Hi, everyone. We are about to start. We have about 100 people with us now. Vivek, we can start the call.
Sure, thanks. Hi, everyone. Good evening and welcome to Info Edge (India) Limited Q2 FY 2022 financial results conference call. As a reminder, all participant lines will be in listen-only mode, and there'll be an opportunity for you to ask questions after the presentation concludes. Should you need any assistance during the call, kindly raise your hand on your screen. This conference is being recorded. Joining us today from the management side, we have Mr. Sanjeev Bikhchandani, Founder and Vice Chairman. Mr. Hitesh Oberoi, Co-Promoter and Managing Director, and Mr. Chintan Thakkar, Chief Financial Officer. Before we begin today, I would like to remind you that some of the statements made in today's conference call may be forward-looking in nature and may involve risk and uncertainties. Kindly refer to slide number two of investor presentation for detailed disclaimer.
Now, I would like to hand over the conference to Mr. Hitesh Oberoi for his opening remarks. Thank you, and over to you, Hitesh.
Thank you, Vivek. Good evening, everyone, and welcome to our Q2 FY 2022 earnings conference call. Trust you and your loved ones are safe and in good health. With the number of new COVID cases on a declining trend, thanks to the massive effort put in by the government in vaccinating people across the country, we are foreseeing normalcy return to our daily life gradually. That's good news. We will now talk about our quarterly financial performance and then, of course, we'll have time for Q&A. As always, the audited financial statements and other schedules, segmental billing revenue, et cetera, along with the data sheet, have been uploaded on our website, infoedge.in. We had an excellent quarter.
Overall billings in Q2 grew to INR 402.2 crore, up 61.3% over Q2 of last year and up 34% from Q2 of 2020. Revenue in Q2 stood at INR 351.7 crore, up 37.3% from Q2 2021, and up 11% from the pre-pandemic levels. Operating expenses for the quarter excluding depreciation and amortization were INR 245.4 crore, up 20% from Q2 2021, and 13% from Q2 2020. Operating EBITDA stood at INR 106.3 crore versus INR 51.6 crore last year, an improvement of 106% from Q2 2021 and 7% from Q2 2020. Operating EBITDA for the margins for the quarter stood at 30.2% compared to 21%.
20.1% for the same quarter last year. Operating cash EBITDA for the quarter stood at INR 165.9 crores compared to INR 45.7 crores last year and INR 82.5 crores in Q2 of 2020. During this quarter, our investee company, Zomato Limited, has come out with an IPO of its equity shares, and such shares were listed on NSE and BSE on July 23, 2021. We also participated in the offer for sale as selling shareholder and sold 49.3 million shares for a total consideration of INR 375 crores and booked a gain on sale of investments of INR 357.14 crores under exceptional items.
Effective listing date, Zomato Limited has ceased to be a joint venture that is a jointly controlled entity and hence has been reclassified as financial investment, which will be fairly valued at each reporting date in accordance with Ind AS 109. Accordingly, unrealized mark-to-market gain of INR 8941.2 crores till date of listing of Zomato has been credited to P&L through exceptional item. Unrealized gain of INR 7339.8 crores from date of listing till quarter end has been taken to other comprehensive income in accordance with one-time irrevocable option available under Ind AS. Therefore, sales revenue for the quarter stood at INR 561.2 crores as of September 30th, 2021 versus INR 370.17 crores.
INR 371.9 crores as of September 30th, 2020, an increase of 50.9% year-on-year. The cash balance of Info Edge including the wholly owned subsidiaries stands at INR 3,880 crores as of September 30, 2021, as against INR 3,325 crores as of September 30, 2020. One can see from the above numbers, the company has experienced remarkable billing growth in Q2 2021/2022. A similar trend was also observed in traffic and interactions across all our platforms. The growth trajectory in the recruitment business that started in Q4 of 2021 has carried on in this quarter as well. With the September 2021 Naukri JobSpeak Index reflecting almost 60% growth YoY, we observed improvements in hiring sentiment in both IT and non-IT industries.
While the index for IT and ITES vertical grew by 173%, index for other verticals like banking, insurance, retail, hospitality grew in the range of 40%-70% year-on-year. We also released our October JobSpeak Index recently, and the growth trajectory in recruitment across various verticals continues. The tech talent market remains very competitive, and it's posing a challenge to hire the best talent in the market for all companies. This is also reflected in our higher personnel cost during the quarter in our financials. We are also seeing a revival of the real estate segment post the impact of COVID-19 second wave that hit the country in Q1. There is sizable growth in loan books of all major home finance companies.
With low prices and higher personal income, the country is seeing a higher housing affordability index. You know, in fact it's the highest in the decade. Accordingly, the traffic on our platform in terms of new listings and user queries has also been showing encouraging trends. In Jeevansathi, we continue to invest in our brand and user experience. We continue to focus on increasing our share in the Hindi belt. During the peak of the second wave of the pandemic, the subdued sentiments didn't hamper the steady progress in the growing number of users and billings. We are also seeing more, you know, interest in our education portal from both students and institutes. We'll now talk about financial and other highlights of the recruitment segment.
In Q2 2022, recruitment segment billings were INR 291.1 crores, up by 73.9% from Q2 of 2021, and 39% from Q2 of 2020. Revenues were INR 56.5 crores, up by 40.5% from Q2 2021, and 13% from Q2 of 2020. Operating EBITDA for the recruitment business stood at INR 153 crores, up 52.3% from Q2 2021, and 23% from Q2 2020. Margins peaked at 59.6% versus 55% last year. Cash EBITDA for the recruitment business during the quarter stood at INR 192.8 crores, up from INR 85.4 crores reported for Q2 2021. Cash EBITDA margins were at 66.3% of billings compared to 51% in Q2 of 2021.
Recruitment numbers shared above are standalone numbers and do not include iimjobs, Zwayam, and DoSelect. iimjobs and Hirist had a year-over-year growth of 110% in their billing numbers, closing at INR 10.9 crores from INR 5.2 crores reported in Q2 FY 2021. Our recent acquisition of Zwayam also reported a quarter-over-quarter growth of 40% during the quarter. A wider and comprehensive recruitment offering ranging from Naukri Resdex to iimjobs, Hirist, and B2B offerings like Zwayam, RMS, and DoSelect to customers has shown promising sort of strength in the market. On the product front, we made significant investments in upgrading the foundation of the platform, which is essential to drive faster and scalable innovations in the future.
A lot of emphasis is now being placed on data classification and taxonomy, with new age industry companies building changes and adding new roles and changing the industry taxonomy on the platform. With these building blocks now in place, we expect our continued investments in the data science and UI/UX layers of the product to increase more and more stickiness going forward. Resdex renewal rates have been progressing since last quarter and are showing improvement. This quarter also witnessed a growth in Naukri India billing by 60% over Q2 of 2020. This is just the Naukri India, you know, corporate business that I'm talking about here. Because recruitment, just the recruitment segment consists of Naukri Candidate Services, Naukri Gulf, Quadrangle and as well.
The Naukri India enterprise or B2B business grew by 60% over Q2 of 2020, and at about 82% over Q2 last year. There's also, we are seeing a sizable uptick in sales of usage-based products in all our business in our business verticals. Of course, we also you know, rationalized discounts and upped prices on some products this quarter. This quarter also saw significant growth in new resume registration on the platform. We added an average of 19,798 CVs every day, up 20% compared to Q2 of 2020. Average CV modifications were 539,000 per day, up 20% YoY. Moving on to 99acres.
Billings in Q2 grew by 45.9% year-on-year to INR 68.1 crores, while revenue grew from INR 36.3 crores to INR 48.3 crores. Operating loss for the quarter stood at INR 21.9 crores against a loss of INR 7.2 crores in Q2 of last year. At a cash level, however, the business was cash neutral in Q2 2022 against a profit of INR 3 crores earned in the same quarter last year. The 99acres business also saw a strong recovery post-COVID second wave in Q2 in all business segments. Billings grew 204% over Q1. We had a strong momentum exiting Q2 as well. We saw daily listings on the platform grow 29% over Q1. Renewal rates bounced back this quarter and are back to pre-COVID levels.
There's a marginal change in the product mix, with few customers now focusing on upgrades and high-value services being offered on the platform. There's a problem which Hitesh is facing. He'll just join back. Hitesh, you're on mute now. Hitesh, you're on mute still.
There's some internet challenge we are facing. Hitesh will be back in a while.
Hitesh is back now. He's back. I was logged out. Can you hear me now clearly?
Yeah. Hitesh, we can hear you loud and clear.
Okay, thanks.
Hitesh, you have to repeat from daily listing on the platform grew by 29%.
99acres business saw strong recovery in Q2 in all business segments after a slow Q1. Billings grew 204% over Q1. We had good momentum exiting Q2 as well. We saw daily listings on the platform grow 29% over Q1. Renewal rates bounced back in the quarter and are back to pre-COVID levels. There's a marginal change in the product mix with few customers now focusing on upgrades and higher value services being offered on the platform. Overall responses on the platform grew well with growth in every category. Rental and commercial markets also recovered well, besides new home and resale. Our improved platform experience is helping generate more inquiries for our clients. New premium listings were launched for brokers in resale, rental, and commercial.
New home pages on desktop, new solutions for advertising and discovering co-working office centers are also rolled out in the quarter. Reviews and locality insights were further improved and scaled up in the quarter. We expect this momentum to continue, at least in the residential buy segment. Low interest rates for home loans, people looking for bigger homes, stamp duty incentives in some states will hopefully continue to aid residential home sales. Market is likely to remain affordable for some time. Now, of course, all this could change if real estate prices start going through the roof. Share of the online medium and overall advertising spend of builders will hopefully continue to increase as advertisers further realize the cost efficiency of digital versus the offline medium.
We will continue to invest aggressively on improving our core platform experience in all our business verticals within 99acres.com and in marketing our brand to further improve our competitive position. This space, of course, also a lot more competitive than earlier, thanks to a lot of money flowing into this sector. Jeevansathi billings declined marginally by 1.6% year-on-year in Q2 to INR 24.3 crores, and revenue grew 6.7% year-on-year to INR 25.4 crores. Operating EBITDA losses stood at INR 21.2 crores in Q2, down from a loss of 33.3 crores last year. Cash flow for Jeevansathi during the quarter stood at INR 21.7 crores against a cash loss of 32.7 crores in Q2 last year.
The surge of COVID cases in the country caused a slowdown in the initial part of the quarter. This, however, continued in the quarter, with many users putting off matrimony search in this period. Business continued to work, however, on product development with focus on improving verification mechanisms and smoother communication flows from the platform. Users are now offered increased privacy by allowing them to completely hide their contact details and encouraged to use on-site chat and voice video calls to connect with others on the platform. On the verification front, Jeevansathi now has 55% of the daily actives verified through a government-issued ID number. We now also offer newer ways for NRIs to verify their profiles, helping in improving their user experience. Moving on to the education business.
In Q2, billings grew 74.7% year-on-year to INR 18.9 crores, while revenue grew 60.8% year-on-year to INR 21.6 crores. We made an EBITDA of INR 5.1 crores versus an EBITDA of INR 0.9 crores in Q2 of last year. Shiksha exhibited strong growth in billing and collections in Q2. It has deepened its engagement. In Shiksha, we are working hard to deepen our engagement with private colleges and universities for undergraduate admissions as well, in addition to postgrad courses. We continue to invest in making our content more comprehensive, more student-friendly, more real-time, and in building the domain expertise. This should help us in generating even more responses for our customers going forward.
At the consolidated level, the net sales for the company stood at INR 364.07 crores versus INR 260.9 crores for Q2 of last year. For the consolidated entity at the total comprehensive income level, there is a profit of INR 13,805.5 crores versus a INR 331.8 crores profit for last year's same quarter. As explained earlier in our commentary on standalone financials, we hereby further clarify the impact of the listing and OFS on our consolidated financials. We have booked a gain on sale of investments in Zomato Limited for INR 357.14 crores under exceptional items. We have also booked an unrealized mark-to-market gain of INR 7,867.7 crores till date of listing of Zomato.
It has been credited to P&L through exceptional item. An unrealized gain of INR 7,269.36 croress from date of listing till quarter end has been taken to other comprehensive income in accordance with one-time irrevocable option available under Ind AS. Adjusted for the exceptional items, PBT stood at a profit of INR 66.6 crores in Q2 2022 versus a loss of INR 31.6 crores in Q2 2021. Thank you. We are now ready to take any questions that you may have.
Thanks, Hitesh.
Hi, everyone.
Thanks, Hitesh. We'll now begin the Q&A session. Anyone wishes to ask a question, raise your hand on the screen. We'll take your name and announce your turn in the question queue. Anand, you may start the Q&A now.
Yeah. First question is from Nitin Jain. He's a private investor. Nitin, go ahead and ask your question.
Yeah. Thank you for the opportunity. My question is related to the recruitment business. Do we see any business model or any new-age business coming and threatening the traditional hiring, you know, business, wherein it is more passive, as in, the applicant goes onto the Naukri website, uploads his resume, and then, you know, if the recruiter is interested in the applicant and they reach out to him or her? A follow-up to that is, like, what kind of a threat do we see from apna.com? You know, which is seeing, like, super growth numbers recently. Thank you.
To answer your first question, that's what actually happens in Naukri today. People upload their resume, recruiters contact them, right? It's not just a job application platform. About 70% of our revenue comes from our database product, which operates the way you mentioned, right? Of course, we are throwing more and more AI and machine learning at the problem to improve the experience for both job seekers and recruiters so that they don't have to spend a lot of time searching like earlier. To answer your second question on Apna. To answer your other point you raised, do we see a lot of threat from startups and other verticals? You know, well, not much has changed in the last few months.
Of course, there are a bunch of startups like always trying out new things. We also are trying to disrupt our own model internally. We've been investing in Job Hai and, you know, BigShyft inside the company. We're trying to build new products to see how we can sort of change the experience for job seekers and recruiters. Early days for many of these companies, and nothing material to report on that front, at least at this point in time. The threat, I mean, the competitive situation has not changed dramatically for us in the last few quarters. The same, I mean, LinkedIn and Google, these continue to be other big guys in the market.
As far as Apna is concerned, well, Apna is, I think they're targeting the blue-collar markets, while we, the Naukri business operates more on the white-collar space. I think it's still early days for them. I mean, I don't think we are sort of, we see them as competition as yet, but of course, they have raised a lot of money, and I'm sure they're trying to sort of, you know, build a good product. Early days, we don't see them as competition at the moment, at least in the space in which we operate.
Okay. Just if I can dig a little deeper on the hiring business. What you mentioned about JobHai or, you know, filling the white spaces in this business. My point is a little, you know, a step further. Do we see any disruption coming to this business? How are we preparing for that?
Like I said, we are continuously, w e have a very strong product development team in-house, and they keep working on, you know, making changes to the platform. They sort of improve the experience of both job seekers and recruiters. We continue to experiment with a bunch of things. One is, of course, we've acquired some startups. Like, you know, I mentioned we have a recruitment assessment business now. We have a software business, Zwayam . We have DoSelect. We acquired iimjobs some time back.
Inside the company, we've been investing very aggressively in improving the platform experience in Naukri by throwing more and more machine learning and data science at the problem, you know, to provide better recommendations, better alerts, improve our search quality, improve our data quality on the platform. These are areas in which we've invested. We also, you know, a place where you can research information on companies. You know, there are lots of reviews, salary data, interview questions on AmbitionBox. Our First Naukri business also had a good quarter. It grew at more than 100%, last quarter, year-over-year. There's a bunch of things we are doing inside. We are experimenting with, we are test launch.
We test marketing sort of Job Hai, which is our blue-collar platform in the NCR market. If the results are encouraging, we'll roll it out nationally. We are trying to build a digital agency platform through BigShyft. You know, early days, again, we are experimenting. So, you know, we have a huge team working on sort of some of these things inside the company. Outside, you know, of course, there are a bunch of startups, and they are trying out various things. Has anybody become very large? Answer is no. I mean, there's nobody who's even, I think, even 5% of our size at this point in time, s tartups I'm talking about.
You know, so outside our competition continues to be mostly LinkedIn and the other established players who've been around for a while. Of course, things could change five years, three years, four years, five years, who knows?
Of course, yeah. That's very helpful. Thank you.
Thanks, Nitin. Next question comes from Vikram, from Ambit Capital. Vivekanand, go ahead and ask the question.
Hi, am I audible now?
Yeah, Vikram. Go ahead.
Thank you very much for the opportunity. How should one see the recruitment billing in light of your previous commentary of a more evenly spread out collection for this business post-COVID? I mean, Hitesh, what I'm trying to get at is what is the trendline growth now for this business as it appears now that we are past the COVID challenges? That's my first question. Second one is on the AIF book. Could you give us an update on how much corpus has been deployed till now? And any thoughts around, you know, increasing or decreasing the size of the book? Given that, you know, the deployments we've been seeing news reports that deployments have been happening quite frequently. Thank you.
Yeah, let me take the first question. You're absolutely right. See, last year we had a muted Q2 because of COVID. I think recruitment billings were down maybe 13%-15% last year. On the back of that, of course, the growth this quarter looks very, very solid. You're right in saying that Q3 was a normal quarter last year. You know, last year, Q3 was, I think, flattish over Q3 2020. If I just sort of extrapolate, growth should slow down in Q3. Year-on-year growth should slow down in Q3 compared to Q2, unless of course the recruitment market gets worse in the sense or it gets even better from our standpoint. It's a red-hot market right now.
We saw, you know, a lot of our growth in Q2 was driven primarily by the IT market recovery. Now what we are also beginning to see are some green shoots in the non-IT markets. Even attrition rates are growing in other functions, talents are getting harder to find, salaries are going up. I think if the market goes crazy in the other verticals as well, then all bets are off. Yes, otherwise year-on-year growth should slow down compared to last year, compared to last quarter in Q3, because the base will be higher. It's very hard to say, I mean, right now what's how it's actually gonna play out.
I think the second part of the question on the AIF?
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah. Thanks. Look, we have no announcements to make right now except to say one thing that, look, we remain committed to investing and we continue investing. As of now, what is the status of the first fund? You know, we are not making any announcement right now. We have seen from the Zomato and PolicyBazaar experience that look, it does pay, it is profitable, it creates value for shareholders, it gives us good return on our investment. Therefore, we continue to stay committed to the course of investing and investing judiciously. As and when this fund is fully invested or at least some of the first checks, we will evaluate our options.
I just wanna make one more point. You know, all the comments I made were with respect to billing growth, right? Because in our business the billing, you know, revenue growth is different from billing growth as you were seeing this quarter as well. Billing growth may slow down, you know, vis-a-vis Q2, but revenue growth may still be better because we recognize revenue with a lag. Let's see how it plays out going forward.
Thank you very much for the color.
Thanks . Next question comes from Swapnil Potduke of Kotak Mutual Fund. Swapnil, go ahead and ask your question.
Yeah. Thank you. Just wanted to delve a bit deeper on 99acres. Given, you know, lot of competition which is happening, going ahead also we would be spending more on keeping and taking away the market share, like that's what I'm assuming.
You're right. I mean, it's a very competitive market and the market is also likely to grow faster going forward and there are many more players and there are money flowing in. There are also. It's not one, just one segment anymore. 99acres is, you know, new homes, there's resale, there's rental, there's PG, there's commercial. So there are various sort of sub-segments and sub-sub-segments within the larger sort of real estate overall, within the overall real estate umbrella. We are likely to invest more and more in marketing going forward in this market.
Perfect. Perfect. All the best.
Thank you.
Thanks, Swapnil. Next question is from Sudheer Guntupalli from ICICI Securities. Sudheer, go ahead and ask your question.
Yeah. Thanks, Hitesh, thanks for the entire team for giving me the opportunity to ask the question. My first question is on the margins part. Of course, we have seen margins trending up significantly because of the strong growth that we have seen in this quarter. Hitesh, how do you look at the margin trajectory now? Do you think that it has more or less peaked out? Or if the job market continues to be very vibrant and growth continues to be very strong like we have seen in the current quarter, there is still some more headroom for recruitment segment margins to inch up?
You're right, it depends on growth. You know, so if the market continues to remain red-hot and we, you know, I mean, then, you know, margins will only improve. If things start stabilizing a bit, then margins should, you know, stabilize or sort of maybe inch down a little bit going forward. It'll depend on growth from here on.
Sure. There is no thought process around margins more or less fluctuating or peaking out or anything of that sort in this segment?
See, we don't really target margins. We basically, you know, set targets for sales growth, then we, you know, invest in product development, and then margins are a result of what happens in the end as you know, when we go to market. It's not as if we have a target margin in mind which we want to maintain as a company. We don't work like that.
I'd like to add something there. See, you gotta understand that one is, if the market red-hot, it's good for our sales. It's not so good for our wage bill, it's not so good for our own employee attraction, retention, attrition. Therefore while sales may go up, so will to some extent our costs.
Mm-hmm.
Because you know wages are one of our biggest costs. Where the balance is, we've got to figure that out and, as Hitesh said, we don't target margins.
Yes, sir. And Hitesh, just an extension to that. In 99acres, how do you read the margin trajectory? You know, if I were to marry the one of your previous comments about the higher intensity of investments in marketing and sales. If growth continues to be strong, how can we expect the margin trajectory to be in 99acres?
I don't know. See, it'll depend on competition to some extent. It'll depend on what opportunities we see for ourselves in the long run. Again, like we're not targeting margins. We are, you know, if tomorrow we have to lose INR 20 crores a year in 99acres to make stuff happen, we will lose INR 20 crores a year. You know? And on the other hand, if it's not required, it's not required. I think the long-term game in any internet business is leadership, and I think we have to do whatever it takes to establish and retain leadership in all the segments we operate in if we want to stay in the game.
Sure. Just one last question on the 99acres part. Recently, of late we have seen very increased aggression from Square Yards, and they're talking about offering an end-to-end product suite or, let's say, enabling transactions on the platform vis-à-vis, you know, just a listing sort of a platform. How do you look at 99acres responding to this sort of increased competition or higher intensity of competition? Do we also have plans of making it more end-to-end product and transaction-enabled platform or we continue with our current team?
See, in the short term, we have no such plans. We will continue with the model we have, which is basically a marketplace model. Square Yards is not a marketplace, it's a brokerage, right? There are several such brokerages we work with today. They are all our customers. We are not looking to set up a brokerage in the near future, nor are we looking to change our model. Like I said, what I'm telling you is likely to hold for the next two quarters. The situation is constantly evolving. It's a changing market, very dynamic market. I can't say what's gonna happen a year from now, but this is what, like, I mean, unlikely that we will change what we are doing for the next two quarters at least.
Sure it is. Thanks. That's it from my side. All the best for the future.
Thank you.
Anil, you're on mute.
The next question is from Mayank Babla, from Dalal & Broacha. Mayank, go ahead and ask your question.
Yeah. Thank you for taking my question. My first question is regarding, sir, what is the plan with the money raised from the OFS from Zomato's listing? If you could expand that out for us.
Yeah. Chintan, you wanna take that? Go ahead.
Yeah. Why, sir? Just a second.
Look, the money wasn't that much when you compare it to our, you know, our total capital pool. You know, we got what, INR 350 crores? How much was it, Chintan?
Yeah. INR 350 crores.
Okay?
Okay.
There's little more tax, and then rest of it comes. It just adds about maybe 7%-8% to our, maybe 10% to our fund balance.
Mm.
There's no specific plan for it. All money is fungible. We will obviously use it for our whatever are we using the rest of our cash balance for, it'll be part of that.
Okay, sure. Sir, second was just a suggestion. Don't mean any offense to Hitesh, sir. In the initial remarks, if you could go a little slower, it would really go a long way for analysts, sir.
I'll do that. I'll keep it in mind going forward.
Thank you so much. Best of luck. Thank you.
We also put out the transcript, you know, on our website. Maybe that will give you a chance to again review the-
In a couple of hours, have a good day.
Yeah. Actually-
Yes, sir.
The key takeaways go immediately after the call, so.
No, sure. I'm sure. I understand. I'm just saying that.
Thank you so much.
Yeah.
Thanks, Mayank. The next question is from Devesh. He's an investor. Devesh, go ahead and ask your question.
Yeah. Hi. Good afternoon. Congratulations for good set of numbers. I just had some more directional question in recruitment vertical. Given that, you know, we have a strong performance, the market looks good, like you said, red-hot. Do you have any adjacencies monetization, for example, AmbitionBox seems to be doing really well, right? Do you have any more monetization platform monetization plans around these platform extensions or as such the, you know, the data itself of the large pool that you have?
For the next few quarters, we are gonna be focusing on monetizing of course our main Naukri platform better.
Mm-hmm.
We see a lot of opportunity there and we, you know, sort of launched some new products, repackaged some of our existing products. We've taken a price hike, we're cutting discounts, one. Two, we are also trying to scale up our iimjobs business. This is a business we acquired some time back, so we are now using a Naukri sales team to sell that product, that suite of products to our customers. Three, you know, we recently also acquired Zwayam and DoSelect, so these are new products in our portfolio. For the next year, you know, couple of years, we are also gonna be using our sales team to sort of sell these products to our existing customers.
Now, of course, you know, the team is working on developing new products and there are new ideas and so on. This is where most of the revenue is gonna come from for the next, you know, year or two.
Got it. Just one connected question, just for as a business model understanding, for Naukri particularly. Now we have seen, if we see last five years, right, o r maybe even extended to 10 years, people used to switch less when there were less startup ecosystem. Fast forward, the transactions per se would happen more. Does that augur well for us in terms of a business model?
No, absolutely. Because see, you know, in the long run, our revenue and our growth is a function of how many people get hired through our platform. How many people get hired through our platform is a function of one, of course, our market share and some of those things, but also at a very macro level of you know, attrition rates in companies, growth plans of companies. If a company has an attrition rate of 10%, they need to hire 10%. I mean, they have 5,000 people, they need to hire 500 people to stay at the same number. If that attrition rate goes to 25%, they need to hire 1,250 people to stay at the same number, right?
Just to stay the same number, I mean, they have to hire for growth. If attrition rates at companies go up, and if that becomes a new normal for whatever reason, could be because of economic growth, could be because of higher economic growth or COVID or digital transformation or whatever, right, t hat's gonna be a big plus for our business on the revenue side. Like Sanjeev mentioned earlier, it also means that we have to work harder to retain and attract talent for ourselves. It also means higher wage bills for all companies, including us.
Sure. Sounds good. Thank you.
Thanks, Devesh. Next question is from Aditya Grover. He's an investor. Aditya, go ahead and ask your question.
Thank you for the opportunity. Am I audible?
Yeah, go ahead.
Yeah. I want to understand what's the trend in more and more startups, your portfolio startups in which you have invested, in like being welcoming your investment fund again in the further rounds, in the upcoming rounds. Like in Happily Unmarried, if I'm naming the startup correctly, you have the biggest owner in that. So what's the trend in like. So they have so much options. There are so many funds, they're looking for a startup. So how they look to, I mean, Info Edge again upcoming rounds coming into them.
Sanjeev, you wanna take that?
Sorry, could you repeat the question? I lost my audio for a bit.
In Happily Unmarried, if I'm naming the startup correctly, I've seen your stake has increased year over year. What's the trend in your portfolio companies? How easy it is now for you to increase stake in your present portfolio company in which you have invested? Because there's so many options and-
Yeah. The question really for us is, do we want to increase our stakes?
Yes.
Do we want to maintain pro rata? We don't mind diluting. Now, the answer is different for different startups. Okay? Now, one consideration is, look, if there is enough external money coming in, and these new investors have got deep pockets, and the company is gonna require a lot of capital going forward, what's called exponentially, you want more pockets on the table. And therefore, if somebody is coming in with a demand that, "Listen, I want X amount percentage shareholding," you may even do less than your pro rata. Right? On the other hand, if the company is looking good and but others don't have faith, right? We might put in the whole money ourselves, although we are increasingly less inclined to do that.
Because we have seen in the past in a couple of companies that, look, we ended up losing money. Because, you know, if you're doing financial investment, you need more than one pocket on the table.
Right.
You know, we did the first four rounds of Zomato solo. Eventually by the fifth round, as the requirement of cap went, kept going up and up, and it was beyond our means or beyond our risk appetite, we had to sort of go out and get external capital, and that worked for the company. I think the key is to do what's best for the company, the investing company, and not just our company. It's different in different cases with different considerations.
Uh-
What is pretty clear to other investors now, enough of them, is that, look, Info Edge is regarded as a decent early-stage investor, so we're getting enough follow-on investments or inbound interest into our portfolio companies from other investors. That is happening.
Okay. Thank you.
Not every company, but in enough companies.
Thanks. Thanks.
Thanks, Aditya. Vivek from Ambit Capital is back. He has another question. Vivek, go ahead and ask your question.
Thank you very much for the follow-up opportunity. My question is pertaining to the merger of Highorbit Careers with the standalone entity. If you could give us an update on when that is likely to fructify and when will, you know, the billing of recruitment standalone include the iimjobs billing also, and what are the pending procedures? Second is, do you have similar plans for Zomato and DoSelect as well, given that now they are 100% owned and, you know, your sales team seems to be promoting these products in tandem. Thank you.
Chintan, you wanna take that?
Yeah, sure. Vivek, on iimjobs, court process is over. We are just waiting for the final copy of the order. I think this quarter, we should be kind of merging it, you know, along with the standalone numbers. I mean, it took a little longer than what we had expected because of COVID. There's a lot more pendency in the court. Even after the hearing was done, it took kind of more time to get the order out. I think this quarter we should be able to. It should be done. On Zwayam and DoSelect also, of course, this is subject to final board approving it, but as a model, we have found that iimjobs model worked very well for us.
We are likely to follow the same model. So far we haven't kind of got any resolution done or process started for that. Legal integration may take a while, but business integration, as Sanjeev just already informed, that we have already started a little bit of, you know, leveraging our sales and distribution muscles to help Zwayam and DoSelect. That part is already begun. The legal process may take a while.
Thank you. I have one more question on the recruitment business. Hitesh, you said that the Indian billing grew much faster than overall billing for recruitment. If you could give us some color on whether the billing was driven by mostly higher quotas on your resume database access, or was it linked to value-added products that the customer they subscribe to, or was it just volumes? That would be great. Thank you.
You know, I don't have the breakup right now, but, you know, all three. You know, we were able to realize higher prices, we were able to sell more volume, and we were also able to add a lot of new customers, last quarter.
Okay. Thanks a lot.
Thanks, Vivek. The next question is from Vijit Jain from Citi. Vijit, go ahead and ask your question.
Yeah. Thank you so much. Hi, Hitesh, Vivek. My question, I have two questions. One is on just the Info Edge Ventures side. You know, just a color on how, what is your investment level in Shiprocket right now? They've been through a couple of rounds of funding with you in the last six months, right? Second is, you know, you and Zomato have both invested in Shiprocket now, and you also have another company called Shipsy, which is kind of in the related business. Just an overall sense of how you're thinking about this space specifically, and that exact number on how much your investment currently is in that business would help. Thank you.
Shipsy is in a very different business from Shiprocket. Shipsy is essentially a B2B SaaS company for shipping companies globally. Of course, you know, a chunk of the sales are currently in India, but they are now also pushing overseas. That has got almost no connection with Shiprocket, does not compete, does not complement. It is a different target customer and solving a different problem. As far as Shiprocket is concerned, look, in the AIF, we have got a pocket where 10% of the fund can go into listed investments. For both Shiprocket and Goqii were from that pocket. Right? Now, Shiprocket is a company we've been tracking for 8-10 years. We've known the entrepreneur a while.
We almost invested in 2012, but, you know, somehow I think we made a mistake not investing at that time. He's done very well. He continues to do well. We believe there's a logistics play there, which is very, very interesting, because ultimately there'll be many e-commerce companies which do a lot of sales which are not on Amazon or Flipkart, which means that they need logistics support for that.
Right.
for the direct sales. Shiprocket is essentially targeting that market. Right? It's doing quite well. That's the logic and rationale. Zomato came in, and you have to ask Zomato why they came in. They listed now. I really can't speak for them. Look, Zomato sees themselves a delivery company. They see logistics and other grocery items and stuff as adjacencies. Therefore they came in.
Right. Correct. Got it.
Shiprocket is invested only in AIF. It is a pure financial investment. Therefore, obviously, you know, we will, at some point in time, look at an exit.
Okay, got it. Sorry, Sanjeev, if I can ask, what's your shareholding in Shiprocket at the moment?
I'm not sure we've announced it because, you know, what happens is that, look, when you go into a company, there are other investors there, and you sign an agreement with them, you will not disclose anything beyond.
Okay.
What the company discloses, and therefore we stay with that.
Okay. Sure. Thanks. I appreciate that, Sanjeev.
Look, it's one, it's not very large because it's, you know, a listed company and we didn't put in that much money.
Got it. Thanks.
We'll wait for a while. Yeah. He's there. Prakshit, go ahead.
Yeah. Am I audible?
Yeah, Prakshit. Go ahead.
Yeah. First of all, congratulations, team, on a great set of performance, and good to see your financial investments yielding good windfall gains. My question was regarding Zomato. Going by what Zomato has told about their strategy going forward, and I just wanted to know your thoughts as an investor, right? That they believe that they want to replicate a Tencent or an Alibaba or an Info Edge. But one key difference what we observe is that Zomato vis-à-vis these players, they had a kind of a cash cow business, which they funded these investments with. Whereas Zomato is, as of now, making losses, and going for growth, right? In future, maybe in the next one or two years, do you see a risk of dilution at Zomato?
How do you see this playing out, given that the current kind of shareholders, right, the anchors, Info Edge or Ant or Uber may not want to put additional capital? Yeah. Thanks a lot.
Yeah. First of all, boss, Prakshit, no offense meant. It's not a windfall gain.
That's correct.
Okay. That was a joke. Okay. Aside. Now, see, second is that Zomato, in its own head, if I'm thinking, is not emulating an Alibaba or a Tencent or an Info Edge. You know, they're independent thinkers, and they've always been independent thinkers. They are following the strategy that they believe is right for their company. They, for instance, are only investing in adjacencies. Info Edge didn't just invest in adjacencies, we invested in several non-adjacent businesses as well, right? They believe there's strategic synergy to be derived from many of the businesses that they're investing in, if not now, in the future.
For example, if they believe that groceries is a big part of the future potentially, they will look at investments in grocery delivery, they will look at investments in logistics that can help deliver groceries, so on and so forth. Somewhere, hopefully, they're saying it'll all add up. Now, as far as investing from money raised from the market versus money from operating cash flows, look, a more conservative, you know, approach would be, hey, make a profit. Okay. With that profit invest, as opposed to raise capital to invest. That's probably the way Info Edge would have run, because we are more conservative. Zomato is, has always been a little bit more dynamic, mobile, risk-takers than we have been. It has worked for them, and what we do has worked for us. I don't say one approach is necessarily better than the other.
Look at it this way, we have taken 24-25 years, almost 24 years to reach maybe $10 billion-$11 billion market cap. They've taken 13 years to reach, you know, whatever, $13 billion-$15 billion market cap. Maybe they've taken a higher risk approach, but they've got there. Right? I'm not saying, you know, high risk is better than low risk or low risk is better than high risk. I think they're two different approaches and they're following their approach, and we accept it.
Okay, thanks. Thanks a lot .
Thanks, Prakshit. Next question is from Prateek from Antique Stock Broking. Prateek, go ahead and ask your question.
Yeah. Good evening, sir. Can you hear me?
Yeah, please go ahead.
Yes. My question is regarding investing space only again. There was a comment from one of the, I think, peer investors recently that investors are feeling like commodity due to this liquidity surplus, and level of competition is so high that there are many rejections and disappointments in recent months. In that context, I mean, I think in one of the calls or earlier we have mentioned that we have been meeting seven companies like on a daily basis or a quarter basis. Even us also now we are chasing companies or companies are coming to us? I mean, in what context we should see this like statement from-
Both are happening. Point is there are some identified good companies which a lot of investors chase. There are some times you get a hidden gem which others haven't found yet, you could still go in. There are some times, you know, you get a situation where, you know, you simply can't get in. You're too late, far too many people already got in, and so on. Sometimes you get a situation where a company only flip overseas. There's a constraint in our industry with flip company, and so on. But as long as. Look, see in a fund you will invest in 25 companies maximum, 27, 28. It's not as if you'll do 100 companies in the size of funds that we are doing. To get to that number, I think there's enough.
If you work hard enough, work smart enough, you dig deep, you meet a few hundred companies every month, you're okay. You'll find your investments.
Okay.
We also now see a lot of the good companies now come as references from our investee founders. We found referred deals are often the best. If the founder becomes the ambassador, which in many cases has happened with us, it works well.
Sure. Thank you. My second question is related to the prior question on like Zomato investing in adjacencies. Zomato was able to raise $1.2 billion from market towards various, I mean, as was suggested, towards various organic and inorganic growth initiatives. Obviously this IPO happened and now is behind and they have able to raise the money. Had this IPO may not happened, still like let's say if they would have been going to private capital investors asking for, I mean, for fundraise, they still would be investing in these adjacencies, suggesting that, like, for example, we may look at say Grofers or, I mean, adjacencies.
Well, you know, that's a counterfactual situation which I don't have the answer to. I would have advised them to obviously be a little careful and first get a core business in order and build your business. Look, that's my advice. Like I said, Info Edge is more conservative than they are. I don't know. They might have. Who knows?
Okay. Just last question. On the billing side of the matrimony segment, this number of INR 25 crores, how do we see that on a quarterly basis, like 2-3 years down the line in Jeevansathi segment?
Two, three years down the line, it's very hard for me to predict what's gonna happen, yeah. Can't say.
Sure. Thank you.
Thanks, Prateek. Next question from Sharvi Chinnaswamy. Sharvi, go ahead and ask your question.
Hello, everyone. Am I audible?
Yeah. Please go ahead.
First of all, congratulations to the whole Info Edge team for today's policy.
Just a clarification. It's Padma Shri, not Padma Bhushan.
Sorry, Padma.
Padma Bhushan is two levels higher. Just to clarify.
Yeah. Sorry, sir. It's regarding the data privacy bill that's been around for quite some time now. It seems that it'll take further discussions in the winter Parliament bill. Just wanted to know how would this impact the startup space and also this internet space because there's a lot of approvals would be required and many people who are becoming aware have started denying the pulls like this regarding locations and all of that. Would that impact Naukri or any other vertical or any other adjacent startup business sector?
Sorry, I didn't get the question. Chintan, you got the question?
No, I also didn't get something related to privacy law.
I'll take it. See, you know, if I got you right, what you're saying is there's a privacy bill and, you know, all kinds of approvals will be required to get more data on users. Would that therefore impact our business? Is that correct?
Yes. Not just the Naukri business, but like many other businesses, those require a location. Like, all those businesses that are asking for the locations and many people have, like, becoming aware of the fact, have started denying the locations all this time, the people around me and all of that. Would that impact the business, the advertising spaces and all of that? That's the basic question. Do you see? Like, it's too ahead of its time, but have you, like, managed to come out of it or have a plan for that aspect?
See, I can comment on our businesses. We don't see it impacting our businesses because in our business, we ask for all this data and people give it to us willingly. Because if, for example, you're looking for a job, you know, the recruiters want to know where you're based. Job seekers are more than happy to share where they're based. It's not as if we are sort of taking this data and selling some other ads to them. You know, they sort of willingly give this data to us, and we use it to improve experience of both job seekers and recruiters. Similarly, in real estate, I mean, people willingly give us their location data or whatever other data because they want to sell their property.
If they want to buy property, they need to sort of share this information with us. They do with Jeevansathi as well. I don't see this impacting our businesses because, you know, we are very transparent about what data we collect. We don't use it on sly. You know, so it's what you see is what you get on Info Edge. We don't take data from people's mobile phones. We don't sort of do any of those things. As far as our businesses are concerned, of course, I'm not very, very familiar with the bill, but the location piece, we don't see that impacting us.
Of course, one will have to study the bill in more detail to see if there could potentially be impact on our verticals. As far as the other sort of internet businesses go, I mean, I guess the impact could be different on different businesses depending on their data policies.
Yeah, sure. Thank you for taking that. I have just a case that happened to my sibling a couple of days ago. A call got to him like he was registered on the Naukri website for some job and all of that. A call got to him saying that they're talking from the Naukri headquarters, and they want to know if he's still looking out for jobs. And if he is, then like he'll have to pay a certain amount of fees, like INR 1,000 fees and all of that. Like is it extracted already from the application or it comes through the data, like in the mail data and all of that? That was where the basic question was directed.
Uh, so I, I...
Yes.
Yes.
She's talking about some fraud, some fraud case. We are not charging, you know. Sharvi, if the impression is that the call was from Naukri asking for money for the job application, I don't think that's, you know, what we do. That's not our model. In fact, we aggressively tell and message everyone that they should not be paying specifically for any job, so.
See, we are a free platform. Register for free. You can apply to jobs for free. There are some candidate services for which we charge. Like if you want your resume developed, we can help you write your resume. There are some paid services. See, but what we are also sort of experiencing, and we are actually a victim here, is that there are many people outside who are using our brand name to fleece job seekers, right? People get a hold of this data from wherever they get data.
Then they sometimes call them and say, "Listen, we are calling from Naukri, and we can help you with your job, and we can help you line up interviews for you, and if you pay us money, we'll get you a job or we line up interviews." That's got nothing to do with us, right?
Yeah. We indirectly thought of it to be a fraudulent call because it was not verified on Truecaller, all of that. We actually didn't go further on it. Yeah, it was just one of the questions that had something to do with data privacy, and I thought to raising it in front of you first then, going ahead with it.
Sharvi, if you can offline send us the details, you know. In fact, Vivek is there on this call, and can see if we can help you.
Yeah, sure.
Thanks.
That was the last question. In case anybody wants to ask any more question, please raise your hand now. We'll wait for a minute. Hitesh, there's a question from Hitesh Oberoi. Hitesh, go ahead and ask your question.
Yeah. I just wanted to know, by any chance, are you planning to have brick-and-mortar situations as well in your current line of business?
No. I mean, we are not looking at expanding offline in any major way right now in any of our verticals.
Hitesh, there are certain aspects of our client engagement that are offline. For example, the Naukri sales team for the bigger clients goes and meets clients. Earlier it was face-to-face, now over Zoom. Once COVID goes away, maybe it's face-to-face again. Likewise, in the company similarly. The product and platform itself is online, and the consumption is online, and usage is online. You know, there is of course a telephone element also sometimes, where you have a call center to make sales, where you have a call center to do training, you do Webex training. The core product is online with some facilitation and support, which sometimes is offline. No, I mean, what Hitesh is saying, we're not planning to have a core product that's offline.
The reason for asking was that, like, the specialized placement consultants like 3P or someone else, are you planning to have some separate channel for the extremely senior people?
No. See, like I said, see, you know, I mean, we could continue to sort of focus on improving our online platform and improve the experience for all kinds of job seekers. We have a separate vertical for freshers. We have FirstNaukri. We just acquired iimjobs. You know, we have a lot of premium job listings there for premium job seekers. We continue to work on improving the experience for all kinds of job seekers on our Naukri platform by using more and more machine learning and data science to personalize it and so to ensure that people get relevant jobs, relevant roles, et cetera.
We are not looking to set up an offline business to help the senior job seekers or anything of that sort at this point in time.
But we only-
We have a small business. We have a small recruitment firm called Quadrangle inside the company. That's a tiny business for us. We do about INR 8 crores-INR 10 crores a year from that business. They work more like a placement firm. But that's a very small part of our business.
Hitesh , you know, the point is that as long as I think we have, I mean, Vivek, how many placement consultant clients do we have?
Yeah. Putting together.
We have 15,000 placement consultants who use Naukri. When you go on a Naukri, you are, potentially you can get helped by 15,000 specialized placement companies as opposed to us doing our own.
Yeah. No, no, I am only talking like directors and all the senior people like me, something like that. That's all, like.
No, we have.
Because there is a trend going on.
No, we have no such plan. We have no plan to launch a separate vertical or a separate line of business or offline or online for very, very senior people, not at the moment at least.
Thanks a lot, and congratulations again to Mr. Bikhchandani for being awarded Padma Shri, I think.
Thank you so much.
I really feel proud about it. I've been using Naukri, I think maybe like 25 years, 35 years. My career has been 35 years. 37 years, to be precise. Whether for recruitment or for looking for, I've been doing something there many times. Thanks a lot.
Thank you so much. Thank you so much.
Any more questions, please? Vivek, we are done with the Q&A session. No?
Thanks, Anand. On behalf of Info Edge, we conclude this conference call. Thank you.
Thank you, everyone.
Yeah. Thank you everyone for taking the time out for this call, and have a great evening.
Thank you. Bye-bye.
Thank you, bye-bye. Bye.
Bye. Bye.
Thank you so much, everyone. We conclude this call now. You may disconnect your lines. Thank you so much.