Good afternoon, everyone. We have 150 people with us. We'll start the call now. Vivek, you can go ahead.
Thanks, Anand. Hi, everyone. Good evening and welcome to Info Edge (India) Limited Q3 FY22 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 conference call, please raise your hand on your screen. Please note that 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, our CFO. 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 risks and uncertainties. Kindly refer to slide number two of our investor presentation for detailed disclaimer.
Now I would like to hand over the conference to Mr. Hitesh for his opening remarks. Thank you and over to you, Hitesh.
Thank you, Vivek. And a very good evening, everyone, and welcome to our Q3 FY 2022 earnings conference call. Trust you and your loved ones are safe and in good health. As always, we'll first talk to you through our quarterly financial performance, and then we'll have time for Q&A. As we've done in the past, the audited financial statements and other schedules on segmental billing and revenues, along with the data sheet, have been uploaded on our website, www.infoedge.in. We'll first discuss our standalone financials. Overall billings in Q3 grew to INR 468.1 crores, up by 57.6% from Q3 of 2021, and 56% compared to Q3 of 2020. YTD billings stood at INR 1,184.6 crores, a YoY growth of 61%.
Revenue in Q3 stood at INR 403.3 crores, up by 48.1% from Q3 of 2021, and 26% compared to Q3 of 2020. YTD revenue stood at INR 1,074.6 crores, a YoY growth of 32.9%. Operating expenses for the quarter, excluding depreciation and amortization, were at INR 291.2 crores, up 42.7% from Q3 of 2021, primarily driven by advertising and promotion spends. Operating EBITDA stood at INR 112.1 crores versus INR 68.2 crores last year, an improvement of 64.4% from Q3 of 2021, and 6% from Q3 of 2020. YTD EBITDA stood at INR 318 crores, a YoY growth of 41.8%.
Operating EBITDA margins for the quarter stood at 27.8% compared to 25% last year for the same quarter. Cash EBITDA for the standalone business for the quarter stood at INR 192.6 crores compared to INR 92.6 crores last year for the same quarter. YTD cash EBITDA stood at INR 452.5 crores, a year-on-year growth of 197.5%. The cash EBITDA for Info Edge, along with the acquired businesses like iimjobs and Zwayam, stood at INR 200.9 crores for the quarter. That is a YoY growth of 113%, and INR 467 crores for the nine months ending 31 December 2021. That is a growth of 205%.
During the quarter, we also booked an exceptional gain of INR 217.8 crores. This relates to diminution recorded in value of investment in our wholly owned subsidiary, that is SIHL, which has been reversed by way of exceptional gain of INR 217.8 crores. The net worth of SIHL has significantly increased as one of its investments, that is Policybazaar, PB Fintech, has been categorized as financial investment post its listing and has been carried at mark-to-market value in the books of the wholly owned subsidiary. Deferred sales revenue stood at INR 622.8 crores as of 31st December 2021 versus INR 393.5 crores as of 31st December 2020, an increase of 58.3% YoY.
The cash balance of Info Edge, including the wholly owned subsidiaries, stands at INR 3,855 crores as of 31st December 2021, versus INR 3,387 crores as of 31st December 2020. We'll now talk a little bit about the market conditions in our different verticals, and then we'll discuss the financials for each vertical in a little more detail. We continue to see massive strong hiring trends across sectors in the recruitment space. IT clients recruiter activity remains an all-time high, primarily driven by high attrition in the sector and big wins by major IT firms in the current quarter and past few quarters. We see the current trend of high resource requirements and demand for our products to continue for a while.
Consultants in Q2 2022 were in recovery mode as well. However, in Q3, they have started exhibiting strong growth in their daily interaction with the platform. This is clearly indicated by a 14% YoY growth in the number of searches. Non-IT clients, especially in sectors like real estate, FMCG and logistics and healthcare, have also been hiring in large numbers through the platform. The JobSpeak Index for November and December clearly highlighted recovery in a few non-IT sectors like travel, hospitality, retail and tourism. We are also experiencing some revival in the telecom sector. However, IT being the main growth engine of employment in the country in the white collar space, we see maximum concentration of new jobs in South India in markets like Bangalore and Hyderabad. Moving on to the real estate vertical.
Despite a temporary slowdown due to the third wave of COVID, we are still experiencing good momentum in the residential buyer segment. Low interest rates and home loans, people looking for bigger homes and incentives by governments to the sector will continue to aid the residential home sales market for some time. With price correction over time, the sector is also a lot more affordable after a long time. We expect this trend to remain for some more time. Moving on to the matrimony business. This quarter was marked with the presence of the marriage season, which normally starts post-Diwali. Post-COVID, we saw a decline in activity on the platform. After COVID too, you know, it. But we've seen come.
You know, users come back to the platform in large numbers post-Diwali. Hopefully things should get better from here on going forward. The education segment has witnessed, you know, we witnessed a strong vibrancy in our Study Abroad segment, specifically after a brief contraction post the first wave of COVID in Q1 and Q2 of last financial year. We also saw a lot of interest in new colleges and universities advertising on our platform. Now we'll talk about the financials, segment-wide financials in more details now. We'll first cover recruitment. In Q3 FY 2022, the recruitment segment billings were INR 356.5 crores, up 77% from Q3 of 2021, and 70% from Q3 of 2020.
While revenues were INR 298.5 crores, up 57.5% from Q3 of 2021, and 30% from Q3 of 2020. YTD billings stood at INR 891.1 crores, a YoY growth of 75%, while revenues stood at INR 777.5 crores, a YTD growth of 35.9%. Operating EBITDA stood at INR 178.7 crores, up 67.8% from Q3 of 2021, and 33% from Q3 of 2020. Margins peaked at 59.9% versus 56.2% in Q3 of FY 2021. YTD EBITDA stood at INR 455.3 crores, a YoY growth of 39%. Cash EBITDA for recruitment during the quarter stood at INR 245.8 crores, up from INR 118.3 crores reported for Q3 of 2021.
Cash EBITDA margins are at 68.9% of the billings, compared to 58.7% in Q3 of 2021. YTD cash EBITDA stood at INR 583.4 crores, a YoY growth of 120.5%. Billings for Naukri India for the quarter stood at INR 309 crores, up 84.6% YoY. This is just the Naukri India business. While revenues for the quarter stood at INR 254.93 crores, up 63.2% YoY. YTD billing for Naukri India stood at INR 759.6 crores, a YTD growth of 82%, while the revenue grew 38.6% YoY and stood at INR 653.3 crores.
Recruitment numbers I shared with you just now are standalone numbers and do not include iimjobs, Zwayam, and DoSelect. Recruitment segment billing, including the acquired businesses, iimjobs and Zwayam, etc., stood at INR 375 crores. That is a growth of 80% year-on-year for this quarter, and 74% compared to Q3 of 2020. INR 932 crores, that is a growth of 78% year-on-year for the nine months ending December 2021. iimjobs and Hirist had a YoY growth of 91.7% in their billing numbers, closing at 12.7 crores from 6.6 crores reported in Q3 of 2021. Both Zwayam and DoSelect are in the process of integration with Naukri business teams, and we continue to devise a strong go-to-market approach for them.
During the quarter, we also launched a new age look of the Naukri homepage to create a refreshing experience for job seekers and to ease the discovery of the variety of offerings that can help them in their career journey. Along with this, we have upgraded our employer branding portfolio also to create a new offering that allows employers to drive recall and engagement with job seekers across all platforms, web, app, and the mobile website, and across all touch points. Employers now have the flexibility to pick their brand positioning as per their target persona and leverage data-driven insights to understand the impact of their branding initiatives. This is a strategic milestone in demonstrating our commitment towards delivering the best experience for our users and reinforcing the perception of our brand as a modern recruitment platform.
The quarter was also marked with more emphasis on value selling with high usage customers, which resulted in better price yields and rationalized discounting across the board. Over the last few quarters, Naukri business, through product enhancements and acquisitions like iimjobs, RMS, Zwayam, DoSelect, AmbitionBox, has been able to diversify its product portfolio. Together, these businesses have a strong potential to be a significant contributor to Naukri revenues in the next few years. The quarter also witnessed a 50% growth in new client acquisition versus FY 2020, with growth across all segments. Growth in non-IT customer base improved from 23% in Q2 to 36% in Q3. A sizable portion of this growth is being generated through online and retail sales.
As far as our operating metrics go, we added 17,000 new CVs per day, which is an increase of 11% year-over-year. Average CV modifications were at over 400,000 per day. Our traffic share in the job portal space continues to be in the mid-70s%. Moving on to the real estate business. Billings in Q3 in 99 acres grew by 17.3% year-over-year to INR 61.4 crores, and 13% compared to Q3 of 2020. Revenue grew from INR 44.9 crores in Q3 of 2021 to INR 58.6 crores in Q3 of 2022. YTD billing for the business stood at INR 151.9 crores, registering a YoY growth of 34%, while revenues stood at INR 156 crores, a YoY growth of 26%.
Operating loss for the quarter stood at INR 22.6 crores against a loss of INR 3.5 crores in Q3 of 2021. YTD EBITDA stood at a loss of INR 44.4 crores, up from a loss of INR 6.5 crores reported last year for the same period. The business reported a cash loss of INR 16 crore during the quarter against a cash profit of INR 3.6 crores earned in the same quarter of last year. YTD cash loss for the period stood at INR 42.9 crores against a cash loss of INR 17.9 crores for the nine-month ended December 2020. Business momentum continued in 99 acres in Q3.
We witnessed growth in our YOY billing for the quarter across all categories, new projects, resale and rentals, and across all client segments, builders, brokers and owners. We also experienced higher usage of the platform by our customers, specifically in the new and resale home segments. Our recently launched product, Premium Listings, also saw good adoption among brokers. Daily listing postings on the platform were similar to last year, but listings from owners grew 15% year-on-year, and traffic in Q3 grew 3% YOY. We also witnessed 5% year-on-year growth in the number of responses from the platform. The rental category grew faster than other categories. New plans and e-commerce experiences for owner clients, wider range, a revamped commercial investment section, a new application to self-verify properties, and a digital brand campaign were rolled out in Q3.
The business teams are also working on improving the customer delivery initiatives for a few of our top clients. Moving on to the Matrimony business. Billings declined by 6.5% year-on-year in Q3 to INR 24.5 crores. They were still up 9% compared to Q3 of 2020. Revenue declined by 1.9% year-on-year to INR 24.2 crores. YTD billing for the business stood at INR 73.8 crores, a year-on-year growth of 0.3%, while revenue for the nine-month period stood at INR 74.8 crores, a YOY growth of 5.4%. Operating EBITDA losses stood at INR 37.2 crores in Q3 of FY 2022, against a loss of INR 27.6 crores last year same quarter.
YTD EBITDA loss stood at INR 81.6 crores, a year-over-year increase of 10%. Cash loss for the quarter for Jeevansathi stood at INR 35.9 crores against a cash loss of INR 26.4 crores in Q3 of 2021. YTD cash loss for the period stood at INR 81 crores, a year-over-year increase of 12%. With the marriage season setting in, marketing investments were scaled up in November, December, as improving trends of traffic led to sequential growth in sales. Profile acquisition and site engagements is also up, and an overall recovery in sentiments and interaction on the platform is being seen in the matchmaking market, which was temporarily hit by the second wave of COVID for the last few months. We continue to make investments in improving the tech backbone of the platform.
New verification mechanisms were launched for our NRI users, which helped improve the quality of matches in that segment. More privacy options were offered to users to make the platform experience more secure. A fresh iOS app experience has been in the works and will be available to users this week, which should significantly enhance platform engagement on the app. Moving on to the Shiksha business. In Q3, billings in Shiksha grew 51.4% year-on-year, and 94% compared to Q3 of 2020, and stood at INR 25.7 crores, while revenue grew 65.7% year-on-year and 105% compared to Q3 of 2020 to 21.9 crores.
YTD billing for the business stood at INR 67.7 crores, a YOY growth of 72.6%, while YTD revenue grew 59.5% and stood at INR 66.2 crores. We made an EBITDA of INR 2 crores during the quarter versus an EBITDA of INR 80 lakhs in Q3 of last year. Cash EBITDA for the quarter stood at INR 7 crores, a year-on-year growth of 55%. YTD EBITDA stood at INR 14.7 crores, a year-on-year growth of 26.7%, while YTD cash EBITDA stood at INR 18.1 crores, a year-on-year growth of 27%. The Shiksha business team has again been able to pull through a strong quarter with reasonable revenue growth.
The recent momentum is backed by positive sentiments among students who are now more involved in online searching for universities and colleges. At the same time, most of the private colleges have realized the worth of online marketing on platforms like Shiksha. Our Study Abroad business has also seen an encouraging response from students. We continue to invest in making our content more comprehensive and more student-friendly, and in building up deep domain expertise in this space. Moving on to the consolidated financial highlights of the quarter. At the consolidated level, the net sales for the company stood at INR 419 crores during Q3 of 2022 versus INR 277.6 crores in Q3 of 2021.
For the consolidated entity at the total comprehensive income level, there is a profit of INR 4,562.8 crore versus INR 678.1 crore for the previous quarter ending 31st December 2020. Adjusted for the exceptional items, PBT stood at a profit of INR 2,621.1 crore in Q3 of 2022 versus a loss of INR 6.9 crore in Q3 of 2021. Since investment in PB Fintech is held by our wholly owned sub-companies, joint venture companies, mark-to-market gain on such investment after being categorized as financial investment posts as distinct amounting to INR 4,488.2 crore. Net of deferred tax liabilities of INR 552.9 crore on the date of listing has been included in PAT of consolidated financial statement.
The mark-to-market loss of INR 151.2 crore net of deferred tax asset of INR 19.5 crore, which reflects the change in fair value of such shares as of quarter-end over fair value in listing date, has been recognized as other comprehensive income as per the accounting policy of the company. While computing the impact on PAT and OCI, 50% of gain loss recognized in joint venture Makesense is considered. Okay, I hope you understood that. Thank you, and we are now ready to take any questions that you may have.
Thank you, Hitesh. Team will now begin the Q&A session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may raise your hand on the screen. We'll take your name and announce your turn in the question queue.
Yeah. First question is from Vivekananda from Ambit Capital. Please go ahead and ask your question.
Hi. Thank you very much for the opportunity. I have two questions. The first one is on recruitment margins. You said that the margins, I mean, they've improved substantially and have remained elevated for the last two quarters, even though your employee costs seem to be rising. Any thoughts, Hitesh, on how one should look at the operating margin in recruitment, now that there is more clarity on a normalization post-COVID?
Yeah. You know, our margins are gonna be a function of what kind of revenue growth we are able to get going forward. In the past we have said, "Listen, at 15% we can maintain margins. At 20% growth, we start improving margins." Right now what is different this time around is that there is you know massive wage inflation across the board. Listen, our sense of this is that unless you know we sort of start spending aggressively on marketing you know margins should sort of get even better going forward if you know we continue to grow at 20%+. That's our current take.
Like I said, a lot will depend on whether we up our investments in marketing or not. Right now it doesn't look like we're gonna get very aggressive on marketing, at least for this quarter. Of course, next year we'll, you know, it'll be a much higher base, and we'll have to grow on that higher base to improve margins even further, even more.
Okay. My second question is on the JobSpeak data that was very encouraging till September, but then we've started to see the index moderate. Is this just because of Omicron? Though I'm not able to reconcile the JobSpeak index movement with your comments, which seem to indicate that there hasn't been much adverse impact of the Omicron wave.
Yeah. Right now, at least, you know, the sense we are getting from the market is that Omicron, it's impacted our 99 acres business again to some extent because, you know, in real estate it's, you know, unless people go out and actually see houses, they don't buy. In jobs, in the job market on the other hand, you know, people are happy to sort of sit at home and give interviews, and even recruiters are happy to hire people without even meeting them, right? That's a new trend. We don't expect our recruitment business to get hit because of Omicron. At least that's been the trend so far in January. But real estate could take a hit in January.
We are hoping that, you know, Omicron will hopefully be behind us in the next couple of weeks and, we'll be able to go back to office and things will go back to normal in all verticals. At a very macro level, unless things get worse from here, on the Omicron front, we don't really expect it to, you know, impact our Q4s or Q4 billings as a whole.
Okay. What about the JobSpeak data that saw some moderation in the last three months? Is that
You know.
Is that also something that you have factored in your guidance, you know, or your commentary with respect to the optimism?
Yeah. We continue to be optimistic. I mean, like I said, you know, attrition rates are still high across most companies. Salaries are also moving up. In fact, you know, we were hoping that the non-IT sort of sector will also bounce back very strongly this quarter. That may have got delayed by a month or two because of Omicron. Up till now we were seeing a lot of our growth because of you know, IT companies hiring more than they were hiring earlier. Of course, some non-IT sectors have started to recover. Going forward, we expect the other sectors to also start sort of hiring more, in more numbers. Now of course, Q4 last year was a good year, right?
You know, we grew, we had healthy growth in Q4, so we can't expect the kind of growth we got in Q3 and Q4. I mean, if we get that kind of growth, we'll be very happy. Compared to 2020, you know, 2022 sort of Q4 should be very good.
Yeah. Can I just add something there? You see, you raised the point of the JobSpeak moderating last month. You know, that kind of contradicts what we are experiencing from our sales team and client feedback. It is possible that for one month it moderated because when Omicron was headed up, there might have been 15, 20 days of uncertainty because people were unsure about how serious it'll be. You know, given the fact that Omicron is now waning and it was not so serious in terms of lethality, I think we are optimistic.
Okay. Thank you very much. Over.
Hello?
Yeah. Am I audible?
Yes, you're audible. Anand, you're on mute.
Yeah, Nitin, go ahead.
We can't hear you, Nitin.
Hello?
Yeah, we can hear.
Can you hear me now?
Yeah, we can.
Can you hear me now?
Yes.
My first question is regarding the recruitment vertical. A number of large IT companies have indicated in their Q3 result commentary that attrition is expected to cool off in the next 2-3 quarters. Should we expect to see a lagged impact of this in the Naukri business? That's my first question.
You know, if attrition numbers cool off, then of course it'll have an impact on our business because you know, unless companies continue to grow rapidly in terms of overall headcount. Gross hiring is basically a function of attrition plus new additions. Now, that is really what decides the company budgets and how much companies spend on us to a large extent. If attrition numbers fall drastically and new hiring also doesn't pick up, then of course companies may not budget as much for recruitment as they have budgeted till now. Yes, I mean, if attrition numbers cool off, then that'll have an impact, unless new hiring picks up as well. As far as IT companies
My perspective here was, will the drop in IT hiring be made up by the non-IT businesses picking up, like, as it was seen in your commentary this quarter?
Actually very hard for me to say. I don't know how much non-IT hiring will drop by. I don't even know whether non-IT hiring will drop. I don't know how much IT hiring will drop by. I don't even know when it will drop and if it will drop. As far as non-IT hiring goes, we are expecting non-IT hiring to bounce back because it was sort of hit big by COVID, because of COVID. Non-IT companies, at least in some sectors, we saw some recovery in last quarter in sectors like travel, retail, hospitality, after a long time. We're expecting.
I mean, if this Omicron is now behind us and we don't get another wave, then hopefully these companies will start hiring again, you know, going forward. Now, whether it'll make up for the decline in hiring because IT companies have slowed down, it's hard for me to say.
Okay. Next question is regarding the Shiksha business. We have seen a very good scale-up over the past 2-3 years. What is the vision here for the next, like, 3-5 years? How big do we see this business becoming? And what other profitable subverticals are we expected to add here?
See, we don't know how big the business will become in three or five years. Our goal remains. You know, this Shiksha is basically an education sort of, counseling stroke, information sort of platform for people looking to get into colleges and universities in India. To this, we added a Study Abroad vertical some years ago, and that business has also sort of started doing well for us. Now, of course, our desire is to grow this sort of platform. We get a few million users on our platform every month. Our desire is to sort of offer more counseling services, offer better information, you know, offer more comprehensive content on the platform.
Our desire is to grow the Study Abroad business and take it to the next level. We also have a small Naukri Learning business inside Naukri, right? Which is again an education business, which is basically about online courses. While Shiksha is more about offline colleges and universities, the Naukri Learning business is more about helping people figure out which online courses to sort of you know study. The idea here is to sort of you know sort of grow all these verticals into you know into more comprehensive sort of platforms, which so that they become the preferred way of sort of searching for education information in this country.
You know, as you know, there isn't a lot of information available. You know, a lot of colleges and universities don't put out a lot of information. It's not available in the public domain, unlike the case overseas. Parents and students in India have to spend a lot of time figuring out which college, which course, especially after class 12, even after that. The vision is to just make it easier for them, sort of so that they can take the right decisions. As you know, this is a very important sort of decision for a lot of parents and students, right? If we can sort of play a role in that journey, you know, then hopefully over time everything else will follow. Now, whether
How much will this translate into in terms of revenue over the next three to five years? Hard for me to say.
Okay. My last question is regarding ShopKirana investment. Recently there was news about ShopKirana raising money at around $38 million led by Info Edge. What valuation was the money raised at?
Look, for competitive reasons, we are not announcing that because, whenever there are co-investors, right, the other VCs don't necessarily want to announce the valuation, and we have to abide by that. And also company may or may not want to announce it. We can't just disclose the valuation, unfortunately.
Okay. Sounds good. Thank you.
Thank you, Nitin. Next question is from Gaurav Chopra, Union AMC. Gaurav, go ahead and ask your question.
Yeah, thanks for the opportunity, sir. My question on the margin
Tanak,
Can you hear me?
Yeah.
Yeah, sorry about that. Yeah. My question was really on the 99 acres business. What we have noticed is if I were to look at the recent numbers that some of these real estate players have sort of reported, they have been extremely strong. If you look at our listings, they continue to sort of remain flattish. What explains that? If you could just highlight the market share trends in our real estate business. Secondly, if you could just highlight our market share trends in the overall recruitment segment. Are we facing tough competition from the likes of LinkedIn, et cetera? Yeah. Those are my two questions. Thank you.
Yeah. You know, the 99 acres platform caters to different segments within the real estate business. We have a new home section, we have a resale section, we have a rental section, we have a commercial section. Listings are normally more representative of the resale market and not so much of the new home market. The developers you mentioned who are listed and they've released results, they're mostly they operate in the new home space. There we offer very different solutions to developers. That is not necessarily reflected in listing growth on our platform. Listings mostly are representative of rental growth and resale growth. What has happened over in 99 acres over a period of time is, one, that we've tweaked our business model.
We don't necessarily want more listings because, you know, what happens after a while is you end up getting a lot of spam listings. We are encouraging a lot of our broker partners to put up fewer listings, but put up more genuine listings on the platform. We are trying to sort of change behavior in some sense. On the other hand, if you look at owner listings, they have gone up because owner listings tend to be very genuine listings. There is no spam in owners list on our platform. Those listings are up 15% year-on-year. Now, as far as trends in the market go, you know, we have. You know, there was a period over the last few years when real estate went through a lot.
You know, we had RERA, we had demonetization, we had GST. We had, you know, all kinds of other issues in real estate. The business was slow for a long time, but 99 acres kept growing. I think now our sense is that we are entering a phase where some of these issues are actually behind us. Of course, you know, Omicron and COVID have played spoilsport for a while now. Because every time we have Omicron, every time we have a wave, you know, activity just freezes in the market because people just refuse to step out of their homes and brokers shut shop. Unfortunately, we make a lot of money from brokers. You know, we're not. You know, if they stop advertising, you know, we stop getting revenue. They've been very cautious.
We are hoping that, you know, activity will return to the real estate market post-Omicron once again, and that business will start to grow. Having said that, what has also happened in real estate over the last 18-24 months is that there is a lot more competition than was the case earlier. There are many players which have got funded over time. So there are lots of players in the, you know, there are lots of new sort of brokers, e-brokers who are active, who are spending a lot of money on marketing. There are players like NoBroker who have raised a lot of money and who are active in the market. You know, Housing.com has seen a change in ownership.
They are a lot more aggressive than they were earlier. Housing.com, Magicbricks continues to be aggressive. There's a lot more activity, you know, there's a lot more competition in the real estate space than was the case earlier. This competition then is likely to result in sort of, you know, more marketing from all the players to fight for share and more marketing spend to fight for share. This is also likely to result in depressed sort of pricing because, you know, players have need to discount to get customers. That may be the case in this space for a while till the dust settles down, as far as the business of portals goes.
As far as the job market is concerned, you know, there's been no material change in competitive activity. LinkedIn and Indeed continue to be two big players who are active in the market. Naukri is, of course, the largest job board. We are not seeing any major sort of activity on the startup front. On the whole, I mean, not much has changed in terms of competitive activity and market share in the job space. Now let's see how it plays out going forward.
All right. All right, Hitesh. Thank you so much. All the very best.
Thanks, Gaurav. Next question is from Vijit Jain from Citi. Vijit, go ahead and ask your question.
Yeah. Thank you for the opportunity. Yeah. Hitesh, my question is, in the recruitment business, what is the total unique customer base for nine months FY 2022? This number has been fairly stable for the last few years, right? Now obviously it looks like from Q3 number at around 68,000-69,000, there should be a jump in FY 2022. Is that jump largely also coming from IT and related sector hirings, or is more broader than that? That's my first question.
You know, I don't have the nine-month number with me right now. Chintan, did we give out the number? If yes, can we get back to Vijit?
Come back on those numbers. I think we do give an investor presentation.
Sure. Thanks. My second question is the employee expense that has risen, is that almost all wage hike related? Because the total headcount hasn't grown that much, right? Related to that, I think in one Q you had shared that your total tech staff headcount was around 700. Where is that number at the moment?
Yeah, yeah. Basically what has happened is that, one, our tech headcount has gone up. Our overall headcount may have remained the same. Our tech headcount is up one-
Okay
because of the acquisitions, and two, because we are doing a lot of new things inside the company. We have a, you know. Some of these new things are not revenue generating at this point in time.
Right.
For example, we have a job hire business, a vertical that we are trying to sort of build inside the company. We have some people working on the blue collar platform. We've been investing more behind our AmbitionBox platform, you know. That platform does not generate any revenue right now. We have a small team working on our BigShyft, which is our premium tech hiring platform. That team does not generate any revenue. We have a lot of internal sort of R&D stroke new business effort, new product development efforts going on.
Mm-hmm
which, you know, we have scaled up over the last 12- 18 months. We're investing a lot more in these efforts. None of these efforts generate any revenue right now. So the tech cost has also gone up. It has increased. For one, of course, we've also given salary hikes. We in fact gave two salary hikes to entire last year, this year.
Right.
We've also upped our head count in some of the newer sort of things that we are doing.
Okay. Got it.
They're not generating any revenue at the moment.
Hitesh, that number was, I think, 700, if I'm not wrong, for about six months back. Do you have the correct number on the head count tech side?
Yeah. I don't recall the exact number, but if we are referring to the same number, then what was 725 sometime back is now I think close to 800 plus. 825, 850.
Got it. Thanks. Those were my questions. Thank you so much.
Yeah.
Thanks, Vijit. Next question is from Sudheer Guntupalli from Kotak AMC. Sudhir, go ahead and ask your question.
Thanks, Hitesh, for the opportunity. My first question is on the IT hiring front. Of course, you mentioned that, irrespective of how the IT attrition may look like over the next 2- 3 quarters, and irrespective of the fact that the growth numbers might be very strong, deal wins might be very strong, there has been, you know, a view that IT companies are now taking that this sort of a lateral hiring is not sustainable. So they should be focusing more on the fresher hiring, and they should be correcting the pyramids. In that context, they're focusing more in terms of getting, you know, hiring from colleges, giving advanced offers in colleges, so on and so forth.
How do you see that impacting the activity on Naukri going ahead probably two, three quarters down the line?
Look, I don't think I said that our billings will be good irrespective of what happens to hiring in IT companies. We are strongly indexed to, you know, IT hiring. Close to 50-60% of our business is now indexed to IT hiring, and if IT hiring slows down, you know, it'll have an impact on our business. Yes, while we have a campus hiring product and we work with a lot of IT companies for their campus and off-campus hiring efforts as well, that's still a small part of our business. If IT hiring changes structurally for some reason or attrition rates suddenly drop and, or if IT companies stop hiring for some reason, you know, it'll have an impact on our business. You'll see the impact very soon.
You know, it is not as if the impact is gonna be delayed. I hope that doesn't happen because that's not what we are hearing from our customers and from our sales people on the ground at least.
Sure, Hitesh. Thanks. And secondly, on the 99 acres side, right? At the real estate side you mentioned that the competitive intensity has increased quite a bit, and we are seeing similar trends even in the matrimony segment as well, right? Number of players present, competitive intensity has been high for quite some time. We have been investing with the hope that we'll probably become the number one, number two players. What's your outlook on these two segments in that backdrop, and by when can we see some maturity in these two industries?
Real estate, see. Listen, real estate is a tricky one because, see, we are a leader in real estate and, I mean, our revenue base is pretty solid. You know, like, for the last two quarters we've done about INR 150 crore in terms of billing in the last two quarters, and Q4 is normally our largest quarter. This year it may get impacted a bit because of Omicron, but normally Q4 is also very, very good. You know, we have a healthy business in real estate, and it's growing. But yes, there is a lot more competitive activity. There's a lot of VC money which has gone into the sector.
There are new players who entered the sector and in the hope that this will be a large sort of category over a period of time. So it's difficult to say how this is gonna play out. We of course will continue to invest because, you know, this is the time to invest because we've been very patient for the last few years even though we went through a lot in real estate. You know how bad the real estate sector was for so many years. I guess, you know, the next few years from a market standpoint look good. It's very likely that the real estate, you know, sort of sector will grow at 10%-15% per annum at least, for the next few years if real estate remains affordable, if interest rates remain modest.
You know, that is likely to happen and therefore I think we should take a slightly longer term view on real estate. We should continue to invest aggressively in this space because while we may not be a dominant player, it is not as if anybody else is dominant in real estate either. It's still open. Our market is still open. We are a leader, so we should do whatever we can to protect our position in this market. If that means maybe we have to invest INR 200 crore over the next two years, so be it. As far as matrimony is concerned, you know, matrimony, the matrimony market is more mature because it's been a three player market for the longest time. We are a number three player in matrimony. We will ...
We gained share for about two or three years in between. This year, this quarter was not so good for us. We will be hoping that business will bounce back and we'll at least start growing at 8%-10% or more going forward. Now in matrimony, I think we have to think a little out of the box. We'll have to do things a little differently than we've done them till now, if we want to continue to gain share in this market. It's not a very high growth market, it's a market which grows at 8%-10% per annum. There are three players. The other two players are also well-established. We don't have anything very unique to offer at this point in time.
I think we have to work hard on creating a new strategy, you know, in this space if we want to get anywhere in the medium term. Having said so, you know, we have a few ideas and we are working on them, and let's see how this plays out.
Sure, Hitesh. Just one follow-up on the real estate part. By the very nature of this industry, probably we can assume that this will continue to be fragmented, for a long period to come, right? In that context, do we see it ever converging with a recruitment, a Naukri kind of a business where we have winner takes it all kind of a proposition, and we are the number one by a wide margin?
Well, it could happen. I think it's possible. I mean, if you get the network effect going, if you know, we are able to deliver superior customer value, if we can, you know, create a better experience for our users than our competitors, anything is possible. You know, there is no reason why. You know, globally at least there are some very good case studies. There are some real estate sites which are actually bigger. Most real estate sites in most countries are bigger than job boards in those countries. So it is possible. It's just that, you know, I think people see that, and they know there is a lot of value to be created in this space, and they're waiting it out, and they're waiting to invest.
They don't want to sort of give up given, you know, what they're seeing in jobs and given what they're seeing in other sort of categories. Will we get to 70% share in the next 12 months? The answer is no. Would we get there in five years? It will depend on how we execute and how much we are willing to invest in this category.
Sure, Hitesh. Thanks. That's it from my side. All the best.
Thanks, Sudhir. Next question is from Mayank Babla from Dalal & Broacha. Mayank, go ahead and ask your question.
Thank you for taking my question. My question is directed.
Hello? Mayank, I think we lost you. We can't hear you.
He's lost the call.
Okay.
Hello?
Let's take question from
We'll take the next question, yeah. The next question is from Amit Jeswani, Stallion Asset. Amit, go ahead and ask your question.
Hi, Hitesh. Hi, Sanjeev. We just wanted to understand the rationale behind we investing more money in the Jeevansathi business. We lose broadly INR 100 crores a year. Shaadi.com's never made money. The opportunity size is very small at INR 700-INR 800 crores. We're not market leaders. The market leader itself is INR 400 crores. Are we putting good money behind bad money? Shouldn't we just shake hand and move on from this market and probably reinvest in so many other opportunities out there?
Amit, listen. When we invest, you know, we believe actually when we invest that, you know, we'll sort of grow our market, we'll grow our share, we'll grow our business. Now, sometimes some of these things work out, sometimes they don't. We actually saw reasonably good growth in our business over the last two or three years. We were gaining, and we gained share. Last one or two quarters have not been so good. I don't think we should give up on this business in a hurry. Even though it's a INR 700-INR 800 crore market today, the truth is it'll be in 10 years maybe a INR 3,000 crore market, INR 2,500 crore market.
There is nobody who has even 50-60% share in this market. I mean, no one company is a dominant player in this market. Like I said, you know, I think it's about time that we started thinking a little differently in this space. We can't be doing the same thing and expect different results, right? We need to think a little out of the box, go back to the drawing board, and rework our strategy in this space. As far as investing in other verticals goes, you know, it's not as if we are diverting money from other verticals or cash which could have been spent elsewhere to Jeevansathi. We are sitting on INR 3,800 crores.
The company's generating tons of cash. We are looking for newer places to invest in. Right? It's not as if we are distracted or we are diverting sort of resources from other verticals to the Jeevansathi business.
Like, we would continue reinvesting money till the time we can get, like a better this thing in Jeswani, right?
Well, may I add something, Hitesh?
Yeah, please.
Yeah, Amit, see, it's like this. The play over here ultimately has to be consolidation. If you consolidate one or two of the other sites, you get pricing power. Straight away the total industry size go up, you get higher margins, right? It's a question of sort of waiting and trying and hoping for the best. We want to be on the buy side and not the sell side.
All right. Got it.
It may take some time. You know, it's not that we've not been trying. It may take some time.
There are only two other players, Sanjeevji. Are you looking to buy anything? Have you had those kind of-
No, we can't comment specifically on that. All I'm saying is the play is consolidation. We want to be on the buy side, and we are waiting.
Got it. Thank you. Thank you so much.
Thanks, Amit. Mayank is back. Mayank, go ahead and ask your question from Dalal & Broacha.
Sorry about the previous time. Am I audible now?
Yeah, go ahead please.
Yeah. My question is directed towards Chintan, sir. It's an accounting question. Could you please explain to us the accounting treatment of these newly listed, like Zomato and PB Fintech? From henceforth, the mark-to-market gains or losses will be in the other comprehensive income or in the P&L on all the quarters going forward? Could you please explain that to us?
Yep, that's correct. Henceforth, all the gains and losses because of mark-to-market would be in other comprehensive income.
There will be no other tax implications in anything. It'll just be other-
I mean, they are notional, you know, gains and losses arising because of mark to market. There is no real transfer of shares or transfer of assets happening, so there are no capital gains, you know. There's no real tax impact. It's just an accounting notional gain or loss entry.
The tax incidence will happen when you actually sell.
Sure, sure. Thank you so much, and best of luck on the future.
Thank you.
Next question is from Pranav Kshatriya from Edelweiss. Pranav, go ahead and ask your question.
Yeah. Thanks for the opportunity. My first question is regarding this, you know, the trend in the advertisement market, especially on the real estate side. You have Google, Facebook on one side, and then you have this, you know, vertical-specific platform like Magicbricks, and 99 acres and NoBroker, et cetera. Can you explain, you know, how the trend has been for, you know, the shift to digital is happening? Are the Googles and the Facebooks of the world are gaining more market share? Or, is it the more vertical platforms are gaining market share from the print and, you know, other forms of advertising?
Listen, we don't have Google and Facebook numbers for real estate advertising. They don't report their numbers by vertical and so on. We don't have their exact numbers. See, you see. Let me just explain. See, where Google and Facebook do a great job of is in the new home launch market, right? Whenever a new developer launches, especially a big developer launches a new project, they want to quickly get the word out. Earlier, they used to do a lot of print advertising. Today, they do some print advertising, but they also put a lot of money to work on Facebook and Google because they're able to get the word out very quickly.
Once the dust settles down and the project becomes like a regular project, then, you know, what happens is they start spending more money on portals, right? Because portals have a 365, 24/7, 365 a day audience, and so on. Right? Now, our goal of course is to sort of get developers to shift their ad spend over time from print to online and from Google and Facebook to platforms like 99 acres. Therefore, we keep working on improving our delivery, our experience, our sort of responses to our users. On the resale side, on the other hand, it's not as if, you know, brokers use Google and Facebook to advertise. For rental listings, people don't use or clients don't use Google and Facebook to advertise.
That business mostly goes to portals like ours and Magicbricks. Even on the new home side, you know, Google and Facebook mostly make money, a lot of money from the bigger developers, not from the smaller developers. There are, you know, for example, we in 99 acres work with over 5,000 developers in the country, big and small, right? We have developers who may sort of do one small project and launch 10 units, and then we have developers who launch thousands of units every year. Where Google and Facebook do a good job is with the bigger developers.
Sure. My second question is, you know, regarding Matrimony and possibly, you know, there could be some repetition to the earlier question. But my thought was that, you know, if you look at the competitive intensity for the market, which is reasonably consolidated, is very high in that segment. Is, you know, the consolidation the first thing to happen or possibly there is a rate hike or to drive the market, you know, that should happen. What are your thoughts on that?
We are a small player in that market. You know, we are of course very large in North India. We are the number two player in North India and in the Hindi belt, but we are a tiny player in the grand scheme of things, so we don't really decide the fate of that market. Of course, we have been spending more aggressively than earlier, and we've been running aggressive price discounting because that's what our competitors have been doing. But you're right in saying companies could consolidate.
The other thing which could possibly happen over a period of time is that people cut their ad spends and people up their prices, because really we are giving everything away very, very cheap to our users. Now, whether that will happen or not, I don't know how these things will play out over a period of time. Let's see.
Sure. I mean, I take that response, but even if you are the smallest player, I think you are the one who actually, you know, set, you know, the pace of discount and to that
Well, if our competitors are actually much bigger than us and they, you know, they have the network effect going for them, they have much higher market share, they should be able to charge much higher prices and get away with it.
Sure. Thank you so much. Sure. Thank you.
Thanks, Pranav. Next question is from Ankur Rudra from J.P. Morgan. Ankur, go ahead and ask your question.
Thank you. Good to see the growth surprises on Naukri continue this quarter. Just a question on pricing. You know, given how strong the demand has been and, you know, how you're seeing this continue, what are you thinking about the opportunity to take price hikes, this year on all the products you have?
We've taken a price hike on some of our products, and we've also managed to sort of realize more than what we were realizing earlier. We've cut discounts for a lot of our heavy users over the last few months. As a result, our realizations have improved significantly over the last, you know, 12 months. Of course, you know, we're also sort of seeing more volume growth. We have added new customers as well, and we are also selling more products than earlier because we have these sort of new things in our portfolio like iimjobs, Zwayam, DoSelect, and others. Now, going forward, I think a lot will depend on how hot the market is. In a hot market, it's easy to take up prices.
If there is wage inflation, it's easy to take up prices. Because for the same number of people who are being hired through you, companies are saving much more money. Because otherwise they would've had to hire through consultants, and they would've had to pay a lot more, right? Some things are also a function of how hot the market is. If the market continues to be hot, you know, you can expect us to take a price increase also, you can expect us to get higher volume also, you can expect us to add more customers also, you can expect us to sell more volume also. Everything will happen. If the market cools down for some reason, then, you know, we'll have to be careful.
If we think about on a year-over-year basis, Hitesh, what's the broad split of the billing rate growth between volume, price, and maybe new products that have been added?
Chintan, do you have a sense of that?
I think it's very hard to really kind of give a precise number to that. Because, you know, there is in a particular deal there would be upgrades, there would be new products, there would be, you know, price increase as well. At the end of it, you know, finally it's a combo deal where sales guys just go and kind of say that, "Okay, this is the final price for you," right? It depends on how you want to allocate, and the methodology of allocation, the numbers would differ. It's very, very hard to kind of really give a precise number to that.
You know, a substantial chunk of our growth this year would be better realizations.
Yeah.
Because, you know, for a long time we were discounting very heavily. One, because of COVID, you know, we were forced to give very aggressive discounts, you know, for about three or four quarters. You know, and even before that, when we went into COVID, the economy had started slowing down. For the last two quarters, growth was 4%-5%. During times like these, salespeople tend to discount more. I suspect that a lot of the growth that we've seen in the last three, four quarters would be basically us getting our pricing back, also, you know, to some extent.
This will be equally true, Hitesh, for the billings number and the revenue number, or more true for one of them?
More true for billings, I'm assuming. I don't know, Chintan.
Well,
Over three, four quarters it'll even out, right?
Yeah.
Over three, four quarters it'll even out. Yeah.
Yes, that's correct.
Okay. Just in terms of the, you know, this question's been asked before. Just wanted to take another stab at it. The, you know, the trend on Naukri JobSpeak Index versus your commentary about the growth you see out there. Maybe for the December quarter, could you give us a sense if you know the billing rate growth you saw in October was similar to December, or was it an acceleration or a deceleration? You know, just to see how the trend is playing out in January as well, and how that goes ahead.
Listen, one second. I just want to clarify this Naukri JobSpeak Index. We have never said that it is correlated to our growth, okay, numbers. This is true. While it is correlated, but it's not a direct correlation, right? There is a correlation, but it's not a 100% correlation. Like I, you know, what happens in good times especially is that we get a lot of revenue from our other products. People sort of, you know, use our database also a lot more. Database revenue is, I think, 50%-60% of our total overall revenue. You know, people buy more branding products. People buy our shortlisting and screening services. You know, we've been selling our new products also in the market.
None of these things are captured in the JobSpeak Index. JobSpeak Index basically is a barometer of listings on the platform and nothing else, right? And even for the same listing, right, on the platform, if in a bad year companies are looking to hire 10 people, they may be looking in a good year to hire 20 people, because they have just many more requirements, right? It's not even an index of the number of openings on the platform. It's an index of job listings, right? I just want to clarify that because, you know, one should not read too much into the JobSpeak Index also.
Yeah.
It's correlated, but it's not 100% barometer of what's happening in the
Yeah. Ankur, the way to look at it is see, we sell mostly annual solutions. A lot of our revenue is that, right? The JobSpeak Index is listings for that month and the rate of change in that over the previous year, previous month, whatever, right? Now if this Omicron coming in and, you know, positivity is running at 29%-30% in Delhi, NCR, there will be some freezing of some activity for some time. If that freezing is for 10-15 days, it'll impact JobSpeak for that month, no two ways about it, but it would not impact billing or revenue. Now, if this thing continues for 3-4 months in JobSpeak, surely it will impact, you know, billing and revenue.
Yeah.
Understandable. This is very helpful, Kara. Thank you for that. I'm just assuming there's no change in the duration of the billing period or the contracts or the vouchers of that you're seeing.
No, no. Nothing.
Just as you say.
We haven't altered our policies at all.
Okay. Absolutely. That's been helpful.
There's been no change at all.
Could you maybe give us an update, where is the proportion of revenue or billings for IT or, you know, overall technology as part of the billings right now?
Okay. Listen, if you do a client-wise thing, then you know we estimate that about maybe 35%-36% of our revenue is directly from IT/IT-enabled services companies, and maybe another 13%-15% is from recruitment firms who hire for IT clients, right? If you go by activity on our platform to see, okay, which kind of CVs are being accessed. You know, because the other trend that we are seeing is a lot of the non-IT companies are also hiring for IT, right? In our database, they may be classified as non-IT companies or banks or financial services companies or insurance companies, but they could be hiring IT talent.
If you look at the demand for IT talent on our platform, I mean, today at least close to 60% of the demand on the platform is for IT professionals of some sort, right? Of some type. That's how it is today. Now, that could change going forward. Like I said, IT market has been buoyant, the non-IT market has been down for a while, and that could change in the next few months. That is what it is, you know, right now as we speak.
Understood. Just last question. Any change in the thought process about the Indeed type of business model? I know you've historically not tried to do that.
Yeah.
Have you rethought that? Any sort of update in terms of how you're thinking about what they're doing and then sort of, you know, dealing with that sort of competition?
To be honest, we haven't given it too much thought. It's a project which we have measured inside the company. We're looking at how to revive our listings business. You know, our listings business is a tiny part of our total revenue, and Indeed is mostly a listings platform, and that's where they do well. We've got a group of people trying to figure out what we can do going forward to revive our listing business. Now, as a part of that project, we will of course look at the Indeed model also and see if that makes sense for us.
Understood. Thank you, and best of luck.
Yeah.
Thanks, Ankur. Next question is from Rajesh Kumar. He's an individual investor. Rajesh, go ahead and ask your question. Rajesh, you are there?
Sir, Rajesh is on mute. Oh.
Hello. Can you hear me, sir?
Yes, Rajesh, we can hear you now.
Hi. Thanks for the opportunity. I just wanted to know, like, will you be providing additional extra things for the Naukri things so that like, if you give additionally, competitive exams for the freshers, then it will be easier for the HR to shortlist the candidates. Something like additional features you'll be providing to the Naukri because the competition from LinkedIn now it's quite high nowadays, right?
No, we've been doing a lot of stuff. We, for example, like I mentioned, we acquired a platform DoSelect some time back, and DoSelect is a talent assessment platform. We've been taking this platform to all our clients, and they use this platform to conduct tests and hire sort of people through us. As a part of our first Naukri business also, which is our campus hiring. Because a lot of this testing happens, you know, on campus and for freshers, we offer testing solutions to a lot of our customers. You know, we've been sort of toying with this idea for a while, and a lot of our customers now use our services, and we'll be doing a lot more in this area going forward as well.
Okay. Thank you. Thank you so much.
Yeah.
Thanks, Rajesh. Next question is from Mukul Garg from Motilal Oswal. Mukul, go ahead and ask your question. Mukul is lost. We'll take the next question. Next question is from Srinath. Srinath, go ahead and ask your question. He's from Bellwether, Inc.
Hello, can you hear me guys?
Yeah. Please go ahead.
Yeah. We have, I got dropped out for 10 minutes in the middle, so I'm not sure if this question has been asked. We have made significant number of investments in this quarter, 4B Networks, Adda247, DoSelect and so on, Redstart Labs. Could you spend a minute on each of these companies and kind of help us understand what was the thinking behind these investments? Some seem strategic, some seem like financial. If you could help us understand that would be really great.
Yeah. What have we announced, Chintan? What are we allowed to disclose?
We can just explain what our, you know, strategy is for investment because there are financial and there are.
Yeah, okay.
you know, strategic and adjacencies.
Okay. Shall I go with it?
Yeah, please.
We've been now investing since 2007, that's 15 years, in other startups, right? Initially we invested only from the balance sheet, right? We used to call all investments in our head, we said they're all strategic investments, right? We got a little bit more discerning and we said, "You know what? Investments in the four verticals that we operate, which is jobs, real estate, matrimony and education classifieds. In these four verticals, and their adjacencies is what we'll call strategic, the rest we will call financial." We bifurcated investments into strategic and financial. Over time, as some of the investments began to do well, and we got a better handle on stuff, we kind of figured that, listen, it's a little unwieldy to keep investing from a balance sheet.
From a pure liquidity point of view, it's better to have an AIF, right? In 2019 we floated an AIF, and all fresh companies that were outside the four verticals which we operate, those investments went from the AIF. However, follow-on rounds in the older companies, which are financial investments, continue to go from the balance sheet. ShopKirana is financial, but it is invested from balance sheet, right? There are five or six companies where investments are still going from the balance sheet as follow-on rounds. There's a whole bunch of investments which we have made, which are strategic investments, which go from the balance sheet or a subsidiary, and they continue, right? Redstart is a different case.
Redstart is a subsidiary of ours where we are taking very small bets in deep tech companies, right? It's not a lot of money in Redstart, but we are taking very small bets in deep tech companies to figure out. It's a bit of an experiment to figure out what happens there. Right? That's how our investment's organized. Redstart, you look at it as, you know, infusing capital into a subsidiary that is investing in small checks into deep tech companies, maybe 10 or 12 of them so far. You know, at that 24/7, well, there are other financial investors in there, so therefore it's a financial investment.
You can't call it strategic, because the moment there's a financial investor in there other than you have to regard it as financial investment. A strategic investor, you have to be the only investor there. There's a whole bunch of investments that are strategic, right? You want to name some strategic investments, Hitesh?
Yeah. You know, you mentioned DoSelect. DoSelect is an acquisition, it's not an investment. It's 100% acquisition of the assessment platform I just mentioned. iimjobs is 100% acquisition. Zwayam is 100% acquisition. These three are acquisitions. Then we have a few where we own between 25%-50%. 4B Networks is a real estate investment. We own close to 50%. NoPaperForms is an investment in the education space. We own about 49%. You know, then there is Greytip HR. We own about 20 odd%, 25% in Greytip. Then we have Coding Ninjas, where we own another 25. These are, you know...
I mean, right now classified as strategic investments, but it's early days and, let's see what happens to them going forward. Sometimes, you know, strategic-
How do you
Investments over time become financial, and sometimes financial investments over time become strategic as well.
Can you kind of help us understand how this all comes together, at least on the strategic side? Again, I'm not looking for any numbers or, a valuation or nothing out of the numbers. Like, where do these fit in the broader scheme as in-
Yeah.
What was the intent to bring them in and so on?
Yeah, yeah. Like Sanjeev said, you see, strategic, in our head, we define as investments in the spaces we already operate. We have a recruitment vertical, we have a real estate vertical, we have a matrimonial vertical, singles vertical, and we have an education vertical. Anything we sort of do in any of these spaces, broadly, is classified as strategic. Where we are very clear that we would like to own this business and run it, and we see tremendous synergy with Naukri or with any other verticals we already operate in, we would rather acquire, right? If that is an option. Sometimes it is not an option, but we like the asset. Sometimes we may want to watch the business for a while before making up our minds, right?
In such cases, we end up investing and not acquiring upfront. You know, sometimes we may believe that, you know, this may become synergistic with what we have, not today, but maybe three or four years down the line, and we would want the entrepreneur to sort of stay vested and to sort of stay motivated. We may therefore continue to invest for a long time, but take more and more ownership over a period of time. That's the thinking. Now, like, but like I said, you know, some of these are experiments, and we are not sure when we invest. Over time, some of them may become more strategic, and we may require, right, like to acquire a higher and higher sort of ownership in these companies.
Sometimes we may feel that maybe it doesn't make sense and maybe and then at which point in time those investments become finished.
Let me elaborate. You know, there's a company called NoPaperForms. Now, we got into that as a financial investment, saying that, "Listen, you know, this is not really strategic." We did the first two rounds on that basis, right? Then we did a rethink and said, "You know what? Actually, this is strategic." Okay? We're the only investor there. Now it is being treated as strategic investment, and that's how we are handling it. That's how, you know, companies sometimes evolve from financial to strategic or the other way around.
Perfect. Just two more in that. One is Greytip, and one is Univariety. Any broad
Yeah. Greytip is an HR services company. It's not recruitment, but it's HR services, which is why we took a view that, you know, it's not strategic maybe right away in the sense that we may not want to acquire it, but maybe we want to watch the space, learn a little bit, and then we make up our mind over a period of time, right? Teal is a real estate analytics company. We had a tiny, it's a tiny setup right now, so we want to again, sort of see how that space evolves. Now, like it's a little complex. Sometimes financial becomes strategic, and then it will become financial again. Where we are very clear.
Are these getting strategic once they become integrated?
We would rather acquire, where we are not so clear.
Are they getting integrated into our product or, you know, where our sales teams are marketing them or, how does this work once they become strategic?
No. We, you know, sort of, don't sort of up till now at least have not really partnered with them in any significant way to sort of take their products to market or anything of that sort. Of course, we talk to them, we bounce ideas with them. We, you know, mentor them sometimes, and so on. We've not really in any significant way, let me put it this way, taken any of these products to market through our system, for example.
Got it. Last one, Sanjeev. Just wanted to find out what is your broader understanding and view on the quick commerce space, given that one of our large economic interest is deploying significant economic interest in this space. Again, I'm not looking for any numbers as such or anything at all, but broader understanding of how do you kind of see this space playing out over the next 3-5 years?
Look, it's going to be massive demand and therefore top line. I think the real challenge will be getting to profit and they'll hopefully figure that out along the way. It's a huge space.
Got it. Thanks, guys. Thanks for your patience and listening.
Thanks, Srinath. Next question is from Prateek. Prateek, go ahead and ask your question. He's from Antique Stock Broking.
Can you hear me?
Yeah, Prateek, go ahead.
Yes, thanks for the opportunity. First question is on a clarification on, like, when we see the consolidated results, there is this share of net profit from associates. There's a large swing from negative number to a INR 2,400 crore kind of number. Is this some restatement or some one-off which has been reported here?
Yeah. Chintan, you wanna answer that? Chintan, are you there?
It's largely it is because, you know, in this quarter, if you're looking at Q3, it's primarily because Policybazaar got listed. Policybazaar was an associate company till it got listed because we had certain special rights in that organization when till it was a private company. Since it got listed and now we are like any other shareholders, it is now classified as a financial investment. The gains, you know, which have happened, you know, you know. And this Policybazaar, by the way, was held by our SIHL, you know, three of different subsidiary companies. That's why it's part of the consolidated one, you know, right?
When we consolidated all the gains that happened in those subsidiary companies till the date of listing, I think they all are coming by way of consolidated when it comes to, you know, the Info Edge, you know, consolidated results. After that date, whatever the gains and the mark-to-market gains and losses are there, that, you know, is accounted as other comprehensive income.
That happened with Zomato also in quarter September.
Yeah. I think the difference is that in Zomato, shares were held directly by, you know, Info Edge, right? That's why it is part of this stand-alone. While Policybazaar was held through different, you know, JVs or different, you know, wholly-owned subsidiaries.
Okay. That clarifies. The second question is on the recent impact on stock prices of tech companies globally in India. Have we seen anything in private space in terms of valuations?
Look, the space remains as busy as earlier. There have been statements made by Sequoia, by SoftBank, and by Tiger that private valuations are going to correct. We haven't seen evidence of that on the ground just yet. When we go out and talk to companies and we compete and, you know, there are two, three things. One is, if there are committed pools of capital for private markets in India, right? Their mandate is to go into private markets. That pool of capital does not reduce. If they have an investment period of three years, they have to invest in three years, all these funds. Structurally, they can't go anywhere.
Now, it's a question of negotiation whether you can get something cheaper or not, and we have yet to see evidence of that. It may materialize. In general, my sense is that it takes six months for private markets to correct, you know, after public markets are corrected. 4-6 months, maybe eight months. It does not happen immediately. We've seen that earlier.
Sure. Thank you, sir. One last question. You know, one of the investment companies announced two small investments. I think these were early-stage investments or relatively early ones. Are these the kind of investment where we also compete with them in terms of investment opportunities?
No. No. In general, no, we don't. In general, look, if one of our investing companies wants to invest in a company and we also approach them, we generally defer to them. Because those guys are not interested in financial investments. If we are going after the company, it's a financial investment. Even internally, when you see a company which looks like it could be in a gray area, it's strategic or financial, we always go to the strategic team first and say, "You tell me, is this strategic or not? If it is, you do it. Otherwise, we'll do it. Otherwise, the financial investing team will do it.
Understood, sir. Thank you so much for the answers.
Thanks, Prateek. Next question is from Shashank from Macquarie Capital. Shashank, go ahead and ask your question.
Yeah. Hi. Just thanks for taking my question. Just one clarification on when do we see the acquired operating businesses being integrated with the standalone numbers? iimjobs, DoSelect and Zwayam with the standalone reported numbers.
Chintan, are you there? On iimjobs, you know, actually we have already begun the process. You know, the court hearings and shareholders meetings and creditors approval. Everything is already there. The final hearing is also done almost now probably four or five months ago. Before the written order comes, you know, judge, you know, retired and, you know, maybe I am told that now the hearing will happen again and then they will get the order. But it can happen, you know, any day, you know. iimjobs, you know, should be done. Zwayam and DoSelect, you know, may take more time. It's a court-driven process, so unfortunately, you know, it's, we have limited control on that.
Okay. Thank you.
Thanks, Shashank. Next question is from Nitin Jain. Nitin, go ahead and ask your question.
Yeah. Thank you for the follow-up opportunity. I would like to dwell a little upon one of our edtech investments, Adda247. It seems to be scaling up quite well. We have around 15 million MAUs on the platform. This is while, you know, the focus has been solely on exams for government jobs. Is there any plan to, you know, broaden the offerings on the platform, like outside of government jobs?
Is that 24/7? Well, actually.
Yeah
You know, there's truckloads of government jobs out there. You know, they almost all of them have got entrance exams. Whether you are looking at a job as a constable in Maharashtra somewhere, or you are looking to get hired by BSNL as a technical assistant, or you want to join as a railway engineer apprentice through the SCRA exam, there are many government jobs out there. This company has till date largely been focused on banking, and there's massive scope for expansion right now within government jobs. You know, the number of people in India who want government jobs is very large. It's a large market, lots of empty space for them, which they will expand into.
I don't think. I mean, you never know, yeah, because you know, it's an independent company, it's an independent management team. As of now, there's been no conversation about going outside of government jobs.
That's primarily because within the government jobs itself, there is a lot of scope for expansion?
Yes.
Thank you.
Vivek, that was the last question we had for the day. We may wait for some time. If there are any more questions, please raise your hand. There's a question from Utkarsh Solapurwala from DAM Capital. Utkarsh, go ahead and ask your question.
Hello, can you hear me?
Yeah, Utkarsh, go ahead.
My question is on Zomato. What is the capital allocation policy of Zomato when they think of investing strategically in many of the companies like Grofers? Because Sanjeev sir is on the board.
You know, Zomato is an independently listed company, and so we are sort of being told that listen, we should not be talking about Zomato on your conference call. Because Zomato is independently listed, you will have to talk with them actually on the capital allocation policy. Apologies.
Okay, sir. Second question is on 99 acres. There are similar platforms like NoBroker and others, which are also performing activities like listing of homes and et cetera on the platform. There is no single company that can provide actually an end-to-end home buying from starting from home searching to providing some help like the legal services. Because in India, many times actually when you buy real estate, it is a dicey business where the records are not clean. People generally they prefer brokers who looks after most of the stuff, and then buy actually from the brokers and not directly from the 99 acres. Are we planning to do something like that?
Offer an end-to-end service in 99 acres?
Yes.
No, right now there is no plan to offer an end-to-end service in 99 acres. We have teams, however, evaluating opportunities constantly, and we are not saying that we will never do it, but at least I don't see us doing anything like this for the next two quarters.
Okay, sir. Okay. Thank you, sir.
Thank you, Utkarsh. Next question is from Srinath from Bellwether. Srinath, go ahead and ask your question.
Hi. Hitesh, just wanted to understand if you could give us a qualitative view on 99 acres' app usage or eyeballs. Because just wanted to know that, see, the sales numbers in Knight Frank, they're all still the same as 2019, so the growth hasn't come yet, but there's been a lot of commentary that demand is actually kind of funneling in, and that would be seen in pre-enquiry stages with, you know, more footfalls on the app and so on. If you could give any qualitative understanding of whether you're seeing a ramp-up on the app or on the site, that would be great.
Yeah, you know, I think it's been a little sort of, you know. Like, you know, because we've had these different sort of waves at different points in time, COVID waves, there have been periods where we've seen more activity than, you know, one or two years ago. There have been periods, you know, when we've seen less activity. It's very difficult to say what's really happening in that market. Overall, I would say it's been flattish in terms of activity. It's not as if activity has gone down, but it's not as if it's like, gone up significantly as well. We've seen more activity on the rental side for sure. On the platform, some markets are doing better than other markets for us.
That could also be a function of our competitive position in those markets. Small towns have done well for us for the last two years now. Maybe that's because people went home and a lot of people sort of are operating from home and maybe they want to upgrade their accommodation. Hard to say because, you know, there have been all those changes, you know, which sort of have been impacting this market.
What we picked up and, you know, anecdotally from a lot of our customers, was that there is at least for some time in between, and this may have changed once again in the last two or three months because of Omicron a month or two, is that a lot more leads, inquiries were actually converting into transactions. While the number of inquiries may have remained the same, you know, more people were sort of ending up buying or closing a deal, right? But this is anecdotal, so we don't have data on this.
Overall, I think come maybe February, come March, we'll have a better sense because hopefully COVID will be behind us and, hopefully companies will start to open, employees will start to go back to work.
You know, the market will go back to normal. At least the team seems to be of the view that given that interest rates are still low, home loan rates and real estate is much, much more affordable, and salaries have actually also gone up in the last 12 months, there is likely to be renewed interest in this market. Because of COVID, there weren't too many new launches over the last 18-24 months, and therefore inventory in most cities is also lower than what it was two years ago, right? Let's see. That's where it is, and let's see how it plays out over the next few months.
Perfect. One last question for Sanjeev. You know, after the QIP, you had kind of articulated a strategy for us in terms of concentric circles that we would look at from a point of view of you know, doing a transaction to augment our existing businesses. Just wanted to understand where are we on that? Have we kind of stayed to the course on that particular path, or are we looking at a different strategy going forward and that particular or set of deals did not fructify? Was that a valuation issue or the deal flow itself given that large deals don't come that often? Just wanna understand you know, how you are seeing this thing going forward.
Well, the strategy, the intent remains the same, right? However, it's about durability, and it's not been happening. Look, we have done a few acquisitions, you know. So if you look at DoSelect, you look at iimjobs, you look at Zomato. You know, those are acquisitions. They're not big acquisitions. If you add up the total cost of these acquisitions, Chintan, what will it be?
Of all three, Zomato.
Of three.
DoSelect and iimjobs should be around, you know, INR 180 crore-INR 190 crore.
We've done roughly around INR 200 crore. It's not a big amount because, you know, I mean, we didn't need QIP for this. But look, we'll keep on adding stuff. We'll keep on looking for the big one, and we keep on talking.
Got it. We have been broadly staying to the
A part of the last QIP was also because, look, COVID had happened. We didn't know what will happen. If you want to buy something, right, it's good to have money in the bank already rather than go hunting for money afterwards when you actually strike a transaction and then you find the market is not good enough. Of course, in hindsight, you know, we're doing better off to raise money now than at that price, but that's life.
We have also made some part investments. It's not fully acquired company like this three one, but, you know, there are other strategic investment like, for example, 4B Networks. We've made some part investments in some of the other companies.
Thanks. Thanks, guys. Thanks a lot. Much appreciated. I'll get back into the questions queue.
Thanks, Srinath. We have Nitin Jain, next question from Fairview Investment Advisory. Nitin, go ahead and ask your question.
Yeah. My question is again on our investment portfolio. After Zomato and PB Fintech, do we have any other investee company which is closer to probably listing or, you know, becoming a unicorn?
Not from the balance sheet, but from the AIF, the GoMechanic has filed. That is a late-stage investment for us, not an early stage. We can't say that, you know, we got in early and stayed 10 years and, you know, worked with them and made it happen, helped them make it happen. No, we can't say that.
Okay. Thank you.
That was the last question we have till now.
Thank you, everyone. On behalf of Info Edge, we conclude the conference. Thank you, and you may disconnect lines now.
Thank you. Bye-bye.
Thank you, everyone. Have a good evening, and stay safe.
See you, and stay safe.