Good evening, 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 Q1 FY 2022 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 question once the presentation concludes. Joining us today from the management side, we have Mr. Dinesh Agarwal, Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer. Mr. Brijesh Agarwal, Whole-Time Director. Mr. Prateek Chandra, Chief Financial Officer. Mr. Puneet Gupta, Vice President, Strategic Planning and Investor Relations. Before we begin, I would like to remind you that some of this today's webinar may be forward-looking in nature and may involve risk and uncertainties. Kindly refer to slide number three of the earnings presentation for the detailed disclaimer.
Now I would like to hand over the call to Mr. Dinesh Agarwal for his opening remarks. Thank you, and over to you, sir.
Thank you. Good evening, everybody, and welcome to IndiaMART's Quarter One FY 2022 results conference call. I hope you all and your loved ones are staying safe and healthy. We have already circulated our earnings presentation, which is available on our own website as well as at the stock exchange's website. I am sure you would have gone through the presentation and detailed the financials advised. I would be happy to take any questions afterward. In the meantime, I'm pleased to report that IndiaMART has delivered a consolidated revenue from operations of INR 182 crores in the first quarter, representing a year-on-year growth of 19% on a lower base of Quarter One FY 2021. Collections from customers stand at INR 170 crores in this quarter, and deferred revenue has increased from INR 628 crores as of June 2020 to INR 715 crore as of June 2021.
I think we have been able to navigate the disruptions caused by second wave of the COVID much better than last year, and have been able to sustain and deliver a profitable growth in this quarter as well. IndiaMART sustained buyer traffic of over 268 million in Q1 FY 2022, and business inquiries of 162 million in Q1 FY 2022. During the challenging second wave of COVID-19, our 90-day repeat buyers stand at about 55%. Unlike FY 2021, where in the 1st quarter we had lost about 14,000 customers, we saw lesser mortality and 6,000 paying customers have been declined on the sequential basis, closing the total count of 146,000 customers for the end of the quarter. We remain committed to enhance our value proposition and deliver value to our customers through organic and inorganic initiatives.
As communicated earlier, in line with our strategy, we have made certain progress in the areas of accounting, logistics software, distribution management, SaaS, and order management. Now, I would like to hand over the call to Prateek to discuss financial performance in little bit more detail. Thank you. Over to you, Prateek.
Thank you, Dinesh. Good evening, everyone. I will take you through the financial performance for the quarter ending June 2021. Consolidated revenue from operations were at INR 182 crores in the quarter, a growth of 19% year-on-year, supported by both increase in ARPU and paying subscribers year-over-year. Consolidated EBITDA was INR 89 crores, representing a margin of 49%. As highlighted earlier, company posted a strong Y-o-Y revenue growth due to a low base of Q1 FY21 for comparison, maintained high margins as we continue to work from home and have lower cost. Net profit for the quarter was INR 88 crores with a margin of 42%. Cash generated from operations during the quarter was INR 61 crores. Thank you very much. We are now ready to take any questions.
Thank you, Prateek. We will now begin a 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 restrict to 2 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. I repeat once again. Please raise your hand in order to ask questions and enable your camera and microphone access. First question is from the line of Amit Chandra. Please go ahead. Yes, Amit, we can hear you. Please go ahead with your question.
Thanks for the opportunity. As you mentioned that obviously, the impact has been lower as compared to the first wave, how do you see it in terms of the impact that we have seen in the various pockets, and what has been the impact on the monthly and the yearly package users? As compared to as we see that, we have seen sharp realization, h ow do we rate that? If you can provide clarity on that, then I have a follow-up.
Last time and even this time, I think almost 80%, 90% of the total customer that we decline is coming from the silver monthly bucket only. Most of the other customer buckets have either more or less filled up from the new upgrades or have signed up. There we have not seen much of decline. Coming to your second question on the realization. I think the total revenue itself has been increasing, which is coming from the deferred revenue. Deferred revenue last quarter had increased substantially, and so is the revenue for this quarter, and it is divided by the number of customers this quarter. Since most of the customers which are downgraded or which are removed are the lowest ARPU customers, and that is why you see a sudden jump in the average revenue realization per customer for the quarter.
I believe that is just a quarterly aberration, and as soon as we will recover this customer base, that will normalize back again to INR 45,000, INR 46,000.
Okay. Sir, thanks for the clarification. Also, sir, in terms of your investments that you have planned for the rest of the year and what kind of recovery you're seeing. Based on that, can we expect upfronting of some of the investments that we have been doing in terms of sales and marketing, in terms of also sales cost? Because that has been coming down consistently. Based on the market conditions and based on the recovery that you're expecting, how do you see the different costs going forward in terms of your investment in sales and marketing and hirings and in terms of your also sales cost? Also in terms of the increasing competition, maybe some of the competitors are spending huge amounts of money on advertising.
Are we seeing any impact of that on, say, traffic or in terms of any of our clients shifting from IndiaMART to the competition or something of that sort?
Since you have asked two, three questions, let me try and answer them one by one. So, for the first one, let us see. We have been telling this that in the October, November, December quarter itself, that we could not do hiring in the first two quarters of the last financial year. We wanted the office to open before we start hiring. However, that did not happen until Diwali. Post-Diwali, we started to hire a number of people, and that could be seen as in this last quarter, we have been able to increase total employee on the rolls of IndiaMART from 2,700 to about 2,982. January, February, March was good months where we could do the campus interviews, do the other interviews, and hiring was good. However, as you know, April and May were pretty bad for everybody.
Many of our employees and many of our people were really suffering. I think there could be a little bit of a dent on the speed of hiring that we could do. Other than that, we definitely are committed to get back to our employee numbers, and especially on the sales and servicing numbers, as soon as possible over the next two, three quarters. The second question that you asked was in terms of the cost guidance. That we have been giving very similarly, that we used to have a pre-pandemic cost of about INR 115 crores, INR 120 crores. We believe that it had come down all the way to INR 80 crores, which has now increased from INR 80- INR 85 to INR 90 crores- INR 95 crores. We continue to guide that it will remain in the range of INR 100 crores-INR 105 crores.
The competitor advertising, I think, yes, you are referring to the recent advertising done by them on the IPL thing. Look at our buyer-side traffic, and the buyer-side traffic remains steady. I don't think advertising has led to any distraction on that side. We will continue to evaluate. We have a good profitability as well as cash balance, and we will not be shy of advertising if at all needed at any given point of time. Thank you.
Yes, sir. Thanks for the answer. Sir, answer on the competition angle. Now with Reliance acquiring a majority stake and now the company is also having huge war chests. Are we, in any case, worried about that in any sense that huge war chests can impact our future ambitions? Are we planning to tweak some of our strategies based on that as of now?
I think we will maintain the same stance as earlier. I've been saying that more investment, more entrepreneurs, more industrialists coming into different internet as a sector, software as a sector, marketplace as a sector, e-commerce as a sector, is good for the entire sector. Suddenly, in the last two, three years, the number of internet users have gone up tremendously, and their needs have gone up tremendously in terms of software needs, in terms of commerce need. There are huge opportunity today to channelize different kind of things, and I don't think it will be possible for a single IndiaMART or a single JustDial or a single Google or a single Reliance to do that. Many more people and many more entrepreneurs and talent and industrialists would be welcome in that side.
Having said that, yes, JustDial was always a very different business than our B2B business. They had recently announced entry into B2B. We haven't seen yet much of the traction on that side or haven't heard anything, but we remain cautious and keep monitoring the situation properly. At IndiaMART, I think our focus will remain to see how do we continue to increase our network effects by way of more buyers and more suppliers coming there, and the supplier behavior data and the buyer behavior data that we gathered over a period of last 10 years, and every year that we gather with 55% repeat visit, that we will use towards behavioral matchmaking using AI and ML and different data techniques.
As you can see, we are slowly expanding our ecosystem to go beyond just discovery towards financial accounting, towards logistics technology, and towards distribution management or order management side. We continue to look for more organic as well as inorganic opportunities. Within IndiaMART, organically also, our lead management system has been slowly going towards becoming a conversational commerce platform. We continue to work slowly on that bit by bit. I'm sure these things will result. Hope that answers your question.
Yeah. Thanks and all the best, sir.
Thank you. Next question is from the line of Amit Jeswani, Stallion Asset. Please go ahead.
Hi, Dinesh i. Dinesh , when I look at your vertical things, you've done everything perfect. When I look at website views, RFQs, number of buyers, sellers, you've created a great platform. You are perfect horizontally. Do you think we've been very conservative on not going vertical? I mean, getting into newer products which can solve large customer problems, because you have massive numbers of customers, probably the largest. What we are doing right now is very small scale things. Your customers need accountings, they need websites, a lot of these SMEs need to get digital. You have a platform. Because we have capital, do you think we need to hire the right kind of skill from places like Zoho, et cetera, to get that thing rolling? My question is more on the verticalization of IndiaMART, not on the horizontal things.
Horizontal things, sir, now it's an automatic platform that you have created. My ideas are more based on how do you think about verticalization and what large new customer problems can you solve?
Okay. Thank you. Let's say, first of all, how do we expand our ecosystem horizontally? Within horizontal ecosystem, as you can see, we started with a website. We started offering them RFQ and buy lead system. We started them offering the cloud telephony, lead manager, and CRM. Now we are adding accounting, logistics, order management. We already have a payment system in place. Horizontally, we have been adding multiple items, and we have been investing into multiple items. You are right, vertically, we have not invested so far into any, but we continue to look for any vertical inorganic investment opportunity. On the other hand, if you look at internally, last year also I said that previous to pandemic, more or less, very little category focus was there within IndiaMART.
It's only last year, first time when we suddenly had to work on the medical as a category or medicine as a category, we realized that there is a huge opportunity to do things more vertical category-wise. We are actually in the process of increasing team and expertise on that side so that more and more vertical fulfillment can be done and more vertical problems can be solved. You are right, yes, hiring better people can definitely improve this whole area, and the better we are able to hire and better we are able to execute, that is how we will go. To answer your question, we are looking at vertically inside the category management, and also we are expanding horizontally slowly.
Right. Dinesh , last time when we had a conversation, you were speaking about 5x-10x growth in next five to 10 years. Have you set a roadmap for it? That, you know what, I'm at one and a half lakh customers, I need to go to seven to eight lakh customers in the next five to seven years. You already have a large number of customers already on your platform. Of course, they're not paying. Have you set a roadmap or does it include many vertical things in that kind of goal that you've set?
Yeah. I think as a broad strategic roadmap, we have shown you that we would have a core SME business and a medium and large enterprise business, and then Fintech, SaaS, and vertical commerce. However, if you ask me, do I have a business plan broken quarterly on that? We don't yet. We have done about five investments in different sectors so far inorganically. At the same time, we have done organically into three sectors, whether it is payment or whether it is CRM lead management, or whether it is order management. I think, give us some two, three more quarters when we will be able to give you a slightly more deeper insight on how does the growth will look like. I think we would have given you a better insight if the April, May would not have happened.
Everything was started to fall in place in the FY, but I think April, May was a big surprise.
Right. Dinesh, according to you, except discovery, what is the biggest problem of your customers? These are SMEs largely who are your customers. Would you say Fintech? Would you say more on the logistics side? That is where our large focus. There are large profit pools you can target. You've already nailed one profit pool, Dinesh Ji. I'm just trying to understand which is that big problem which your customers you think have, which is adjacent to your IndiaMART platform. Is it logistics? We've tried once on the logistics side in 2015, 2016, if I'm not wrong. If you can also help us understand what stops us getting more on the logistics side also, so that we control the ecosystem better.
I think we've conveyed it multiple times. If you look at this particular slide, the dark blue ones are the areas which we have already worked upon and continue to improve upon. The light blue ones, there are four areas which have been defined. One is the payment, the second is the logistics technology and tracking, the 3rd is transaction financing, and 4th is the enablement of business. I think on that side, enablement of business is a lot more fragmented because multiple different SaaS and multiple different solutions are to be integrated. It is not just one big ERP that you can acquire, and SMEs will start using it. Similarly, on the logistics side, the medium enterprise uses very different logistics technology as compared to a D2C brand.
Whereas Shipway fits into a D2C logistics help, SuperProcure fits into a slightly more larger size, medium to large enterprise, logistics and transportation front. Payments front, we have been building organically, and we have continued to look for more partners on that. As I showed credit and transaction financing, we tried doing some small pilots before the pandemic, but after the pandemic, immediately, I think everything went onto the back burner. Currently, our focus remains on the enablement of business, logistics tracking, and the payment side of it. As we get more granular data, we will come to the transaction financing side.
Got it. Thank you. One last question. Do you think, Dinesh , this year also we'll be able to grow at 25% around those levels? June and July, you've seen a bounce. You probably might have seen a bounce in June and July. You think this year, by the end of the year, we'll be able to do 25% odd kind of growth?
I will keep mum, not to answer this question.
Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Dinesh. Nice speaking to you again.
Thank you. A reminder to all 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 Mohit. Please go ahead with your question.
Hello. Hi, good evening. Am I audible?
Yes, you are audible, Mohit. Please go ahead.
I just want to know, with respect to the outsource sales representative, which usually is disclosed. Just wanted to know if you can get the numbers for those outsource field sales representative, and total sales and service representative. That was number one. Number two is that, going forward, since this field sales representative count has declined significantly from the last year, right from Q4 FY 2020, do we see aggressive hirings happen on this front so as to acquire more and more customers, thereby resulting in increased outsource sales cost?
Yeah. Mohit, this slightly complex answer here. Let me try to explain you. The way total sales and service organization in IndiaMART is by and large divided into two parts. One is the client acquisition side, the other is the client servicing, upsell, and renewal side, whether they are on field or whether they are on telephone. Currently, almost 99% of our renewal servicing, upsell team, which we call client servicing team, which actually brings about 80% of the revenue, is in-house on IndiaMART rolls. We have not experimented any kind of outsourcing on that. However, on the client acquisition side, if you see about two to three years ago, we used to have 100% on in-house set of people. We actually started to hire some of the people on the outsourced payroll, like TeamLease or other companies.
We also started to look at tele-call centers who could work with us either on a per seat option or on a per sale basis just like a DSA. We had told you in the month of July, August, September, we started with the option of the franchise or a dealer-distributor network spread in as well as IndiaMART. Some of them could be selling telecom as well as IndiaMART. That is why we have only now declared the employees on our own rolls and the sales managers, which are managing this outsourced sales. 80% of this new client acquisition team is now on the different outsourced model. You will have to look at the cost directly on that side rather than the headcount.
If at some point of time in future, I will be able to get a clear number, which I can give you in terms of headcount, we'll give you, but as of now, it is difficult to give you a headcount number rather than the cost.
Understood. Yeah. I have understood. Thank you for that. Thanks for that.
Thank you. Next question is from the line of Bharat Shah. Please go ahead with your question.
Yeah. Dinesh, continuing from an earlier question. There are many things that we have done well, and then there are others where we have taken some baby steps, and then there are areas where we are aspiring to be something but as yet have not commenced or taken any steps. Given the size of the opportunity, which is very large before us, unless you disagree that the size of opportunity is small, then it's a separate issue. If you agree that size of opportunity is large, what is inhibiting us from moving about in a more, so to say, measured way? I'm not saying that we take rash kind of steps in haste. If we allow opportunity to kind of be prolonged beyond a point, then to that extent, our own competitiveness and our own strengths will diminish. What is your view about all of this?
How are you seeing the situation?
Bharat, you're right to some extent, and just to reiterate, there are two ways that we would want to tackle this large opportunity issue. Immediately after the IPO, we said that, "Okay, let's start on two-pronged strategy. One, the inorganic side, and one on the organic side." On the inorganic side, we did one or two investment, and then this whole last 15 months pandemic had happened, though we continued to do the more inorganic investments in the last two, three, four months after the first six months of the pandemic. On the organic side, we have been telling you that our conversational commerce part is shaping up well on the lead management and CRM side. You see very little happening on the payment and transaction financing side.
Hello?
Hello.
Yes, Mr. Bharat, can you hear us? Mr. Dinesh, you may please continue.
Yeah. I think it's just that these uncertainties and challenges every now and then are distracting us from taking those two-pronged approach in a much faster manner. That's the only thing you can say. I fully agree that we should be looking at these opportunities, both organic and inorganic, in a measured as well as rational way, faster rational way. We do not want to go irrational and rash increasing. I think, hopefully, we'll meet your expectation in times to come.
Right. Thank you. Next question is from the line of Kumar Pandit, Somerset Capital. Please go ahead with your question.
Hi. Thanks very much for the call, and congratulations a lot. Just a couple of questions. First one is could you just explain the dynamics behind?
Mr. Kumar, could you please speak little bit louder?
Yes, of course. Is that better?
Yeah. Please continue.
Great. I just wanted to understand the dynamics behind the ARPPU growth in spite of the decline in paying subs, and whether you think these dynamics are sustainable, and whether these trends are sustainable over the near to long term. Thank you.
Yeah, Mr. Kumar, I think I've already answered that question. Due to sudden decline of the number of customers, mostly from the lower ARPU segment, this suddenly looks like an aberration. I have already answered that once we recover, start the customer base growth and recovery on that side, it will come down to the usual INR 45,000, INR 46,000.
Thank you. Apologies, I missed the early part of the call, and thought you'd mentioned that. Thanks for clarifying that.
Do you have any other question, Mr. Kumar?
No, that's fine for the time being. Thank you.
Thank you. Next question is from the line of Sudhir, ICICI Securities. Please go ahead.
Thanks for taking my question. Firstly, in terms of the cost structure. You spoke about, let's say, reorganization or restructuring of the sales team into two, three different models, and accordingly, our cost structure may have changed a bit. We have also been seeing some of the COVID-led cost tailwinds for the time being in terms of, let's say, a higher mix of telecallers rather than foot on streets, so on and so forth. When we reach the steady state, let's say when COVID is behind and when we reach the steady state, how do we think about the steady-state margins at an EBITDA level?
I think I've already given that answer earlier also. We used to be a 30% odd margin, closer to 30% margin. We had saved about 20 odd percent or increased the margin by about 20 odd percent. Half of that is because of the different kind of automation that we have been able to do, and I think there is a permanent shift in the business that has happened. Half of that is slowly going to come back because we have not been able to hire, and we have not been going to the offices. I think the employee cost is one of the biggest costs, and some of the other costs that will return. I would say that if you take that into account from closer to 30% margin, I think we'll be more closer to 40% margin in the steady state.
Got it, Dinesh. The second point on the buyer side traffic or business inquiries delivered, so on and so forth. This quarter, I think there is a bit of buoyancy we have seen. Is a decent part of this led by product categories like oxygen concentrators or oxygen cylinders, so on and so forth?
Yes. In the month of April, a lot of oxygen-related and CPAP, BiPAP, and mask-related items were there. Some of them have sustained, like mask has become a permanent feature now. In May, a lot of them were for the purpose of medicines, remdesivir or tocilizumab and things like that, because after certain time, the medicine shortage has started. In June, I guess, the traffic had sustained. It is not that IndiaMART, whatever spike came in April and May, because in April and May, on one side, these medical spikes came. On the other hand, naturally, the industry was more or less shut down. That actually balanced it. We are seeing in June month or in the current weekly trend, I think a 250, 260 million traffic seems like a sustainable traffic.
Got it. Even after that spike is over, that rush towards oxygen concentrator as a category is over, you are still seeing reasonable amount of buoyancy in the inquiries delivered and the buyer-side traffic?
Yeah, it has become very diversified. As we have seen in the past, we are coming from 50 different industries and almost 100,000 different categories, coming from 1,000 plus towns and cities. Tier 1 cities only contribute about 33% of the buyer traffic, tier 2 city about 25%, and then tier 3 and 4 is actually increasing now at 41%. We have a very well-diversified traffic across fashion, apparel, garment, chemical, fertilizer, medical, agro, machinery, and everything. I guess we have seen even on a monthly basis, if you go and look at any of the indicators at Alexa or Similarweb, the traffic is maintained, and we believe that there is a permanent shift has happened towards internet adoption, and IndiaMART has proven to be a go-to place for our people.
Yeah. Got it, Dinesh. Thanks and all the best.
Thank you, Sudhir. A 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 Bharat Shah. Please go ahead, Bharat. Hi, Bharat, can you hear us? A reminder once again to all the participants, please use raise hand option on your screen if you wish to ask a question. Next question is from the line of Kushagra Bhattar. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Hi. Thanks for giving me the opportunity. Am I audible?
Yes.
Yeah. One question on this data advantage, which you were mentioning of buyers and sellers on a platform with all the AI, ML you can do on that. I just wanted to gather more sense on how with this whole data you are sitting on, what sort of analysis or what sort of advantage you can do versus others, possibly because all of the businesses in the B2B space are sort of moving in a similar direction. How are you thinking of differentiating yourself in a way, what additional offering which you can provide?
I got it. I got it.
others would not be able to. Also, 1 related question is, with the Reliance data sitting on, with all the Jio platforms and all, what data you think is probably you are missing today, which Reliance would be bringing to the table, with their telecom and whatever Jio platform ecosystem they have?
Let me first answer what we know of our own business. There are two kind of data. One is the database. The supplier database or the category database or the product database or the photos database or the ratings database that we have, which probably everybody has, even Google has, or even JustDial has. Telecom companies also have some different kind of data. The second part of the data is the behavioral data or usage data. Now, many places you will see more consumer personalization that is being done. If you go to Google, if you go to Amazon, as a consumer, you go there not very frequently. You go there frequently, maybe two, three, four times a month. Here at IndiaMART, we do very differently. We do supplier personalization.
What happens, at IndiaMART, we have developed two, three very good supplier tools, which bring the supplier back on our platform almost every day or almost some of them every hour. For example, our RFQ system, our lead management system, and our call pickup system, this cloud telephony system. All of these, they actually bring back the supplier and especially our paying customers, almost multiple times a day to our platform. They end up doing activities on those kind of buyers, which they like the best. If they like the retail ones the best, or if they like the Agra ones the best over the Jaipur ones, or if they like the sofa set ones best, suppose there are two furniture manufacturers. Both of them say that they can do all kind of furniture.
Both of them actually sell a sofa also and a table also and a chair also. The supplier one likes sofas because he has some expertise in sofas, and he keeps coming and checking out RFQs of sofas and checking out replying leads to the sofas very frequently. The other guy is doing, say, office chairs very frequently. Though we know that both of them are furniture manufacturer, but he is a sofa set specialist and the other one is a office chair specialist. This data is not available with most other platforms, and they are not even gathering this. Similarly, we know location affinity, similarly, we know price point affinity, and similarly, we know quantity affinity. The other thing is the buyer profiling that we have created over a period of time.
A buyer comes to on our platform, say, once, and then he gave you his number, and maybe email and name and some information. He put a requirement for, say, sofa. Next time he came in and he gave a requirement for, say, a chair. Next time he came in and gave a requirement for a, say, sofa fabric. We know that he is probably a sofa set integrator or a sofa set fabricator, and we display that to the suppliers. It's an enhanced buyer profile that we have gathered over a period of time, because the buyers have been repeating on our platform at 55% rate. These are some of the special insights that we gather, and thereby we use them in the matchmaking. We know by behavior that he likes retail leads.
We know by behavior that he do not like retail leads. We know by behavior that he's an exporter. We know by behavior that he's an exporter or he's a local-only manufacturer. We know all of these because of this data that we collect every day in, day out, and the data sources are RFQ consumption, are lead management where callback and replies happen, and the PNS system. All of these data sources, obviously, over and above there is a product data which is there available. That is a very specific data that we are referring to. Anybody will tell you that the relevancy is far more better at IndiaMART than at any place else.
Okay. Second part of the question, what data you probably would be missing today, which Reliance is able to provide? Any sense on that, or you won't be able to comment on that?
No. We have not been tracking Reliance. We have not been tracking JioMart. We know only a little about just that. Now that this development has happened, we will start to study that more in detail as and when more details are revealed. We'll try to see where we need to act. We'll keep a close watch on the developments happening, and then start to build our strategy accordingly.
Sure. Last question on the ARPU thing. Is this the correct understanding, when I break it up, the ARPUs, that the platinum customers, the top 10% suppliers on your platform, the ARPUs for them have kind of moved from almost INR 1,80,000 to almost north of INR 2,00,000. Is this the correct understanding, first of all?
No, sir. I think what happens is the way our revenue recognition work, Prateek, you would like to explain, the way our revenue recognition works, it comes from the deferred revenue.
Right.
The way ARPU we calculate is end of the quarter customers. The total revenue recognized during the quarter divide by the end of the quarter customers. This does not mean that the ARPU has increased dramatically in a particular segment. It is purely because there has been a sharp decline in the number of paying customers by 6,000, and that is why it is reflecting. It is also reflecting that most of the decline has happened at the bottom of the pyramid.
Okay. Got it. A related question is, when you mentioned that the ARPUs will kind of go back, I remember in one of the past few con calls, you sort of hinted towards planning or strategizing towards price hikes as well in respective categories. Those price hikes you are not going ahead with, right?
We have been doing minor things here and there. That is how you see a longer dip. If you see a longer duration from 33,000 to 44,000, about almost 33% price hike has happened over the last three, four years or so. The specific instance that you're talking about, the category-based or city-based pricing, that we have not been able to roll out. I don't think this is the right time to roll out that.
Okay. Sure. Thanks.
Thank you. Next question is from the line of Bharat Shah. Please go ahead.
Yeah. I think earlier I was talking to you and for some reason line got snipped off. We were discussing that in terms of the size of opportunity, are we being a bit more measured than what is good for us? We think what we are doing at a pace is something which is meaningful and appropriate. In that context you answered, I wanted to raise an alternative point of view on that. Supposing if you have to think about IndiaMART three to five years down the line, what do you think IndiaMART would look like? What will be the key defining aspects of IndiaMART that you think it will look like, otherwise you would regard that as a missed opportunity?
What we think we will look like is already there on this slide. Puneet, can you put up that slide again?
No, I said in three to five years' time, and not today.
Yeah. This is three to five years time frame. This is where we would look like. This slide truly depicts what we want to look like in three to five years' time.
We can see the dark blue or light blue, all boxes will be cleared and will be attained.
80% of these boxes should be ticked.
The reason why it is as yet not there is because of a strategic reason, or not having adequate talent pool, or some other reason why it is kind of being moved over slowly?
No, Mr. Bharat, I think until last year, we were only doing the first two quadrants. We were only doing the discovery, and we were in the process of doing conversation. The next light blue color items we had put down only in the month of October, November, December last year. From there, we are only sitting in July. It's been seven, eight months when we start doing all this. From your point of view, satisfaction plans, proportionally.
Okay. Thank you.
Please go ahead.
Thank you for the opportunity. Slide 32 is fantastic transparency in terms of how your franchise is being developed. I had one query and one request. The query is that, is it possible for us to report the percentage of inquiries that have been fulfilled successfully as a percentage of total business inquiries delivered?
Sir, that number is only available to us on a sample feedback basis, and we get almost 100,000 feedbacks every month. Out of the monthly, daily unique inquiries of about 8 million, 7 million that we have, 26 million in the recent quarter. If you divide it, about 9 million per month. We send out feedback mailers to all of them, and about 2%-3% people respond back, which becomes about 150,000 odd feedback. Based upon that feedback, and since that is not a very
The platform is servicing its end purpose. As long as you're being consistent in the way you are sampling, I think even if you could report this metric based on the samples you're doing, it might be very useful. I think this is something I'd request you to think over and see if you could report.
Maybe-
There might be issues there which might skew the data. If you believe that the sampling is representative, and if the 40% is trending higher or trending lower, I think it gives some good feedback operationally.
On a monthly or a quarterly basis, this number may or may not change dramatically, but on a yearly basis, as part of my roadshow and as part of my IPO roadshow and QIP roadshow, many of you had asked this question, and I had answered that over the three to five-year period, this number has kept moving up from 20% odd to almost 40% odd. In the last year, and year and a half the number of buyers themselves have gone up tremendously in the last two years again, the number has still stayed at 40% odd. Maybe as part of the current year's annual report is almost done, but maybe as part of the annual reporting, we could try to give some color on this.
Okay. The second query I had, Dinesh, was, I repeat, slide 32 is very useful. Is it possible for you also to share, going forward, what is the percentage renewal rate of subscriptions of your top 10% suppliers? Or sorry, top 10% customers.
Top 10% customers, the renewal rates are above 90%. They used to be as high as 94%, 95%. In last year, ever since the pandemic happened, that has come down to about 90% or 89%. We have said that the top 10%-
My question was that, can we add that to this quarterly data pack that you're sharing?
On the top 10% customer?
Yeah. Again, it's a very good metric to look at operationally.
Yeah. We'll definitely note down your suggestion and look at that.
Last question I had was, in your employees, the product and tech employees, that seems to be flat or going down. Anything to read into that?
That otherwise they have been about 100 odd, there has been a specific downturn in the past year, last four, five quarters, and that has started to increase. If you read this quarter itself, that has gone from 419 to 464. Also, many of the product and tech and data, a lot of them are now becoming more technology employees and more product employees and less data. We have started places. Whatever you see is about 498 . It was inspiration and confidence that we have a lot more to execute, and a lot more green grass ahead of us. Thank you very much for posing the confidence. I would say stay safe and have a nice weekend. Thank you, everybody.
Thank you, everyone. On behalf of IndiaMART, this concludes this webinar. Thank you.