be, improve the traffic also, because they will tend to come more often for their other requirements as their.
Mm-hmm.
fulfillment ratio goes up. As of now-
Mm-hmm.
Based upon the sample that we do or the feedbacks that we receive, we believe the buyer conversion is anywhere between 30%-40%. We continue to measure that. It fluctuates because the measurement is only based upon the feedback of the buyers through email. As we get closer to the closer to the transaction, by way of our, you know, lead manager or by way of our message center, I think we will have better ability to measure the buyer conversion. In the near term, I'm not worried, yes. In the long run, you know, buyer and supplier traffic cannot move, you know, differently. They have to move in sync with each other. Yeah, they may lag.
Mm-hmm.
-or lead each other, but they have to finally become in sync. In the past also, if you see, the buyer traffic has taken a jump, a step function jump. one jump you can see, between FY16 and 18, then there was some kind of a stabilization. Then the second jump again that you can see. Every time there is a jump happens, there is a stabilization that happen. I believe that next year onwards, you know, we should be able to focus more on buyer traffic.
Thank you for that detailed answer. I get what you are trying to say that in a very short period of time, it's very difficult to match the growth frequency of buyer and supplier, but over long period, they should run hand in hand. Here, what I'm trying to just assess is that at what level of it turns worrisome for IndiaMART? How to look, how you look for that signal or that trigger in your business where it's turning, I would say concerning for you?
If I don't have even 50 unique buyers for a supplier in a month, then probably, I would start to worry. As long as I have anywhere upwards of one buyer and, you know, up to two buyers, I'm fine. Currently, we might be having closer to four buyers per unique supplier, per unique buyer. I think I would still have a, you know, at least 50% headroom from where we are. Up to 3 lakh suppliers I should not be worrying. Yes, beyond 3 lakh suppliers, I should be worrying if the traffic does not move up.
Understood. Thank you.
Mm-hmm.
Thank you. Next in queue is Nikhil Choudhary from Nuvama. Please go ahead with your question, Nikhil.
Hello. Yeah, hi. I have a couple of questions. First is on higher churn in silver category. It's been like quite some time, and churn continue to remain high. Earlier there used to be case where, you know, we have less number of employee per supplier in support category, so maybe the experience got impacted during those time. We have filled those gap and despite of that, we are seeing higher churn. Can you give some color on that? Is it due to higher pricing maybe?
Pricing, not necessarily, because we are currently running at silver monthly pricing, which we were at in 2018, 2019. In fact, possibly we'll see if we can whatever INR 500 discount that we gave during the COVID, we should now, you know, recover that back. I don't think the pricing is a problem. The problem is how many suppliers can make use of the platform and how many suppliers don't find it useful. It's anybody's guess how much of that is a platform problem versus people problem versus process problem and versus SME's own problem. You are right, why can't it be similar churn or even better churn numbers as pre-COVID?
I would also be working towards that. That's the only thing that I can say. The one little change that you can say is because the overall churn of the supplier is dependent on the first year mix versus second year mix versus third year mix. Currently in the silver monthly, because during the COVID we lost most of the customers that we lost was silver monthly customers. We were probably down to 30,000-35,000 or so. Now, in the last year or so, I think a lot more number has been added to the silver monthly only. The early churn is always high, and the same is true for the monthly customers annual customers also.
Last year we acquired so many customers which are coming up for renewal. Once the mix improves, then also, we can probably, look at improvement. Another thing could be, many of the customers who signed up during 2021, 2022, they were, you know, changing their businesses because their current business was changed and they moved to a different business. Some of them are, coming up for renewal, and, they might have changed their business line or. And that is the precise reason initially we thought that, you know, we need to have all the support system back and all the, you know, field, support system back.
That is why we went aggressive on hiring, because if we are not able to take care of customer, there's no point acquiring more customers. I think the good part is that the upsell to the gold and ARPU in the platinum continues to increase and which gives me confidence in the platform, that the platform continues to work for people who are willing to spend time and energy on the platform. It, it might also be possible that a lot of people that we have hired in the servicing department are quite new and they are still on the field doing hands-on training. Some of that might also improve in times to come. Hope that answers.
Sure, sir. Very detailed answer. I think, I have one follow-up related to what you mentioned about geographic expansion. We also read on the news that you expanded into Tamil Nadu, some cities in Tamil Nadu, Pondicherry, and also some other tier two and three cities. How is the initial response? Can we say that good part of or most of your paying subscriber addition is coming from this geographic expansion while, you know, more or less your lease existing geography paying addition is broadly flat? Any color on that?
Are you talking about IndiaMART or BUSY India?
IndiaMART, as well.
IndiaMART was always there in Tamil Nadu. I mean, so we, yes, we have expanded to many tier two and tier three cities.
Yes.
Now we are present in places where we could not have ever had a proper full-fledged branch, but we have a channel presence through channel partner. We have increased our presence back into the main metro cities also. There is a slide which tells you the I think the paid customer breakup in the tier one, tier two, and tier three. That doesn't change much. Paying subscription suppliers, I think it was 56% in metro cities, now it is 54%. Not much has changed. Because we have gone to tier three through channel partners, so the market which was totally untouched for us are totally being served on the telephone, is now probably has gone gained 1% or 2% there.
I don't think much has changed there.
Sure, sir. Thank you so much.
Thank you. Next in queue is Amit Chandra from HDFC Securities. Please go ahead with your question, Amit.
Hello?
Yes, sir. We can hear you.
Yeah. Yes, sir. Thanks for the opportunity. My simple question is, now, obviously we have seen very strong collections. You know, it has increased, you know, quite well. You know, what factors do you attribute to that? Maybe, you can expand more upon the channel partners, because is it, is it coming from higher sales from channel partners? You attribute it, to, you know, a lot to the sales efficiency or, you know, the aggressive sales investment that we have done?
Is it the existing suppliers are doing more, you know, are actually going up the pyramid or subscribing to more, you know, long-term contracts or more monthly suppliers are getting converted to, you know, the platinum category? If you can throw some light, you know, which part, is actually, you know, Actually, yeah? It's actually leading to that, yeah.
Effectively all of above, you know. The answer goes is all of above. Let me see, which one is the highest contributor probably. The highest contributor would be expanded customer base, because earlier we used to expand at max 13%, 16% of the customer. This time we have expanded almost 20%, 21% on the customer base. So that obviously increases the collection. As the people who came up for renewal who were acquired, if you see our customer base has started to increase about October, November, December of 2021. So from October, November, December 2022, once they come up for renewal, a lot of them are met due to renewal, and at that point of time they decide to upgrade.
Many of them have upgraded. Probably, most of the collections comes from 80% of the collections come from these upsells and renewals on the expanded customer base. Most of it would be. The first year growth, when the first 6 months growth or 9 months growth happens because we expanded the network, which we did not expand since March 2020. We expanded the network after 18 months. Then, I think the later part of the growth on the collection started to come mainly from the renewals and upsells.
Okay. On the price hike, what is our strategy here? You know, is it an annual price hike or, you know, we do it, you know, when, you know, we, you know?
We have six, seven different tiers of the packages. Silver monthly is priced at currently INR 2,500 per pack plus tax. Silver annual is currently at INR 25,000 plus tax. TrustSEAL is priced for INR 40,000-INR 45,000 for one year, and then INR 60,000 for two years, and INR 80,000 for three years. Similarly for gold, you know, Maximiser price and then multiple tiers in the star and leader. It's not that we do one price hike across all the products at one go, no. We generally try and see whenever we feel like there is enough traction in one particular product or...
We make small changes in price, sometimes in platinum one segment or sometimes in TrustSEAL, sometimes in Maximiser. On the bottom of the pyramid, we do maybe one price hike once in three years. As I said, this price hike that was done in 2018 was actually reverted back in 2020. We will see about that. There is no significant trend on price hike.
Okay. Sir, my last question is on the, on the BizE. If you can throw some more light on, you know, what is the cross-sell opportunity. I know there's a huge cross-sell opportunity that, you know, that you talked about. What is the success that we have got in terms of cross-sell, and how many of our existing suppliers are using, you know, BizE?
Essentially, you know, as we said, the 1st year for BizE was primarily focused on stabilizing the acquisition itself. As you understand the people, the channel, they all have their own questions and queries. We still think that, you know, BizE as a business, initially we would want to focus on growing that business on a standalone basis. Second step, we would, you know, take some assistance in terms of, you know, getting leads for acquiring additional customers for BizE from IndiaMART. I think it's only in the step after that we would start looking at possibilities of cross-selling and upselling. As of now, you know, for a year or two, we would still continue to focus on growing BizE first before looking at these cross-sell opportunities for IndiaMART coming in from BizE.
Okay. Thank you, sir.
Thank you. Next in queue is Sarang Sanil from RW Investment Advisors. Please go ahead with your questions, Sarang.
Hi. Good evening. Am I audible?
Yes, you are.
Yes. Yes. Thank you. I have two questions. The first one is, during our last phone call, you had mentioned that we'll be targeting an ARPU growth of 4%-6% for next year, while early last month on the media you had pushed this number a little higher. Would this be coming from price hike or the adoption of more cities category by the paid suppliers, like you have noticed with the platinum customers?
Both, I think. There is no, I mean, I can't break it up between the two. Price hike is easier to break up, but, you know, some people taking more number of city combination or more number of categories. Versus the mix change also, because last year most of the customers were at the bottom of the pyramid. Now they will move up to the, you know, TrustSEAL and others, or even in the second year, you know. As the customer aging improves, their revenue also improves. Typically, 20% of their customers upsell when it comes to renewal.
Right.
I think, you know, it's a blend of two, three things, that brings us about 5%-7%, 5%-6% ARPU growth.
Okay. You're confident for 5%-6%, 7%, right? Yeah. My other question is on the registered buyer slide. Right? Here my understanding is, just a customer sign-up puts me on the registered buyer figure. Only once I submit an RFQ, I get into the active buyer figure, right? I completely understand how you're optimizing the business inquiry side through algorithmic changes and all. Here there's a different situation where paid suppliers are coming in from one side, but the ones interested in submitting an RFQ on the buyer side is just stagnant for the past 3 years, right? Are we planning to improve this engagement metric in some way, or are we just fine?
Yeah, those who have submitted any RFQ in the last 12 months, pre-COVID it used to be at 30%, and now it is at 37, 38, no, 30% means 30 million. Now it is at 37, 38 million. There also is the same growth as the unique business inquiries growth. I think the same question comes back to the increase in number of buyers. As I said, another 50,000 customer, if the buyers don't increase, I think I'm not worried. You know, as we add 1 lakh customer, then buyers must increase, and it should increase because otherwise the customers will not increase.
Right. My understanding is, you know, last three years, the paid suppliers have gone up significantly. You know, the active buyers.
Only last one year paid suppliers have gone up significantly. The paid suppliers were INR 1,50,000 on INR 1,47,000 on March 2020, and they were INR 1,47,000 on October 2021. If you really see the paying suppliers have been growing at 15%-16% CAGR, versus the buyers have been growing at 20% odd CAGR. Buyers have been growing much higher rate. If you go to the unique inquiries slide. Yeah. That's been growing at 21% CAGR. I think we are fine there.
You're not worried about the active buyers number not increasing?
Not as of now. Not as of now.
Sure. Sure. Okay, sir. Thank you.
Thank you very much. It has been a very engaging session. I would now like, Dinesh to give a closing concluding remarks.
Thank you, ladies and gentlemen, for joining our quarter four and FY 2023 conference call. We have tried to address your queries in the time available. If you still have questions, please feel free to contact with our investor relation team. Their contact details are available on our website. Wish you all a very good next financial year, and we'll see you soon in July. Thank you.
Thank you, everyone. On behalf of IndiaMART, we now conclude this webinar. Thank you.
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