Q1 21/22

Aug 16, 2021

Quarterly report

Good afternoon, everyone. This is Anupansu. Welcome to English conference call along with my colleague, Vivek Agarwal, who will run this conference. Vivek, you can start now. Sure. Thanks, Anup. Hi, everyone. Good evening, and welcome to InfoAgelia q one twenty two financial results conference call. As a reminder, all participant lines will be in listen only mode, and there's an opportunity for you to ask question after the presentation concludes. Should you need any 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 mister Sanjeet Chamdani, founder and vice chairman mister Ikish Choprahy, co promoter and managing director and mister Chetan Khapar, chief financial officer. Officer. Before we begin today, I would like to remind you that some of the statements made in today's conference call may be forward looking in nature and may involve risk and uncertainties. Kindly refer to slide number two of investor presentations for this detailed disclaimer. Now I would like to hand over the conference to mister Hitesh Aguil for his briefing. You, and over to you, Hitesh. Thank you, Vivek, and a very good evening to everyone, and welcome to our q one financial year twenty twenty two earnings conference call. Trust your you and your loved ones are safe and in good health. As we come out of the second wave of the pandemic, we would like to express our heartfelt condolences to all the InfoEdge stakeholders who lost a family member, friend, or colleague. I hope the coming days are better for everyone. Over the past one and a half years, InfoEdge has stepped up and has not left any stone unturned to support the health and overall well-being of our employees and their family members. We continue the COVID relief work and we continue the COVID relief work and have our employees with oxygen support and emergency supply of basic and advanced medicines, hospital beds, ambulance support, health care services at home, and other health care needs. Despite all this, we lost four of our employees to the pandemic. Our thoughts and prayers are with them and their family members. We continue to offer COVID leave and enhanced medical insurance coverage to all. We also recognize the emotional toll on employees and initiated mental health mental well-being programs for for all employees of our company. Also, realizing that vaccination is the only way to return to normalcy, employees carried out a vaccination drive for the for all our employees and their family members. We also extended the reach our the vaccination drive to our partners and clients, especially in. You will remember this challenging time in our lives as a turning point that asserted us out of our comfort comfort zone and press us towards a different future. We will now move we will now talk about the financial quarterly financial performance of the company. We'll start with the overall financials as always and then cover each business financials in more detail. And then, of course, we'll have q and a. The audited financial statements and other schedules on segmental billing, revenues, etcetera, along with the data sheets have been uploaded on our website, the employer story. Let's begin with the summary of key numbers in the, stand alone financials. Billings in q one are rupees 314.2 crores, up by 66.6% year on year. Revenue in Q1 is INR 319.7 crores, up by 14.1% year on year. Operating expenses for the quarter, excluding depreciation and amortization, are INR $2.20 crores, up 25.3%. And operating EBITDA stood at rupees 99.7 crores versus a $106,104.6 crores last year, a drop of 4.7% year on year. And operating EBITDA margins for the quarter stood at 31.2% compared to 37.3% last year. And cash issued cash EBITDA for the quarter stood at rupees 94.1 crore compared to rupees 13.7 crore last year for the same quarter. The first sales revenue stood at rupees $5.00 $1.6.1 crore as of June 06/30/2021, versus INR371.7 crores as of 06/30/2020, an increase of 36.2% year on year. The cash balance of inflows, including the wholly owned subsidiary, stands at INR 3,561 crores as of 06/30/2021 as against INR $14.25 crores on 06/30/2020. As one can see from the above numbers, the company witnessed remarkable about recovering billings in q one over q one of the previous year. The billings for the the year the the year over year growth in q one billings is across all of this is what it means, but it's different. We saw different growth, in different to different degrees in different verticals. The recruitment business, has shown a sharp rebound in the equities of the platform with the June 21 job speak index reflecting almost 100% year, growth year on year, and ITS and IT IT and IT ES showing positive trends in hiring. The recruitment business is poised for a high growth phase to enter a high growth phase. In 99 acres, the drop in traffic on the site was about 30% in April compared to the previous month due to the second day of the pandemic. It started recovering month over month. The monetization of 99 yen acres was severely impacted, particularly in the month of May, which is at the peak of the second wave. Since then, we have witnessed recovery in both traffic and monetization, and the external environment on the real estate business has also turned more benign. In Jeevansati, we continue with our strategy to invest in brand and improving and improvements in user experience. We continue to focus on the Hindi speaking belt in North And West India. During the peak of the second wave of the pandemic, the subdued sentiments didn't hamper the steady progress of the growing number of users and billing in G. Manzahi. Shiksha doubles its doubles its billings in in the quarter compared to q one of FY twenty one. Compared to the pre pandemic year of FY twenty, also, it showed a growth of about 45%. Clearly, for the portal is continues to gain an acceptance in with the student community and with colleges and universities. The Northview distribution muscle was, of course, was leveraged by IIM Jobs and Harris, and they both grew in terms of number of clients, billings, and cash profits. During the profit during the quarter, we also completed our acquisition of Zwiem, the Bangalore based SaaS company, and it has Bangalore based SaaS company, Zwiem, actually has some marquee customers for its SaaS product. Zwem, along with RMS, would strengthens Nokri's offerings in the enterprise segment going forward. In early July, we also announced the signing of definitive agreements to acquire DooSelect, a Bangalore based company in the assessment space. DooSelect would add breadth and depth to the Nocreep's product stack in the recruitment space. As a result of the accelerated accelerated digitization in the companies in not just in India, but in globally, the talent market has has become very, very competitive, particularly in the technology and digital talent space. This gets reflected in our higher personal cost during the quarter as well. I mean, it's becoming almost impossible to hire talent in this market. We are watchful on in of of discretionary expense expenses, managing the long term investments in the business with short short term goals. As a company, we continue to work from home. You know, all our employees have been working from home for the last almost seventeen, eighteen months now, without any impact on productivity. And the total headcount of the company, remains around four 4,500 as of 06/30/2021, up by about 25 2.5% from March 3121 2021. Moving on to the financial and other highlights of the recruitment segment. In 2022, the recruitment segment billings were at least two forty three point five crores, up 73.6% year on year, while revenues were $2.22.6 crores, up 11.2% year on year. Operating EBITDA stood at rupees $1.23.6 crores, up 2.5% from 2021. Margins were at 55.6% versus 60.3% in '1. Cash EBITDA for recruitment during the quarter stood at INR 144.8 crores, up from INR 60.8 crores reported for 2021. The cash EBITDA margins are at 59.5% of the billings compared to 43.4% in 2021. IIM Jaws and Harris saw a quantum jump in their billing numbers here and there. The billing for the quarter stood at 8.6 crores, up by 170% from 03/01/2021. Pending the final legal process of merger, these numbers are excluded from the stand alone numbers above. So we saw recovery in both segments. The IT and ITS segment was the most significant contributor to the overall numbers. We also witnessed a high growth across geographies in terms of new customers added and billings per customer. We had a very high renewal rate. We saw a very high renewal rate for rest assured subscription during the quarter. We also see a significant uplift in market sentiment as few customers buying higher volumes in anticipation of an uplift in high demand in the near future. An important point I wanna make is that last year, and particularly in the first half of last year, due to lockdowns and and COVID, the annual a lot of companies deferred their annual renewals. As a result, the renewal basis basis shifted for many companies. Right? So so the point I'm trying to make is that while we can we are so okay comparing this year with last year, but comparisons with last two last year may not be appropriate because the renewal base has shifted for a lot of companies. So we are we we expect q two, for example, and q three to sort of so higher growth if this trend continues with the ways of with the ways q two and 1920, you know, because the base has shifted. I hope I'm able to get my point across clearly. Lot of companies who were supposed to renew in q one of last year did not renew in q one. Many of them went on to renew in q two and q three and some in q four, And therefore, their renewals will now come in q two, q three, and q four of this year and not in q one or q four. Right? Just one second. The new approach here we are following in Oak Creek with, you know, with because we've added a lot acquired a lot of new businesses and added new features and functionality, we're now offering a whole suite of products, you know, starting with campus hiring, to talent assessment, to recruitment software, to sourcing, to service, you know, to ehire, to to our clients to meet all their hiring needs. And and this strategy is beginning to get higher acceptance with our with some customers. Early days still, but it's beginning to get higher accept acceptance of some customers. And the acquisition of Zuayam and Dooseneck would further enhance our product offering, over time. Our tech and product team also successfully launched has three new products in the last, you know, three or four months. Restex Enterprise, for example, a new a next generation talent product planning and source platform equipped with AI, ML based person search, and CV recommendations. This it also has advanced data analytics to closely track recruiters' performance and productivity tools to save hiring time. We also launched TalentPulse, a comprehensive talent planning tool that helps organizations shape their hiring strategy through real time insights on talent distributions and new trends, competitive benchmarking, and more. And lastly, we also launched mobile branding solutions. Till then, till recent very recently, we used to offer the branding solutions only on desktop. But now we are all we have started offering mobile branding solutions to companies as well. This which will help companies showcase their brand to an untapped pool of mobile savvy talent talent with company page and targeted ads on Nokris, JobSeeker app. Early results for these new products are encouraging, but it's still early days. Ambition Box, which is our career platform, and which has job seekers discover best places to work, which hosts a lot of reviews and ratings of our companies, also launched its best places to work in India awards. It showcased top places, workplaces based on more than a million reviews from 2,500 locations across the country. These awards are also received well by by our customers. Moving on to our operational sort of metrics. This quarter saw a significant uplift of in terms of new CV registrations on the platform as well. On the average, we added 16,202 CVs per day, up 93% compared to 2021. Average CV modifications were also up to 40 four lakh 89,000 per day, up 51% year on year, and our traffic share in the job portal space continues to be in the high seventies. Moving over to 99 acres. Billings in q one in 99 acres grew by 59.6% year on year to rupees 22.4 crores, while revenue grew 15.8% to rupees 49.2 crores. EBITDA for the quarter stood at rupees 10 lakhs against an EBITDA of 4.1 crores reported in 2021. Cash loss for the quarter was 26.9 crores against a cash loss of 24.5 crores last year. So we saw a solid recovery in q four in in '19 in 99 acres, but q one was again hit due to the second wave of COVID. While, you know, billings grew 60% year on year, it was on a small on a small base. We were expecting to do much better till the second wave hit us. Unlike hiring, which has moved totally online and has become very digital, and companies are willing to sort of interview people and make offers without meeting them. You know, homes are a very high involvement category, and most people don't would would not buy a home without sort of check you know, visiting, you know, or or sort of seeing a few places, which is why, you know, this business was set in q one. We saw a modest recovery in June, and traffic is now back. All our metrics are at an all time high in 99 acres. And even July was a a a very, very good month. So we are hopeful and confident that unless and until we get hit by another wave of COVID, things should be be should quickly get on back get back on track in 99 acres. And across all segments, new homes, resale, rental, and commercial. Daily live listings on the platform grew 49% in year on year in q one with both owner and local listings with a strong growth Y o Y. Our mark our brand share continued to be in the high fifties with our nearest competitor. Overall inquiries and responses in the platform also grew very strongly in q one in all categories, 60% year on year on the back of a group platform experience and renewed sort of research activity in real estate. People are still searching. They were not sort of going out and checking out lists. Better spam spam detection, new solutions for advertising and discovering previous commercial properties, and a new rental agreement service were also rolled out during the quarter. Reviews and locality insights were further scaled up in the quarter to help buyers and tenants make an informed Going forward, in 99 acres, we expect the share of online medium in the overall spend of advertisers to increase as advertisers realize the inherent cost efficiency of digital versus print and media and holdings. We saw strong upward trends in listings, traffic inquiries, and revenues in July month and expect this to continue for the rest of Q2 as well. Both pent up demand and improved platform experience are driving this upward trend. We continue to invest aggressively in improving our core platform experience in all the verticals within national retail, new home, rental, commercial, and in marketing our brand and to further strengthen our competitive position. On the whole, also, the real estate market is, you know, maybe likely to sort of be in a better place than it was for the last five years going forward because of the, you know, lower home loan rates, real estate becoming more affordable, and the desire to own bigger homes after COVID. Given moving on to the Givensati business. Givensati billings grew 10.2% year on year in q one to rupees 25.1 crores. Revenue grew 11.9% year on year to rupees 25.2 crores. Operating EBITDA losses stood at rupees 23.2 crores in q one of FY 'twenty two, up from a loss of rupees 30.3 crore last year. Cash loss for Chivansanti during the quarter stood at rupees 23.6 crores against a cash loss of INR 13.3 crores in 2021. In q one, growth momentum slowed down slightly due to rising COVID cases, particularly in the northern parts of the country, but we saw a slight recovery in the month of May and June. Key differentiating features on the platform like online verification, video calling, and video based online meetups kept driving this the engagement, and the app rating on the Google Facebook continues to be the best in the category. Moving on to the education business. In Chicxane, q one billings grew a hundred and one point one one point 101.9% year on year to rupees 23.2 crores, while revenue grew 52.4 year on year to rupees 22.8 crores. We made an EBITDA profit of rupees 7.7 crores in q one in Chixa versus an EBITDA of rupees 2.1 per quarter in q one of last year. Cash profit for the quarter stood at rupees 8.2 crores against a cash loss of rupees 1.3 crores in 2021. Shiksha exhibited strong growth in billing and collections in q one. Stronger competitive position focused on student centric content and product improvements have helped, you know, take our traffic and help us increase our growth in Shiksha. We continue to invest in making our content more comprehensive and more student friendly and and building the domain expertise in the space. This should help us in generating even more responses for our customers going forward. At the consolidated level, the net sales of the net sales of the company stood at rupees $3.27.3 crores during 2022 versus rupees $2.85 crores for 2021. For the consolidated entity at the total comprehensive income level, there is a profit of rupees $1.55.9 crores versus a profit of 94.4 crores for the previous quarter ending 06/30/2020. Adjusted for the exceptional items, PATH stood at rupees 4.9 crores in 2022 versus a loss of rupees in think of 7.6 crores in 2020. Moving on to our strategic investments. Zomato had a stellar performance of of its IPO during the quarter. The issue was subscribed over 28 times, and the stock price is currently about 160% of the issue price. Our other investee company, PolicyBazaar, has filed a DRH with SEB seeking approval for our proposed IPO. And we continue to, of course, evaluate new investment and acquisition opportunities. Thank you. We are now ready to take any questions that you may have. Thanks. Thanks, Desh. We'll now begin q and a session. Anyone who wishes to ask question may raise your hand on the screen. We'll call your name and announce your time in the question queue. First question comes from Mukul Gan from Motilal as well. Mukul, go ahead and ask your question. Yeah. Hi. Thanks. So, you know, Satish, first, a quick comment on the personal cost. And I know you mentioned that the cost is is increasing quite a bit. How should we see this going forward? Last quarter, you had, you know, a substantial wage hike. Do you expect it to remain around, you know, this level given that, know, overall billing and revenues are also moving up. So you will get some cushion from operating leverage, or or, you know, is the increase in employee retention going to cross that, you know, even after the growth? So listen. So, you know, the wage bill is, of course, gonna go up because of the pressure on, you know, tech talent, especially. Right? So which is so, you know, we there are we have 4,500 employees in the company, about seven, eight hundred working tech and related roles. So there, of course, the pressure on the base bill will be high. It's not that bad for the with the other 37, thirty hundred people. There, you should see normal increases. Now unless, of course, the market changes, and, you know, it's an evolving situation. You know, every three months, the tech salaries go up. Right? So we are forced to look at them again. So I it's gonna be hard. It's hard for me to predict what will happen with tech salaries going forward, but the rest the rest of the company, the salary sort of increase should be modest. But let's see what happens going forward. As far as the operating leverage go, see, we expect this business to do very well this year given what we're seeing in the talent market. So, you know, so so if we are able to get anywhere close to the kind of growth kind of targets we have in mind, then, of course, you will see a massive improvement in, you know, EBITDA and margins in in Mokri, In Shiksha, we are doing well. So if this work continues, we should be fine. It's not as if we expect cost to surge in Shiksha. Given Satya, a lot will depend on how much we spend on advertising. You know, the base special on Jeevan Sathi will be if the base bill is a small part of Jeevan Sathi's total bill. So 900 acres is concerned. Again, a lot will depend on what happens to the housing market going forward. We saw it. We had a terrible q one because of COVID two, but we had a a really good July. So we are hoping that and we are having really great a good q four as well. So unless, you know, something goes wrong once again, you know, things should be okay on the nine nine acres front also as far as, you know, operating margins, etcetera, go. Of course, the wage bill in 09/09 acres will also go up, especially on the tech side. But that's only about maybe only about 10 or 15% of our workforce in nine nine acres is is tech. And so so, I mean, fingers crossed, but, you know, what if if we have a good year and all the signs are that we might, you know, in fact, the kind of the attrition we are seeing in in the company, the kind of story we are in the market. Maybe you've not heard these kind of stories for in the last fifteen years. So it's the talent market is especially in IT, not in non IT so much. But on the IT side, it's it's the best we've seen in a you know, in fifteen years. Right? There are so many opportunities, and people are almost impossible to find. It makes it hard it makes it harder for us on the talent on on the operating side to, you know, be able to hire and sort of retain people. But if this market continues, then the non IT business should have a very, very healthy year. And if the non IT market also comes back, you know, which we're hoping that it will, you know, in the second half of the year, then that will that will sort of give us, you know, a further boost. Sure. And, you know, one quick one on on Nocli and and one on nine ten, Akhil. So Just a clarification on the Nocli side, the number of unique customers dipped in q one. The only time we have seen that was last year q one. So was that on account of the lockdown, or was there some other factor that's there? And on '90 and acre, given that, you know, the overall environment seems a bit better from July onwards, do you expect a pickup in your investment spends because, you know, they kind of came down quite sharply this quarter? Yeah. So, see, in, happened last year was because of COVID, because of the lockdown, because companies have scrambled to get their act together, work from home, etcetera, etcetera. Many companies go there. Right? Because, you know, the market's very unpredictable. If you recall, we were also sort of unsure of what would happen. We actually did a QIP, you know, in the first half of last year. In the end, you know so so so what happened as a result is a lot of companies did not renew in q one. Right? So we have a renewed business. A lot of our clients are clients who've been clients for years, and they renew every year at the same time. So a lot of clients are not renewing q one of last year. Some of them came back and renewed in q two. Some of them came back and renewed in q three. Some of them came back and renewed only q four. So our bases have shifted. So no so any so comparison with with comparison with '19 to twin 1920 is no longer a fair comparison. You can, of course, compare it last year. The comparison in 1920 is no longer the right comparison because bases have shifted. Right? So we are hoping to do better vis a vis 1920 in the coming quarters. Right? So in this quarter, for example, where we grew massively over last year's same quarter, we did not grow over nineteen twenty q one. Right, because basis has shifted. And a lot of the clients who renewed in q who sort of gave us business in nineteen twenty q one will now give us business in q two and q three of this year. Right? So we are hoping to see higher growth vis a vis 1920 in q two and q three this year. And as far as 900 acres is concerned, yes, ad spend was muted this quarter because, you know, was no activity in the hiring market, in the in the in the property market. So it did not make a lot of sense to advertise at a time when nobody was venturing out of their homes to look at property. And we've started upping our ad spend in 99 acres. And because the market is coming back, like I said, we will sit at a at a very macro level. Real estate is more affordable. Real estate is home loan interest rates are lower, and people want bigger houses. So we are seeing massive activity on our platform once again terms of inquiries, in terms anecdotally, also, there are you know, we are having stories of people buying property now. This is not the case, you know, a year ago, year and a half ago. And, therefore, if, you know, it may make sense for us to upper advertising spend going forward in. But, again, we'll we'll watch and wait. You'll see how the market works. Sure. Thanks for answering my question. I'll I'll get back into the queue. Next question is from Pankaj Kaboot from CLSA. Pankaj, go ahead and ask your question. Yeah. Hi. Thanks for the opportunity. So I have two questions. So first is, I just wanted to understand, was there any impact of the wave two on the bookings in this quarter, especially in the 99 acres? And if you can give some sense of that. And, also, how much would be IT ideas of the bookings that we have done in the in the recruitment business? Yeah. Yeah. See, 900 acres bookings were impacted massively by COVID two. See, in q four of last last quarter, which is q four, we, I think, built 72 crores in 900 acres. Right? And q four is normally our best quarter. So so but we were expecting or hoping to build at least 60 crores in q one, but we ended with 22 crores because the market was massively hit by COVID two. You know? All sort of property buying activity came to a virtual halt in in most market. I mean, brokers, see, we make a lot of money from brokers. They they just did not open their shutters. Right? They were sort of closed for business. Now they're coming back, and we expect this quarter to be a lot better. You know? I don't know if you can give July numbers, but July numbers were were pretty decent in 99 acres from a billing standpoint. Your your so what was the question regarding Yeah. On the recruitment, yeah, on the recruitment business, can you give a sense how much would be the billing from the IT, ITS as a vertical? Okay. So, you know, so if and if you look at a recruiter activity on our platform, you know, which what kind of CVs are recruiters viewing? Right? One is, of course, how much we make from IT services companies, how much we how much we make from, you know, Internet companies and so on, which is one way of looking at how much we make from placement firms, who who sort of hire for IT hire IT talent. And that number, think, would be close to 55% now if I'm not mistaken, if you were to sort of you know, because of the of the baby. But but, you know, if I were to look at activity, what are recruiters searching for? Who are they with CWU? And close to 57, 58% in some and and some on some trading, 60% of all hiring sort of, all searches and hiring activity is for IT talent on our platform. Understood. And, Hitesh, slightly longer term, but, you have traditionally been very prudent in your approach to valuations, whether it is for investing or for for making acquisitions. So I was just wondering, do you now see a need to maybe rethink that given the the kind of currently the levels, what we are seeing are fairly elevated? So if you want to really do a scale acquisition in the different segments, which I think you have been keen to do but have not been successful in the last few few quarters, so are you looking at maybe having a rethink on there? And related to that is that now since we have Zomato and probably PolicyBazaar also being the state, so we now have these stocks as currency. Will that change your approach in terms of how you look at the valuations? Thank you. So this is valuations are what they are. I mean, they've for certain companies, they've definitely gone through the roof. I mean, for many of the companies, they actually haven't moved too much. Right? So if you look at some of the other sort of, you know, pairs in the segments we operate in, it's not as evaluations have have moved that much. Right? They've, of course, you know, moved over what they were one year ago. So will we be so would we be willing to pay more? Of course, if it makes sense for us to pay more if the business if by consolidation or through some acquisition, which allows us do to things which we are not able to do today, we are able to create a lot more value for our our our our users or for our investors, we would be more than happy to sort of revisit, you know, valuations. Right? Because, you know, at the end of the day, so the investors are looking at company in a certain way. We are also being rewarded. Our valuations have also gone up. You know, there are some you know, the interest rates are low, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera, which has an impact. So we would definitely be willing to consider paying the right price in which in our view, for assets, which makes sense for us to own in in the long run. Right? So but having said so, you know, I mean, like I said, valuation lies in the you feel like you feel lies in the eyes of the world. The valuation lies in the eyes of the valuers. So it has to sort of you know, it has to be a sensible valuation. It can't be something which is. Understood. Thank you, and all the best. Thanks, Pankaj. Our next question is from from. Panukh, go ahead and ask the question. Sorry. It is from Panu. Panu, you are there? Panu is not there. So we'll take the next question. Next question is from Malik from GM Financial. Manik, go ahead and ask your question. Manik is also not. Mhmm. So maybe we'll take the next question. There are some questions in the chat box. You want us to answer them? I already started this morning, Okay. Good. Thanks. The next person in queue is Rishi from Nomura. Rishi, go ahead and ask your question. Hi. Am I am I audible? Yeah, Rashid. Go ahead. Okay. Perfect. So just one question from my side. Right? I think we've there there was a news article we recently sort of invested Right? Which is more or less a file for an IPO. So the point that I wanted to check is, are we sort of looking at late stage, larger ticket size investments as well versus compared to early stage, more smaller tickets earlier that we've largely focused on? Is there a clear strain change in strategy, or this could be termed as a one off? Yeah. I'll take that first, Khalidya. So, look, in the AI, we've got it as for the sort of agreement and the charter, roughly 10% of the funds can go into as first our first checks into growth and data stage companies. So it's not as if it was massive shifting strategy, at least not now. It is from that pocket, and that pocket is the $10,000,000. Okay? And that's about it. Now any further changes strategy, you know, we have to sort of evaluate it later as we go along. But as of now, there's nothing on our side. But this is from that small pocket. Okay. Fair enough. And one question on Nocree. If you could just provide color. So we've seen a lot of those renewals, which is typically come to us in April and January. Right? I mean, that's typically been the seasonality. So you would expect that will be more like a February, March phenomenon, and then it could be a substantial it could be a very similar improvement that we've seen in the past, or it could be much higher given the momentum is much stronger in the Nokia business because of the demand in the IT services piece. You're right. You know, the renewal sort of cycle has changed because the base has shifted, and a lot of companies are not renewing, q one. Some did not even renew in q four of last year. You know, if you because when COVID hit us, it it hit us in the last two weeks of March. So we saw some deferral at that time also in q one o nine 1920, and then we saw a lot of companies definitely made purchases in 2021 as well. And so some of these companies came back and renewed in q two, and some came back in within q three. So the business shifted, and therefore, unlike previous years when when q four and q one used to be our biggest quarters, we are more likely to see a more sort of balanced year. Right? Will growth rates improve further going forward? I mean, who knows? I mean, the IT market, like I said, is super hot, and it could become hotter. And what happens in a hot market, as you all know, is that companies want us a lot of discounts while volumes also go up. You were able to attract new customers. So and if the non IT market comes back, then that would provide a further boost because now all said and done, 40% of our hiring is still very tech competition. We still know of non IT folks. And there, we're not seeing we are just seeing a modest recovery at at this point in time. But if that market also recovers, if manufacturing sort of starts to pick up or if infra investments start to pick up and you know? Or it just be because, you know, COVID starts to subside and companies sort of start opening and start hiding and the team are confident, then, of course, growth rates would get even better going forward. Okay. Fair enough. Thank you. Thanks, Ashish. The next person in queue is Manik from James Financial. Manik, go ahead and ask your question. Hello, Yeah, Manik. Go ahead. Yeah. Thank you for the opportunity. I had a few questions. The first question was with regards to our. Why is it that you said that you expect to do quite well this year due to the solid hiring environment in the IT IT space? Just wanted to understand, is there a leverage for our revenues to the level or the volume of hiring in the market? Because our sense was that the business is largely subject to the next place. And does it also give us some some leverage to increase pricing? And I have a few follow-up questions as well. Yeah. Yeah. See, what happens is, you know, see, in a normal year, we end up giving a lot of discount to customers, especially bulk discounts. So in a good market, one doesn't have to extend those discounts, number one. Number two, in a in a growth market, companies want to grow. They wanna add a one, they need to sort of stay at the same place. You know, they because attrition levels go up, they need to hire more people. Right? And then on top of that, they want to grow because they want to there's more business coming. They want to increase their headcount. So that means, you know, they wanna post they will want to post more jobs. They will want to do more CVs. They will want to send more emails. To our database. So you'll suggest some volume growth as well. And a of companies, you know, stand out. They want their brand to sort of you know, they would just spend a little more on branding also. Right? So all this will result in us getting more volume as well from a lot of our customers, not just Python three. And then in a good year, in a good market, what happens is a lot of new people also set up shop. So there is a good company sort of become active. Some companies maybe sometimes go to augment, sometimes new players set up shop. So we're likely to have more customers as well. So so let's see how this plays out. But right now, you know, the sign signs are that we should be able to offer our prices or at least our realized prices. We are getting all our lost accounts back. Our renewal rates are at an are at an all time high. Right? So it should be a good year. Sure. So I had a couple of questions for Sandeep as well. So while the matter has already got listed, quality bazaar is on the way to getting the same. Could you talk about the three port key portfolio fees within our existing portfolio that you think one should be watchful of in in terms of making a lot of revenue over the next few years? And secondly, how just wanted to get your thoughts around how do we compete against the new aggression in that space right now, people closing deals in the span of days, which would be quite contrary to the main influence as as part about making these investments over the over the last decade or so. Thank you. K. So as far as some of the younger companies in the old portfolio concerned, people like Shopkana, Ramaphone, Shipsi, Business, etcetera. I mean, we are quite hopeful of many of them at that twenty four seven. They're much younger. They're much newer investments as compared to the amount of the, you know, 11 and and and 14 years old, 13 years old. So investments do take time to become valuable in India. But, look, we are hopefully confident. We are supporting them further. They're expanding that that's coming in somewhere. And it's overall looking good, but it takes a while before they really become they move the needle on our own valuation or our own market share. Right? And before they come and you get close to where the market went from. As far as competition is concerned, look, I mean, you gotta live with it. Right? We compete. We get some deals. We miss some deals. We have deals that we can't do in three days. You know, we missed them or we try. There are deals we can do in five days, seven days sometimes, and sometimes we can't because, you know, it's it's it's we have to go through our process. Right? And I don't think we should be investing out of a sense of mentality or compulsion. We gotta invest without the important option that we wanna close in three days. It's okay. We'll live with it. It's a small fund, $100,000,000. If we miss some, it's okay. We'll get some more. Sure. That's quite right. One last one, given the given the shift in terms of billing that you encountered in the past twelve months, would it be more prudent to look at our billing performance on a LTM basis? Just one So you asked the question, Satish? Yes. That's it. Right. Ltm. What does Ltm mean? Sorry. Last payment. Okay. And then what what do you think? Ltm. You think it's because basis has shifted, you know, doesn't make more sense to look at LCM, last twelve month billing as opposed to year on year or Yeah. I think one can look at that. Every progress will kind of get a better understanding of how the deals are moved and how we should be able to make them. But it's a good solution. I mean, we can look at the last twelve months as a as a kind of a comparison. I still think that if you look at, like, now last twelve months, probably because of the pandemic, they're not the they don't also, they don't give you a, you know, correct correct picture. But as we go forward, I think, you know, that may make sense because then we can compare normal stable year with a normal stable year with a shifted shift in view. Thank you, all the best, Patricia. Thanks, Marik. So any more questions? There are a couple of people also in this app. Right now, not visible. We have some questions in queue in the box. So, yes, Pranav is back. Pranav's wrong. So, Pranav, go ahead and ask your question. Hello? Am I audible? Yes, Pranav. Go ahead. Yeah. So my question is regarding other expenses. So how should we see the marketing expenses trending in the next, you know, three to four quarters? Because, you know, that has been sort of curtailed for for some time due to pandemic. So listen. We don't expect spend a lot of money on marketing in Nocree unless something changes dramatically in the market. In nine nine acre in Jeevansathi, we've been spending a lot of money. It's not as if we have not been spending for the last four, eight quarters. So, you know, marketing spend in nine in Jeevansathi will continue to be high going forward as well. In September acres, you know, we've not we've not spent a lot of money in the last two quarters because the recent market has impacted because COVID. Now if we don't see a third wave coming and, you know, like and if we continue to sort of see the kind of action we saw in 900 acres in q four of last year and in July, then, of course, spend will go up a little bit in in in in some M and A in the related sectors. So far, there has been very little action. Is it largely due to the valuation expectations or you know, or or the targets, what you're finding are too small at this point of time. And that's why, you know, those are the smaller companies which we are ending up investing. I am I mean, the large acquisitions have not really happened. So how should we see this, and what is the reason for, you know, those not happening? Yeah. So a little bit of both. So one, you know, there aren't too many sort of targets we are sort of excited about, you know, in in given the spaces we operate in, there aren't mean, there aren't too many large companies requiring jobs, for example. She said it was a small business for us. In September, I believe we said we're doing the same mostly in the 20 and and real estate. And the number of companies we can acquire to possibly call account in the fingers of one note, maybe 200 max. So it's partly that. There aren't many sort of acquirable companies or companies which which would love to acquire. And partly, it's the ones which are, you know, the valuations have been so you see the the the valuations have been going up every quarter. Right? So every time you look it looks like a deal is doable at a certain price, you know, things change, and then you go go back to the drawing board. So it's a harder market to acquire also because valuations have been sort of going up and up and up in in in a lot. And that, you know, generally and like I said, even though valuation have not gone up for everybody, but even even then, you know, when you raise up some company going public or, you know, some there's a IPO pipeline building out, the market is sort of rewarding a lot of companies very differently. You know, expectations go up. So that's also making it a little harder. So let's see. I mean, we are not in a hurry, like you said. Like I said, you know, we are are happy to pay the right price, but we don't want to pay, you know, we don't want to sort of I don't think we will acquire a computer using $200,000,000 a year and pay $2,000,000,000. That's not gonna happen. Okay. Okay. Thank you so much, Thanks, Pranav. Next, first name too is Anna. Anna is in this list, mister. Anna, go ahead and ask a question. Thanks for the opportunity. I had a couple of questions. One was, it will be great if you can give some color on first NOCRI and job here. In the annual report on first NOCRI, you mentioned this is at the nascent stage. It will be good to get a sense, you know, how do you see it in a three to five year length and same for job here. And then the second question was around the recent investment in Shiprocket. I think Sanjeet just mentioned that you're looking at late stage but only to a certain threshold of the overall amount. So it would be great to get some color on, Shiprocket investment and also on JobAir and FirstNocri. Thank you. So FirstNocri and JobAir are both very tiny business to businesses to us. First, Nokri, you know, it's it's small business. Of course, we've been in the space for a while, and we've been figuring things out slowly. And we've now supplemented the offering with two Select, which is a talent assessment platform we just acquired, you know, in the month of July. So previously, we had a tie up with another platform. Now we have our own platform for assessment. Now is do we expect the business to become very large business going forward? The answer is no. But it does supplement and complement our main of the offering and has to complete the hiring suite when we go to customers. So when we go to customers, it is we say, listen. We have everything from campus hiring to recruitment software to, you know, premium hiring products like I'm jobs and high risk and mass hiring products like. So, you know, it's part of that booking, and we continue to invest behind that business. And we expect it to sort of grow at a reasonably healthy rate going forward. Job here is start up inside in. We've been added for about, you know, eighteen months or so, and, of course, then we have COVID in between. We have test mark launched in Delhi NCR. We've got reasonably good success, and we are now gonna roll it out nationally as a platform to sort of, you know but we're still not monetizing it. It's still long way a long time away from that. So I I think job here more as a, you know, a three to five year play, not as a one or two year play. And, again, you know, only if you get good results, we'll be sort of invested aggressively in the behind the business. The chances are that are that, you know, the market is now beginning to sort of no. It is very hard to make a blue collar business succeed in India for various reasons, but now it does look like, you know, all the trends are in the are in this are in favor of blue collar hiring moving online. And it maybe should should be possible to sort of build a viable business in this space over the next four, five years. So if we get the right response, we will up up definitely up our investment in this space going forward. Sandeep, do wanna take the one on Shiprocket? Yeah. Sorry. I I can you repeat the question, please, on Shiprocket? Yeah. The question was, Sandeep, you recently mentioned that, know, you're looking at late stage investments across certain threshold. Will will Shiprocket fall in that, or you will say Yes. Shiprocket is from that from that page. Okay. So and could you, like, quantify, if possible, to share what number of this total of that pool you've invested even in under percentage? No. As of now, our pocket allocated for first checks into growth listed company is 10%. You know, in exceptional circumstances, we may go to the committee to approval a little change and bust out a bit, but it's not a significant chunk of the of the fund as a part. Alright. Thank you. Thanks for this time, Sandeep. Take care. Best of luck. Thanks, Sandeep. The next question is from Gauravanshu from Deutsche Bank. Gaurav, go ahead and ask the question. Yeah. Harish, thank you for the opportunity. Am I audible? Yeah. Gaurav, go ahead. Yeah. One one one question I had is that we have been talking about, like, and and other segments. And what I wanted to know is that any other area, niche area that we are actually looking down the line for future for future prospects? See, inside the company, as far as operating businesses go, we are focused on these big sort of categories, jobs, recruitment, real estate, and matrimonials for singles. And, you know, most of our investments, most of the big acquisitions, most of the new business we try and put inside the company will be in these spaces. Now these spaces are vast, and we see a lot of opportunity. I just mentioned Nokri. Nokri is not just the main Nokri business. We have a Nokri Gulp business. We have a first Nokri business. We have a Zuaym business. We have a Hiris and IIM jobs business. We have we're doing JobHare. We are doing Bigshift, which is a done AI based based platform for hiring. So there are a bunch of activities we are doing in job other than. Right? And that's where a lot of our investment is going today. Similarly, in in in in Shiksha, we sort of have a Shiksha domestic business. We are trying to build an online sort of market course course marketplace for online courses as well as just today called non pre learning. We are we are still experimenting. We've we've sort of started a study abroad business. Right? So we, you know, have started sending students overseas all online. Similarly, in 99 acres, we started as a resale platform, and over time, we went to homes. And now we are focusing a lot more than earlier on rentals and commercial as well. So these are, you know, large spaces. There's a lot to do in each of these spaces. Unlikely that we will enter, you know, a fifth category. We will continue to make investments. Strategic investments, we invested in Mhmm. These three education companies, no paper forms. It's an education software provider. Coding Ninja, which is an ad tech. You know, they actually teach coding. You know? So so we'll make a a we've invested in GreatTip, which is an hrservicescom HR software company. So we continue to make these investments outside. We will invest in a no broker broker broker network in real estate. So in adjacent areas, we will also continue to invest outside. We will continue to acquire in these areas. We will continue to see more and more sort of opportunities inside the company in these areas, but we are likely to limit ourselves to these four large categories in the near term. Okay. Okay. Thanks. Thanks, Nathish. Thanks, Varun. Next question is from Ankur Udra from JPMorgan. Ankur, go ahead and ask your question. Can you hear me now? Yeah, Ankur. Go ahead. Yeah. Thanks for taking my question. Just one question on. Could you if you if it's possible to disaggregate at all, how should we think about growth adjusting for this base shift in renewal that you saw? Is it possible to disaggregate that to see, you know, what is the true, you know, like for like of pro form a growth trending at right now compared to f 20? Is there any way of doing that to me? I'll to. Chetan, the question was if you is it possible to sort of adjust for the base shifting on the renewal side on the NOCRI billings to see what is the growth over f twenty that you're currently trending at? Kind of getting towards, you know, when you're analysis for that. Right? But, like, you know, like, you just say that, you know, maybe you can get comfort from the fact that the renewals, you know, the rates have kind of gone gone up. Maybe this there's a shift, and, obviously, the shift is in, you know, leaning towards the later quarter because, like, we have started the COVID. The q one kind of went into q two, q three, q four. Right? So there has been, obviously, there is the trend. Good. Now you can see that it's going towards the latter quarter. And whatever has remained in the quarter, the the subscription renewal rates are also high. So this is there's an inherent, you know, growth, but course, it would have changed. Okay. So perhaps, you know, over the next two quarters, you'd probably get a better sense, I guess. Yeah. The second thing on Nocree was, is it possible to give us a flavor of how the billings or revenue picks up now across the various parts of the business. Right? As you highlighted, just to answer the previous question between India and first of the IIM jobs. Is what I'm trying to understand is, you know, how the trends different across these businesses now? So, therefore, see, the Gulf business is, you know, not on a roll because, you know, it's not an IT sort of it's not indexed to IT. So The Gulf recovery is modest. Right? And if The Gulf revenue that I think out of the total sort of business we do in recruitment, fifty, sixty growth comes from The Gulf. Fifty, fifty five growth comes from The Gulf. Right? So that's not on our goal. First, not least, tiny. It's doing well, but it's tiny. Doesn't move really. IIM jobs, like I I think we mentioned, we we grew by 170% in q one, you know, of course, on a very tiny base because last year, we were impacted by COVID. So we build about eight and a half crores, eight and a half crores of IIM jobs in quarter, IIM jobs in Harris, which is not in our stand alone, I think. Right? And then because it's a separate company. Yeah. It's not been merged or within four years yet. So now I don't know how to look at it, but, you know, July, for example, the year old previous growth was very, very expensive. Now will it sustain way forward? I don't know. In North Creek. Okay. Appreciate that. In terms of, you know, as you said, the growth in North Creek appears to be very, very strong. And, typically, we see a significant operating when that happened in the past. How do how are you thinking about it this time? Are you thinking of investing some of that back into the business? Because you probably should be getting a lot of leverage going forward. Yeah. Yeah. You know? So if things play out as expected, of course, not even just generate a record cash cash at least this year. And, of course, not all of that can be invested back in the recruitment business. Right? But we'll continue to invest like we have in you know, we'll continue to make financial investments. We'll continue to invest more than We continue to sort of we'll up our spending nine nine acres if that market responds positively. We continue to look for acquisitions, investing sort of companies to acquire in the state that we operate. So all that will continue. K. So we're not clear. Margins should expand on that. In terms of, you know, how you've seen q one this time play out, have you seen this time versus last time, any impact on, you know, user behavior in your, you know, portfolio companies sorry. Not portfolio companies. Any other non local business in 99 acres, Jeevan, Satya, Shiksha, which has moved in any one direction or the other beyond the the, obviously, impact of not using them during the lockdown? In general, we are seeing see, we we saw I for us, at least, I don't know whether it was it happened for the category as a whole. We saw this you know, the Jeevan Sathi business was impacted negatively this time during COVID. I think the April and May, May was just just too much to bear for and you know, we we get most of our business in the Hindi Belt. I think the Hindi belt was the worst sort of impacted by COVID. So we saw a decline in activity. I mean, still grew over was still better than last year, but it not it did not sort of go to the extent you would expect it to to grow. I think people took a pause. Marriages got delayed, and, you know, I think even now, actually, it's only slowly getting coming back into that market. In all the other in in 900 acre, of course, we were impacted by COVID, like I said, but it bounced back very strongly after COVID. So we are again seeing record activity in our platform, and we are seeing record activity in the rental side as well, not just on the buyer side. Right? In in the first wave, you know, rental was massively impacted. Rental activity in the platform was impacted because now we are seeing rental activity also bounce back, you know, after COVID too. In Nocree, you know, as a core activity in the platform, both in the recruitment side and the job seeker side because there's just too many jobs out there and not enough job seekers, lots of opportunities. Right? It show also we continue to see a lot of activity in our platform. Again, you know, all time high in terms of numbers. Understand. Just lastly, in terms of you know, on a on a broader basis, given the success of of Zomato's listing, any thoughts about changing of the size or volume of your investments either via the IR or otherwise? I mean, we'll take it company by company. The AIF is, of course, a $100,000,000 fund. That should keep evaluating and optionally much. Go follow on fund. There's no supply right now, but nothing else yet. But, you know, should we do it? It's a question to be discussed. But but, look, our first priority is to get the $100 fund right. And as we are convinced, it's getting right, we would evaluate optionally as they arise. Now from the balance sheet investment companies, yeah, we have the flexibility going larger because that's the balance sheet and that we keep. So this will be a couple like Gramophone, ShopKiranha, Adder twenty four seven, you know, ShipSee, you know, Those are from the balance sheet. Okay. Appreciate that. Thank you, and that's. Thanks, Ankur. Thank you so much. The next question comes from Suma Naksh. Suma, go ahead and ask the question. Sema, you're on mute. Hi. This is Sruchi from Bank of America Capital. I have a question for Sanjee. So Zomato's listing and few more to join soon. We have seen a very encouraging response from investors despite operational losses at these companies. Do you think this can increase the possibility of fast track IPO for some of your investing companies? You know, we don't think it's a good idea for a company to go public before it is ready. It has to deal with the listing afterwards. It has to deal with scrutiny, deal with the, you know, the the the reporting, the compliances. It has to, you know, be answered to analysts. Management gets distracted very often. So we believe that we should not ask for any IPOs, you know, and and do them any sooner than is is is advisable. So I don't think we'll be actually any IPO. Yes. Part of that is fine, but the others are when they're good and ready. Understood. That's helpful. Thank you. Next question comes from. Go ahead and ask the question. I I have a basic question about the overall business. How would you like to see yourself as a investment management company or Internet business management company? I mean, I would just like to seek your views on that. Yeah. Should I go first, Rajesh? Or should I go? Yeah. Please. Look. We are primarily operating company. The company is four and a half thousand people, approximately. And of that, 400 only six working investments in financial investments. Another two or three working in Canadian investments. So fewer than 10 people out of 4,500 work on investments. You know? And so we are primarily an operating company. So this is area from there. And some of the services we deploy into making investments to create greater value for our shareholders. So we are primarily an operating model, and that's our identity. Okay. Can I make a follow-up question? Yeah. Go ahead. Yeah. So I I agree that that is the scenario as it is today. However, if you are to look out a bit far out into the future, what would be your guidance to investors on this one? So look. I mean, you heard it, Ash. He's expecting good growth coming back in the operating business going forward, unless the third wave of COVID. And so there'll be some businesses that are growing faster than others, and sometimes the operating business are growing faster. So we're reasonably well diversified. And, yes, we do have ownership of some other good Internet business, but we are primarily an operating company. Thank you. Thanks, Neha. Next question comes from. Charlie, go ahead and ask your question. Hello? Am I audible? Yeah. Go ahead, Shani. Congratulations to everyone for support for this incredible IPO. I'm a 25 year old, so I feel really a sense of pride in having the on the. My question is, is the is in any kind of split in the coming period? A stock split you're talking about? A bonus? Yeah. Yes. Stock split. Yeah. I don't think we have even tabled at the discussion. I'll tell you why. If you wanna do a bonus, then it's unpredictability. And given what's happened last fifteen months on COVID, I don't think anybody has had the courage to recommend the bonus or stocks because we don't know what will happen after six months. When we get stability, I mean, maybe we can say think, you wanna add to this? You're the boss on this one. Yeah. No. I think in the past, also, more than. Many retail, you know, shareholders do comment for this, you know, that retail shareholding is low. The, you the share price value has gone up, and there there is some there's some merit in, you know, in this particular one. But, look, you know, eventually, it is in a in a board's vision, and we would have a comprehensive, you know, debate before any decision is taken. And so on the consideration, like, as you mentioned, that we also need to look at that we will be able to service, you know, we had this with dividend and and things like that. And then based on that, we will take a follow-up. Okay. Thank you. Thank you, Shavu. This was the last question we had till now. In case any more questions, please raise your hand. We will wait for a minute. Okay. If you have any questions, please visit that. So thank you very much, ma'am. And I hope now now I do the conference to Kitesh for his closing comments. Oh, thank you everyone for taking time out for this call, and have a great evening, and and stay safe. See you next quarter. Thank you, everyone, bye bye. Thank you. Thanks, everyone. Thank you so much.