Ladies and gentlemen, good day and welcome to Lodha Developers Limited's post-result conference call to discuss the Q1 FY2026 earnings. 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 any questions during the conference call, please signal an operator by pressing star zero on your touch-tone phone. Please note that this conference is being recorded. I now hand the conference over to Mr. Chintan Parikh. Thank you, and over to you, sir.
Thank you, Avinath, and good afternoon, everyone. Welcome to Lodha Developers Q1FY26 conference call. Today, we have with us Mr. Abhishek Lodha, MD and CEO; Mr. Sushil Kumar Modi, Executive Director, Finance; Mr. Sanjay Chauhan, Chief Financial Officer; Mr. Rajendra Joshi, CEO, Bengaluru. I would now like to invite Abhishek to make his opening remarks. Over to you, Abhishek.
Thank you, Chintan. Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to our Q1 earnings call. Before we dive into the business update, I want to take a moment to pay tribute to the brave Indian soldiers who served the country during the recent war with Pakistan. Their courage, commitment, and sacrifice in protecting our nation's sovereignty and ensuring the safety of millions is something we deeply honor and respect. On behalf of the entire Leadership Team and the company, we salute their service and stand in solidarity with their families. The Lodha Foundation is working with the families of these martyrs to strengthen their future and ensure that they feel that the rest of the nation is completely behind them. Let me begin with a brief overview of the overall macroeconomic and industrial situation.
On the back of the increase in government capex spending, as well as the monetary easing that the RBI has undertaken, the GDP forecast for the year continues to remain resilient at around 6.5%. Inflation remains within a comfort zone, and we hope that it will further improve given the quality of this monsoon. On the interest rate front, we continue to see a downward trajectory, and as a consequence, as is normally seen in such late-stage cycles, we see it as being strongly favorable for home buyers and the home buying industry. Combined further with the taxation benefits that have been given for the middle-income households earning up to INR 25 per annum, this will further boost the purchasing power of these households and spur home demand as well as broader consumption.
We continue to believe that the Indian real estate sector is in the early stages of a long up cycle with favorable macroeconomic indicators, strong urbanization, and improving affordability. At Lodha, our focus continues to remain on delivering high-quality development, strengthening our brand, unlocking value from our land bank, and maintaining industry-leading cash flows and return metrics. I am sure that the recent news headlines from some of the lenders as well as some of the IT companies might raise concerns about the resilience and strength of the demand. I would like to mention that we have so far continued to see actually a strengthening of demand. We measure the health of our business through various metrics, but most particularly the non-launch weekly sales.
Even now, in the month of July, which is typically not a very strong month given the monsoon and other factors, we continue to see weekly sales around INR 275-280 crore per week, which is much higher than the same period last year, and tells us that there is good strong on-ground demand across different segments, and there is a continuous trending in the mid-income demand based on the factors that I had highlighted earlier. Coming to the highlight of this quarter, the first quarter faces through by about 10%. It was in line with our business plan but moderately affected by the two weeks of geopolitical tension in May 2025.
However, this does not affect our growth outlook for the year, and we expect H1s to be about 40-45% with an upward bias towards the 45% number of the AOP and the balancing in H2, driven by the significant launches planned for H2, including from the BD concluded, the business development added in Q1, the benefit of the interest rate cuts and income tax cuts stimulating mid-income demand, and the clearing of the approval bottlenecks. As some of you may be aware, environmental clearances have not been considered in many parts of the country since August 2024 due to the MGT order asking the center to consider these clearances and the center not yet having the bandwidth to do so.
The matter is now expected to be decided by the Supreme Court of India in this quarter, and that will further enable us to scale up our supply and comfortably achieve our overall pre-sales as well as operating cash flow guidance. As a business, we continue to remain focused on predictable and disciplined growth. Our net debt-to-equity will have small increases and thereafter moderations from time to time, but at all times, we will remain substantially below our ceiling of 0.5 times net debt-to-equity. As I mentioned earlier, we continue to see improvement in our non-launch weekly sales rate, and we expect this number to touch INR 300 crore a year by the end of this FY, from INR 250 crore a year in FY25.
This sort of continued regular sales makes our business very, very different from most of our peers, and this predictability gives us significant confidence in how we perceive business in the times to come. We expect to enter Delhi NCR in the next 12 months as a pilot and hope to launch in fiscal 2027. As you are aware, this will be a pilot stage where we will focus on gradually growing while we build our local team and strengthen our operating and sales capability. With this entry, we will be operating in four of the largest real estate markets in the country, covering about two-thirds of the total residential sales. We will, of course, provide more details once the overall entry strategy and the first project land acquisition is completed.
The last point which I would like to underline in terms of an overview is that while there may be concerns about the strength of overall demand in urban India, it is important to note that the sales of the top five real estate developers who are focused on quality and presumer service, thereby having strong brands, are constrained by supply and not by demand. We strongly believe that this is a unique position for the real estate market that the top developers have almost. A complete inability to safeguard their demand, and any short-term aberration in the demand side is unlikely to impact their sales. The second point is being that real estate sales are driven largely by households with annual income greater than INR 1 million per annum.
The strength of job and wealth creation for the upper middle class and higher income segments continues to remain quite strong. The third point, this environment of low interest rates and low inflation is probably the best ever for real estate. When interest rates went up three years ago, it had a negative impact on demand, and as this retraces, we expect it to provide a positive fit for demand. Lastly, we believe that the real estate growth will lead to the demand revival in urban India, and this cycle will be visible in the next 12 months. The real estate multiplier to economic activity is the highest of any sector, as it leads to job creation across the entire supply chain as well as wealth creation for homeowners. Speaking about our KPIs. The pre-sales, embedded margin of these pre-sales, business development, and brand score for the first quarter.
We achieved our best-ever first-quarter pre-sales performance, which was at INR 44.5 billion, growing 10% year-on-year. As I mentioned earlier, we are in line to deliver our overall guidance for the full year. Having delivered INR 40 billion-plus sales consecutively now for six quarters, we are now headed towards establishing a new base of INR 50 billion of quarterly pre-sales, which should be the average number through the course of the full year this year. The embedded EBITDA margin for this quarter came in at about 33%. This level of embedded EBITDA margin has been achieved with the JDA contribution to sales of about 38% of pre-sales, in line with our long-term guidance.
We saw price growth of approximately 2% in Q1FY26 on a like-to-like basis, which is in line with our strategy to have price growth at around 6%, which is below base growth and therefore keeps affordability getting better each year. Based on an embedded EBITDA margin of 33% on the pre-sales for Q1FY26, our PAT for the quarter is at about INR 9.5 billion, implying a PAT margin of about 21% on the pre-sales done during this quarter. This is where we are very much in line with our overall objective of 20% ROE, which we on an underlying basis, which we have already achieved in fiscal 2025 too.
As far as new business development is concerned, we had five projects in this quarter across Mumbai, Pune, as well as Bangalore, with a combined GDV of about INR 227 billion, which is more than 90% of the business development guidance for the full year. I am happy to share that out of this, we've added about INR 84 billion in Bangalore, which is more than what we had added in the full year last year in Bangalore. This shows that landowners are now starting to see in Bangalore what others have seen in Mumbai and Pune, the strength of the Lodha brand and the increasing desire to collaborate with Lodha for the development of their land holdings. This gives us confidence and strength that our growth phase in Bangalore will be well supported with land availability.
At the end of the quarter, our net debt stood at INR 50.8 billion, which is 0.24 times net debt-to-equity, well below our ceiling of 0.5 times. This is despite significant investments towards our new pay income as well as accelerated business development, which we have done in the first quarter. As we mentioned earlier as well, our debt levels are likely to go up in the first half of the fiscal year due to greater activity on business development and moderate in the second half of the year. Our average cost of funds on the debt stood at 8.3%, down about 40 basis points for the quarter. On our focus of do good, do well, on the ESG side, we believe that sustainable growth is a collective duty, and we are dedicated to nation-building through impactful long-term initiatives.
The Lodha Foundation prioritizes education, environment, and human development with programs which are long-term and deliver at depth. In the coming quarter, the foundation will launch one of its flagship initiatives, the Lodha Mathematical Sciences Institute. The institute seeks to advance India's legacy of analytical thought through cutting-edge research across all areas of mathematics and applied mathematics. The institute will pursue both foundational inquiry as well as real-world solutions to 21st-century challenges. The Lodha Genius Program welcomed its third batch with a cohort of about 300 students selected from about 7,000 applicants across India for a month-long program in June 2025. This will be followed by a continued learning module through the rest of the year. On the environmental side, we now manage about 50 million-plus sq ft of green-certified portfolio and advance our low-carbon strategy with renewable PPA receiving 10 MW, aligned with SBTi's targets.
Innovations like nature-based cooling at Palava and Ujja for household energy analysis reflect our comprehensive approach. Recognized by RESPE, DJSI, FTSE for Good, and the World Benchmarking Index, we strive to build a sustainable, developed India through our various initiatives and ensuring that this development is not just economic but also environmental as well as around personal happiness and satisfaction. On some of the other performance metrics, our selections for the quarter grew by 7% on a year-on-year basis and came in at just under INR 29 billion. We launched projects with an estimated GDV of about INR 83 billion. On the back of the business development that we've done in the first quarter, our launch pipeline for the full year now stands at about INR 250 billion, with a balance being launched in the balance three quarters of the year with a heavier emphasis on H2. In terms of.
Our expansion and diversification across different cities, our strategy of entering a new city with a pilot phase, thereafter followed by growth phase, is panning out reasonably well, as it has done in Pune in the past and is now scaling up in Bangalore. We believe that the top few developers will be present in the top few cities of the country, and the depth of their presence will improve the quality of the market as well as enable the consumer to get the best quality product irrespective of the city that they are living in. The strength and success of the developers will be driven by their process and operational capability and the ability to attract and retain talent, and we believe that Lodha has an exceptional advantage in that area.
This is evidenced by the growth in Pune, the scaling up of our team, as well as the fact that this quarter, Pune has—Bangalore, sorry, the growth in Bangalore and the scaling of the team there—and also reflected in the strength with which Bangalore contributed to the pre-sales in this last quarter. In terms of our townships in the extended eastern suburbs, we had about INR 5 billion of sales towards core data centers, and there were strong residential sales. At a broader level, we see that mid-income sales are trending across the various different markets that we see. Typical mid-income demand coming through, and that is heartening for us given the strength of fact that luxury and freelance sales anyway continue to perform well. On specific updates on Palava, the infrastructure progress continues to remain strong.
As you know, Palava will see the delivery of several transformative infrastructure projects over the next two years, including the Mulund-Airoli-Palava Freeway, the Navi Mumbai International Airport, as well as the Bullet Train. The Mulund-Airoli Freeway is progressing well with partial, and we expect it to be significantly operational in this fiscal year. We also note that the Navi Mumbai International Airport is expected to start becoming operational for commercial flights this calendar year, and both of these are quite positive from Palava's perspective. By the end of this decade, Palava will transform from being a peripheral suburb of Mumbai to a core suburb. The Bullet Train connectivity, which will make Palava less than 30 minutes, less than 20 minutes from VKC, before the end of the decade, will of course be a landmark transformation.
Of course, there are other projects, including the 100-meter-wide multimodal corridor from [Virat Kohli Alibaug] , as well as the two metro lines which are passing through Palava. Thus, all in all, the infrastructure benefits to Palava continue to remain quite strong and are now visible on the horizon. To enhance the value of the residential development in Palava, we are consciously premiumizing the location. Last fiscal, we launched three neighborhoods: Lodha Golfview, Lodha Hanging Gardens, and Lodha Opulis, which are at a premium to the existing lower mid-income neighborhoods. This quarter, we launched a new villa neighborhood in Palava with ticket sizes of INR 50 million and higher for the land and the villa, which also received a good response and takes us a step further in our journey to premiumize Palava.
The premium segment contribution in Palava for FY25 to the 20%, and this will keep growing towards 50% by the end of the decade. Contributing both to a new segment of sales as well as higher blended margins. Today, there is a significant gap in pricing between any core suburb of Mumbai compared to Palava. As this infrastructure plays out and we continue to invest towards build-out of the internal infrastructure as well as quality of life, we expect that Palava will deliver INR 80 billion of annual sales by the end of the decade with EBITDA margins approaching 50%. Lastly, an update on our warehousing and industrial leasing vertical.
There has been strong leasing traction with further leasing of about 0.2 million sq ft in this quarter to marquee names like Tesla as well as DP World, taking the overall lease area in this portfolio to 2.3 million sq ft. We now have an impressive list of clients, including Skechers, DP World, DHL, and Mitsui, operating in our parks. This is not only adding recurring income but also creating jobs, which benefits in various ways, including the local communities. The industrial and warehousing ecosystem in Palava has emerged now as a preferred destination for warehousing as well as light industrial spaces for high-quality companies. This quarter, we are increasing our stake in the DP World infrastructure platform in line with our strategy to grow our annual income to INR 15 billion by the end of the decade.
Against this, we already have visibility for just under INR 12 billion from the existing assets. Before I conclude, an overview on the P&L. As you may recollect, we have adopted the progressive percentage completion methodology for accounting of all pre-sales done from April 2023. For sales done prior to April 2023, the project completion methodology continues to be in existence. We are now in the midst of the transition period, and we expect this transition to be fully complete by the end of fiscal 2027. In terms of the numbers, our revenue from operations came in at just under INR 35 billion, with a year-on-year growth of about 23%. The adjusted EBITDA for the quarter was INR 12 billion, growing at about 25%. The adjusted EBITDA margin was at about 34.4%.
This is an important point to note because the equivalent number in Q1 FY25 was 33.7%, which shows that our margin continues to grow on a reported basis as well as on an embedded basis. Our quarterly PAT came in at about INR 6.8 billion, growing 42% year-on-year, and our operating cash flow was at about INR 9.5 billion, growing about 50% year-on-year. With these updates, on our request, my colleague Sri Rajendra Joshi, CEO of the Bangalore business, to speak to you about our Bangalore growth phase. Thank you, and over to you, Sri Rajendra Joshi.
Thank you, sir. Good afternoon, everyone. I would spend a few minutes talking about the Bangalore market. The total residential real estate market in Bangalore is estimated to be about INR 80,000-85,000 crores, growing at about 19%-20% CAGR since 2021.
The growth has been driven both by volume and price, with prices increasing by 10%-15% in the recent past. Supply, however, has not kept pace, and as a result, the inventory overhang is reclining. It is currently at about 12 months, and it has been at the same level for the last three years. The growth has been driven largely by the salaries in some customers, essentially from three sectors. First, the IT, where Bangalore has been based for large MNCs and Indian companies like the likes of Google, Microsoft, Wipro, Infosys, etc. Second, startups, both late-stage and well-funded early-stage ones, and those in consumer sectors like Swiggy, Ola, Razorpay, etc. Many of these startups also have gone the ICO route, and that benefit has trickled down in terms of real estate purchase.
Third, the global capability centers, or the GCCs, which have driven the office space at Broadstone in Bangalore, have also been a large contributor to the growth of real estate in Bangalore and the residential space. Overall, the market is growing in the higher end of the spectrum, with the units above INR 2 crores having contributed to about 30% in the last year's sales. This clearly indicates premiumization of the market towards the higher end. Looking ahead, we've seen strong job creation, strengthened investor confidence in the startup ecosystem, and many ongoing infrastructure developments, such as the upcoming North Bangalore Metro line and the Satellite Town Ring Road, are expected to be key catalysts for the continued residential growth in the city.
Now coming to our journey in Bangalore, we launched our first project in Bangalore, Lodha Mirabel, located next to the Manyata Business Park in North Bangalore in November 2023. Since then, our journey in the city has been marked by strong momentum and rapid growth. Over the last two financial years, which we consider as our pilot phase, we recorded a cumulative sales of over INR 1,900 crores. As we transition into our growth phase in the coming years, we see a huge opportunity to be a significant player in the premium segment at scale. During that pilot phase, our focus was largely on laying a strong foundation on two key philosophies: the people and the brands. Talking about the people, building a high-caliber core team in Bangalore, combining the expertise of seasoned Lodha associates from Mumbai and Pune with new talents from the Bangalore market to Vodafone.
This blend of internal experience and local market knowledge, supported by continuous guidance from our head office, has enabled the new hires to quickly align with the Lodha way of working, ensuring smooth and consistent execution across the value chain. Second, on the brand side, establishing Lodha as a premium brand in Bangalore, both through the strength of our product and the quality of our customer experience, was another focus area. A key strategic decision during this phase was to build and showcase the clubhouse in our first project at Lodha Mirabel, even before the project launch. This served as a live demonstration of the quality Lodha brings to its development and is now viewed as one of the finest clubhouses in the city.
Additionally, we have placed strong emphasis on delivering a superior customer experience at our sales galleries, creating service standards that are unheard of in the Bangalore market. This has led to a positive word-of-mouth both in the market and has reinforced our premium positioning. In addition, two factors I believe have helped us scale rapidly. One, we have built a team of subject matter experts in each of our functional areas, be it design, marketing, procurement, over a period of time at our head office in Mumbai. This team helps the regional teams to absorb the Lodha way of working rapidly and supports the rapid scale-up. Two, our internal systems that are built on a strong foundation of processes and policies help us in moving up rapidly in a new location.
These, together, have not only helped in Bangalore scaling up, but I believe will help us in any future expansion in any new market that we enter. Thanks to our focus on products and our customer experience, brand Lodha has been received positively in the Bangalore market. Both customers and landowners now recognize us as a trusted premium developer. This positive perception has also enabled us to expand our footprint, as Lodha was mentioning, going from two projects in FY2024 to five in the last financial year. The new targets include two in the new high-growth Southeast corridor of Bangalore and the large 70-acre project in North Bangalore, which has a pipeline of over INR 10,000 crore over its target lifetime. As we scale, our strategic focus remains on premium and luxury development.
We continue to actively evaluate land parcels that align with these criteria to maintain a healthy project pipeline. High-growth North, East, and Southeast corridors of Bangalore remain our priority, and we continue to explore opportunities closer to the heart of the city for luxury development. From our people's standpoint, we have scaled up significantly. From a team of about 100 associates in the beginning of FY2025, we are over 200 plus as of today across various functions. We expect this number to double over the next 12 months in line with our growth expectations. As always, we will continue to leverage support from our head office, as I had mentioned earlier, while depending on the strong core team in Bangalore to lead and deliver this next phase of expansion in the growth phase in Bangalore. Thank you very much.
Thank you, Joshi. Avinath, we can open the floor for Q&A.
Thank you very much. We will now begin the question and answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may please press star and one or get a show on the telephone. If you wish to remove yourself from the question queue, you may please press star and two. Participants are requested to answer by asking a question. Ladies and gentlemen, we'll wait for a moment while the question queue is up. Participants who wish to ask questions may please press star and one at this time . The first question is from the line of Puneet from HSBC. Please go ahead.
Yeah, hi. Hello, can you hear me?
Yes, please go ahead with your question.
Yeah, my first question is, you know, if you can comment a bit more on the pricing front in the current market, what kind of growth are you seeing?
We talked about a 2% like like here. Are you likely to see similar growth as last year, or do you think the pricing trajectory has changed a bit?
Hi, Puneet. We shared our outlook for price growth at the end of the last fiscal, and we continue to maintain that our price growth will be in that range of 5%-6%, which is somewhat higher than last year.
Understood. And secondly, on the land sales pipeline. Do you have a decent pipeline for you to ensure that land sales continue on a year-on-year basis, or you think it can be very, very one-off times?
Please, we think that the land that we are selling for specific users, including data centers and residential industry, is a recurring and predictable part of our business. The land, which is acquired by the government sometimes for infrastructure projects, that obviously is unpredictable and one-off.
But what we are doing for data centers, industrial use, or bus uses is something which we see good pipeline of, and we see that as a predictable part of our business.
That's it. Thank you so much for all of this.
Thank you.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Abhinav Sinha from Jefferies India. Please go ahead.
Hi. So thanks for taking my question. Couple of [questions, One] . On the sales growth, I understand that second half is going to be much stronger. Which are the markets where you see this contributing? Because we think Bangalore already off to a very strong start. That is one. And second question is on Bangalore. Within that, how are you differentiating on product? Because we already see a lot of strong developers out there. Thank you.
Hi, Abhinav. Thank you for your question. So in terms of.
Across the different micro markets within Mumbai, Pune, and Bangalore that we operate in, we believe that the sales growth is expressed quite well across the board. There is not any one particular launch or one particular project that we are dependent on delivering our overall growth to about INR 210 billion. That is how we like it. We see good demand as well as the availability of our supply in South Central Mumbai. We see, as we have discussed earlier in this call, significant scale-up in Bangalore. We see continuation of the positive momentum in Pune. Our township business is standing well because of the overall infrastructure benefit we have, as well as the pickup in mid-income demand aided by the factors that we discussed.
This full year will not see too much benefit on the infrastructure side because the Mulund-Airoli-Palava Freeway will only be operational towards the end of this fiscal year. Even in spite of that, there is good momentum there. It is quite broad-based in our view, with no one particular outlier.
Okay. The second question on the Bangalore side, if you can help.
Go ahead, Abhinav, please.
Y eah. Okay. My question is how you are differentiating on the product itself. I mean, are you looking to have more of smaller ticket size, larger ticket size, anything between that?
Abhinav, I do not think that we are needing to differentiate in a way which is driven by some size of unit.
I think our differentiation lies in our product detailing, our design of the product, both inside the unit and outside, and our overall package of product as well as service, which together is what people see in our brand. Bangalore obviously has some very good developers, and they continue to do well. I think there is a space above them for the quality of product that we do, as we have shown in the pilot phase, that the market is willing to pay the premium for it, and there is good velocity associated with it. We tend to focus on homes between INR 1 crore -INR 5 crore , with a particular emphasis on homes between INR 10 crore-INR 30 crore, but with a higher cost per sq ft price.
As Joshi was mentioning, we are now in the process of launching one of our larger developments in Bangalore, which will be spread over 70 acres and offers products in an upmarket manner, with a very convenient location close to the airport, as well as a lot of good social infrastructure. That, I think, will really augment what North Bangalore has seen in terms of quality of development. Our focus, and that is not a Bangalore thing, across the board is on doing sort of the best quality product and marrying that with our high service standards to deliver a superior living experience to our consumers.
Just one last question, if I can quickly ask. Slide 57 of the presentation where you have the cost inflation. I believe this number was higher in the March quarter. Basically, you're saying costs have come down on a QOQ basis?
Joshi, would you like to comment on that?
Yeah. Yeah, Abhinav. That's right. I mean, the composition issues, it's a function of numerous items in the composition, right? While there are a few items which end up being high, there are equally offsetting numerous items which end up offsetting. On the whole, if you see, it has slightly come down because of the composition of the total overall construction cost. Okay. This seems to be holding as a trend, or you wish to see some change here? Frankly, obviously, commodities, we all know that commodities go up and down. Numerous nuances are always there. If the U.S. exports on the steel side get restricted with the duties on board, there lies the potential that perhaps domestically prices may go down further.
Nonetheless, the important point is, on the whole, we continue to see, without really specifically talking about a single composition or a constituent of the cost, that on a CAGR basis, the cost continues to be reasonably controlled in terms of the inflation. The impact is generally on a CAGR basis end up being less than 3%.
Okay. Great. Thank you. Yeah.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Abhash Gupta from the MORA. Please go ahead.
Hi. Am I audible?
Yes, please go ahead.
Hi, sir. Thank you for taking my question. Sir, my first question was with respect to your strategy in Delhi. Could you give us some understanding as to what kind of business development you are planning to do there and when are you planning to do any launch there?
Delhi NCR is an important market for us to get into.
We obviously, as have done in Pune and Bangalore, will only enter in a gradual manner. We will be starting off with a pilot phase with a moderate number of projects and a moderate development investment with a view to understand better how the market operates and how we build out the supply chain for operations as well as sales. Our focus in this field is first and foremost on building our local operating team. We expect that we will conclude one or more land transactions, either on a joint development basis or otherwise in the course of this financial year and hope to launch in the next financial year. Obviously, at this stage, the details are limited. We will provide a more detailed update once the first land transaction is concluded.
Got it. Got it, sir. Sir, my next question was with respect to your Bangalore strategy.
There was some news with respect to IT slowdown. Obviously, you have done very well in Bangalore. Do you think this IT slowdown is fully playing out and then impacting your Bangalore sales? How are we trying to hedge ourselves against that?
I would like to use this question to emphasize that an economy is a sum of various different sectors performing in different ways. When IT was growing at 20%, 25%, 30%, it did not mean that real estate sales were growing at the same level because obviously, there is a composition effect. Vice versa, if some particular sector, for example, IT, is going to have a slowdown for whatever reason, we are not experts in that field. It does not really take away from the fact that India is a broad-based granular economy.
As a company, we have set ourselves not to be over-focused or overexposed to any one sector or, for that matter, any city or location. That broad-based strategy, we believe, allows us to have the predictable growth that we have been talking about. We watch all of this with focus. I try to understand better. As I was mentioning in my initial remarks, the factors that in the month of July were averaging for non-launch sales, about INR 275 crore a week. That really gives you a sense if you take that INR 275 crore number moving towards INR 300 crore in the course of the next six months, you are talking about INR 15,000 crore-plus of sales coming just from our non-launch on a steady week-on-week basis. That really is the differentiation and strength of our business. We believe that the Indian economy overall is quite resilient.
The GCC numbers continue to add up. While you are seeing some slowdown in the IT companies, the GCC is now probably employing 2 million or more people, and that is only growing. Something goes up, something goes down. If we are the most sought-after brand, if we have the operating breadth as well as the locational breadth, we think we are able to capture more and more of the demand. Ultimately, you have to note that we are delivering, we are selling 7,000 homes a year, which is just, in unit terms, a little over 1% of overall volume in the country, and in value terms, probably 2%-2.5% of overall value of residential sales in the country. There is a long, long way to go before we penetrate in any significant manner.
That allows us to deal with these sort of ups and downs of some parts of the economy quite reasonably. I think the big picture is that real estate in India is at the start of a very long-term upcycle as India moves from low income to mid-income. There may be some days or some months or some quarters which are weaker. That is the broad direction. As long-term, as our investors, who we generally see as long-term, we hope that as long as we are performing on the ground, these aberrations are not really. Coloring their perception of the big opportunity that housing in India, particularly from the top three to five brands, offers.
Got it. Got it, sir. Actually, one final question from my side.
So basically, this quarter, we had launches of roughly INR 83 billion, which is quite strong in the sense that we had INR 30 billion of launches in the first quarter of last financial year. So. But our PTOs growth was just 10%. Is it the sweet thing that it sells to was not strong enough, or the reason was mainly because of the geopolitical tensions in the first two weeks of the quarter?
Obviously, we have not seen anything outside our projections panning out on the ground. As I mentioned, July also continues to remain quite solid. We are not seeing anything which we would not have otherwise seen.
If you take those two weeks and you multiply it by the VP non-launch rate, that is about INR 400-500 crore of lost sales. We will make it up in the course of the year, but if you were to just look at it at a quarterly basis, that is the difference between 10% and 20% growth for the quarter.
Got it. Got it, sir. Very clear, sir. Thank you so much and best of luck.
Thank you.
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, in order to ensure that the management is able to address questions from all participants in the conference, please limit your questions to per participant. The next question is from the line of Kunal from Bank of America. Please go ahead.
Great. Thank you. Abhishek, I wanted to follow up or better understand a couple of your opening comments.
The first one was you were talking about revival in urban growth being led by real estate as we look forward into next year. Is this sort of more predicated on your view that supply would stay bottlenecks and that should sort of normalize from here? Or was it more to do with the fact that as the benefits of lower rates and inflation start to percolate down, that would boost sales?
Kunal, I think that environmental bottleneck, which we are seeing, is highly likely to get resolved this quarter. Obviously, whatever negative draft that has had on supply will get addressed. I think the broader point is that we have had a slowdown last year. The factors, you all understand better than we do. We are coming out of that slowdown through. We have had improvement in fiscal spend. We are getting more support in monetary policy.
In this kind of rate-reducing environment, typically real estate demand sticks up. That is what we are starting to see initial times of in the mid-income segment. Hopefully, in the second half of the year, we will see some good, meaningful numbers coming out of it. But when you multiply or sort of add that on to the fact that real estate has such a strong multiplier to the economy, both in terms of direct employment, supply chain employment, and equity wealth creation, plus homeowner wealth creation, it's understandable, and I would say something which one can foresee that as real estate sticks up, it will have a positive impact and therefore raise overall economic growth.
Got it. Understand. The other one was this interesting metric that you gave us, weekly non-launch sales.
Abhishek, that trending up, does it apply just at a company level, or if you were to isolate just for the Mumbai trend, maybe do you think it would hold for the city as well? I'm wondering if this reflects your market share gained in cities outside of Mumbai or improving demand within the city itself?
Kunal, we haven't broken it up that way. Since you mentioned it, we'll also look at it that way, but we only look at it at the company level. I can tell you that sales within Mumbai are performing quite well. There isn't a situation that if your question was that are sales from Pune and Bangalore making good for some fall in Mumbai, the answer is no. Mumbai is also performing quite well.
Got it. Thank you.
All right. Thank you.
Thanks. Thank you.
The next question is from the line of Parvesh Rajeev from the VAMA Group.
Hi. Good afternoon, and thanks for taking my question. My question is regarding your comment about you seeing an improvement in demand in the mid-income segment. It would be great if you could provide some colors. I mean, by what do you measure in terms of improvement demand? Is it in terms of improving footfalls or conversion rate, etc.? The second part of the question is, I mean, let's go over the next one few years as we see more rates cut. Do we see the proportion of mid-income segment in our overall three years increasing? Will there be any impacts on our profitability margins because of this, either on the upside or downside? Thank you.
Hi, Parvesh. Thank you for your question.
What I mentioned was that we're seeing the initial signs of a pickup in mid-income demand. Obviously, it's very early and it will more be in H2 that we get more real data. What we are seeing so far is that as the rates, we've seen higher conversion rates, particularly in June and July, starting to come through as the mortgages have settled down. Still very early days. I can't give you a huge amount of color beyond that, but we are starting to see that. In terms of what it does to our margins, I think our margins overall across the company tend to be around that early mid-30s number. There isn't a significant variation by segment. Obviously, the cash margin in Palava and [Thane], the extended regional suburbs, is higher because of the fact that the land is all bought historically.
We may see some benefit in cash margins. I think over a medium term, over a two- to three-year term, we will also see some uptrend in overall margins because obviously, Palava margins are, as a mix, changing, also moving higher. Generally, on the margin side, as we've spoken even earlier, we see some upside each year going forward, partly driven by operational efficiency, partly driven by the upcycle out of the infrastructure and other factors in Palava.
Sure. Thanks, and all the best, Abhishek.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Pritesh Sheth from Axis Capital. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Thanks for the opportunity. Firstly, on the BD, we have always completed our full year targets. Obviously, short-term confidence on the market. What's driving your confidence on demand? Is it market itself growing?
Because since last one year, we have seen volumes at the list level mostly flattening out. Are you hoping that this will now grow? Because, as you said, because of supply concerns, its ability of top 5, 10 brands to create enough supply and take a share of that demand, that is driving confidence.
Yeah. I think there are a few questions within your questions. Do we remain confident about the overall nature of the demand? The answer is yes. As you can see from the performance of the key developers last year, it's very strong here. If you look at the numbers for this quarter, very strong. There's no reason why there could be any concerns about demand, especially for the top five developers.
I re-emphasize this point that the sales of the top five developers are supply-constrained, not demand-constrained, due to various factors, including the fact that consumers really want to upgrade their quality of life in a manner within a low-risk manner, and that's what the top five developers offer. That's one. Second, I think in terms of this, a lot of reporting around the fact that volumes have been flat last year. Let's be clear that you cannot look across the entire real estate spectrum and treat it with one aggregate number of overall volume. Obviously, there is a shift within the segment, and we've seen that the affordable housing segment has degrown, and there has been growth in the other segments. The affordable housing segment, which tends to offer the higher volume of units, has, because of degrown, that has degrown.
There's been a fall in the number of units there, but the rest of the segments have actually made good, which has been why there has been a unit growth has been flat, but value growth has been significant. It's really telling you where the growth is coming from. I think. It's important to do the analysis in value terms rather than just in unit terms because that's what you would do in most other categories. In terms of how we see things going forward, we continue to see strength in the premium and luxury segments over the next 12 months. As I mentioned earlier, we expect that in H2, there will be a pickup in the mid-income segment. We really don't operate in the affordable housing segment, so I have no comments on that specific segment.
Sure. That's helpful.
On Bangalore, the last project that we signed this quarter, 70 acres. Firstly, I wanted to know whether it's a JDA or an outright. If it's a JDA, I mean, there are a lot of developers, income developers vying for that market. Is Lodha? I mean, where is the preference for Lodha coming in in terms of what our brand brings to the table? Please give a highlight on that.
Yeah. The project is in two parts. There is about one-fourth of it as an outright version, and the balance, three-fourths, is a joint development. The reason for the Lodha preference, we believe, is the same as it is in the other cities. It is about the brand execution capability, the pricing, and the velocity at which we can sell, and the transparency at which we operate with our landowner partners.
There is confidence that we will generate the highest NPV, and it will actually get delivered to them. It's really about an operating style which gives a lot of confidence to landowners. As [Joshi] was mentioning, over time, as we have, over the last two to three years, scaled up in Bangalore, what was known in Mumbai and is getting more known in Pune is also now starting to get recognized in Bangalore that working with Lodha is a good experience for the landowner, and working with Lodha leads to fairly good economic value creation for the landowner.
Sure. Just last, in North Bangalore, it's also prominent for plotted developments. Will we be doing plotted development in this land parcel, or is it more of group housing and high-rise towers that we are looking at?
No, this is a very prominent location.
Plotted development obviously happens twice in Bangalore, but that's happening further away. Plotted development is a category which we thought we might consider going forward, but this is not a location for plotted development. It's a very attractive location and very well located, proximity to the airport, proximity to various tech hubs, and a lot of good social infrastructure.
Sure. Thank you. That's it from my side and all the rest.
Thanks.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Ashish Mendekar from JP Morgan. Please go ahead.
Hello. Am I audible?
Yes, please go ahead.
Yeah. Partly, my question is answered regarding JD and SIA markets. But have you thought down on the micro markets which you see opportunity in and any particular ticket sizes that you have targeting?
Hi, Ashish. No, we do not have that level of detail right now.
I think we are looking across the entire NCR to make sure that locations which are fit with our brand premium positioning and at the same time have attractive dynamics when it comes to supply demand and also profitability for us. We are looking across the board, and we will be able to provide a little bit more specific detail once the first land conversation is concluded. I think at this stage, it is just a directional thing that we expect to be entering in the NCR in the next 12 months.
Okay. Understood. Thank you.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Parikshit Kandpal from HDFC Securities. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Hi, Abhishek. My first question is on the launch pipeline for the rest of the year.
If I see total INR 13,300 crore is there on the new launches, and out of this, INR 3,000 crore is from MMR and Pune. In terms of NGT issues, how will this get impacted if there is a delay in the judgment from the courts?
Yeah. Pune is unaffected by the environmental issues. Thane and Pune were affected, but that has already been clarified, and those approvals are now progressing without any case center in the last, I think, about six to eight weeks. In Mumbai, I think the total value which is affected potentially by these environmental constraints is at about INR 3,000-INR 4,000 crore of launches for the year. That is the value which we expect will get unlocked for being open to launch in the second half of the year. That is the one which is currently impacted by it.
Okay.
The second question is on the total resales for the quarter of INR 4,450 crore. Out of that, how much was the contribution from the new launches of INR 8,300 crore?
Sushil or Sanjay, can you assist that response please? Okay.
Yeah. Around INR 1,500 crore was coming from the new launches. Is it like the impact of last year on the main issue or because this seems to be a very slow conversion velocity. Conversion of sales in sales?
No, we do not see it as being slow. Our business model is not this heavy launch, let's sell everything in one-go model, which puts a lot of pressure on profitability.
Our business model tends to be to sell about 40% of what we launch in the first 12 months. Therefore, if we launched INR 8,000 crore, we would expect to sell about INR 3,000 crore in the first 12 months from launch. This has been an average of 45 days out from launch. We find that it is very much in line. I think you will have to. Appreciate that our business model, to that extent, is quite different from some of the other developers who tend to benefit or want bigger launches. We like selling our product over time. We survive making sure that consumers are fully appreciative of our product. And we like to make sure that we are prioritizing ourselves for strong profitability. So this is very much in line with our standard expectations around launch.
Thank you.
Thank you.
There are no further questions from the participants. I now hand the conference over to Mr. [Rajendra Joshi] to record this.
Thank you, everyone, for joining the call today. I hope we've been able to answer all your questions. If you have any further questions or need any information, you may connect with the investigation team. Once again, thank you all for joining the call today.
Thank you. On behalf of Lodha Developers Limited, that concludes this conference. Thank you for joining us, and you may now disconnect your lines.