Good day, and welcome to the Q4 FY22 earnings conference call of Just Dial Limited. We have with us today from the management, Mr. V.S.S. Mani, MD and CEO, and Mr. Abhishek Bansal, CFO. At this moment, all participants are in the listen-only mode. Later, we will conduct a question and answer session. At that time, you may click on the Raise icon, Raise Hand icon to ask a live question. Please note that this conference is being recorded. I now hand the conference over to Mr. Abhishek Bansal, CFO. Thank you, and over to you, sir.
Hi, everyone. Welcome to Just Dial's earnings call for fourth quarter of fiscal 2022. Our operating revenue for the quarter stood at INR 166.7 crore, declining 5.1% year-on-year, but was up 4.9% sequentially. Our adjusted EBITDA, excluding ESOP expenses, stood at a minor loss on account of increase in employee costs and advertising spends. Our employee expenses increased 22% year-on-year, led by approximately 20% year-on-year increase in head count across sales, technology, content and marketing functions. Our advertising expenses stood at about INR 8 crore for the quarter. Other income stood at INR 35.2 crore, and overall net profit stood at INR 22.1 crore. Coming to business update, FY 2022, as we all know, started with onset of second wave of COVID-19, which had significant impact on SMEs across the board, especially in B2C services.
However, situation started stabilizing from third quarter, and we have embarked on aggressive monthly plan monetization, coupled with ramp-up in sales hiring. During Q4, we signed up about 71% customers on monthly plan basis, which was just about 23%-24% last year. Our sales head count has grown 23% on YoY basis, and 26% sequentially during the quarter. We have seen monetization continuously improve significantly on month-on-month basis since November, December. Our paid campaigns grew by about 24,100 campaigns to 461,500 total campaigns at the end of the quarter. While paid campaigns are still about 14% short of pre-pandemic levels, this quarter-on-quarter addition has been highest over past several quarters, and we should be closing this gap soon and growing further.
Q4 collections stood at about INR 179 crore, and it witnessed 19% quarter-on-quarter growth despite 70%+ deals coming on monthly plans, where upfront collections are typically lower. Consequently, deferred revenue witnessed 3.8% quarter-on-quarter increase to INR 338 crore. Now, since the mix of upfront versus monthly plans is changing, in order to assess how our monthly sales is panning out, we calculate or we measure what is the total annual collections that we expect to get from all the sign-ups that we have done during the quarter, be it upfront plans or monthly plans. We call it realizable value, which is essentially total money that we have received from upfront plans right now and money that we expect to be received via monthly plans over next one year.
This realizable value of sign-ups that we did in 4Q has witnessed a healthy 24% year-on-year growth and 29% sequential growth. This, in a way, acts as a leading indicator for us to see where our collections and future revenues are headed. Our monthly ECS collections, which is money received via direct bank debits for monthly plans, stood at about INR 29 crore for the recently concluded April month, versus it had reached a low of INR 13 crore back in October 2021. Further, the recent ramp-up in sales hiring too should aid our monetization in coming months, as we should see improved productivity of new hires as they get tenured. In a nutshell, as far as reported P&L is concerned, our top line reflects monetization performance of last few quarters which were COVID-19 impacted, whereas most of our costs essentially hit our P&L immediately.
As we see our top line ramp up in coming quarters, we should see profitability improving as well. Overall, cash and investments stood at about INR 3,820 crore as on 31st March. Coming to operational highlights, traffic stood at 144.8 million unique users for the quarter, growing 12.2% year-on-year. On strength of database, total listings now stand at about 31.9 million. Overall, as I see, expenses have picked up in FY 2022, led by resumption in hiring for sales and various new initiatives and resumption of our advertising. Recent recovery in sales should reflect in FY 2023 revenue, which should aid recovery of profitability too. The core business is clearly on a recovery path, and new initiatives are currently under various stages of development and user experience enhancement.
With this update, for further discussion, we shall now open the floor for questions. Thank you.
Thank you very much, sir. We will now begin the question and answer session. To ask a question, please click on the Raise Hand icon available on the toolbar, or you may click on the Q&A icon to raise hand. The operator will announce your name when it is your turn to ask a question. Please accept the prompt on your screen and unmute your microphone while proceeding with your question. We will wait for a moment while the question queue assembles. The first question is from the line of Pranav Kshatriya from Edelweiss. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Thanks for the opportunity. Abhishek, a couple of questions. Firstly, you talked about the revenue growth. Should we expect this revenue growth, you know, to start flowing in from the Q1 FY 2023 itself? You know, for the productivity, it will take some time? Secondly, you know, for this quarter, the operating expenditure was roughly INR 170-odd crore, which was broadly INR 140 crore-INR 150 crore, previously. Should we expect this operating expenditure to stay at this level, or there is some one-off? You know, how should it trend considering you have added, you know, fairly, you know, large number of employees to your workforce?
One last question from my side will be on, you know, JD Mart. Can you tell us, you know, where, you know, do the things stand in terms of the monetization of that platform? At least, you know, on various platforms you don't really see traffic for JD Mart really picking up. You know, what is the status there? Thank you.
Pranav, on your first question regarding revenue growth, yes, revenue growth will start showing improvement from coming quarters as soon as 1Q also, assuming we are able to sustain the recent momentum that we are witnessing. This particular quarter also, as can be seen, there is a sequential growth in revenue that we are already witnessing. The most recent month run rate is also better than the quarterly run rate. On your question around operating expenses. Operating expenses definitely have ticked up because of significant hiring. Our sales headcount, which had gone to as low as about 6,800 employees two quarters back, that is now 10,000 plus.
The reason of ramping up this particular sales force is that we are seeing situations stabilize on the ground, and we are also seeing SMEs willing to come back on a advertising spree. While hiring has happened in a chunky manner, this should give us good dividends going forward. On your query around JD Mart. JD Mart currently draws traffic in two ways. One, the dedicated portal itself gets traffic. Second, on Just Dial also, now we have all the B2B products on Just Dial platform itself. Since Just Dial has a very strong brand affinity, it draws a very good amount of organic traffic.
Out of total about 145 million users that we had last quarter, a decent 7%-8% of that did come for JD Mart related new pages that we have on both platforms combined. Apart from that, at this point of time, we have over 1 million rich catalogs with about 15 million unique products. As far as content enrichment and traffic are concerned, there is a steady improvement on a quarterly basis. Even on monetization, we currently have a dedicated 400+ member team which focuses on our B2B monetization initiatives, a combination of both tele sales as well as feet on the street. As we are seeing overall business come back to normalcy, we should see a good contribution from B2B in coming quarters.
Okay. Thank you. If I can just have one follow-up question. On my question on cost, can you just tell us that, you know, how much of your, you know, G&A was spent on the advertisement, and how do you plan to, you know, spend it? That's why I was looking more from a, you know, run rate cost basis that, you know, how should we see the cost, going from INR 170-odd crore in this quarter, in the upcoming quarters.
On the cost side, we spent about total around INR 7.5 crore-INR 8 crore on advertising in last quarter. For coming fiscal, we have budgeted about, say, INR 60 crore-INR 65 crore as full year advertising, subject to this particular budget going up, depending on how we are faring on monetization, depending on how our newer initiatives are panning out. At any point of time, we would take a sort of a calibrated approach in terms of core business will see more of digital spends. New initiatives will see ATL campaigns as and when they are at an optimal stage.
Okay. Ad ex of advertisement cost, you know, should we expect to stay at the current level given, you know, most of the hiring is already done?
There will be some hiring that we will continue to do. There are certain cost optimization activities also that we are taking, undertaking. At this point of time, the thought process is that we want to chase growth. As we saw last year, as well, even in a COVID impacted year, where our top line went down by about 27%-28%, we were still able to have 25%+ EBITDA margin. We do have cost levers which can be optimized, but at this point of time, when things are picking up, we would want to ensure that our monetization top line picks up, our newer products get their fair share of investments. At opportune time, obviously profitability should return for the core business as well as our newer initiatives.
Okay. One last question from my side. If you can comment on, you know, the partnership with Reliance Retail Ventures, or sorry, the synergies, with the parent, that is Reliance Retail Ventures Limited. You know, any plans, on that, you know, which you can talk about? Thank you.
As we all know, RRVL already is on our board. We actively engage with RRVL and even RIL leadership teams for various initiatives. For example, JD Shopping is one area where we are very closely working with them. Now, as far as synergies are concerned, there are certain newer initiatives such as a reseller plan that we are learning that RRVL and even Jio Platforms have successfully implemented. We would want to replicate the same for JD monetization as well. Some of these particular strategies are being closely worked on by us as well as RIL teams.
Thank you so much. That is from myself.
Thank you.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Vijit Jain from Citi. Please go ahead. Mr. Vijit Jain, your line is in talk mode. Please proceed with your question. As there is no response from the current participant, we move to the next question from the line of Naman Jain, an individual investor. Please go ahead.
Yeah, good evening, everybody. I have a couple of questions. First is around the two products that we spoke about in the last call as well. One is JD Shopping, and the second is JD Xperts. Wanted to know, what's the update on JD Xperts, how has it been picking up? And on JD Shopping, I noticed that in the Just Dial app, there is a specific tab for shopping. Now, when I click on that tab, you know, you can select or search for an item or a product, but then the search results will show you all the nearby shops who are selling that product. The option is to call that shop and place an order. Is this how we plan to move to e-commerce?
Is this the way, you know, our strategy is vis-à-vis other players, e-commerce players, where you can directly place the order with from the price and the app itself? This is the first question. If you can answer this first, please.
Sure. Naman, firstly, on JD Shopping, what you see on the live platform is an existing avatar, which is essentially search. It primarily does not have transaction capabilities. However, what we are doing is hyper local e-commerce. At this point of time, onboarding of vendors has started in three cities. Shortly over next few weeks, we would have the user interface as well. The way it will work is that we will onboard vendors, those particular vendors will share their inventory, pricing, et cetera. Then in a phase-wise manner, both in terms of categories and geographies, we would open it up for users to place orders, get it fulfilled via either third-party logistics or by vendors themselves. That is how JD Shopping will be.
Coming to JD Xperts, at this point of time, there are multiple services pertaining to repairs category, and pest control services, which are live in multiple cities. At this point of time, the focus is on optimizing user experience. Based on recent feedback that we have got, most of the users have rated the service 4.2, 4.3 on a scale of five. We want to ensure that we have good coverage, good user experience before we are able to scale it further. That's the brief update on both these products.
Okay. JD Shopping, when do you expect it to go live even on a trial basis for the customers?
Sometime in 1Q or early 2Q is what we are expecting.
Next year?
This year, 1Q 2023, the ongoing quarter.
The ongoing quarter.
Yeah.
Okay. The second question is, we, our promoter also has a company called JioMart, which is, you know, which provides not exactly e-commerce facility, but you can place orders online and all. Would we be competing in some way with them, or how is it going to be? Are we mutually exclusive in that sense?
In a way, we would be mutually exclusive because first of all, JioMart operates in, say, a different set of categories. The primary set of categories are, say, grocery related. Second, most of the sales that are done on that platform are primarily first-party sales. It's not the mom-and-pop stores or SMEs that are selling via that platform. Whereas Just Dial will be a pure third-party marketplace where any SME can list their products on the platform and sell through us.
Okay. Just one more clarification or a follow-up on JD Shopping. When we plan to do a hyper local delivery, Reliance has also done acquisition of Dunzo. Would that help us in any way for the logistics in terms of partnering, or are we going to have our own?
We are integrating with multiple logistics partners, including Dunzo, Grab, a third party hyperlocal logistics partners as well, such as Shadowfax, Shipyaari. At the same time, we would give option for vendor itself to deliver also, in case vendor is willing to do so. It will be a blended model wherein logistics will be either third party or vendor himself can do it.
Okay. Any take on the e-commerce policy that is in the works? What is our take on that? Where are we? Are we aligned to it or, as per whatever discussions have been till date?
Broadly, as we understand that the new e-commerce policy wants marketplaces to operate as pure 3P marketplaces, and not as a blend of 1P versus 3P. Just Dial, as Just Dial, since we do not intend to hold inventory in the first place, so for us it's a simple straightforward thing, and we would definitely be complied as a third party marketplace.
Great. Thank you so much, and all the very best.
Thank you.
Thank you. A reminder to the participants, to ask a question, please click on the Raise Hand icon available on the toolbar, or you may click on the Q&A icon to raise hand. The next question is from the line of Vivekanand Subbaraman from Ambit Capital. Please go ahead.
Hi. I hope I'm audible. Thank you very much for the opportunity. A couple of questions. One is the unique visitors that we have now, 145 million. This had gone up to around 157 million pre-pandemic. Is there any change in methodology of the reporting of unique visitors or am I missing something in terms of the recovery? That is question one. Secondly, if you could help us understand the split of campaigns by volume, the paid campaigns by volume across tier 1 and 2, you know, top 8 cities and the rest of the country. Sorry, top 11 and rest of the country. Revenue contribution as well. Thanks.
Vivek, firstly on unique users, there is no change in methodology. Last particular quarter, 145 million that we had. Couple of things to be noted. One, our advertising spends, especially on digital, used to be much higher when we were at 157 million-160 million run rate. At that point of time, we were spending approximately INR 17 crore-INR 8 crore a quarter, whereas on digital we have spent broadly about 7 crore in last quarter. Second, fourth quarter, specifically January month, was indeed impacted due to third wave of COVID-19. While it did not impact our monetization much, second half of January was partly impacted as far as traffic is concerned. As we are getting into first quarter of this year, summer months anyway tend to be strong.
We are seeing good recovery in our organic traffic, so we should be back to pre-COVID peak levels also shortly. On your second questions around campaign split. Top 11 cities, they had about 44% contribution to volumes and about 64% contribution to revenue.
On the traffic, when you say that you have spent INR 7.5 crore in A&P this quarter, was it for the Just Dial app or was it for above the line spending on, you know, to support JD Mart?
It was primarily digital campaigns. If you are searching for, say, packers and movers in Bangalore, the results that you see on third party search engines, if someone clicks on those particular results and lands on our platform, that type of advertising is primarily what we did during the quarter. That would be across categories, would be for B2C as well as B2B categories.
Okay. What about the A&P that you have envisaged for the next year? You said it's INR 65 crore. Is it fair to assume that most of the A&P will be for the new businesses rather than for the core business?
The INR 65 crore that I mentioned, a good chunk of it we have planned for core business itself because we believe core business does require 7%-8% of top line to be spent on advertising spends. As far as newer initiatives is concerned, those will be calibrated as and when we think that there should be ATL spend for the same. This particular INR 65 crore can actually go up basis how newer initiatives are panning out.
Okay, understood. I'll come back in the queue. Thank you so much for the opportunity.
Thank you.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Vijit Jain from Citi. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Hi. Can you hear me?
Yes, sir. Please proceed.
Yeah. Thank you. Sorry about earlier. I think my sound was on mute. Yeah, my first question is just a clarification. You said the 4Q collections were at INR 179 crore. Did I get that right?
Yes, that's right.
Sorry, I don't have the trend rate on that. If you could give the trend rate on that'd be great.
4Q collections of INR 179 crore were up about 19% sequentially.
Okay.
They were down about 10% on a year-on-year basis.
Got it. Yeah, that's because of the mix, I guess. My second question is, you know, this, on your relationship and the plans with Reliance Retail, if I think about it in this way that, you know, you could do B2B business, which is I guess what you were referring to when you mentioned the reseller opportunity, and then the B2C services, e-commerce, and then the whole shopping thing, how would you prioritize those in terms of what is most important for you guys to do in collaboration with them first? I mean, is there a priority order there or the plan is to hit all those three things in line and align them kind of with what Reliance Retail is doing?
Vijit, the first priority obviously is to get the core business, which is our cash cow back on track ASAP.
Mm-hmm.
As I mentioned, the traction is already very much visible. Now, the reseller plan that we propose is mainly to be able to support this particular core business itself in terms of reaching out to as many SMEs as possible across India.
Okay.
So far we have been reaching them out via our own employees. We think that we could get a much wider reach if we get freelancers to actually get us customers. Our teams shall primarily focus on farming those customers to higher levels.
Mm-hmm.
As far as other initiatives are concerned, we have initiated them. Some of these projects are highly promising, but they will take time for user experience to get stabilized, especially considering there are vertical players out there. Both things will happen simultaneously with dedicated teams in place.
Got it. Thanks, Abhishek. Abhishek, one just last clarification from my side. I think, you mentioned 44% contribution to revenues and 64% to campaigns for tier two and below cities, right? 44% to revenues and 64% to campaigns?
No, sorry. 44% contribution to campaigns and 64% to revenue by top 11. Top 11-
Oh, okay. Got it.
They have a higher share of revenue, 64%.
Yes.
They form 44% of B2B volumes.
Got it. Yeah. Thanks. Just sorry, one final question, if I can sandwich it in. So you said, 400-member B2B-focused sales force team. I think last quarter this was about 180-200. You have added about 2,000 employees in this quarter. Can you give a breakdown of where your tech staff currently stands at? Total tech staff, I think it used to be 300-350 about a couple of quarters back.
The tech team also has been ramped up. Total tech team strength is about 450-plus employees right now.
Okay. Got it. Great. Thanks, Abhishek. Those were my questions. Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you. The next question is a follow-up from the line of Pranav Kshatriya from Edelweiss. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Thank you so much, Abhishek. I just wanna know that, you know, you talked about INR 65 crore. You know, will bulk of that be spent on the, you know, the digital campaigns or, you know, you want to continue some of that? Because I remember, you know, you had not spent the entire amount which was allocated for JD Mart, you know, during IPL. So, any color on that?
Pranav, at this point of time, we have a full-fledged marketing team which specializes both on digital as well as ATL advertising. The core business, while we think that digital gives a decent good ROI, but we would not be averse to ATL spends as well. I'm sure 50%-60% of this will surely go towards digital, could be higher also for core business.
Okay. My, you know, the second question is regarding, you know, you talked about this committed revenue, which has grown. Can you give a QoQ how it has grown? You know, just to get a sense on, you know, what is the traction in that. Because that is not getting reflected in the unearned revenue anymore.
Right. On a quarter-on-quarter basis, this particular committed revenue or what we call as realizable value grew about 27% quarter-on-quarter.
On a year-on-year basis?
On a YoY basis, it had about 19% growth.
Okay. I mean, because there is no history of this, I mean, you know, should that be considered as a you know the indicator of you know what could be potentially the revenue growth?
Right. The key reason of discussing this particular metric was that the two metrics that so far get disclosed, one is the P&L revenue. That is obviously a sort of lag indicator that reflects what we sold over past few quarters. Second is collections, which we can even calculate via deferred revenue and revenue metrics. Collections in a monthly plan environment does get affected. My sense is that to evaluate the monthly performance of our business, we actively track this particular realizable value metric. If this metric continues to sustain with the kind of growth trends that we are seeing, definitely we should see our top line growth also converging to these particular growth rates.
Sure. Thank you so much. That's from my side.
Thank you.
Thank you. A reminder to the participants, to ask a question, please click on the Raise Hand icon available on the toolbar, or you may click on the Q&A icon to raise hand to ask a question. The next question is a follow-up from the line of Vivekanand Subbaraman from Ambit Capital. Please go ahead.
Yes, thank you. Thank you for the follow-up opportunity. Just a couple of questions. Extending the discussion on the realizable value, would you have a sense of where you had reached in terms of realizable value prior to COVID? How far are we from that level?
Prior to COVID, on a quarterly basis, our realizable value used to be about INR 235 crore a quarter. For last quarter we did about INR 230 crore-INR 232 crore. Almost very close in that sense.
Okay. What you are saying is that our revenue numbers should also now soon go back to the pre-COVID levels, say sometime in the first quarter itself. Is that a fair assessment given this strong trend in improving realizable value?
Okay, let us understand this conceptually. If I sell an upfront payment plan to a particular customer today, I get the entire money upfront and if it's a typically annual contract, I recognize it as revenue over next four quarters, over next 12 months. If I sell it as a monthly plan, I get, say two months of down payment and rest 10 months of payment come via monthly ECS every month. However, accrual of that particular money also happens on a monthly basis. Whatever trends we are seeing, it will not reflect immediately as that particular pre-COVID run rate over next quarter. It will happen over next, say, 3-4 quarters. There should be a quarter-on-quarter improvement, assuming these particular growth rates sustain for coming months as well.
Okay. I think I understood a bit better. If you talk about, you know, you spoke about what percentage of the subscriptions are monthly. I think you said 71% versus 27%. Is this on an overall paid campaigns basis or the new paid campaigns that you are adding? Just to clarify on that.
71% was whatever new sign-ups that we did in last quarter. On overall paid campaign basis, obviously it will take time for that percentage to increase. That currently stands at about 30%-33%. Of the 461,000 paid campaigns that we have, monthly payment based would be 30%-33% out of that, which had gone to say about 20%-23% two quarters back.
Are there any discounts still that the SMEs are getting on the dial versus pre-COVID?
No, at this point of time we have withdrawn almost all discounts. What we encourage the customer is to sign up on a monthly plan basis. When sign-ups are happening on a monthly plan basis, typically there is hardly any discussion that happens on discounts.
Okay, this is useful. When you look at the realization on that you report, that number is around 3,600, right? Compared to, you know, prior to COVID, it was around 4.7-4.8 P&L, right? Why is it that the average realization is lower now despite there being no discounts? Is it because of the mix change only, or is there any other factors here that we need to consider?
Okay, the quarterly realization that you are calculating is basis reported quarterly P&L revenue divided by number of campaigns.
Okay.
Now, we have to understand that the reported revenue is basically coming from customers who signed up over last four quarters because revenue recognition happens over the tenure of the contract.
Right.
The realization that we see is basis, what is the realization of customers that I signed up in last quarter? What I signed up in last quarter was about INR 18,000 on an annual basis, which was similar to pre-COVID levels. As we move into future quarters when revenue improves, at that point of time, this particular realization will start improving.
Understood. This is very clear. Just one last question, if I may. So, the 13,300 headcount that you have, would you have a sense of the split across the core business, JD Mart, Xpress and shopping at an aggregate level, not just the sales people?
Primarily we do not segregate it by business because there are certain functions which are common across businesses. Out of the total sales team, as I mentioned, about 400 are dedicated for JD Mart. In our technology and content teams, there are certain teams which work dedicatedly on newer initiatives. Right now I won't be in a position to specifically mention number for core versus non-core employees.
Okay. No, this is very helpful. Your explanation made it very clear. Thank you so much.
Thank you.
Thank you. A reminder to the participants, if you wish to ask a question, please click on the Raise Hand icon available on the toolbar, or you may click on the Q&A icon to raise hand to ask a question. Next question is from the line of Ameya Karambelkar from Kotak Investment Advisors. Please go ahead.
Hi, good evening, and thank you so much for the opportunity. This quarter, you know, we've seen a strong sequential addition of around 24,000 paid campaigns. On a sustainable basis over the next 3-4 quarters, can we sort of see that you can maintain a 20,000 campaign addition per quarter kind of run rate?
Ameya, this particular quarter, yes, campaign addition was strong, considering we aggressively sold on monthly payment plans, and that is getting good traction. Assuming we continue to get similar traction, yes, it is very much possible. Our peak campaigns were at about 536,000. If we want that we exit the year at that particular level, definitely we should be able to add at that particular run rate.
Got it. Great. Secondly, of course, you know, this quarter, because of the strong hiring that we did, margins were sort of impacted. On a more normalized basis, what are the kind of margins that you're sort of aspiring for over the next 3-4 quarters? Any sense or any perspective on that would be helpful. Thanks.
See, I won't comment on next 3-4 quarters. Historically, last, say, 3-4 years, as everyone else can see, we have the core business has delivered 25%-30% EBITDA margin. So 30% adjusted EBITDA margin is very much doable by this particular business. This particular year, since we are on a aggressive hiring spree, margins will be relatively subdued, also because of newer initiatives that we are undertaking. As monetization ramps up, I think margins owing to operating leverage that the business has should start to see recovery as well.
Perfect. Thank you so much.
Thank you.
Thank you. This is a reminder to the participants: to ask a question, please click on the Raise Hand icon available on the toolbar, or you may click on the Q&A icon to raise hand to ask a question. The next question is from the line of Abhishek Rathi. Sorry, Drishti Poddar from Dhunseri Investments. Please go ahead.
Hi. Hi, can you hear me?
Yes, please go ahead.
Yes, ma'am, please proceed.
Yeah, hi. Sorry, I don't know if I missed this. I just wanted to understand a bit on the strategy and the synergies with the parent that are there any merger prospects or how does Reliance, you know, Retail want to take this forward? Just wanted to understand in more details regarding the synergy benefits and the strategy on that front.
Drishti, as I mentioned in my earlier comments, at this point of time, RRVL's involvement is primarily at board level. Just Dial continues to operate as an independent listed entity. We are in active discussions on what all synergies can be exploited. Now, the key focus is to get the core business back on track as soon as possible. In the core business, to aid our particular monetization, we are in the process of evaluating and rolling out reseller model. This particular reseller model has been successfully implemented by RRVL and Jio Platforms, so that should help us reach out to much more number of SMEs pan-India, which should help our monetization. Secondly, there are certain newer initiatives that are being undertaken, such as hyperlocal e-commerce.
In those particular initiatives also, we could gain from synergies in terms of the SME reach that Reliance Retail platform has.
Right. Thank you so much. That was really helpful.
Thank you.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Naman Jain, an individual investor. Please go ahead.
Yeah, hi. Just one more question from my end. I wanted to know how do we plan to utilize the large cash reserve that we have? Where exactly the company, you know, plans to utilize it? Because it's been already clarified that it is not going to be distributed to the shareholders. How is it going to be utilized?
Naman, at this point of time, the cash balance that we have, the thought process is that, whenever this cash is required for initiatives pertaining to product building, content enrichment, and marketing of some of our newer initiatives, part of it will get utilized. The good part is the core business is free cash flow generating, so part of that support can directly come from incremental free cash flows that core business will generate. At this point of time, this is what we have in mind in terms of using this part of this cash for newer initiatives. As and when-
Okay.
In case there is any change in situation in future, we will let you know.
Okay. Does this also mean that, you know, suppose when you launch, the hyperlocal, product that we have, you may start offering some discounts to attract customer base, or gain market share?
See, at that point of time, we will evaluate whether, say, some bit of discounting versus advertising, what is advisable. From day one as a company, we are clear we don't want to give incentives solely to buy consumers such that today the consumer is coming, seeing those discounts and incentives, and tomorrow as soon as discounts disappear, those users disappear. A blend of good ATL advertising and mix of discounting to get users to use your platform would be a prudent strategy.
Okay. All right. Thank you so much.
Thank you.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Mohit Motwani from Edelweiss Securities. Please go ahead.
Hi. Am I audible?
Yes, sir. Please proceed.
Yeah. Hi. Thanks for the opportunity. Abhishek, my question is on JD Mart. We have had the setup for JD Mart where you have invested in technology, you have invested in sales and ad spends and everything, b ut just wanted to understand where is the strategy lying. What is the strategy, you know, for taking this forward? Is it that, you know, we are finding it difficult to penetrate the B2B services market? Because clearly some of our competitors are making good traction with many SMEs coming on board. Where is the difficulty lying currently for you? Is it like on the pricing or, you know, on the penetration of having difficulty penetrating this market?
I understand that, you know, in some of the previous calls you said that, you know, the idea is to bring them as customer of either Just Dial or JD Mart, b ut having a separate setup, you know, a complete setup, a free website for this, is there any strategy for JD Mart in particular? Thanks.
Mohit, there is no specific difficulty in monetizing, et cetera, for JD Mart. We need to understand that the B2B category contributed about, say, 20% of Just Dial's revenue. While we were implementing JD Mart, at the same time we were impacted by these two waves of COVID, most importantly the second wave, which impacted our the rest 75%-80% business as well. At this point of time, endeavor is to get that particular B2C segment, B2C services segment back on track as soon as possible. At the same time, keep enriching JD Mart content. That enriched content is driving traffic. Also keep gradually building a monetization team, which is now a 400-450-member team. It's not that we want to just go after B2B monetization sacrificing B2C.
Overall, we want the entire, whatever, INR 650 crore top line that we had for last year to reach pre-COVID levels as soon as possible.
Do you envisage, like, you know, a contribution from B2B increasing a bit over a period of time? Like, is that your focus? Like, you know, to have increased contribution while at the same time also having traction in B2C?
Definitely. Even for recent quarters, that 22% contribution-wise went to 25%-26%, but that was primarily because the B2C side was more impacted versus the B2B. Once the overall business comes to pre-COVID levels, thereafter it will be interesting to see that the growth, incremental growth will possibly be driven more from B2B categories versus B2C.
Okay. Sure. Thanks. That was helpful.
Thank you.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Abhishek Rathi from Millennium Partners. Please go ahead.
Hi. Thanks for taking my question. Abhishek, my first question is on the synergies with the parent again. You know, I understand from your previous answer that there'll be synergies on the vendor side. Are there gonna be synergies on the traffic side also, given that your platform attracts a certain amount of traffic and the parent has a bunch-
That in turn could increase usage of our particular platform. Those could be certain areas where we could get their particular users to have Just Dial platforms as well.
You mean like an app-in-app in JioMart, MyJio something of that sort?
Yeah, there could be multiple things. There could be, for example, you have the Jio ecosystem, MyJio app, where there are multiple Reliance apps there, so there could be JD app there as well. Even on the retail side, wherever possible, JD app could be put in places which could aid the download of JD app. Those are some of the things that could be worked upon.
Understood. My second and last question was on. In terms of the capital that you're allocating in terms of investment in JD Shopping, you would have a certain roadmap, right? In terms of what your monetization plan is. If you could share some something along the lines of the potential, you know, TAM, the kind of GMV that you could be looking at, or anything along those lines, that would be very helpful to understand the size and scale of your ambition.
Abhishek, size and scale of this particular venture, I would say that we all are aware that the kind of GMVs players like Amazon, Flipkart, et cetera, are doing. Even at that scale, India is still in very nascent stages of people doing online shopping. As far as scale is concerned, I mean, I think e-commerce shopping is probably the largest e-commerce vertical that is out there in India. At this point of time, we are focusing on onboarding vendors, getting our flow right, getting our process right. Once we get that, see that particular traction, I think it is bit too early to be able to comment what kind of GMVs we are targeting. Definitely, as a sector, there is huge potential for this particular vertical.
Got it. This is very helpful, Abhishek. Just last thing, if I understood right, the launch for JD Shopping will happen at some point in this quarter or the next quarter, right?
Yeah. Currently, as I said that we are onboarding vendors and, as a pilot, we would open it for users as well to place orders. That particular pilot should take place sometime in this or next quarter.
Got it. Thanks a lot.
Thank you.
Thank you. A reminder to the participants, to ask a question, please click on the Raise Hand icon available on the toolbar, or you may click on the Q&A icon to raise hand to ask a question. The next question is from the line of Lavanya Tottala from UBS. Please go ahead. Miss Lavanya, your line is in talk mode. Kindly go ahead with your question, please. As there is no response from the current participant, we move to the next question from the line of Naman Jain, an individual investor. Please go ahead.
Just one small clarification. The JD Shopping pilot launch that you mentioned, I assume this is for three cities that you are targeting. Which are these three cities? Can you please, you know, help with that as well?
Mumbai, Bangalore, Hyderabad.
Okay. All right. Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you. A reminder to the participants, to ask a question, please click on the Raise Hand icon available on the toolbar, or you may click on the Q&A icon to raise hand to ask a question. As there are no further questions, I would now like to hand the conference over to Mr. Abhishek Bansal for closing comments. Over to you, sir.
Thank you everyone for joining us. In case you have any further queries, please do reach out. We would do our best to address. That's it from our side. Thank you.
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, on behalf of Just Dial Limited, that concludes today's session. Thank you for your participation. You may now click on the Exit Meeting to disconnect. Thank you.