Hi, everyone. Good evening, and welcome to Info Edge (India) Limited Q2 results conference call. As a reminder, all participants' 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 assistance during the conference call, please raise your hand on your screen. Please note that this conference is being recorded. From the management side, we have Mr. Sanjeev Bikhchandani, promoter 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 some risks and uncertainties. Kindly refer to slide number two of the investor presentation for detailed disclaimer.
The audited financial statement and other schedules on segmental billing, revenue, transcript, et cetera, along with data sheet, have been uploaded on our website, www.infoedge.in. Now I would like to hand over the conference to Mr. Hitesh Oberoi for his opening remarks. Thank you, and over to you, Hitesh.
Yeah. Thank you, Vivek, and good evening, everyone, and welcome to our Q2 2024 earnings call. As always, we will start with an update on standalone financials, then cover segmental financials, along with the business commentary in each business, and then we'll have time for Q&A. Starting with standalone financials for the quarter and for the first half of 2024. On an overall basis, revenues registered moderate growth, while billings, which are a lead indicator, have grown slower in lows, in low single digits as compared to the same period in the previous year. Revenue for the second quarter of FY 2024 was at INR 593 crore, a year-on-year growth of 11.5%.
For the first half of FY 2024, revenue was at INR 1,177.3 crores, a year-on-year growth of 13.3%. Billings for the second quarter of FY 2024 were at INR 569 crores, a Y-O-Y growth of 4.8%. For the first half of FY 2024, billings were at INR 1,092.1 crores, a Y-O-Y growth of 2.3%. If we include acquired businesses, Zwayam and DoSelect for the quarter in the standalone operating results, INR 604.9 crores respectively, a year-on-year growth of 3.8% and 10.1%.
For the first half of FY 2024, billings, including the acquired businesses as Zwayam and DoSelect, were at INR 1,120 crores, a year-on-year growth of 2.1%, and revenues stood at INR 1,204.9 crores, a year-on-year Y-O-Y growth of 12.6%. Because of a disciplined approach to marketing spending, the operating expenses have remained in line with the growth in billings. For the quarter, the operating expenses were at INR 374.2 crores, a Y-O-Y growth of 4.1%. For the first half of FY 2024, operating expenses were at INR 749.5 crores, a Y-O-Y growth of 4.9%.
Operating profit for Q2 was at INR 218.9 crore, an increase of 26.8% as compared to the same period the previous year. For the first half of FY 2024, the operating profit grew 31.7% year-on-year to INR 427.8 crore from INR 324.8 crore reported last year. Operating profit margin for the quarter was at 36.9%, compared to 32.4%, a 450 basis points rise as compared to the same period of the previous year. For H1 2024, the operating profit margin is at 36%, compared to 31%, a jump of 500 basis points. Profit before tax for Q2 stood at INR 277.4 crore, a Y-O-Y growth of 24.7%.
For H1 2024, profit before tax stood at INR 544.1 crores, a Y-O-Y growth of 30.6%. EPS for the quarter was at INR 16.12, a Y-O-Y growth of 24.1%. For H1 2024, EPS stood at INR 31.55, a Y-O-Y growth of 29%. Cash from operations for the quarter was INR 250 crores compared to INR 219 crores in Q2 of 2023, a Y-O-Y growth of 13.9%. For H1 2024, cash generated from operations was at INR 394.7 crores, a Y-O-Y growth of 2.8%. Deferred sales revenue at the end of Q2 was INR 936.2 crores versus INR 840.9 crores as of September 30, 2022, a Y-O-Y growth of 11.3%.
Cash balance of Info Edge, including the wholly owned subsidiary, stands at INR 3,649 crores as of thirtieth September 2023. It was at INR 3,250 crores as of thirtieth September 2022. Headcount as of thirtieth September is 5,594, up from 5,282 as of September thirtieth, 2022. Now, let me walk you through the segmental results in a little more detail. Starting with the recruitment solutions business. The continued softness in tech hiring was partially moderated by reasonable growth on the non-IT hiring front. For the second quarter of FY 2024, the recruitment solutions segment revenue were INR 456 crores, a Y-O-Y growth of 9.1%, and billings were at INR 431 crores, a Y-O-Y growth of 1.4%.
For the first half of FY 2024, the revenue, revenue was, INR 924 crores, a Y-O-Y growth of 12.1%, and billings were at INR 28.9 crores, a decline of 1.4% compared to first half of FY 2023. The quarterly operating profit, was at 270.1 crores, a Y-O-Y growth of 8.8%, and the operating margins were almost steady at 59.2%. For H1 2024, operating profit was at 533.6 crores, a Y-O-Y growth of 12.7%, and operating margins remained steady at 59.1%.Cash from operations for the recruitment solution business during the quarter was INR 267.9 crores, down from 280.4 crores for Q2 of 2023.
The business generated INR 474 crores of cash from operations in H1 of 2024, down from INR 515.8 crores generated in H1 of 2023. Revenue for Naukri India was INR 396.4 crores, a growth of 7.7% year-on-year. However, billings for Naukri India for the quarter were steady at INR 370.6 crores. The billings for Naukri India for the first half of FY 2024 were INR 716.6 crores, a decline of 3.5% compared to last year. Recruitment segment billings, including acquired businesses, Zwayam and DoSelect for the quarter, were INR 444 point- 443.3 crores. For the first half of FY 2024, Naukri India billings, including acquired businesses, DoSelect and Zwayam, were 856.8 crores.
The Naukri JobSpeak for the month of September was up 6.3% sequentially, but down 8.6% year-on-year. We witnessed a slight recovery in client retention, renewals, and new customer acquisition in the quarter. However, our IT customer and consultants business continued to be slow due to declining attrition and slow business growth in this space. Hiring in healthcare, infrastructure, transport, and real estate sectors showed better performance during the quarter. Billing growth in the non-IT segments was in double digits. The billing growth from strategic businesses like iimj obs, DoSelect, et cetera, was also reasonably encouraging during the quarter. Job seeker engagement with the platform was intact, with 9% growth in active users, 495,000 daily modifications, and 58,000 Android app installs per day.
Monthly active users attained a new high with more than 10 million monthly active users on the, on the average in Q2 2024. Average monthly job applies were also at an all-time high during the quarter. Our blue collar job platform, Job Hai, reported 27% growth of user traffic and 41% growth in job seeker registration sequentially over last quarter. We continue to make investments in platforms like Job Hai, AmbitionBox, and areas like data science and machine learning in Naukri. Moving over to the 99acres segment or to the real estate segment. Growth momentum continued in new home, both new home and secondary sales, across the country in Q2. Despite increased property prices, end user demand was reasonably robust, and we expect this trend to continue at least for some more time.
Billings maintained growth trend—billings growth trend continued this quarter. Billings were up 22% year-on-year and stood at INR 92.2 crores, while revenue grew from INR 69.7 crores in Q2 of 2023 to INR 87.3 crores in Q2 of 2024, a Y-O-Y growth of 25.2%. For H1 2024, billings were at INR 165.6 crores, a Y-O-Y growth of 21.1%, while revenues were INR 169.9 crores, a Y-O-Y growth of 24.9%. The operating loss for the quarter was INR 16.5 crores against a loss of INR 32.4 crores reported last year. For H1 2024, operating loss in 99acres was INR 39 crores against a loss of INR 70.4 crores in H1 of 2023.
The 99acres business reported a cash inflow from operations of INR 5.2 crores for the quarter, against a cash loss of INR 19.1 crores in the same quarter of the previous year. The cash loss from operations for, in the first half of FY 2024 was INR 35.3 crores, down by 46%, vis-a-vis a cash loss of INR 65.8 crores in the first half of last year. Growth in Q2 billing was led, primarily led by increased broker and owner spending on the platform. The platform also increased in, also witnessed an increase in the number of new projects and broker listings and, in the resale and rental categories.
The user activity on the platform also is on an increasing trend, with traffic numbers up 24% Y-O-Y and 13% quarter-over-quarter. The app daily active user base also grew by 33% year-over-year in Q2 and 13% sequentially. Overall responses from the platform also grew 28% year-over-year in Q2, supported by a healthy demand environment and improved customer experience. The business continues to sort of deploy more machine learning algorithms to improve the platform experience; it continues to focus on improving data quality and creating differentiated content and reducing spam on the platform.
In the education business, Shiksha, Q2 billings were INR 25.7 crore, a Y-O-Y growth of 3.7%, while revenue was INR 30 crore, a Y-O-Y growth of 15.9%. For H1 2024, billings were INR 59 crore, a Y-O-Y growth of 7%, while revenues were INR 65.9 crore, a Y-O-Y growth of 15.2%. The business incurred an operating loss of INR 2.75 crore during the quarter, against a loss of INR 2.8 crore in Q2 of last year. For H1 2024, the business reported an operating loss of INR 3.7 crore against a profit of INR 2.5 crore in H1 of last year.
The cash loss from operations for the quarter were INR 5.6 crores against a loss of INR 1.77 crores in Q2 of last year. For H1 2024, cash loss from operations were INR 5.3 crores. Hiring slowdown, delayed joining dates, and few companies missing out on campus placements has impacted student sentiments. While traffic and student responses on the platform maintained reasonable momentum, domestic clients reported a decline in conversions of student inquiries into applications and admissions. Despite the current phase of low growth, the study abroad business continues to be a business with commitment, which we are focused on, for the long term. We will keep working on strengthening our platform and our ability to deliver counseling services to more students in the study abroad business.
Moving on to the matrimony business, Jeevansathi, we continued with our strategy to gain traffic share through our free chat offering, and we worked hard and we worked on launching new products to monetize our traffic growth. The new products launched in the last few quarters are now helping us grow our business a little faster. We are trying to basically monetize the traffic a little better. Billings in Q2 grew by 16.7% year-on-year to INR 19.7 crores, and revenue grew by 8.6% year-on-year to INR 19.7 crores. For H1 2024, billings were INR 38.5 crores, a growth of 11.5% year-on-year, while revenues are INR 39 crores, a decline of 4.8% from H1 of last year.
Operating losses for the quarter were INR 17.5 crores, against a loss of INR 27.6 crores in Q2 of last year. Operating loss for H1 2024 was INR 35.6 crores, against an operating loss of INR 56.3 crores in H1 of last year. Cash loss from operations for the quarter was INR 14.4 crores, against a cash loss of INR 29.8 crores in Q2 of last year. Cash loss from H for H1 is down 55.4% and stood at INR 35.5 crores. Marketing spends in Jeevansathi were down 39.1% year-on-year and 6.1% sequentially. Moving on to the consolidated financials.
At the consolidated level, the net sales of the company stood at INR 36,625.8 crores, versus INR 604.1 crores last year. For the consolidated entity at the total comprehensive income level, there is a income of INR 3,399.4 crores, versus a loss of INR 470.7 crores for the corresponding quarter last year. Adjusted for the exceptional items, PBT stood at INR 262.3 crores in Q2 versus a profit of INR 148.7 crores in Q2 of last year. Thank you, 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 question, may raise your hand on the screen. We'll take your name and announce your turn in the question queue.
Thanks, Vivek. So the first question is from Vivek, from Ambit Capital. Vivek, go ahead and ask your question.
Thank you for giving me this opportunity. First question is, if you could give us a bit more color on the IT versus non-IT billing for the quarter, a broad sense of the decline on IT, and perhaps, a bit more color than double-digit growth on the non-IT would, would help us understand better. Second question, that I have is, your, JobsSpeak index, the IT services job postings have been declining since January. But basis your past commentary, recruitment billing from IT customers declined only from the June quarter. Why is that so? Is that because of long duration nature of contracts? Here, if you can give us some direction on the, duration of contracts, three, six, 12 months. The reason for this question is mainly to correlate JobsSpeak data with billing trends. Last one is on the, non-IT side.
To me it appears that the number of branches that Naukri has increased in the recent months. So what kind of response are you getting on the non-IT side? Are you signing up more customers? And is that helping you service non-IT customers better through these branch expansions? Any color on how to look at the sustainability of non-IT growth and the investments needed? That would be very helpful. Thank you so much.
Yeah, at a very macro level, about half our business comes from IT companies or recruitment firms which work with IT companies. Or maybe 55% of our business is IT or IT related, so to speak, and about 45% is non-IT related. Now, you know, overall, our billing growth was flattish for the recruitment business as a whole. And, you know, the non-IT business, you know, it's not as if we are able to do a 100% job of, you know, sort of segmenting our business between IT and non-IT, because there are lots of small customers, we don't really know what percentage of their hiring is IT hiring.
But from what we can tell, you know, as far as we can tell, our non-IT business continued to grow in double digits, so maybe about 14%-16% growth in that range. While our non-IT business must have declined by a similar amount for billings to have remained flattish. Now, because, you know, we are seeing growth in non-IT and, I mean, within non-IT, there are some sectors that are doing quite well, there are others that are not doing as well. We are investing more on the non-IT side of the business right now, so to speak, which means ...
What we are seeing in non-IT is a lot more growth in small towns than was the case a few years ago. Which is why the focus on sort of opening new branches. The focus, our non-IT customers are not as internet savvy sometimes as our IT customers, and therefore it makes sense to reach them face-to-face, makes sense to sort of make sales calls on them physically, especially in small towns. So you will see us opening more branches, going forward. We've already opened a few. In the markets we already operate, also, we need to improve our coverage, go after the smaller customers a little more than we have been going, than we've been doing in the past.
Also, you know, for a long time because of COVID, you know, a lot of our sales guys were operating from home, and now is the time and therefore, you know, our customer interactions were fewer. I think this is the time to sort of go all out and meet customers face-to-face. So we'll be focusing a lot more on that, going forward. As far as, you know, correlation with JobSpeak is concerned, see, JobSpeak is index of job listings mostly. And we are now trying to incorporate Resdex activity, which is our database hiring activity into JobSpeak. But you must understand that 70%-75% of our revenue is from the database, and that's the primary source of hiring for a lot of companies.
A lot of these companies also post jobs. So, I mean, there is correlation between JobSpeak and billing growth. It's not like a one-to-one correlation because a lot of the hiring happens through the database offering as well. Was I able to answer all your queries?
Yes, just one follow-up. And thank you so much for the explanation on the non-IT side, helps us understand the strategy better. As far as the IT billing is concerned, just wanted to get your sense on how much longer you think the slowdown is likely to last. And given that material percentage of your billing, recruitment billing comes from the fourth quarter, is there a real risk that the billing trends in that quarter might reflect some of the pain that the IT companies are facing, and perhaps some of that has not yet manifested in your numbers? Is that a sense you are getting, or am I just reading the situation very wrongly?
Well, genuine answer is we don't know when IT is going to recover. As of now, we are not seeing any recovery on the ground. So things are like they were three months ago. Not much has changed over the last three months. Anecdotally, all I can tell you is that a lot of companies are going slow. They are, you know, they perhaps overhired, you know, last year, and they're slowly getting rid of the additional headcount on their roles. Now, once they get rid of the additional headcount, you know, and a lot of them are actually postponing campus hiring. They're not going to campus to hire this year, so they're not going to build a bench.
Now, once they get rid of the additional extra headcount, and if demand comes back, then of course, IT hiring will come back, and it may come back with a bang, who knows? But when will that happen is hard for us to say, right? Now, from our standpoint, you know, You're right, our Q4 is our biggest quarter. But things have started slowing down by Q4 last year, right? So it's not as if we had a fantastic Q4 last year. We saw growth in Q4 last year, but it was tepid compared to the growth we saw in Q1, Q2, and Q3. So the base is high, and but things had already started slowing down a little bit by Q4 of last year.
So the base effect will not be as pronounced as it was perhaps in the first and second quarter of this year. But like I said, we don't know, I mean, how this is going to pan out. Time will tell. In the past, of course, we've seen recovery, you know, slowdowns have seldom lasted for more than four quarters. And, you know, business has bounced back spectacularly after every slowdown, but, you know, each time is different. I don't know what's going to happen this time around. Hard for us to say.
Thank you so much for the elaborate explanation.
Thank you, Vivek. The next question is from Nikhil. Nikhil, go ahead and ask your question.
Hey, hi. Thanks for the opportunity. Hitesh, my first question is on recruitment business, only basically what Vivek asked, just continuing that. Basically, you delivered positive revenue growth on YY basis, and that happened despite of we are seeing at least top 10 IT companies reporting headcount declines similar to last quarter, and even JobSpeak is, like, down about 8%-9% on YY. So what I want to understand is, is there is some element of, let's say, even on Q and Q basis, IT headwinds are a bit relatively lower, or maybe non-IT is delivering much more better than, let's say, last quarter's growth?
So, non-IT, like I said, you know, certain sectors continue to sort of hire aggressively, and we can see that. I mean, so our IT markets are hit a lot more than our non-IT markets. Sectors like banking, financial services, insurance, travel, tourism, hospitality, construction, real estate, et cetera, they continue to sort of hire a lot of people. So that's the good news. And on the IT side also, why, you know, we are, what we are sensing, what we are seeing on our platform is that salaries have gone up. So the kind of people which are being hired through the platform are perhaps their salary level is about 10% or 15% higher than what it was last year, right?
Maybe there's a lot less entry-level hiring happening, but there is a little more experience hire happening. We haven't gone into the details, but so there's some more, you know, so while volumes have actually gone down a little more, because that's what you're perhaps seeing in JobSpeak, salary levels have gone up. So that still helps us realize, you know, more value from our customers when we negotiate with them. But it's not as if we are seeing any major sort of recovery on the ground on IT as yet.
Sure, Hitesh. Second thing, again, what we are seeing on IT services company, what you mentioned also that initially they hired, or maybe overhired. There as well, the utilization has started to increase, right? And, the headcount, count, you must all aware that it has declined quite a bit. And what even Chintan mentioned during, CNBC interview, that, we expect second half to be better than first half, and even, you know, some benefit from the base effect as well. So is it fair to say, let's say, not recovery, but at least attrition backfilling, part can start, maybe, a quarter or two? Is it what you're saying?
See, attrition rates start going up at IT companies.
Yeah.
You know, that is a good sign for us, for our business. So attrition rates have corrected significantly from 22% or whatever they were last year, same time. I know now they're down to 13% or 12%, 13% levels for many companies. A lot of companies are not replacing the people who are leaving, so because they had overhired, like I said. Many are postponing campus hiring. So if for some reason the market comes back and they haven't hired from campus, then they will be forced to do a lot of lateral hiring. So now I don't know. See, we work with a few thousand, you know, companies in the IT space, and, big and small, all types.
Some companies, but in some clients, we manage to still get upgrades, so it's not as if all the companies are badly hit. It's not as if every IT company is struggling. Some companies are, have actually paid us a lot more than what they paid us last year at renewal time. But overall, the mood is, is, what it is. And, it's, I don't know, yeah, whether it'll take them three months to get rid of the bench or another six months to get rid of the bench. It'll depend on what policies they adopt. You're right. Once they get rid of the bench, and once they, you know, sort of then they will be at least forced to backfill, they'll be at least forced to people, replace the people who start leaving.
If the market starts to look up, then attrition rates will also go up. If they haven't hired from campus, then they'll be forced to hire just in time, which is good for our business. Hitesh, just, last one from my side. Last time you mentioned about how the July went, lower than expected. Any comment on how October shaped up? How was the last month, basically some queuing up for the quarter three?
I would not read too much into October, for the simple reason that, you know, what happens in October and November depends a lot on when Diwali is, right?
Okay.
This year, Diwali is a little delayed.
Sure. Sure. That's it from my side, thank you.
Thanks, Nikhil. Vivek is again there, so Vivek, you have a follow-up question? Go ahead and ask your question.
Anand, maybe you can let other people in. I can come back later also, no problem. But since you gave me the chance, I wanted to double-click on the Naukri India billing trend versus the overall recruitment trend. Hitesh, did I hear it correctly that the Naukri India billing was INR 387.2 crore this quarter?
Just one second here. Naukri India, billing for the quarter?
Yes.
It was INR 370.6.
Yeah, that's correct. INR 370.6.
Okay, so Naukri India has done better than overall recruitment. Okay, got it. So I just wanted to understand-
No, not really. That's not true. On Naukri India, where. Did I say that?
No. So.
Last year it was INR 356.2 crore billing, right?
Uh, Vivek-
Same quarter.
Vivek, I'll speak to you offline. It includes IM Jobs also now, since the business has gotten solid.
Oh, I see. Okay. Okay. Yeah, that's the clarification I needed. I'll, I'll circle back with you offline.
Sure. Sure.
Thank you.
The next question is from Srinath from Bellwether Capital. Srinath, go ahead and ask your question.
Hi, guys, I'm just out, so may have some disturbance. So, wanted to understand, in the JobSpeak index, there's a particular segment called recruiters, and that number has come off significantly, you know, almost going back to COVID lows. Is that a data anomaly, or are we seeing third-party recruiters significantly come off their, you know, services? Because they may be the variable part for IT hiring, in that sense. So any views on why that number has come off significantly?
Yeah, yeah. So if you're referring to recruitment firms, the recruitment firms are the ones who are hit first when there is a slowdown. So, you know, it's very likely that business from jobs posted by recruitment firms and business from recruitment firms is down a lot because of what we are seeing in IT. A lot of these recruitment firms actually hire for IT companies, as you know.
Got it. Got it. So it's a real reading that recruitment firms are down 70%, 60%, 70% in terms of business activity?
We'll have to look at the exact numbers and confirm to you, but if the report says recruitment firms, then yeah.
Okay. Got it. Sanjeev, I just wanted to, you know, have some understanding from you. The listed technology companies have been, you know, the consumer tech, neo-tech companies have pivoted towards profitability and, you know, that, and there's been a significant improvement in contribution margin across the board. You know, how does this, you know, change the whole unlisted space where we largely operate in? Are you seeing a cultural shift in promoters towards unit economics, and ability to control expenses?
That's been going on for a year now, maybe exactly more than a year, where everybody has been told by their investors, and they realize themselves that, listen, the party is over. You've got to move to profit, and if you can't, you're in trouble, unless you're very well-funded and have a lot of money in the bank, in which case you just postpone the trouble.
Y ou ultimately have to get a profit.
Is this trend happening across sizes, even in, in, you know, companies which are, say, in the seventh, eighth year of their journey?
Yes.
While what we see is in the more 10+ year of their journey.
Everybody is conscious of the fact that money is less likely to be as easily available as it was earlier. Therefore, you've got to manage what you have, and maybe you can raise some, but you can raise some on the back of very good performance.
Got it. Got it. And I would wanted to also understand opportunities in Deep Tech. You had mentioned in an earlier call that you were running some pilots, and especially with, you know, Generative AI coming in, so on and so forth, and, and this being a kind of large opportunity where we could have-
Are you talking about pilots on within the company? That Hitesh should answer? Answer.
No, no. You, you had spoken about making investments in the deep tech space.
Yeah, yeah. So we have, and we keep on evaluating companies, and we've got a separate fund, which is for Deep Tech AI, tech-ish kind of investments, and we invest from there. But the truth also is in our other fund, you know, almost every company now has a flavor of AI. So, you know, there's a bit of AI going on everywhere.
But as such, do you think, you know, India or the founders that you're meeting have had kind of the ability or, you know, the product range to start a company where you basically are multinational from day one? You are having a, you know, unlike most of the, you know, more mature tech companies, again, on the listed space, are very India-centric. But could this be a much more global kind of space in Deep Tech?
So in theory, yes. In actual practice, getting revenue and business and customers from overseas is not easy, especially from the developed markets of Europe and U.S. So that's not easy. So many people try, but it takes a long, long time to succeed to get business. So, you know, I always believe it's useful to have a home base where you have a home market, and that's large enough to sustain you, and, and then you can foray overseas if you wish.
Got it. Got it.
But look, I mean, there are companies trying. Some will succeed.
Got it. Got it. Thanks a lot. I'll get back into the question queue.
Thanks, Sridhar. The next question is from Abhisek Banerjee, from ICICI Securities. Abhisek, go ahead and ask your question.
Hi, thanks for the opportunity. My first question is with regards to 99acres. The reduction in losses seems to have been actually higher than the improvement in revenue on a quarter-to-quarter basis. So, what exactly is happening there? Are we really looking at, say, breakeven here in the next two to three quarters?
So, see, the business has been executing well for the last 5-7 quarters now. The market has also been very supportive. We have managed to keep our costs in control, and we have managed to up our revenue significantly over last year. We are working on a lot of interesting new initiatives now. At the same time, you know, the space is hard. There is a lot of competition. It's not a dominant player. 99acres is not a dominant player like Naukri is, as yet. So, you know, so we don't have a target to breakeven inside the company, but we are basically just doing what we think makes sense. We are focused on executing.
You know, we've identified five, six areas where we think there is scope to execute better, and that's what the team is focusing on right now. If we actually, you know, start feeling that we are doing well and there is a lot of potential in the market, then we would actually like to spend more money in this space to gain share. But we're going step by step, and, let's see what happens. So there's no target to breakeven, but if we continue to do well and the market is supportive, then we would actually want to invest a little more in this vertical going forward.
Understood. But, that, that investment might not necessarily be at the cost of an EBITDA breakeven, right? You could be at the margin of breakeven and then, push incremental, investments into, growth.
Yeah, it'll depend, it will depend on whether we're able to get top-line growth as well. So if we are able to grow our top line by, let's say, 25%-30%, going forward also. Then, you know, there's a very high probability that we might sort of do well in the second half. But that's gonna be a function of our top-line growth more than anything else. We are very clear that we have to make certain investments and we don't want to slow down on that front. We don't want to cut corners there. And if market continues to be supportive and if our sales execution continues to be like it's been for the last few quarters, and we are able to get 25%-27% growth, then we should broadly be okay.
Understood. Understood. In terms of the consolidated numbers, the employee expenses have gone down on a year-over-year basis. What would be the reason for that? I mean, the standalone has gone up, but overall, the employee expenses have gone down.
So last year, it included the 4B Networks also. This year it is not because we fully paid on the numbers.
Okay, just, just that, right? And in terms of the portfolio companies that we have right now, any update on any one or two companies which you could call out, which you are seeing right at an inflection point as of now?
No, there's no announcement to be made here. We continue to work with companies and they progress by and by. There's nothing that's really breaking out and becoming a rocket ship finally.
Okay, fair enough. Thanks.
Thanks, Abhisek. The next question is from Vijit Jain from Citi. Vijit, go ahead and ask your question.
Thank you, Anand. My question is on the recruitment business: Have GCC hiring trends been more steady through this calendar year versus last year? And if you could give a broad sense of, you know, what GCCs or Global Capability Centers of global companies, their share is in your overall recruitment business. A broad sense there would be helpful. And overall, how do you see that? Does the divergence continue? Do they continue to be steady, if they are in fact steady?
See, while we work with a lot of GCCs, our sense of the GCC space right now is, and we've only started recently deep diving into this data. The bigger GCCs are also impacted. So there are all kinds of GCCs in this country. There are GCCs which employ 25 people, and there are others which employ 25,000. So the bigger ones have also been impacted by this slowdown to some extent. On the whole, GCCs are perhaps less impacted than Indian IT services companies, and maybe the smaller GCCs are not at all impacted because they are still growing. The bigger ones are impacted more than the smaller ones. How big are they as far as our business goes? Maybe they are... I don't have the exact numbers.
We, we need to do a better job of our categorizations internally, but I suspect they may not be more than, you know, maybe, I mean, I don't have the exact number. I don't want to sort of hazard a guess, but maybe in the 15%-20% of all IT hiring right now. But we'll have to get back to you with the exact, exact numbers. But for that, we need to do a better job of categorizing them internally. What I'm
Just giving you a sense of what I think is
No, that's helpful, Hitesh. Thank you so much. That was my question.
Yeah.
Yeah. Thanks, Vijit. The next question is from Pankaj, from Renaissance Investment. Pankaj, go ahead and ask your question.
Yeah, hi. My question, Sanjeev, is in both 99acres and Jeevansathi, we've been active in terms of investing now for quite some time. Clearly, meaning there is competitive intensity in the marketplace, unlike, as I think Hitesh was alluding to in the previous question, we don't have dominance there versus what we have in Naukri. So, this is obviously delaying the path to profitability. And probably some of those competitors have learned their lessons, right? Meaning last time, TimesJobs probably did not do as great a job in execution, but they've learned their lessons. They're resourceful. So how does this whole play out, meaning, and how does one think about both these investments?
I understand that you will keep executing and, but if none of the players want to relent, then, meaning how does this whole shape up from a, you know, business perspective in terms of cash flows, profitability for all the players for that matter?
You want to know about 99acres and Jeevansathi, right?
Yeah, that's right.
So I think Hitesh is best positioned to answer that. Hitesh, you want to take that?
I guess the question is not, is about, you know, if, if I understood it correctly, what you're saying is these are two, three-player markets and, you know, the players have all learned, and they may not. They are also executing as well as perhaps we are executing, and therefore, how will it all end, right? I mean, is that?
Yeah. Yeah, exactly.
How will any player, how will any one player get to a dominant position?
Yeah, which looks unlikely. So, and we've been investing in these businesses for now quite some time. So how does one think about these businesses now?
Yeah. Firstly, I think we must differentiate between the two verticals. In Jeevansathi, we are actually the number three player and, you know, while in the real estate business, we think we are a number one player. So while we may not be dominant, we are a leader and, which is not the case in matrimony, right? In matrimony, we are the number three player. We may be the, you know, number two player in the Hindi belt and so on in some communities, but overall, we are a number three player. We are 1/4 the size, maybe. No, actually, not even 1/4. We are today, in terms of revenue, 1/6 the size of the number one player, maybe 1/5 the size of the number two player and so on.
So we are tiny in the grand scheme of things. What we tried to do was to disrupt the model. You know, we tried multiple things over the last few years, but every time we did something different, competition was able to catch up within a year or two. So last time around, we changed the model. We went freemium with chat being free. And again, let's see what happens. Now we are trying to cut burn and get to breakeven. Whether we'll get there in 6 months or 12, time will tell. So that's a very different situation.
And, but, but the goal there is to also try and get to breakeven or at least reduce the burn significantly over the next 6 to 12 months in, in Jeevansathi, and also try and get the revenue to grow because we went freemium and that resulted in a different revenue, but now we're trying to get to get our revenue to grow again. We have actually gained traffic share in the last, four quarters because we went freemium. So we are a strong player in the, in the segments we operate. We don't operate in the entire country, but where we operate, we are a strong player. How does it all end? In, in matrimony, hard to say.
It will all depend, you know, if, if, if you're able to get consolidation to happen, then of course, the economics of the, of the category will change. On the other hand, if it continues to be a small three-player market, and it continues to grow at the pace that it is growing, which is not a very high pace, and it's growing at 10% year-on-year as a category, then it's, you know, it's not going to be easy for anybody. Real estate is a very different ballgame. One, we are a leader in number one. Number two, the market is growing, it has started growing rapidly. It was down in the dumps for seven, eight years because of various things which happened to real estate.
But after a long time, real estate has bounced back and it's a large market. It's a much larger category than matrimony. Real competition in real estate is actually not the other portals, it's actually players like Facebook and Google, who get a large chunk of the real estate advertising spend. So if we get our products right, if we are able to execute well, we can actually, one, on the one hand, digital will take share away from offline, and two, we can, within digital, we can take share away from Facebook and Google if we execute well. So it's a much bigger opportunity. It's a category in which we are a leader. The last seven, eight years were very bad, but despite that, all the players grew.
So I think the real game in real estate is going to be over the next two, three years when. So if the market were to double, for example, over the next three years, and if some of, one of these players were, were to get their act together and move ahead, then, then the game can change. So it's not a stalemate as yet, it's still wide open, and the team which executes well, could still, sort of, surprise others. At the very minimum, you know, the category will grow handsomely over the next few years, unlike matrimony.
So then you think, Minnie, are you saying that real estate now, probably we should be on a path to breakeven and profitability, in respect to the market share?
Like I said, see, earlier on the call, see, we don't have a breakeven target. We have a few ideas we're working on. We are of co, we're trying to execute a lot better than we were executing earlier. For the last five, seven quarters, the market has been supportive and we've grown well. We managed to keep our costs under control. We would not want to lose share in this market, and if that requires us to invest more, in the short term, we, we are prepared to do that. We have a few interesting ideas, but the key is going to be the quality of the execution more than anything else. So, you know, if, if we are able to execute well and the market continues to grow rapidly, we may break even also. Who knows?
Let's see what happens.
Well, to some extent, also on ad, it may depend on competitive behavior, you know, of the spend.
Correct. So if you know, if everybody behaves rationally, then it's easier. But if we get a lot of... If competitive activity flares up, then, of course, we'll also be forced to respond.
Yeah, that's what the point is that, and as much as we are willing to relent, I think the competition is also unwilling to relent. So then, many, that's what we've seen, right? Over so many years. At the same size and scale of revenue, Naukri was far more profitable than where we are in real estate. So, you know, I understand-
That because, you know, I think it doesn't have the kind of market-leading share, traffic share, that Naukri had at that time, and it continues to have. So it's about market share also.
Yeah. Maybe. Okay, so let me put it the other way around. If one were to step back, namely, from a business perspective, which is the nonlinear growth opportunity in our from a business point of view across our strategic businesses or strategic investments, where is the nonlinear growth opportunity for a company like us?
Yeah, I don't think we have anything in our portfolio which can grow 100% year-on-year. We are not, you know, but can we? You know, once the recruitment market bounces back, once IT hiring comes back, can we? You know, and the Indian economy starts growing at 6-6.5%, can we aim to grow Naukri at more than 20% year-on-year? We can certainly aspire to do that. If the market in 99acres remains reasonably good, and if we execute well, can we aspire to grow 99acres at more than 25% per annum? We should attempt to do that. Jeevansathi, we had gone freemium, now we are trying to sort of monetize a little better.
Can we aim to grow the business at 20%, 25% year-on-year? We can aspire to that. Whether we'll be successful or not, time will tell, right? So I don't think we have anything in our portfolio which can grow at 100% year-on-year. But can we aim to, once the market sort of becomes a little normal, get back to, as a company, 20%+ revenue growth? I think we should try to do that.
Okay, thank you.
Right. Right. That, that's the range we operate. I mean, there's nothing. At the smaller. See, we have a lot of tiny businesses in the company, which we have seeded over the last few years, which can grow at 500% and... But, but that's a, they are tiny, yeah, so they don't really move the needle on the, on our INR 2,500 crore top line.
Oh, thank you. Thank you very much.
Thanks, Pankaj. The next question is from Aditya from UBS. Aditya, go ahead and ask your question.
Hi. Just a very quick question from my side. Just wanted to hear your thoughts on your stake in Zomato and Policybazaar. I mean, you said in the past that you have no plans to monetize as of now, but just wanted to understand your thought process on how you look at it. Do you think there's more value to be unlocked? Or what would you consider a trigger to kind of start thinking about trimming the stake there? Is it maybe some kind of consolidation opportunities in 99acres in real estate or in matrimony? Or do you think that you just need to hold on to a kind of unlock some more value in these two stakes. Thank you.
Sanjeev, you're on mute.
No. So the question is, when do you think we will be willing to trim some stake in Zomato and Policybazaar? As of now, you know, our thinking is that if we don't need the money and there's growth left in these two companies, we should hold on. So there's no answer to make them, but obviously this is, you know, it comes up every quarter in board meetings just as an update. But as of now, there are no plans.
Just to follow up, I know you mentioned that consolidation is probably the end game in some of these sectors. Are you seeing any signs or indication that that could happen kind of sooner than later? Or, it's still kind of uncertain as of now?
You're talking about real estate and,
Real estate and matrimony. Yeah.
Yes. Hitesh, you wanna answer that?
So real estate, like I said, see, the market has come back after many years, and I think everybody's going to take a shot at it for some time. Matrimony is a little more mature as a category, and players have been at it for a while, and as a category, you know, the category is not making a lot of money. So, you know, there's a higher probability of some consolidation in matrimony than real estate, at in the short term at least. But with these things, you never know, so you can never predict what's gonna happen.
Got it. Thank you.
Thanks, Aditya. Vivek is back with a follow-up question. Vivek, go ahead and ask them, ask your question from Ambit Capital.
Thank you so much. So, Sanjeev, it appears that the public market investors are getting interested in internet companies again, with the share prices of Zomato, Policybazaar, and even Mamaearth getting listed. Do you see any of your financial investees, especially names like Bijnis, Shipsy or ShopKirana, getting ready for a listing, say, in the medium term? So that's the first question. Second one is for Hitesh, on recruitment margins. So in the first half, despite revenue growth being only around 12%, the PBT margins have expanded, and this is quite at odds with your historic commentary that margins go down if revenue growth is less than 15%. And this year, you've also added branches. So just wanted to understand, is there any change in the new business investments?
I remember you mentioned last time, INR 25 crore per quarter being spent on projects that don't generate any revenue, like Job Hai and AmbitionBox.
Yes, Sanjeev, you want to answer your-
Yeah, the first thing, see, look, is it possible that somebody can go public in three to four years? Answer is yes. But how likely is it? I don't know, because it's still early days yet. Now, we are talking about. You know, we encourage companies to go public after they, especially in this environment, after they're profitable, after achieve a certain scale, and they still have enough growth left in them. So, it, these companies, the names you mentioned, are not yet profitable, and they're not of the size and scale where they go public. Can they get them three to four years? Maybe, but maybe not. We'll have to wait and watch.
See, you're right. You know, we continue to invest INR 20 -INR 25 crore a quarter in some of these verticals, Job Hai, you know, AmbitionBox, BigShyft, et cetera. And most of them are pre-revenue, or we don't actually expect to monetize them in the short term at least. Why have our margins gotten a little better? It's just that like some of our competitor, some of our clients, we've also perhaps, you know, had overhired last year, because attrition rates for, you know, for us were also very high and we were also, we also went all out to acquire talent at that time. And so we've been a little slow on hiring this year in such.
Okay, that's useful. Just one last comment, or rather, question from me on recruitment. There are still businesses where you don't hold a 100% stake, which are strategic in nature, like Coding Ninjas. And then there are a couple of them which, where you have 100% shareholding, like Zomato and DoSelect. So previously you had consolidated iimjobs and Hirist. Is there any plan to maybe integrate these two 100% owned companies into the standalone operations and get your salespeople to perhaps offer them to your clients? So that's one. And of course, if you could give us an update on where your thoughts are on Coding Ninjas, and how is that useful to your business?
Is there any change that has happened in the last quarter or so? Thank you.
So as far as DoSelect and Zomato go, operationally, they have been integrated. Now, from an accounting standpoint, for various reasons, we may still be, you know, reporting them separately. But operationally, Naukri team is fully involved, and they are working very closely with our both with our sales team and our engineering teams and our product teams. So, so that's done. As far as Coding Ninjas goes, of course, that's, you know, we are 51% shareholders, and but that company is run by the founding team. And there we have started integrating with Naukri, integrating some parts with Naukri, right? And early days, still, not much to report on that front. That is a start-up, and that company has a long way to go, and we would want the.
The founding team to run that operation for a long time. The pilots with Naukri started. We, you know, we've started seeding some content on Naukri. We're trying to get more leads of them through Naukri. Early days on that front, not much to report right now.
Okay, thank you, and all the best.
Thanks, Vivek. The next question is from Bhavik Mehta from JP Morgan. Bhavik, go ahead and ask your question.
Hi, this is Ankur. Hey, good evening. I think first question from my side is on the sequential momentum we've seen in billings and recruitment, right? So, could you elaborate, Hitesh, this trend, is it specific only in the non-IT segment, or did you also see IT, you know, begin to bottom out and sequentially grow, and how should we read that?
So see, I would not read too much in, you know, this 2%-3% whatever swing that you are seeing. See, IT hiring continues to be slow, and it's not easy to get upgrades from IT customers right now. And we are. In some cases, we've seen downgrades as well. The situation on the ground continues to be like it was three months ago. Not much to report on that front. Non-IT hiring continues to be reasonably solid. And, you know, it's of course not as hot as it was during the period of the great resignation and so on, but continues to be solid, at least in some sectors. Could things have bottomed out? I hope they have, but we will know only after a couple of months.
Okay, understood. In terms of the pricing, Hitesh, I mean, obviously you guys have taken some price increases, including because of adding functionality over the last two or three years. In customer conversation on an average, is that something that comes up, that people ask for pricing, you know, discounts, as opposed to bringing volumes on from a consumption perspective?
Actually, pricing, we've managed to, you know, you know. So basically what's happening is customer attrition rates have gone down. Companies, IT companies are hiring a lot less than they were hiring earlier. They are, they are not using the platform as much as they were using one year ago. Volumes have shrunk considerably, and that's really, you know. And therefore, you know, we are sort of, many of them are downgrading. That's, and the same is happening with recruitment firms, because a lot of these recruitment firms hire for IT companies. Pricing is not such a big challenge right now. It's just that, you know, demand has taken a big hit.
So when you say they are downgrading, they're reducing the number of, you know, seats that they can buy?
The number of CVs they view, the number of emails they send.
Sure.
You know.
Okay. And in terms of, you know, just kind of, kind of trying to understand, when you do see a beginning of a recovery, what will be the sign of that from your perspective? You, I mean, obviously, billing, but in the, within the billing side, will you start seeing more short-duration activity first? I mean, just looking at previous cycles. Or will you start seeing people looking for longer duration, accessing more seats? I mean, generally, what would be the type of sign we look for, number one?
Actually, even before billing, we'll see usage go up on the platform, right? And we track usage. So we'll see more jobs being posted. We'll see more CVs being viewed by companies. We'll see. So I mean, if that starts to happen, then we know that activity is beginning to, I mean, the same, you know, because it's an annual subscription, the company may renew one year later, six months later, et cetera.
Right. Right.
But if usage starts to go up, then that's a very good sign.
So the JobSpeak will indicate on that actually. That is on job listing activity.
Okay, so we keep tracking that. Okay, helpful.
Right.
Question is on the cost side as well. I mean, given the challenges and, you know, given a lot of global tech companies are also taking very seriously to think about how they drive efficiency within their platforms, how are you thinking about that? I know you mentioned attrition is going up, and you were sort of looking at that as well. So both maybe from a technology cost perspective, labor cost and P&P cost.
So how are we looking at our costs?
Yeah, your cost base and, you know, how are you thinking? Are you rethinking of, you know, the investments you made in the last two or three years, if, you know, this remains slow, let's say, for the next 12-18 months?
Well, there are some areas where we would not want to sort of cut corners. So, for example, we continue to invest very aggressively in our machine learning and AI capabilities across the company, okay? So that's not something we want to cut down on. You know, like I mentioned earlier, you know, we are seeing you know, opportunities in non-IT, so we want to expand the number of offices, hire some more salespeople both in Naukri and in 99acres. So we would not want to sort of. Unless, you know, demand slows down further, we would not want to sort of compromise on that. In other areas, we can get a little, perhaps get a little more efficient. So and, but, but it's not - we're not looking to lay off people.
You know, we, we think. See, we also have some attrition. What we will not do is, where we have some extra people, we will not backfill. You know, and we'll slow, we'll also go slow on campus hiring, you know, for, over the next, for the next few months, in areas like, engineering and, and QA. You know, we continue to invest in some of our newer verticals, like Job Hai, you know, they, they require investment. We are actually hiring as we speak in Job Hai. So some of these long-term investments, and which are more strategic in nature, we'll sort of not want to cut corners on.
Where there is scope for more efficiencies and, you know, where we think we can get higher productivity by organizing ourselves better or by focusing ourselves a little more on what matters in the short term, and by making our people more productive, there we'll do whatever we can without laying off people.
Understood. Quick question on real estate. How is the incremental competitive intensity moving, especially with respect to housing?
It's a competitive market. You know, everybody sees a big opportunity in the medium term in real estate. It's come back after a long time. Everybody's trying, we are also trying. But, I think if you ask me, I think it's a little more rational than it was last year. But you never know how things are going to play out going forward. I mean, some of these things can change at the drop of a hat.
Okay, understood. Thank you, Hitesh.
Thanks, Ankur. Just a small thing, system showed your name is Bhavik Mehta. So just, just to mention that. Yeah, thanks. And, Vivek, that's the last question we have.
Okay, thanks. Thanks, everyone. With this, we conclude the call. Thank you.
Sorry to interrupt. We had,
I think has a question. Maybe we can take this last one.
Came back, yeah. So, okay, , go ahead and ask your question.
Yeah, thank you for the opportunity. So just two quick questions. So in terms of the Naukri portal, I just wanted to understand, you know, what new developments or functionalities, or new features you have introduced, on the portal in, say, the last two quarters or so, or are you planning to make? And the other question is, you know, given the good amount of cash that we have on the balance sheet and the cash that we are generating every quarter, can we expect, you know, any meaningful change in the payout ratio going forward? Thank you. Sorry.
See, features on Naukri. There's a lot of stuff which we do at the back end, which you won't get to see. Like I said, we've been investing very aggressively in our machine learning capabilities. We've been working on our recommendation engines. We've been working on our search. We've introduced some branding products on the platform. You know, so we've made a lot of changes to the app. We are working on our content. We've done some integrations with Coding Ninjas. So there's a bunch of, a whole lot of things we've done and we are trying to now working on integrating FirstNaukri with Naukri. We've been working on Job Hai a lot. I mean, that platform is growing very rapidly.
We've integrated AmbitionBox very deeply with Naukri over the last, you know, year or so. So, I mean, a bunch of them. We can take this offline. I can take you through what we are doing, and what we are planning. Similarly, we've been working on, you know, high-end jobs and high as well. So yeah, I mean, we have a 300-strong team working, maybe even more, in Naukri, which is constantly. And there are long product pipeline, and there is something which goes live every week, or maybe a few things go live every week on Naukri.
Okay. And on the payout ratio?
Y ou want to take that?
Sorry, what is the question? Can you just repeat that?
No, sir. It's basically, we have a good amount of cash on the balance sheet, and, the business is also generating, you know, significant amounts of cash every quarter.
Yeah.
So going forward, can we expect any, you know, meaningful change in the payout ratio?
Yeah. Well, today we declared INR 10 dividend, interim dividend, which is in line with what we had done it in October last year. But it's a constant discussion on the board about, you know, what the cash requirements are and what should we do for the, for the long term. We also look at what the current cash position that we have, compare it against what the deferred revenue we have, which is almost like an advance received from customers. We also look at, you know, the next, you know, 12-15 months type of expenses. If something like, you know, like pandemic type of like an event happens. So we take all that into consideration, and we look at what cash, cash position we have.
As such, the dividend policy that we have is like, you know, 25%, 15%-40% of adjusted PAT, and that's what we follow as of now. But the policy also has certain, you know, possibilities that in certain situations we can do some special dividend. So we'll look into it on a quarter to quarter basis.
Okay. Thank you.
Thank you, .
I think that was the last question.
Yeah.
Thank you, everyone. With this, we conclude this conference.
Yeah.
Thank you, and wishing you all a very happy Diwali. You may disconnect your lines now.
Thank you, everyone, a very happy Diwali to all of you.
Thank you so much, everyone. Happy Diwali to all of you.