Ladies and gentlemen, good day and welcome to Le Travenues Technology Limited Q4 and FY 2025 earnings conference call hosted by DAM Capital Advisors Limited. As a reminder, all participant lines will be in the listen-only mode, and there will be an opportunity for you to ask questions after the presentation concludes. Should you need assistance during this conference call, please signal an operator by pressing star, then zero on your touchstone phone. Please note that this conference is being recorded. I now hand the conference over to Mr. Arnold Gurk from DAM Capital. Thank you, and over to you, sir.
Thank you, Steve. Good evening, everyone. On behalf of DAM Capital, I welcome you all to ixigo's Q4 FY 2025 earnings call. We have with us Mr. Alokee Bajpai, Chairman, Managing Director, and the Group CEO of the company; Mr. Rajnish Kumar, Director and the Group Co-CEO of the company; and Mr. Saurabh Devendra Singh, Group CFO of the company. Before I hand over the call to you, I'd like to read the safe harbor statement on the second slide of the earnings presentation, and it's assumed to be read and understood. Over to you, Saurabh.
Hi, thanks, Arnold. As we sit on this call, I'm reminded of a year ago. That time, we were in the last stages of our IPO. ixigo was stepping into a new arena, public market. Where scrutiny is sharper, timelines are shorter, and the stakes are inevitably higher. A question kept on circling in my mind, sometimes quietly during the meeting and sometimes loudly in the solitude of late night. Would we be able to honor the belief that the public market investors are placing in us? As some of you might know, I've spent a large part of my career in the public market. I've seen many IPOs, and that is why the transition worried me. The IPO is a moment, yes, but being public is a mindset, a discipline, a daily commitment to openness, accountability, and performance under the bright, unforgiving light.
These lights are glittery, the coverage, the clap, the ringing of the bell, but they cast long shadows. A single misstep travels fast. When needs, context mistakes must be owned in real time, in full view. That is the reality we stepped into a year ago. Today, as we close FY 2025, our first full year as a listed company, I feel something deeper than relief. I feel gratitude that even in this new paradigm, we stayed faithful to who we are and what got us here. More importantly, we have shown that being public does not mean being something else. It means being more of what matters. With this thought, I will pass it on to Alokee, our Group CEO.
Thanks, Saurabh. Good evening, everyone. There are great quarters, and there are blockbuster quarters. Q4 FY 2025 was a blockbuster quarter for us. In fact, FY 2025 was a blockbuster year because we grew quarter-on-quarter without any impact of seasonality that our industry usually witnesses. When I use the word blockbuster, it's not just because of our GTV for the full year being close to INR 15,000 crore, which is actually more than Bollywood's annual box office collection even in its best year, but also because it is a quarter that demonstrated our ability to scale with discipline and generating operating leverage that is both visible and sustainable, with INR 122 crore of cash generated from operations in the full year, as well as a more than doubling of our profit after tax for Q4.
While building a company, we have to make conscious decisions that balance our short-term interests with our long-term ones. We've had the good fortune at ixigo to never have to compromise our long-term interests in optimizing for purely short-term objectives. Our investors have also been always supportive of this approach. This allows us to continue betting on areas that could one day disrupt our core business or de-risk it to a large extent. It also allows us to keep taking small side bets time to time, which, if they work well, can end up defining us. If they do not, will give us learnings at hopefully not too big a cost. What matters most here is the foresight and conviction that the team needs to build about how the market will evolve in the future and what would be required to offer superior customer experience and product differentiation.
As an outsider, at times, it is hard to appreciate this approach because some of the things we spend disproportionate time or effort talking about or doing may not make much sense today. It is only after two to three years, sometimes more, that those start to impact our growth and P&L in any meaningful way. When we listed in June last year, we had a solid foundation of a large and sticky user base, dominance among OTAs in the train line of business, a young but fast-growing flight and bus OTA business, and the product agility and nimbleness that a challenger brand typically needs to have in a competitive space.
The promise was that as our large, widespread base of aspiring middle-class travelers would mature, they would come back to us for a wider array of their travel needs, pay up for value-added services that solve their pain areas, and as their incomes improve, spend a larger share of their wallet on us through premiumization of the spend. Our FY 2025 performance has proved that the market is evolving exactly how we expected it to, with flights and buses becoming our fastest-growing verticals both in GTV terms and revenue terms. There are visible market share gains we see across the three core lines of business. We have hit pretty meaningful scale with annual active users crossing 544 million for the full year and our monthly active users crossing 83 million across our brand's apps and websites.
The bigger achievement, though, is how we have grown our monthly transacting users, which have crossed 3.7 million monthly transacting users as of Q4 with a 4% MTU to MAU ratio. If we look at our GTV scale now, it is nearly 2% of all B2C e-commerce being sold in our country today. In the flights and buses business, we are seeing material acceleration and some gains in market share as well. Buses, in fact, now have the largest share of contribution margin across our lines of business, so we are a much more diversified business in that sense. We are no more just a Tier 2, 3 brand either.
If we look at our growth coming from Tier 1 to Tier 1 flights, it was at 68% in passenger segment terms in Q4, which is multi-fold faster than the overall market growth of flown passengers between the top metros, indicating our increase in market share even in those axes. ixigo's uniqueness lies in its ability to tap into a growth factor that is rare, which is not just that of people making their first online travel booking, but of people booking the first ticket of their life on that mode of travel itself. This new-to-market segment essentially allows us to create a blue ocean for ourselves rather than compete in existing red oceans.
An interesting statistic to share with you all is that the NBU users that we have, the ones that come and book new flights with us, the ones that came in Q4, our surveys indicate that half of those users, that was the first flight booking of their life. Essentially, half of those new users who came to book on the NBU apps had never booked a flight in their life. We are basically creating a new market. One contributor to that is also Travel Guarantee, which is now fully rolled out across ixigo Trains and Confirmed Tickets, a value-added service that leverages our unique advantage of a strong presence across the travel segments that we operate in: trains, buses, and flights.
Travel Guarantee helps travelers gain greater visibility into seat availability for their trips and allows them to get steeper discounts on alternate modes of transportation in case their wait-listed train ticket does not confirm on the date of travel. In many cases, this introduces the next billion users to new modes of travel, such as flights and buses. This product has received strong initial uptake and is helping a lot of travelers to be able to benefit from up to 3X discount on a bus or a flight booking, or up to 2X discount on an alternate train booking when their train ticket doesn't confirm. All three lines of businesses are seeing a positive impact of Travel Guarantee on the revenue and GTV growth.
At this stage of our journey, we are not optimizing Travel Guarantee for margins, but instead prioritizing trials and adoptions by our customers and measuring customer satisfaction while observing their propensity to book an alternate transport. Our AI-based optimization algorithm for pricing this product, as well as deciding for which wait-listed ticket this product even gets offered for, allows us to run this product in a profitable manner. In the initial phase, Travel Guarantee will be a lower margin offering than the overall margins in our business, given there is a slightly higher variable cost to operate this product.
As you can see in our financials, it has strengthened our overall portfolio, and despite the marginal dilution in unit economics that it brings for the trains business, 31% trains contribution margin in Q4 FY 2025 versus 34% in Q4 FY 2024, it has still contributed to a healthy GTV and revenue growth for the trains business and the other lines of businesses. In FY 2025, we've also doubled down on brand and performance marketing across our portfolio, building upon the organic growth foundation that we had. We partnered with Rohit Sharma for our ixigo Trains brand campaign, which had visibility across railway stations, TV channels, Maha Kumbh, and more. We also doubled down on our Confirmed Tickets partnership with RCB in IPL and executed a new campaign for Travel Guarantee featuring Virat Kohli and other cricketers.
We also renewed our Mahesh Babu association for AbhiBus brand, as well as signed up with the CSK team in IPL. Apart from these, we did several tactical campaigns, sponsorships, brand partnerships, and offline activations, which has been enhancing our brand recall across our brand portfolio. Let me speak a bit on the macro development since we last spoke. The Maha Kumbh Mela in the months of January and February 2025 saw a surge in searches and bookings for us across our three lines of businesses, and not just for Prayagraj, but also for nearby towns such as Varanasi, Lucknow, Kanpur, Ayodhya. These act as feeder routes into Prayagraj.
Our bookings to Prayagraj surged 20x YoY for buses, 5.4x YoY for flights, and 4x YoY for trains during this period, reflecting that for categories such as bus, where supply was not constrained like the others, there was a decent spike noticed during the Mela. What came as an eye-opening insight for us was how Gen Z and solo travelers formed a dominant demographic for Maha Kumbh, shattering stereotypes about what demographic drives spiritual travel demand in our country. On trains, solo travelers made up over half the train bookings to Prayagraj, and a staggering 50% of all visitors to Maha Kumbh across all modes of travel that we saw were under 30 years of age. Having witnessed it myself, I believe that this event was a testament to the true power of spiritual tourism in our country, marking the beginning of a structural multi-year theme.
Though some bit of our performance in Q4 might appear to be influenced by what was happening at the Maha Kumbh, let me also clarify that only a mid-single-digit percentage of our GTV for that quarter is directly attributable to the Maha Kumbh. The event was an eye-opener to many on the power of spiritual travel in India, and there's an opportunity in the long term to serve this market in many ways. In more recent developments, the Pahalgam terror attacks happened at a time when Jammu and Kashmir was seeing 70% growth YoY in bookings for us in the month of April. The attacks marked a significant blow to the state's tourism momentum and the region's security environment and led to a military conflict that impacted flight operations in North India.
At ixigo, our first priority was to ensure the safety and well-being of our travelers by ensuring we were disseminating information about disruptions and closures in a timely manner and to help them find alternate means of transportation to return to their homes safely. We were also supporting our users by offering full refunds, including convenience fees, free reschedules to all passengers flying from or to the affected airports. We also saw some increase in customer reach-outs to our customer support channels, and our CX teams worked proactively day and night in coordination with our airline and hotel partners to resolve customer queries efficiently with the help of some AI as well. On May 10, 2025, driven by feedback from our users, we took a decision to suspend flight and hotel bookings for certain countries whose actions and stance during the conflict sparked significant public outrage in India.
As a company deeply rooted in Bharat, we believe it is our responsibility to take a stand in solidarity with our nation during this critical situation. This action reflects our unwavering commitment towards aligning our business practices with the sentiments of the people in our country. We remain dedicated to reviewing this position as the situation evolves. Should geopolitical equations change, we'll reassess the stance and will do what is right for the broader travel ecosystem. This decision aligns with our core value of empathy and is reflective of our responsible corporate citizenship. Lastly, I want to end by quoting Swami Vivekananda, whose life and principles have been inspiring for me. Take up one idea, make that one idea your life, think of it, dream of it, live on that idea.
Let the brain, muscles, nerves, every part of your body be full of that idea and just leave every other idea alone. This is the way to success. For us, that idea has been to serve the underserved travelers. When I say underserved, I mean travelers not just from the next billion user segment, but also the ones from the existing market who haven't been fully served in terms of depth of customer experience as of now. On June 3rd , we will complete 18 years from launch, and our journey is a testament to the true power of compounding. We remain thankful to the immense faith of our customers, employees, airline partners, IRCTC bus operators, hotel partners, all our stakeholders that have reposed their faith in us throughout. We remain conscious of the great burden of trust we carry on our shoulders.
With that, I will now hand over the call to my friend and Co-CEO, Rajnish.
Thank you, Alokee. Switching where we are, we want to see the important bets we took ahead of time, even when it seemed counterintuitive on why we were taking those bets. We took these bets because we felt they would help improve customer experience and pain points in the travel industry over the long term. What we are seeing now is therefore a result of some resource allocation decisions we took several years ago. If you see our growth trajectory over the last three quarters, the acceleration coming quarter-on-quarter is a result of multiple factors: improvement of products, especially for more evolved users, firstly with regulatory features such as Flight Tracker Pro, automated trip management, bus insights.
Secondly, enrichment of supply in buses and flights and now starting to happen on hotels as well. Thirdly, deeper cross-integration and synergies across our products and services in our app ecosystem across ixigo, Confirmed Tickets, AbhiBus. Fourthly, better cross-sell through integration of food, hotels, advertising, etc. Lastly, enhanced monetization from new value-added services such as Travel Guarantee and Price Lock. We already have a large user base, so our focus is on enhancing our monetization and expanding our share of wallet among our users. Our approach to expanding the share of wallet is centered around solving customer problems through innovative products that build trust and loyalty through better customer experience. This loyalty and trust then translates to better cross-sell and upsell, leading to enhanced monetization per user over the long term. Over the years, we have focused on utility-first community-driven use cases to organically acquire customers.
Since travel is an infrequent use case, the best way to measure share of wallet growth for our business is by tracking annual spend per transacting user, calculated as GTV divided by annual transacting users. This metric reflects how much each transacting user is spending on our platform annually and serves as a proxy for our share wallet share expansion. We have grown from INR 6,537 per user per annum in 2023 to INR 9,705 per user per annum in 2025, compounding at 22% CAGR, signifying our deepening relationship with our customers. This increase in share of wallet is also correlated with the rising trend of what we call premiumization in our country. We are witnessing a clear and accelerating growth trend of premiumization in Indian travel, a shift driven by rising purchasing power and innovations that are delivering better value at lower costs to the customers.
Destinations once considered aspirational, such as Goa, are being substituted at times by international travel places such as Vietnam, Thailand, Dubai, Abu Dhabi, and Singapore. Domestically, too, there's a strong surge in spiritual travel destinations like Prayagraj and Ayodhya, reflecting both evolving aspirations and deeper cultural exploration. Transport is also seeing upgradations. We are seeing people transitioning from trains and buses to flights. These behavioral shifts are being fueled by two core underlying drivers. The first one is rising disposable income, enabling more Indians to spend on travel and experiences. Secondly, massive infrastructure investments, including expansion of airports from Tier 2 to Tier 3 cities and the development of major tourist sites like temples and monuments. The recently introduced Travel Guarantee value-added services is another step in this direction, created to ensure that users without a confirmed train ticket can conveniently and affordably switch to alternate modes of transport.
As previously highlighted, this feature is also enabling many users to experience new modes of travel such as flights for the very first time in their life. Aloke has already talked about the growth in our flights and buses vertical, which continues to surpass our own expectations. Hotels is still nascent, but we are very satisfied with what we have achieved in the fiscal year where we have worked upon it. There are quite a few learnings we have in that vertical when it comes to product-market fit, both on the supply side and the customer side. There's also lots of work to be done there in the coming quarters to get to a point where we feel we have solved some customer pain points that still exist in that space in terms of customer experience on the ground and the expectation versus reality of it.
As a trusted customer-first brand, it is important for us to continue investing in technology, AI, and new initiatives that can enhance our customer experience as well as into brand marketing. Some utility products that we launch, such as crowd-sourced products on trains, Flight Tracker Pro, or Bus Insights, may at times lead to disproportionate growth in tech costs without a proportionate increase in revenue. However, in the long term, these products help increase engagement and stickiness and improve our repeat bookings, leading to a reduction in our consumer acquisition costs. Over the past year, a number of investors had asked us about this, so let me share an interesting metric for you. In FY 2025, 85.8% of our transactions were done by repeat bookers who have booked with us before, which shows the loyalty and faith our users have put upon us.
Given the accelerated progress in the field of AI, the adoption of AI tools has accelerated across all our teams, as well as in customer-facing products. This incremental investment also shows up in our technology costs, but it ends up creating operating leverage in other areas such as employee costs and customer support costs. To give you an example, recently we rolled out Voice AI Agents for our flight and train customer support, and we are already seeing 45% of our flight customer support on Voice being done end-to-end by these AI agents, allowing us to scale the flight business without adding incremental human support agents. If you look back and see where we are coming from, it looks like an impossible feat to have grown nearly 23 times of our revenue from operation from INR 40 crore pre-COVID in FY 2019 to INR 914 crore in FY 2025.
However, we remain extremely paranoid about the future and will continue to place our bets on areas that can potentially disrupt us because that is the only way we know we will remain relevant and continue growing. I want to end by thanking our team, now 509 people strong in the ixigo core business. Their contribution to this journey is commendable, and I think they are the true creators of this impact. As we approach our 18th anniversary as a company, I can't help but reflect on the early days marked by a series of venture capital pitches and the string of repeated rejections that we faced. Back then, we believed that securing that funding would have significantly accelerated our growth trajectory. What we didn't realize then was that those very rejections were helping shape the DNA that would allow us to build a stronger foundation for future growth.
With capital always in short supply, we were left with no choice but to rely on technology, creativity, product-led growth, organic growth marketing, and we built a culture deeply rooted in capital efficiency and customer centricity. What began as a necessity soon became second nature, and that discipline has served us remarkably well till this day. With that, I'm handing over to my friend and Group CFO, Saurabh Devendra Singh. Over to you.
Thanks, Rajnish. Let's walk through some highlights. As always, all figures shared are in INR crore in case I forget to mention it unless mentioned otherwise. Year- over- year, comparisons refer to the same period in FY 2024 for annual and Q4 FY 2024 for quarterly. Now, let's start at the top. Our gross transaction value, or GTV, rose by 65% in Q4 to INR 4,418.4 crore.
For the full year FY 2025, we recorded INR 14,971.6 crore in GTV, a 46% increase year-over-year. Revenue from operations stood at INR 284.1 crore for the quarter, a 72% increase YoY. For FY 2025, the number was INR 914.2 crore, a 39% increase YoY. On contribution margin, we delivered INR 120.9 crore in Q4, up 69%. For the full year, our contribution margin totaled INR 401.3 crore, growing 37% YoY. While the quarterly margin percentage dipped slightly from 43.5% to 42.5% in Q4, that was in line with our decision to lean into growth opportunities and along the lines of what we've been talking about in every call that we've had. Adjusted EBITDA, excluding other income and ESOP costs, improved to INR 29.1 crore for the quarter, up from INR 17.1 crore in Q4 FY24.
On a full year basis, we closed FY 2025 at INR 94.8 crore in adjusted EBITDA compared to INR 55.3 crore last year. Profit after tax stood at INR 16.8 crore for the quarter, compared to INR 7.3 crore in Q4 last year, an increase of 128%. For the full year, that was INR 60.3 crore versus INR 73.1 crore in FY 2024. This year-over-year difference is explained by one-off, which we have already discussed in the previous quarter, and I'll also summarize again close to the end. I should highlight that our operating cash flow has nearly quadrupled over three years from INR 30.8 crore in FY 2023 to INR 122 crore in FY 2025. Now, let's take a quick look at how our major business lines are performing this quarter. Our bus segment is now cruising like a well-maintained Volvo 9600, smooth, category-defining, and ahead of schedule.
Whoever hasn't traveled, please travel in AbhiBus, and you'll realize how good it is. In Q4, we recorded 5.5 million passenger segment booking, making a 78% year-over-year growth and generating a GTV of INR 552.5 crore . The contribution margin rose to INR 40.1 crore, with a healthy contribution margin percentage of 60.9%. Thanks to this strong profitable growth, the bus segment now contributes 33.2% of our overall contribution margin. Now, much like the Boeing 787 Dreamliner, which was a bold rethinking of what long-haul travel should be, our approach to flight business has been intentional, ambitious, and built for long term. We didn't rush to scale. Instead, we invested in the underlying systems and customer experiences needed to build something enduring. Now, the strategy is taking off.
In Q4, we booked INR 0.25 crore flight segment, a 73% year-over-year increase with a GTV of INR 1,709.2 crore, which is a 92% growth YoY. Contribution margin reached INR 39.6 crore, with a margin percentage of 45.2%. Flights now contribute 38.7% to overall GTV and 32.7% to group's total contribution margin. When it was first launched in 1969, the Hafla Rajdhani taught India to expect more from train travel, not just in terms of speed, but in consistency, comfort, and trust. Our train line of business carried forward the same spirit. In Q4, we booked INR 2.62 crore segment, marking a 30% growth over Q4 FY 2024 and contributing to INR 2,107.1 crore, up 41% year-over-year. Operational revenue came in at INR 126.3 crore, with a contribution margin of INR 39.2 crore at a 31% contribution margin percentage. Trains accounted for approximately 32.4% of group's total contribution margin.
Now, as promised, I would like to highlight a few one-off or call-out items that influenced the comparison between FY 2025 and FY 2024. Re-evaluation gain for our associate FreshBus was INR 29.7 crore in FY 2024 and INR 5.8 crore in FY 2025. Share of loss of FreshBus increased from INR 5.9 crore in FY 2024 to INR 9.1 crore in FY 2025. FY 2024 also had a FreshBus loss of INR 5.2 crore consolidated with us. At that point of time, it was a subsidiary. There was INR 1.2 crore related to share issue expense in FY 2025 related to our IPO. Further, we had a tax expense of INR 21.5 crore in FY 2025 as compared to a one-off tax credit of INR 12 crore in FY 2024. Thus, due to the above item, on a like-to-like basis, we had a net charge of INR 26 crore in FY 2025 against a net gain of INR 30.6 crore in FY 2024.
Lastly, let me quickly touch upon the impact on our business due to the recent geopolitical issues. The temporary shutdown of 32 airports resulted in some disruption to flight services, with cancellations affecting 5%-8% of total scheduled flights between May 7 and May 12. While there was not much impact on train business, our bus business actually saw some increase in demand during this time. Hence, at a company level, we did not see much impact. With the announcement of reopening of affected airports from May 12, we are glad to report that as of May 13 and onwards, we have returned to normal flight booking levels prevalent in early May. Now, where does the end of FY 2025 leave us? It leaves us with a strong start on a long and ambitious journey.
While we have strengthened our platform, invested, and reinforced our value proposition, we know that next few years won't be easy because defining chapters are rarely the comfortable ones. I'll end up with a quote which means more or less what Aloke said, but he's a spiritual guy while I'm a dark-brewed entire. So Kafka once wrote, "Don't bend, don't water it down, don't try and make it logical. Don't edit your own soul according to the fashion. Rather, follow your most intense obsession mercilessly." We are following our mission to democratize access to travel with integrity, empathy, and innovation at the heart of everything we do. It's that obsession that has brought us here, and it's the same focus that will carry us through good quarters like this one and also through others, which may not be as smooth.
Though in which things do not go as planned, regardless of the challenges, we will remain steadfast to our core value and mission. Thanks, and with that, I will hand it back to the moderator for Q&A.
Thank you very much. We will now begin the question and answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may press star and one on their touchstone telephones. If you wish to withdraw yourself from the question queue, you may press star and two. Participants are requested to use handset while asking a question. Ladies and gentlemen, we will wait for a moment while the question queue assembles. The first question is from the line of Anmol Garg from DAM Capital. Please go ahead.
Yeah, hi. And congratulations, guys, for a very strong performance. I have a few questions that I wanted to understand.
Firstly, in both our flight and bus business, our take rates have gone up significantly versus the last quarter. Just wanted to understand what has led to this. Has there been an increase in the overall international booking in our flight segment?
I'll take the first one, Anmol. Look, part of it is what we have as a value-added offering. One of the things that, say, in the case of bus, what we've been doing is we've been increasing and expanding the footprint of AbhiBus across. In general, as we've discussed in the presentation, we've introduced a number of value-added servicing. A part of the take rate, while our take rate would always be slightly different, is our underlying routes might end up being, our underlying route mix might end up being different to the market.
We do not know what the market is right now, but partially, it is more of math in that sense. The second question, sorry, you had was international.
I will take that, Anmol, Aloke here. I think the growth we saw on international this time around was pretty much in line with the kind of growth that we saw for the overall flight business. You could look at it that way.
Understood. Understood. Secondly, wanted to understand that you have launched travel guarantee this quarter. Also, we have other value-added products. Currently, what would be the percentage of revenue that is currently coming out of this product, and how has it changed over the last year?
Yeah, we are not declaring the revenue on this. Firstly, and again, it was launched last quarter, so whatever it is over last year.
Let me give you a more qualitative idea, and probably Aloke and Rajnish can talk a bit more about the product. Remember, the product came from the need of the users a lot of times. It is a product which came with the need of users. Secondly, with the kind of base that we had in trains, we felt we could make it really work in this sense. What I can tell you is that the product is doing extremely well for us. What we are trying to do is, and part of what you see in the decrease in the margin of the train business is what is happening with the travel guarantee because we are not optimizing the product right now for margins.
We are keeping it profitable, but we are prioritizing adoption by customers, trying to see the customer satisfaction really work where it works. Yes, it is a very popular product for us. As in, if you see the in-general growth, what has happened in that segment has been driven by this. We are getting a lot of people in the segment. I'll let Aloke and Rajnish add more questions.
Yeah, I'll just add that, look, if you look at the utility value of this product, right, as an end customer, it's superb, right?
Because if you were planning to go somewhere and you had a waitlisted ticket, now you have the chance to be assured about the fact that if the ticket doesn't confirm, you will have enough discount to buy a bus or a flight at a steep sort of discount from where the fares typically are at the last minute. You could take a train the next day and still you could afford a more premium tactile train, right, with 2x the refund. In that sense, the folks who actually do opt in for this product and who do not get actually a ticket at the end of the day, confirmed seat, you can assume that a large part of them will actually start using this to book an alternate trip.
In that sense, it also kind of expands the market because that person would have not traveled at all or would have not found anything on our app worthy of their spend, but now get that option and largely priced with data science and AI. We keep it profitable that way. Like Saurabh said, it's very early days. I mean, I think I would love to talk more about it in a few quarters from now. Rajnish, you want to add something?
No, I just wanted to say that as the name suggests, the goal of this product was, like I said, everything, it's not about making money right in the beginning. Are you able to hear me?
Yes. Yes.
Yeah. As the name suggests, travel guarantee, the goal of the product was to make people travel. Are you able to hear me now?
Sorry.
Yes, you're audible, Rajnish.
Sorry, I think there might be a connection issue.
Yes, sir. The current participant got disconnected. We will move on to the next question.
Am I audible?
Yes, sir, you're audible.
Yeah, I can hear you, Rajnish.
Yes, sir. Shall we move on to the next question?
Yes.
It's from the line of Swapnil from JM Financial. Please go ahead.
Hi. Thanks for the opportunity and congratulations on a good set of numbers all through. Just starting with your flights business, see, if I were to look at from the seasonal perspective, Q1, Q2, 4Q to 1Q, typically, I believe there is a decent growth that you see because of holiday season in 1Q. Now, but there were a few events like you called out, right? There was some disruption in Kashmir. There was Kumbh in the base of 4Q.
There are certain markets where you stopped taking some bookings. My question here is, will we see the usual seasonality despite these events, or should we build in a slightly unusual quarter for 1Q this year, particularly because of given the data?
Yeah, Aloke here. Thank you, Alokee here. I just wanted to call out, first of all, that Maha Kumbh itself, like we said in our narrative, was just contributing single-digit percentage of additional GTV as of Q4, right? Even though it did help us grow a tad bit faster, I would say that the secular growth trajectory itself was pretty exciting even without it.
I'm saying this especially for flights where the inventory addition, which was purely Maha Kumbh related, was not as big as, let's say, on a vertical like buses where the impact could be felt more materially, right, in that sense. I think at an overall business level, we would have still grown very fast even if there was no Maha Kumbh in Q4, let's put it that way. As far as the disruptions that you mentioned are concerned, those disruptions which happened just for a period of five days during the conflict, I think as I speak today, we have already recovered levels that existed pre-conflict. Let me put that to rest.
Swapnil, you have to realize one thing that because we are multi-modal, as I called out in the last question, there are different businesses which react differently to this kind of event.
It is kind of in that sense, it is kind of balanced out for us. The other thing, going back, I would not say that this is a quarter which is where the one-offs, and then we kind of have called everything out. If you go through NFAQ, you will find most of these things also put on paper where we highlighted these points.
Got it, Saurabh and Aloke. The second question is with respect to your bus segment. Your take rates have increased materially this quarter. I mean, I presume this is one of the highest take rate quarters for a long period of time. Now, my question here is, first, is this a sustainable number to look at? And secondly, was there any element of better commission that you are able to get from the suppliers?
Or is it purely the value-added services that you might be offering?
Swapnil, could you just—I missed the last part of the question. Could you repeat that part again, please?
My second part of the question was, is the take rate increase because of you getting better commissions from the suppliers, the bus operators? Or is it because of the value-added services, customers taking more number of value-added services, or the percentage contribution from the value-added services increasing?
Yeah, it's a mix of a number of things. One of the—as in, probably you've summarized all the things there. As in, what you've got is one is the share shift, which is private versus government. That is working out.
The second, as I mentioned earlier on, the VAT, which includes things like value-added products, which also gets us into things like the first-time users that we are getting, or the returning users after years that we are getting to the bus segment from the train segment to the travel guarantee move. It is also a combination of us providing, us going deeper into our relationships with the bus operators. Remember, for bus, the interesting thing is bus is a fixed CapEx business. In case we are able to get better CapEx utilization, better utilization for a bus operator, he is willing to share much more. This is a very different business than the other two businesses.
Yeah. Just wanted to add that there is also the value-added services that we sell specifically, value-added products, etc.
You have to understand that these value-added services are not priced manually by people. There is an AI algorithm that prices them. As time progresses, these algorithms start optimizing for P&L. I think what we are seeing also is that this optimization is resulting in significantly better attached rate, better revenue and margins that we are starting to see now. This is one of the reasons why we might be seeing these things. This is one of the areas that could potentially impact, like you rightly mentioned.
Will it be fair to say that 12% plus may be the new normal for your bus ticketing business?
Yeah, at the— I do not think we would like to kind of comment anything on that front about whether this is the new normal. All we can say is that we are seeing these optimizations yielding results.
We don't know what's going to happen in the future. Hopefully, with all the efforts we are making on the AI side and data science and personalization related to these products, we might see further optimization in the future.
Got it. One quick question on your cost side. You did call out in your earnings note that there was some operating leverage that you were able to drive in FY 2025 when it came to technology and branding cost. What my sense is that both these cost items increased materially in the second half of FY 2025, which means the full impact of these investments, the technology and branding investments, should be visible in FY 2026.
Does that mean while in absolute terms, we might be able to deliver very strong EBITDA growth in FY 2026, but on a percentage margin perspective, things may not move in the same manner?
Yeah, sure. I mean, you have to look at technology expenses in a slightly different way. Technology expenses generally are proportional to the number of queries or hits or searches, as we say, that we get on our tech infrastructure. This includes all kinds of searches hosted on our platform. Sometimes we keep building these utility products that we talk about, right? Whether it is the Flight Tracker Pro or the crowdsourced running status on trains or Bus Insights. Many times, these kind of products, since they do not have a direct revenue impact, will lead to disproportionate growth in tech costs without any proportionate increase in revenue.
However, in the long term, if you look at these products, they help increase engagement, right, and stickiness, and this eventually leads to a reduction in our customer acquisition costs, and we are able to acquire more customers for free. I think what we measure in terms of our technology reduction, technology efficiency is whether our cost per million queries, right, which is defined as the server infrastructure cost that is needed to support those million queries by dividing the numbers, is constant or declining over time or not. I can share that that number has been only reducing year-over-year since we started measuring it. The current interesting insight I can share with you is that at the current spend, we are roughly seeing about 8 billion hits every week on our infrastructure. This is the cost at which we are doing it.
The other reason why this cost is an investment right now is that there is a very accelerated progress happening in the field of AI, and the adoption of AI tools has accelerated across all our internal teams. People are using a lot of AI across teams, whether it is engineering, customer support, etc. Also, this adoption of AI or implementation of AI in customer-facing products that we have built. Everything that we do, every product or feature that you see, there is some amount of AI inside it, right? This incremental investment that we are doing in AI is also showing up in our technology cost. I think this is something that we had already said as use of funds at the time we went public that we will be using these funds for investment in AI.
This cost may end up creating more operating leverage in the future in areas such as employee cost reducing or customer support cost reducing. Just to give you an example, I think I talked about it in the call as well. We have our voice-to-voice agents, AI agents now operating at full scale, and we have already seen that almost 45% of our flight customer support voice queries are being completely handled end-to-end by AI, right, allowing us to scale this business significantly. Yeah, I mean, there is a rationale behind this spend. Having said that, even if you look at an overall level, even at the percentage of GTV, that number is not growing. It is only constant.
Got it. Just the last one, if I can squeeze in, it is more on a long-term perspective.
While you guys are doing fantastic across all these three key segments that you are operating, at some point of time, my sense is you will have to build the hotels segment also in a meaningful manner and in direct manner. Any thoughts around that? How do you intend to do that, and what kind of efforts will be needed? Any thoughts around that will be very helpful.
Sorry, you're talking about hotels specifically?
Yes. Yes.
Yeah, I mean, like I said, hotels are still in build-out phase. Obviously, we are seeing very good growth in hotels, but as of now, we are not disclosing those numbers. The reason is that we are still in early phase of build-out. We are focusing a lot on customer experience on hotel side.
There's still a lot of unsolved pain areas that we see on the hotel side which we are trying to solve for, whether it is on the inventory side, whether it is in solving areas related to trust, or whether it is areas related to how people—why do people not transact online enough because of this lack of trust or the availability of digital content, etc., that allows people to take those decisions to book online, etc.? We are focusing on a lot of these areas in order to kind of optimize the customer experience on the hotel side. I think that we'll be able to build something which will have a differentiated customer experience, and I think that is what will create that product-market fit that we are looking for. I would just reiterate the same thing.
Our playbook will continue to be the same, which is we'll go very deep on customer experience side, and we'll explore most of the customer pain areas that are there in the hotel side as well, and we'll try to solve them from first principles. The thesis is that if we are able to solve the right problems at the right time, we should be able to kind of create a product that should attract, create that customer stickiness. The other thing we are confident about is that as of now, we are not spending a single amount of dollar or penny to acquire customers to transact on hotels on our platform. The reason is very simple because we have an extremely large captive audience on our platform, like 83 million people coming monthly on our platform.
So our focus and goal would also be to kind of optimize that large base of customers that we have and start cross-selling and upselling in order to improve adoption of hotels in the future.
Got it. Aloke, thanks a lot for the opportunity and all the best.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Harikesh from Avendus Parks. Please go ahead.
Thanks for the opportunity. Firstly, I think congrats for the great result, and I think it obviously is an island of opportunity in what otherwise looks like a fairly sad consumption sentiment in India. I had a couple of philosophical questions. I'll just weave it with some of the numerical ones as well. I think you had alluded in your opening remarks about user, usage, and premiumization.
Essentially, in a consumer category which is structurally growing, the people who execute this well 30 years out essentially both hold margin, power, and cash flows. I wanted to just address all the three in one question. In terms of usage, you obviously opened up your original business model and opportunity which no one else saw, but multiple players or large competition have seen it and started entering it, and hence you are being flanked there. How are you thinking about it, and where do you defend that? That is on users. In terms of usage, your ATU to AAU is a number which we have been tracking. There is some improvement. How are you thinking about it? Do you have a target in mind and where it goes?
In terms of premiumization, would love to hear how do you think of it, or are there cohorts which you can break up? You obviously alluded to an average value which has gone up substantially. If you break it by cohorts, are you seeing something different in terms of where you tried premiumization offerings and how they have been moving? If you can just address these three, that would be great.
Sure. Hi, this is Aloke here. Just the first part of your question, I just want to make sure I understood it. Which part were you referring to when you said it's flattening?
No, I didn't say flattening. I said in terms of users, you opened up an opportunity for the market focusing on tier two, three, and then everybody else is seeing an opportunity there. Obviously, they will flank you.
They try to enter it. They'll be more aggressive. How do you defend that core moat? Between the prioritization, right, you said you're focusing on growth. Now, user usage premiumization, how does your focus and prioritization stand today? That was that part of the question.
Got it. See, we have to start by understanding how we got here, which is a decade-long journey, which was built largely on understanding deeply the pain areas of these users that have very different needs at times, right, when it comes to travel. Most of the usage that came initially was for utility and not transactions, right?
If you think of why ixigo has the largest user base in the market today, the answer probably will have very little to do with our transactional funnels and more to do with our utility funnels because we cared about use cases that did not make any money for us or made very little money for us in the first decade. We went very deep in them and solved those problems to such an extent that we built a very sticky, repeat, and closed ecosystem of these users. When I talk about that, of course, train is the forefront of it. Even today, when I talk about flights and when we see the growth coming there, a large part of that growth is being driven by product-led growth, right?
Because we've launched these new things like Flight Tracker Pro or helping people get their boarding pass directly at the time web check-in opens. All those kind of things are essentially helping build more word of mouth and get more new users on the platform. Now, one could ask why nobody else did it because everybody has been in the same market for the same time as us. I think it is really a question of where you place your focus and bets. For us, we spend disproportionate time worrying about the smallest of things that our users struggle with. I think that's really our moat, right? Of course, one can argue that, of course, we have network effects now. There's a lot of data that we have which is proprietary, which is hard for anybody to copy. All those things are there.
If you go back even one more step before that, how did we get there? By understanding customer problems more deeply than anybody else, right? I think that's a harder playbook to copy because it takes a while to build some of those things or scale some of those things or prove them. Now, when you talk about how will this usage grow, etc., see, on an annual active user basis, if you look at the numbers, and there's a reason why you will see that the growth is slower there in the last couple of years. I mean, we've reached a point where one out of two people on the internet has used us at least once across at least one of our brand app or services, right, in the last one year.
Now, if you've reached that point of growth, the focus needs to shift on how do you build enough services that bring these people back for a diverse set of use cases, as well as how do you monetize that better through transactions and deepen the relationship with that customer through transactions in other categories. To give you a small example, let's say when we launched food delivery on trains, we are deepening that relationship, right? We are bringing the customer back to the app for one more use case. We are monetizing even further from that customer. When we talk about value-added services that Rajnish talked about, all of those deepen our relationship and give the user a reason to come and spend more on us. In a way, TAM expansion, once you have hit this sort of scale, TAM expansion makes a lot of sense.
We have been working on TAM expansion as well as tapping into these new areas, which is resulting in this kind of growth. If you look at the ancillary attached rate of 29%, or if you look at our repeat transaction rate, which again has always been in the 80s, even if you look at our DRHP today, it is 85.8%, close to 86% of our transactions in FY 2025 were done by repeat bookers. That is just a testament to the kind of stickiness that we have built. Was it built by spending money on brand or by discounting? No, right? Am I worried about if anybody decides to do that in this market? No, because that is not my moat. That will never be my moat if you ask me. Yes, those things will accelerate my growth as well if I do that.
Brand is something we are already talking about how we are doubling down on in proportion to revenue growth. To understand our business, one has to understand why we do the things that we do, right? That is the answer. Rajnish, you want to add something?
Yeah, I just wanted to, since it is a philosophical question, I wanted to give a philosophical answer to this question as well. The short answer to your question about whether somebody can copy us is yes, of course, people can copy us. There is no surprise in that. The reason why we feel that we will keep innovating and we will keep being ahead of the curve is because this extreme sense of customer obsession that we have built the DNA around allows us to be extremely close to customers and their problems.
We always have our ears to the ground listening to what customers want and what their problems are. We do not have to go looking out for what to solve for. We already know what we need to solve for next because of this obsession. The only issue now is that what is the right problem to solve? I think it is not really about solving a problem. Given a problem, anybody can solve it. This is more about solving the right problem at the right time and basically having the courage to say that you are going to spend a disproportionate amount of time and resources in solving a problem which might not give you immediate ROI in terms of revenues, profits, etc. The company takes courage to do that.
You might have seen that some of those investments we have made in the past have yielded results after years or months or quarters, right? This is the reason why we do what we do, right? That's the reason why we do not have to look outside for what we need to do next. Most of the time, what happens is that we do something, and yes, people would copy us. That's something that is unavoidable, right?
Yeah. I think just the last part on premiumization in case you have some insights from some cohorts which are looking at which are higher than the average in terms of what I was looking for as in multiple services premiumization.
If that is something you—
Yeah, I mean, see, the whole point of premiumization in our country is that—so one thing that people fail to understand is that generally, if people do not have enough purchasing power, it does not mean that they cannot spend enough. It just means that people are not—they are not price-conscious, really, in the real sense of the word. They are more value-conscious. They value what they are purchasing more than—they value their money more, right? Hence, there are people who are willing to spend, let's say, INR 100 to kind of protect their ticket and travel. Or people who really want to travel are willing to spend some amount of money and say that they would want to purchase travel guarantee.
We, as a company, would create a product and say that, "Yes, we will ensure that we would be able to take you from point A to point B, come what may. If you won't be able to go in train, we'll put you on a flight or in a bus, and we'll make you travel. The purpose of travel guarantee was to help people get to their destination, irrespective of the mode of transport. People are willing to pay an additional price for that, or for free cancellation, or for price lock, or for a reassured, any of these products.
This is the trend of premiumization because when you create value and customers are willing to pay for it and they have the loyalty and trust built into you and the purchasing power, as we see it increasing, we see more and more people keep on buying these value-added services and products that they're building. That trend is secular, like we talked about. I think we have seen this happen across the board. We have seen people move from flights, from buses, and trains, and upgrading to flights. We are seeing a lot of cross-site flights in our ecosystem as well because of the same trend. Yeah, premiumization is real. It's happening, and I think there's an accelerated trend around that.
Thank you. Yeah, yeah.
I've given you ancillary attachment rate at 29.23%.
The reason which you ask on the comparison, I can't give it because nobody else has this disclosure. As in, you're a great joking house. I would want you to ask other companies have disclosure so that we can compare better. I'll allow my point rest there.
Sure, sir. Thanks for the opportunity. Yeah.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Manik Taneja from Axis Capital. Please go ahead.
Hi. Thank you for the opportunity and congratulations for continuing to accelerate in terms of growth through the recent quarters. I don't know if my question has already been asked because I got cut off in between, but you've already answered about what drove the improvement in take rates on the bus side.
It will be great to essentially understand the improvement in take rates on the air side and how that's translating into the contribution margins for the segment, given they are possibly the highest in over five or six quarters, and how should we be thinking about this trending going forward. The second question is basically with regards to ease of expenses on a go-forward basis, given the new approval that you've taken. Those would be my two questions.
Hey, hi. Hi, Manik. Thanks a lot. There are two points to your question. One part is where you've talked about the contribution margins for the flight segment being highest over many segments. I don't think that's the case.
No, I said many quarters.
Many quarters.
Many quarters. Yes.
Remember, look, part of it, I'm not sure which, as in, it is not out of any range which is there.
In fact, if anything, I've been investing on growth there. A couple of things on the take rate part. One of the take rate part is, if you see my flight take rate, it's mathematical. Like it's for many people where a large part of my take rate is fixed. And the underlying flight price decides what my take rate would be. If you go back a couple of years and see the range of the rates that we've given, hence the variance in the take rate is there because it's the underlying price and it's how my mix moves. Because as the core of our business still lies outside the top four metros, my underlying price would be, as in, it's spread across different places. The other part with flights too is what Rajnish mentioned with the bus answer.
If it is the products that they have, it is the optimization coming of age of the value-added products where they have been starting to improve, and which are giving you an improvement. Also, the cross-functional advantage that we are getting with products like TG adding on to this. Rajnish, would you want to add on the product side on this?
No, I think I would, on the flight side, the contribution margin, if you talk about why it has improved, obviously there are new value-added services that we have built like price lock that is also contributing in some way. There are existing value-added services as well which are getting optimized further as our algorithms start seeing more and more data and keep optimizing and improving the algorithms. I think a combination of all of those things is what is causing this.
I think overall, the ancillary attached rates are optimal. I think the pricing algorithm attached rate, I mean, it's something that needs to be optimized at an algorithm level to make sure that it kind of derives the best value for us. I think that is a work that AI does beautifully. We don't need to do much work here in that sense. We see some of those benefits kind of coming in over time as these algorithms keep maturing.
I wanted to prod you on this one. Just to clarify, there may not be any element of one-off in terms of any one-time GDS incentives in terms of two-up for the full year or similarly from a WASP standpoint in terms of post-report?
Yeah. Aloke here. There are no one-offs in there, just to clarify that.
Typically, these kind of incentives, even if they come, they are prorated across the period on which they are applicable, etc. We do not recognize it as a one-off, typically, even if they come. More importantly, I think as a percentage, the contribution margin has not really grown, if you see. Last three quarters, our stated strategy has been that we are chasing market share growth on flights. We are doing it by allowing the percentage contribution margin to dip a bit, which it has, right? We used to be in the 50s at one point, and now, if you see, it has come down from there. As a result of also the things that Rajnish described, obviously, it has not dipped as much as what it would have if the AI had not kicked in and sort of improved the attached rates and the value per ancillary sold, etc.
I think in that sense, we are striking a balance. We want to grow as fast as we can without our unit economics deteriorating. I think we are happy with what we are able to produce now.
Sure. The last one was for Saurabh in terms of the ease of cost going forward.
Yeah, the ease of cost going forward, some time back, I told you that we would be within the range of roughly within the range of around 20 maximum. It might go slightly above 20 because we've got, as we've already declared, we've got a target-based incentive plan which the shareholders have voted on. It will be near about the same PIN code which is there.
Remember, in the new ease of which we've got, it doesn't—and you can read through the filing now that it's public—it doesn't get kicked in until the market cap limits are reached. What we've also done, and it's an important thing that we talk about this ease of plan too, so I thank you for asking this question. In our case, what we have tried to do is to make this fair in terms of we've got a VWAP over a month, over 30 days as a criteria. We've got a market cap criteria. We've got a time-based criteria on this to just ensure that it's not unfair to anybody on this plan. You can get much more details in the filing that we've done on this. It will be around that going forward.
Sure. Thank you and all the best in the future.
Thank you.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Akhil from Hornbill Capital. Please go ahead.
Hello. Good evening and congratulations on a great set of numbers. We've grown nearly 40% in revenues this year. Clearly, the industry is not doing so well. We've had two years of post-COVID boom, and now we've had a great quarter for the Maha Kumbh. How do you see this going ahead in the next few years? These are very high numbers. You're clearly gaining market share. Your competitors are not growing as far. What gives you confidence that you can sustain such numbers?
First of all, I don't know if you've seen our growth trajectory over the last six years, right?
If you go back to pre-COVID and look at where ixigo is today, we are at 23 times the revenue that we had in FY 2019, right? And our CAGR is like 68%. Even during COVID, we were continuing to grow. We've not had a single down year. I think some of the things we've described earlier today are factors that have been driving that growth, which is our ability to grow user base through product-led growth, as well as monetize through value-added services and cross-sell upsell better. Now, if I speak about the industry, right, I think we have to break it into two parts, right? We are not just in the ticketing business. If you think about ixigo, right, we didn't start out as being an OTA. Even today, we are not your typical OTA, right? Let's put it that way.
We have a large utility-based reason for people to come to us. We monetize through avenues which are built on top and which create a new TAM. The value-added services, I believe, create a new TAM which did not exist earlier and allow us to sort of grow disproportionately faster by tapping into that new TAM. I think if you look at the industry, I will actually not agree with what you said. If I look at how the incumbent is growing and if I look at how the overall market is growing, it is pretty healthy. If you look at categories like buses, it is actually growing all around, right? It is not just us. If you look at flights, barring the supply constraints that exist, the demand is there. It is very strong.
I mean, people are paying a premium on fares year on year and still flying 85-90% load factor. It is not a one-off. There is no major impact of Maha Kumbh. Like I said, it is a single-digit percentage GTV contributor. I think even without that, we would have grown decently well as we were growing even till last year. 68% CAGR is what we are doing on revenue if I look at the six-year view.
Got it, Aloke. That is the past. Now your base is much bigger. You are already probably the second largest OTA. Do you feel confident that you can sustain the growth numbers on this base as well?
Look, the first thing I would—this is Saurabh. The first thing I would say is we do not give forward-looking guidance. I would not comment on any specific number.
Having said that, yeah, as I said at the end of my speech, as of right now, we believe that there are problems to solve and which we'll continue to solve. From what we see, we remain confident in our ability to solve problems. As a company, we've always believed that if we solve the right problems and if we do the right things for the customers, monetization will follow. The logic remains the same. Nothing has changed for us in that sense.
Yeah. I would just like to add that we are still nascent in many categories that define how OTAs are built, right? In those categories, I think we still have a lot of upside in the years to come waiting for us, right? It's not like we are maxing out on growth.
On trends at—we disclosed this last quarter—58% share of the OTA market. We continue to grow at the speed that we do, right? By that logic, we should have been tapering out. I think innovation is the reason why you can find new growth factors. I think this is a company that has always managed to find new growth factors every year or two.
Got it. Got it. Thanks. That was very helpful. Lastly, on the contribution margin, that has seen a slight dip this year as opposed to last year. Is it because the value-added service component has increased? Is that the reason, or is this because your performance marketing has increased?
Of course, we'll find out in the annual report, but if we just throw some light on why the contribution margin has dipped, and how are you seeing performance marketing as a cost?
Look, what we've said in our regular quarterly basis is that I look at performance marketing, discount, and branding as a combined customer inducement cost. It will be between 3%-3.5% where I'll remain comfortable on that. In that sense, I kind of remain there. Yes, the combined number is at a higher end, but you should look at it in that range going forward.
Probably in some sense, if you look at that in another context, what we had earlier mentioned, if you go back to our first quarter or say first quarter call, at that point of time, as I said, buses were giving you great contribution margin, and we had said that we would be investing in growth. The underlying business is growing, as in if I look at industry numbers, everybody talks about OTAs being 18% figure, world take whoever you are using. We believe that if that is the case, if the underlying business is growing this fast, it is time to invest. That is what we are doing. We are investing. I think the answer that you are looking for, if you go back to my FAQ one or two quarter back, you will find.
Okay. Understood. Thank you so much. The result has been incredible.
Congratulations once again.
Thanks.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Shrinarayan Mishra from Baroda BNP Paribas. Please go ahead.
Thank you for the opportunity. My first question was on the headroom that we have in terms of cross-sale. If you can highlight what percentage of users are using either of the two services and what percentage are using all the three services, that would be great.
Yeah. Aloke here. I think at this point, we do not disclose this particular metric, but it is a great input. Perhaps at some point, we should look at talking about it. What I can tell you is that there are two things you can track which give you some sense on this. One is how fast we are able to grow on the flight and bus line of business.
I think a very significant part of the answer lies in our ability to cross-sell, upsell better. Now with hotels also, we are seeing the ability to—because like Rajnish said, we are not spending any money outside our ecosystem to acquire users. There is no brand or performance marketing, etc., we are doing for hotels at this point. Largely, whatever growth we are driving internally is through cross-sell, upsell. Similar is the case with Zoom. Most of the food orders that we are doing there are now largely coming from within our ecosystem. I think there is still huge headroom. I mean, just to give you one sense of this, right? There is still a significant number of people who use our apps just for utility and do not book yet with us, right?
I think the biggest headroom still for us lies in that bucket.
Okay. Okay. So how much would be that user base which is just for utility purpose?
Yeah. You can look at the MTU-MAU ratio, right? We have disclosed this in our presentation if you go and see that. But we crossed 4% there. It used to be early 3s. So we managed to sort of increase that, which is a sign of, again, how well we are able to sell to our own users, right? The top of the funnel is, if you see on a monthly basis, it's our MAU. It's 82 million. We've got monthly actives, which is the top of the funnel, and that is the potential which you're talking about.
Okay. Okay. Got it. Got it. Second question was on the bus segment.
Will it be possible for you to give market share geographically? I was trying to get how the bus segment, where this growth will be coming from.
The bus segment, the good news is that there are three things happening there. One is supply expansion, which is that existing operators are adding new buses. New operators are coming in. We had the likes of PlixBus, NewGo, FreshBus, etc., entering the market the last couple of years. We have existing operators, like even Intercity ZingBus and all, who have added supply in the last couple of years. The second thing is the premiumization, which we were talking about, which is moving from non-AC to AC buses, moving from just government to private as well. Those two things are also happening.
The third part, which is penetration, which is only under 20% of bus tickets get booked online today. That sort of penetration number will move over time, right? Because in other verticals, that's much higher. On buses, there is still a lot of scope to move this metric as the market expands. Experience will matter a lot because it's a very last-minute product, right? It's the last people typically realize that they need to book a bus in the last two, three days. I think a lot of it is being able to target the right user at the right time and also get the experience right so that people come and book with you. On the experience, we've launched a few things. Maybe Rajnish can talk about which are also helping this expansion.
Sorry. Am I audible? Aloke?
Yes. Yes.
Yeah.
On the experience, I mean, as you would have noticed that our rating from the App Store, at least for our AbhiBus, has been constantly increasing. We are at almost 4.8 now. This is something that is the proof of the fact that the product experience has significantly improved. Some of the examples of the things that we have done, things like Bus Insights that we talked about in the call, which have significantly improved the confidence of customers trying to book a ticket. I'll be assured it was one such product we built in the past which has helped us build that confidence in customers to book with confidence, right? Whether you get canceled or not, or whether for service-level reasons, etc. You will never be let down. All that seems refund most of it, or even more than that in certain situations.
Service-level promises were not delivered. This has always been our effort, and I think we've been using now AI, tech, and data science all the more to kind of create these kind of experiences that we are able to predict exactly what bus gets assigned to you, what kind of what age the bus has, etc. People are able to kind of make that decision. The problem with buses as a category is always because the inventory is so fragmented and unpredictable that you generally don't know what kind of bus you'll get, how the experience of travel would be. Giving people that kind of insights using Bus Insights product is helping people make that decision and is letting them book with confidence.
We are seeing those kind of products and features also result in revenue and margins, although the intent was just to solve customer problems, right? The side effect was that it led to better stickiness, it led to better conversion rates, and then eventually we were able to kind of drive higher revenues and margins.
Thank you, sir. Ladies and gentlemen, that was the last question for today's conference call. I now hand the conference over to the management for closing comments.
Thank you. I would like to thank everybody who joined the call today. We speak to you again very soon. Have a great day. Good night, depending on where you are. Take care.
Thank you. On behalf of DAM Capital, that concludes this conference. Thank you for joining us, and you may now disconnect your lines. Thank you.