Good afternoon, everyone. This is Anand Bansal. Welcome to Info Edge conference call, along with my colleague, Vivek Aggarwal. We will run this conference. Vivek, we can start now.
Sure. Hi, Anand. Hi, everyone. Good evening and welcome to Info Edge India Q1 2022 Financial Results conference call. As a reminder, all participant lines will be in listen-only mode, and there'll be an opportunity for you to ask questions after the presentation concludes. Should you need any assistance during the call, please raise your hand on your screen. Please note that this conference is being recorded. Joining us today from the management side, we have Mr. Sanjeev Bikhchandani, Founder and Vice Chairman, Mr. Hitesh Oberoi, Co-promoter and Managing Director, and Mr. Chintan Thakkar, Chief Financial Officer. Before we begin today, I would like to remind you that some of the statements made in today's conference call may be forward-looking in nature and may involve risks and uncertainties. Kindly refer to slide number two of investor presentations for this detailed disclaimer.
I would like to hand over the conference to Mr. Hitesh Oberoi for his opening remarks. Thank you, over to you, Hitesh.
Thank you, Vivek, and very good evening to everyone, and welcome to our Q1 financial year 2022 earnings conference call. Trust 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 Info Edge stakeholders who lost a family member, friend, or colleague. I hope the coming days are better for everyone. Over the past 1.5 y ears, Info Edge 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 continued with COVID relief work and helped our employees with oxygen support and emergency supply of basic and advanced medicines, hospital beds, ambulance support, healthcare services at home, and other healthcare 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 well-being programs for all employees of our company. Also realizing that vaccination is the only way to return to normalcy, Info Edge carried out a vaccination drive for all our employees and their family members. We also extended the reach of the vaccination drive to our partners and clients, especially in 99acres. We will remember this challenging time in our lives as a turning point that has asserted us out of our comfort zone and pressed us towards a different future. We will now talk about the quarterly financial performance of the company.
We'll start with the overall financials as always, then cover each business financials in more detail. Then of course, we'll have Q&A. The audited financial statements and other schedules on segmental billing revenues, et cetera, along with the data sheets, have been uploaded on our website, infoedge.in. Let's begin with the summary of key numbers in the standalone financials. Billings in Q1 are INR 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 220 crores, up 25.3%. Operating EBITDA stood at INR 99.7 crores versus INR 104.6 crores last year, a drop of 4.7% year-on-year. Operating EBITDA margins for the quarter stood at 31.2% compared to 37.3% last year. Cash EBITDA for the quarter stood at INR 94.1 crore compared to INR 13.7 crore last year for the same quarter.
Deferred sales revenue stood at INR 5,016.1 crores as of June 30th, 2021, versus INR 371.7 crores as of June 30th, 2020, an increase of 36.2% year-on-year. The cash balance of Info Edge, including the wholly-owned subsidiaries, stands at INR 3,561 crores as of June 30th, 2021, as against INR 1,425 crores on June 30th, 2020. As one can see from the above numbers, the company witnessed a remarkable recovery in billings in Q1 over Q1 of the previous year. The year-on-year growth in Q1 billings is across all its business verticals, but we saw different growth to different degrees in different verticals. The recruitment business has shown a sharp rebound in the activities of the platform, with the June 2021 JobSpeak index reflecting almost 100% growth year-on-year, and IT and ITES showing positive trends in hiring.
The recruitment business is poised to enter a high-growth phase. In 99acres, the drop in traffic on the site was about 30% in April compared to the previous month due to the second wave of the pandemic. It started recovering month-over-month. The monetization of 99acres was severely impacted, particularly in the month of May, which is at the peak of the second wave. Since then, we have witnessed a recovery in both traffic and monetization, and the external environment on the real estate business has also turned more benign. In Jeevansathi, we continue with our strategy to invest in brand 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 billings in Jeevansathi.
Shiksha doubled its billings in the quarter compared to Q1 of FY 2021. Compared to the pre-pandemic year of FY 2020, also it showed a growth of about 45%. Clearly, the portal continues to gain acceptance with the student community and with colleges and universities. The Naukri distribution muscle was, of course, leveraged by IIMJOBS and Hirist, and they both grew in terms of number of clients, billings, and cash profits. During the quarter, we also completed our acquisition of Zwayam, the Bangalore-based SaaS company. The Bangalore-based SaaS company, Zwayam, actually has some marquee customers for its SaaS product. Zwayam, along with RMS, which strengthens Naukri's offerings in the enterprise segment going forward. In early July, we also announced the signing of definitive agreements to acquire DoSelect, a Bangalore-based company in the assessment space. DoSelect would add breadth and depth to the Naukri's product stack in the recruitment space.
As a result of the accelerated digitization in the companies, not just in India but globally, the talent market has become 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 of discretionary expenses, balancing the long-term investments use the business with short-term goals. As a company, we continue to work from home. All our employees have been working from home for the last almost 17, 18 months now, without any impact on productivity. The total headcount of the company remains around 4,500 as of June 30, 2021, up by about 2.5% from March 31, 2021. Moving on to the financial and other highlights of the Recruitment segment.
In Q1 of 2022, the Recruitment segment billings were INR 243.5 crores, up 73.6% year-on-year, while revenues were INR 222.6 crores, up 11.2% year-on-year. Operating EBITDA stood at INR 123.6 crores, up 2.5% from Q1 of 2021. Margins were at 55.6% versus 60.3% in Q1 of FY 2021. Cash EBITDA for recruitment during the quarter stood at INR 144.8 crores, up from INR 60.8 crores reported for Q1 of 2021. The Cash EBITDA margins are at 59.5% of the billings, compared to 43.4% in Q1 of 2021. IIMJOBS and Hirist saw a quantum jump in their billing numbers year-on-year. The billing for the quarter stood at INR 8.6 crores, up by 173% from Q1 of 2021. Pending the final legal process of the merger, these numbers are excluded from the standalone numbers above. We saw recovery in most segments.
The IT and ITES segment was the most significant contributor to the overall numbers. We also have witnessed high growth across geographies in terms of new customers added and billings per customer. We saw a very high renewal rate for Resdex subscriptions during the quarter. We also see a significant uplift in market sentiment as few customers buying higher volumes in anticipation of an uplift in hiring demand in the near future. The important point I want to make is that last year, and particularly in the first half of last year, due to lockdowns and COVID, a lot of companies deferred their annual renewals. As a result, the renewal base has shifted for many companies, right?
The point I'm trying to make is that while we are comparing this year with last year, but comparisons with last-to-last year may not be appropriate because the renewal base has shifted for a lot of companies. We expect Q2, for example, and Q3 to show higher growth, if this trend continues vis-a-vis Q2 and Q3 of 2019/2020 because the bases have shifted. I hope I'm able to get my point across clearly. A lot of companies who were supposed to renew in Q1 of last year did not renew in Q1. Many of them went on to renew in Q2 and Q3 and some in Q4, and therefore their renewals will now come in Q2, Q3, and Q4 of this year, and not in Q1 or Q4. Right? Just one second.
The new approach here we are following in Naukri because we've acquired a lot of new businesses and added new features and functionality, we're now offering a whole suite of products, starting with campus hiring to talent assessment, to recruitment software, to sourcing, to service through eHire to our clients to meet all their hiring needs. This strategy is beginning to get higher acceptance with some customers. Early days still, but it's beginning to get higher acceptance with some customers. The acquisition of Zwayam and DoSelect will further enhance our product offering over time. Our tech and product team also successfully launched three new products in the last three or four months. Resdex Enterprise, for example, a next generation talent planning and sourcing platform equipped with AI, ML-based personal search and CV recommendations.
It also has advanced data analytics to closely track recruiters' performance and productivity tools to save hiring time. We also launched Talent Pulse, a comprehensive talent planning tool that helps organizations shape their hiring strategy through real-time insights on talent distributions, hiring trends, competitive benchmarking, and more. Lastly, we also launched Mobile Branding Solutions. Till very recently, we used to offer the branding solutions only on desktop, but now we have started offering Mobile Branding Solutions to companies as well. This will help companies showcase their brand to an untapped pool of mobile-savvy talent with company-based and targeted ads on Naukri's job seeker app. Early results for these new products are encouraging, but it's still early days.
AmbitionBox, which is our career platform and which helps job seekers discover Best Places to Work, which hosts a lot of reviews and ratings for companies, also launched its Best Places to Work in India awards, which showcase top places based on more than 1 million reviews from 2,500 locations across the country. These awards were also received well by our customers. Moving on to our operational sort of metrics. This quarter saw a significant uplift 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 Q1 of 2021. Average CV modifications were also up to INR 4.89 lakh per day, up 51% year-on-year. Our traffic share in the job portal space continues to be in the high 70s%. Moving over to 99acres.
Billings in Q1 in 99acres grew by 59.6% year-on-year to INR 22.4 crores while revenue grew 15.8% to INR 49.2 crores. EBITDA for the quarter stood at INR 10 lakhs against an EBITDA of INR 4.1 crores reported in Q1 of 2021. Cash loss for the quarter was INR 26.9 crores against a cash loss of INR 24.5 crores last year. We saw a solid recovery in Q4 in 99acres, but Q1 was again hit due to the second wave of COVID. While billings grew 60% year-on-year, it was 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, homes are a very high involvement category and most people would not buy a home without sort of visiting or sort of seeing a few places, which is why this business was hit in Q1. We saw a modest recovery in June. Traffic is now back. All our metrics are at an all-time high in 99acres and even July was a very good month. We are hopeful and confident that unless and until we get hit by another wave of COVID, things should quickly get back on track in 99acres and across all segments, new homes, resale, rental, and commercial. Daily listings on the platform grew 49% year-on-year in Q1 with both owner and broker listings registering strong growth YoY.
Our brand share continued to be in the high 50s% vis-a-vis our nearest competitor. Overall inquiries and responses on the platform also grew very strongly in Q1 in all categories, 60% year-on-year on the back of improved 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 places. Better spam detection, new solutions for advertising and discovering 3D 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 choice in 99acres. Going forward, in 99acres, 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 99acres, resale, 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 maybe likely to sort of be in a better place than it was for the last five years going forward because of lower home loan rates, real estate becoming more affordable and the desire to own bigger homes after COVID. Moving on to the Jeevansathi business. Jeevansathi billings grew 10.2% year-on-year in Q1 to INR 25.1 crores.
Revenue grew 11.9% year-on-year to INR 25.2 crores. Operating EBITDA losses stood at INR 23.2 crores in Q1 of FY 2022 up from a loss of INR 13.3 crore last year. Cash loss for Jeevansathi during the quarter stood at INR 23.6 crores against a cash loss of INR 13.3 crores in Q1 of 2021. In Q1, 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 months of May and June. Key differentiating features on the platform like online verification, video calling and video-based online meetups kept driving the engagement and the app rating on the Google Play Store continues to be the best in the category. Moving on to the education business.
In Shiksha in Q1, billings grew 101.9% year-on-year to INR 23.2 crores while revenue grew 52.4% year-on-year to INR 22.8 crores. We made an EBITDA profit of INR 7.7 crores in Q1 in Shiksha versus an EBITDA of INR 2.1 crores in Q1 of last year. Cash profit for the quarter stood at INR 8.2 crores against a cash loss of INR 1.3 crores in Q1 of 2021. Shiksha had exhibited strong growth in billing and collections in Q1. Stronger competitive position, focus on student-centric content and product improvements have helped take our traffic and helped us increase our growth in Shiksha. We continue to invest in making our content more comprehensive and more student-friendly and in building deep 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 company stood at INR 327.3 crores during Q1 of 2022 versus INR 285 crores for Q1 of 2021. For the consolidated entity at the total comprehensive income level, there is a profit of INR 155.9 crores versus a profit of INR 94.4 crores for the previous quarter ending June 30, 2020. Adjusted for the exceptional items, PAT stood at INR 4.9 crores in Q1 of 2022 versus a loss of INR 7.6 crores in Q1 of 2020. Moving on to our strategic investments. Zomato had a stellar performance of its IPO during the quarter. The issue was subscribed over 238 times, and the stock price is currently about 160% of the issue price.
Our other investee company, Policybazaar, has filed a DRHP with SEBI seeking approval for a proposed IPO. 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, Hitesh. We'll now begin Q&A session. Anyone who wishes to ask question may raise your hand on the screen. We'll call your name and announce your turn in the question queue. Anand, you're on mute.
First question comes from Mukul Garg from Motilal Oswal. Mukul, go ahead and ask your question.
Hi, thanks. Hitesh, first, quick comment on the personnel cost. I know you mentioned that the cost is increasing quite a bit. How should we see this going forward? Last quarter you had a substantial wage hike. Do you expect it to remain around this level, given that your overall billing and revenues are also moving up, so you will get some cushion from operating leverage? Or is the increase in employee retention going to cross that even after the growth?
Listen. The wage bill is, of course, going to go up because of the pressure on tech talent especially, right? We have 4,500 employees in the company, about 700, 800 work in tech and related roles. There, of course, the pressure on the wage bill will be high. It's not that bad with the other 3,700, 3,800 people. There you should see normal increases. Unless, of course, the market changes and it's an evolving situation. Every three months tech salaries go up, right? We are forced to look at them again. It's hard for me to predict what will happen with tech salaries going forward. The rest of the company, the salary increase should be modest. Let's see what happens going forward.
As far as operating leverage goes, we expect this Naukri business will do very well this year given what we are seeing in the talent market. If we are able to get anywhere close to the kind of targets we have in mind, then of course you will see a massive improvement in EBITDA and margins in Naukri especially. In Shiksha, we are doing well, so if this growth continues, we should be fine. It's not as if we expect costs to surge in Shiksha. Jeevansathi, a lot will depend on how much we spend on advertising. The wage bill is a small part of Jeevansathi's total bill. As 99acres is concerned, again, a lot will depend on what happens to the housing market going forward. We had a terrible Q1 because of COVID too.
We had a reasonably good July, and we had a reasonably good Q4 as well. Unless something goes wrong once again things should be okay on the 99acres front also, as far as operating margins, et cetera, go. Of course, the wage bill in 99acres will also go up especially on the tech side. That's only about maybe 10% or 15% of our workforce in 99acres is tech. I mean, fingers crossed. If we have a good year, and all the signs are that we might. In fact, the kind of attrition we are seeing in companies, the kind of stories we are hearing in the market. I mean, we've not heard these kind of stories in the last 15 years. The talent market, especially in IT, not in non-IT so much.
On the IT side is the best we've seen in 15 years, right. There are so many opportunities and people are almost impossible to find. It makes it harder for us on the operating side too. We also need to hire and sort of retain people. If this market continues, then the Naukri business should have a very healthy year. If the non-IT market also comes back, which we're hoping that it will in the second half of the year, then that will sort of give us a further boost.
Sure. One quick one on Naukri and one on 99acres. Just a clarification on the Naukri side, the number of unique customers in Q1, the only time we have seen that was last year, Q1. Was that on account of the lockdown or was there some other factor at play there? On 99acres, given that the overall environment seems a bit better from July onwards, do you expect a pickup in your advertisement spends because they kind of came down quite sharply this quarter?
Yeah. See, in Naukri, what happened last year was because of COVID, because of the lockdown, because companies were scrambled to get their act together, work from home, et cetera. Many companies go there, right? The market is very unpredictable. If you recall, we were also sort of unsure of what would happen. We actually did a QIP in the first half of last year. What happened as a result is a lot of companies did not renew in Q1, right? We have a renewal business. A lot of our clients are clients who've been clients for years, and they renew every year at the same time. A lot of clients did not renew in Q1 of last year.
Some of them came back and renewed in Q2, some of them came back and renewed in Q3, some of them came back and renewed only in Q4. Our bases have shifted. Comparison with 2019/2020 is no longer a fair comparison. You can, of course, compare with last year, but comparison with 2019/2020 is no longer the right comparison because bases have shifted. We are hoping to do better vis-a-vis 2019/2020 in the coming quarters. In this quarter, for example, while we grew massively over last year's same quarter, we did not grow over 2019/2020 Q1. Because bases have shifted. A lot of the clients who sort of gave us business in 2019/2020 Q1 will now give us business in Q2 and Q3 of this year.
We are hoping to see higher growth vis-a-vis 2019/2020 in Q2 and Q3 this year. Right? As far as 99acres is concerned, yes, ad spend was muted this quarter because there was no activity in the hiring market, in the property market. 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. We've started upping our ad spend in 99acres and because the market is coming back. Like I said, real estate at a very macro level, real estate is more affordable. Home loan interest rates are lower and people want bigger houses, so we are seeing massive activity on our platform once again, in terms of inquiries. Anecdotally, also, we are hearing stories of people buying property now.
This was not the case a year ago, a year and a half ago. Therefore, it may make sense for us to up our advertising spend going forward in 99acres. Again, we watch and wait. We'll see how the market evolves.
Sure. Thanks for answering my question. I'll get back into the queue.
Thanks, Mukul. Next question is from Pankaj Kapoor from CLSA. Pankaj, go ahead and ask your question.
Yeah. Thanks for the opportunity. I have two questions. First is, I just want to understand, was there any impact of the wave two on the bookings in this quarter, especially in the 99acres, and if you can give some sense of that. Also, how much would be IT, ITES of the bookings that we have done in the recruitment business?
Yeah. See, 99acres bookings were impacted massively by COVID too. In Q4 of last quarter, which is Q4, we, I think, billed INR 72 crores in 99acres. Right? Q4 is normally our best quarter. We were expecting or hoping to bill at least INR 60 crores in Q1, but we ended with INR 22 crores because the market was massively hit by COVID too. All sort of property buying activity came to a virtual halt in most markets. I mean, brokers. We make a lot of our money from brokers. 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. I don't know if you can give July numbers, but July numbers were pretty decent in 99acres from a billing standpoint. What was your question regarding.
Yeah. On the recruitment business, can you give a sense how much would be the billing from the IT, ITES as a vertical?
Okay. If you look at recruiter activity on our platform, what kind of CVs are recruiters viewing, right? One is, of course, how much we make from IT services companies, how much we make from internet companies and so on, which is one way of looking at it. How much we make from placement firms, so who sort of hire IT talent. That number, I think, would be close to 50%-55%, unless I'm not mistaken. If I were to look at activity, what are recruiters searching for? Who are they? Which CV are being viewed? Close to 57%-58%, on some trading, 60% of all searches and hiring activity is for IT talent on our platform today.
Understood. Hitesh, slightly longer term, but you have traditionally been very prudent in your approach to valuations, whether it is for investing or for making acquisitions. I was just wondering, do you now see a need to maybe rethink this given the kind of currently the levels what we are seeing are fairly elevated. 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 quarters. Are you looking at maybe having a rethink on this? Related to that is that now since we have Zomato and probably Policybazaar also being listed, so we now have these stocks as currency. Will that change your approach in terms of how you look at the valuations? Thank you.
Listen, valuations are what they are. For certain companies, they've definitely gone through the roof. For many other companies, they actually haven't moved too much. Right? If you look at some of the other players in the segments we operate in, it's not as the valuations have moved that much, right? They've, of course, improved over what they were one year ago. 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 to do things which we are not able to do today, we are able to create a lot more value for our users or for our investors. We would be more than happy to revisit valuations, right?
At the end of the day, the investors are looking at the company a certain way. We are also being rewarded. Our valuations have also gone up. The interest rates are low, et cetera, which has an impact. We would definitely be willing to consider paying the right price in our view for assets which make sense for us to own in the long run. Right. Having said so, like I said, beauty lies in the eye of the beholder. Valuation lies in the eyes of the valuer. It has to be a sensible valuation. It can't be something which is totally out of whack.
Understood. Thank you, and all the best.
Thanks, Pankaj. Our next question is from Pranav from Edelweiss. Pranav, go ahead and ask the question. Sorry, it is from Pranav. Pranav, are you there? Pranav is not there, we'll take the next question. Next question is from Manik from JM Financial. Manik, go ahead and ask your question. Manik is also not available, maybe we'll take the next question.
Chintan, there are some questions in the chat box. Do you want to answer them?
I've already started responding to some.
Okay, good. Thanks.
The next person in queue is Rishit from Nomura. Rishit, go ahead and ask your question.
Hi, am I audible?
Yeah, Rishit, go ahead.
Okay, perfect. Just one question from my side. There was a news article we recently invested into Xpressbees, which is more or less has filed for an IPO. The point that I wanted to check is, are we 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 change in strategy or this could be termed as a one-off?
Yeah, I'll take that first, Rishit. Look, in the AIF we floated, as per the agreement and the charter, roughly 10% of the funds can go into our first checks into growth and later-stage companies. It's not as if it's a massive shift in strategy, at least not now. It is from that pocket, and that pocket is the INR 10 million, okay? That's about it. Any further changes in strategy, we'll have to evaluate later as we go along, but as of now, there's nothing announced there. This is from that small pocket.
Okay, fair enough. One question on Naukri, if you could just provide color. We've seen a lot of those renewals, which typically come to us in 4Q and 1Q, right? That's typically been the seasonality. You would expect that will be more like a 2Q, 3Q phenomenon, and then 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 Naukri business because of the demand in the IT services piece.
Right now the renewal cycle has changed because the bases have shifted and a lot of companies did not renew in Q1. Some did not even renew in Q4 of last year. Because when COVID hit us, it hit us in the last two weeks of March. We saw some deferrals at that time also in Q4 of 2019/2020. We saw a lot of companies deferring their purchases in Q1 of 2021 as well. Some of these companies came back and renewed in Q2, and some came back and renewed in Q3. The business shifted, and therefore, unlike previous years when Q4 and Q1 used to be our biggest quarters, we are more likely to see a more balanced year. Right. Will growth rates improve further going forward? Who knows?
The IT market, like I said, is super hot, and it could become hotter. What happens in a hot market, as you all know, is that companies don't ask for a lot of discounts, and volumes also go up. You are able to attract new customers. If the non-IT market comes back, that could provide a further boost because now, all said and done, 30%-40% of our hiring is still 35%-40% is still of non-IT folks. There we have just seen a modest recovery at this point in time. If that market also recovers, manufacturing starts to pick up or infra investments start to pick up or it's just because COVID starts to subside and companies start reopening and start hiring and they're feeling more confident, then of course, growth rates would get even better going forward.
Okay, fair enough. Thank you.
Thanks, Rishit. The next person in queue is Manik from JM Financial. Manik, go ahead and ask your question.
Am I audible now?
Yeah, Manik.
Thank you for the opportunity. I had a few questions. The first question was with regards to our Naukri business. Hitesh, you suggested that we expect Naukri to do quite well this year due to the solid hiring environment in the IT-ITES space. Just wanted to understand, is there a leverage for our revenues to the level or the volume of hiring in the market? Our sense was that the business is largely subscription-linked. Does it also give us some leverage to increase pricing? I had a few follow-up questions as well.
Yeah. See, what happens is, in a normal year, we end up giving a lot of discounts to customers, especially bulk discounts. In a good market, one doesn't have to extend those discounts, number one. Number two, in a growth market, companies want to grow, they want to add headcount. One, they need to sort of stay at the same place. Attrition levels go up, they need to hire more people, right? On top of that, they want to grow because there's more business coming their way. They want to increase their headcount. That means they will want to post more jobs, they will want to view more CVs, they will want to send more emails to our database. You get some volume growth as well.
A lot of companies, to stand out, they want their brand. They would spend a little more on branding also, right? All this will result in us getting more volume as well from a lot of our customers, not just price increase. In a good year, in a good market, what happens is a lot of new people also set up shop. There is more companies that have become active. Some companies maybe sometimes go dormant, sometimes new players set up shop. We're likely to have more customers as well. Let's see how this plays out. Right now, the signs are that we should be able to up our prices or at least our realized prices. We are getting all our lost accounts back. Our renewal rates are at an all-time high, right? It should be a good year.
Sure. I had a couple of questions for Sanjeev as well. While Zomato's already got listed, Policybazaar is on the way to getting listed, could you talk about the three portfolio plays within our existing portfolio that you think one should be watchful of in terms of making a lot of money over the next few years? Secondly, just wanted to get your thoughts around how do we compete against the new entrants in that space right now, people closing deals in the span of days, which would be quite contrary to the way Info Edge has thought about making investments over the last decade or so. Thank you.
Okay. As far as some of the younger companies in the old portfolio are concerned, people like Shopkirana, Gramophone, Shipsy, etcetera. We are quite hopeful of many of them, Adda247. They're much younger and they're much newer investments as compared to a Zomato or Policybazaar, which are 11 and 14 years old, 13 years old. Investments do take time to become valuable in India. Look, we are hopefully confident. We are supporting them further. There's external investors coming in, some of them, and it's overall looking good. It takes a while before they move the needle on our own valuation or our own market cap, right? Before they come anywhere close to where Zomato and Policybazaar are today. As far as competition is concerned, look, we've got to live with it, right? We compete. We get some deals. We miss some deals.
There are deals that we can't do in three days. We miss them or we try. There are deals we can do in five days, seven days sometimes. Sometimes we can't because we have to go through our process, right? I don't think we should be investing out of a sense of herd mentality or a compulsion that we've got to invest because we've got an option that we want to close in three days. It's okay. We live with it. It's a small fund, INR 100 million. If we miss some, it's okay, we'll get some more.
Sure. That's quite helpful. Last one. Given the shift in terms of billing that we've encountered during the past 12 months, would it be more prudent to look at our billing performance on a LTM basis?
You're asking a question, Hitesh?
Yes, that's it.
Sorry. LTM? What does LTM mean, sorry?
Last 12 months.
Okay. Chintan, what do you think?
I didn't get the question.
Do you think because bases have shifted, does it make more sense to look at LTM, last 12 months billing, as opposed to year-on-year or?
Yeah, I think one can look at that. As we progress, we will kind of get a better understanding of how the deals have moved and how we should be able to move them. It's a good suggestion. We can look at the last 12 months as a kind of a comparison. I still think that if you look at right now, last 12 months volume because of the pandemic also may not give you a correct picture. As we go forward, I think that may make sense because then we can compare a normal stable year with a normal stable year with a shifted view.
Thank you. All the best for the future.
Thanks, Manik. Any more questions? There were a couple of people who also raised hand. Right now not visible. We have some questions in Q&A box. Yes, Pranav is back. Pranav from Edelweiss. Pranav, go ahead and ask your question.
Hello, am I audible?
Yes, Pranav, go ahead.
Yeah. My question is regarding the other expenses. How should we see the marketing expenses trending in the next three to four quarters? Because that has been sort of curtailed for some time now due to the pandemic.
Listen, we don't expect to spend a lot of money on marketing in Naukri unless something changes dramatically in the market. In Jeevansathi, we've been spending a lot of money. It's not as if we have not been spending for the last four to eight quarters. Marketing spend in Jeevansathi will continue to be high going forward as well. In 99acres, we've not spent a lot of money in the last two quarters because the real estate market is impacted because of COVID. If we don't see a third wave coming and if we continue to sort of see the kind of action we saw in 99acres in Q4 of last year and in July of this year then, of course, spend will go up a little bit in 99acres going forward.
Okay. My second question is regarding the M&A. You had raised capital for some M&A in the related sectors. Far there has been very little action. Is it largely due to the valuation expectations or the targets what you're finding are too small at this point of time and that's why those are the smaller companies which you are ending up investing? The large acquisitions have not really happened. How should we see this? What is the reason for those not happening?
Yeah. A little bit of both. One, there aren't too many sort of targets we are sort of excited about given the spaces we operate in. There aren't too many large companies to acquire in jobs, for example. Shiksha was a small business for us. In 99acres and Jeevansathi, there we've been looking mostly in matrimonial and real estate. The number of companies we can acquire, you can possibly count on the fingers of one or maybe two hands at max. It's partly that there aren't too many sort of acquirable companies or companies which we would love to acquire. Partly it's the ones which the valuations have been going up every quarter, right? Every time it looks like a deal is doable at a certain price, things change and then you go back to the drawing board.
It's a harder market to acquire also because valuations have been sort of going up and up and up in a lot. Like I said, even though valuations have not gone up for everybody, but even then when you hear of some company going public or some IPO pipeline building out, the market is sort of rewarding a lot of companies very differently, expectations go up. That's also making it a little harder. Let's see. We are not in a hurry, like I said. We are happy to pay the right price, but I don't think we will acquire a company which is losing INR 200 billion a year compared to billion dollars . That's not going to happen.
Okay. Thank you so much.
Thanks, Pranav. Next person in queue is Arnav. Arnav is an institutional investor. Arnav, go ahead and ask your question.
Thanks for the opportunity. I had a couple of questions. One was, it'll be great if you can give some color on FirstNaukri and Job Hai. In the annual report on FirstNaukri, you mentioned this is at the nascent stage. It'll be good to get a sense how do you see it in a 3 to 5-year lens? Same for Job Hai. The second question was around the recent investment in Shiprocket. I think Sanjeev just mentioned that you're looking at late stage, but only to a certain threshold of the overall amount. It'll be great to get some color on Shiprocket investment and also on Job Hai and FirstNaukri. Thank you.
FirstNaukri and Job Hai are both very tiny businesses to us. FirstNaukri is a small business. Of course, we've been in the space for a while and we've been figuring things out slowly. We've now supplemented the offering with DoSelect, which is a talent assessment platform we just acquired in the month of July. Previously we had a tie-up with another platform. Now we have our own platform for assessment. Now, do we expect the business to become a very large business going forward? The answer is no. It does supplement and complement our main Naukri offering and helps us complete the hiring suite when we go to customers.
When we go to customers, we say, "Listen, we have everything from campus hiring to recruitment software to premium hiring products like IIMJOBS and Hirist and mass hiring products like Naukri and so on." It's part of that bouquet and we continue to invest behind that business and we expect it to sort of grow at a reasonably healthy rate going forward. Job Hai is a startup inside Info Edge. We've been at it for about 18 months or so and of course, then we had COVID in between. We have test market launched in Delhi NCR. We've got reasonably good success and we are now going to roll it out nationally as a platform. We're still not monetizing it. It's still a long time away from that.
I think Job Hai more as a 3-5 year play, not as a one or year-year play. Okay. Again, only if we get good results will we sort of invest aggressively behind the business. Earlier it was very hard to make a blue collar business succeed in India for various reasons. Now it does look like all the trends are in favor of blue collar hiring moving online and it maybe should be possible to sort of build a viable business in this space over the next four, five years. If we get the right response, we will definitely up our investment in this space going forward. Sanjeev, you want to take the one on Shiprocket?
Yeah. Sorry. Can you repeat the question please on Shiprocket?
Yeah. The question was, Sanjeev, you recently mentioned that you're looking at late-stage investments up to a certain threshold. Will Shiprocket fall in that?
Yes, Shiprocket is from that pool.
Okay. Could you quantify, if possible to share, what number of that pool you've invested, even in number percentage?
No. As of now, our pocket allocated for first checks into growth-related company is 10%. In exceptional circumstances, we may go to the committee to approve a little change and bust that a bit, but it's not a significant chunk of the fund as of now.
All right. Thank you. Thanks, Hitesh. Take care. Best of luck.
Thanks, Anand. Next question is from Gaurav Bansal from Deutsche Bank. Gaurav, go ahead and ask your question.
Yeah, Hitesh, thank you for the opportunity. Am I audible?
Yeah, Gaurav. Go ahead.
Yeah. One question I had is that we have been talking about Naukri and Shiksha and other segments. What I wanted to know is that any other niche area that we are actually looking down the line for future prospects?
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. Most of our investments, most of the acquisitions, most of the new businesses we try and build inside the company will be in these spaces. These spaces are vast, and we see a lot of opportunity. I just mentioned Naukri, and Naukri is not just the main Naukri business. We have a Naukri Gulf business. We have a FirstNaukri business. We have a Zwayam business. We have a Hirist and IIMJOBS business. We are doing Job Hai. We are doing BigShyft, which is a talent AI-based platform for hiring. There are a bunch of activities we are doing in jobs other than Naukri. Right? That's where a lot of our investment is going today.
Similarly, in Shiksha, we sort of have a Shiksha domestic business. We are trying to build an online sort of marketplace for online courses, as well as this today called Naukri Learning. We are experimenting. We've sort of started a Shiksha Study Abroad business. Right? We have started sending students overseas all online. Similarly, in 99acres, we started as a resale platform, and over time we went into new homes, and now we are focusing a lot more than earlier on rentals and commercial as well. These are large spaces. There's a lot to do in each of these spaces. It's unlikely that we will enter a fifth category. We will continue to make investments, strategic investments. We invested in these three education companies, NoPaperForms, it's an education software provider. Coding Ninjas, which is an ed-tech. They actually teach coding.
We've invested in Greytip, which is an HR services, HR software company. We continue to make these investments outside. We've invested in a broker network in real estate. 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. We are likely to limit ourselves to these four large categories in the near term, at least.
Okay. Thanks, Hitesh.
Thanks, Gaurav. Next question is from Ankur Rudra from JP Morgan. 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 Naukri. If it's possible to disaggregate at all, how should we think about growth adjusting for the base shift and renewals that you saw? Is it possible to disaggregate that to see what is the true like for like of pro forma growth trending at right now compared to FY 2020?
Chintan, any way of doing that?
Please repeat the question once.
Chintan, the question was, is it possible to sort of adjust for the base shifting on the renewal side on the Naukri billings to see what is the growth over FY 2020 that we are currently trending at?
We have to kind of get into a granular analysis for that, right? Like he just said that maybe you can get comfort from the fact that the renewals rates have kind of gone upwards. Maybe there's a shift, obviously the shift is leaning towards the later quarter because after we started the COVID, the Q1 kind of went into Q2, Q3, Q4, right? Obviously there is the trend, good. Now you can see that it's going towards later quarter, whatever has remained in the quarter, the subscription renewal rates are all-time high. Obviously, there is an inherent growth, cohorts would have changed.
Okay. Perhaps, over the next two quarters, we'll probably get a better sense, I guess.
Yeah.
The second thing on Naukri was, is it possible to give us a flavor of how the billings or revenue breaks up now across the various parts of the business, right? As you highlighted just now to the previous question, between India and Gulf, FirstNaukri, IIMJOBS. What I'm trying to understand is how the trend's different across these businesses now.
Of course, see, the Gulf business is not on a roll because it's not indexed to IT. The Gulf recovery is modest. Right? With Gulf revenue that I think out of the total sort of business we do in recruitment, about INR 50 crore-INR 60 crore comes from the Gulf. INR 50 crore-INR 55 crore comes from the Gulf. Right? That's not on a roll. Firstnaukri is tiny. It's doing well, but it's tiny. Doesn't move the needle. IIMJOBS, like I think we mentioned, we grew by 170% in Q1. Of course, on a very tiny base because last year Q1 was impacted by COVID. We billed about INR 8.5 crore from IIMJOBS in this quarter, IIMJOBS and Hirist, which is not in our standalone, I think, right, Chintan? Because it's a separate company.
Yeah.
It's not been merged within Info Edge as yet. I don't know how to look at it, but July, for example, the year over previous growth was very handsome. Will it sustain going forward? I don't know in Naukri.
Okay. Appreciate that. In terms of, as you said, the growth in Naukri appears to be very strong. Typically we see a significant operating leverage payout whenever that happened in the past. How are you thinking about it this time? Are you thinking of investing some of that back into the business? You probably should be getting a lot of leverage going forward.
If things play out as expected, of course, Naukri will generate a record cash at least this year. Of course, not all of that can be invested back in the recruitment business. Right? We'll continue to invest like we have been. We'll continue to make financial investments. We'll continue to invest more in Jeevansathi. We'll up our spending in 99acres if that market responds positively. We are continuing to look for acquisitions, interesting sort of companies to acquire in the spaces we operate. All that will continue.
Okay. Naukri margins should expand on that. In terms of how you're seeing Q1 this time play out, have you seen this time versus last time any impact on user behavior in your portfolio companies, sorry, your portfolio companies, in your other non-Naukri business, in 99acres, Jeevansathi, Shiksha, which has moved in any one direction or the other, beyond the obviously impact of not using them during the lockdown?
In general, for us at least, I don't know whether it happened for the category as a whole. The Jeevansathi.com business was impacted negatively this time during COVID. I think the April and May wave was just too much to bear. We get most of our business from the Hindi belt, and I think the Hindi belt was the worst impacted by COVID. We saw a decline in activity. I mean, it still grew, was still better than last year, but it did not grow to the extent you would have expected it to grow. I think people took a pause. Marriages got delayed. I think even now, activity is only slowly coming back into that market. In 99acres, of course, we were impacted by COVID, like I said, but it's bounced back very strongly after COVID.
We are again seeing record activity on our platform, and we are seeing record activity on the rental side as well, not just on the buy side. Right? In the first wave, rental was massively impacted. Rental activity on the platform was impacted because of COVID. Now we are seeing rental activity also bounce back after COVID too. In Naukri, there's record activity on the platform, both on the recruiter side and on the job seeker side, because there are just too many jobs out there and not enough job seekers. Lots of opportunities. Right? Shiksha also, we continue to see a lot of activity on our platform. Again, all-time high in terms of numbers.
Understood. Just lastly, in terms of on a broader basis, given the success of Zomato's listing, any thoughts about changing of the size or volume of your investments, either via the AIF or otherwise?
I mean, we'll take it company by company. The AIF is, of course, an INR 100 million fund. That we'll keep evaluating, and opportunities emerge, there should be a follow-on fund. There's no set plan right now, as Rahul said, but should we do it? It's a question to be discussed. Look, our first priority is to get the INR 100 million fund right, and as we are convinced it's getting right, we would evaluate opportunities as they arise. Now, from the balance sheet investment companies, yeah, we have the flexibility to go in larger because that's from the balance sheet, and that we keep evaluating. These will be company like Gramophone, Shopkirana, Adda247, Shipsy, Ustraa. Those are from the balance sheet.
Okay. Appreciate that. Thank you, and best of luck.
Thanks, Ankur. Thank you so much. The next question comes from Seema Naik. Seema, go ahead and ask your question. Seema, you're on mute.
Hi. This is Ruchi from Bank of Baroda Capital. I have a question for Sanjeev . Zomato's listing a 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 investee companies?
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 the scrutiny, deal with the reporting compliances. It has to be answerable to analysts. Management gets distracted very often. We believe that we should not accelerate any IPOs and do them any sooner than is advisable. I don't think we'll be accelerating any IPO. Yes, Policybazaar is fine, but the others, when they're good and ready.
Understood. That's helpful. Thank you.
Next question comes from Anirudh Sengupta . Anirudh , go ahead and ask your question.
I have a basic question about the overall business. How would you like to see yourself, as an investment management company or internet business management company? I would just like to seek your views on that.
Yeah. Should I go first, Hitesh? Should I go?
Yeah, please.
Look, we are primarily an operating company. The company has 4,500 people, approximately. Of that 400, only six work in investments, in financial investments. Another two or three work in trading investments. Fewer than 10 people out of 4,500 work on investments. We are primarily an operating company. Surpluses generated from there, and some of the surpluses we deploy into making investments to create greater value for our shareholders. We are primarily an operating company, and that's our identity.
Okay. Can I make a follow-up question?
Yeah, go ahead.
Yeah. I agree 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 front?
Look, you heard Hitesh. He's expecting good growth coming back in the operating businesses going forward unless there's a third wave of COVID. There'll be some businesses that are growing faster than others and sometimes the operating businesses are growing faster. We're reasonably well-diversified. Yes, we do have ownership of some other good internet businesses, but we are primarily an operating company.
Thank you.
Thanks, Neeraj. Next question comes from Charvi Chandwani. Charvi, go ahead and ask your question.
Hello, am I audible?
Yeah, go ahead, Charvi.
Congratulations everyone. First of all, it is incredible IPO. I'm a 25-year-old, so I feel really a sense of pride in having Zomato, seeing Zomato on the BSE listed. My question is very common, as Sanjeev told you. Is Info Edge considering any kind of split in the coming period?
A stock split, you're talking about? A bonus?
Yes. Stock split.
Yeah, I don't think we have even tabled such a discussion. I'll tell you why. If you want to do a bonus, you need some predictability. Given what's happened the last 15 months on COVID, I don't think anybody has had the courage to recommend a bonus or a stock split because we don't know what will happen after six months. When we have stability in the environment, maybe we could consider it. Chintan, you want to add to this? You're the boss on this one.
Yeah, no, I think in the past also, Board has looked at it, many retail shareholders do come and suggest that retail shareholding is low, the share price value has gone up, there's some merit in this split. Look, eventually it is the Board's decision, we would have a comprehensive debate before any such decision is taken. Some of the consideration, like Sanjeev mentioned, that we also need to look at that would we be able to service the higher base with dividend and things like that. Based on that, we will take a call on that.
Okay. Thank you.
Thank you, Charvi. That was the last question we had till now. In case any more questions, please raise your hand. We will wait for a minute. In case you have any questions, please raise your hand. Vivek, I think we're done for the moment, so maybe you can give your comments.
Thank you very much, everyone. I now hand over the conference to Hitesh for his closing comments.
No, thank you everyone for taking time out for this call, and have a great evening and stay safe. See you next quarter.
Thank you. Have a good one. Bye-bye.
Yes. Thank you.
Thanks, everyone. Thank you so much.