Good evening. It gives me immense pleasure to welcome all of you to the Quarter One FY 2026 Earnings Conference Call of Jio Financial Services Limited. My name is Jill Deviprasad, and I head investor relations. On the call with us today, we have Mr. Hitesh Sethia, MD and CEO of Jio Financial Services Limited, Mr. Kusal Roy , MD and CEO of Jio Credit Limited, the NBFC, and our Group Chief Financial Officer, Mr. Abhishek Pathak. The earnings presentation is uploaded on our website, www.jfs.in, and on the stock exchanges. A quick reminder that all participants will be in a listen-only mode in this call. Before I hand over the call, I would like to read out the Safe Harbor Statement. This presentation contains forward-looking statements which may be identified by their use of words like plans, expects, estimates, or other words of similar meaning.
All statements that address expectations or predictions about the future, including but not limited to statements about strategy for growth, product development, and market position, are forward-looking statements based on rationale and data. Actual results may vary materially given market circumstances. I will now hand over the call to Hitesh to discuss the business in detail.
Thank you, Jill. Good evening, everyone. A very warm welcome to all those joining this earnings call today. At Jio Finance, our aspiration is to build a financial service institution of long-term national significance, one that is structurally sound, digitally enabled, and aligned with India's economic priorities. As India embarks on a transformative decade characterized by rapid formalization, digital adoption, and rising consumption, we are uniquely positioned to serve the evolving needs of millions of Indians. With our diversified platform, strong Jio parentage, and tech-first approach, Jio Finance is poised to play a very pivotal role in powering India's financial inclusion and prosperity. Against this backdrop, the foundation we laid in the last two years is now translating into meaningful traction across our businesses, bringing us closer to our goal.
I'm pleased to share the details of the strong operational execution and strategic momentum that we have seen during Q1 FY 2026. After our demerger two years ago, we commenced our growth journey with the strength of the Jio brand and the robust capital base. The treasury income generated from this capital has been instrumental in supporting the early-stage build-out of our business. While our portfolio spans businesses at different stages of growth cycle, from incubation to rapid growth phase, we have continued to maintain profitability even as we invest in long-term value creation. This is significant for an organization at a nascent stage of its life cycle. This disciplined approach positions us well to unlock the full potential of each vertical as they mature.
Our consolidated total income for the quarter increased 48% year-on-year to INR 619 crores. As our businesses scale up, the consolidated total income from business operation has significantly increased from only 12% of our net income in Q1 FY 2025 to around 40% this quarter. This is one of the key metrics which we monitor on an ongoing basis, and we expect this trend to continue as we further scale up. Consolidated pre-provision operating profit for the quarter stood at INR 366 crores , up 8% year-on-year. We remain well-capitalized with a consolidated net worth of INR 1.4 lakh crores, providing a solid foundation to fuel our ambitious growth aspirations. Our asset management company, Jio BlackRock Asset Management Private Limited, achieved a significant milestone during the quarter. The joint venture received regulatory approvals to commence operations in May 2025, and only within a few weeks of this approval, we launched our maiden NFO, or new fund offering.
We are very encouraged by the enthusiasm with which the NFO was met by both institutional and retail investors. The AMC raised over INR 17,800 crores through the NFO, making it one of the largest cash and debt fund NFOs in the country. In our lending business, we evaluated market conditions and strategically pivoted towards a secured lending in the latter part of FY 2024. This shift reflects our commitment to responsible, risk-calibrated growth and to building a resilient franchise that delivers long-term value for both customers and shareholders. This disciplined yet ambitious approach continues to guide the performance of our NBFC, Jio Credit Limited. Jio Credit's AUM has witnessed significant growth over the last one year, from only INR 217 crores in Q1 FY 2025 to INR 11,665 crores in Q1 FY 2026. Backed by a diverse suite of lending products and a wide distribution network.
My colleague, Mr. Kusal Roy, the MD and CEO of Jio Credit Limited, is also with us here today and will take you through the performance of the NBFC later during the call. Our payment solution business, Jio Payment Solutions Limited, is also growing at rapid scale, recording a transaction processing volume of INR 7,717 crores, growing 93% year-on-year. Our focus is on driving value-accretive TPV by providing bespoke payment solutions for merchants, which aids our contribution margin. During this quarter, Jio Payment Bank Limited's deposit grew to INR 358 crores, a very impressive 206% year-on-year increase. Abhishek Pathak, our Group CFO, will take you through the detailed financial performance of the company in the second half of this presentation. Moving on to the key developments of the quarter. Our joint venture with BlackRock for asset management, wealth management, and broking have now received all necessary regulatory approvals.
This now enables us to offer a comprehensive suite of investment solutions. We have also, in this quarter, successfully completed the acquisition of State Bank of India's remaining 14.96% stake in Jio Payment Bank for INR 105 crores. Thus, Jio Payment Bank now is a wholly owned subsidiary of JFSL. The payment bank's business correspondent network has expanded remarkably to over 50,000 touch points across India, a significant increase from around 2,300 touch points in Q1 FY 2025 and around 20,000 in Q4 FY 2025 , further extending our reach, especially into underserved areas. Our digital platforms continue to show traction with a highly engaged customer base. During the quarter, an average of 8.1 million monthly active users engaged with our wide range of financial products and services across the JioFinance and MyJio apps.
These developments underscore strong execution momentum across all our business verticals, and we will build on this momentum over the remainder of the financial year. At JFS, we remain true to our vision to democratize financial access for all Indians. We are deeply committed to empowering individuals and businesses across the nation with simple, innovative, and intuitive financial products delivered digitally. With the recent regulatory approval for our joint venture with BlackRock, we will become a full-stack financial service provider. This completes our comprehensive suite of offerings, allowing us to serve the four core financial needs of every individual: the need to borrow, need to transact, need to protect, and need to invest. Each of these areas is served by a dedicated entity within the Jio Financial Services Group, ensuring specialized focus and expertise.
The Jio Finance app, our unified platform, is designed to support customers through every stage of their financial journey, catering to needs that evolve over time. This integrated approach enables us to cross-sell and upsell effectively, allowing us to create a virtuous flywheel effect, offering more bespoke products per customer and deepen engagement as they grow within our ecosystem. As we grow, our steadfast focus remains on four core pillars: product, distribution, technology and data intelligence, and people. These are the key elements of our long-term strategy on which we build and innovate to ensure sustainable growth. Our product suite is thoughtfully designed to cater to customers across their entire life cycle, offering smart, seamless, and secure solutions. During the quarter, we launched a convenient and intuitive journey to invest in Jio BlackRock mutual funds, which is now live on the Jio Finance and My Jio apps.
Our direct and digital-first go-to-market strategy for mutual funds is designed to democratize access to world-class investment solutions through a seamless experience for Indian investors and help them maximize their returns. The Jio Finance app, our primary digital storefront, which is also integrated within My Jio, provides convenient access to all our retail products from mutual funds and digital gold to home loans, loan against securities, UPI, savings bank account, and life and non-life insurance through our broking entity. As mentioned earlier, we continue to strengthen our digital and physical distribution footprint, ensuring we reach a wide spectrum of customers across the country. On the digital front, the Jio Finance app is rapidly growing as our central digital hub for retail financial products. You will hear from us in the days to come regarding upcoming enhancements in the app, which will make it even more intuitive and intelligent.
The aim really is to provide a seamless, hyper-personalized platform for both our own offerings as well as products from other well-known financial brands. Our direct digital sales channel for the NBFC has also enhanced with the launch of a new website for Jio Credit Limited. To further extend our market presence beyond our own channels, the NBFC's loan products and Jio BlackRock mutual funds are now available on various external fintech platforms. For merchants, our innovative JioSoundPay solution on JioBharat phones and dedicated merchant solution app are enabling efficient onboarding and transaction processing at scale. In terms of our physical presence, in addition to the expanded reach of the payment bank, our NBFC payment solution and insurance broking entities are actively expanding their physical customer touch points across major Indian cities, offering last-mile fulfillment for various products, especially those requiring physical verification.
We are actively developing new external go-to-market channels and alliances across all our lending and insurance products with the likes of banks, wealth management companies, real estate developers, and corporate services. This multi-pronged distribution strategy, combining a digital-first approach with strategic lean physical presence, allows us to serve our customers better by ensuring we are present wherever they are. Moving to technology and data, we have made significant progress in our technology and data architecture, very crucial for enhancing our customer experience and operational efficiency. Key accomplishments here include the implementation of an advanced data analytics and AI platform across all our group entities. We have reached a significant milestone with our new single customer view dashboard. This powerful tool provides sharp customer insights and enhances engagement, allowing for superior customer lifecycle management.
As a new-age financial service company free from the burden of technological debt, we are able to implement this initiative remarkably fast. These integrated initiatives, along with the app intelligence architecture, which is in advanced stages, empower us to offer highly relevant customer solutions, enhance user experience, facilitate early detection of potential defaults, and achieve significantly improved operational efficiencies. Human capital is absolutely critical for our long-term success, driving growth through innovation. The core of JFSL's talent DNA is defined by an ownership mindset and a digital mindset, which collectively power a relentless drive for execution excellence. For enhanced agility, we have implemented a pod structure, establishing over 80 cross-functional capability-based pods. In essence, each pod is a compact autonomous team with professionals from diverse backgrounds working together seamlessly on critical, high-impact projects. This framework is instrumental in accelerating our innovation cycle and delivering best-in-class solutions to the market.
The agile pod structure will allow us to manage human capital and associated costs more efficiently by ensuring greater productivity. In line with our stated objective of bringing world-class services to the people of India, we are also attracting global talent to build UI/UX capabilities that help elevate customer experience. Overall, we have made significant progress across all the four core areas critical to our operational strategy during the quarter. We now turn to our specific businesses and their performance during the quarter, beginning with Jio Credit Limited.
I would now like to invite my colleague, Kusal Roy, to discuss the progress of our NBFC.
Thank you, Hitesh, and good evening, friends. Having laid the foundation for the NBFC in the last two years, it has been five quarters since we launched our commercial lending business and four quarters since we launched our first secured retail lending business. In the intervening period, we have successfully launched a full suite of commercial lending products, which includes term loans, supply chain finance, working capital loans, and factoring. We have also built up a robust portfolio of secured products in retail lending, namely home loans, loan against property, and loan against shares, in addition to loan against mutual funds. I'm happy to share with you that in each of these product lines, we have scaled rapidly and substantially over the last few quarters. Before I share some numbers, I would like to take a few minutes and speak about our approach in these product lines.
I will speak about retail lending first. All our retail lending products (home loans, loan against property, loan against shares, and mutual funds) have a fully digital and optimized journey for onboarding customers through the JioFinance app. We believe that our loan against mutual funds journey is among the quickest and best in the market in terms of customer experience and have received positive feedback from customers since launch. Similarly, customers can also experience a fully digital journey on the loan against shares and mutual funds product through our Jio Credit website.
In a few weeks, our Jio Credit website will also provide customers with a fully digital end-to-end journey for home loans and loan against property, mirroring the digital journey in the Jio Finance app. All our digital onboarding journeys for retail lending are fully integrated with the My Jio app, which serves close to 500 million customers across the length and breadth of India, giving us access to a customer base that is unmatched in size and scale in the financial services industry.
We believe that our digital journeys are best in class in the Indian market, and we will continue to refine them in line with the latest advances in artificial intelligence and digital technology. We are strongly focused on delivering best-in-class service for our customers through the life of the loan. We have already built out a series of digital channels for customer service that includes a world-class chatbot available through WhatsApp, as well as a voice bot. Again, in the very near future, our Jio Finance app and Jio Credit website will provide customers with full self-service options on all loan details, statement of accounts, interest certificates, etc. Beyond our digital channels for customer acquisition on retail loans, we have strategically built out other avenues for origination on each retail product.
To broaden our reach for home loans and loan against property, we have collaborated with online aggregators and offline channel partners to cater to the needs of home loan and lab customers who require physical assistance with documentation and technical processes involved in property-related transactions. Additionally, we have also partnered with renowned builders and developers across the country to bring home loans to customers at the point of new property purchase. For loan against mutual funds and shares, we have successfully partnered with leading wealth management companies and banks to source high-quality customers. Complementing these digital and partnership channels, our physical presence across 11 major Indian cities serves as a key enabler for last-mile fulfillment as well as accurate credit assessment. Over the next few quarters, we will continue to expand our physical footprint across some of the top-tier cities in the country.
Now, turning to the commercial lending business, I'm pleased to inform you that we have been able to capitalize strongly on the group ecosystem's wide network of vendors and partners. We have built up a highly experienced team of commercial lending professionals who have been able to cater to the needs of our vendors in the group ecosystem, addressing various financing needs in the shape of short-term and long-term loans backed by solid security. In addition to customers from the group ecosystem, we are also cherry-picking customers from stable industries with robust ratings and financial performance. Again, as I mentioned in the retail lending section, we are in the process of setting up a comprehensive self-service system for our commercial lending customers in the Jio Finance app and the Jio Credit website. This will be live in a few weeks from now.
Our focus on digitization and AI-based solutions extends significantly beyond customer-facing processes. We are focused on delivering digital efficiency to all backend processes involving risk, underwriting, operations, finance, and other functions that span across all our lending businesses. This will continue to create cost efficiencies for us while enabling superior customer experience at the front end. Our governance and policy frameworks are in line with the highest regulatory standards to ensure that our franchise stays well within the guardrails of our risk appetite across all parameters. Our leadership team brings to the table a unique mix of experience and entrepreneurial mindset trained in some of the best learning grounds of the financial services industry in India. Overall, we have adopted a risk-calibrated approach, consciously targeting prime and near-prime retail customers and high-grade credit corporates.
This disciplined focus is critical to building a high-quality, diversified loan portfolio that aligns with our principles of sound capital deployment and sustainable growth, finally paving the path to become one of the leading NBFCs in India.
This is Jill. There is a technical issue with the audio. Please bear with us. We'll resume shortly. The issue is resolved. We'll start with Kusal.
Thank you, Jill. Just continuing. The discussion. From slide 11 onwards. This disciplined approach is clearly reflected in the steady quarter-on-quarter growth of our assets under management. Our AUM has shown consistent expansion, demonstrating the market's strong acceptance of our secured product offerings. We have also been agile in acquiring opportunistic, high-quality direct assignments at attractive rates. During the quarter, our AUM grew 16% quarter-on-quarter to INR 11,665 crore. Our strategic advantage in this competitive landscape is underpinned by four critical cost levers. Firstly, our cost of funds.
I'm pleased to highlight that Jio Credit Limited has received a AAA rating from both CareEdge and CRISIL for a new NCD facility. This quarter, we successfully raised approximately INR 2,500 crore through commercial papers and non-convertible debentures at best-in-class rates, further optimizing our cost of funding. Secondly, our cost of acquisition. We leverage our marketing agreement with the group ecosystem. To access the expansive user base of My Jio. This adjacency, powered by our advanced data analytics, enables targeting the right customer at the right time with the right product, thereby significantly reducing our customer acquisition costs. Thirdly, the cost of service. Being a digital-first entity born in the new digital era, we benefit from having no legacy book or technology debt. Our modular, scalable tech stack, adopted on a SaaS-first and cloud-native model, allows for paper use efficiency.
This provides us with a significant advantage in delivering cost-effective, modern backend and frontend technology. And finally, our credit cost. For underwriting, we integrate three crucial data sets: bureau data, account aggregator data, and our proprietary alternate data. This alternate data, derived from the digital footprint within the Jio ecosystem, is unique to us. It not only helps us identify ideal customers but also provides early warning signals of potential defaults, enabling proactive and corrective actions. Our integrated debt management and collections framework is robust and designed for effective collections and risk management, utilizing a segmentation-based strategy, a digital-first approach with human intervention wherever needed, and early warning triggers. Our endeavor by leveraging these cost levers is to significantly optimize our cost-to-income ratio, allowing us to share the benefits with both our customers and shareholders.
With this, I will now turn it back over to Hitesh. Thank you, and wishing you all a very good evening.
Thanks, Kusal. Moving on to our payments business, starting with Jio Payment Bank Limited. The payment bank is committed to providing accessible and inclusive banking services nationwide and continues to demonstrate strong growth and expand its reach. Owing to the strong growth in its network of business correspondents, the bank's CASA customer base saw a significant growth, reaching 2.58 million this quarter, up from 0.96 million in Q1 FY 2025 and 2.31 million in Q4 FY 2025. Deposits have also shown a very impressive growth, rising to INR 358 crores from INR 117 crores in Q1 FY 2025 and INR 295 crores in Q4 FY 2025.
In a notable development, Jio Payment Bank has also been empaneled by the National Highways Authority of India and Indian Highway Management Company Limited as an acquirer bank for toll processing and has been awarded the mandate for three national highway toll plazas. The payment bank also launched a subscription-based premium account for customers this quarter. Jio Payment Bank also saw a substantial 10x sequential increase in the value of transaction banking services on its platform. These services included Aadhaar-enabled payment service, domestic money transfer, and B2B UPI services. These initiatives will help the payment bank diversify and grow its revenue streams. Moving forward to Jio Payment Solutions Limited, JPSL is committed to delivering a 360-degree omnichannel payment solution to merchants through a comprehensive enterprise product suite for collection and payments, catering to all types of transactions.
Our scalable, secure, and best-in-class cloud-based core platform ensures robust performance, and our distribution network is a critical growth enabler in this business. These enablers have contributed to consistent growth in our transaction processing volume, which reached INR 7,717 crores in Q1 FY 2026, up from INR 3,989 crores in Q1 FY 2025 and INR 5,963 crores in Q4 FY 2025. As highlighted earlier, our focus in this business is on driving margin-accretive transaction processing volume to ensure profitable growth. In a significant initiative, Jio Payment Solutions has launched a developer portal, which provides a one-stop destination for developers to explore, integrate, and scale payment solutions with its advanced APIs and tools. This will allow small and medium businesses and startups to integrate customer-friendly payment solutions on their digital commerce platform very quickly and securely, thereby helping them grow their businesses by reaching more and more customers.
Moving on, our joint venture with BlackRock is set to democratize access to world-class investment products for the people of India. This partnership brings together the global data-driven investment expertise of BlackRock, along with Jio Finance's strong digital distribution reach and deep understanding of the Indian market. In asset management, our maiden NFO new fund offer across overnight liquid and money market funds received overwhelming participation from over 90 institutional investors and over 67,000 individual investors. The total AUM of over INR 17,800 crores makes it one of the largest cash and debt fund NFOs in India. Jio BlackRock Asset Management also received regulatory approvals for 5 new index funds, which will allow the AMC to build on the encouraging start and further expand its product portfolio. Our asset management operations will leverage BlackRock's renowned Aladdin platform for end-to-end investment management process, ensuring sustainable operational excellence.
Along with this, we have also received approvals for commencing wealth management and securities broking operations, and you can expect further updates from us around these ventures over the rest of this financial year. As I conclude, we remain very optimistic about the future. Our ambition is to become a leading force in India's financial services landscape with profitable market share and superior return ratios. This will be achieved through sustained discipline execution, scaling operations, refining products, and delivering best-in-class digital experiences. And this growth will always be underpinned by our robust governance framework and four core principles. Reputation, regulatory adherence, return of capital, and return on capital.
I will now hand over to Abhishek for his comments on the financial performance. Thank you.
Thank you, Hitesh. Good evening, everyone. Our performance in Q1 FY 2026, which was marked by robust business growth and strong operational execution, reflects the strength of our well-calibrated business model. Even as we invest for growth across businesses with diverse maturity profiles, we do so in a disciplined manner, with utmost focus on maintaining profitable unit economics. The ultimate objective of a prudent capital allocation strategy is long-term value creation for our customers, shareholders, and all our stakeholders. As you can see from this slide, our group structure comprises of wholly owned subsidiaries, joint ventures, and associates. Our diverse businesses across the four verticals of lending, leasing, payments, investments, and protections are housed under separate entities. JFSL, as the parent holding entity, is a core investment company which supports the scale-up of these entities.
On June 18, 2025, JFSL acquired the remaining stake of SBI and Jio Payment Bank for INR 105 crore, making JPB a wholly owned subsidiary. Consequently, in accordance with Ind AS 103 business combinations, the previously held equity interest was remeasured at fair value, resulting in a gain of INR 439 crore. Goodwill arising from this acquisition, amounting to INR 411 crore, was offset against this gain, and the net amount has been presented under exceptional items. We view our investment in JPB as a long-term strategic business interest aligned with our broader digital financial services vision, and we intend to scale JPB as a core platform for an inclusive, technology-driven banking solution. Moving on to the financial performance for Q1 FY 2026, our financial results for this period are presented and prepared in compliance with Indian accounting standards as prescribed by the Ministry of Corporate Affairs.
JFSL's consolidated total income for this quarter was INR 619 crore, a significant increase from INR 418 crore in Q1 FY 2025 and INR 518 crore in Q4 FY 2025. The total income for the quarter primarily comprised of the following. Interest income of INR 363 crore. This includes interest on our lending operations and income from our treasury operations. Net gain on fair value changes on money market and liquid mutual funds of INR 196 crore. Fees and commission income of INR 53 crore on account of our insurance broking and payment service business. Total expense, including provisions for Q1 FY 2026, stood at INR 260 crore. This compares to INR 79 crore in Q1 FY 2025 and INR 168 crore in Q4 FY 2025. The increase in total expenses was primarily attributable to the higher finance costs, which rose to INR 99 crore. In this quarter.
This was on account of our NBFC, Jio Credit Limited, actively tapping the external debt market to meet its funding requirements, in line with its growing scale of operations. During the quarter, JCL commenced its market borrowing program. The NCDs and CPs we issued during the quarter were very well received. The competitive cost of borrowing we could achieve for these instruments reflects the strength of our brand and the balance sheet. Additionally, staffing expenses increased to INR 64 crore, and other operating expenses rose to INR 90 crore, reflecting our continued scale-up across various businesses. Provisions on account of ECL stood at INR 7 crore. Our pre-provisioning operating profit, or PPOP, stood at INR 366 crore in Q1 FY 2026 versus INR 374 crore in Q4 FY 2025 and INR 339 crore in Q1 FY 2025. Shares of Associates and Joint Ventures stood at INR 31 crore in Q1 FY 2026, lower than INR 46 crore in Q4 FY 2025.
It may be noted that this is primarily due to our joint venture entities with BlackRock not having commenced their full operations. Consequently, our consolidated profit after tax in Q1 FY 2026 stood at INR 325 crore, up from INR 313 crore for Q1 FY 2025 and INR 316 crore in Q4 FY 2025. While our portfolio spans businesses at different stages of growth cycle, from incubation to scale, we have continued to maintain profitability even as we invest in long-term value creation. Some of these early-stage businesses will gain scale over the next few quarters, and their impact will reflect in our consolidated earnings profile over the coming quarters. JFSL's consolidated net worth stood at INR 1.4 lakh crores as of 30 June 2025, and we continue to be well-capitalized to pursue our growth aspirations.
Now, moving on to the standalone financial performance for the first quarter of the financial year ended 30 June 2025. Standalone total income in FY 2026 was INR 134 crores versus INR 175 crores in Q4 FY 2025 and remained unchanged year-on-year. This income primarily comprises interest income on interest-bearing investments and net gain on fair value changes on money market and liquid mutual fund investments. Total expenses, including provisions for Q1 FY 2026, was INR 38 crores versus INR 49 crores in Q4 FY 2025 and INR 36 crores in Q1 FY 2025. On a standalone basis, the profit after tax of the company for Q1 FY 2026 was INR 71 crores as compared to INR 72 crores in Q1 FY 2025 and INR 97 crores in Q4 FY 2025. Standalone net worth stood at INR 25,000 crores as of 30 June 2025.
In summary, the inherent strength and resilience of our balance sheet gives us a formidable bedrock for sustained expansion. This strong capital base firmly positions us to confidently scale our operations, foster innovation, and seize strategic opportunities that are closely aligned with our overarching long-term vision. Reflecting on our performance in Q1 FY 2026, we're extremely pleased with the significant strides made during this quarter towards realizing our aspirations to become India's leading financial services company. As we continue progressing on the path of profitable growth, we will do so by following a prudent risk management framework and adhering to all the regulatory requirements. Strategic planning, cost structure optimization, and prudent capital allocation will enable us to maximize shareholder value by ensuring return on capital and return off capital. I would now like to conclude by thanking our shareholders for their continued support as we progress further towards building a strong, new-age financial institution. Thank you.
Thank you, Hitesh, Kusal, and Abhishek. And thank you, everyone, for joining this call. Our apologies for the stoppage in between. As we conclude our earnings call, we invite you to explore the detailed earnings presentation available on our website and the stock exchanges. Thank you. Have a good one.