Ladies and gentlemen. G ood, and welcome to KFin Technologies Limited Q3 FY 2024 Earnings Conference Call, hosted by IIFL Securities 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 the conference call, please signal an operator by pressing star then zero on your touchtone phone. Please note that this conference is being recorded. I now hand the conference over to Mr. Devesh Agarwal from IIFL Securities Limited. Thank you, and over to you.
Thank you, Muskan. Good morning, everyone, and welcome to the Q3 FY 2024 earnings call of KFin Technologies Limited. From the company, we have Mr. Sreekanth Nadella, MD and CEO, Mr. Vivek Mathur, CFO, and Mr. Amit Murarka, Head Investor Relations. I would now hand over the call to Mr. Sreekanth for his opening remarks, which will be followed up by a Q&A sessions. Thank you, and over to you, Sreekanth.
Thank you so much, Devesh. Very good morning to one and all. It's a great day, bright start to our new quarter. I thank my management team who are part of the call, as well as everyone who's contributed to the continuous growth of our organization. Over the next 25 minutes, I would cover the broad business highlights. I would, at which point in time, hand it over to Mr. Mathur to cover the financial aspects of it, and we'll then leave the floor open for questions. I believe the investor presentation could have been circulated broadly, the results that were declared the previous week on Friday.
We continue to deliver to our promise and commitment of meaningful growth, profitable growth, and a growth that is sustainable and one that is getting de-risked with each passing day. Risk here being the cyclicalities that a market brings, the cyclicalities that a particular asset class may bring, the cyclicalities that any particular geography or a country could bring. As I had explained back in the day, our strategy had been to be able to diversify into every financial asset class. You would recollect that we are the only entity in the country who manage the capital markets from the standpoint of issuer services on the equity and the bond markets, mutual funds, Alternate Investment Funds, National Pension System, Private Retirement Schemes.
We do this in India and in Malaysia, Philippines, Hong Kong, Singapore, and now Thailand to start. Just a quick overview in terms of the financials that we have delivered thus far. The Q3 ending December 2023, our revenue clocked growth of 16% year-over-year and an EBITDA growth at 21% and a margin percentage nearing 45% and the PAT growth of 25%. This is despite certain one-off episodic expenditure that we continue to incur in the context of our aspiration to deliver similar solutions and value proposition to many other countries beyond India. If you were to adjust it for the one-time such expenditure, we believe our growth would have been higher than what is currently clocked in.
We are extremely satisfied with the growth of the controllable components of the income, especially the value-added solutions, which has grown near about 60% year-on-year, and today occupies near about 6% plus of the total revenue profile, and one that is growing really fast. This is where a significant amount of the company's efforts had been to be able to create differentiated solutions for our clients, especially in the form of data, cloud, the API infrastructure, the analytics associated with that, and the entire CRM stack, so to speak.
Our share of non-domestic mutual fund business, as I've called out in terms of the de-risking strategy that we've adopted, stands at 31% for the period ending 31st December, and one that is continuing to grow faster than the more mature businesses of mutual funds and Issuer Solutions. Mutual fund business itself had grown on the back of significant net flows into the industry. A massive spike in SIP, which is a very, very important parameter to judge the health of the financial asset class, because that is the sticky retail investment book that has nearly doubled over the last one and a half years or so. KFintech, on the other hand, continues to grow.
While the industry itself has been growing, we have been outpacing the industry, in the context of having, several more clients, in the industry, and also the faster growth profile of our clients. For example, six out of the ten fastest growing asset management companies, you know, are with KFintech. We have been, playing our, little role to help our clients, grow faster than the industry. We are yet to clock revenue from some of the newer asset management companies which have gone live in the recent past. That includes Bajaj Mutual Fund and Old Bridge, which has just gone live in the preceding quarter. Our overall AUM grew at 22.7% vis-a-vis 22.2% for the overall industry.
We have gained about 30 basis points of market share in the preceding quarter on the overall AUM standpoint. From an Issuer Solutions standpoint, which is the other larger and the traditional and the vintage business that we have, we continue to expand our profile of the corporate clients. 170 new clients have been added in the preceding quarter, taking the number closer to 6,000. Our market share of the NSE-listed companies by market cap stands about 46.5%. Added near about 5 million folios. As we all know, our revenue profile for the Issuer Solutions is a factor of a unit price on the number of folios.
Hence, expansion of IPO Market, expansion of retail investor participation into the company, all of that goes on to help our business to grow, you know, in a fairly secular manner. We have managed near about 46% of all the Main Board IPOs from the standpoint of the market share, which is a very critical parameter to be considered in terms of the revenue growth of any organizations. We have managed 5 out of the top 10. We have also orchestrated several transitions from the industry into the organization, even as we are hoping to hear some positive news from several others in the coming quarter. Outside of these two, it's the international expansion story that had been differentiating KFintech. The last we spoke, the total number of clients we had were 50.
It has now been increased to 54. In the last meeting, you know, I have spoken about two letters of intent received from two clients from Malaysia, one of which has been converted into a signed contract and transition has begun. One of the other has transferred in the form of a letter of award for the contract, which should be signed in the coming weeks. Four of the transactions which started in Q1 and Q2 are due to go live into February and March, which effectively means the revenue for four additional contracts will start to kick in into the Q1 of fiscal 2024 onwards.
We are hopeful to see it on a round of the markets in Southeast Asia, which, as we all know, have been reasonably tepid, with the mark-to-market gains hopefully to be received into the Q1 onwards. Our growth in the international markets, you know, hopefully will grow much faster than what it had been thus far. This particular entire segment of international and other financial asset classes, that includes alternatives and pensions, has grown near about 30% year-on-year, as against 17% for mutual funds and about 20%+ for issuer solutions for the same period year-on-year. We continue to win several alternative investment funds. You know, we have added two new GIFT City clients in Q3, taking our total tally to about 16.
We continue to land and expand the existing clientele, which helped us to win a new scope of work for an existing client in Malaysia and one in the Middle East as well. Our intent to grow the fastest-growing asset class currently in India, which is Alternate Investment Fund, you know, had been paying us rich dividends.
We today have 455 funds, of which there are at least 100+ funds which are yet to draw on the capital, which is a critical trigger for our revenue, which effectively means that our revenue growth of nearly doubling from the previous year to now, you know, will only expand as many of the other funds who have already signed up with us start drawing the capital and investing from there on. We have won several new clients. Some of the names include additional funds coming from Nippon, more from the GIFT and ASK, so on and so forth.
I'm very excited to share this news of an absolutely brand-new platform we have created called XAlt, which is the only at-scale cloud solutioning alternative-specific platform that has been created, which is a fully integrated transfer agency fund administration solution overlaid by digital CRM and analytics. We believe that this is a game-changer initiative on a platform that will help us to add significant value to our clientele, their investors, and the entire distribution fraternity along the way. This platform is also multi-asset, multi-geography, multilingual as well, and multi-currency, which effectively translates it to be a platform that is ready for the world, and not just India, but made in India nevertheless.
The last of the asset class we are looking to is the National Pension System. We have been outpacing the industry by a factor of 2 for the past 3 years. We have grown 25.3% year-on-year, whereas the industry grew about 12% broadly. We have expanded our total market share close to 8%. We all must recognize that we started this line of business just about four and a half years back, and from nothing at all, today we are nearly 10% of the total pension subscriber base, and most of it coming from the private sector, where it is not mandatory, so to speak.
We continue to double down our interest and investment into the National Pension Scheme, as we believe it is one of the very important asset classes every Indian should invest in, to take care of their retirement plans. Quickly moving on, on the overall India performance, it is not lost on anybody, so I would not dwell too much into it, except to tell you all that every asset class, whether it's equity, IPO Markets, bond markets, mutual funds, alternatives, and every parameter points to an elevated interest levels, participation by the broader populace of the country, expansion of FII, FDI investments into the country, as well as, you know, certain demographic dividends that are helping us and will continue to help for the foreseeable future.
For example, every single year, near about 75 lakh new investor new Indian citizens turn major, earlier being minor, which effectively translates to many of them wanting to invest in financial asset classes. As a strong participant in the capital market ecosystem and, you know, somebody who's doing pioneering job in driving ease of doing business for new investors, onboarding them, and providing the ease to transact, we believe that, you know, several new million millions of investors will come into the industry, as has been the case over the past two to three years.
A lot of that would flow in the form of SIPs, which is a very tricky retail book, and that, I think, is the harbinger of far greater growth for the entire industry, and not just mutual funds, but including for equities and the alternative investment funds as well. The registration of the new alternative investment funds with SEBI had also been seeing significant expansion. There's been a 20% jump in the new funds that have registered year-on-year, and that's sizable if you speak in the context of number of funds itself. And the amount of capital that they could draw down is obviously a factor of the value proposition which the fund manager has to offer.
We are privileged and honored to have some of the largest and the marquee asset managers of the country, being both our clientele as well as investors, in some form or shape. KFintech's growth, very specific to mutual funds, had, you know, you know, grown about 22.7, as I already called out, compared to 22.2% in industry level. We continue to have even a sequential growth of 5.5 vis-a-vis industry at 4.7% on the overall AUM. There has been a slight reduction in the equity component of our market share.
That is largely on the back of several of our clients driving a paradigm shift in the form of passive to be a significant growth factor both for the client themselves and for the end investor, so to speak. So it is a very welcoming, you know, paradigm shift. Not a paradigm shift, but a shift that augurs very well for the industry as low-cost expense ratio products, you know, help the investors and the broader participation of them into the market from here on. We have managed here about 45% of all the NFOs, and nearly 50% of the fund mobilization that happened in the industry came to KFintech's service clients, which is, you know, obviously very good in the context that we manage 32% of the total market share.
Fund mobilization, however, is at 50% of all new funds that have happened in the industry into this quarter. I hope and I wish my clients will file a greater number of NFOs and a successful one set it into the coming quarters. The transaction volume continued to expand at a faster pace as compared to the AUM, which is understandable. That just explains the nature of the business. And that is one of the critical reasons why we've been continually investing in technology, infrastructure, cloud computing capabilities, to be able to future-proof, you know, our business to make sure that our clients are best served in the industry, not just in India, across the world.
Today, we are happy to also tell you that, you know, four out of the top ten asset management companies are with KFintech. Just about, six quarters back, we had just, you know, one, I think two. Today we have four of them. With this continued, you know, faster growth, and the velocity of our clients, we hope to have a parity into the next, you know, two to three quarters, so to speak. MF Central, a joint initiative created, with CAMS and us, has gained significant traction into the previous quarter. We had about 7 million, 6.5 million hits in Q3, and one that's been growing faster.
And the value proposition together, what we're able to offer to the industry is expanding, with each pass, with each passing day, whether it is, loan, solution, business solutions, such as loan against mutual funds to, CAS APIs, to, being able to provide investor the best-in-class services is what this initiative is all about to drive these growing business. And we believe we have a lot more to offer in times to come together. On the issuer solutions, just quickly going back, the market capitalization, as I've already called out, as of December 2023, is about 46.5% in the Nifty 500 clients. We continue to add both, listed and unlisted companies and orchestrate transitions.
We have recently transferred Usha Martin Limited from one of the competitors into KFintech, and we are in conversation with some more, and hopefully they fructify in the coming quarter. On the international business, as I called it, we've added four new clientele, and with the market turning around in many parts of Asia, I hope that, you know, we'll have a faster growth and traction.
As we speak, there are close to $20 million worth of pipeline that is, that is, you know, warm, and has passed the technical and the functional round, meaning they are into the commercial round, and should any of them fructify, there would be a step-up growth into the international business, in which we hope to see in time to come.
Our acquisition of the fund administration company called Hexagram has been helping us direct growth into the organization, as well as its significant impact of, you know, helping KFintech to be the only provider who can have a, who has a fully integrated made in India TA and FA platform together, offering, you know, absolute and parallel solutions and services, you know, with the single, you know, point of contact, and someone who can deliver all the services that are required for a fund manager. Alternatives, I have already covered that space.
On the value-added solutions, I just want to take a minute and call out our growth of 60% year-on-year is something that I hope you know to maintain as a trajectory into the coming quarters and years. Happy to announce that in just the last 1 week to 10 days itself, we have signed 3 medium to large size contracts purely in the space of tech. That is the data lake creations you know for our you know and the other clients as well. And we are expanding taking these offerings beyond the traditional asset management space into the broader BFSI sector including on the capital companies as well.
So that is a news that all is well, given the context of the number of companies which are into the lending, are quite substantially larger than the number of companies who are in the asset management space. We are also nearly done with our wealth management platform, which we hope and aspire, you know, we, you know, will be the platinum standard, you know, for the wealth management industry in time to come.
...With this, I would hand it over to Vivek to cover the financial performance.
Thank you, Sreekanth. The financial performance has been strong in this quarter and, YTD ended December 2023. We have seen an increase in revenue by 16.3%, while in the domestic mutual fund business, the average AUM went up by more than 19%. The revenue went up by about 14%, so we had the telescopic pricing impact. Although the overall yield still remains range bound, it is about 3.8 basis points. You know, so we operate in 3.5–3.9 basis points, sort of a segment. And this is something which continues to remain strong. And as Sreekanth mentioned, where revenue continues to grow. Overall, even sequentially on quarter-on-quarter also, there's a growth of 4.7%.
Our, you know, business mix continues to remain, you know, similar as we have been mentioning, about 66% from domestic mutual fund, and then about 3.4% within mutual fund because of wealth services, so overall about 69%. Issuer solutions continues to be about 15%–16%. International and other investor solutions is about 10%, which was, you know, about 8.8% last year, same period of 9 months. Within that, we have, you know, we are seeing that the overall businesses in AIF and wealth, continues to grow. It is about 5% as compared to about 3.8% within that 10%. And rest is about GFS and small businesses like NPS and Mobile. And there is tremendous growth in terms of, segment business.
As AIF, you know, has outgrown all other businesses. It has grown of, you know, in terms of year-on-year growth by almost, 86%, as compared to the rest of the businesses growing in mid-teens or little higher, as compared to, you know, the, the AIF business. You know, we, we continue to remain focused on growing our international and other investor solutions business. As Sreekanth mentioned, you know, we are, you know, we have got, you know, new mandates, in the current quarter. Now, you know, besides the last quarter, even in the current quarter, which will actually get fortified in terms of contracts, and you will see, exchange information being filed, and then we get the letter of mandate. So we remain buoyant about, you know, the international business growth.
Overall, expenses have also gone up, you know, in terms of, overall expenses, you know, there is a growth. Even on quarter-on-quarter, there is a growth, if you see, and we feel that, you know, the overall expense growth is more fueled by our, you know, people strategy of getting best of the talent and retaining them. Overall expenses have gone up by 7.4% year-on-year and 3.3% quarter-on-quarter. And that is something we feel, you know, the retention bonus paid to the employees and, you know, attracting more employees, in growing businesses like AIF, and also because number of transactions have gone up substantially, as Sreekanth earlier mentioned.
We have strengthened our audit and surveillance team, and we hired more people there, besides hiring more people in, you know, AIF operations. So, you know, within the quarter, we would have hired almost, you know, more than 120 people in these businesses and support functions to make them stronger, which has resulted in slightly higher employee cost, but that is not something which will continue, ever after. This is sufficient to take care of the growing volumes. As a result of that, the EBITDA has gone up and touched 43% versus 39.9% last year, same nine months period. It's almost in, you know, touching distances of 45%, you know, for the quarter.
That has gone up by 23.7% year-on-year and about 9%, sequentially quarter-on-quarter. And, you know, we are now at 28.2% PAT percentage, and the quarter ended with 30.6%, PAT percentage. Diluted EPS has gone up to INR 10, which was 8.2 last year. Now, we are sitting on cash and cash equivalents of more than INR 313 crore. This is after repayment or buyback of the RPS of INR 134 crore, which was paid out at the end of November 2023. So we have strong cash flow, strong balance sheet.
Net worth has gone up to INR 1,062 crore, which was INR 870 crore last year, so it's an 18% growth on net worth, almost INR 200 crore up as compared to last year. DSO continues to be in the range of about 65–66 days, and we are putting measures to improve it. Although the overdue is just 26 days, but we are getting more rigorous because of the diversity of our business into, you know, not just domestic mutual fund, but corporate industry and AIF with new client wins. We are trying to reduce it further, internally putting that discipline in. This was more about the financials. Happy to take any questions now. The floor is open.
Thank you very much. We will now begin the question and answer session. Anyone who wish to ask a question may press star and one on the touch-tone telephone. If you wish to remove yourself from 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 question queue assembles. The first question is from the line of Abhijeet from Kotak Securities. Please go ahead.
... Hey, hi, good morning, everyone. Thanks for the opportunity. The first one is on the international slash alternate business. So Sreekanth, if you could just again, you know, simplify for us and maybe break down the revenue pipeline in this part of the business. I think one number that you mentioned, $20 million, seems like a pretty strong growth runway from where we are today. So a little more color here and numbers, if possible.
Thank you, Abhijit. Very good morning. Yes. So, the international business, so there are two important, I mean, three factors rather. So winning the deals, and obviously, hitting the revenue has a certain lead time, as I explained back in the day. The last three, four quarters that, we have been, announcing about the new wins. Four out of those wins, you know, are turning into revenue-generating, you know, accounts, starting late this quarter into early into the coming quarter. And they are, medium-sized asset management companies, which will add, a decent amount of revenue growth into the coming year. Point number one.
Second, the deals that we have announced in the previous quarter, one of them has converted into contract, which means that the transition, you know, has just started. And the other one, which is one of the largest integrated asset manager in the form of both private and public mandates in Malaysia. That contracting process is underway, which will be concluded hopefully in the next, you know, 2-3 weeks, and then we will go on to initiate the transition for that, which will be a short burst activity, so to speak. So that's the second. The third, in terms of the pipeline, we have a sizable number of clients, as is evident, you know, 54 clients.
But obviously the revenue profile, you know, in comparison to Indian clients, isn't that substantial, as is evident. That's largely a factor of the size of the asset management company, you know, whom we have as clients today. Given we are relatively new in almost all of these geographies, so probably the longest vintage we have is about 4.5 years in Malaysia and some of the other countries it's just, you know, two years. It is but understood that the large asset management companies, you know, would want to see certain amount of track record, continued performance, as well as the work we are doing with the regulator for each of those local geographies. And then, you know, is when they would start having serious conversations with us.
Happy to state that the current pipeline and the clients we are talking to are mostly among the top 10 asset management clients in that, in each of those geographies, so to speak, right? Although a win in each of these client mandates, you know, would have a post-multiplier effect. It'll, you know, hopefully will drive on multiples of revenue growth as against percentages of growth, right? So the $20 million is largely in that context. So the last, you know, large contract we had won happened to be the third-largest bank-based asset management company in Thailand, called Krungsri Asset Management. The transition is underway and is expected to conclude by end of, you know, this fiscal.
You know, given that, you know, we are managing one of the largest one out there, many of the top 10 are having, you know, very serious and engaging conversations with us to be able to render value-added solutions, you know, both in terms of transfer agency and fund administration at a country level, right? So it is that, you know, pipeline that I was talking about. So it is not an early-stage pipeline, but a mid- to advanced conversations with the client. Sometimes the contracting process is a little protracted in that part of the world. But, you know, given now we have a track record of nearly five years, never lost a single client, and have been adding at least two to three clients every single quarter.
There had been a substantial interest in almost every single geography in that part of the world. In addition to starting operations in Thailand, we are going to start, you know, operations in Singapore, even as we have some clients there already. You know, we are working with the regulatory process to be able to secure alignment to both to set up the office as well as start in-country operations in Singapore.
Thanks, Sreekanth, for that. Just to follow up here, on the international side, like, how do we look at, the investments that are going into it, in terms of lead lag? Because I think the margin number that you report, I'm not sure how reflective it is, about, you know, the underlying, you know, operating numbers, in this part of the business. But, it was a decline, sequentially there. So at what point of time, this business starts to deliver, you know, somewhere close to 15%-20% sort of margin numbers?
Yeah, great question. So the way to look at this, Abhijit, is, at a client level, not at a geography level. We cannot compare the growth market to that of India scenario, where we have 60% market share, many of the clients being there for the last decade to two. And a new client addition, you know, takes certain amount of time, at least 3– 4– 5 years in India, for example, for them to make any meaningful corpus, for me to make any meaningful revenue out of it. Whereas, you know, in, in that part of the world, or any new country for that matter, a client-level margin is what we look at, and in almost all cases, you know, we are tracking to, you know, anywhere in the range of 35%–40%.
But at an entity level, international may look a little less because of continued expansion into newer geographies, continued expansion of technological capabilities or platforming capabilities, the transition costs that we incur as we migrate a client from, you know, incumbent, including their own captive, to KFintech. So those costs tend to vitiate, you know, what is otherwise a profit profile, which I think is pretty good. And I'll give you a leading indicator to that, for example, is the basis points. In India, our blended yield, as you have seen, is roughly about 3.9, and it has been fairly stable for us for the past X number of quarters. The same for my international business is 5.2 basis points, right? So pound for pound, the yield is higher.
The number of transactions one would expect will be substantially lower than when compared to India, right? Because these are high ticket size, low volume countries such as Singapore, so on and so forth. Ergo, at every client level, the margin is healthy. But when you aggregate at an overall entity level, it looks like lower because of continued investments into, you know, new geographic expansion.
Yeah, thanks a lot for that. And the second and last question is that, in this context, I think the core business, the MFRT, as well as the issuer solutions business, they have been delivering very solid, you know, margin improvements. So just want to understand, what is the level of, you know, operating leverage that is available there, in the sense of, can these businesses grow, you know, at, you know, mid- to high-single-digit expense growth, on a sustainable basis?
We are just like in the case of international too, in, domestic side, Abhijit, we are future-proofing or, you know, endeavoring to future-proof our business for volume expansion. You know, we've seen a volume expansion of north of 20%–30%, and that volume expansion actually adds much higher amount of data storage, cybersecurity-related costs, the engineering, environment management, et cetera, that is required for our core operations. So, so it actually translates to a far higher quantum of engineering efforts and work and maybe even costs that are in as compared to the transaction volume that you see in the industry. The expense that you have been seeing, you know, that has slightly gone up in the last two quarters, which I would expect, you know, we, we will continue to invest.
As you know, we all expense, you know, all of it out, most of it at least. Ergo, these are not necessarily investments that are on the balance sheet, but already, you know, into the PNL, even if we are at 25% or EBITDA numbers. These particular investments are required to future-proof our businesses, right? I mean, the investments we made, 3–4 years back, for example, have been continually driving the operating leverage, right? Reducing the pure play operations cost, the risk associated with that, and hence the margin profile continue to stay put. The investments that we are making now are the ones that are going to help us into the next 5–7 years.
Because what we are now doing is not incremental changes, but a complete re-architecting and step-up charge changes that we're making to the overall platform and solution, which will have far, you know, reaching consequences in driving operating leverage into the coming years. So XA lt is one such classic example, right? So we did not go on to make incremental changes to our existing platform, but we built bottom up, you know, in a manner that our ongoing operating costs will be low. Our dependency on the large enterprise solutions, where the licensing costs tend to spiral out of control very soon, comes down over a period of time.
Well, that's very appreciated. Thank you very much.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Sup rat im Datta from Ambit Capital. Please go ahead.
Thanks for the opportunity. So starting with the international business, wanted to understand what is the mix of FA and RCA business do you see in this business, you know, in the next five years? That's the first part. And the second part is on the FA business. You know, this is a platform which has significant growth opportunity, not only in Southeast Asia, but in other international markets as well. However, this is a mature market with, you know, well-entrenched operators in this business already. So what are the differentiators for your FA, you know, platform that, you know, you think will help differentiate and penetrate into ex- you know, clients, hedge funds or, you know, other, asset managers? So if you could, you know, start with those two questions on the international side before I go to some other questions.
Thank you. The current mix of TA to FA, in terms of the number of clients is about 31 clients are TA and 23 are in FA. FA thus far broadly had been platform-only service. That is by virtue of our acquisition of Hexagram. The TA, however, broadly is a full service model, like how we deliver it in India today with to all our mutual fund houses whom we manage today, right? We, in terms of the overall revenue mix, as again, the client mix, you know, it would be around 80% would be TA revenue and about 20% would be FA revenue. The differentiation or what is the value proposition we have to offer for FA, right?
I mean, I think the question I heard was that as a platform play, we are not looking at ourselves as a pure play platform, right, for FA. Which was the case with the acquisition that we made. Hexagram broadly was a platform-based company, not necessarily rendering a service layer on top. I could equate that in the case of TA, for example, to our platform, which is called K-Bolt, and that platform also could be given out just as a platform, too, right? Probably not so much in India, but outside the country. But we also have our entire processes and people and the risk management, everything associated with it and the governance, and hence we charge a certain basis points and which translates to a participation of the growth of the industry itself.
So we are replicating the same model in FA. So it is no longer just platforms. Wherever we already have platform sale, we are upselling the service layer. All new clients, all new geographies, we are pitching for a full service model. It is still possible that the client could be interested only in the platform and not the service, and in some cases it could only be the service and not even the platform. The value proposition we have to offer is manifold. First off, you're right, there are several entrenched players, especially in mature markets such as Singapore, for example, or in Europe and U.S. But probably not so much in other geographies such as, you know, emerging, you know, Malaysia and Indonesia, Thailand, Philippines. You know, some of these markets do not have entrenched players.
But let me drive the answer in both cases, even in the case of mature markets. The value proposition we have to offer is that we offer both FA and TA and the entire digital stack, which most others do not, point number one. Number two, we today are able to deliver at 5–6 basis points all of the solutions and more, as compared to a typical fund administrator who could be charging anywhere between 8-18 basis points, depending upon, you know, which fund administrator and which AMP you're talking about. Which means that I have a value proposition to optimize the cost to serve of most fund managers by a minimum of 25%–30%. So that is the second big value proposition. Third, is in terms of our go-to market and, you know, speed to market, rather.
You know, given we are, you know, at heart, a tech company at this point in time, we are able to create solutions for our clients, which, you know, most of the fund administrators do not do because they are purely fund administrators, whereas we are a full, full-scale digital company, so to speak. For example, you know, we have created the first of its kind, a simple WhatsApp-based distributor empowerment, where we could onboard 340,000 distributors in a single day. Now, these are alien concepts to most of the other operating geographies beyond India, and we're able to take these solutions at scale and be able to provide value to those clients.
Fourth, while the entrenched fund administrators are there, they are more focused on the large fund managers because the quantum of the AUM is quite substantial, and ergo, the return they derive out of that is quite high. Whereas we see a large market of several boutique, small to medium fund managers, who we believe are charged very, very high, you know, anywhere to the tune of 15 basis points, if I may. And also are underserved because they are not the largest out there. And that offers a phenomenal amount of space for a player like us to start with small, medium-sized AMCs, as we have already done in the case of mutual funds, and then expand into the larger, larger alternatives. I hope I answered your question.
That is very helpful and, you know, very elaborate answer. Thanks a lot for that. On the cost side, I wanted to understand, you know, you have been making investments in this business, you know, to drive and rightly so, because, you know, it requires, you know, future-proofing. Also, I wanted to understand, given, you know, the focus on tech and, you know, the tech life cycle is getting shorter, are these investments more recurring as compared to one-off? And that is how we should think of it, that, you know, it, it should continue at a similar level rather than, you know, there being a, you know, currently there being a step up and going forward, there being a step down in cost. So just, you know, if you could give your thoughts on this. Thank you.
Certainly. So I think the answer is, part of it is yes, and part of it is no. The big-ticket expenditure, which is one-time and not recurring, and, you know, it may be reset maybe once in a decade, kind of a scenario is effectively the brand-new platform creation, right? For example, the XAlt Platform that I spoke about for alternatives or the platform that we have now created for Malaysia, Philippines, Hong Kong, Singapore, Thailand. Now, these are all one-time creation. Or now, the entire cloud strategy that we have implemented over the last two to three years, you know, whereby we moved much of our data layer onto the cloud, much of our API infrastructure onto the cloud, you know, that is also one-time.
We are right now in the midst of the journey to take our mutual fund platform to be the most digitally advanced TA platform, not just in India, honestly, you know, anywhere in the world. That is a one-time expense, one-time investment, not a recurring one at it. Now, these are big-ticket items. You know, these are generational shifts. As an industry and as an organization, you know, we are 35 years old into this, and you know, what we've been able to do is add incremental you know enhancements into the platform. But we believe the time has now come, at least, in the context of the growth we have seen in the industry and what we expect in the future, to completely reset it, right?
Hence, it's a one-time, and it's a big-ticket item, no doubt, and we've already, you know, spent much of it and, you know, expensed off and some more to happen. Whereas there are several other recurring items, you know, which is a continual, as you rightly said, the tech life cycle has come down. So we create a lot of new features, products, solutions. Some of these are revenue-generating in their own right. For example, today, 6% of my revenue is coming from value-added services. Those value-added services are on the back of those platforms and solutions we have created. So these are not just purely cost items, but they are recurring revenue-generating items for us, right?
If I were to put a quantum to it, I'd like to believe that anywhere about 60%–70% odd would be a one-time investment of the tech spend that we are doing currently. Maybe 40% of what we've been incurring could be a repeat expenditure, but again, a lot of that would continue to drive revenue profile and not just a pure cost consumption for us.
I'll just add to what Sreekanth mentioned. This is Vivek Mathur. You know, we continue to spend almost 19%–20% of our revenue in terms of IT, OpEx, and CapEx. CapEx is just, you know, 5% out of this 20%, the rest is all OpEx. And we believe that, you know, as a growing company, we have to invest in technology, and as you rightly asked the question, that isn't it recurring? We feel that as the volume goes up in terms of revenue, the percentage will keep coming down, but we will continue to invest in technology. So this, you know, 15%–20% of our revenue, we will continue to incur on IT.
Got it. And, so 15%–20% on the elevated revenue if or upon the revenue base increases, that proportion goes down?
Yeah. So last year, for nine months ended December 2023, we spent almost 22% of our revenue. This year, we have spent 19% of our revenue. So as a percentage, it will keep coming down, but the quantum will also keep going up as the overall revenue really goes up.
Understood. Understood. That's very clear. My last question is, you know, on the MF RTA business and the AUM growth. So overall, AUM, you have been growing ahead of the industry, but when I look at the equity AUM, that has been growing slower than the industry return, the debt has been growing slower than the industry. Any particular reason behind this? You know, I understand this is driven by your mutual fund partners, but just wanted to understand, you know, why is there a difference, and, you know, could this drastically reduce going forward? Thank you.
Sure, I can take that. No, there is, you know, there is no reason. This is just the cyclicalities that I was talking about, right? In 2020, our market share of equity... I'm sorry, in 2018, the market share of equity was 26%. In 2023, it rose up to 35%. So there is a nearly 800–900 basis point expansion that we saw in a matter of, you know, 3 years at that point in time, right? And now it is slightly less. Now, that basically is a reflection of the fund performance, right?
I mean, you will have, you know, if, if you look up the fund performance itself of various schemes or various fund managers in the quadrants, if you put Q1, Q2, Q3, Q4, you would realize there is a constant movement of certain funds from one quadrant to the second, to the third, to the fourth, based on the fund performance broadly. And that would obviously drive the inflows of the both SIPs as well as the lump sum into that particular scheme, which obviously will then roll up into that particular client. So 26–35, 35, now down to, you know, 33 or 33.5. And, you know, in the next 2, 3 quarters, you know, it could go up again. So there is no reason. I believe this is the cyclicality that, you know, we would see.
It is possible that in the next 8 quarters, it can easily go to 38–40. I mean, it's very hard to predict. There is no underlying reason except in the fund performance of, you know, of the clients. And, you know, sometimes the fund performance could favor some large asset managers, sometimes it could be for other asset managers. So we expect this, the cycle to continue, and hopefully in the next 1–2 years, our market share would expand than reduce a little bit.
Sure. That's very helpful. Thank you.
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, in order to ensure that management is able to address questions from all participants in the conference, please limit your questions to questions per participant. Should you have follow-up question, we request you to rejoin the queue. The next question is from the line of Ijaz Lakhani from Unifi Capital. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Hi, Sreekanth. Congrats, congratulations to the team on the numbers, and thank you for the detailed explanations. Two questions, one on international and one on domestic. The international question, Sreekanth, thanks for clarifying that the yield that, you know, your partners charge is 8–18 basis points, and you're charging 5–6. So we understand that, you know, scope. And, what I've understood from your previous calls and this one is that the mid to boutique are the ones that you're chasing directly, whereas the larger ones you are chasing through a custodian partner, et cetera. So I just wanted to understand that, is there a specific conflict that arises because the custodian is like: "Okay, you're going direct, and will you come after my lunch?" Is there any sort of a conflict in that?
And also specifically, the international piece, AUM grew, degrew this quarter for about 3%–4%, whereas the AIF piece, AUM grew 8%, but revenues declined 3%, sequentially. So could you just explain that specific, you know, aspect as well? That's on the international.
Certainly. So, so I'll clarify the point on the custodians and then on to begin with. We have partnered with, you know, two custodians, you know, in, in the Asian region. And, the custodians there usually also provide fund accounting, right? And our partnership with them is largely for very specific mandates from the asset managers who want a single entity to provide transfer agency, fund accounting, custody all together, right? And given we offer TA and the custodians offer custody and FA, so this partnership is extremely limited for that very specific purpose of mandates, where we need to have a joint go-to-market strategy, right? Outside of that, you know, there is no conflict and there is no, you know, anybody stepping on somebody else's toes.
So we would as much as partner with a custody to, you know, bid for a particular deal, we could easily be competing with the same entity for the next deal, where the fund manager does not necessarily insist on a single entity to provide all three solutions, you know, under the hood. So to that extent, it had been a, an extremely harmonious relationship that we maintained, you know, with all of them, right? Now, this is more for mutual funds. You know, as we are very intentful of growing our, alternative space quite substantively, especially, say, in the context of Singapore. In Malaysia, it is probably not very large, but in Singapore it is quite large, so is the case in Thailand.
There the custody and all is not a, you know, is not something that, you know, we need to work with because there they look at TA and FA as one unified provider, which is where, my point about large fund administrator came to picture. Right? In all those- in almost all those cases, it is the same administrator who provides both EA and SA, and custody is a completely different line of business. So depending upon which asset class you look at, you know, we will... Our partnerships work for that particular purpose. But yes, you know, in the case of a single, you know, bid, it is a, a partnership.
In the case of non-single bid, you know, where there's no expectation that, you know, all these bids will be rendered under one boat, you know, we compete, you know, with them. And then, as the track record had been showing, you know, we've been winning, you know, at least a couple of international mandates in every single quarter. And hopefully, large ones are going to happen this quarter. Now, in terms of the, the growth itself, yes, the, the markets, you know, there had been... We all know, for example, the Hong Kong market, you know, wasn't the brightest, and it was the case of Malaysia and others.
So to that extent, there had been a little bit of AUM decline growth, but that had not necessarily resulted in any decline growth of revenue in the case of international business, which had grown about 7%. But the overall, the line of alternatives and international and the pensions, you know, there was a slight sequential decline growth. That was on the back of the previous quarter Alternate Investment Funds year-on-year had grown near 100%. This quarter we had grown 86%, so to speak. So a lot of fund mobilization in alternatives happened last quarter. A lot of new funds we won. The preceding quarters went live in the previous quarter, but probably little less of that happened in quarter three.
And that was the only reason why there was a slight sequential, you know, reduction. But, you know, the alternatives brought on, and the capital commitments are, you know, on the significant upswing, you know, into the later part of the quarter. And as we see into this quarter, we expect the trend to reverse very, very soon.
Got it. This is very clear. I think this is what you were alluding to when you said the controllable components of the income. This is clear. Thank you for that. And the second is on the domestic business. Sreekanth, is, you know, how is the competitive landscape shaping up? Could you speak a little bit about that? Has competition in lieu of, you know, the stance that you have taken and the investments you are making, has that landscape shifted, changed? Your comments about it, and what, in your opinion, are the key risks to KFin's business today? Thanks.
Thank you. The competition landscape, you know, one thing that we, we've always been proud of, and, you know, we continue, and we will ensure, you know, we will do that is set industry standards. You know, we, we haven't traditionally been following as much as leading from the front. You know, whether it's in terms of the business solutions that we offer, getting into the new asset classes, new business lines, or the pure tech changes, you know, whether it is cloud-first strategies, whether it is, you know, driving a at-scale generic capabilities, you know, including on the big data components, where in fact we even manage some of our competitive clients in that space. You know, it's something that we'll continue to do so.
I think, you know, a competition, whether it's in the space of secure solutions or in the case of alternatives, pensions, mutual funds, I think it's a very healthy, you know, trend, if I, you know, if I may, right? I think it's, it's great that, each of us, you know, constantly innovate and bring to the market for the betterment of the investors, asset managers, and the distributor, the regulator, for that matter. And I know that amount of healthy competition is driving down the cost. It is significantly improving the ease of doing business, onboarding, financial inclusion by moving into every last city and location. Creating digital solutions which, you know, were hitherto unthought of.
For example, to onboard a client on an alternative investment fund, you know, till about a year back, was literally a three-day process and about 145-page, you know, document that needs to be filled. You know, we took it upon as a challenge for ourselves, and then we created the country's first digital onboarding platform at scale, where you could onboard anybody in three minutes. And not just HNI, ultra HNI, but whether you're a trust or an endowment fund or any corporate for that matter, right? So the competition landscape, I think, is constantly evolving. You know, we are all putting, you know, enough pressure on each other. And I think it's a very healthy friction, for the betterment of the industry over a period of time. That was one.
And, sorry, there was another question that you asked in terms of that.
Just, any key risks that you feel that the business may face? Right.
Well, our business is riddled with risk, so there is to that extent, I think that there are several, and we continue to track, and it is our duty, solemn duty, to ensure that the risks are mitigated at every point in time. But let's say, you know, continued focus on cybersecurity and, you know, data privacy is an exceptionally important item for us. We manage near about 8.5–9 crore investors, you know, in the country. Almost every, near about 80%–85% of the financial investors in India have something to do with our organization. So we... You know, that's an enormous responsibility.
Then hence, all these investments and efforts and all of that, you know, that we're continuing to do, is to ensure that, you know, this is all protected, right? So that's, that's definitely one thing that we will continue to double down and make sure that we create, you know, an absolute zero trust model, and, you know, absolute amount of cybersecurity resilience.
... outside of that, well, the cyclicalities from a business standpoint will always be there. You know, we were fortunate, we had a great year last year. It is possible every year won't be like that, right? And that is exactly the reason why our risk diversification strategy of rendering solutions for every asset class and for as many countries as possible, will go on to play a big way. You know, hopefully, for example, you know, if India were to have a subpar mark-to-market growth into this year or next year, it is strongly possible that Asia could rebound.
If between time, what now seems like a little tepid, relatively tepid growth of Asia compared to India, will probably go on to help Fintech the next year, you know, when those markets could be, you know, coming, you know, back, you know, after two years of relatively underperformance. So it's all about risk diversification from a business standpoint. Outside of that purely technology standpoint, the data security and the infosec is something that we are tracking very, very closely. It is a very big topic for the regulator as much as it is for us. The DPDP Act is really going to come into play sometime soon. The dates are yet to be announced.
But we are keeping ourselves ready, you know, at the very earliest, even before any instructions come from UIDAI.
Thanks, Siddharth. All the best to you and the team.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Dipanjan Ghosh from Citi. Please go ahead. Hello, sir, you are unmuted. Please ask your question.
Hi, hi, hi. Am I audible?
Yes, sir, you're audible.
Hi, hi. Good morning. Just a few questions from my side. First, on the domestic MF business, if you can, you know, kind of break it down between the AM-linked portion versus the non-AM-linked portion, let's say for the third quarter or nine months versus what it would be last year. Second, on the issuer solutions business, it's... You know, when you calculate the revenue portfolio, adjusted for seasonality, like comparing CQ versus CQ, that seems to have gone up. So, is it more of corporate actions or value-added services? If you can give some more color on that. Lastly, on the international and domestic alternate business segment, I know you gave the growth number of around 100% in 2Q and almost 80%–85% this quarter.
But if you can just, you know, split it on an absolute basis for 3Q, nine months this year and last year, that will be really helpful.
Sure, Sreekanth, I'll take this. You can add.
Yeah.
you know, the breakup of domestic mutual fund into fee-based business and non-fee-based business is 66% of our total revenue comes from fee-based domestic mutual fund business, and anywhere between 3%-4% comes from value-added services. In terms of issuer solutions, this, this business, you know, currently, which is about 15.7% of the total revenue, is range bound between 15%-16%. But as the, you know, number of folios, grow and we continue to add and migrate clients from other RTAs to KFintech, this revenue pool will continue to grow, and with new IPO participation, this will grow. So revenue portfolio, you know, because of various, value-added services also.
So there is not just one way of looking at, of, you know, pure folio-based revenue, but there are corporate actions, there are value-added services, which add to the portfolio income for KFintech. So it's a combination of three streams of revenue: the pure folio-based revenue, more corporate actions means more event-based revenue, and then there are value-added services like eAGM, e-voting, AML, PML, insider trading platform. So all these also continue to add. As we penetrate more of these value-added services to our client base of almost 6, you know, 5,800 plus clients, you will see an uptick in terms of portfolio income.
On the AIF international business and AIF, you know, while overall revenue is given here, I have already told the percentage of revenue that comes from, you know, the international business of global financial services is about, you know, about 4%. And AIF and, you know, the platform of TA of Hexagram, which is mPower, contributes to about 5% of the total revenue. Balance comes from our pension and other small businesses. Does that answer your question?
Yes. Just a small follow-up. You know, on the issuer solutions business, is it fair to assume that, you know, this quarter the market tailwinds leading to higher corporate actions which supported revenues? I just wanted to get some sense of how much of this, you know, would you consider as more from the current market situation versus how much can you consider as more of recurring and your penetration of clients through various value-added products?
So issuer solutions business doesn't have to do anything with the market. It is more number of market participants. So if there are more Demat accounts opening, that means, for listed companies, that means more revenue, per, you know, for us, because number of folios go up. So market-driven revenue is more in mutual fund. The fundamental consumption story and growth story of India remains intact, and the financial household savings coming into mutual fund and getting into direct equity continues to augur well. So it's not something that we are looking at a short-term jump. You know, it, it, this business, on a sustainable basis, will continue to grow on a mid-teen kind of a growth. Sreekanth, do you want to add anything?
Thanks, Vivek. Just add two more points. One is that, you know, in the case of issuer solutions, there is a price escalation that we orchestrate. Unlike in the case of the asset management industry, where there are certain volume discounts given beyond certain asset management thresholds... where the yield is important that we all track to. In the case of Issuer Solutions, there is a price escalation that kicks in, you know, when the contract ends, and that's, of course, negotiated price increase. That was one of the reasons why it had gone up beyond the corporate actions. Second, and importantly is that as we have won a substantial number of client mandates in the previous year, including managing several IPOs, and all of that becomes a recurring annual revenue this year.
The IPOs that we have done this year obviously will contribute to a higher revenue to the next year in addition to the corporate actions so on and so forth. The component of the corporate actions as an overall share of Issuer solutions revenue is not substantially different from year to year. So the corporate, for example, the dividend declarations, the buybacks, many of these, you know, have been pretty similar for us, you know, and hadn't been very different this year compared to the previous bunch of years. But obviously it is the addition of the new clients and their declaration of corporate actions in addition to the retail portfolio expansion of nearly 5 million.
You must have seen that 5 million net new portfolios have been added, either because of the new mandates we won or the transitions we have orchestrated into the previous year, and or the corporate actions of those transitions and the new IPOs that have driven the growth.
Got it, got it. Thank you and all the best.
Thank you.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Bharat Sheth from Quest Investment Advisors. Please go ahead.
Hello?
Hi, please go ahead.
Hi. Thanks for the opportunity. So one question on international side. See, as you are in transit, some winning that new client, then the... if they are rolling out, takes after, say, two, three quarters, then which also incurred a transition cost. So overall, if we have to take little, longer perspective from three to five years, so how do we see that business? And what could be the margin that we really like to have in, that business? And can it, I mean, be a very meaningful contribution to our overall top line?
Thanks for asking that question. Not underrated, yeah, and, you know, that's the reason why we have, you know, started the international surge on. Just to give you certain facts, four years back, you know, the revenue was zero. Today it is a little over, 11%–12% of our revenue comes from a brand new line of business, which never existed before.
Correct.
Right. So to that extent, I think it explains to us it's not just our intent and aspiration, but we have executed to the strategy and there is an addressable market to grow. Our intent is to make that percentage, you know, to grow substantially higher. I would love to see in the next five years, the international business occupying about 25% of our total revenue pool, even as the revenues of the overall metro business also continue to grow. Three, in terms of, the margin itself, I had called out at an individual account level, you know, we have healthy margins. But because we are constantly winning deals and constantly creating new platforms for new countries, and incurring on certain transition costs, what have you, you are seeing an overall margin profile slightly below.
But on a steady state basis, I would expect the international business to have higher margins than the domestic business for the very simple reason... two simple reasons as cited. One, my yield is higher than it's in India, at least by a factor of 30%, if not more, and we'll try to do more in time to come. Second, pound to pound, if I get a thousand crore AUM in India versus a thousand crore AUM in Singapore, for example, for the same thousand crore of AUM in India, if I do a million transactions, I will have to do 10,000 transactions in Singapore. As you could then imagine, the effort required is substantially lower as compared to what it's in India, because the ticket sizes are small in India, and it is a volume game for us here.
So to that extent, the operating leverage will kick in as larger AMCs start to work with us. So we are definitely optimistic about the margin profile in the long term. We have already seen, you know, good expansion in the last four years, and it is a long-term business. You know, we are—this is not a one-quarter, two-quarter business. It is strongly possible that tomorrow, you know, for example, if I were to draw a parallel to India, right? I mean, it could be winning one of the top five asset management companies in India versus, let's say, the bottom five asset management companies in India, right?
Right.
You see the magnitude of the assets being managed is so substantively, you know, high, right? So about INR 400,000 crore–INR 500,000 crore AUM in the top five, versus probably a few thousand INR crore of AUM in the bottom five or in the mid five. So if we go on to win one or two such deals, you know, which is the conversations we've been having with the larger fund, fund managers today, the revenue growth won't be a 30%–40%, but could easily be two or three times, jump that can happen in a single year, too. While that is not necessarily the guidance I'm offering or we are baking into the books, but I'm stating that's the kind of potential that exists.
I think we have done sufficient amount of good work over the past four years for all the large asset managers to stand up and take notice of the work we've done, and hence the conversations now we're having are with the top five in almost every country.
That's a good answer. I mean, very elaborated. So on second thing, on geographic expansion, if you can share some more color, say, apart from the Singapore and Southeast Asia, so going little aggressively on the western country.
Yeah. So we are actually one deal shy of having 50% market share for mutual funds in Malaysia, by the way. And that's just what we've done in four years. Now, in Asia, Singapore quite clearly offers the most significant opportunity, but not so much in mutual funds. Singapore is more an alternatives market, so to speak, right? And there is roughly about $7 trillion worth of alternatives there. And we have just launched our platform, XAlt. You know, and we needed that. You know, so far our clients largely have been on the mutual fund space, not in the alternatives. And the reason why we've toiled hard to create such a platform, which is applicable for anywhere in the world, and especially including for Singapore, is that very reason.
So we are, you know, getting feet on the street in Singapore. As I've stated, you know, we are looking to secure, you know, a license and an office space in Singapore to start, and the platform is already there. So to that extent, I think the opportunity of a near $7 trillion worth of addressable market for the fund manager at, even an average of, you know, seven or six or even five basis points that we could charge, today, which is absolutely the lowest end of threshold, you know, offers a very large revenue potential. Of course, it needs to be executed to, you know, both the sales and the delivery and the execution. But that's what, you know, we are working towards to, and we have confidence in our abilities to do so.
Now, while this offers the greatest potential in immediate, you know, Southeast, but if you move a little to the west, you know, on the Middle East, you have, you know, Dubai is another area of interest to us. But clearly, much of the global wealth continues to reside between U.S. and Europe. So to that extent, starting our operations there is very, very important. We are looking at both organic and inorganic routes, including acquisitions, both in Europe and U.S. at the moment. Whichever happens first, organic or inorganic, is how we're going to start there.
Okay, thanks for the elaboration, and all the best.
Yep.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Rohan from Anvil Share & Stock Broking . Please go ahead.
Hello.
Rohan?
Yes. So, just one question on the issuer solutions part. So, like you said, that, you know, your aspirations are growing mid-teens in the issuer solutions business. So, if you, you know, just delve a little deeper there and see what kind of growth do you expect to come from the volume growth that is increase in number of folios, and what part of it will be, you know, corporate action, value-added service, escalation, et cetera. So what's the breakup between these two, if you can?
Certainly. I... So even if you were to give a regular on business as usual, profile of, the revenue component, here about, 70% comes from the folio-based pricing, and about, 20%–22% on the, corporate events. And the rest is the corporate, sorry, corporate actions, and the rest is the corporate events. When I say corporate events, I'm talking about conducting and holding AGMs and, you know, so on and so forth, whether it is electronic or otherwise. Our revenue, the share or rather this particular component breakdown of revenue for Issuer solutions, you know, had been pretty similar, you know, over the last 3–4 years.
Excepting that, we have added a fourth component, which is the value-added solutions, which includes, for example, us creating insider trading platforms and administering it, managing and administering ESOPs, for many of the clients, so to speak. Now, that pool of revenue has basically added about 6%–7% of additional revenue overall, so to speak. So on a business-as-usual basis, I'd expect, that, you know, 65-odd% would continue to come from the folio-based pricing, and about, you know, 15%–17% on the corporate actions, which is buyback, dividend declarations, demergers, what have you. And 7%–8% of equal proportion coming from corporate events and value-added services.
Understood. Understood. So, so what I was also alluding toward, so the breakup was really helpful, but what I was also alluding toward that, if you say that, you know, you aspire to grow mid-teens in the issuing business, issuer solutions business, so, so then what is the volume growth that we can expect in number of folios, you know? Say, for example, 8% volume growth, 8%, other services, increase in pricing, et cetera. So what are your aspirations there? So breakup of this mid-teens is what I was looking for.
I understand. So I believe the volume in the form of folios, you know, factor anything around a 10% increase in the volume of folios, you know, will easily drive a mid-teen growth in the business. But of course, you know, the volume growth of folios can come from... It also depends on which client. As I've explained, you know, this is unique pricing and it's a negotiated price. It is not the same for any, you know, any two clients. So which particular client, you know, is growing faster will also drive the revenue growth corresponding to that. And also, if the volumes and the folios are getting added more because of IPOs and transitions, it always adds a faster revenue growth profile to us.
I mean, it's hard to give a very specific number, but let's say an 8%–10% increase in the folio, you know, would get us into easily a mid-teen kind of growth.
Yes, understood. I think this is very helpful. Thank you. So, one more question was under Indian AIF business. So, what is the kind of yield, you know, we can expect on the medium term under Indian AIF side? The-
So the Indian AIFs had been, you know, pretty much baseline right from the very beginning. You know, if you do only TA or only FA or if you're doing both, you know, traditionally, this industry in India had grown only with TA, both us and our competitors focusing on that. But since we acquired and added the entire FA capability over the last 24 months in India, we are now one of the very few who can offer TA and FA, and definitely the only from India who have their own proprietary platforms for TA and FA. The yield, you know, for TA standalone, would be in the range of, say, you know, 1.5-2.
FA would be around 0.5–0.75, and a composite deal could get you anywhere around 2.5–3 basis points.
That's very helpful. Thank you. And just a last question, if I can. You said that you have around INR 300 crore of, you know, cash, surplus cash available with you. So just on the acquisition plan, if you can, you know, just give us a... How do you look at it?
Vivek, do you want to pick that up?
Yeah. Your question is about how we are going to look at the cash surplus that we have, correct?
acquisitions, you know, in that range, part of it.
So we continue to evaluate acquisitions. At any point of time, we have three or four targets that we continue to look at. Historically, if you've seen, we have been doing small-sized acquisitions. As our aspiration is to you know grow in terms of either growing our product bouquet or acquiring clients or expanding into geographies, from these three lenses, we continue to look at opportunities. So you will see that you know even in the coming year we'll continue to explore that only when we find that the proposition of acquisition is going to add substantial value in terms of shareholder value creation. It's not just acquiring and then saying, "You know, we just added top line." So we are looking at exponential growth by combination of two entities and not just pure acquisition.
So we will use that, and we will also see, you know, the board will also consider in terms of, beyond acquisition, if there is surplus cash, you know, board will also look at dividend policy, you know, once the financial year ends. So, M&A is now something that we have been doing successfully. 4 M&As we have done in the last 6 years, 7 years. So we feel that, you know, that is something which we'll continue to do and utilize this to create future modes.
Great. Thank you so much.
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, due to time constraint, we have to end. We will reach out to people in the queue separately. As that was the last question, I would now hand the conference over to Mr. Devesh Agarwal from IIFL Securities Limited for closing comments.
On behalf of IIFL Securities, I thank the KFin Technologies management for giving us an opportunity to host the call today. Before we conclude the call, sir, would you like to add any closing comments?
Thank you so much once again, Vivek, for moderating it and, you know, all the investors and analysts showing very, very keen interest, and rightfully so. The growth areas and the emphasis on international, on the alternatives is rightly placed. We continue to stay exceptionally focused on innovation, value addition to our clients, whilst ensuring that the operating leverage on the cost is, you know, managed and focused to. We have been diversifying the risks, and that will add a certain amount of cost, which I think is extremely important and well worth it, for long-term, you know, prospects of the growth. Aspirationally, I've stated this several times before, I just want to state it one last time and conclude the call.
We intend to make KFint ech the first company from India which is globally relevant in the space of capital market infrastructure. That has been our North Star, and a lot of work we've been doing is eventually to get that far. If India could replicate this in IT, ITS, generic pharma, any line of business, there is no reason whatsoever that we can't do the same in the space that we operate in. So together and on behalf of my entire management team, which has been exceptionally behind us to ensure a continual financial performance as much as, you know, setting of ourselves for long-term success, you know, a very happy investing, and thank you so much for your time.
Thank you.
Thank you. Thank you, everyone, for joining the call today. Mishka, you can conclude the call now. Thank you.
On behalf of IIFL Securities Limited, that concludes this conference. Thank you for joining us, and you may now disconnect your lines.