Good evening, everyone. Thank you for joining the call. Welcome to Info Edge India Limited earnings conference call for Q2, FY 2026. Joining us today from management, we have Mr. Sanjeev Bikhchandani, Founder 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 for good order's sake. Kindly note that this call is being recorded, and all participant lines will be on mute, and there will be an opportunity for question and answer towards the end of the call. I will now hand over the call to Hitesh for his opening remarks. Over to Hitesh.
Good evening to everyone, and welcome to Info Edge's earnings call for the second quarter of FY26. As always, we'll begin with an update on the standalone financial performance, then cover the performance of each segment, along with our commentary on each business. Of course, we'll have time for Q&A in the end. For the standalone business in Q2 of FY 2026, billings were INR 729 crore, a YoY growth of 12%, and revenue was INR 746 crore, a YoY growth of 14%. Billings and revenue, including Zwayam and DoSelect , were INR 752 crore and INR 769 crore, a YoY growth of 12% and 14%, respectively. Operating profits at a standalone level grew by 7% YoY, INR 268 crore, and the operating margin stood at 36%. Operating profits, including Zwayam and DoSelect , grew by 11% YoY, INR 270 crore, and the operating margin was 35%.
The standalone business generated cash from operations before taxes of INR 293 crores in Q2 of FY 2026, a YoY growth of 12%. Cash from operations, including Zwayam and DoSelect , was INR 302 crores, a YoY growth of 14%. The cash generation from the recruitment business was INR 325 crores. The non-recruitment businesses at an aggregate level incurred cash losses of INR 6 crores in FY 2026, a YoY cash loss reduction of 62%. For the standalone business in H1 of FY 2026, billings were INR 1,373 crores, a YOY growth of 12%, and revenue was INR 1,482 crores, a YoY growth of 14%. Billings and revenue, including Zwayam and DoSelect , were INR 1,416 crores and INR 1,526 crores, a YoY growth of 12% and 15%, respectively. Operating profits at a standalone level grew by 8% YoY to INR 518 crores, and the operating margins stood at 35%.
Operating profits, including Zwayam and DoSelect , grew by 12% to INR 521 crore, and the operating margin was 34% in H1 of FY 2026. The standalone businesses' business generated cash from operations before taxes of INR 472 crore in H1 of FY 2026, a YoY growth of 8%, and cash from operations, including Zwayam and DoSelect , was INR 485 crore, a YoY growth of 11%. The cash balance of Info Edge, including wholly owned subsidiaries at the end of September 2025, stood at INR 4,823 crore. The board has proposed an interim dividend of INR 2.4 per share. Headcount of the company as of September 2025 end was 6,238. There is an exceptional gain of INR 5,200 crore in Q2 of FY 2026 related to Info Edge's holding in PB Fintech.
Following NCLT approval for the amalgamation of MakeSense Technologies with PB Fintech, Info Edge's 6.5% stake held through MakeSense will now be directly held by Info Edge in the mother company. From an accounting perspective, the difference between the investment cost and fair value on the order date has been recorded as an exceptional gain in the P&L. Subsequent mark-to-market changes in PB Fintech's value will be reflected in other comprehensive income, similar to the treatment for Eternal. Now, moving on to the segmental performance and starting with the recruitment business. In Q2 of FY 2026, standalone recruitment billings grew by 11% to INR 545 crore, and revenue grew by 13% to INR 558 crore. The operating profit for the standalone recruitment segment improved by 9% YoY to INR 312 crore, and the operating profit margin was 56%.
Zwayam and DoSelect combined were also profitable in Q2 of FY 2026 vis-à-vis loss-making in Q2 of FY 2025. The operating profit for the recruitment segment, including Zwayam and DoSelect , improved by 13% YoY, and the operating profit margin was 54%, a 20 basis point improvement year-on-year. Cash generated from the recruitment operation was INR 3.25 billion, a YoY improvement of 13%. In H1 of FY 2026, the standalone recruitment billings grew by 10% to INR 10.15 billion, and revenue grew by 14% to INR 11.00 billion. The operating profit for the standalone recruitment segment improved by 10% YoY to INR 5.96 billion, and the operating profit margin was 54%. The operating profit for the recruitment segment, including Zwayam and DoSelect , improved by 13% YoY and the operating profit margin was 52%. Cash generated from recruitment operations was INR 5.21 billion, a YoY growth of 9%.
Key operating highlights, YoY billings growth of 11% in Q2 was slightly better than YoY growth of 9% witnessed in Q1. Billing for tech, IT, and BPM segments combined grew by 7% YoY. Other sectors combined grew at 11%. GCCs grew at 18%, and recruitment consultants grew at 9%. The recruiter and job seeker engagement metrics, such as CV searches, CV views, CV additions, modifications, traffic, etc., continued to grow well during the quarter. IIIMjobs , Hirist, and Naukri Fast Forward witnessed some moderation in billings growth in Q2, as we are experimenting with different go-to-market strategies in these businesses. Naukrigulf 's billings continued to grow well at 22% year-on-year. Job Hai, which is currently operating primarily on a freemium model and is focused on select markets, maintains strong platform metrics and continued to generate revenue.
On the Job seeker front, the Naukri platform now hosts approximately 111 million resumes and added an average of 26,000 resumes daily during Q2 of FY 2026. Marketing expenses in Naukri were significantly lower in Q2 compared to Q1 and were flat on a YoY basis in Naukri. We continue to make investments in Job Hai, though, as it scales up its monetization efforts. Therefore, the operating profit margins, which saw some moderation in Q1 to 53%, improved by 3.3 basis points to 56% in Q2. Excluding Job Hai Job Hai investments, the recruitment margins were over 58% in the second quarter. In summary, though, the hiring environment remains uncertain, as is evident from the JobSpeed Index as well. Despite this, we were able to achieve some improvement in recruitment billings. We remain cautiously optimistic about growth in the quarters ahead. Very hard to predict how the market will shape or will evolve.
Moving on to the real estate segment. In Q2 of FY 2026, billings grew by 14% to INR 122 crore, and revenue grew by 13% to INR 115 crore. Operating losses were INR 23 crore, whereas the business generated cash from operations were INR 2 crore in Q2 of FY 2026. In H1 of FY 2026, billings grew by 15% to INR 217 crore, and revenue grew by 12% to INR 226 crore. Operating losses were INR 42 crore, and cash losses for operations were INR 17 crore in H1 of FY 2026. Key operating highlights of 99acres.com. In Q2, billings growth remained at a mid-teen level. The secondary business grew well, whereas growth in the primary business was very modest. We continue to invest in this business, and we continue to see massive gains in traffic share in Q2 as well.
We've been expanding our traffic share by almost 0.5%-1% each month for the last almost 12 months now. Our traffic share for the last three months has averaged between 47%-50%, while the other two players are in the mid-20% range. Also, traffic share growth, we believe traffic share gains will ultimately translate into billing growth, but with some lag. Customers need to experience increased responses and inquiries over a period of time for them to shift more spending to the platform. Q2 billings were primarily driven by customer count growth, and broker billings continued to grow faster than developer billings. Live new project listings of the platforms grew 23% YOY, while live resale and rental listings from brokers grew 37% YoY in Q2. App and web traffic continued to grow, leading to an increase in inquiries across all categories.
In fact, a very healthy increase in inquiries across all categories. With healthy traffic share, time share gain, and mid-teen billings growth in Q2, we believe we grew faster than our competitors and continue to gain market share for almost three or four quarters now. Moving over to the matrimony business. In Q2 of FY 2026, billings grew by 29% to INR 34 crore, and revenue also grew by 29% to INR 34 crore. The business maintained break-even at both the operating level and cash from operations in Q2 of FY 2026. In H1 of FY 2026, billings grew by 33% to INR 68 crore, and revenue also grew by 29% to INR 68 crore. The business generated an operating profit of 60 lakh and cash from operations of INR 6 crore in H1 of FY 2026. In Q2, the Jeevansathi.com business maintained its growth momentum driven by monetization initiatives undertaken over the past 12-18 months.
The focus remains on Hindi-speaking markets, where we continue to have a strong presence and see significant growth potential. Investments in these markets are delivering encouraging results, particularly in terms of user acquisition growth. AI is being leveraged to drive efficiencies in creative development and other related business processes, as well as to enhance both product experience and improve pricing yield. Marketing expenses have increased year-on-year over the last few quarters. The business intends to stay within this range while continuing to operate at or near break-even levels, subject to changes in competitive intensity. Moving on to the education vertical, Shiksha. In Q2 of FY 2026, billing was INR 280 million, a YoY growth of 13%, and revenue grew by 18% to INR 390 million.
The business delivered an operating profit of INR 2 crore, and cash losses from operations were INR 8 crore in Q2 of FY 2026 versus INR 11 crore in Q2 of FY 2025. In H1 of FY 2026, Shiksha billings were INR 73 crore, a YoY growth of 10%, and revenue grew by 18% to INR 89 crore. The business delivered an operating profit of INR 8 crore, and cash losses from operations were INR 6 crore in H1 of FY 2026. The 13% billing growth in Shiksha was across both the domestic and study abroad business. Domestic private universities and colleges continue to grow and expand their course offerings. This presents an opportunity for Shiksha to further expand its footprint. Shiksha enables students to explore colleges and courses aligned with their preferences.
This growing shift from Google Search to AI chatbots along with Google's rollout of AI summaries has, however, led to a decline in traffic in Shiksha.com over the last couple of quarters. This is something we continue to monitor, and we are working on strategies to mitigate this. We continue to invest more in creating comprehensive student-friendly content and building deep domain expertise in this segment. The business is strengthening its domestic counseling capabilities, driving higher conversions from client responses to student applications to help mitigate the potential impact of AI on traffic.
On the AI front, our current focus on leveraging AI is centered around the following key priorities. one, enhancing search quality, user personalization, and productivity across existing platforms, two, building new AI-powered features that improve user experience and engagement, three, creating entirely new products and monetization levers powered by AI, and four, leveraging AI internally to improve operating efficiency, the speed of decision-making, and execution agility. In line with this, we continue to upgrade our database product in Naukri.com with AI and machine learning, resulting in improvements in recruiter productivity. Similarly, new AI models for job search and recommendations have driven a 15%-20% year-on-year improvement in job seeker engagement. Across our businesses, we are now using GenAI tools to create content, and some of our recent marketing campaigns are generated in-house and AI-driven. Overall, our AI initiatives are early days.
Of course, we've been investing in machine learning for a long time, early days in terms of leveraging generative AI and agentic AI, but we continue to invest in the same. Moving to consolidated financial highlights. At the consolidated level, the net sales for the company stood at INR 805 crore in Q2 of FY 2026 versus INR 701 crore for Q2 of FY 2025. The total comprehensive income was INR 6,070 crore in Q2 of FY 2026 versus INR 8,170 crore in Q2 of FY 2025. Profit before tax, without exceptional items in Q2 of FY 2026, was INR 404 crore compared to INR 335 crore in Q2 of FY 2025. To summarize, the recruitment business remains resilient as billings growth improved slightly in Q2. Engagement on the platform remained healthy, and we continue to deepen our presence across GCCs, SMBs, Tier 2, Tier 3 cities, and other non-IT sectors to broaden our customer base.
Our niche and adjacent platforms, including IIMjobs , Hirist, Naukrigulf , Naukri Fast Forward, DoSelect , Ambition Box, and Job Hai, are growing well and will hopefully unlock new growth opportunities in the years to come. The non-recruitment businesses continue to grow steadily and reduce cash losses during the quarter, reflecting consistent execution and improving efficiency. In 99acres.com, we continue to gain market share supported by sustained investments in marketing and platform improvements, content quality, and customer acquisition. Our efforts remain focused on further strengthening our leadership in the resale and rental and commercial and new home segments while improving our offerings in the new launch space. In Jeevansathi.com, top-line growth was supported by the continued success of the freemium model, enhancements to our matching algorithms, and ongoing efforts to drive monetization. The business continued to break even in this quarter as well.
Shiksha business maintained a steady growth trajectory and continued to operate profitably. Across all our platforms, we are progressing well on the deployment of AI and machine learning to improve customer experience through smart search, smarter recommendations, smarter pricing, superior creative development, and new feature rollouts. Our healthy cash flows and strong results remain our core strength. These enable us to invest in long-term growth, initiative, respond to competitive dynamics, and evaluate opportunities that create sustainable shareholder value. Thank you all for joining the call, and now we are happy to take any questions.
Thank you, Hitesh. We can start with the Q&A session. Anand, over to you. I guess we already have a few questions in the queue. We can maybe start.
Thank you, Vineet. So anybody who wishes to ask a question, may raise your hand, and we'll take one by one. We already have a few questions, so I'm going to take. First question is from Vivekanand from Vivek Goan, and ask your question.
Hi, thank you very much for the opportunity. My first question is, first set of questions are on recruitment. So Hitesh, last time when you had outlined your commentary in the conference call, you said that there was some spillover of demand from 1Q into 2Q. Yet, if I look at the first half, billing growth, it has moderated to around 10%, down from 15% in FY 2025. I know you mentioned about being cautiously optimistic. Could you elaborate on this outlook and also the drivers here? That's question one. I'll ask more after this answer.
Yeah, like you know, it's a very modest hiring market, and also things continue to be unpredictable. It's very hard and uncertain, very hard to say how things will change, will evolve going forward. Clearly, it's not a market where it's not a hot market, and it's not a market where companies are hiring like they used to hire maybe three years ago or two years ago. Our sense of the situation on the ground right now is that we have to fight for all our renewals. We have to fight for upgrades. We have to fight for sales. We have to fight. We're trying very hard to acquire new customers, but new customers start small. They don't start. We are sort of, we have a diversified portfolio now. We are trying to get customers to sample new products, which we've launched over the last few years. It's not easy to take prices up in this market, right?
The market continues to be tough. Recruitment consultants are, of course, impacted the most because they are the first ones to get hit in a tough market. IT companies continue to remain cautious about hiring. The non-IT market has been growing at, most non-IT sectors have been growing at between 10% and 15% for us. I mean, very, very, so it's very hard to say what will happen going forward. Of course, if GDP growth starts to look up, or if the world economy starts to do better, or if things settle down between the U.S. and India, I don't know if this whole uncertainty sort of, if things start to stabilize a little more and they become more predictable, then it's easier for companies to make investment plans. I hope that happens going forward.
Okay, thanks. The second question is on your diversification efforts in recruitment. Now, you were providing some data on the Naukri India contribution to total recruitment billing. Any broad color that you can provide and how to think about it over the next three years? A related point is the recent recruitment organizational changes that you did. How do you think this will impact the diversification thrust that you've been leading?
Let me give you a sense of how we are thinking about the market going forward. Like you said, there's a core Naukri India B2B hiring business, which is the bulk of our revenue. Maybe I don't know if they have the exact number on me right now, but maybe let's say it's 80% of our revenue or 75% of our revenue. Now, that is really the mass hiring market. That is the one which is under pressure right now because this is the IT hiring market. This is the call center market. This is the market for hiring people between two to eight, 10, 12 years of experience. This market is slow right now. What we are seeing is we're seeing a few trends emerging. We believe that going forward, at least there's a lot of noise. There's a lot of talk about companies wanting to use AI as a copilot for hiring. A lot of companies want real-time intelligence and data to take better decisions on salaries and hiring and for talent planning. We're also seeing a slight increase in demand for premium professionals, meaning people who are paid well. They seem to be, and who are more qualified and have the right skills, seem to be more in demand than earlier.
In fact, the average salary of a person whose CV is viewed on Naukri.com has almost doubled over the last five or six years, right? We think premium talent will be in more demand going forward. At the same time, we also see demand for blue-collar and gray-collar workers growing over time, right? That is why the investments in IIMjobs and Hirist, which are our premium tech and premium MBA hiring platforms, and the investment in Job Hai, which is our blue-collar and gray-collar hiring platform. The international business is a small business for us. Naukrigulf continues to grow at 20%. It has been growing at 20% for two to three years now and is now very profitable. The candidate service business has also been growing at 15%, 17%, 18% for the last few years now and continues to be very profitable.
This is how we are thinking about how we think about the market and where it's going to go in the years to come. This is why we have also restructured because we think increasingly the growth in core Naukri, the mass hiring, bulk hiring platform, will be AI-led. Our Chief AI Officer has also taken over as Chief Product Officer for Naukri for that reason. Similarly, like I said, at Job Hai, we started investing in a few years ago. We've now started monetizing it. We think the blue-collar market is a few years away, but it can become a large market over the next five, seven, eight years if we execute well. Demand at this end for people is also growing, and they're all becoming edge-savvy. They're all on online platforms and so on. We have that.
That does not run like a separate business unit. We also see demand for premium talent growing over time. While we are doing whatever we can in Naukri to attract premium talent, we are also investing in our IIMjobs and Hirist platforms. These platforms have really grown over the last two to three years. We have moved our Naukri product head to run these platforms. Both IIMjobs and Hirist will now be run by Nimish going forward along with Naukrigulf We see Naukrigulf also continuing to grow. That is the reason. We are seeing Naukri core, more AI-led, run by product to be run by the AI person to make it easier. IIMjobs and Hirist focus more because premium hiring will look up going forward. We put a senior person in charge.
Job Hai, blue-collar platform, will continue to grow, run like a separate business. We are investing in it. Of course, the consumer business. We also see an opportunity in the consumer business. That business has grown to become INR 150 crore-INR 170 crore for us over time. It has been growing at 18%-20%, makes up 50% margin. Perhaps that can grow faster if you focus on it. We have not really focused on it much till now. We have put Shell in charge of that business as well in addition to running the Naukri 360 and marketing for us. That has been the thinking behind the restructuring.
Okay, this is very helpful. My last question is your quick comments on the non-recruitment businesses and the roadmap to profitability there at an aggregate level. What are the timelines?
Let's go business by business. 99acres.com, see, 99acres.com, we are very happy with the progress we have made in terms of growing supply on the platform, in terms of growing our traffic share. Our traffic share a year ago was maybe 36%-37%. We now think it is around 48%-49%. In the month of September, we touched 50% as well. We have not seen this kind of traffic share gain in our real estate business in a long time. Now, hopefully, revenue growth will follow, maybe with a lag of two, three, four quarters, but it should happen. It should follow. We have seen growth in all segments. We have seen growth in the new home business. In terms of traffic, we are seeing growth in the new home segment. We are seeing growth in resale. We are seeing growth in rental. We are seeing growth in commercial. Inquiries on the platform are up substantially year- on- year, right?
We are not able to monetize our growth right now. That is why you still see some burn. We have gained substantial traffic share. The number of responses, the number of inquiries we generate, the supply on the platform, everything is up substantially year- on- year. When will 99acres.com get to profitability? A lot will depend on, of course, how much we want to keep investing to gain share, number one. Number two, a lot will also depend on when revenue growth actually moves up. We have been in the mid-teens for a while now. We need to get to the 20%-25% level, and we need to stay there for several years. If we are able to do that, then we have high operating leverage in these platform businesses, as you know. Jeevansathi.com continues to execute really well.
I don't think the market is growing at more than , 10%, 11%. We are growing at 30%. We are breaking even. We are gaining share. We are hoping that we can continue to sort of maintain this growth going forward as well. Let's see how this plays out. Again, we are not focused on profitability. We want to grow and gain share in Jeevansathi.com. Shiksha has been profitable. It has been a profitable operation. Shiksha.com is a business I'm worried about a little because of the changes. A lot of the traffic in Shiksha was its SEO traffic. Because of the changes you're seeing in search, platforms like Google, etc., have started answering questions directly. There is an AI overview and so many other things are changing in search. Traffic on Shiksha has actually, through Shiksha, has fallen, right?
We are seeing, we've seen a degrowth in terms of people ultimately ending up on Shiksha from Google and other platforms. Now we're working on strategies to mitigate this decline in traffic. It could take a few quarters before we figure things out. Growth, I hope. On the other hand, pricing is looking up in this segment because most clients get their responses from Google, inquiries from Google. Let's see how this plays out overall. Shiksha is a little very hard to predict what's going to happen, but maybe we'll have a better answer for you three quarters from now in that business. Job Hai, we continue to invest. I think the Job Hai business is burning about maybe INR 400,000,000 a year, if I'm not mistaken. We've started monetizing it now. Last year, I think we did about INR 50,000,000. This year, we'll do at least, we'll try and grow that business, this business, INR 15 crore-1INR 7 crore. Let's see where we end up. Let's see where we go from there.
All right, this is great. Last follow-up is on 99acres.com and the point you made on traffic. Is the traffic only genuine, or is there also the AI-led, GenAI-led crawling traffic also? Is traffic a very reliable indicator of revenue market share going forward in this business?
Just traffic is not a very reliable indicator because you can get all kinds of traffic, like you said. You need to invest in getting quality traffic, right? You need to invest in getting traffic which converts into inquiries, into leads, ultimately into transactions for clients. Ultimately, your revenue is going to be a function of the number of successful transactions you enable through your platform. Which is why I also mentioned that the inquiries we're generating for our customers through Shiksha or through 99acres.com are substantially year on year. It takes time to monetize. As long as we are happy, as long as our traffic share is growing, relevant traffic share, as long as our inquiries are growing, as long as we are enabling more transactions with the platform, hopefully, we'll get rewarded for it at some point in time.
Great. Thanks, Hitesh, for the detailed answers.
Thanks, Vivek. The next question from Vijit Jain from Citi. Vijit, go ahead and ask your question. Vijit, you are there? We will take the next question, actually. The next question is from Sachin from Bank of America. Sachin, go ahead and ask your question.
Thank you for the opportunity. I have three questions. First question, I know, Hitesh, it's early days, but this entire H1B issue, on the back of it, we are seeing media articles that certain GCCs are looking to expand their presence in India. Basis your interactions with most GCCs, do you see this as an opportunity where they could look to hire a bit more in India? In that process, platforms like you as benefit on the back of it?
I hope that happens. The GCC business has been growing at 17%-18% for us for the last couple of quarters. A lot of GCCs in India are the bigger ones employ. A lot of companies have 30% of their global workforce operating out of India, right? There are lots of GCCs who already operate at that level where they have 30% of all their global workforce operating out of India, with maybe 60% in tech, maybe 25% in other functions. That is how big they are, right? There are some 1,700 odd GCCs. I'm sure not all of them are operating at 30% of their workforce in India at that level. There is substantial, I think, room for growth there, both with existing GCCs and hopefully new GCCs will also set up shop over time. That continues to be a big opportunity for India. I think these GCCs today employ around 1.7 million people or so. The jobs also tend to be slightly higher quality. They have also over time moved up the value chain.
You are seeing a lot of high-end jobs also move to India now, which was perhaps not the case earlier. Earlier, most of them used to, most GCCs or back offices used to be about just hiring IT workers and call center employees. That's not the case anymore. Now, will this H1B issue lead to more hiring in GCCs? I don't know because things keep changing every few weeks, right? A lot of clarifications have been issued by the U.S. government. I don't know. I don't know whether this will have an impact on more jobs getting created in India. India is really, if you ask anybody outside, they'll tell you India is the only country outside the U.S. and China where you can get high-quality talent at scale, right? That's really our advantage. Any company which wants to hire high-quality, cost arbitrage is just one part of the story. If you want to hire a lot of high-quality people, especially in high-end roles, the only place other than the U.S. and China where you can get them in large numbers and cheap is India.
Got it. Very clear. Second question is, how does management look at marketing spends? This question is because in the past, you guys had mentioned that if the billings growth continues to be a bit soft and given the fact that you guys are competitively better positioned as compared to peers, why not take this as an opportunity to spend a bit more in terms of pushing for market share growth? Should that be how we be looking at the company directly? That if growth on billings is a bit soft, you guys could spend a bit more on marketing or how to think about it?
Spend money on marketing because billings growth is soft. We are spending on marketing because it makes, in some verticals, we are spending a lot more than we were spending earlier. Like I mentioned, 99acres.com, I mentioned Jeevansathi.com, Job Hai because we see an opportunity to gain market share, right? Yeah. More on those lines, opportunity to gain market share in a soft market. Of course, the marketing has to work for us, right? It has to, we have some models which we use internally to understand whether the marketing is working for us or not. As long as the marketing investments continue to work for us and we continue to gain share, it just makes sense to keep investing in marketing.
We will continue to do that. Now, we are perhaps spending more on marketing than our competitors now in 99acres.com and not in Jeevansathi.com, but in Jeevansathi.com, we are only in the northern part of the country. In that geography, we are spending enough. Even in Job Hai now, we have upped our marketing spend. In Naukri.com, we are spending a little more. For example, in Naukrigulf, we are spending a little more on Hirist because these are growing businesses. Core Naukri.com, we are not spending as much. We do not think we need to spend a lot because we are getting the CVs we need anyway. It is a tight market, right? It is not easy to get jobs. On the other hand, if the market starts to change or if competition becomes or starts investing a lot more, then perhaps we'll be forced to respond. Till then, I think we are fine.
Got it. Last question, just wanted to understand directly, how should we look at realizations in context of you guys looking to penetrate a bit deeper into Tier 2, Tier 3? Because it's very evident that as in how you go into tier two, tier three, there's a bit of a pressure on average realization. Is that something we need to be mindful about as you expand more into Tier 2, Tier 3?
See, every time, new business development requires investment. Most companies who start fresh with us start small. We are already in many of these cities. We've already opened offices in 70, 80, 90 cities. We've already hired people. It's not as if we are going to be hiring more people and investing a lot more than we were investing earlier in tier two cities or tier three cities now because we made those investments in marketing to get CVs. We've opened these offices already. We've already hired the salespeople on the ground. Yes, the customer RPU in Tier 2 and Tier 3 will be much lower than the RPUs you get in Bangalore and Bombay and Delhi.
Got it. Very clear. Thank you and all the best.
Thank you, Sachin. Next question is from Vijit from CityVine. Vijit, go ahead and ask your question.
Hi, can you hear me now?
Yeah, Vijit, go ahead.
Yeah, thank you. And apologies for earlier. My first question, Hitesh, you talked a little bit about this AI-led approaches in Naukri. I wanted to double-click on that. First, is that referring to how the ResDex database will be used in the future? It'll be more qualitative queries and search prompts that people will enter, and that's what you're looking at? Or is there more in terms of how you're rethinking the product on the Naukri side? That's my first question. When you talk about AI-led.
Yeah, there are many types of AI. We've been investing in machine learning for several years now. Most of the gains we've seen till now have been on account of the investments we made in machine learning, which we started investing in maybe seven, eight years ago, right? Whether it's search quality, whether it's quality of recommendations, whether it's personalization, all this is data science plus machine learning feedback loop-led, right? These gains have mostly materialized already in Jeevansathi.com and in Naukri.com.
Now, of course, we are also trying to reimagine experiences and using generative AI and other tools which have now become available to us, right, over the last few years. Just because we're investing more, we're just thinking about how more we can sort of use AI to improve and enhance the experience. One of the things, for example, we are working on is you mentioned ResDex. Earlier, how it worked is that companies, recruiters would log into ResDex and they would search based on some query or some JD they had in mind. They would contact the shortlist candidates, and then they would call them on the phone one by one. If calls are not answered, they would call again and so on and so forth.
One of the things we are trying to, we are experimenting with is like a recruitment copilot in that sense where you actually get AI to do all this for you, right? The AI understands what you're looking for. It shows you a few profiles, and you tell the AI whether those profiles are the type of profiles you're looking for. Then the AI takes over, it searches the database, it contacts job seekers, it phones them, it asks them a few questions if you want a few questions to be asked, and then finally gives you a list of candidates which you can maybe interview. These are pilots. Some are in commercial beta with some customers. Of course, you get feedback from customers. You iterate, you go back to them. Early days. We are already pilot.
These are already in commercial beta with some customers. Of course, then the revenue model also has to be figured out. So many things to be done still, right? Then, of course, you have some generative AI-enabled features. Like if you are posting a job on the platform, generative AI can help you post a better JD. It can help you do it faster. There are reviews in Ambition Box or in Shiksha. You can use generative AI to summarize those reviews for the user. A lot of experience enhancements using generative AI are possible. People want to write. We are helping people prepare for interviews using generative AI, right? Mock interviews through generative. All these things have become possible, which were not possible earlier. We are experimenting with a bunch of such things.
There are lots of AI tools that are now available to us. Let's take marketing, for example. We run ads, for example, on Instagram, on Facebook, and on Google. Previously, we would experiment with a few creatives and take them live. It used to take a lot of effort and time and effort to make new creatives. Now you can use GenAI tools to create new creatives on the fly. You can create thousands of them very quickly and experiment with them. We're also trying to use these AI tools. I mean, coders are experimenting with AI tools to see if they can code faster and become more efficient at coding. That is a separate suite, using external AI tools to become more efficient and smarter at what we do across all functions, not just in product or engineering.
In the August.
Yeah.
Got it. Thanks, Vijit. So Hitesh, is it safe to say that in those product changes and those product pilots that you are running, the monetization or how customers would pay for it has to be different from what is the norm now, right? You would have to charge differently, charge possibly higher.
Yeah, it has to be figured out, right? It has to be. We have gone to something, but we are experimenting with something right now as we speak. It could change going forward based on the feedback we get.
My second. No, understood. My second question was on the property segment now. I mean, obviously, we can see that you're seeing a lot of market share gains here. Do you think this is moving into that direction where some kind of a consolidation move is likely? We've seen some of that in the industry, in other spaces in the industry recently. From your point of view, if you assess some kind of an opportunity, obviously, a consolidation move has an impact on the category as well, right, in terms of pricing, in terms of many other things. Would that be a part of how you would assess an opportunity should that arise of consolidation?
We are open, I mean, to consolidation in both matrimony and real estate. We've said that for a while. If the right opportunity arises at the right price for the right kind of company, we'd be more than happy to acquire.
I guess, Hitesh, my question was also because it can help improve the profitability of the entire segment, would that have a role to play in your fair value assessment?
No, yes, of course. I mean, you're right. If accuracy leads to higher market share, higher traffic share, and ultimately better pricing, that will, I mean, we'll keep that in mind while valuing whichever company we look to acquire.
Got it. My last question, I think you covered some bit of in the previous question from Sachin. Just the GCC's bit, we've had a few announcements from U.S. recently, and I've seen a few news articles suggesting that after the H1B announcements, there's been another push, at least in some pockets, on shifting some work to India. Have you seen that in your client base? Is GCC seeing another leg up just simply because of all of these developments?
See, hard to say because there are already 1,700 GCCs. Maybe a few get added, every few new ones open every month. Has that number changed over the last three months? I don't know, actually. We don't track that. There's a lot of, and see, what our GCC business has been growing at 17%-18% over the last two-three quarters, right? Now, the bigger ones think differently from the smaller ones. If a GCC already has 20,000 people on the ground, it's unlikely that they will add a lot of new people in a hurry, right? If 30% of their workforce is already in India, what happens to their global business impacts the India operation also, right? On the other hand, most GCCs, when they start in India, they start small.
They do not start with 20,000 people or 10,000 people. They start with a few hundred people or tens of people, and they scale up over time, right? I think that will continue because GCCs which have set up shop in India over the last two, three years, where their India headcount is still maybe 2%, 3%, 4%, 5%, 7% of their global headcount, I think there is going to be room for them to grow, continue to grow for several years. I think that will continue. Will we start seeing new GCCs in India or many more companies setting up shop because of this H1B issue? I do not know. Hard for me to say.
Okay. Yeah. Got it. No, thank you. I appreciate your comments. Those were my questions.
Thanks, Vijit. Next question is from Deep Shah from BK Securities. Deep, go ahead and ask your question.
Yeah, hi. Thanks for the opportunity. Hi, team. The first question is on Shiksha. You did mention that because the search is shifting to, say, AI or even Gemini, the number of hits on the websites are coming down. Now, Hitesh, what is your take on this? I mean, we ideally believe that verticals would largely remain immune to this because of the granularity of information that is available on these websites. Maybe search will start on ChatGPT or any such AI platform, but eventually move to a vertical for the detailed information available. Is there some error in that understanding? Are you seeing maybe people who are coming on the website spending more time than before, something like that? Because otherwise, this has the potential to disrupt any vertical, right? Your comments on that, maybe even other comments would be useful. Second.
I think there's a bigger problem where the content is static and not very dynamic. For example, on 99acres and on Naukri, content is very dynamic. The listings change every day. The jobs change every day, etc. All the details are available, and people want to go into the details. People want to, they can only apply on our platform and so on. Shiksha is a little different because it's a content-led platform. A lot of the content is static, does not change every day. A lot of publishers globally have seen traffic fall. The traffic they were getting from Google fall. Now, the people who want to go, who are very serious users who want to go into more detail, etc., they're, of course, still putting the effort. I mean, you may have seen your own behavior.
Like if you want to answer to a question very quickly, previously, maybe you would have visited, let's take health platforms. You would have gone to a Mayo Clinic website or some other website. Today, if you get an answer from the AI engine or from the AI overview, you do not necessarily sort of always end up visiting these platforms. I think that is what Shiksha is seeing. Of course, we are working on strategies to mitigate this. It is something which has happened in the last few quarters. It is impacting, of course, every platform in education, all the other sort of players in this space as well. I am sure this has impacted all other publishers too of content. It is a real change in behavior.
Yeah, you are right. In the sense, even our behavior has changed. That is fair. Hitesh, for example, if the nature of search changes the way we interact with horizontal search platforms, how difficult is it to have an internal system within Shiksha that instead of me searching for colleges the traditional way, I can simply enter my query and then the results pop up the way it pops up for, say, a ChatGPT kind of platform? How easy or difficult is that to create? Again, this would be applicable for all verticals.
See, the problem is the top of the funnel. You see, once a person lands on Shiksha, there is no problem. We can engage him even more than we were engaging him earlier, right? If fewer people end up on your platform, because a lot of our traffic comes from the people who are searching on Google. Previously, what used to happen is that when you would search on Google, Google would show you a few links, and based on your query, you would end up on Shiksha or on some other platform. Google would not answer the question for you, right? Now, that has changed. For the number of people who end up on a content platform like Shiksha, right, have fallen. There are still many who are coming, right? There are many who come directly as well. The total number of, at the top of the funnel, you're getting fewer people. Of course, the ones you are getting are perhaps more serious, and you can engage them a lot more than earlier. There is a problem at the top of the funnel, which has to be fixed.
Understood. No, this is very helpful to understand this vertical horizontal fight. Second is more straightforward. We have not seen any change in the composition of revenue of 99acres.com builders, brokers, etc. We are seeing the number of paid listings grow very rapidly in the last two quarters. I hear your comments on DVED monetization, but is there some change in pricing as such? The number of paid listings has grown rapidly in the last two quarters. Billings have not. If you could just help us understand. It is not that as if owner profiles are more versus brokers, and therefore maybe RP or listing or whatever that metric is could come down. Just help us understand this.
Yeah, see, we have made a lot of changes to our sort of marketing mix. We have changed pricing in a few markets. We have increased our focus on customer acquisition. We have changed our marketing mix. With the overall objective of growing our traffic share and growing our market share and delivering more value to our customers. Now listings have grown because, one, maybe they're cheaper in some markets than they were earlier. Two, because we've acquired a lot of new customers on the ground, and they are posting listings. Three, there's generally more competition amongst brokers to get more responses, right? Sometimes that also impacts. It's a good market. I think it's a combination of various things which have led to what you're seeing.
Yeah. Thanks, Hitesh.
Anand, you're on mute.
Thanks, Deep. Next question from Nikhil from Nuvama. Nikhil, go ahead and ask your question.
Thanks for the opportunity. Hitesh, very strong growth in GCC, but partially it looks like the base was also relatively softer. Sequentially, GCC actually grew lower than the company growth. Was there any seasonality because you only recently started closing this particular segment, or actually you saw some slowdown on a sequential basis?
See, not much has changed on the ground. I would not read too much into these quarterly numbers. Growth can change basis a couple of customers renewing or not renewing or upgrading or not upgrading. I think perhaps we should look at all these segment-wise numbers on an annual basis more than on a quarterly basis. That may be a better indicator of what is happening than just quarterly numbers.
Got it, Hitesh. Second, on AI, multiple sub-questions here. First, on how prepared we are for the new set of product. We have recently, and you must have recently heard the Merkor AI raising big bank funding. They are launching more product. Do you think our product pipeline capability and investment is completely on track, or do you think we need to accelerate, especially competing with this AI-first company? Second, you did highlight it earlier that AI investment monetization will happen much more quickly and some of the products we have launched recently. Where are we in this monetization journey? Last one, globally, we are seeing this phenomenon, Hitesh, which you also called out, that senior hiring is increasing in the AI-first world while juniors is actually going down. Do you plan to at least pilot new product, new capability where you can monetize this opportunity? Because, I mean, it's not one-to-one, right? I mean, when the salary doubles, ultimately, you are contributing more to your clients. Any plan? Three questions within AI.
See, like I mentioned, we are making different types of AI investments. Core machine learning investments we've been making for several years now, and I think we are maybe as good as anybody else out there. We have a very large team, and we've done a lot of good work over the years. We have data nobody else has, right? And our algorithms have improved substantially, whether it's our search engine or our recommendation engines or our alerts or our personalization on the platform. We've seen gains. Because we track these numbers, we've seen a 15%-20% kicker over time in Jeevansathi and in Naukri, or both, right? On machine learning, I think we are as good as perhaps anybody else out there. We have the advantage of having data nobody else has, right? Which is an important ingredient for these algorithms to work.
As far as generative AI is concerned, there, we are experimenting with an agentic AI. We are experimenting with a bunch of things, like I said. It is early days there. I can't say, listen, we are very successful, and we've understood it fully, and we've cracked the market. We've launched some database offerings. They have been received well in the market. We've launched AI Rex, which is our AI, like an AI Copilot. Think of it as an AI Copilot. Early days, we are experimenting. We are piloting it with a few customers, some commercial beta, getting feedback, making changes, going back to them. Everybody talks about it, but it's not an easy sale because companies also need to be ready to implement it at their end. They also need to sort of change their business processes if they want to use some of these tools.
Early days on that front. Would I say that we are the best in the world? Are we doing as well as others? I do not know because it is a new space, right? Even others are all, there are other products also out there in the market. They are also experimenting, and they are also piloting a lot of new features every day. Lastly, AI to just become better at what we do across all functions. We have to become more efficient. AI for improving our pricing, realization in Jeevansathi.com, for example. AI to improve our ROI on marketing. We are doing whatever we can to just become efficient and faster at what we do, right? I think we are perhaps as good as almost anybody else, at least in some areas, right? We have done a lot of good work in marketing and content.
We're using AI for telecalling, right, to qualify leads in some businesses. And it's working out well. Are we the best in the world? Are we as good as others? I don't know. Are we in a much better place than we were five years ago? Definitely. Have we managed to put a good team together? Absolutely. Have we been able to roll out new features and functionalities? Yes. Have we launched new products? Yes. Have we improved our algorithms substantially? Are we using AI in many parts of the company? Yes. Tools, right? I would say at least in India, we're doing better than most companies. I don't know what's happening in the U.S. That maybe answers your first question. What was the second question, sorry?
On AI monetization.
Monetization, see, the changes, like the algorithmic changes, right? Somewhere, we're not monetizing them directly. If more matches happen through us, ultimately, we can charge higher prices. We get higher renewals. All that happens. We do not charge for it directly, but because it impacts the user experience and it impacts customer experience, somewhere it will show up in our pricing at some point in time. We are able to monetize indirectly. A lot of the features we give, we have launched using AI, are free. I mean, they are just, again, to improve the user experience on our platform. The new products we have launched, the data products, for example, we are monetizing. The AI offerings, which we are running, which we have launched as copilots, early days. We are testing them out. There is a commercial beta going on with some customers, but early days.
Last one was on senior hire.
And senior hire, so yeah. See, two things. One, like I said, on Naukri, the average CTC of a CV being viewed on Naukri is almost doubled over the last five, six years, right? Now, somewhere, this should show up in pricing, right? We did increase our prices substantially post-COVID when there was a surge in hiring. With pricing, the way it works is it's easier to take prices up in a good market, hard to take them up in a lukewarm market. The market right now is lukewarm. We haven't seen any pricing growth, I think, with.
We are checking. Hitesh got offline. We'll come back to you. Stay put. Hitesh is just chatting right now. Hitesh will be back soon.
Yeah, I'm sorry. My computer restarted for some reason. I'm now logged into my phone. Am I audible, Vineet?
Yeah, audible.
Okay. Yeah. Sorry. You were talking about premium applications.
Yeah, premium. So premium, so one is the CV CTCs have increased in Naukri. And we should be able to realize higher value from our customers through pricing at some point in time. Easier to take up pricing in a hot market, difficult to take it up in a lukewarm market. That's one. Second, we are pushing our premium hiring platform like IIMjobs and Hirist, right? IIMjobs is a premium MBA hiring platform. Hirist is being developed as a premium tech hiring platform. And we are seeing jobs are increasing on these platforms. We are adding more customers. So it's a twin strategy on this front for us.
Got it, Hitesh. That's one point here. While I agree there is a strategy to Hirist, let's say, for senior hires, but also some of the job or candidates just come on Naukri, right, rather than going to Hirist. So it also has to do with the fact that where the candidates are coming. While at overall level, I agree with you, the hiring is slow, but there are micro segments where hiring is phenomenal, right? Why don't we want to monetize that? That is what looks like will continue, right? I mean, that's why I'm emphasizing on this question.
No , we are monetizing. Premium hiring on the Naukri platform is also growing, right? There are enough companies who hire senior talent and mid-management talent and premium tech talent and premium MBA talent from Naukri. All I'm saying is, see, there traditionally our share has been low, right? With the LinkedIn. Correct. In addition to Naukri, we are also developing IIMjobs and Hirist as premium hiring platforms so that we can increase our share in this segment.
The other thing to remember is that, look, on the base that which Naukri is, if you get a couple of extra niches, the revenue you get does not move the needle in the short run. Therefore, it does not show up in much, much higher growth in the short run.
Got it, Sanjeev. Last question, Sanjeev, for you. I have noticed I think there are a few investments on AI-first company by Info Edge. Are we seeing enough opportunity as the ecosystem is large enough? Are we seeing the similar money chasing few startups in the AI ecosystem the way we are seeing globally?
Look, almost every startup now that we meet has got an element of AI in it. Some are AI-first, but all of them are AI-enabled, and they've got an element of AI. It's very difficult to find a startup in the tech space that does not have some AI in it. Even if they don't, at least they claim it, okay? You've got to be discerning and figure out what's going to work, what's not going to work, what is a false claim, what's a true claim, and then go behind it. The options are tremendous. I mean, the number of startups that you're seeing right now is only increasing. We've got a team of 18 people that is just seeing lots and lots and lots of startups.
G ot it, Sanjeev. Thanks a lot, Hitesh, Sanjeev, and good luck for the coming quarter. Thank you.
Thank you.
Thanks, Nikhil. Next question from Swapnil from JM Financial. Swapnil, go ahead and ask your question.
Hi, thanks for the opportunity. The first question is for Hitesh. So Hitesh, we are already halfway through the quarter, and our jobs pick index numbers were not that great in October, at least. How should we see this quarter panning out in terms of billings growth? Because, again, December is generally a holiday season, and that's where hiring stops. I mean, any sense on that side?
Yeah, see, October and November, I normally do not go by what because the festival season shifts every year, right? This year, Diwali was earlier. Last year, Diwali was around October end. This year, it was maybe 10 days earlier. In this quarter, and in general, our sales are lumpy. We get most of our sales in the last month of the quarter, right? Very hard for me to see how this quarter is going to pan out and what the numbers will look like. Has anything changed on the ground between September and October or November? No. We are not seeing any major change on the ground. I mean, it's like it was. I can't really go by what we are seeing in October and November because of the change in the festival season every year.
Okay. Got it. The second question is with respect to the breakup that you used to give in terms of growth rates for IIMjobs , Naukri Fast Forward, and Naukrigulf. You mentioned about Naukrigulf growing, if I'm not wrong, 22% this quarter. What about the other businesses? What were the growth rates in that?
Yeah, see, we saw a moderation growth rate because we are experimenting with different go-to-market strategies, right? Whether we should be bundling IIMjobs and Hirist with Naukri or selling standalone. Stuff like that, we are experimenting with. This quarter, we saw growth slowing down in IIMjobs and Hirist vis-à-vis the growth we reported earlier. That was perhaps because of the experiments we're doing more than anything else.
Okay. Got it. The third one is with respect to the simplification that you have done in the PB Fintech ownership. Now, generally, such kind of changes are a precursor to something next happening. Is there anything that we can foresee towards a stake sale in the company or anything of that sort?
You should not read anything into it. This was a merger that's being planned for several years now. It does take time to do a merger. It was actually planned three, four years before the IPO. It did not happen for various reasons. The IPO happened, then we reapplied. It is just procedural that it happened now and not earlier. Yeah. I think they got more than four to five years to kind of complete this in the quarter. It is nothing planned. Should not read too much into it.
Got it. Sanjeev, thanks a lot for taking it. Thanks, guys. Those were my questions. All the best.
Thanks, Swapnil. Next question from Prateek from HSBC Securities. Prateek, go ahead and ask your question.
Hi, team. Thank you for the opportunity. Hitesh, I just have one question. That is relating to the comments that you made earlier on the org restructuring that you have done in recruitment. I just wanted to check on if there has been any change in your view of the midterm and long-term growth prospects of the core Naukri that you said, apart from the premium talent and lukewarm hiring. Core Naukri, has there been any changes in your view which has led to this org restructuring?
See, we continue to believe that core Naukri growth is going to be a function of, one, Indian economic growth and the resultant job creation as a result of that. Two, because a lot of our revenue comes from IT hiring, it's going to be a function of what happens to IT companies and their hiring, which now depends on global GDP growth. It depends on what happens because of AI, right? What we are doing as far as at our end is to see if we can expand, grow the TAM for ourselves, right? If we are able to get a small, so far, Naukri has been used mostly for sourcing. Core Naukri has been used mostly for sourcing candidates. Now, if you can also help recruiters do their job more efficiently and do their jobs faster, and if you can help them hire more candidates through Naukri than they were hiring earlier because of our better matching engine, better algorithms, etc., then that expands the one, that helps us grow our market share in the hiring that happens already. Two, it helps us expand our TAM as well. What Naukri, and of course, lastly, there is pricing growth, which, like I said, is often a function of what happens to when the market is hot.
It's easier to take a price in a hot market, let me put it this way. They stay there for a while. If the velocity of hiring grows, then it's just easier to command a higher price. That has, I mean, that model, that's not changed. If GDP growth slows down or if something happens to IT companies, then of course, growth would slow down. On the other hand, if we are able to successfully roll out new products, if we are able to get more hiring to happen through Naukri because of our superior algorithms, then of course, growth would look up.
Thanks, Hitesh. Also, just to check on, so again, the CTO involvement in the business, the products that you're talking about, do you think that there could be a case where the recruiters could also indicate with the evolving nature of the tech that's coming about, right? Do you see any kind of risks also that the recruiters are able to better utilize your platform, the other LinkedIn platform, right? Where that also hinders your proposition to take a price hike?
Of course, see, I'm sure there are enough startups trying to do things, to do new things. We've been through this before also. See, right now, as things stand today, my understanding of the market is that most companies end up hiring through online platforms like ours and LinkedIn and through referrals. A very small percentage of the hiring happens through their private databases as well.
That's not changed substantially in the last, that's not changed significantly in the last couple of years, at least. Now, could there be new players, could new technologies emerge which change the way companies today go about hiring talent? I'm sure enough people are trying, but we have not seen anything material on change on the ground as yet is what I can say. Of course, we are also trying. Like I said, we are also doing a whole bunch of things to see how we can help our clients do their job better. In the end, technology has to be used to solve a business problem. Just the technology in itself is not enough. The reality is that, see, whenever there's a new technology, it opens up new opportunities, right? For incumbents, it also creates new opportunity for startups, right?
We're going to see that with the advent of AI, right? Now, a lot will finally now, the one thing we are going for, two things we are going for us is that we have distribution, which new players lack. Two, we have data, which, again, new players lack. That's something which is slightly different about this technology than earlier new technologies, which is why you see Google still dominating the market, which is why you see Meta also sort of doing a good job because they have cash flows, they're able to invest in AI. Two, they have data, which nobody else has, right? Three, they have distribution. I think we still have these advantages over new players. Yes, we will have to continue to execute well. We will have to be, we should be able to attract good talent. We should be able to launch new products. We'll have to do all that also. We can't just assume that we're going to succeed.
Great. Thanks. Those were my questions. Thank you so much.
Thanks, Prateek. There is a follow-up question from Vivek from AMBIT Capital. Vivek, go ahead and ask your question.
Thanks for the follow-up opportunity. As far as the products that you acquired four, five years back, Zwayam and DoSelect are concerned, now that Naukri team members are selling these products and taking these products to more and more customers, I believe you had filed for a merger of these two companies with your core operations, right? When is that likely to be effective? What are the timelines there? When do you see more scalability of these two businesses? I think they've done quite well. I think DoSelect better than Zwayam. If you could just discuss about some of the scalability factors for these businesses. Thank you.
Hitesh, do you want to answer that question of the merger first?
like you rightly said, Vivek, that we have already filed the papers. I think different NCLT and different states have different pendency rate. Some takes years, some takes two years. So it's really difficult to predict. Like I said in one of the earlier questions, that for MakeSense, actually, it happened in two phases. But overall, it took almost like five years. I mean, it could be a very long-term process. In this case, I would expect that maybe it will take another year or maybe maximum one and a half year. I mean, that's my expectation. It really depends on the pendency.
To answer your second question, see, we've acquired a bunch of startups over the last few years. MakeSense Technologies was actually a company we acquired many years ago. They were doing semantic search 10 years ago, which actually today is like AI in that sense. Ambition Box, DoSelect, Zwayam, IIMjobs, Hirist. We are very happy with what we got from MakeSense Technologies. We were able to improve ourselves substantially because of MakeSense Technologies. That is something which did not generate direct revenue for us, but the acquisition really worked out for us. Ambition Box, again, has scaled up substantially over the last few years. Now we are generating branding revenue from Ambition Box. IIMjobs and Hirist, like I've spoken about them, we scaled. I mean, Hirist was very, very tiny. It was a very small platform when we acquired it.
We've grown the platform over time. IIMjobs also, we've taken it to more customers through the Naukri sales team. This acquisition also worked out. DoSelect and Zwayam, like you rightly said, we are happy with the progress we're making in DoSelect . We think we can do a lot better in Zwayam than we've done till now. I mean, Zwayam, I think will take a lot more effort than what we put in till now to sort of scale, is my sense.
Okay. You are currently facing scalability challenges primarily because of the sluggishness in the market, or is there any product or go-to-market challenge also that you have identified?
I think the core issue right now is that the overall hiring market is very modest. Actually, we were very confident till Q4 of last year, the Naukri business grew by some 16-17%, right? Therefore, when we budgeted for this year, we assumed that we would grow at at least 15%-17%. We gave generous increments. We hired people. We invested like we were going to grow at 15%-17%. Suddenly, we saw a dip in Q1, right? Now, was it because of the tariff wars? Was it because of the Iran-Israel war? Was it because of the India-Pakistan skirmish? Was it because of the noise around AI? I do not know, right? We saw a sudden dip. Q2 was a little better, but not much has changed on the ground. The real challenge right now is that a lot of our big customers are not hiring as much as they were hiring till some time back, right? Whether it's IT services companies, which is, or whether it's the recruitment firms who hire through us, their business is not as they're not hiring as many people as they were hiring earlier, right? That's impacted Naukri growth more than anything else, Core Naukri growth.
Okay. Great. Thank you and all the very best.
Thanks, Vivek. Vinney, that was the last question for the day we had.
Yeah. Thank you, everyone. On behalf of Info Edge, we conclude this call. You may disconnect.
Thank you. Thank you, everyone, and have a good evening. Thank you.
Thank you, everyone.
Bye-bye. Before you all go, I mean, I'd like to, this is Chintan's last analyst call. He's moving on. I'd like to express our appreciation for all that he's done. I'd like to welcome Amrish, who's coming in back into the company as the interim CFO. He's on this call as well. Since Chintan moves on, Amrish comes back, but Chintan remains a friend and supporter and is always available to us. Thanks, Chintan, for everything.
Thank you so much. Thanks to all the analysts. I think there's always been great support coming from them. Thank you, everyone.
Thank you, everyone. Good evening.