We have 70 people with us, and, I'm handing over to my colleague, Vineet, and we'll start the call now.
Thank you, Anand. Good evening, everyone. Welcome to Info Edge (India) Limited Q1 FY25 earnings conference call. Joining us from management today we have Mr. Sanjeev Bikhchandani, Promoter and Vice Chairman, Mr. Hitesh Oberoi, Co-Promoter and Managing Director, and Mr. Chintan Thakkar, Director and CFO. Before we begin, I would like to draw your attention to the detailed disclaimer in the presentation for good order's sake. Kindly note that this conference is being recorded, and all the participant lines will be in listen-only mode, and there will be an opportunity for Q&A after the presentation concludes. Now I'll hand over the call to Mr. Hitesh Oberoi for his opening remarks. Thank you, and over to you, Hitesh.
Good evening, everyone. Welcome. A big welcome to all of you to the Info Edge earnings call for the First Quarter of 2024/2025. We will start, as always, with an update on our standalone financial performance, and then we will cover each segment performance along with the commentary on each business. And then, of course, we'll have time for Q&A in the end. In Q1 of FY25, our standalone billings were INR 579 crores, a Y-O-Y growth of 11%, and revenue was INR 639 crores, a Y-O-Y growth of 9%. Billings and revenue, including Zwayam and DoSelect, were INR 596 crores and INR 655 crores respectively, a Y-O-Y growth of 11% and 9%.
Operating profits at a standalone level grew by 9% year-on-year to INR 227 crores, and the operating margin was 36%. The standalone business generated cash from operations of INR 174 crores in Q1 of 2025, a Y-O-Y growth of 20%. The recruitment business continued to generate healthy cash. The cash losses in non-recruitment businesses reduced significantly by 73% from a cash loss of INR 61 crores in Q1 of FY 2024 to INR 17 crores in Q1 of FY 2025. EPS before exceptional items for Q1 of FY 2025 stood at INR 18, a Y-O-Y growth of 16%.
The cash balance of Info Edge, including wholly owned subsidiaries at the end of June 2024, stood at INR 4,255 crore, and the headcount as of June 2024 end was 5,817. Moving on to segment by performance and starting with the recruitment business. In Q1 of FY25, recruitment billings grew by 9% to INR 431 crore, and revenue grew by 6% to INR 472 crore. Revenue growth lagged behind billing growth due to the slower billing growth observed in mid FY 2024. Operating expenses rose by 19% year-on-year in Q1 of 2025, led by costs from IPL campaigns, as discussed in our previous call.
We also continued to invest in our strategic business initiatives like AmbitionBox, JobHai, et cetera, which are aimed at driving long-term value creation in the recruitment business. Consequently, the operating profits were lower by 3% year-on-year to rupees, at INR 255 crores, and the operating profit margin was 54%. Cash generated from the recruitment operation was INR 190 crores. You know, I'll spend some time on the operating highlights of last quarter in the recruitment business. There was a slight improvement in Y-O-Y billings growth in Q1 of FY 2024-25 of 9% compared to a Y-O-Y growth of 7% in Q4 of last year. Growth momentum in the non-IT segment continued, with billings growing at 14% year-on-year.
This was largely driven by sectors such as healthcare and life sciences, infrastructure, transport, real estate, and media and telecom. After a continuous decline in billings for four quarters in a row, the recruitment consulting segments, we saw a slight improvement in billings with low single-digit billing growth, but after several quarters. Billing growth in the IT segment also continued this quarter, though the growth rates actually moderated compared to the previous quarters and was in mid-single digits. Our niche and adjacent business verticals, including iimjobs, Naukri Talks, Naukri FastForward, also maintained healthy billings growth, with Y-O-Y increases of 26%, 25%, and 29% respectively. AmbitionBox and JobHai, which began monetization in the previous quarter, continued to grow and showed some improved performance in the quarter as well.
These are relatively small businesses, and will not move the needle in the short term, but are strategically important to us, for the next five, six years. Employer branding offerings, across our portfolio, including Naukri, iimjobs , Hirist and AmbitionBox, have been well received by customers. We are further strengthening these offerings and focusing on increasing our market penetration. The recently launched, career platform for students, Naukri Campus, is slowly gaining traction, with an increasing number of students signing up and utilizing our offerings to become more industry-ready. On the platform metric side, our Naukri database now comprises over 100 million resumes. App installs stand at 14 million, and the average number of resumes added daily was 22,000 in Q1 of FY25.
Lastly, as mentioned in the previous call, we will continue to monitor overall growth over the next one or two quarters. While growth rates, particularly in IT, are positive, the trends have not yet stabilized. Moving over to the real estate segment, in 99acres, billing growth moderated to 10%, to INR 81 crore, while revenue grew by 20% to INR 99 crore. Operating losses reduced by 39% to INR 14 crore, and cash losses for operations were INR 19 crore, a Y-O-Y reduction of 54%. In terms of broad industry trends, in the real estate segment, new project sales moderated in Q1. Overall, new project sales in the top eight cities were flat sequentially in Q1 and up approximately 10% year-over-year.
Sequential price increases appear to be tapering off in most cities for both new projects and in the retail segment. Unsold new project inventory levels remain at reasonably healthy levels in the top eight cities. As a result, developers continue to launch new projects at similar levels to Q4 in most cities. There was some uncertainty during the election period, which may smooth out in subsequent quarters. For 99acres, billings growth in Q1 was driven by improvements in both the number of billed customers and in the average billing per customer. Broker and channel partner billings grew faster than developer or builder billings.
Our listing realization continued to increase year-on-year in Q1 as well, driven by successful premiumization through product upgrades. We continue to invest in getting new users and further increasing our lead in terms of brand recall. Overall traffic, user traffic, on the user side, on the buyer side, in 99acres grew by 23% year-on-year, driven by growth in new projects-both new projects and resale traffic. Our app usage-daily active users on the app grew by 33% year-on-year in Q1. 99acres continues to remain focused on investing in growing its user base, delivering and delivering a superior platform experience, and providing differentiated content to help users make informed real estate buying decisions. Moving on to the matrimonials business. In Jeevansathi, billings growth momentum continued.
Billings grew by 35% to INR 25 crores, and revenue also grew by 35% to INR 26 crores. Operating expenses were actually reduced 25% year-on-year, driven by a huge reduction in marketing costs. This was down 45% year-on-year. Business is now nearing breakeven. Operating losses were reduced by 88% year-on-year to INR 2 crore. Cash loss was INR 4 crores, a year-on-year improvement of 79%. The business continues to focus on monetization. You know, we had made several features on the app free a couple of years ago, but now we are back to focusing on monetization, with new features launched in Q1, such as Super Interest and Handpicked Matches gaining good traction. Marketing expense rationalization continued, with marketing costs down 45% year-on-year, while maintaining growth momentum.
Competition intensity remained similar to last year. There was no change on that front. Paid products, launched a few quarters back following the free chat implementation, have been gaining traction as users see value in these offerings. Some gains in Q1 were also achieved through better realizations. Offering a high-quality matchmaking experience remains our core focus, and we plan to further invest in matchmaking, improving matching recommendations, to improve user outcomes. Key metrics, like acceptances and two-way chats on the platform, continue to show healthy growth. The business will continue to launch new products in the coming quarters, and try and offer different value propositions to different users. Some of these new products will feature exclusive new functionalities for paying users, and the chat function, chat functionality will continue to remain free on the platform.
Moving on to the education business, Shiksha. In Q1 of FY25, billings grew by 25% to INR 42 crores, while revenue grew by 18% to INR 42 crores. Operating profit was we made an operating profit of INR 4 crores last quarter, versus a loss of INR 1 crore in the same quarter last year. Cash generation from operations grew to INR 7 crores, versus thirty lakhs in the same quarter of last year. The emergence of new private universities in India presents an opportunity for Shiksha to expand its huge its footprint. Shiksha makes most of its money from private colleges and private universities and not from government colleges. We continue to invest in making our content more comprehensive and student-friendly, and in building deep domain expertise in this space.
Shiksha's traffic share, in fact, reached an all-time high of 51% in April 2024. Student interest in studying abroad for the fall 2024 season, you know, the study abroad business is a small part of the Shiksha business, has been affected by the weak external environment. We remain committed to making long-term investments in strengthening our study abroad platform, improving the productivity of our counseling team. Moving on to the consolidated financial highlights for the company as a whole. At the consolidated level, the net sales for the company stood at INR 677 crores in Q1 of FY25, versus INR 626 crores in Q1 of FY24. The total comprehensive income stood at INR 3,583 crores in Q1 of 2025, compared to INR 3,002 crores in Q1 of 2024.
Profit before tax, without exceptional items in Q1 of 2025, was INR 329 crore, compared to INR 217 crore in Q1 of FY 2024. To summarize and and reiterate our midterm to long-term outlook, we are truly excited about the growth opportunities across all our businesses. The IT-dependent segment of our recruitment business has been volatile, but it is recovering from the lows, with positive signs emerging in the last two quarters. The July 2024 JobSpeak report has also been very encouraging, and it's JobSpeak, the JobSpeak Index grew by 12% year-on-year in July, and month-on-month, it grew by 11%. Fingers crossed. Let's see how this plays out over the next couple of months as well. We have been expanding and strengthening our-...
GCC and non-IT segments by improving our go-to-market offerings and adding more clients, particularly by penetrating further in tier two and tier three cities. Our niche and adjacent businesses, such as iimjobs, NaukriGulf, FastForward, AmbitionBox, and JobHai, have been delivering decent results and expanding the opportunities for future growth of the recruitment business. Our non-recruit recruitment businesses are showing reasonably healthy growth and are all nearing or approaching breakeven. 99acres has established a strong value proposition and is on the right track to grow market share through, you know, given favorable market conditions, improved new sort of offerings and better realizations. Jeevansathi's shift to a premium model has now started yielding results. We are accelerating top line growth and reducing losses. Shiksha continues to grow well and is already profitable.
We have also been making reasonably good progress in deploying AI and machine learning across all our businesses. As a result, we are seeing benefits in terms of higher user engagement on the platform, and we are also trying to both boost both productivity and efficiency inside the company. A key strength in navigating these these cycles, which we go through, go through periodically as a business, has been our strong cash generation and our healthy sort of bank cash balance. And we continue to evaluate the best possible ways of deploying our cash to maximize shareholder returns. Thank you. I'll stop there, and we are now ready to take any questions that you may have.
Thank you, Hitesh. We will now begin the question/answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question, please raise your hand on the screen. We will take your name and announce your turn in the question queue. Anand, over to you.
Thank you, Vineet. The first question is from Vivek Anand, from Ambit Capital. Vivek, go ahead and ask your question.
Yeah, thank you for the opportunity. First set of questions pertain to Naukri and recruitment. So, Hitesh, could you explain to us how non-IT as a segment did? You've been expanding the presence of Naukri across tier two and three markets. On your JobSpeak, also you are disclosing a lot more number of cities. So clearly you are focused on tier two and three cities, and mostly these cities are non-IT centric. So could you help us understand how non-IT is doing for you, and what's the pricing proposition like for non-IT customers versus current billing trends for IT, and how you think about the scalability of non-IT billing?
Yeah. You know, we've done a bunch of things over the last three, four quarters to accelerate our non-IT growth, sales growth, and also to improve the experience on the platform for both the non-IT job seekers and customers. We've opened new offices in existing cities. So, cities like Delhi, for example, NCR, we used to have three offices earlier, but the cities have grown over time. You know, so now we have six offices, for example, in NCR, to service our customers better and to grow coverage. So we have an office in Ghaziabad, we have an office in Faridabad, we have an office in Greater Noida, we have an office in Manesar. We were perhaps not covering these markets, you know, adequately earlier, and, you know, cities have grown over time.
We've also opened new offices in cities where we did not have offices earlier. We are... I think, our goal is to get to, you know, 100 cities, you know, in maybe a couple of years. We're perhaps already in more than 70 cities. And that's where we have a lot of non-IT growth, right? Because as these cities grow, they are creating jobs, and IT is not everywhere. So, and many of these companies start small, and it's important to get them onto the platform early, right? On the product side also, you know, our IT experience is always very good and on the job seeker, both on the job seeker side and on the customer side.
We have been working very hard to improve our experience for non-IT users, you know, job seekers and recruiters. It's harder problem than IT, because there are so many industries, so many segments, you know, all kinds of job seekers in the market. There are, you know. So segment by segment, we've been trying to improve the experience. We've taken, of course, taken up targeting, you know, looking at the bigger segments first. We are here, this is where we are deploying a lot of AI and machine learning to improve the experience. You know, we do all really well with the bigger customers, even in the non-IT space. Now we are trying to make more inroads into the smaller SME space as well. You know, the SME customer is very different from the enterprise customer.
You know, often SME customers are small in size. They don't have HR departments. They don't have a lot of time to go through our database and post jobs and, you know, you know, so, so we're trying to see how we can help them use the platform better. Also, we must understand that the non-IT market was there was supply overhang in this market, because not much hiring happened during COVID, but a lot of people, you know, hit the market, you know, looking for jobs. And that supply is slowly getting absorbed. That overhang will hopefully go away with time. And if that happens, and then, and the economy continues to grow at 6%-7%, then actually the non-IT, you know, segment should grow even faster for us going forward. But fingers crossed on that one.
So that's really, you know. So again, you know, our pricing in non-IT also, you know, is more modest, compared to IT, because the hiring needs of customers, you know, of every company and IT companies hire in large numbers, while here they sort of don't hire that many people. But we have worked with many more companies, right? So it's also more aggressive. So all in all, you know, we are happy with the progress on the non-IT side.
Great, this is helpful. Just one more on recruitment. JobHai seems to have now expanded to, I think, around 60 cities, and you seem to be getting a lot of traction in terms of number of job seekers on the portal. How should we think about the revenue contribution here? It seems like there is an explosion in the number of profiles that you are adding here. I mean, year-on-year, I think you've expanded to so many new cities, so many new job seekers. I think you're doubling there, and perhaps from a low base, I understand. But how to think about the monetization of this segment? You seem to clearly have critical mass.
You're absolutely right. We've worked very hard on the product for the last three years, and we seem to have got product market fit. There's a lot of traction. We're getting a lot of job seekers. We're getting a lot of jobs. We're getting a lot of recruiters advertising on the platform. And it's a freemium model, so, you know, anybody can actually post a job for free to start with. And it's all, it's mobile first, it's vernacular, it's local. So it's a very different platform from Naukri, targeted at a very different user segment. If JobHai has to be successful, I mean, Naukri may grow. Naukri today works with 120,000 customers, perhaps.
If we do a good job, we may end up working with 200 to 250,000 customers in the next 5-6 years. On the other hand, if JobHai is successful, then we would want JobHai to work with 1 million customers, you know, 5-7 years from now. It should be the platform of choice for SMEs, as well, not just enterprises. And that's how, you know, that's how we've been thinking about JobHai. We were not monetizing because we wanted to get the market, the product market fit right. And when we started pressing the pedal on monetization only a few months back, and we are getting a reasonable response.
We don't want to compromise on the freemium elements of JobHai, so we don't want to force people to pay to list, customers to pay to list on JobHai. But we are launching more and more features to... Just like in Jeevansathi, you know, to see how we can monetize our heavy users, you know, better. But this is a 5-6 year play. This is not something which is gonna move the needle on top. It may move the needle on bottom line, but it may not move the needle on top line for the next 2-3 years. But long term, it's a big opportunity because the truth is, the blue-collar job market, in terms of volumes, is perhaps four or five or maybe 7 or 8 times the size of the white-collar market.
ARPU will however, be lower. Unit economics will have to be figured out with time, so that we want, we want this market to be as self-serve as possible. So fingers crossed, but good traction. A lot of job seekers, a lot of pledges. And I won't be surprised if in a couple of years, it's, you know, we have more jobs, or maybe even in a year, we have more jobs on JobHai than on Naukri. And we get, start getting more daily registrations on JobHai than on Naukri. But that'll be a good problem to have.
But you already do seem to have a lot more jobs there, right? If I look at the job listings number, the live jobs on Naukri are around 4-5 lakhs. Here, you have, like, 1.5 million or something. Correct me if I'm wrong.
No, those may be vacancies, not listings. I was, I was referring to listings. So against every job, there may be like, somebody wants to hire delivery boys, they may want to hire 100, 200, 500, right? But I was referring to the number of job listings, you know.
Understood, understood.
Yeah.
Great, great. Sanjeev, one question. Thank you, Hitesh. Great answers. Very detailed as usual. Thanks a lot. And, Sanjeev, just one question for you. We get to interact with you very infrequently, so I'm taking the liberty to ask questions from the annual report as well.
Sure.
So this year, you invested in 20 more companies through the AIFs, right? All three AIFs. And you seem to have pressed the pedal on capital deployment in fiscal 2024. And we are seeing that your investees seem to have had a very high interest from external stakeholders in terms of wanting to fund them. So how are you thinking about exits and monetization in the AIF? We saw recently that there was some transaction announced where Apax Digital came in. How to think about the exits here? Or is it too early, and how to think about-
Little early. See, see, we have a 12+ 2-year fund, right? Because we believe that, look, past experience and evidence tells us that in India, if you are early stage, you have to be patient. I mean, you look at Zomato, we went in 2010, Policybazaar we went in 2008, we are still there. And the big value, you know, has come in the last 3-4 years, which basically means if you exit in 7-8 years, you won't. You know, you need to be there, you know, for a long, long time before you really, you know, get the value. So which is why we have a 12+ 2-year fund, because most funds are of shorter duration than that. We deliberately went for 12+ 2 years. So it's a little early.
Our first fund, our first AIF, was 2019. So if you start looking at getting your exits eight years or nine years out, then you're talking about 2027, 2028. Of course, there will be some exits, some which may happen earlier. If something blows up, you'll obviously exit earlier. If there is a great acquisition offer that comes along and, you know, the founder wants to take it, you know, you can't really block that because you have to back the founder because you can't really run the company without the founder.
O r the founders. And if we invest in a later stage company, like we did with ixigo, it goes public. Now, we haven't exited ixigo, but we have the option to whenever we want. So we are patient. I'm, we're not even thinking like this right now, actually.
Okay, great. That's very helpful. Thank you so much.
Thanks, Vivek. The next question is from Nikhil Chaudhary from Nuvama. Nikhil, go ahead and ask your question.
Hello. Thanks for the opportunity. Hitesh, first on recruitment side, while overall billing growth had been improving since last two quarter, but underlying growth, especially in IT, has changed growth trajectory from double-digit to now mid-single-digit. Despite Quarter Four, I suppose, was a high base year compared to Quarter One, right? So and in same kind of wild swing happened in job seek as well, right? June, we saw the dip in July, very sharp upswing. So any color there, what's happening? What would be the trend going ahead?
If you can say, see, we were. Actually, April and May were good months. But in June, we saw sort of negative, we saw a decline in jobs being posted on the platform. Now, prior to our sales team, maybe it had to do with the uncertainty around the elections, but we can't be sure. I mean, July, we've seen a bounce back. Will it sustain? Hard to say. Right now, as things stand, the sales team is more bullish than they were. But you know, all the function of what happened in the last month, more than anything else, you know, moods and moods change basis, you know, that. So it's a wait-and-watch situation.
Like we have said last time also, we would want this to maybe comment on these two quarters will, you know, from now. I mean, there's a recession in the U.S. now, according to some people, that may impact things in India. In the past, recessions have also been good in the medium term for IT companies, because recessions lead to in the U.S., lead to cost cuts, and ultimately, you know, more people get hired in India as a result. But we don't know how this is gonna play out this time. So fingers crossed. I mean, in our company, at least, I can tell you attrition has moved up a little bit, you know, so that's worrying us. But let's see if it sustains there. Hard to say what's gonna happen.
Sure, Hitesh. Second, on margin side, we have seen improvement in profitability, especially on the non-recruitment side, and many of the businesses almost reaching breakeven. So just want to understand, what's the strategy going ahead. We have reached, you know, some of the milestones which we targeted. Are we planning to increase the profitability further, or no, we would like to invest back in the business?
So in Jeevansathi, we are targeting breakeven this year, so we would like to get as close to breakeven as possible. At the same time, we're targeting high growth because we've started monetizing more aggressively. We had gone free for a couple of years. I mean, we continue to be premium, chat is free, but we have launched more features and more functionalities to help monetize better. So we would want to get as close to breakeven as possible this year in Jeevansathi. In Shiksha, can we continue to sort of be profitable? The domestic business grew very well in Q1. Such study abroad is struggling a little bit because of what we are seeing are happening around the world.
So at least even in Shiksha, we would want to at least, you know, target breakeven or at least make, make some profit this year. But we would want to continue to invest in in growing our platform and improving the, the quality of content, the quantity of content, the richness of the content on the platform. We are investing a lot more behind the app. We are wherever possible, we are trying to use you know, generative AI and with data science and machine learning to improve the experience. So that will continue. 99acres is a little tricky. You know, we had a, a great five or six quarters, but this quarter growth was a little lower than what we expected.
On deeper analysis, we saw, we realized that in certain markets, we grew really well, and in some markets, we struggled. Now, again, you know, anecdotally, what I can tell you, you know, the business took a hit in, in June. Maybe again, it had to do with some uncertainty around the elections. And often when state government change and so on, and all these things happen in real estate, some of the projects get delayed. I mean, approvals, you know, take longer, as people adjust to the new environment. So, we would want 99acres to grow faster.
Going forward, we are, you know, doing whatever we can, and if that requires us to invest a lot more in the business, and if that means, you know, taking a loss or some more time, I mean, that's fine with us. I mean, we see this as a good opportunity in the long run.
Sure, Hitesh. You had mentioned now the investment in the non-recruitment side.
Yeah.
In fact, you had mentioned that FY25 will be year where you want to invest in recruitment side as well.
Yeah, yeah.
So is it fair to assume that FY25 will be the year of investment, where, you know, the focus will be on growth or maybe, building the capability rather than profitability improvement?
Right. Even in recruitment, see, we will continue, we continue to invest in our JobHai business. We continue to invest behind the AmbitionBox platform. We continue to invest behind iimjobs and Hirist. Even our NaukriGulf business has been doing well. We continue to invest in the NaukriGulf business. We spent even though our business is growing slowly, we were on IPL in Q1. That's why our marketing spend went up in Naukri, because we were out of media for a long time, and it's never good to be sort of out of media for a long time. I mean, there is, you know. So, you know, it's normally, you know, slowdowns don't last for a very long time, and business always bounces back.
It's important to keep investing even when the market is slow, because that's how you get share. That's, you know, and, so, so that's what our philosophy has been. And, you know, we will continue to invest, like I said, because we are thinking more medium-term and more long-term. It's a huge opportunity. And we would not want to slow down investing just because of a couple of bad quarters. In any of our verticals. In all our verticals, not just-
Understood, Hitesh. Yeah. Yeah, thank you so much. Just last one from my side. Just understanding greytHR transaction in more detail. By the name, greytHR was a strategic transaction, right? And now we are letting,
Yeah.
A private equity acquire it. So what's the thinking behind it?
Yeah, yeah. So you're absolutely right. See, when we went into greytHR, you know, in our heads, it was quasi strategic. But over time, we've realized that we would rather sort of invest more in sourcing and recruitment and automation than in getting into an HR services sort of play. So really, over time, we, in our heads, we turned financial instead of strategic in greytHR. And therefore, you know... But of course, the company is doing very well. The founders are executing brilliantly. And we see a long-term sort of... And we are confident the business will do well in the long run.
Some of the early investors wanted to exit, and you know, that gave an opportunity for us to get another investor in. It's not as if the company needs a lot of money. The company is breaking even and growing well. But you know, because some investors wanted to exit, Apax you know was very bullish on the company and they wanted to come in and we allowed them. And the founders were very keen. But we continue to be bullish, and we continue to you know be investors in the company. And we're hoping that the company will you know perhaps IPO in a few years from now, if all goes well.
Sure.
You see, Nikhil, it's like this.
Yeah.
If earlier investors want to exit, either we buy them out or somebody else buys them out, because they want to exit. And if we are no longer regarding it as strategic as we thought earlier, then, you know, do we want to commit more money to buy them out, or let somebody else? And that is the choice, and I think we've made this choice for reasons that it's no longer as strategic.
Sure, sure. Understood, understood. Thanks a lot. Good luck for coming period.
Thank you, Nikhil. The next question is from Nitin Sharma, from MC Pro. Nitin, go ahead and ask your question. Nitin, you're there? Maybe we'll take the next question. Next, we have Vivek Anand from Ambit Capital, a follow-up question. Vivek, go ahead and ask your question.
Thanks for the follow-up opportunity. Hitesh, just extending previous participant's question on investments in recruitment verticals. You had previously quantified around 20-25 crore per quarter investment, and even now, while answering my JobHai query, you said that it will have a bottom line impact, so I presume negative impact. So could you help us understand how much of a drag are these gestation projects causing? They clearly are not monetizing to their potential currently. So how much loss are you absorbing in the PNL from some of these projects, which are very long gestation?
In the range you said, you know, INR 20-25 crore a quarter, around that much.
Okay. So that's pretty similar, despite-
Yes.
The new coming.
Yes.
I see. Understood, understood. And secondly, on 99acres, the competitive environment, like you said, there's some back and forth there. I mean, there are some aggressors, plus you may have gained some market share. So how to think about the investments there? In your annual report, you didn't disclose the segment-wise advertising this time last year. I mean, in fiscal 2023, you had. So just to understand, the ad spends here and how to think about the OpEx for 99acres. I mean, revenue, you addressed that quite well. I wanted to understand the OpEx on 99acres, along with the ad spends in this launch.
So ad spend, we are actually spending more than we spent last year. I don't know exactly how much. Right now, as we speak, we have a higher budget than we spent last year. On the other hand, job, you know, you know, manpower costs, et cetera, are under control, so those are not growing a lot. But we are spending a lot more on advertising than we spent last year.
Right. So in that, in effect, you're saying that even if you see, let's say a 20% revenue growth, it may not necessarily need, lead to a very sharp reduction in losses. Is that how to infer it on 99acres?
Yes, you're right.
Okay, great. Thank you again, and all the best.
In case there are more questions, you may raise your hand, we'll take them one by one. That was all. Yeah. So the next question is from Swapnil. Swapnil, go ahead, go ahead and ask your question.
Hi, thanks for the opportunity. I just wanted to understand the spends that you did during the IPL. You know, if you can just quantify that, and will we continue such spends going ahead, and how often would that be?
We will not be able to give you the numbers, but, you know, so IPL was, is of course, once a year, and, the team was out of media. I mean, now, Naukri had been out of media for a long time, which is why we went aggressive on IPL in Q1. We don't intend to spend as much money, or, in Q2. Q3 is also normally a lean quarter for advertising. You know, but, but in general, I mean, we will spend a lot more on advertising this year than we spent last year on Naukri.
If I can just probe you a bit more on that. So on Q&Q basis, your Naukri spends seem to have grown around INR 22 crore. I would presume a majority of that would be related to, you know, market.
Related to. Yes, because of IPL.
Because of IPL, yes.
A lot of it is because of IPL.
Right. And the second question is with respect to your 99acres business. So, we have seen your revenue growth coming mainly from the broker segment of late. The developer segment seems to, the revenue share has been declining quite a bit. Any color on that?
Yes, yes, yes.
As to what would drive that growth going ahead, if at all? And if that is not going to happen, would it not be fair enough for us to invest on the B2C side? You know, directly go to the customer and try to monetize that even more than what we are doing right now.
Two points. One, see, the market is also moving more and more towards channel partners. So on the resale side, you know, all our revenue comes from brokers, right? There are no developers there. On the new home and new launch side of things, on the primary, in the primary market, we make money from both channel partners and developers. Our sense of the market also is that it's moving more and more towards channel partners. So there are more channel partners than earlier. More and more homes are being sold through channel partners in more and more cities. In the north, for example, in NCR, maybe 90% of all homes are sold through channel partners. While a city like Bangalore, maybe 40-50% of all homes are sold through channel partners.
But the share of channel partners in home sales is increasing in every city with every passing year. And that's showing in our numbers as well to some extent. Too, you know, we believe our platform also delivers better for channel partners than for developers, and we are trying to see how we can fix that. We may have to launch some offerings which work, you know, for better for developers. Maybe our pricing is also a little off on, you know, on that front, and we're trying to see how we can fix that.
But long term, our sense is, I mean, if we were to fast-forward five years, most homes in the country will be sold through channel partners and not directly by builders, especially in the affordable and, you know, those kind of segments. And especially when the market is a regular market. See, in a hot market, anything happen, you know, developers don't even need us, they don't need channel partners to sell. You know, you may have heard of day of launching, everything getting sold in two days. Nobody's required, if that is the case. But in a regular market, you know, it's more and more transactions are likely to happen through channel partners than through direct developer sales teams over time. That's our sense.
Right. And on the B2C part, any plans to go aggressively on that side?
Monetizing owners, you mean, and buyers?
Yeah, both.
We don't intend to monetize buyers. That's not on in our plan. We have some offerings for owners. You know, while any owner can list their property for free on 99acres, we offer some value-added services, and a small percentage of owners avail those services. About, you know, 7%-8% of our revenue is from owners in 99acres.
By any chance, do you want to increase that share if the developer share is not going?
No, no. I, you know, of course, I mean, we would want to grow our revenue from owners. But it's not a very, very big part of our strategy. We would rather grow our revenue from brokers, channel partners, and developers first.
Got it. Got it, Hitesh. Thanks a lot.
Yeah. Okay.
The next question is from Jalaj Manocha, from Svan Investment. Jalaj, go ahead and ask your question.
Yes. Thanks for the opportunity. I hope I'm audible.
Yeah, please go ahead.
Nitin, this one question was for you. So has there been a material change in the outlook for IT hiring from the last quarter per se?
Yeah, the July jobs peak was very positive. You know, all I can say is that we've got, you know, some of our clients have renewed and upgraded. But whether this will sustain or not, I don't know. Maybe we should wait and watch for maybe another 3, 4 months.
Okay, and this upgradation you are talking is per se for the IT clients only?
Yeah, about IT, IT clients. I was referring to IT, some large IT clients. And like I said, you know, our consultant hiring recruitment, you know, we get about 27%-28% of our revenue from recruitment firms, and they were, you know, negative for at least four quarters. We saw a slight improvement there. You know, they moved into positive territory. A lot of these recruitment firms also work for IT customers. So... But, you know, let's see how this, whether this sustains then.... I don't know what you are seeing. I mean, are your IT companies maybe telling you whether the attrition rates are going up or not?
So, from our IT companies, what we understand is the utilizations have started to peak out right now.
Yes, yes.
Though attrition numbers to be moving on the downward trend. So just wanted to understand if that is just supposedly for you guys.
Yeah. So that's, you know, what I said last time as well, right? That a lot of these IT companies had overhired during good times, and they had built a big bench. And, and slowly, you know, and as a result, their utilization rates have fallen. And, because they did not hire for a long time, you know, they're, they're now back to pre-COVID utilization levels in, in most cases. And therefore, if they have to maintain headcount, they will now at least have to replace the people who are leaving. So at least that part of the market should come back. Now, are they going to be hiring for growth? I don't know. Are they going to grow headcount aggressively from here on? I don't know. Will attrition rates go up? I don't know.
I can also tell you that GCCs have started hiring. So some of the larger GCCs were had you know shut down hiring, you know, the larger ones. The smaller ones were hiring, but they were, they were small. So the larger ones have stopped hiring. Now, there are some green shoots there as well. Some of the larger GCCs have started hiring in small numbers. Let's see how this plays out.
Got it.
You know, once they, if they start hiring in large numbers, then that may lead to higher attrition in IT services companies as well. But let's wait and watch and see what happens.
Understood. Thanks a lot, Hitesh.
Yeah, thanks, Jalaj . So Vineet, that was the last question we had for the day.
I think I have Abhisek Banerjee as well.
There's one question just came. So Abhisek Banerjee from ICICI Securities. Yeah. So Abhisek, go ahead and ask your question.
Yeah. Hi. Hitesh, just one question. You just mentioned that the captives are starting to hire. Now, last time you had said that captives, when they just formed, you do not get any revenues from them. But after a year, they also, you know, start contributing to your revenues. So given that, the number of captives have gone up, quite a bit in the last one year, do you see the revenue contribution from that increasing, going ahead?
See, again, even here, there's an 80/20 principle at work. There may be 1,700-1,800 captives, but the bulk of our revenue comes from the big ones. You know, the big ones are, maybe 100 in number. And, you know, they had all sort of. Most of them had sort of frozen hiring because of, you know, what was happening in the U.S. and so on. Now, if they start hiring, in large numbers, then of course, you will see, we know we will benefit immensely. The smaller ones, of course, once they like, you know, I said last time, in year one, they may just hire 50 people. They don't need anybody. They go through recruitment firms and hire because they need to hire senior management and middle management.
But once they start hitting 200-300 headcount of 200-300, you know, they have attrition, they need to replace people, they need to hire for growth, and that's when they will start using platforms like Naukri. So that will continue. And yes, over time, as the number of captives with a headcount which have a headcount of more than 200-300 in the country start growing, you know, it'll also help us. But for the needle to move, you know, the big ones have to start hiring, and we are seeing early signs of that, but let's see if that sustains.
Understood. Understood. And in the matrimonials business, if you could give some you know thought process on what is happening there, and is there any likelihood of you know the revenue growth kind of starting to look up?
The revenue growth is 35%. Right, right now for us, and we want to sustain this kind of growth for at least two more quarters. And at the same time, cut burn and, you know, reduce our costs, so that we can get to breakeven for the year or near breakeven, you know, maybe plus/minus INR 8 - 10 crore. That's our internal goal, and that's what we are focused on right now. As far as the overall recruitment market is concerned, I really don't know much. Maybe it continues to grow at seven, eight, 10% per annum, like it has for many years.
Yeah. So actually, when I asked about revenue growth, I meant above, I mean, beyond the number which you used to do before you decided to, you know, discount on the pricing bit.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
So do you see yourself breaching that level anytime in the near?
You know, if we continue to grow at 35% for the next two, three, couple of quarters, then, you know, for the year as a whole, we'll cross INR 100 crore, right?
Hundred.
I think we were around this number. I don't remember the exact numbers, but perhaps around this number, you know, two years ago. I remember our billings were hit by 30%, when we moved to this model. So we perhaps will inch back to where we were, two years ago, but with much lower marketing spend, so, and therefore, improve profitability and higher share of overall matches, since the number of, you know, people on the platform has grown. So let's see, I mean, and now, of the. Now, the real test will be the year after this. You know, how fast are we able to grow once we get to the INR 110 crore, sort of top line?
After that, will we start growing at 10%, or will we grow at 20% or 30%? Let's see what happens.
Understood. And are you looking at monetizing the new age products which you have developed in that front?
I, oh, the dating platform. No, so there, you know, we are, we are sort of still learning, and we are, we are bullish on one or two products. But early days, you know, a lot of work to be done on, as sort of those platforms grow. But of course, they are a long-term opportunity for us.
And one last one to Chintan, sir. Any update on the Google issue with regards to how much they're charging you for in-app billings?
See, there are no further updates. I mean, all is okay on that front right now. Nothing to worry about at this point in time.
Got it. Thank you so much, sir.
Thank you.
Abhisek, there is a question from Nitin Jain. Nitin, can you raise your hand so that we can take you live? Because he posted that. But, Nitin, we can't see your hand actually, while you are posting a message that you raised your hand. Yeah, it's there.
Now, we can see that.
It just came and again went. So, Nitin, you'll have to raise your hand so that we can take you in.
Ask your question in the chat box, and Chintan will answer.
Maybe, maybe the question there, yeah.
Nitin, maybe I will.
Yeah, can you see my hand now?
Yeah, yeah.
Nitin, you are online, you can go ahead and ask your question.
Yeah. Thank you. Thank you for the opportunity.
Yeah.
So first of all, congrats on the good quarter. So I have a little long-term question on the 99acres business. So, given that, you know, the real estate cycle has turned for good for quite some time now, but we are not yet in the mode of, you know, reporting positive operating profits, although we have consistently reduced losses there. So my question is: What would we need to do, you know, to take the business to a level where it reports profit on a consistent basis? Like, whether we need pricing changes or strategic changes or product changes, if you can, you know, throw some light on that. And my second question is for Sanjeev.
Given that, you know, some of the investments, especially Zomato, Policybazaar, their stocks have done pretty well in the last few years. So, and, you know, we've been invested there for a long time as well. So would you be, l ike, is it, on the table at least, you know, evaluating whether, we can book at least a partial profit and, you know, pay out as a special dividend or something along those lines? Thank you.
Right. To answer the question on 99acres, short answer is that we need to gain more share. You know, we are, it's very strong in some cities, in some cities, you know, we need to work harder. In the end, you know, revenue is a function of supply share, traffic share on the platform, and which translates into higher pricing and therefore more profit. So that's, I mean, and to do that, we need to, you know, of course, we are working on the product, and we are improving on, working on improving the experience.
On the platform, we are trying to fix our pricing wherever it's, it needs to be fixed, and we are working hard to get more and more supply on the platform, so that it becomes a one-stop shop for all things real estate. And, you know, at the same time, we also need, in the new home segment, you know, we actually are not competing with real estate portals. We end up, we are competing with Facebook and Google. And there, we need superior offerings to sort of, you know, get people to engage with the platform a lot more. And yeah, and these are things we are working on, but, let's see how this plays out.
Yeah.
On the Zomato and Policybazaar shareholding, look, this is obviously constantly discussed with the board, but we have taken a slightly longer term view that where will these businesses be three years from now, five years from now, 10 years from now? And if we believe there's substantial growth and consequent value creation left, we think it's better in our long-term and we think it's better for our long-term value creation for our shareholders, we'll probably stay. But, yeah, this is constantly discussed. As of now, there is no plan to exit.
Thank you.
Thank you, Nitin. Any other question, you may kindly raise your hand now. So Vineet, there are no more questions for the day.
Yeah. Thank you, everyone. We may now conclude this call. Thank you for joining in. You may now disconnect the lines.
Thank you, all, and have a great day.
Thank you so much.
Bye. Thanks, everyone.