Ladies and gentlemen, good day and welcome to Matrimony.com Limited's Q2 FY2023 earnings conference call hosted by ICICI Securities. We have with us senior management of Matrimony.com on the call. Mr. Murugavel Janakiraman, Chairman and Managing Director. Mr. Sushanth Pai, Chief Financial Officer. As a reminder, all participant lines will be in a 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. Murugavel Janakiraman, Chairman and Managing Director of Matrimony.com. Thank you, and over to you, sir.
Thank you so much. Good evening, everyone. I hope all of you are continuing to stay healthy. After many quarters of good growth, we are seeing a tough quarter due to intense seasonality. However, we are confident of overcoming the challenge and move to double growth with our new launches and with our new focus on the customer side, and we are very confident of bouncing back on growth. Now let me come to the results. In quarter two, on a consolidated basis, we have achieved INR 109.1 crores in billing. This is a 2.2% year-on-year growth. Revenues were INR 113.9 crores, which is a 4.5% year-on-year growth. Key insights and highlights for the matchmaking business include the following. Billing was INR 106.6 crores.
It is a growth of 0.6% year-on-year. Revenue was INR 102.5 crore, growth of 3%. 112.5 crore, a growth of 3% year-on-year. We added 2.4 lakh paid subscriptions during the quarter. It's a growth of 8.3% year-on-year. EBITDA for the matchmaking business declined 6.4% quarter-over-quarter and 2.2% year-on-year. We reinvent our customer acquisition strategies. We continue to drive the impact that we bring for our customers. Let me state that we have created about 50,000 marriage successes in quarter two. Now coming to marriage services business. Revenue was INR 6.4 crore, a growth of 30.6% quarter-over-quarter and at 202.9% year-on-year.
Loss in the quarter was INR 3.3 crores compared to INR 3.4 crores in the previous quarter. Let me state some of the other milestones in the quarter. We launched RainbowLuv, an exclusive matchmaking app for LGBTQIA+ community to help them find their meaningful relationships. We launched EliteMatrimony, an exclusive matchmaking service for high net worth and professional professionals to enjoy find the match from the pool of their choice. BharatMatrimony won the Pride of India Awards, the Best of Best Awards 2022. Bharat Matrimony's , Adaai, and Shaadi won the WEMA Circle Awards, WEMA awards. On the billing and revenue outlook for Q3. Matchmaking billing to grow at single digits because of impact seen during quarter two. It takes one more quarter for us to bounce back.
We expect to bounce back to double-digit growth in quarter four, nine months. On the wedding services, the momentum is expected to continue. We expect to grow at a double-digit pace. The losses, however, will be at a similar level as that of quarter two. Let me now pass on to Sushanth Pai to comment on the key profitability items. Sushanth Pai, over to you.
Yeah. Thanks, Muruga. Our EBITDA margin for the matchmaking business in Q2 is at 23.1% as compared to 23.5% in quarter one and 29% a year ago. Marketing expenses are at INR 44.4 crores as compared to INR 43.5 crores in Q1 and INR 39.9 crores a year ago. Excluding marketing expenses, our margins in matchmaking are stable at 63%. On a consolidated basis, our EBITDA margins in Q2 are at 16.3% as compared to 17.6% in quarter one and 22% a year ago. Tax rate in the quarter is at 13.3% as compared to 21% in quarter one. The tax rate reduced, which is ETR, due to lower tax on realized gains on mutual funds which were redeemed to fund our buyback amount.
PAT is at INR 11.7 crores, a decline of 2.2% quarter-on-quarter and 29.3% year-on-year. Share of profit from MatchAstro is INR 12.5 lakhs. Net profit margin has been stable at 10%+ levels for the last four quarters. Return on capital employed annualized for the quarter is at 19.5%. We completed the buyback of shares extinguishment by August 26th 2023. The buyback cost, buyback taxes and expenses are accounted as reduction from the equity during the quarter ended September 30th 2022. The buyback program was successful with 759% subscription, and all the shareholders who tendered their shares were accepted for the buyback, which ended upon the proportion of shareholding. Since the promoter group did not participate, it added further to their entitlement.
On the outlook for Q3 margins, we expect Q3 EBITDA and PAT to be slightly lesser than the levels of Q2 due to the revenue impact of lower billings of Q2.
I would like to end with the customary safe harbor statement. Certain statements during this call could be forward-looking statements on the business. These involve a number of risks and uncertainties that could cause the actual results to differ materially from such forward-looking statements. We do not undertake to update any forward-looking statements that may be made from time to time by or on behalf of the company, unless required by law. Over to you. We can open some Q&A now.
Thank you very much. Ladies and gentlemen, we will now begin the question-and-answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may press star then one on their telephone. If you wish to remove yourself from the question queue, you may press star and two. Please again remember to use hands-free while asking a question. Ladies and gentlemen, we will wait for a moment while the question queue assembles. We take the first question from the line of Vivekanand Subbaraman, Ambit Capital. Please go ahead, sir.
Hi. Thanks for the opportunity. I have two questions. One is on the billing trends. It's well below the guidance or the aspiration that you have of double-digit growth. Muruga, you said that seasonality was particularly bad. I am just trying to understand this better because my sense was this segment, the online matchmaking segment was a fairly small part of the overall matchmaking activity that Indians do. In that context, why did seasonality hurt us so much? That is question one.
Secondly, as far as your strategy is concerned, couple of years ago, you had chosen to follow a path where you would segment your pricing based on the, you know, educational qualifications and the, you know, and also the place that the people are subscribing from. That was one of the factors that had led to transactions increasing to over two lakhs per quarter. But now it's stuck at that, right? Compared to last quarter levels. There's a small improvement year-on-year, but still you would argue that this improvement is definitely not something that would make you proud, right? Could you talk a little bit about the strategy that now you are following?
It's been two years since you followed that pricing-led, you know, the segmentation-led model to increase more transactions, but little success there. Thank you.
Thank you, Vivek Anand. Let me talk about seasonality first. The seasonality definitely has an impact on the matchmaking business because when people look at starting something on the matchmaking, these people do look into the auspicious period, and people, you know, come back after the lean in the matchmaking seasonal matchmaking process. Particularly in the South, we have something called Ashadam in Andhra, and the Aadi in Tamil, and also in North India, the Shradh period. This is, again, across the region. During that period, we definitely see that activity goes down.
Again, if I take a look at the last so many years of a trend, there are some years we are able to overcome because of different reasons. Either through launching something or during the period or some other factor that contributed. If you look at a historic trend, the Q2 always, you know, definitely lower than the quarter one. Looking year-on-year, this trend for whatever reason that the impact was severe. It was much more than what we had anticipated. This quarter definitely similarly suffered in terms of the customer behavior in terms of the profiles and the conversion elements. We definitely as people, it's black or white. It's definitely it's low part for the matchmaking business. It seems to go down because of reasons which already explained.
Again, as I said, the portfolio we had a severe impact on quarter two. However, I think things are definitely bouncing back. While this quarter we cannot hope for double-digit growth, the way things are looking, definitely in quarter four we can move to double-digit growth year on year. Coming to the pricing strategies. The pricing strategies are based on various things. We look at maybe education or socioeconomic status, various factors. We look at our sales data, the team was sort of subdued, but still we managed to increase the billing growth. Again, we're talking about from last year INR 3.2 lakhs increasing to INR 3.4 lakhs.
It's almost additional 20,000 new additions in a quarter. That's, you know, definitely good growth. You know, we continue to employ this pricing strategy because it's not harmed the customer experience. That's the right thing to do. However, while we definitely see that the state of affairs is moving up, in terms of compared to what it was in the past. However, we definitely can improve around this space, I'm sure.
Okay. That was helpful. Just one follow-up. Since seasonality had impacted our business very adversely in 2Q, would it not be fair to say that 3Q would be a strong bounce back, at least in billing terms, given that there would be some pent-up demand? Because going by your logic, you know, people seem to have postponed their decision of, let's say, signing on to paid matchmaking services because of inauspicious days and, you know, across the country. I'm just trying to understand if 3Q could be substantially better from a billing perspective. Revenue, I understand. Revenue growth will be subdued, I understand, because of weak billing in 2Q.
In terms of billing also, but in terms of revenue, we get some renewals. There's a drop in the revenue, and the billing and, it's also has some kind of impact on the which is the renewal part of the business. We get good portion of revenue coming from the people renewing their subscriptions. Definitely that impacts on the renewal side. Again, the pent-up demand, if some drop happens, if a bounce back happens, it's not maybe a strong, you know. The pent-up demand has always been, I mean, year-on-year the similar level of the growth, in terms of people coming back to the last involved. We expect this quarter also the growth, right?
We are certainly while we won't see a double-digit growth because of the recent challenges faced. However, we expect to move to double-digit growth only from quarter four onwards. If that happens, it happens. From the growth front, you know, that can be increased. First, conversion in the first half and then into quarter four we can move to double-digit growth.
Right. I'll ask one last question, which is on the business model itself. One of your competitors which is listed, they have chosen to follow a model where now they are moving to more freemium than what you currently offer, which is chat being free. They are trying to increase traffic for the category, right, for their site and of course be more relevant in the category. Separately, they are also investing in a serious dating website, indicating that you know they want to try multiple things here to get growth.
In that, or on those lines, is there something that you are also trying to do which can, because this segment is clearly growing much slower than what one would expect of a deeply under-penetrated online classified segment?
In terms of business model, we continue to remain what we are doing. We think it's the right way to do. In terms of the revenue drop has been the same across the market. It's not that we have seen any significant drop in any part of the market. As far as I think we continue to look at things, we are not seeing any impact. From business model, you know, the business model we have been operating as a leader and we think we continue the business model. In terms of the overall category growth, if you ask, yeah, we probably have been growing at, you know, 7%, 8%-15% year-over-year growth.
Again, while we are taking this through faster growth and we are taking some other initiatives, some of our strategies, you know, there are recently bounced back in the last several quarters, while Q2 was one of the quarters. We hope to bounce back, as you know, in the Q4 and more into digital growth. Yes, I agree with you that, well, there are some challenges because one of the reasons that this category is also under some regulatory conversations. We think that sort of things are quickly coming to a stage where we see that, you know, the company will have to continue.
Again, the strategies, the steps what we are taking, we believe that we should be able to move to a better growth in the coming quarters.
Okay, thank you and all the best.
Thank you, sir. We'll take the next question from the line of Prakash Kapadia from Anived Portfolio Managers Private Limited. Please go ahead, sir.
Yeah. Thanks for the opportunity. You know, we've seen the second quarter in a row, EBITDA has actually declined for us. If by looking at pre-COVID trends, revenues are much higher than, you know, pre-COVID. We are seeing advertisement expenses of almost INR 45 crore, which is much, much higher. What is leading to this increase, you know, despite, you know, we being industry leaders, shouldn't we, you know, drive, growth and manage our profitability by, you know, pricing revenue potential and cost management? You know, looks slightly confusing to me. Where are we heading? Ad expenses in a muted quarter are also so high. One would guess if sales or, you know, billings are weak, we could have or, you know, we should have ideally cut down on some of these expenditures.
What is driving this? You know, what's the outlook on ad spends in the coming quarters?
See the ad spend, we expect to continue at a similar level. While we understand that Q2 was one of the challenging quarters for matrimony to manage that market differently because again it could be the sort of dramatic change in the middle of the quarter. We know we done the right thing to do and continue the market different because sometimes the prophylactic decisions also helps in the coming quarter. Also don't want to further impact that this quarter which was already seasonally a weak quarter. Again, as I said, within the first second impact on quarter two. The weak quarter for matrimony and that impact was much more than what we had assumed for.
Overall, you know, the marketing spend for us will continue to remain at this level because, you know, we still have, you know, significant amount of brands to manage. It's also that the marketing spend, the competition continues to remain high. Important that we believe that, you know, continue to operate at similar level. While we are definitely, you know, working on our strategies and steps to drive the growth. Today currently it looks like the marketing probably remain at the sort of similar level. We now hope from now onwards to be able to drive the growth and, you know, the progress, the increase in building that translate to revenue will help us recover that margin opportunity.
Yeah, I think definitely, you know, this quarter was definitely a difficult quarter. However, we are confident of once we drive the growth and all that. However, the marketing spend remain at this level only. In terms of other costs, I think as a company we are definitely operating at a very efficient business. Continuing to look at, you know, the ways to optimize the cost and, that's always been the case. I think the important for us are in what we are working on is driving the growth now.
The only way to, you know, offset some of these higher ad expenses is to get higher revenue growth. Which at least, you know, you alluded the next quarter could be slightly, you know, challenging. Q4 onwards, like double digits, you know, revenue growth has to come in to offset some of these expenses. Otherwise profitability improvement could become a challenge in H2.
Yeah. Yeah, I think the growth definitely, you know, the revenue growth definitely move up, yeah.
From the revenue side, you know, you did mention some of the factors in terms of seasonality or, you know, some of the inauspicious days. Was it in south of India only, or this was witnessed in some of the other markets? You know, also you could give us some sense of what is happening, say north, west or, you know, non-south markets. What is competition doing or, you know, what are we sensing in some of the other markets except south?
No, I know the seasonality is across India. You may know that in north there is a period called Shradh. During that period people abstain from on not to do that. There are certain customers, not that you know everyone decide to you know take a break and all. During that period definitely you see that the profiles reach goes down because there are people who are really religious or sentimental about these things. That's a certain section of people. It's not that entire India or all the people across India. It's only certain sections of people. That's the reason why the drop is only a few%. Again, it's only during, it's not entire quarter.
It's Aadi nowadays for a month and Ashadam for a month. Again, it's across regions, certain pockets of some Hindus in India. It's very limited. Kerala and Andhra not too sentimental about these things. It varies from market to market, but some of the markets the sentiments are definitely very high. For us, the drop is not limited to any particular region. It's across India we've seen the drop. That's it. It's broad-based, and it's not one geography versus the other geography. That is the impact we felt.
Understood. Thanks. All the best.
Yeah. Goa is.
We're not able to hear the next question.
Hello?
Yes, please go ahead.
Okay. Hi, this is Salan, and I'm a JM Financial.
Yes, you are. Please.
Yes, sir. Sorry, there was a lag. Sir, I want to focus again on marketing and, pardon my knowledge of the business, but understanding some marketing perspectives that if you're considering H1- H1, your, let's say, marketing spend has gone up by, like whatever INR 12 odd crores-INR 13 odd crores, typically, common sense is that, we expect some like a 3x-5x kind of a ROI on the marketing spend. Hence, let's say the top line ideally would go up by, INR 50 odd crores- INR 60 odd crores. And then that's what has been. Just attending a sensitivity call essentially.
Now, I am just putting that common sense in here that if that is not expected or you see a softness in the market, there are two ways where you see maybe we need to change the channel or we maybe need to cut down the marketing budget. What's it gonna be if let's say your marketing budget remains the same as what it was right now, it doesn't go up and you generate more cash. Maybe your top line is not going up.
What you want it to be. Can you actually tighten your funnels on your marketing side? The ROI is actually, is that something which, on those lines, company I'm assuming it's a good thing, but I'm just trying to, I think, open a discussion that I look at to just understand how you guys think about it. That's part one of my question.
Today, when digital marketing spend is one of the largest and then most of the marketing spends are towards the brand side. The marketing spend has gone up on account of multiple things. One is, today we have multiple brands. And also, we've seen that in a category, spends have gone up substantially. Substantially, so that now we need to run different our marketing precisely to different leaders too. That led to the increase in marketing spends. You can guess why reducing marketing spends will have an immediate impact.
However, you know, if you don't differentiate our marketing reach or our leadership with the wave of increased marketing because in-category marketing spend has moved up now a bit. It can possibly have some kind of long-term impact on our business. Important things, you know, that even this category going through the kind of intense competition, spend has gone up. We actually prefer the marketing spend. While dropping the marketing spend proper, while the output/input may not be, it won't be bad. However, we believe that in the long run it's gonna have an impact on our business.
We have been told that, you know, we have to, you know, sort of operate at a certain level of visibility to ensure our ability to remain at level of leadership. That's why the marketing spend has gone up. Most of the marketing spend are the brand led marketing teams. Because when the digital mix has been increasing that today the good percentage of our marketing move to digital. However, large part of marketing spend continues to remain our brand building. As we progress when the competitive intensity or the marketing spend category comes down, that's why then we will be able to operate, you know, at a less marketing budget.
At this point of time, considering the category intensity or the marketing spend, it necessitates that we need to operate at a certain level of visibility on the marketing spend. Plus also add to the thing, we have multiple brands compared to other players in the market that also added to the increase in marketing spend. Maybe a couple year down the line, when the top line or growth comes to a certain level of marketing spend, then that time we will definitely be able to reduce the marketing spend.
If I were to just understand this now, just double checking on what you just said. Even branding can be done on a performance basis, if I understand the marketing correctly. Has our customer acquisition cost really gone up because it's not converting into similar offline growth delta? Is it true that our customer acquisition costs have gone up significantly, maybe year-over-year or over the last two, three years?
The good thing is Sonal, most of the customer acquisitions are organic. That's the strength of the brand what we are building. While acquiring millions of profiles and, most of the profiles are organic. What we don't make money on acquisitions. That's the strength of the brand. In most of the areas, the brand is synonymous with category. That's why you can see through the marketing source that it shows where we monitor ROI and other things. In terms of where the brand building was and the brand building can only happen. You know our category, we definitely see that, at this point of time, the paid acquisition is necessary. Again, as you see the things are changing. In India also things are changing rapidly in all the
It's always a companies. WhatsApp made digital. WhatsApp create new thing in all the things. Because marketing become also more challenging and complex as well. You know, five years ago, 10 years ago, marketing was TV plus. Today it's increasingly multiple channels, OTT, many things. Marketing definitely become a challenge now. However, as I said, because our brands are being so strong, the majority of customer acquisition are organic. Definitely look at the various things like digital acquisitions and ROI. Everything is necessary for acquisition. However, in terms of the TV spend, when it's putting money, it's not that, you know, you're going to get, you know, 600 million profiles and. We have to understand the difference. Look at that spend and how the ROI and basically those things are necessary in order to.
The right mix has been taken. While there's always going to be, and the brand building can be done only on digital. As you said, every time, we require the combination of TV plus digital at, you know, different product. Actually things have changed. Like I told you, things are changing. You know, we are sometimes need to contemplate what is the right mix of spend in all those systems.
I'm assuming a large part of your customers would be acquired online, right? More than 90% of customers acquired online. Is that correct in understanding? Or can you understand how the acquisition funnel works here?
No, it's completely 100% all digital. It's nothing like we have any offline acquisitions. Everything the customer need to either download the app or you know visit through online channels.
I'm sure this would have, and I think you do have physical outlets as well. I'm just trying to understand if the customer acquisition costs were cheaper in your physical outlets, or customer acquisition. Online, I think the customer acquisition costs have been going up significantly given COVID-
Yeah, that is right. That's a good point. You know, again, it could have been for us because we told you most of the profiles are organic, are not investing money on acquiring those profiles. However, we do spend money on digital. That includes our brand deals as well. Definitely the costs have gone up because there is an increased competition for our brand profiles. Costs definitely have gone up in the last couple of years because of the, I mean, the costs have gone up for the keywords and all that. Yes, definitely the cost of acquisition is quite common. However, physical outlet is not the integral part of profile acquisition.
People walking into physical outlet, they mostly go for paid transactions. The physical outlets are not meant for profile acquisition. They are mainly meant for customer acquisition or paid transactions.
Got it. Thank you, sir. Thank you.
Yeah.
Thank you, sir. A reminder to all the participants, anyone who wishes to ask a question, please press star and one on your touch-tone phone. We'll take the next question from the line of Vipin Sharma from MC Pro Research. Please go ahead, sir.
Yeah. Thanks for taking my questions. Two questions, if I may. First of all, on the marriage service segment, I think after the lockdown it's back at the pre-COVID levels, but revenue seems to be lagging a bit. Can you please provide some color on the progress on this segment, and what are the particular challenges you are seeing in this segment?
First of all, this segment definitely has been growing and we expect wedding services to grow at a steady speed. Now we are again seeing the benefits of the integration of ShaadiSaga into WeddingBazaar.com. We definitely seeing that the increase in traffic, increase in lead, increase in acquisitions. So the outlook for wedding services, the growth we expect to continue at steady speed. However, you know that we are still in a small part of our business, but it's growing at a healthy speed. So the losses will be at a similar level. If the growth continues this way, and we feel confident that, you know, we can deliver sustainable growth.
I think the losses. I think progress will come back.
Any challenges you're seeing in this segment?
I'm sorry?
Any challenges you are seeing from the competition in this space?
Oh, sorry. Yeah. No, competition, it's more of a process. I think challenges are. I mean, this category again is there are multiple service providers in this category. We have a makeup artist, photographer, et cetera. Again, the different service providers come up at different level. You know, some of the service providers, they rely more on online, so we were able to convert. Some other categories, the conversions have been challenged. Again, like I told you, it's not a single service provider. It's a multiple service provider. Service provider like a photographer or a makeup artist, and they are really unorganized.
Converting them online, it's fairly, you know, relatively easy and we see definitely good traction on that segment. However, some other categories within the wedding services like, say, jeweler or apparel and all, they're fairly established brands and they convert a good category. Some other categories like brands, it's not like they don't convert the likes of the photographer and all. Again, the multiple service providers try to convert at a different level. Again, this category has been evolving and we definitely have to do more and to increase the level of transactions, increase the renewal rate.
I believe you know it's a growing segment and we definitely see opportunity to continue to grow in this segment. While there are challenges, we are seeing progress and we feel that we improve and adapt those challenges. They're more of, let's say, progress you know any new business still in the early stages. There's a lot of work to be done and on the product side, service side, and on the engineering side. We need to improve on all these areas so the vendors get the benefits of being in a great number of wedding services and to enable to retain and be able to charge more actually progress.
Yeah, while there are challenges, but I will navigate. This business has been progressing well.
Right. The second question is, can you help us understand what kind of traction you are seeing with the Jodii app, paid registration? Any data would be helpful. Also on the high-end of the ARPU side, would like to understand how your premium subscriptions are doing. If you can again share some growth or the data, that would be appreciated.
Again, Jodii is in early stages and again, as a company, we don't give a breakdown of individual segments. Again, Jodii definitely is in the early stages. Again, we continue to experiment and test it. Second segment is, as you said, fairly progressing well. As I said, while we think definitely some, you know, kind of growth on that segment. Again, we as a company do not share at this point of time kind of individual segments for public view reasons.
Okay, thank you.
Thank you, sir. Participants, if you wish to ask a question, you may please press star and one on your touchtone phone. Participants, you may press star and one to ask a question. We can take question from the line of Vivekanand Subbaraman from Ambit Capital. Please go ahead, sir.
Thank you for the follow-up opportunity. Muruga, you have been raising concerns in the past with the government on Google's App Store policies. Now that the Competition Commission of India has ruled against Google, do you foresee any benefits for your business and the industry? Further, being a seasoned veteran in the tech space, would you be able to comment on the larger implications on the, you know, domestic tech space? That's one. I have one on the business also, which I'll ask after this answer.
Thanks, Vivekanand Subbaraman. It was a good verdict by CCI. The thing was, Google wanted to mandate was that the companies who are operating digital business in India, this is a service provider that means Google in-app billing system. What do you mean Google in-app billing system is that you have to pay certain percentage of transaction money to Google. It will vary from category to category. Google's interpretation or whatever, again, I'm not a lawyer, like, you know, category like that. It was 15%. The 50% billing will go to Google. Even otherwise that, you know, usually it was Google's mandate was that only we are using the Google in-app billing payment.
Later you can also use other service provider. However, if you use other service provider, you have to pay 11% commission. What he means is that suppose we use a payment aggregator like, say, Razorpay or PayU or other six-seven who also do the payment gateway. But that charges around, say, 2%. But again, Google in-app billing was 11%-15%. This is part, you know, obviously Google was completely the dominant in that in the Play Store space, because today almost 90% of the downloads are happening through the Google Android Play stores.
It will be difficult due to CCI because, you know, Google is rather insistent on this, companies offering digital services that they need to use only Google in-app billing or even otherwise they use other payment gateway, you have to pay the commission, all those things. This is more like a Google tax. You have seen that in other countries, it's kind of, you know, recognized as a monopoly and, it's a tax, a fine on Google and Google takes the tax. We have to see what Google can take. If Google will implement it, we have to implement it. There are other players, you know, kind of fighting against this one. Whatever the implementation, we have to do this. This is more like a tax on the company.
How the government tax comes, we are paying 15%. Who will want to tax 15%-20% of the revenue? Again, because only for the company operating digital goods category, obviously they cannot charge e-commerce companies and companies operating maybe some software or SaaS or Zomato. It's kind of conveniently, it is only for the company operating digital or like an ESP company or digital services company and all that things. Apple has been doing, I mean, the EU and Google tried to follow the similar thing. Globally there are so many, you know, cases going against both the companies in South Korea against Apple and Google that does not do that.
Again, it's a good learning opportunity for, you know, Google to have both Google and Apple come to lower the dominance to 20%-30% of company revenue. It actually transform into a tax. Actually, because we are an essential services. It's only limited to digital companies because they cannot charge similar type of revenue for other companies. I'm thankful that CCI now kind of made a good call. In fact, for Indian companies, we paid 13% of 30% of our revenue to Google. This only improves the cost of running the business, all that things.
I don't think that, you know, it's a right thing for Google to do that, you know, charging 15% of in-app billing just for keeping people to use the Google in-app billing or even otherwise take commission on using other payment company. It's also an impact on the Indian startup ecosystem. There are other startup companies are definitely against it, and they've been fighting for it. Thankfully, you know, kind of the CCI gave the charge to vindicate our stance on this one. Yeah.
Murugavel Janakiraman, thank you so much for the elaborate explanation. Does this have any bearing on your realization? If you can talk to us about the proportion of transactions that happen directly through the Google payment system or through the other billing modes that you could have used. Is this going to have any financial bearing on our business?
No, because we don't use Google billing payment system. We use various payment gateways, so that the commissions are ranging from 1.5% to 2%. There are no change for us. No benefit or no change because being the way we have been operating. By the way, every Indian company operating various payment gateways to complete a transaction, whether UPI or more, that transaction we make. We can definitely complete all the transactions through UPI mode. Again, it's around 2%.
Okay. My second and last question is, you know, you are running your matchmaking business profitably despite hyper competition, you know, resulting in depressed EBITDA and very high ad spends. Why not deploy more money in wedding services to chase growth? I mean, that business you seem to be targeting a category which is very, very underpenetrated, even more than your matchmaking business. Could you give us an update on the business model, you know, any metrics that you are tracking in terms of traffic or monthly active vendors or, let's say, the monetization there?
We are today India's largest wedding services marketplace. We have 1.5 lakh products today on WeddingBazaar.com. Again, the integration happened just you know couple of you know quarters you know yeah in the two quarters earlier. We are in the benefit of the integration and you know working on increasing listing, working on increasing the traffic. We want to get to the certain threshold or certain milestones of when we decide what we want to how do we want to take this business forward. Because we believe that whatever we have done we want to realize the the benefits of the integration. We believe that the you know we could able to drive the revenue from that. We believe we are operating.
Get closer to the profitability, then figure out what is the next course of strategy moving on. At this point in time, I think the plan is to drive the growth, get to the breakeven, then figure out, then work on profitability, then work on the next phase of growth and all that. Rather than investing much more on this category, because whatever investments we have now done good enough for the kind of growth what we are seeing now. As we say, let's wait or probably maybe talk more further down the line, then we can figure out what to be done.
Great. Thank you and all the best.
Thank you very much.
Thank you very much. A reminder to all the participants, if you wish to ask a question, you may press star and one on your touchtone phone. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may press star and one at this time. As there are no further questions, I now hand the conference over to Mr. Murugavel Janakiraman for closing comments.
Thank you all for joining this call and look forward to speaking with you during the quarter. If you have any questions, you can write to us. Thank you once again.
Thank you so much. Thanks.
Thank you. On behalf of ICICI Securities , that concludes this conference call. Thank you for joining us, and you may now disconnect your lines.