Good evening, everyone, and welcome to our second quarter FY 2021 results conference call. As always, we will first start with the overall financials and then cover each business in more detail. Then, of course, we'll have time for Q&A. The audited financial statements file and other schedules on segmental billing, revenues, et cetera, along with the data sheet, have been uploaded on our website, infoedge.in. Firstly, talking about the standalone financials. Billings in Q2 were INR 249.5 crores, down 17% year-on-year. Revenue in Q2 was INR 256.1 crores, down 19.1% year-on-year. Operating expenses, excluding depreciation for the quarter, were INR 204.6 crores, down 5.9% year-on-year. Operating EBITDA stood at INR 51.6 crores versus INR 99.3 crores last year, a reduction of 48.1% year-on-year. Operating EBITDA margins for the quarter stood at 20.1% compared to 31.4% in Q2 of 2019/2020.
EBITDA, readjusted for ESOP non-cash charges, stood at INR 58.1 crores versus INR 104.8 crores in Q2 of last year. EBITDA margin readjusted for ESOPs for the quarter stood at 22.7% versus 33.1% in Q2 of last year. Cash EBITDA for the quarter stood at INR 45.7 crores, down 44.5% year-on-year. Deferred sales revenues stood at INR 371.9 crores as of September 30th, 2020 versus INR 480.7 crores as of September 30th, 2019, a decline of 22.6% year-on-year. The cash balance in IEIL and its 100% subsidiaries stands at INR 3,373 crores as of September 30th, 2020. This was INR 1,509 crores on September 30th, 2019. Key highlights for the quarter. In Naukri, traffic has returned to pre-COVID levels. JobSpeak Index, which is a proxy for hiring activity in the country, is rising month-on-month. In September, October, it was down 23% compared to last year.
This is a significant improvement over what we saw in Q1, when the index was down 60% on the average. Some sectors, such as travel and hospitality, are yet to recover, and that is reflecting in the index. [Non English content] In 99acres also, we saw traffic returning back to pre-COVID levels, although builders are still exercising caution over their advertising spends. Brokers have slowly upped their spending on resale and rental segments. Due to a decrease in new launch activity and buyers preference for ready-to-move homes, the new home segment continues to remain a little muted. We continue to remain aggressive in Jeevansathi. Our aggressive investments there have helped us grow faster than our competitors, both in terms of traffic and in terms of billing. Of course, we continue to invest in areas of strategic interest and adjacencies. Moving on to the consolidated financial highlights.
At the consolidated level, the net sales for the company stood at INR 260.9 crores versus INR 329.5 crores from last year. For the consolidated entity at the PAT level, there is a gain of INR 328 crores versus a loss of INR 711.8 crores from the corresponding quarter of last year. Adjusted for the exceptional items, PAT stood at a loss of INR 46 crores in the quarter ended September 2020 versus a loss of INR 113.64 crores in the corresponding quarter of last year. Moving on to business-wise results. We'll first discuss recruitment. In Q2, recruitment billings were INR 167.3 crores, down 20.2% year-on-year, while revenues were at INR 182.6 crores, a degrowth of 19.3% year-on-year. Operating EBITDA stood at INR 100.5 crores, down by 18.9% from September of 2019. Margins were at 55% versus 54.7% in Q2 of last year.
EBITDA readjusted for ESOP non-cash charges stood at INR 103.6 crores at 56.7% versus 55.9% in Q2 of last year. Cash EBITDA for recruitment during the quarter stood at INR 85.4 crores, down 20% year-on-year. In Naukri in Q2, we witnessed a good recovery, a solid recovery back in collections. From a 48% decline in Q1, collections in the corporate sales part of the business were down 13% in Q2, with September collection down only 10% year-on-year. The current recovery is experienced across all industries in Q2. The billing in IT and telecom service in September comprising our largest revenue base has reached pre-COVID levels. Continuous monthly improvement in direct online sales is also suggesting a revival in our sales from retail and small customers. The job seeker activity in the platform continues to recover since June, on an average, we added 16,528 new CVs per day in Q2.
The Naukri database grew to 71 million CVs. Average CV mods were also at about 451,000 per day in Q2. Recruiter engagement on the platform has also recovered in Q2, though recruiter searches are still down 12% in September and 30% for Q2. The recovery is being driven primarily by the IT and ITeS segment. Our traffic share in the job portal space continues to be in the 90s, with nearest competition coming from Indeed. iimjobs reported a billing of INR 5.17 crores for Q2 of 2021. This is a growth of 11.6. This has operated at a breakeven level during the quarter. Moving on to the real estate vertical. In 99acres, billings in Q2 stood at INR 46.7 crores, a degrowth of 22.9% year-on-year, while revenues stood at INR 36.3 crores, a degrowth of 36.3% from INR 57 crores in Q2 of 2020. Operating loss for the quarter stood at INR 7.2 crores.
EBITDA adjusted for ESOP stood at a loss of INR 5.8 crores versus a profit of INR 5.2 crores last year in the same quarter. Cash profit for 99acres during the quarter stood at INR 2.9 crores against a cash profit of INR 6.8 crores last year. In 99acres, in Q2, business improved sequentially each month from July to September, recovering to 76% of last year Q2. We exited the quarter on a much stronger momentum than where we started the quarter. While all business verticals of new home, resale, rental, and commercial continued to be impacted in Q2, new homes was impacted more with lesser new launches than last year, and a shift in buyer's preference for more ready-to-move-in properties. The number of clients billed, and average billing per customer both impacted in Q2. On the average, smaller cities business recovered more than the larger metros.
We reduced our ad spends on facilities and marketing. By the end of Q2, daily listings posted by owners were higher than pre-COVID levels, while broker listings were recovering with some lag. Traffic on 99acres had fully recovered in Q2. By the end of Q2, traffic had started growing by 10% compared to pre-COVID Feb 2020 levels. Inquiries or responses through the platform grew in a strong manner in both new homes and resale. The brand or top of the mind sort of share versus our nearest competitor site reached up to 59% in Q2 as per Google search trends. Moving on to Jeevansathi. In Jeevansathi, billings grew 18.6% year-on-year in Q2 to INR 24.7 crores, and revenue grew 14.4% year-on-year to INR 23.8 crores. The operating EBITDA loss for the business stood at INR 33.3 crores in Q2 of FY 2021, up from INR 16.5 crores last year.
EBITDA readjusted for ESOP stood at a loss of INR 32.9 crores for Q2 versus a loss of INR 16.3 crores last year. Cash loss for Jeevansathi during the quarter stood at INR 32.7 crores. In Q2, Jeevansathi saw further acceleration in profile growth rates and higher traffic on the platform. Aggressive marketing spends resulted in reaching pre-COVID levels of sales growth. Some of the features like video calling, video profiles, and video-based online meetups continued to help the business drive growth and user engagement in the quarter. Improved payment experience across platforms also helped improve realizations. We continue to consolidate our position as we penetrate deeper into our core markets. We plan to spend considerably more on marketing across all markets to strengthen our brand presence going forward. Moving on to the Shiksha business.
In Q2, billings in Shiksha grew 15.2% year-on-year to INR 10.8 crores, while revenue grew 7.7% year-on-year to INR 13.4 crores. EBITDA for Shiksha stood at INR 0.9 crores versus a profit of INR 0.2 crores in Q2 of last year. EBITDA readjusted for ESOP for the quarter stood at INR 1.4 crores versus a profit of INR 0.6 crores last year. Cash loss for the quarter stood at INR 1.7 crores. We are continuously putting more efforts to get more and more user-generated content on the website so that we can drive more leads to our customers. Finally, our strategic investments. Zomato. Talking about Zomato, the company is witnessing the revival of business in food delivery. Both revenues and volumes are trending towards pre-COVID levels. The management is thriving on its journey towards profitability, and the unit economics still remain encouraging.
Policybazaar has registered growth in its core businesses, that is health and term insurance. Its growth rate is higher than the industry growth in these two segments. Paisabazaar is also witnessing a revival in its operations, and we expect significant recovery for the business in the second half of this year. Besides this, we continue to explore investment and acquisition opportunities in areas of strategic interest and adjacencies. These investments will be continued to be made through our management or the IEIL Venture Fund. Thank you. This is all from us today, and we are now ready to take any questions that you may have.
Thanks, Hitesh. We'll now begin the Q&A session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may raise your hand on the screen. We'll take your name and announce your turn in the question queue. [Non-English content] Anand, you want to start the questions now?
[Non-English content] The first question is from Sachin Hemnani. Sachin, go ahead and ask your question.
Good evening, sir. I have a few questions, listing them together.
Sorry, can you introduce yourself first, please? Sachin Hemnani from where?
From Perfect Research.
From?
Perfect Research.
Perfect Research. Okay, thank you.
I have a few questions, listing them together. Number one, as per your latest presentation, Indeed seems to have lost some market share on desktop traffic share. Are we gaining the market share from the other players like Indeed et cetera? Number second, on 99acres, MagicBricks seems to have gained some market share since March 2019, and our lead over them has reduced. Could you please throw some light on it? Next, with the growing number of online education players, what strategies are we taking to grow Shiksha? The last one, also regarding our investment in Coding Ninjas, now WhiteHat Jr., acquired by BYJU'S. How is the competitive intensity shaping up for Coding Ninjas? That's all.
Okay. Indeed, we already have a very large share of the market. The movement in market share over the last few months is because of COVID. Of course, we lost traffic in the first few months, but competition was impacted even more, and therefore, we ended up gaining a couple of points in terms of market share over Indeed. I would not read too much into it. Since we already had a very large share of the market, it doesn't really move the needle for us. Yes, we sort of did a better job than Indeed, at least in terms of share last quarter or in the last six months. 99acres versus MBC, again, I would not read too much into these independent sort of sources which give out share, because a lot of the algorithms keep changing from quarter to quarter. Right?
The problem really is that the app traffic is not so easy to measure. That complicates a lot of things now because a lot of the traffic is on the app. Unlike a few years ago when a lot of the traffic was on the web, a lot of our customers now sort of use the app, and that is not so easy to measure for a lot of these online traffic and data providers. We may have lost a couple of points to MagicBricks over the last few months. Normally when these two or three points or swings which you see are often a result of advertising spend in that particular quarter. In a quarter, if MagicBricks spends more, we may end up losing a few points. On the other hand, when we spend more, we may end up gaining a few points.
I would not read too much into these swings at this point in time. Your third question was around, Sorry, in fact, what was your third question?
It was on Shiksha strategy.
BYJU'S, WhiteHat Jr., Coding Ninjas.
Shiksha strategy. Fourth one is on Coding Ninjas.
Okay. Shiksha, we continue to invest in more content, and that is what's really driving traffic to our platform. We started as a site which listed out colleges and courses. Now we have a lot of information on exams. There's a lot of other education content which we have on our platform as well. We have hundreds of thousands of reviews now on these colleges and courses on our platform. Really our strategy in Shiksha is to provide more and more relevant content to our audiences. Okay? We believe that if we do a good job on this, then we get more traffic, and as a result, we can then generate more inquiries for our customers who pay us for these inquiries.
Coding Ninjas, in the grand scheme of things, their model is a little different from WhiteHat Jr. Originally, when we invested in that, they were basically trying to teach main things. While WhiteHat and others are sort of targeted, they're basically trying to teach students and kids in school. Coding Ninjas, the proposition is that they want to help upskill job seekers, and then help them get better jobs over time because of the upskilling which they provide to them. It's very early for them. This is the model they are sort of working on right now. They're very different from WhiteHat and BYJU'S and the others.
Okay, got it.
The next question is from Vivekanand Subbaraman from Ambit Capital. Vivek, go ahead and ask your question.
Hi. Thank you very much for the opportunity. I have two questions. One is, we are seeing that the usage metrics, whether it's job seeker activity or, say, recruiter searches, they're gradually coming back on track as far as Naukri is concerned, and same is the case with 99acres. Hitesh, just wanted your views on how long will it take for our monetization to follow, given that we are still quite some distance away from the peak billing that we saw both in recruitment and realty, right? We are down 36% versus 4Q FY 2019 in recruitment, 30% down versus 99acres. Second question is on the monetization of the new traffic that you are getting on 99acres. You said that we now have owner listings at an all-time high, and brokers are also spending more time on the portal. How do we build out these new revenue streams?
Because if I understand correctly, new launches used to be the dominant portion of our revenue in 99acres.com. Thank you.
Yeah. You're absolutely right. See activity is coming back. We saw job seeker activity come back about three months back, and [audio distortion] now are increasing. I think this trend, you see it's only a matter of time before revenue catches up. See, our billings in Q2 were about 80% of last year, but in September, we were at 90% of what we did in September of last year, right? On the COVID front, then it's only a matter of time. We should not compare with Q4 because Q4 is seasonally a very strong quarter for us, right? A lot of businesses subscriptions are due for renewal in Q4. Of course, what COVID has also done is it sort of resulted in a shift.
A lot of businesses who did not renew in Q4 of last year or Q1 of this year may actually end up buying in Q3 and Q4 of this year. Let's see how that plays out. Some of the business we are getting actually is business from customers who did not renew when they were due for renewal in the last few quarters. The same thing is happening in 99acres. Again, there, of course, the renewal part of the business is smaller in size compared to Naukri because we sell a lot of monthly and quarterly campaigns as well. Even there, a lot of our clients did not renew in Q1, especially brokers who are annual customers. Now some of them are coming back. I think it also back in 99acres, in fact, the response on the site is actually at an all-time high.
The number of inquiries we are generating are up 50%, 60% on the buyer side over last year. Let's see how that plays out. To answer your second question, see, there again, you're absolutely right. See, what we are seeing is a shift in interest from buyers. Instead of new homes, many of them are looking for deals in the ready-to-move market. Right? Therefore, interest or inquiries have shifted to that segment, which has resulted in our new launch revenue coming under pressure. New homes which are almost ready to move in are still sort of in demand, but new launches or homes will be ready three years from now, four years from now, that sort of response has gone down, and that's impacting revenue. My sense is that even on that front, things are now beginning to improve.
We are now seeing even new home inquiries go up a little bit, and if the situation continues to get better on the COVID front, I think it's only a matter of time before that revenue also comes back on track.
Right. Just one small follow-up on the Naukri answer. Historically, we've grown via a mix of new customer acquisition and also greater usage by our existing customers. When I look at the unique customers that we reported, we are still down around 20-odd% as far as the unique customers are concerned. By when do you expect that we get back to the unique customer level that we had pre-COVID and potentially, then acquire new clients also?
That will take a few more quarters, in my view, to play out, because a lot of customers have gone out of business. A lot of companies have shut down shop. A lot of companies have scaled down operations, and many of them did not buy or renew in the last two or three quarters. We are slowly getting some of them back, right? I think it'll take a while before our numbers start hitting the kind of numbers we were hitting a year ago.
Okay. Thank you. All the best.
The next question is from Ashish Agrawal from Principal AMC. Ashish, go ahead and ask your question.
Yeah, thanks. Sir, just wanted to understand the increase in the advertising cost. Was this primarily driven by Jeevansathi and the 99acres business? Just wanted to understand on the Naukri side, you indicated a lot of that growth is being driven by IT/ ITeS business. Wanted to understand, apart from IT/ ITeS, have you seen a growth in other segments also? I think you highlighted travel segment also remains stressed, but apart from travel, have you started to see growth in other segments also? Yeah, thanks. [Non-English content]
Travel and hospitality and retailing and these segments are very stressing. We've not gotten back to pre-COVID levels or in fact we are down maybe 40%, 50%, 60% from where we were a year ago in terms of activity on our platform from recruiters. In IT, we are getting close to base. Activity from IT companies is now almost at the same level as it was pre-COVID. Some other sectors that are doing well are sectors like healthcare and education, and telecom and insurance. These sectors are still okay, but they're still down vis-a-vis where they were pre-COVID. That's the sort of lay of the land on the recruitment side. Now, of course, things are getting better with every passing week. If the situation on the COVID front continues to improve, hopefully more and more sort of sectors will come back to normal levels.
Anecdotally, what we're also hearing from companies is that attrition rates are going up everywhere. Right? That’s something we are seeing, or companies are telling us. Let’s see how this plays out. Sorry, what was your first question?
Just on the advertising cost because [audio distortion].
Yeah, that is mostly around Jeevansathi.
The Jeevansathi investment you said-
[audio distortion]
Thanks a lot, sir.
Yeah. The next question is from Vijit Jain from Citi. Vijit, go ahead and ask your question.
Sorry.
Hi. Thank you for the opportunity. I have two questions. One is on the Naukri business. If we look at the commentary from the major IT companies in India, a lot of them have announced wage hikes for employees, and looks like recruitment is going to be strong in the next year or so in that segment. I know you mentioned that IT/ITeS is almost close to base, but do you think it will meaningfully exceed pre-COVID levels in the near future, in the next one, two quarters? What kind of momentum are you seeing there, is my first question. My second question is on 99acres.
With activity in players like nobroker.com, which are adding more services on top of the classifieds in the real estate space, do you think there is opportunity for 99acres in adding new services which can be monetized as well, and your thoughts on what you're going to do on that? Thank you.
Yeah. Regarding your first question on IT hiring, see, it's difficult for me to say what's going to happen going forward. What I can tell you is that activity on our platform from IT companies is going up. It's still where it was a few months ago, and still not hit pre-COVID levels, just about there. It's not as if they are hiring much more than what they were hiring earlier, at least on our platform. Very difficult for me to say what is going to happen in the next few months. I guess to some extent, it may depend on what happens in the U.S. and how that sort of scene plays out. As far as NoBroker and the other sort of players, see, the real estate sector is a very large sector. 99acres is basically a real estate search and classifieds and research kind of company.
We focus primarily on the buyer side. A very small proportion of our revenue comes from rental, and an even smaller portion of our revenue comes from commercial. What NoBroker is doing, I guess, is one, they are a different model. They're not just a classified, they're actually an end-to-end sort of transaction platform in some sense. They provide all kinds of services to their users. They don't allow other brokers to list on their platform, for example. They are in some ways a broker. They may call themselves NoBroker, but they provide all the services a broker provides. Of course, they're also trying to get into other areas like society management and so on and so forth. Our focus in the near term is going to continue to be on improving the search and classified experience for our users on our platform in 99acres.
We may sort of provide a lot more information to them over time to help them take a decision, to help them sort of understand the real estate market better, to help them understand what's the lay of the land, and so on and so forth. We will provide a lot more research information in the near term. We already provide some owner assist services to owners. If owners want to list their properties through 99acres, we help them sell their properties, we help them rent their properties through 99acres. We have a team which sort of, but w e don't do the action. We just sort of help them a little bit, which is why they're called assistive services, not transaction services. Do we have any plans to provide more services in the near term?
Not in the near term, but definitely not ruled out in the medium term.
All right. Thank you so much.
Yeah.
These were the questions as of now. In case there are more questions, please raise your hand so that we can take them one by one. Vivekanand Subbaraman from Ambit Capital has again raised. Vivek, you want to discuss again?
Yes. Thank you very much for the follow-up. Pressing a bit on the recruitment piece. You mentioned about certain sectors that are doing well. Could you talk a little bit about the growth that we are seeing, especially in the job seeking index in small towns? I mean, the tier 2 cities seem to be holding up much better than big cities like Mumbai, Delhi. Is there any plan to increase the sales infrastructure or distribution infrastructure in these towns so that we can capitalize on the opportunity in these small towns? The same question is applicable for Realty also. Hitesh, you mentioned this in the opening remarks that smaller towns seem to be doing much better than the large cities. I guess it's a common question on whether you want to invest in creating additional infrastructure on the ground in small cities.
Yeah. Smaller towns have actually, on the whole, performed a lot better than large cities. Fewer cases of COVID in these small towns compared to cities like Bombay, Pune, Delhi, Bangalore, which were locked down for a very long period of time. In 99acres also, we've seen a surge in even buyer activity in small towns, not just listings. Unfortunately, for us, today at least, and they are a very small part of our total revenue, both in 99acres and in Naukri. Actually, we've been in many of these small towns for a very long time now. Naukri has sales offices in over 40 cities. 99acres has offices in over 40 cities. It's not as if we don't cover these small towns. We've been there for a long time. They're growing, but they're growing off a very low base. Right?
Even if they continue to grow like this for a year or two, they will not really move the needle for us in any significant way in both Naukri and 99acres. Of course, we will continue. We don't mind going to 100 cities, 200 cities. We go wherever there is business. That's not a problem. It's just that there's not enough business in these small towns still. They're growing, but off a very low base.
Right. I can understand that it would be the case in recruitment because I guess the white-collar recruitment activity and, of course, business activity would be much higher in the top cities. Why is that the case in real estate? Is it so that the sales velocity is much lower in small towns, and is it because also a lot of construction happens by people on their own rather than sale of property by builders?
No. You're absolutely right in saying that the real estate market is a broader market. Real estate is bought and sold in maybe 200 cities, 300 cities, 500 cities. It's bought and sold everywhere, unlike white-collar job activity, which is actually restricted to maybe 20, 30, 40 cities in this country. We are cognizant of that, and we do believe that in the long run, 99acres will be in 100, 200, 300 cities. It's just that today, the number of transactions which take place in small towns is still very low on a monthly basis. Real estate market has actually shrunk over the last few years. Even in places like Bombay and Delhi, we've seen a massive transactions. Values are also lower. Housing values are also lower in small towns.
While in Bombay, an average house is maybe INR 1 crore or INR 2, you can get a house for INR 20 lakhs, INR 30 lakhs very easily. Therefore, it's just that the size of the market is much, much smaller. That's all. Maybe this will change over the next few years. Right now, the number of brokers in small towns, the number of transactions, the number of houses bought and sold, it's just tiny compared to some of the bigger cities. Together, they add up to a significant number. Maybe if you add the traffic we get for all the small towns in the country, maybe it's still 25%, 30%, 40% of all 99acres traffic. From a revenue standpoint, they are still very, very tiny.
Right. Thank you. Last question is on Jeevansathi. What is going right for you here? If you could help us understand whether the growth is driven by volume or is it that your brand has now become strong, helping you take increases in tariffs or reduce the discounts? Secondly, in terms of the overall market, what would our share be of the total transactions that happen volume-wise and value-wise? Do you have any sense on that?
We've gained some share in this market over the last three, four years because we've been investing very aggressively in marketing and branding. We've been growing at 15%-20% per annum, in fact, for the last three, four years now. On the other hand, the industry has been growing at maybe 7%, 8%, 10% per annum for the last few years. We've gained share and most of our share gains have been in the Hindi belt, in the northern and western parts of the country, which is where we are focused. We are a strong number two player now in the north and west. We're more volume than value growth at this point in time. We want activity on our platform. We want more handshakes to happen on our platform. That's been our sort of focus.
Therefore, on the one hand, we go after marketing expenditure, on the other hand, we drop pricing. That's been the case for the last few years now. In terms of share, nationally, our share is still very small. We are maybe about 15% of the market. That's because we don't really have any presence in the south, which is a very large part of the overall market. In the Hindi belt, we probably have a 35% share of the market. In the north and west together, we may probably have a 25%, 27%, 28% share of the market. That's what we continue to do. We're continuing to sort of penetrate deeper and deeper into the heartland, and trying to gain share.
Right. Thank you.
Thanks, Vivek. Next question is from Suraj Garg from KPMG. Suraj, please go ahead and ask your question.
I just had one quick question. Could you give us a sense of how much of your marketing spend is being spent on Jeevansathi alone?
Last quarter, our marketing spend on Jeevansathi was about INR 43 crore, I think.
Got it. Could you give us a sense of what is the paid profile growth and free profile growth in Jeevansathi?
I think you'll have to refer to our data sheets. Whatever information we reveal is in our data sheet. We don't reveal everything, so I can't give you all the numbers, but whatever we reveal is in our data sheet, which is on infoedge.in. Just take a look at that.
Got it. Thank you.
Next question is from Anmol Garg from Motilal Oswal. Anmol, go ahead and ask your question.
Yeah. Hi, Hitesh. Just wanted to get some sense that, are we planning to increase our advertisement expense into Jeevansathi, and also, are we planning to do any kind of advertising in 99acres as well?
Jeevansathi ad spend, we've already upped substantially. Compared to Q1, we spent a lot more in Q2. We'll continue to be aggressive in Q3 as well. I can't give you the exact number for Jeevansathi in the foreseeable future. The market has also become a lot more competitive. Our competition is also spending a lot more than they were spending earlier. We really have no choice. That's Jeevansathi. 99acres, wait and watch. We have upped our ad spend slightly over last quarter in Q3. We are waiting to see how the market evolves. If competitor ad spending increases in the real estate business, then of course we'll be forced to up our ad spend as well.
Okay, sir. Hitesh, I just wanted to get some outlook on some of the new initiatives within the recruitment portal that you have started off, like BigShyft, and is there any potential in the blue-collar job market?
These are just startups [audio distortion] type of companies. We're experimenting, [audio distortion] and we're few areas. BigShyft, still very tiny. We have a few customers now, and we are making some sort of revenue, but still very early days. Blue-collar, we are test marketing in Delhi right now, the NCR region. We're making good progress. We've got some traction. We've got listing. We will expand here. These are sort of long-term for the blue-collar job board to contribute to revenue in the later term.
Okay. Sure. Just lastly, just for bookkeeping, can you repeat the EBITDA of Shiksha? I missed that. Thanks. [Non-English content]
Vivek, do you have it with you? Can you just give it out?
Yeah. It was INR 90 lakhs for the quarter.
Okay, thanks.
Next question is from Alankar Garude from Macquarie. Please go ahead and ask your question, Alankar.
Yes. Thank you for the opportunity. My first question is, can you comment about the M&A activity in each of our four key verticals? For example, there was a deal a couple of weeks back for one of our real estate peers. Are there any acquisition opportunities which are likely to come out about for us over the next few quarters in any of these four verticals?
See, we are constantly evaluating companies. In the last quarter alone, we must have looked at about five or six sort of deals which have come our way. We've said no to most of them. I can't comment on the deals. We have a team in-house, and we are continuously looking for opportunities to both invest in startups and also acquire companies in all the verticals we operate in. So far we haven't, but yes, are we talking to lots of companies? Are we evaluating lots of companies? Yes, we are.
Okay. Hitesh, when you say five, six deals, that would be across these four verticals, only the key verticals or any of the startups as well, includes the startups as well?
No. The startups, that's a separate activity. That's through the Info Edge sort of venture fund. That's separate. They probably look at hundreds of companies every quarter. I'm referring to the spaces we are already in.
Fair enough.
In which we have-
Okay. Yeah.
Sorry, go ahead.
Next question is from Aditya Badami from Carrhae Capital. Aditya, go ahead and ask your question.
No, I was referring to the spaces we have. [Non-English content]
Hello.
Yeah. Aditya, go ahead and ask your question.
Sorry, I think I was unmuted. Good evening. I just wanted to talk about Zomato. Sanjeev last quarter mentioned that half the restaurants may not survive through this year because of COVID. Today you mentioned that Zomato's unit economics are improving. I just want to know, is it being driven by better revenue or has their cost rationalization-
No, I don't think I could have said half of the restaurants will not survive. I probably said it is possible that half of the restaurant that are still shut may not survive.
Yeah. Sorry, yeah.
Look, some restaurants closed down. Exact number, I do not know. The delivery part of the business is doing well. It's not yet come back to pre-COVID levels, but it should come back to pre-COVID levels pretty soon. This, we're talking about revenue for Zomato and not GMV and not volume. Right. Zomato unit economics have changed since COVID. They are charging a delivery charge. They're giving lower discounts, therefore, their revenue per order has gone up, and the average order value has also gone up as a consequence. Therefore, on revenue, they are almost back to pre-COVID levels. In a couple of months, they should exceed it. Does that answer your question?
Yeah, that does. Thanks a lot. Thank you.
Next question is from Utkarsh Solapurwala from Damos Capital. Utkarsh, go ahead and ask your question.
First one is on USTRAA. Marico recently acquired Beardo in July 2020.
I can't hear your question, please. Can you come close to the mic?
Marico recently acquired Beardo. And Beardo is the competitor for USTRAA. When I compare the financials, Beardo is doing much better as compared to USTRAA. Will USTRAA be able to compete with Beardo once Marico integrates the business and starts to grow the Beardo business?
Obviously, Marico is a large company, and they have muscle and distribution, all that, and therefore it's a significant competitor. USTRAA also sells direct to consumers. USTRAA has raised money from IIFL, we've announced that. Beardo sells to salon chains a large part of their output. Of course, Marico could extend it to consumers. It's a slightly different strategy, and it's not a winner-take-all market. As long as USTRAA achieves its goals and numbers, we think it's all right.
Second question is on ShopKirana. Companies are trying out different logistic methods to reach out customers during the lockdowns. How has been the performance of ShopKirana in last six months?
Shop Kirana exceeded pre-COVID levels within two, three months of the lockdown because it's an essential item. I think there was initially a physical disruption because their delivery vans would not go out, but that lasted about 15, 20 days or so. After that, they were able to manage. It's doing rather well in the cities that it's operating. They've also launched their own house brands in a couple of categories, which are also getting some traction. Look, Shop Kirana is doing well, but it's still doing experiments with its own house brand, with a few tweaks to business models here and there. Let's see what happens.
Thank you, sir.
Vijit, you want to discuss again? Vijit Jain from Citi.
Yeah. Hi. Thank you. Thank you for the opportunity. Sir, I had two questions. One on Zomato. I think you answered it partly, but I was just curious, when you say unit economics are improving, do you believe that they would be able to achieve similar GMV levels as pre-COVID in the next year with these kinds of unit economics that they have?
Pre-COVID revenue levels, I said on the food delivery part, which is the bigger part, which is the essential part, it should be back in a month or two.
Thank you. My second question was, among the other investments you guys have, just wanted to know your thoughts on categories like, you have a few in B2B, e-commerce, you have a few software.
B2B e-commerce, what do you mean? Which investment?
Sorry. ShoeKonnect would be B2B.
Correct. Again, ShoeKonnect is doing rather well. It has got investment from two other marquee investors. We've participated along with the other early investor. I think that company is showing great traction, great growth, and has now got access to great capital. It's back to pre-COVID levels.
How about Gramophone? My question actually was, as a category, you have three or four of these. You have Gramophone, ShoeKonnect, and you also have.
No, Gramophone is not B2C. Gramophone is B2C unless they take a farm as a business, which is quite possible, say, I think
Good.
Go ahead. Yeah.
My question was among these broader categories, right? Okay, if I just simplify that further to e-commerce, B2B or B2C, wherever you are present, and some of these software- as- service businesses that you're present in. Just wondering what your thoughts are on how these things have shaped up post-COVID, how the landscape for these businesses have changed post-COVID.
Look, we don't bother so much about the landscape and the environment as we bother about the performance of our companies, each specific company. I'm quite pleased to say that almost all of our companies have coped quite well with the COVID crisis. Whether it's Shipsy, whether it's Gramophone, whether it's Bijnis or ShoeKonnect, whether it is ShopKirana, whether it's NoPaperForms . They have all coped very well with COVID, which was actually something we were quite worried about the first month or two. I think the management team did really good. We are fortunate to have invested behind some really good operators.
Thank you so much. Yeah, that was my main question.
One or two of them have got COVID also and have recovered.
Okay.
It's not just the company. Even they have coped with COVID.
Okay. Thank you so much.
Anmol Garg from Motilal Oswal, you want to discuss again? You had discussed earlier also.
No, I think all my questions are answered.
Okay. Thank you so much. The next question is from Sudheer Guntupalli. Sudheer, go ahead and ask your question.
Hi. Thanks for the opportunity. Hitesh, as you alluded to in one of your earlier comments, attrition rates across the industry seem to be inching up gradually, and multiple industries have also been talking about bottlenecks in terms of availability of the talent or manpower. In the equation, demand actually seems to be there, but still there is a huge gap in our monetizability on a year-on-year basis or even compared to pre-COVID levels. Do you think maybe relooking at our pricing or marketing strategy on the Naukri segment, at least for a limited period of time, may help us in bridging the gap in monetizability?
Our product team is continuously looking at ways and means to get more traffic into our monetization on the platform. What we don't want to do is. This is a difficult time for our customers. We want to be as supportive as possible. What we are trying to, of course, do is create more value for them. If we create more value, I'm sure they'll be happy to pay us more. That's what our focus will be going forward.
Sure. Secondly, on Jeevansathi, looks like we had run multiple flash sales during the quarter, offering up to 70%-80% discounts on the subscription packages. Just trying to understand the rationale here. Matrimony looks like a segment which anyways is witnessing some shift from physical to digital in the current COVID context. Just curious on how you see the sustainability of this, let's say, aggressive pricing or marketing strategy, especially given the fact the churn of the customers in this segment is relatively higher.
This is something we've been doing for the last two, three years, and it's not just us now, everybody else is also doing the same thing, whether it's Shaadi or Matrimony. We of course, started doing it because we wanted more and more paid customers on our platform. We wanted them to spend. We were number three player in the market. In some ways, we were a challenger. This was our strategy to get more and more people to use us and to become paid customers. Because many of these customers would have otherwise gone and paid competition because we were a weak player at that time. This worked for us. We were able to grow our volumes by over 200%-300% over the last two or three years, and that's got the platform to a certain level.
Is it sustainable in the long run? Clearly, a three-player market where players are competing aggressively with each other on customer acquisition and also trying to outdo each other on pricing is not sustainable for a very long time. That's what it is right now.
Sure, Hitesh. That's helpful. Thanks, and all the best.
Utkarsh from Damos Capital. You want to discuss again, Utkarsh?
No, all my questions have been answered.
Okay. Your hand was raised actually. Okay. Thank you. Next question is from Jaipal Reddy. Jaipal, go ahead and ask your question. He is an individual investor .
Yeah, thanks for the opportunity. I have two questions, actually. The first question is about from our industry companies, right now we see Zomato and PolicyBazaar are a very big fish. What is your next good call that you have taken, which is emerging, that we can count on in the next few years or few quarters?
Sorry, could you repeat that question? Your voice is very soft.
Yeah. Right now from our industry companies, we see Zomato and Policybazaar are made out to be very good calls. What is the next one we can count on to be?
No, look, the others are much earlier, much smaller, but many of them have received external validation by external investment from marquee investors.
Okay.
USTRAA has got investment from Wipro Consumer, it's got investment from IIFL. Likewise, Bijnis with ShoeKonnect has got investment from two marquee investors, apart from another external investor. Gramophone has got enough inbound interest. Nothing announced yet. Shipsy has got, again, nothing announced yet, but enough inbound interest. A lot of them have got validation or getting validation in the processes, and it'll be announced by- and- by as these companies raise money. Yes, it will become as valuable as Policybazaar or Zomato will take some time.
Great.
There are five or six which we are hopeful of.
Okay.
We hope all of them make it to that level.
Okay.
We know that it'll be very fortunate if all of them make it. Even if two, three of them make it to that level, I think we are doing very well.
Great. Yeah. Good to hear.
It will take time.
Of course. Great. I understood. My next question is about, there is a lot of uncertainty right now in the market, right, in terms of a lot of small business payers were suffering from a lot of losses and all. What is your CSR activity that you are doing from last six months? Did we change our CSR activity? At the end of the day, we also need to be safe, right? Did we do any investments and contribution to our society?
Yes, we have. I'll leave it to Chintan to talk about it. Chintan, are you willing to talk about it, or Murli, are you? We have reoriented at least a significant chunk of our CSR budget. We have had several projects related to CSR. This is at a corporate level. At a personal level also, the founders, the management is also doing philanthropy to support people in times of COVID. Zomato has done a lot. Zomato has launched a Feeding India program where they fed a large number of people during lockdown. Chintan, you want to talk about what we've done?
Yeah. No, I think that's correct. I just add one point that, yes, we are continuing to support the organizations which we were in the past supporting because there is a kind of a sort of expectations. Those organizations also kind of were dependent in some ways on our contribution. We have continued that. We have not diverted them, but we have generated additional funds from the company, from the employees, and we have also focused on very specific initiatives around COVID and helping them out. We are far more holistic in our approach. We are adding our contribution to COVID on medical sides, but we are continuing to support the existing contributions as well.
Great to hear that, yeah.
Thanks, Chintan. Next question is from Pooja Ahuja. Mutes, sir. Pooja, go ahead and ask your question.
Yes, sir. I just had one question. With Zomato's IPO coming up maybe next year, do we intend to pair some of our stocks, or will we hold on to our stake in the company?
Look, we are not in any hurry to sort of sell anything. We have the ability to stay on for a long time because we are not running a fund where we have to return somebody else's money at a finite period of time. We see substantial value creation going forward. Having said that, look, never say never. There is no pressure on us to sell. Let me just elaborate on that. You see, the challenge in India is that early-stage investments take a long time to create value. You've got to be patient because strategic sales are not happening in a hurry at valuations that will give VC investors any joy if you leave out Flipkart, right? Another black swan. Now, IPOs take a long time to happen, right?
If Zomato and Policybazaar IPO in the next two years or three years, or next year even, they've taken 11 and 13 years to have gone from inception to IPO, or first round to IPO, right? Most VC funds are eight-year funds with two-year extensions. Really to get exits, you have to be very patient. We have been in Zomato for 10 years. We have been in Policybazaar for 12 years. A lot of the value creation has happened in the last two years. If you were to exit and not benefit from value creation. To really make money in India, you have to be very patient and stay for a long time. That's fine.
Got it. That's it for now.
Next question is from Swapnil from JM Financial. Swapnil, go ahead and ask your question.
Thanks for the opportunity, sir. My question is regarding the employee cost. Have you started hiring again, and have the appraisals which were postponed, been taken? Your comment on incentive as well. That would help.
Yeah. We started replacing people in a lot of businesses. Some parts of the company, like the newer businesses we are in, like Job Hai and BigShyft, we are hiring a few people as well. We had put salary increases on hold for the first six months. We are revisiting that right now as we speak. We had put bonuses on hold. We are likely to sort of roll out bonuses in this quarter to our employees for last year.
But I think normally we will do sort of more of these things.
Are the incentives back or like, because I think incentives are different than bonuses, right?
Yeah. Our sales team is on incentives, and we have a monthly incentive plan and a quarterly plan. They were never withdrawn. It's just that the payout sort of reduced because the sales guys were not able to meet their targets in the first quarter and the last quarter of last year. Q2, we had reasonable quarters, so many sales guys made their incentives. Incentive payout also increased substantially in Q2. I'm hoping that people meet their targets and therefore earn their incentives going forward as well.
Okay. Thank you.
Next question is from Dheeresh. Dheeresh, go ahead and ask your question.
Am I audible?
Yeah. Please go ahead.
Yeah. For September, Naukri, you said billing collection, billing was down 10%. For October, what is it?
Normally we don't give out the quarter numbers before. Let me put it this way, that things are sort of [audio distortion].
Sorry, Hitesh, you're not audible.
Hitesh, we can't hear you.
That's why. October is very small-
Hitesh, you want to switch off the video?
You want to switch off your video.
Okay. Can you hear me now?
I can hear you much better.
Much better.
I can see you clearly.
It is very clear.
Yeah. Sorry. See, October is the first month of the quarter. The first month of the quarter is not a very large month for us. A lot of our renewals are due at quarter end, and that's when we end up collecting a lot of money. Also, last year, Diwali was in October. This year, Diwali is in November. The numbers are not strictly comparable, but we are happy with what we saw in October.
Is it better than September? Because it'll be like to like, right? October versus last year October, right?
Yeah, like I said, it's not strictly comparable because see, Diwali was in October last year. This year, November, right? Hard to draw sort of inferences from it.
For real estate, you did not give September collection exit rate.
We did not, but I'm sure it was higher than the quarter average, for sure. Even October was a reasonably good month for real estate. Again, it's not strictly comparable because Diwali was in October last year. This year it's in November.
Mm-hmm. This new home construction activity, which you said, because of the customer preference is down right now. How much does that contribute in a pre-COVID environment? How much was it contributing to revenue?
See, new homes are a very large part of our business. Within new homes, there is a category called new launches. New launches are basically projects which are launched. I mean, construction is about to start, right? Therefore, the project will become available to live in, maybe, or the property will become available to live in three or four years later. A significant proportion of new home revenue comes from new launches. New launches have actually been impacted the most over the last few months.
Yeah. That is like what? Was it 30% of total 99acres revenue? 40%? How much was it? Just a range would also do.
New home revenue is significant. New home as a whole is significant, about, I think 60% of our total revenue, if not more. 60%-65%. Of that, new launches, I don't have the exact number right now, but would be maybe 30%-40%.
Okay. Understood.
What is the total cash now on the-
On the balance sheet?
Yeah.
Okay. Vivek, do you have the number with you? It's INR 3,300 something crores, in that league.
Yeah. INR 3,323 crores. Yeah.
At the time of the QIP, it was sounding as if some M&A transaction is very nearby. Has that phase gone for whatever reason it is? Has it gone away and now nothing is immediately on the table? It's like that?
No. Like I said earlier, see, we keep talking to companies, and we've been talking to some companies for a very long time. Some companies have recently come. Sometimes, we don't like what they see, sometimes they don't like what we offer. We keep talking, and we've been talking to companies in the matrimonial space. We've been talking to companies in the real estate space. We've been talking to companies in the education space, job space, in all the sectors we are in, and even related sectors. Nothing has materialized till now. I mean, for a deal to happen, two parties have to agree, and that's not happened till now, unfortunately.
Okay. All right. Thank you. Diwali wishes to the team. Thank you.
Thank you.
Next question is from Aatman Ajmera. Aatman, go ahead and ask your question.
Hi. Good evening, gents. Can you hear me?
Yeah. Please go ahead.
A bit of a big picture question from my side and slightly linked to the previous question. Given your size and the liquidity in the balance sheet, you're often seen as the one to be consolidating, as a consolidator of the industry, be it real estate or matrimony. My question is, do you see a scenario where perhaps MagicBricks and Housing sort of merge together? A, do you think that is a likely event? B, what is the consequence for 99acres if that were to happen? Can you sort of combat a merged Housing and MagicBricks?
Yeah. See, everything is possible. I mean, Housing is a number three player in the market. They could merge with MagicBricks, though I think what has happened there is that REA has upped their stake significantly, and they now are majority owners of Housing. Can we compete with the MagicBricks plus Housing sort of combination? Of course, we can. In the past also, we've had CommonFloor, we've had IndiaProperty, we've had a bunch of other players in the market. Our sense is that unless and until the merged company sort of brings a strong value in some form to the table. If they are strong in some market and you are strong in some other market, and therefore the combination is stronger, then it's a different ball game. If they have something which you don't have, some technology, some product, some customer base. Mergers create value.
If it's just a number one company or a number two company acquiring number three company, at least we believe that those mergers won't create a lot of value.
The previous examples you mentioned, they were fragments, right? They were sub 10% traffic share. Number two and three, they sort of have in the 20s, right? Even if they might not have sort of synergies or source, it's just a mere traffic. Is that a big deterrent for you?
We don't think so because we believe it makes much more sense to invest in unless they are complementary, like I said, in different brands and they sort of operate in different segments or different markets. In my view, it makes a lot more sense to strengthen one brand and strengthen the user experience of that brand than have a multi-brand strategy.
Got it. That's all from me, actually. Thank you.
Pooja Ahuja had raised her hand again. Pooja, you want to discuss again? Are you there, Pooja? Maybe. Okay, the next question is from Sagar Goel. Sagar Goel can ask their question.
Sir. Hi. Hello, sir. Am I audible?
Yeah.
Yeah, please go ahead.
Could you just explain on Zomato and Policybazaar IPO timelines? Second question is, could you explain on the Info Edge venture side, what is the fund strategy and what sort of deals are you looking and what sectors? Thanks.
Yeah.
One second. Go ahead, Sanjeev.
No, what is the first question?
IPO timeline.
Yeah. Why don't you handle the IPO question?
Yeah. Look, I know that there are news reports around Policybazaar as well as Zomato intending to do IPO. Yes, that's true in a sense that companies have been preparing themselves. To do an IPO, it's a kind of long journey, and you need to really prepare yourself. From the point where you are just a startup to the point where you kind of make your company ready for IPO, it's quite a long journey. Both the companies are preparing themselves for that journey. They are making their companies ready for it. There is definitely an intention behind it. When will it happen? I think that's a question that is a little premature to respond to that. We'll see.
Right now, the focus is on make the company ready for an IPO so that if we finally decide and if we finally say that, yes, everything is right for us to do IPO, we will go ahead with that. Right now, it's just about preparing the company for it.
The strategy for the Info Edge Ventures, it's the same as earlier. We are focusing on the same areas. We are growing in the same scale of companies. Nothing changes, it's just that we have housed it in the AIF.
Okay. Thank you.
That was the last question we had. In case of any more questions, we will wait for some time. Okay. There are no more questions here. Please go ahead.
On behalf of Info Edge India Limited, we conclude this conference. Thank you. Wishing you and your family a very happy Diwali, and you may now disconnect the call. Thank you.
Thank you, guys. Happy Diwali.
Thank you. Happy Diwali. Bye