I think let's start, Hitesh.
Okay.
Hi, everyone. good evening and welcome to Info Edge (India) Limited Q3 2023 financial results conference call. as a reminder, all participant lines will be listen only mode and there'll be an opportunity for you to ask questions after the presentation concludes. Should you need assistance during the 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, Chief Financial Officer. Before we begin today, I would like to remind you that some of the statement made in today's conference call may be forward-looking in nature and may involve some risks and uncertainties. Kindly refer slide 2 of investor presentation for detailed disclaimer. I would like to hand over the conference to Mr.
Hitesh Oberoi for his opening remarks. Thanks and over to you, Hitesh.
Thank you, Vivek. Good evening, everyone, and welcome to our third quarter earnings call. As always, we will start with an update on our standalone financials and discuss the market conditions for each of our operating verticals and then cover the business financials of each vertical in more detail. Then of course we'll have time for Q&A. The audited financial statements and other schedules on segmental billing, revenues, et cetera, along with the data sheet have been uploaded on our website Info Edge.in. Overall billings in Q3 grew to INR 550.7 crores, up by 14.5% from Q3 of last year. YTD billing growth, YTD billings stood at INR 1,617.7 crores, a YOY growth of 33%.
Revenue in Q3 stood at INR 555.2 crores, up by 33.4% from Q3 of last year. YTD revenues stood at INR 1,594.7 crores, a YOY growth of 44.1%. Billing and revenues along with the acquired businesses like Zwayam and DoSelect for the quarter stood at INR 566.4 crore and INR 571.6 crores respectively. Operating expenses for the quarter excluding depreciation and amortization were INR 338.4 crores. Again up by 14.6% from Q3 of last year. Operating EBITDA for the quarter stood at INR 216.8 crores versus INR 120.9 crore last year and a growth of 79.3% from Q3 of last year. YTD EBITDA stood at INR 563.9 crores.
Operating EBITDA margins for the quarter stood at 39.1% compared to 29.1% in the same quarter of last year. Operating EBITDA including acquired businesses stood at INR 220.3 crores, a YOY growth of 83.1%. Cash from operations for the quarter stood at INR 241.8 crores compared to INR 251.6 crores last year for the same quarter. YTD cash generated from operations stood at INR 625.7 crores. You may have seen in our results that we have fully impaired our investment of INR 276 crores in 4B Network Limited through our subsidiary in line with accounting policies and principles of conservatism consistently followed by the company.
While we continue to believe that the real estate tech market has potential, and had hoped that this investment would work out, we took this decision to write down the investment in the light of the current state of the environment and the significant uncertainty towards funding options available to 4B going forward. Sales revenue stood at INR 835.4 crore as of December 31, 2022 versus INR 623.4 crore as of December 31, 2021, an increase of 34% year-on-year. The cash balance of Info Edge, including the wholly owned subsidiaries, stands at INR 3,079 crore as on December 31, 2022. It stood at INR 3,855 crore as of December 31, 2021.
In the recruitment business, our Q3 JobSpeak reported 8.8% YOY growth in hiring. IT sector hiring index was down by 14%. Among our non-IT customer base, sectors such as insurance, hospitality, retail and banking posted robust growth. We experienced longer sales cycle and spend optimization during the quarter with various customers, especially in the IT sort of space. In the real estate market we are currently witnessing an active primary and secondary market with increasing prices across top cities. We are also seeing higher demand for commercial space from non-IT and retail users. However with the sixth straight increase in repo rates by RBI, we expect stability to return in this space in some time.
In our education vertical we are witnessing pre-COVID patterns of examinations and admission processes across the country. Students have returned back to campus for their classes and are open to moving across the state for higher studies. We also noticed that students aspiring to study in the U.S. universities are facing some visa delays. Moving on to the quarterly financials of the recruitment business. We'll cover each business in detail. In Q3 of 2023 the recruitment segment billings were INR 434.6 crores, up by 17.7% from Q3 of last year while revenues were INR 436.8 crores, up 40.3% from Q3 of last year.
YTD billings stood at INR 1,275.2 crores, a year-over-year growth of 38.1% while YTD revenues stood at INR 12.2 crores, a growth of 53.4%. Operating EBITDA stood at INR 274.7 crores for the quarter, up 46.5% from Q3 of last year and EBITDA margins stood at 62.9% versus 60.2% in Q3 of last year. Cash generated from operations for recruitment during the quarter stood at INR 281.8 crores, up from INR 260.7 crores in Q3 of last year. The recruitment business has generated INR 797.7 crores of cash from operations in the first nine months of this year.
Billings for Naukri India for the quarter stood at INR 362.7 crores, up 17.8% year-on-year. Revenue for the quarter for Naukri India stood at INR 367.6 crores, up 43.3% year-on-year. Recruitment segment billing, including acquired businesses like Zwayam and DoSelect, stood at INR 450.4 crores at a growth of 20.2% year-on-year for this quarter. iimjobs and hirist had a YOY growth of rupees of 30.5% in their billing numbers, closing at INR 17.9 crores, up from INR 13.7 crores last year. We are seeing some concerns around macroeconomic factors which have started impacting hiring on the platform by IT customers.
The sales team is focused on increasing the velocity of closures and monetization of IT customers, non-IT customers, during the quarter. The platform continues to witness vibrant job seeker traffic. Around 19,000 new CVs were registered per day during the quarter, a YOY growth of 15%. In our endeavor to guide and enable job seekers in their career journey, we launched a series of podcasts, videos, and articles and a new content series called Workwise with Naukri. We maintained our marketing spend during the quarter in line to our previous quarter spends and focus on increasing reach of our digital video campaign targeting the Gen Z audience. Our review and rating platform, AmbitionBox, continues to retain its number one position as the employer review and rating platform in the country. Moving on to the Shiksha business.
In Q3, Shiksha billings grew by 8.5% year-on-year and stood at INR 27.8 crores, while revenue grew 26.2% year-on-year to INR 27.7 crores. YTD billing stood at INR 82.9 crores, a year-on-year growth of 22.4%, while revenues stood at INR 84.8 crores with a year-on-year growth of 28.1%. The business made an EBITDA of INR 1.1 crore during the quarter versus a profit of INR 2 crores in Q3 of last year. Cash flow from operations for the quarter stood at INR 2.6 crores against an inflow of INR 13 crores in Q3 of last year. The business maintained its focus on study abroad business during the quarter as we see heightened interest among students to go abroad.
We continue to invest in making our content more comprehensive and more student-friendly and building deep domain expertise in the space. Moving on to the 99acres business. In 99acres, billings in Q3 grew by 15.7% year-on-year and stood at INR 71.1 crore, while revenue grew from INR 58.6 crores in Q3 to INR 72.9 crores in Q3 of 2022-23. YTD billings stood at INR 207.9 crores, a year-on-year growth of 36.8%, while revenues stood at INR 209 crores, a year-on-year growth of 33.9%. The operating loss for the quarter stood at INR 23.2 crores against a loss of INR 22.6 crores in Q3 of last year.
The business reported a cash outflow from operations of INR 19.9 crore for the quarter against an inflow of INR 1.7 crore in the same quarter of last year. Revenue growth was recorded across all key categories in the real estate segment, resale, rental, commercials and new homes. We experienced higher acceptance of our premium listing amongst brokers during the quarter, the platform also witnessed growth in responses and traffic during the quarter. We will continue to invest in platform content, client delivery and marketing in the months to come. Moving on to the matrimony business, Jeevansathi. In Jeevansathi, Q3 billings declined by 30.1% year-on-year to INR 17.1 crore and revenue declined by 26.3% year-on-year to INR 17.9 crore.
YTD billing stood at INR 51.7 crore, a year-on-year decline of 30%, while revenues stood at INR 58.9 crore, a year-on-year decline of 21.3%. The operating EBITDA losses stood at INR 25.3 crore for the quarter, against a loss of INR 37.2 crore in the same quarter of last year. Cash outflow from operations for the quarter stood at INR 27.2 crore against an outflow of INR 21.3 crore in Q3 of last year. Our free chat model continues to drive profile growth and engagement on the platform. We had a significant reduction in advertising and marketing spends during the quarter, backed by compelling proposition and effective marketing campaigns.
The quarter also saw a complete revamp of the user experience on the apps and helped us improve discoverability of profiles on the platform. A few paid products were launched in December to experience monetization with an increased user base. Aisle also continues its growth trajectory during the quarter. Vernacular apps in the space remain a strong area of focus for us. Moving on to the consolidated financial highlights. At the consolidated level, the net sales for the company stood at INR 589.5 crores in Q3 of this year versus INR 421.4 crores in Q3 of last year.
For the consolidated entity, at a total comprehensive income level, there is a loss of INR 399.6 crores versus the gain of INR 4,566.2 crores for the corresponding period last year, for the corresponding previous year quarter ending December 31, 2021. Adjusted for the exceptional items, PBT stood at a profit of INR 511.2 crores in Q3 versus INR 2,624.8 crores in Q3 of last year. Thank you. We are now ready to take any questions that you may have.
We will.
Thanks. Yeah. Thanks. Thanks, Ravi. We will now begin Q&A session. Anyone who wishes to take a question may raise your hand on the screen. We'll take your name and announce your turn in the question queue. We will wait for a second till the question queue builds up.
We have questions, Vivek. I'll take them one by one.
Sure.
The first question comes from Nitin Jain, from Fairview Investment. Nitin, go ahead and ask your question.
Yeah. My question is, thank you for the opportunity first. My question is on the 4B Networks write-off. If you could clarify the rationale for, you know, writing it off, because I think until two quarters back, company was still investing in 4B. What explains the sudden change? Thank you.
Chintan, you wanna take that?
Yeah. You are right, you know, we, and like Hitesh also explained in his, you know, prepared commentary that, you know, we were pretty optimistic, you know, and we have been investing and they also kind of were growing, you know, showing good growth. They had built a solid team as well. In last, you know, few months' time, given their rate of cash burn, and the overall funding environment, the way it has changed, there is a lot of uncertainty about, you know, the future, you know, funding environment. I think that's what is kind of causing us, following the principles of conservatism, that, you know, we thought that we should take a full write-off in this case.
It was an interesting idea when we first invested, the company did well for a while and they were, you know, at one point in time, 30% of all site visits in Bombay were happening through their app, which is why we invested more money. I think the market has suddenly turned and, you know, it's difficult to sort of see the company raising money going forward. I guess that is why we wanna be conservative, and that's why we've sort of written down the investment.
Okay. Just a follow-up on that. When you say the market has suddenly turned, are we seeing a similar impact in our real estate business, 99acres?
No, I meant the funding market.
Okay. Okay. Okay. Perfect. Thank you.
Thanks, Chintan. Next question is from Vijit Jain from Citi. Vijit, go ahead and ask your question.
Thank you. I just have two questions. One, obviously a pretty significant improvement in margins in the quarter, specifically in the recruitment business side. As we look ahead, you have called out a little bit of challenges on the IT side. I'm just wondering how should we think about it, and how should we think about your A&P spending in that regard? My second question is a slightly different one, Hitesh. I'm just wondering on the recruitment side, there are probably a lot of consultants who use your platform and then do other recruitment allied activities, right, including platforms, which probably use it resumes from your site and help companies build teams, et cetera. Do you look at these kinds of platforms who use your who use Naukri differently?
Do you monetize them differently?
Right. To answer your first question, see, we are seeing a slowdown in IT hiring. Our IT hiring was on fire for about 7, 8 quarters, that is why, you know, we were able to release great results for the last few quarters. That's why our margins also improved substantially over the last, you know, couple of years. What we are seeing now is a slight slowdown on IT hiring. Non-IT hiring continues to be strong, continues to be solid. If you look at our JobSpeak for the month of January, which we released recently, IT hiring was down 25%, overall, hiring was still up 2%. Because certain segments, non-IT segments are growing at 90%, 70%, 50% as well.
The non-IT market continues to be hot, and that's about, you know, 45%-50% of our business.
Mm.
A lot will depend on what happens to IT hiring going forward. If IT hiring bounces back strongly within a quarter or two, you know, and the Indian economy continues to grow at 6% or so per annum, you know, we should be fine, right? As far as our pricing model, pricing goes, you know, we don't treat, you know, platforms who... As far as we are concerned, we sell our access to our database, and there are some terms and conditions which people buy, who buy that access are bound by. As long as they adhere to those terms and conditions, we don't price, you know, things separately for different customers.
Got it. Thanks. Yeah, those were my 2 questions. Thank you so much.
Kunal, you are on mute.
Thanks, Hitesh. Next question is from Swapnil from JM Financial. Swapnil, go ahead and ask your question.
Hey. Hi. Thanks for the opportunity. First question is on your impairment side. Given that we are near impaired 4B Networks now, is there a realistic possibility that there could be more impairments coming in other investments that we have done in the past? That's my first question.
Look, may I take that, Hitesh?
Yeah, please.
See, there is nothing to announce right now, in the EIFs we have a portfolio. In fund one, we have a portfolio of 28 companies, right? It's perfectly possible something may be impaired in this environment, but there's nothing visible right now. We shall make announcements as and when we become cognizant of any need to impair. As far as strategy is concerned, I'm not sure. Hitesh, I mean, maybe you can take that.
Yeah. See, you know, this is a fast-changing environment, and the funding environment, you know, I mean. Companies are sort of reevaluating. All the companies in our portfolio also, they are sort of, they've gone back to the drawing board and they're looking at their plans, growth plans once again. Of course, some companies are under more stress than other companies. Right now we don't have visibility on any other sort of impairment or any other asset impairment in our portfolio. You know, the situation is dynamic, and things change, are likely to change every, with every quarter. Let's see what happens going forward. I mean, what we are committed to is the principle of good governance, fair disclosure, correct disclosure.
As and when things arise, we will disclose. Should they arise.
Got it. The second question is with respect to competitive intensity in 99acres and Jeevansathi. Your losses have come down on a sequential basis over there. Has the intensity come down a notch or due to macro factors and funding concerns for the competition term? Have you taken a strategic decision over there to not to spend much and conserve cash?
In Jeevansathi, you know, we have changed our business model, and chat, for example, on Jeevansathi is now free, and experimenting with this new model. We are hoping that because there is stuff we give out for free, we will not have to spend as much money on marketing going forward. So we are experimenting with our marketing spend, and we have started bringing it down slowly. Hopefully it'll not impact our profile acquisition and it'll not impact our revenue growth going forward. Early days on this one, let's see how this evolves. As far as competition is concerned, they continue to spend like they were spending earlier. If we start spending less, maybe they will also spend less going forward, who knows?
As far as 99acres is concerned, again, we are trying to optimize our marketing spend a bit. We are working on a few interesting ideas. It's not as if competitive intensity has changed, but we are taking a breather, and we are sort of, you know, revisiting our strategy and optimizing stuff at our end. Then we'll see how the site responds. Again, let's see what happens going forward. I mean, it's not an indicator of things to come, let me put it this way. We are just conducting some experiments, and as a result of these experiments, sometimes marketing spend may go down, sometimes it may go up.
Okay. Just one more question if I can squeeze in. Given that we have a high base of billings in Naukri from last year, is it a realistic possibility that the billings can degrow in 4Q, you know, on a Y-o-Y basis, given the slowdown in IT hiring and IT contributes a significant proportion of billings. Can you.
No, no. It is a possibility. Of course, my internal target, we set a target, you know, which is a growth target. We are internal target is 15% growth, but we don't know where we'll end up because we have seen a slowdown in billing growth over the last two, three quarters. In Q1, our billing growth was 70%, 80%. In Q2, it came down to 50 odd percent. In Q3, it went down to 20%, 23%. Fingers crossed on what will happen in Q4. We expect IT billing, non-IT billings to continue to sort of be solid because, you know, if JobSpeak is any indicator, that market is still hot. IT billing, we don't know whether we have hit the bottom as yet, right?
It's hard for me to predict what's gonna happen in Q4.
Cool. Thanks a lot for answering those questions. Have a nice day.
Thanks, Swapnil. Next question is from Nikhil from BofA. Nikhil, go ahead and ask your question.
Yeah. I have a couple of question, Hitesh. I'm continuing with what Swapnil has said. In an IT where recruitment was very solid, has completely came to a standstill. We are seeing this look for most of the IT services company, there's hardly had any hiring. When we discussed with IT services company, they are saying that they are looking for monetizing what they have already hired. They are looking to increase their utilization. Can that... Even the hiring in coming quarter would be greater mix for freshers, where, you know, that would be direct hiring rather than through Naukri. Can the impact could be limited to quarter or the impact could be lower, like six to nine months, longer period of impact on our billing, and overall growth?
Second question, is on investment. Last time in your call you talked about that, we are bit conservative on investing, on, startup and new investment. Are we continuing with our policy or we are using the opportunity because of the decline in valuation to invest more? Thank you.
I'll let Sanjeev take the second one, but I'll answer the first question. IT hiring has not come to a standstill because, you know, it's not about just net hiring, it's about gross hiring. You know, attrition rates continue to be high in a lot of companies. Attrition rates have, of course, started trending south. Companies need to also replace a lot of people to stay at the same number. You are absolutely right in saying that they are perhaps adding less people, you know, than they were adding earlier. Attrition rates when I last checked and were reasonably high in a lot of IT services companies still. It's not as if our deal, our business in IT has come to a standstill. We are still closing deals.
We are still getting, you know, clients to renew with us, et cetera, et cetera. What is happening is that, you know, the volumes have gone down, of course, compared to, you know, the same, compared to six months ago. Clients are taking longer to close deals. They're negotiating harder, like all, is always the case in such situations. Will this continue for one quarter or three quarters? I don't know. You know, a lot will depend on what happens in the U.S. market. Right now there is also a lot of bad press, you know, around companies laying off in the U.S., et cetera, et cetera. That is, that's started impacting sentiment on the ground.
Our Startup India also seems to be in some trouble, that's also had an impact on sentiment here. What we have seen in the past at least, and I can tell you from our past experience, that whenever there is a recession in the U.S., whenever there is a slowdown in the U.S. In the short term, you know, for 2 quarters, hiring in India slows down. In the long term, actually more and more jobs are outsourced to India. If that happens this time around also, who knows, you know, IT hiring could pick up actually in a very big way going forward. It's hard for me to predict it, what will happen at this stage.
On the second question, could you please repeat it? I couldn't hear you properly.
Sanjeev, basically during last earnings call, you mentioned that we are going a bit slow on investing in startup new age companies.
I don't think I could have said that. Maybe I miscommunicated. What I did say was we are being more careful.
Therefore a bar for evaluation is higher. We are not now worried about missing investment. We are more worried that we don't do the wrong one. Especially since, you know, we don't know if there will be a follow-on round from another investor or not. There might be or there might not be because everybody is being a little bit more careful. We are investing, but we are being a little slower and more careful.
Understood. That is all from my side. Thank you, Hitesh. Thank you, Sanjeev.
Thank you, Nikhil. The next question is from Deep Shah, from B&K Securities. Deep, go ahead and ask your question.
Yeah, hi. Thanks for the opportunity. Hitesh, I hear you well that you are trying a lot in nineteen eighty years and some experiments are on the way. I just want to understand better if you could help us because the fact is that we have been growing revenue, the market has not become like the matrimonial market where things are sluggish. We have been growing revenue, but at the same time, maybe it's marketing, maybe it's something else which is always kept in the red. If you could just explain how the market is panning out. Is it that the overall size is not increasing, it's only digital spend which is going up? What are we trying to do?
If you could elaborate a bit more, that would be very useful. This was a massive opportunity in all of our understanding, but then, the monetization is only getting protracted.
So let me. Yeah. you know, let me just explain. See, for a long time the real estate market was in trouble, you know, in the sense that, you know, not enough people were buying property. Prices had not, were not moving up. Unsold inventory had been growing in various, in different cities. Customers had been cutting their spend, right? Transactions had fallen, you know, off a cliff. In fact, even, in 2019 or '20 or even '21, maybe they were still lower or lower than what they were 10 years ago. What you have seen is a turnaround in the market at least. The sentiment has changed. There is enough interest in real estate. People are buying, prices are going up.
You know, the market has consolidated over time though, right? There are fewer developers, and they have a larger sort of share of the market than was the case 5 years ago, 10 years ago. Of course, digital spending has also grown and, you know, customers are spending more than earlier. In fact, we may be now in a situation where, you know, a lot of the projects are getting sold without spending because there's so much interest in the market, which is also not good news for us because we like some, you know, we always like the market to be somewhere in the middle. If it's very easy to sell real estate, nobody's required.
That's a danger, but you know, again, home loan rates have started going up and so on and so forth. We will sort of hit, you know, equilibrium in some time. As far as we are concerned, our revenue is growing. We are up maybe more than 30% over last year in the, for the first nine months of this year. We are investing a lot more in the business, both in marketing and in content creation and in user experience on the platform. Of course, we got hit very badly during COVID, and our costs have gone a little out of control over the last couple of years because of COVID, and because we had to.
Because the tech market was also very hard, we had to give heavy increases to retain our talent and so on and so forth. Things are now beginning to normalize and stabilize on that front. If we are able to continue to grow revenue going forward, then things should be fine. At the same time, the competitive intensity are, in our space has also increased because, you know, there are a lot of well-funded players, like Housing, for example, which is owned, now owned by REA. They've been very aggressively spending in the market to acquire customers, to acquire users. There are other well-funded VC startups also who have been sort of making a lot of noise. So while the market is growing, at the same time, competitive intensity has also increased substantially over the last 7, 8 quarters.
We have a few good ideas. We're working on them and, you know, if we are able to execute well, then things should start getting better. If the competitive intensity continues to increase, then we will be forced to respond to defend our position. Let's see how this plays out in, over the next, few quarters.
Right. Right. Hitesh, thanks for that. again, I know you've answered these in the previous quarters, but, and correct me if I'm wrong, but what we've seen is despite the on and offs in the real estate space, the broking or the offline broker community, they have done pretty solid in this period before what you pointed out that properties are being sold even without intervention. So where has been that reluctance to reenter this market? We've been in this market earlier, I guess, 2014 or 2015 sometime. where is this reluctance to enter this market coming from? is it not just?
The broking market? The broking market, you're saying?
Yeah. Yeah, the offline broking market. If you can better explain to us what is the perspective of not getting on the ground.
Yeah. You know, that's a very different business. It's a transaction business. See, we run a platform where we actually today, you know, work with over 20,000 brokers, large and small. We work with hundreds of channel partners. We work with, you know, mom-and-pop shops. We work with resale brokers, rental brokers, commercial brokers, channel partners who sell new homes. We work directly with builders as well. So the model we are pursuing is very different. It's a marketplace model, advertising-led model, listing-led model. You know, we won't get into the transaction. We just enable the transactions and enable handshakes. In the long run, we feel that if we are able to dominate this market, you know, margins can be very, very solid, just like we have, just like you see in the Naukri business.
The analogy there would be, you know, why don't you... I mean, why don't we not become a consultant? Why don't we not become a recruitment firm? Some years ago we took that call, that we did not want to be a recruitment firm. We wanted to be a marketplace. The problem in real estate is that unlike in the recruitment space where we dominate, here there is more competition and therefore, you know, we are not able to realize the kind of margins we realize in Naukri. Can we become a broker? We can. You know, frankly, there are hundreds of brokers out there. There's not much difference between them. Sure, you can make some money, like all recruitment firms make money, right? That business is hard to scale. In a good time, they all look good.
In a difficult time, you know, it's very, very hard to survive as a broker. That business is not very tech-intensive, and it scales with headcount, it scales with people, it does not scale with technology. Our view is that, you know, it's, you know, you can get a lot of revenue, you can get some profit, but it's very hard to build a very valuable brokerage, right? On the other hand, if we, if we are able to win in this space, we may not win because there may be just one or two winners, then you can build a valuable business. We would therefore rather focus on this than spread ourselves too thin and try and do too many things at the same time.
Right. Right. Hitesh, that.
The other thing I want to say is, see, if we become a broker also, then many of the brokers may not want to work with us. That's the other challenge of wanting to become a brokerage.
No, right, Hitesh. Understood. That's a very interesting perspective. Thank you so much.
Thank you.
Yeah, thanks, Deep. The next question is from Aditya from Macquarie. Aditya, go ahead and ask your question.
Hi, Hitesh. Hi, Sanjeev. Thank you for the candid remark. Sanjeev, maybe the first question for you on the AIF. Where are you putting new capital to work, if at all? Maybe, if you can like also provide some context in terms of what are the types of opportunities which might have looked interesting maybe 12 months back but now in this environment you are not really pursuing?
We've always been wary of stuff like crypto, you know. This is from the beginning. Therefore, you know, one of the internal discussions we have is if you can't understand it, don't invest in it. You know, we've sort of were impaired in our understanding of crypto. Similarly, Web3, I think it's a great idea, great concept, but we don't know what the use cases that will make money. We are little slow on, you know, crypto and Web3, but that's not new. We've been slow since the last couple of years, you know, ever since we first heard of it, right? We may have done 1 or 2 investments. We have a flavor of Web3 and crypto. We are likewise skeptical of Meta. We don't understand, we have not done it.
In that sense, we are a little slow off the blocks in this new stuff which until we fully comprehend it and until the fog lifts, what will work, what will not work. Having said that, you know, we are doing some frontier technology in Capital 2B. We continue to, you know, do, you know, consumer internet, B2B SaaS, mobile app, in Info Edge Ventures, fund two. Typically we don't do sectors and do it top-down. We do it bottom-up. It's like stock picking for U.S. If there's a good team chasing a good thing that looks like it could work, is getting some traction, look at it closely, and if you really continue to like it, you know, as you do a deep dive, maybe you can go into it.
Some amount of caution. You know, we are looking at not doing very large deal checks, given the environment. We are sort of reducing the risk. We are looking at possibly co-investing with others, again, to share the risk and to get more deep pockets around the table. Like I said, it's bottom-up, it's not top-down.
Maybe Hitesh for you, and apologies for the generic nature of the question, but, what are your top three priorities for Info Edge?
Sorry, Can you repeat that?
What would be your top three priorities for Info Edge this year?
Top three priorities for Info Edge, huh? You know, so one, of course, you know, we want to sort of, continue to grow our Naukri business, you know, rapidly. You know, we have, you know, we've done really well for the last seven, eight quarters, and Naukri actually grew like a startup. We've also sort of acquired a lot of, you know, assets in adjacent areas. And also after a long time, we are seeing India also sort of grow at a faster, on a faster rate. The Indian domestic sort of economy is doing well.
You know, I was just telling somebody 10 or 12 years ago, you know, the infra sectors, you know, all the heavy engineering and construction, real estate, you know, all these sort of, you know, roads, construct railways, power, all these sectors together were as big as IT for us. All capital spending came to a stall for a long time and, you know, they stayed where they were and IT grew 4 or 5 X. With the government sort of, you know, taking up infra-spending on priority, you know, some of these sort of jobs will come back and these sort of verticals will also grow, start growing rapidly for us. The Naukri business continues to be our number 1 priority because that's our bread and butter business. It generates all our profits.
Our market share. We are investing in adjacent areas. We are investing in the core platform. We have set up a very high quality AI and machine learning team to improve the user experience for both job seekers and customers. Naukri, without any doubt, continues to be our number one priority. Then of course, the other verticals we are in. We realize that these verticals have been struggling for a long time and something or the other has sort of kept them from sort of breaking away from competition. 99acres is a very important priority for us. And personally, I'm spending a lot of time on that vertical to see.
It's, you know, it's not a small vertical anymore. We have an internal billing target of INR 100 crore in 99acres for Q4. We'll see where we end up. You know the run rate is getting better with every. It can become a large business over time if it gets the focus and attention it needs. That's an important sort of priority for the company. Shiksha has surprised us. Shiksha has been, you know, growing at a reasonable rate without us focusing or spending too much energy and time on the business. It's now a profitable business. It's small, but profitable. So the other verticals, you know, are important.
We are also sort of spending a lot of time on our blue-collar job board, Job Hai. You know, we have been sort of test marketing it, testing it out in a few cities. Early signs are encouraging. You know, at some point in time we'll want to sort of scale that up as well. Till some time back, and continues to be, of course, attracting and retaining high-quality talent was a top priority for us because the startup market was super hot and it was getting harder and harder to attract and retain people. Thankfully, I mean, that's come under control now because we are now seen as a stable, mature business and.
You know, because the startup scene has slowed down, it's also an opportunity for us to attract some good new talent into the company. That will always remain a top priority for us.
Thanks, Hitesh.
Thanks, Aditya. We have follow-up question from Nitin Jain from Fairview Investment. This is the last question I have. In case there are more questions, I request people to raise hand so that I can take them one by one. Nitin, go ahead and ask your question.
Thank you for the follow-up opportunity. My question is both for Mr. Hitesh Oberoi and Mr. Sanjeev Bikhchandani. So I'd like to pick your brains as in, drawing on your previous experiences where there have been such funding winters in the market. And has it been a strategic advantage for a firm like cash-rich firm like Info Edge? Because we keep continuously investing in newer businesses. So if you could share your experience. Thank you.
You wanna go first, Hitesh?
Yeah. See, this is an opportunity, but you have to keep at it. What you have to do things right. You, we are, like you said, we are cash rich. Now if the market slows down and we continue to invest because we are cash rich, then when the market comes back, we will emerge stronger. In Naukri, for example, right now the market is slowing down a bit. See, in Naukri we're already dominant. Still, you know, if we continue to sort of invest in Naukri as if there is no slowdown, our position will be even stronger when the market comes back. Especially if our competition starts to or cuts down on its sort of investments in their business.
In 99acres the same thing could play out, the 99acres market is not slowing down. I don't expect competition to slow down their investments in real estate. The real estate market continues to be solid. We don't see any slowdown on that front. On the whole, you are right. In a slowdown, if a company continues to invest in its business, when the market comes back, you know, it's great for the company, especially if others cut down on their investment.
Yeah. I'll add to that. You see if I look back, right? First, let's go back to the year 2000, 2001. There was a dot-com meltdown, bubble burst.
Around that time, partly out of ignorance, partly out of, you know, misplaced confidence, we did not sack people. In fact, we hired 80 salespeople in 2001, at a time when our competition, well, let go of 80 salespeople. A decision like that, really helped us because we continued to grow and we came out of that meltdown, profitable, right? As compared to when we went in. You go to the time, go to the global financial crisis. There we had a 43% or 44% traffic share at the beginning of the global financial crisis. 3 years later, we had a 63% traffic share, right? In Naukri. I'm talking about Naukri.
That's largely because our competition, Monster, TimesJobs, they all let go of salespeople. We did not let go of people. We simply did not sack. We were happy to live with lower profits for, you know, 2 or 3 quarters. We said we will keep our capabilities alive and intact. Competition cut advertising, I remember by 60% or 70%. We cut advertising by only 15%.
Once again, we said we'll take lower profits, but we will keep the business capabilities and the brand salience intact. That paid rich dividend. Therefore, when we came back, we came back with a roar. Let's take a look at 2020, right? COVID, lockdown, Naukri was -44% Y-o-Y in quarter one of 2020-2021. April, June 2020. -44% billing growth Y-o-Y. You know, we requested Chintan, saying: "Listen, can you stress test our, you know, our P&L balance sheet and our cash reserves?" The question we put to him was: If we have zero revenue, zero revenue, not zero growth, zero revenue.
If revenue goes down to 0, and we cut marketing spend to 0 and we have 0 increments, how long can we live as a company with the current cash reserves? The answer he came back with was 3 years. The moment he said that, we said, "Okay, that's enough. You know, It's enough runway." We simply did not downsize. At a time during COVID, when everyone when a lot of other companies were downsizing. You know, we simply said, "Listen, we are a people's company. We, this is the wrong time to let go of people until they're comfortable with COVID. There is no light at the end of the tunnel. If you let go of them, we don't know what will happen to them. They'll never get a job.
At the same time, you know, this thing will turn around and good times, and, you know, we'll start growing again. We don't know when, but we'll start. You know, so preserving our capabilities in times of recession and not cutting back on investments too much has paid us rich dividends on three separate occasions: 2000, 2008, 2009, and again, 2020. You know, so of course, as Hitesh said, you have got to you've gotta, you've gotta you've gotta cut the right, you know, cut some expenses, keep the right ones intact. You know, be a little more careful about how you are investing. If you, if you manage that right, hopefully, you know, it will help. You wanna add something, Hitesh?
No. See, you know you are right. Like, I said, you know, in the case of Naukri, I mean, the question of laying off, et cetera, does not arise. There's very little to gain in the sense that we're already 70%, 80% of the market. Yes, in our newer verticals, in the all the new businesses that we acquired, there is still massive opportunity to grow. Whether it's iimjobs or whether it's Job Hai, which is just a startup inside the company. We will continue to invest in these verticals because there's just, you know, we're just starting, right? We don't have any constraints.
Profitability may go down for a while, like I said, in the past we have seen even when the companies have laid off in the US, after a couple of quarters they've come back and strongly, and hired very strongly in India, because that's part of their sort of, part of the solution. India is part of the solution to cut costs. So in the other verticals, we're not seeing any slowdown at the moment. In the market, at least.
Okay. Great. Thank you, both of you. That's quite insightful. Just a follow-up on that. How does the, your nature of funding, change in such times? Like, do you concentrate more on manpower or technology or ad spends or?
In the long run, we believe that, you know, it's investment in product technology, user experience is what takes you ahead, right. We will continue to invest aggressively in these areas. We've never cut headcount. In fact, the headcount has always grown in this part of the business. Number 1. Secondly, we continue, we believe that we need to invest in new cutting-edge emerging areas. We have been investing very aggressively in AI and machine learning for the last few years now. We've set up a new team for AI and machine learning. We are experimenting with video content and so on. In the new areas we want to invest, and we will continue to invest more because if you get that right, you can actually help your.
Take, you know, you can even move your business to the next level. We don't wanna cut down on investing in new emerging areas. It's important for the long-term sort of health of the company. See, marketing spend is something you can play around. You can turn on the tap anytime, turn off the tap anytime. There it's, you know. See, what we measure is share of voice. See if, you know, our competition is spending a lot, then you have to spend a lot. If competition cuts down, like, but let's say we are at X and competition at X, and they suddenly go to zero, then you can go down to X by two also, it doesn't matter, right? You'll still get your growth.
There it's more a function of how much is competition spending more than anything else. Because you don't want to lose share of voice. If others stop spending and you spend even a little bit, you are still okay. If others are spending a lot and you stop spending, then you're cutting into your market shares. There, I think we go by, you know, what the others are doing more than anything else. Because it's not required to. You know, you don't need to spend a lot of money if others are not spending.
Thank you. Thank you, Hitesh.
Thanks, Nitin . I think that was the last question we have for today. Do we wait for some time?
We can conclude the call. Ladies and gentlemen, with this we conclude the call. Thank you for joining us in the evening today. You may disconnect your lines.
Thank you all. Have a great evening.
Thank you. Thank you. Bye-bye.
Bye.
Thank you.
Thanks, everyone.