A very warm welcome to PB Fintech Limited earnings call, Q1, financial year 2024, 2025. Today, we have with us Mr. Yashish Dahiya, Chairman and CEO, PB Fintech; Mr. Alok Bansal, Executive Vice Chairman, PB Fintech; Mr. Sarbvir Singh, Joint Group CEO, PB Fintech; Mr. Naveen Kukreja, Co-founder and CEO, Paisabazaar; Mr. Mandeep Mehta, Group CFO, PB Fintech, and I am Rasleen. I hand over the call to Yashish for the initial address.
Thank you very much, Rasleen. As you were taking all our names, I was, I was in a jovial mood today, so I was just thinking, obviously, it's the same people. Nothing has changed. It's always the same Yashish, same Sarbvir, same Mandeep, same Naveen, and same Alok. But yeah, I think, I think it wasn't that funny. But anyway, so today we share our performance update for the quarter ended June 30, 2024. We are extremely thrilled with our health and life insurance business, which are a bulk of our long-term value, which are witnessing a combined growth of 78% year-on-year in new premium for Q1 financial year 2025. And I just wanted to pause at this moment and kind of give you a sense of the overall picture, right? I think every organization has a stage.
There is a growth stage, there's a maturity stage, and perhaps there is a death stage at some point. I believe we are, we are still in the very, very early days of our growth stage. Just to put in perspective, we haven't had growth like this in a very long time, and this is on the core business itself, right? So, and in anticipation of that growth, we have built up some additional capacity. So we, we probably overspent by about $3 million this quarter, in terms of actual operating capacity. But that's a sign of our confidence that, you know, we believe this growth could carry on. That's why we've done that. Of course, things might turn out different, but let's, let's hope for the best.
Our total insurance premium for the quarter was INR 4,871 crore. New core insurance premium grew at 66% for the quarter. Core insurance premium grew 46% for the quarter, with the core insurance revenues growing 40%. Credit linked revenue was INR 140 crore. I think the slight disappointment in this quarter compared to where we thought it would end up, we thought credit would end up somewhere between 0%-10%. That's what we mentioned, but it's actually below that. Yeah, so credit is at INR 130 crore, but it is at, you know, lower than zero for the year. It's about -8% or so.
That is something that we need to repair quite quickly. New initiatives grew 2.3 times, so new initiatives have really surprised on the positive. 2.3x growth, and I just wanted to kind of, again, lay the landscape out here. Last year, if you notice in the same quarter, we hadn't grown so much. What we had actually done, and what we explained at that time, was we had moved from large consolidators into smaller and smaller partners, and so we had gone more granular in terms of our distribution base. Now, of course, that granular distribution base is growing, and so it is now 2.3x, and what you would notice is the losses are actually lower than last year.
In terms of percentage, they were 31% last year, and today they are about -12%. So there is a significant improvement in terms of percentage of revenue. Our revenue for the quarter grew 52% year-on-year to just over INR 1,000 crore, and PAT improved to a profit of INR 60 crore. But once more, as I mentioned, we are in the growth phase. We are not trying to optimize profits. Again, as I clarified, this could have easily been INR 90 crore or so, but it is INR 60 crore, and that is the overinvestment in in operations. Our renewal trail revenue is at an ARR of INR 559 crore, up from INR 418 crore last year. This typically operates about 85% margin. Once more, don't worry about renewals at all.
They are in very good shape, and as the year progresses, you'll, you'll see that very clearly. In fact, they're the highest they've ever been. We continue to improve our customer onboarding and claims support services, and this is something we track very diligently. The insurance CSAT is now at 89.9%, and I'm really hoping we cross 90% soon. We were at 88% last time we reported, and we were 87%, I think, a few quarters ago. Credit business has seen moderation in growth. However, continues to be a bit positive, which it has been since December 2022. But we really need to think hard and figure out how we grow this business. Our total credit score consumer base is now at about 46 million consumers.
We continue to strengthen our leadership in new initiatives, as I said, you know, growth to 2.3x year-on-year 131% year-on-year, with adjusted EBITDA margin improving from -31% to -12%. PB Partners, our agent aggregation platform, continues to lead the market in scale and efficiency. And I think I would say, if I look at the last six months, that differentiation in scale growth and quality growth on competition versus PB Partners is now becoming strikingly clear, which is, you know, what we were trying to explain, I would say, in the last six-seven quarters. But that's now actually playing out. We have moved the business increasingly towards smaller and higher quality advisors and most diversified across different lines of business.
We are present in 18,000+ PIN codes covering over 95% of the country. This business really helps us, because if you notice, this is where a bulk of this business is still motor insurance and, you know, that, that kind of product, which our core business is increasing on the health and life side, whereas this business is really increasing on the motor side. Our UAE insurance premium have grown 64%. I must say, I'm very pleased with the way the UAE business is going. It is growing beautifully. It's a absolute B2C business, building a strong brand and, you know, vying for leadership in the UAE market. Our core health and life business are, as I said, we're. Yeah, so we are, we're happy to take questions now, yeah. Thank you.
Thank you, Yashish. We'll take the first question from Sachin Salgaonkar from Bank of America. Sachin, please unmute yourself.
Thanks, Rasleen.
Thank you.
Hi, management. Thank you for the opportunity. I have three questions. First, again, following up on Paisabazaar credit, it looks like the industry recovery towards unsecured is also slow. Any general thoughts in terms of how much time we could see from a recovery perspective or any plans to completely revisit what you are doing from a business perspective out here?
Hi, uh-
Hi.
Hi, Sachin, this is Naveen. Like you said, we are seeing industry moderation for the last few quarters, driven by the advisory from the regulator on the unsecured specifically, and also equally driven by the changes in the processes at an industry level to strengthen the overall ecosystem. Our sense right now is that, on an annual level, the growth will come back, but because, again, if you look at the fundamental level, you know, GDP growing at about 11% nominally, and retail credit growing a little higher, and within that, unsecured a little higher than secured because of NIMs and margins. The industry should get back to growth in H2, is our estimate, and hence we expect to resume our growth trajectory also in H2. We are meanwhile also strengthening our secured focus.
So we expect the secured business to outgrow or grow at a much faster pace than unsecured. And our long, longer term strategy is for the secured business to come to about half of our overall disbursements. Currently, stands at about 15%. That's, that's the... I think we are also evaluating a couple of other channels, like LSP, or distribution, but that's right now at an evaluation and building, background building stage.
Yes. Naveen, a quick follow-up to you. What's the right to win in the secured lending for you guys as a fintech? Because you end up competing with the traditional guys who have been in this space for many years.
Sure. So the rights to win would be similar, as it is in unsecured. What we offer is, you know, a transparent choice, options to consumers, and go over a period of time as we have developed the unsecured ecosystem. We go deeper than any other individual player, that can offer that, options to the consumers. So those parts will remain similar. What is different in secured is, of course, the last mile, fulfillment, which in unsecured is moving digitally, faster, in credit cards, followed by unsecured. And as Account Aggregator systems stabilizes, it is expected to move even more digital. In secured, the last mile continues to be offline, so we will build fulfillment capacity, and we are building, working on that for the last couple of quarters. And we'll start to see some results in Q2 and H2.
And that, I think, will be the differential in terms of our ability to fulfill. We already see good demand in secured. It's just that we were not able to fulfill that in a digital fashion, and the industry is not yet there, from a digital perspective, so we're building now the offline capacity.
And Sachin, to your first point, yes, with Naveen and the board, we are also rethinking, not rethinking our strategy, but we are, we're really trying to figure out how do we make this a more sticky business rather than only a unsecured credit platform. There is value as an unsecured platform, and that will continue to be there, but the unsecured, every few years, there is a big fluctuation in supply, and that makes it a little challenging at times. So I think, we are really thinking through what is the way there, whether secured is the way.
See, if you look at the European market, out there, secured is the largest part of what fintechs do from a lending perspective, so there is a value there. Remortgage market is largely on what you would, you know, you basically call fintechs. And so, that is a market you could be quite large in. But I would say maybe in the next quarter or two, you will have a lot more clarity on the direction of Paisabazaar. But our hope is we come out with a stronger direction compared to where we are right now.
Sachin, just to add one more point. Our credit score business continues to be super strong and is a way for consumers to experience our brand as a first, first kind of product that they invariably do. And that has, over a period of time, helped us build engagement and hence cross-sell and increase the lifetime value. We are working in the background on increasing the strengthening the engagement part by launching more personal finance products riding on account aggregator framework. Right now it's at a development stage, so hopefully I can share more details same time next quarter.
Absolutely. I think it's gonna be a data-led strategy one way or the other. I think that's where it'll play out.
... Thank you both. My second question is, just wanted to check if there is any one-offs in employee expense or ESOP, because that appears to have more on a QoQ basis out here.
In the operating cost, I explained, we have spent about $3 million. No, that is a tax cost, right? There's a tax cost. There was a GST cost of INR 25 crore, which we have paid, and that is a one-off.
Got it. And this came both in employee as well as ESOP, right?
Not in employee, not in ESOP. This is another expense.
This is another expenses. This would not be an employee or ESOP. This is an, this is another expenses. So, Sachin, very simply, on operating cost, I explained we have over-invested from a capacity point of view, so leave that out. In other costs, there is INR 25 crore, which, we have paid on account of, GST, and that is, what you are seeing. It's a one-off.
Got it. And last question, what I have is, regarding, you know, your perhaps, possibility of a shareholder returns. The way we look at it, your, your new initiative business are scaling, there's no big M&A which you guys are looking to do, and with the core business growing, clearly, you guys, will be generating a decent amount of cash going ahead. Plus, there's a good, cash on balance sheet. So you have any thoughts of, potential shareholder returns? Not immediately, but let's say 12-18 months down the line.
No, I think, as I said, that is something we're going to evaluate after, you know, after, I would say, March 2026 . It is, it is not on the cards anytime soon.
Got it. Thank you.
We are, we continue to, you know, invest, but you're absolutely right. Today, you know, the business does not. The current business clearly does not require the amount of capital we have on the books.
Thanks a lot.
Thank you, Sachin. We'll take the next question from Sachin Dixit, of JM Financial. Sachin, please unmute yourself.
Yeah, hi. Hi, Rasleen. Thanks for the opportunity, and congrats on a great quarter. My first question is that I am seeing some sort of a divergence between our take rates on insurance business versus the contribution margin that we are seeing in the existing business. So, ideally, like, if my understanding of commissions is right, then health and term as business mix grow, ideally, we should see a higher take rates happening, because I believe in the first year itself, both of these will be probably your top two sort of take rate categories. We are still seeing a decent dip on a YoY basis in terms of take rates. While on contribution margin, I do understand the logic that contribution margins can take a hit if health gains in mix in a particular quarter.
So, I do understand the dip there, but what is explaining the dip in take rates?
Yeah. So I think, Sachin, there are two points. The take rate is changing because of the mix towards savings products, because we sell a lot of ULIPs, and I'm sure you must have heard from all other industry players also, that right now, consumers want market link products, and that has always been our strategy. So I think because we sell more ULIPs, their take rate is lower, and hence, the overall take rate goes down. The contribution margin actually is just, you know, is around the same number, just off a little, and that is largely because of the Health Fresh business. When Health Fresh grows, the first cost is actually, we almost it comes at zero contribution, because we invest in the, in anticipation of the renewal trail revenue.
So because of that, whenever Health Fresh will grow strongly, you will find there will be a small impact on the contribution, and that's what it is. So that's why these two are slightly different. What you're calling divergence is because of this issue.
So health in term, continuing in the same take rates as before, there's nothing has changed. On savings, our take rate would have come down simply because the product mix has shifted much more towards ULIPs compared to how we were in the past. On the contribution side, health growth, which of course, is part of that health and life growth, and very similar numbers across both of them. Out there, you get a first year contribution, which is 0, right? Versus on average, what is about 40% or so. And so whatever is your delta in health growth versus your overall business, because the overall business growth would be lower than that, that has an impact. But in the take rates, there's nothing to worry about from any product category, except for savings, where the take rates are lower compared to last year.
It is because the savings is a big, is becoming a big category that will have an impact in the overall take rates.
No, understandable on that piece. Basically, what I was trying to refer to, that our new business in core has grown by 66% YoY. Health and life, as you have highlighted, have grown at 78%, so they have certainly gained in mix, which explains the contribution margin as you highlighted, like it's a zero contribution margin in year one in health, so that's why contribution dip. However, can you explain, like, how much is, have ULIPs grown by on a YoY basis?
I'll explain.
Have they really gained in mix? Because 66 was just-
I'll explain.
Yeah.
Suppose savings is, you know, 25% of our business, and in savings, let's say the margin has reduced by 15%. I'm just making up that number, right? I don't have the exact number. I could give you the exact number, or we can provide those. Then obviously, 25%, 15%, you will have an impact of about 4% coming down straight away, right? And you'll see that across the board. Because the savings margin has come down. It's not that the savings margin is lower than the rest. It is just the savings margin has come down from last year.
... I mean, I will probably take it offline, but my issue is that ideally, in business mix of health and life have grown and savings has actually declined in overall mix, even if margins have dipped slightly, health and margins, life should take care of that. Anyways, I'll move to second question. This is on, basically, do you have basically underwritten or sort of written off some investment in MyLoanCare Ventures? I know it's a small investment, but can you please highlight, like, what were the original expectations from this business?
So MyLoanCare was an investment that we had made. It was one of the original three investments that we made. If you think about it, we made one in YAP, one in Visit Health, and one in MyLoanCare. I think in hindsight, the mistake we made there was we took too much equity. We took a 70% stake, and I think that was a mistake. The sweet spot for us is not that. The sweet spot for us is really 20%-35%, because if you go beyond 50, the founder somehow believes that it's not their company anymore. And I don't want to delve into it, but it was more of a you know, essentially the founder saying, "It's your company, so you manage it." And the founder left.
So once the founders left, we don't run the company, because that was not our purpose for investing. Our purpose was we, we always wanted to be a founder-led company. I think that is really where our mistake was, that was where early learning was. I think in the future you should not see us making such an investment unless it's strategic for us in some way. We were a financial investor and, yeah, I think as a financial investor, you should not take such a large stake. I would just call it an early learning.
Sure. And what was the nature of business under MyLoanCare Ventures?
MyLoanCare was an NBFC and, you know, a tech-based NBFC, which was supposed to build its own business. And we, of course, had no intention of going on investing forever behind building a book. That was not our intention.
Got it.
Yeah.
Thanks.
Sure. Thank you.
Thank you, Sachin. We'll take the next question from Ashwin Mehta, Ambit. Ashwin, please unmute yourself.
Hi, thanks for the opportunity. So one question, Yashish, in terms of renewal ARR, there seems to be a dip this quarter, and even in terms of the Policybazaar business, it seems there's a slight reduction. So what is driving that reduction in terms of renewal ARR? This is the first time that we've seen something like that.
Yeah. So, Sarbvir can answer it in as much detail as required, but we obviously spent a huge amount of time on this. Our renewal rates at every level R1, R2, R3, everything is doing much better than before. R1, R2, R3 are first year renewal, second year renewal, third year renewals, renewals of multi-year policies, everything is doing much better than before. It is just our growth in health is really a 4-5 quarter phenomenon. And so what you are seeing is the impact of the slow growth 12 months ago or so. I don't even know whether I should say this, but I think this was the last quarter where you will see slow growth on the renewal side.
I think next quarter onwards, you should see pretty strong growth in renewals, and that is just a question of how they appear, right? There are two ways to think about it, right? There is multi-year policies, single year policies, there's a lot of complexity in it, and that's why I'm saying do not try to understand the renewal rate from outside in. It'll be a fairly complicated exercise. But the renewal rates themselves are very robust. And so what you should see for the year, because it's something we really, really know, for the year, we'll get about 45% or so. It is just the first quarter was about 34%. Next quarter will be 40-something %, and then it will be higher and higher. But it's just how it plays out.
Sarbvir, do you want to add anything specific there?
No, I think you covered it. The only thing I'll just say is that, you know, ARR is a moment in time. If you look at the rolling four quarter numbers, you'll find that as you would expect, they continue to grow. So they are on slide 12, and you can actually see the numbers over there. So ARR is just a moment in time and is a reflection of, as Yashish explained, somewhat slower growth last year. But as you look at the four quarter rolling average, you'll find that the growth is quite significant and will continue to strengthen, because our fresh business strengthened last year every quarter, from Q2, Q3, Q4.
See, at a very fundamental level, if there is ever a problem in renewals, you will definitely hear it from us. Like, right now, the renewals are in, like, superb shape. There's really no problem. And that is a very, very granular level. You are, of course, very welcome to get into that generality with Rasleen, but it's a complicated exercise, you know, and then one doesn't want to get into that level of explanation, that's all.
Sure. Thanks. Thanks, Yashish. So what you're saying is basically, you saw second half of the last year being pretty strong in terms of health, and that's continued-
Absolutely.
Ideally, as you go through the year, there should be an improvement. And my last question-
Let me put it very simply, right? I did not expect our fresh to be outgrowing our renewals. We are in a very lucky place that that's happening, right? If you ever spoke to me in the last three, four years, I always said, "Nobody can predict fresh growth, but renewal growth, we can predict very accurately," right? It's just we're in a very strange position where our fresh is growing at more than double the rate of our renewals, which is a very lucky place to be in at this scale.
Yeah. Yeah, got that. Understood. And just, if you can just remind me, I missed the, the part in terms of what's the credit-linked revenue this quarter?
INR 130 crore, yeah.
Okay. Thanks a lot, and all the best.
Thank you, Ashwin. We'll take the next question from Srinath, Bellwether Capital . Srinath, please unmute yourself.
Hi, Yashish. Just wanted you to spend some time on the savings business and the progress. You know, we set up the offline channel, and on top, you know, we are kind of under indexed on market share on the savings business. So how has it been progressing over an 8-month, 18-month period from a volume perspective, from a product mix perspective? You know, how successful has the you know, conversion to offline been from this product perspective? If you can you know, help us understand how this is progressing, that would be great.
Sarvbir, please.
Yeah, sure. So I think, I'll take it in two, three parts. One is the... As you said, we were under indexed on the savings side. Savings is a very large market, and I think if you see in the last, I would say four quarters, we have made significant progress. I think our market share has probably doubled. It was a very small number, so it was - it has doubled from there. And I would put it down to three things. One is, as you said, that we took an offline strategy in savings first. About two years ago, it was the first business to do that. So that first kick we got was from being able to have higher productivity and, output from the offline side.
The second productivity lever, which came last year or over the last 12 months, is our regional expansion. So when we went offline, we did two things. One is that we had feet on street, and we also set up centers. So we now have 12 centers all over the country, and these centers essentially have people who speak on the phone, but in the regional languages. So the language opportunity took a while to come through. The first year was, the productivity was not that great, but in the second year, the productivity has significantly improved to the extent that now our regional language capability, productivity is actually better than our Hindi productivity. That's also obviously because of the quality of leads, et cetera, that they, they are getting. But so what is happening is that two things kicked in, both the physical and then the regional side.
The third thing that has happened from a product mix perspective is that we always used to sell; we were always a ULIP shop. But we have a capital guarantee product as well, which we sell in the domestic market. NRI is largely pure ULIP. And I think one thing that we learned over this journey is that the customer who comes to Policybazaar is a more evolved customer. That person has a greater understanding of financial products, of insurance and interest in the matter, so you have to sell them the best products. And that's why if you see, today we are selling again some of the lowest cost ULIPs. In fact, many of the ULIPs that we sell are lower cost than mutual funds.
We are selling these, and I think our customers have come to appreciate the fact that we are offering very attractive products. Of course, the fact that the market is doing well is helping us. I think if you put these three points together, physical expansion, regional calling, and then the fact that we are selling even better products, I think has led to this, I would say, nominal growth over the last 12 months.
How would our market shares be trending in ULIP, Sarbvir, given that you know, the traditional savings product seems like much more push and customer unfriendly in that sense. So if you were to only look at ULIP, you know, how are market shares currently, and how has it progressed over again prior to 18 months? Any color you can share, that would be great.
Again, as I said, two things have happened: obviously ULIP sales have gone up and ULIP as a percentage of the industry has also gone up, right? If you see, the ULIP mix is at, probably at its highest, at least in the last four, five years. So I would say that we can sort of this, Rasleen can take you through the numbers in more granularity, but overall, I would say that our share of ULIP has gone up and ULIP share of the industry has gone up, which is leading to us, you know, doing much better on market share in the industry.
Sure, we'll catch Rasleen on that post. One question on health. Given that, you know, this is my rough estimate, that about maybe 15%-20% of retail claims at the hospital level should be coming from our customer base, can we directly engage with hospitals to provide some extra service or some value addition for our customer base? How are we looking at the fact that now we have gained some sort of scale economics from an administration point of view or a claims point of view? How can we leverage all this to, you know, do something better? Thank you.
So all, all I can say is, in the last six months, I have probably spent more than 50% of my time on that, me and Alok, on that particular problem and that particular matter, and we have also discussed at the board level. We are starting to develop a very clear path in the direction we are headed. Just give us maybe another quarter or so. I think we will have a very good solution out there, which will, you know, focus a lot more. See, at a very fundamental level, let me kind of say what I have to say, right? I think today's healthcare model is focused on revenue per bed. We believe the model of the future will be one that focuses on lifetime value of customer.
The lifetime value of the customer starts from the insurance premium that they pay, and the value you derive is that minus the total healthcare expenses that exist. Now, how that gets divvied up, what is for the distributor, what is for the insurance company, what's for the hospital, et cetera, et cetera, is a question mark for everybody. But I think, unless one develops that at some level, we will have a challenging time in the next 10, 15, 20 years. And that's why I said, you know, those are the kind of issues people like me really get paid to, you know, think about. And that's what we're spending time on. We've had some good discussions.
It's too premature to kind of get into what and how yet, but it would, it would, you know, our, our effort is to make the life of the consumer much easier. That's it. And, and you're right-
Thank you.
The scale does help.
Thanks, Yashish. I'll get back into the queue .
Thank you, Srinath. We'll take the next question from Dipanjan Ghosh, Citi. Dipanjan, please unmute yourself.
Hello. Good morning. Am I audible?
Yes, Dipanjan. Yes, Dipanjan.
Yes. So hi, good morning. Just a few questions from my side. You know, first, if I look at your contribution margin trajectory versus your EBITDA margin trajectory, there is a clear, difference. So just wanted to understand what sort of leverage benefits you're getting on, your overheads, ex of, business acquisition cost, because contribution margins are down, but, EBITDA is up. So definitely there is some, savings per scale, on maybe brand spends or other expenses, if you can give some color on that. The second question would be, in terms of your incremental investments in the hybrid strategy and also new initiatives, in terms of scaling up your feet on street or, the overall physical presence, how should one think about it?
Lastly, on PB Money and PB Rewards, you have mentioned some pilots that you'll be doing during the course of the year. If you can just elaborate on the strategy behind that, and will there be any cash burn going ahead? Lastly, two housekeeping questions. If you can give the retail health growth number for the quarter, and the second will be just on the renewal ratio follow-up. I would assume that in your core business, the renewal ratio is probably up YOY, but the renewal growth rate is just reflecting the trajectory of new business growth rate witnessed in the base quarter. Is the assumption correct?
Okay, let me try and go through those questions one by one. Of course, if our contribution margins are at about 40%, that will have an advantage. Our fixed costs are genuinely fixed, except for, yes, at times, we have to invest for growth. Now, what does growth investment imply, right? Let us say we are doing the health business, and we want to start a new focus on a segment. It could be any group, it could be various segments. For that, we would put together a team, and we would start growing it. And so there'll be initial investment in that. See, any team, any focus, what we have understood, it costs you INR 2 crore a year for that little segment focus team creation, right?
And then it takes you maybe a year to kind of break even on that. So there is a bit of cost that comes on the fixed side there. But other than that, our fixed costs are genuinely fixed, yeah. We will have standard increments at about 10, 12%. And I would even say, even when we start new businesses, we-- So the way we utilize our management is, most of the management is ready to think about new businesses, and-- or at least we have some proportion of our management that can think about new businesses. As we do new businesses, if you think about our POSP business, our corporate business, our UAE business, most of that has happened through internal management.
You know, I would say even if you think in the future, we are massaging internal management to be leveraged more and more for that. So I think, yes, the costs are genuinely fixed, and they will obviously grow much slower, so some benefit comes in from there. On the renewal part, I know everybody's having a difficult time trying to grasp why 34%, why not higher? For the year, we will be at between 45%-46%. Just for now, we don't give guidance, but on that thing, it is so precise, you can't really get it wrong too much. So leave it at that. Just wait out the year and let it play out. If you're really interested, spend an hour or two with Rasleen, but then get into the full depth, right?
Then actually get into what are multi-year policies, what are single year policies. And I don't even know if Rasleen wants to discuss that, but then get into all of that. But on everything, things are working well. That's one of our, you know, as the biggest source of long-term profits, you can imagine how much time we would spend if we thought something was actually wrong there. What were the other questions? Sorry.
Incremental investment in-
For incremental investment in POSP, et cetera, I think, we are, you know, we, we have said we will break even in a few years, and that is our plan. The management is going to be incentivized on the basis of profits, but with a 5-7-year time horizon. We don't expect investments to be higher, but listen, we're not going to shy away. As I've always said, there will be a time... We are here to do well in that category, right? We are very confident of the category. Whenever required, we will invest behind it. We will keep our options kind of, you know, open and close to our chest. PB Money, PB Rewards, Naveen, if you have any update on that?
So, like I mentioned in the earlier comment, we are thinking about strengthening the consumer engagement. We've done well in terms of credit engagement and credit management for customers, with 46 million consumers kind of taking their credit score, and then a lot of them using that to track their score, improving their credit score. We are extending the thinking on financial management, on the back of Account Aggregator framework. The idea would be to just simplify it for consumers, help them manage their money better, thereby increasing engagement. That pilot is expected to be launched in Q2. We do not expect any significant cost, if your question was around the cost side.
The PB reward was more around the loyalty and the customer lifetime value, and how do we drive, or give a higher incentive for consumers to come back to take the second or the third product, as and when they need it. So we're thinking through that, and I've mentioned, if you see the slide, that our pilot is expected to be in Q3, Q4. So again, no significant cost implication from this year perspective. We'll have more clarity, when we do the pilot versus the consumer response. But yeah, from a this year perspective, nothing significant from a cost perspective.
See, where do you spend money? You largely spend money either in, I'm saying, direct cost money or upfront money, branding or operating costs. Those are all within direct costs. When you are building a B2B business, you're unlikely to spend that much. And I say B2B because the core brand out there is Paisabazaar, and the core brand is built, and everything else is working in the background of that. So don't anticipate anything major on any of those add-on mechanisms. And we'll obviously give more clarity once we kind of get there. Also, on the operating costs, since you asked about, you know, field people and all. See, whether people are in the call center or whether people are in the field, it's absolutely fungible. So you'll be very surprised, it's not like people are only in the field.
Sometimes we have a mix where people will be in both the call center, and the same people will go out and have meetings. Sometimes we will have separate teams, one doing the calling and setting up appointments, another one doing the physical meetings. And somewhere we will have direct all the way to physical, and it would depend on location and, you know, terrain and various other things. And of course, as Sarbvir explained, there's a lot of sophistication going on in terms of which languages, et cetera, but that is all part of our direct costs of operations.
Right.
There is no separate investment going in any one of them. In which we overemphasize a bit.
Got it. Yes, sir, just on the retail health growth for the quarter.
There is no surprise. The 78% number is fairly indicative of both health and life. So there is not more than a 2% difference between one and the other.
Got it. Got it. Thank you and all the best.
Thank you.
Thank you, Dipanjan. We'll take the next question from Madhukar Ladha, Nuvama. Madhukar, please unmute yourself.
Hi, good morning. So, you know, I wanted to just clarify one thing. On the renewal premium growth, you mentioned that while for this quarter it's a little bit lower, but for the year, you're pretty confident that it'll grow at 45% year-over-year, and that is for the online business. Did I hear that correctly or, did-
Absolutely. No, no, you're absolutely right.
Okay, perfect. And then just moving on, you know, so if you, if you look at the retail health industry, that's growing, you know, closer to 20%, ballpark, but we are growing closer to 80%. Now, and we all know that the number of lives covered are not growing at that rapid a pace, so a lot of the business is churn, churn business, right? Now, I wanted to get a sense of in the new lives that we are getting, what percentage is churn? Second, if also, how much of this, you know, 80% growth is because of multi-year policies? And my guess is that multi-year policies will be more profitable right in the first year itself. Right?
So, then, you know, why is our core contribution margin not improving even more sharply? You know, so-
Let me clarify on the second part, Madhukar.
Yeah.
Our multi-year, this year, is lower than our multi-year in the previous years. So that is certainly not explaining growth. In fact, if anything, our growth is understated because of that. So I'm just clarifying that, because obviously that's something we would track. Churn as a percentage, and we clarified this in the past also, as part of our new business, is much lower than industry, somewhere between 50%-60% of where the industry is. I guess that, that kind of clarifies both points. Yes, we are growing. We are very happy about that, but that growth is, is as it is. If our multi-year was exactly the same as what it was 12 months ago, our growth would be higher, not lower. So yes, we are getting more single year policies than multi-year policies now.
In fact, if I could just add, there are two things that are playing out in health insurance, Madhukar. The affordability is becoming a bigger and bigger concern. So actually, a source of growth for us is the fact that we are able to sell, on monthly, quarterly, you know, modes as well. And-
...So it's not really the multi-year policies that are driving our growth, it is, I would actually say the reverse, that the monthly, quarterly modes are driving our growth. And the second thing that is happening is that we are a source for fresh lives in the industry, and that has always been our-- If you think about it, that's always been our story, that we are bringing fresh lives into the industry, and obviously, then, you know, companies can sell other products to them, et cetera, and of course, we can also do that. So I think that portability is not a driver of our growth. It is the fact that we are bringing fresh people, and like I said, part of it is affordability, and part of it is the products.
So if you look at the products that are available right now on the Policybazaar platform, almost, I would say, a significant portion of them are at an advantage versus the overall market. Because as a company, we are not really focused on ticket size. We are not trying to drive ticket size, attachment, et cetera. We are actually trying to sell core health insurance, and that, you know, while it may sound strange, is not necessarily every distributor's thought process. So I think that those are the kind of, I think, two, three points which you should keep in mind as you think about our growth.
Understood. And just a follow-up on the margins, so what will be, like, the margin differential between, like, a three-year health policy that you sell versus, you know, a one-year health policy? So, we know that, you know, the one-year policy is sort of negative contribution margin.
When you look at an NPV basis, they are the same. We, we internally, I know what we report as financial number, you know, obviously has to be financial, but what we internally look at is NPV accounting. They are exactly the same, whichever way you do it. So it, it actually doesn't matter any, either way. I, I, I know what you are saying, that, okay, from a cash flow perspective, maybe you make a little more money in the, in the three-year policy, so yes, you might make a margin on that compared to a fresh policy. That's okay. You know, that's something we don't think too hard about, yeah, quite honestly.
Fifty-five percent.
Yeah. So eventually, it's about building the renewal base, et cetera. So... But again, something that, you know, one can spend some time with Rasleen and try and understand a little more deeply if one is really interested in that. See, as shareholders, I would say shareholders should be invested in the end, interested in the NPV, which is where we guys are interested, right? Looking at just quarterly numbers may not be the best on that.
Sure. Sure. Thanks, thanks, and all the best ones. Thank you.
Thank you, Madhukar. We'll take the next question from Yash Gandhi, Stallion Asset. Yash, please unmute yourself.
Hi. Thank you for the opportunity. Am I audible?
Yes, Yash. Yes.
Thank you. So my first question is that, your total premium has grown 62%, you know, this quarter, but your revenue has grown less at 52%. So I just want to understand why is that the case? And, you know, ideally, would the revenue and premium grow in sync?
Longer term, you are right, premium and revenue would grow in sync. But as we explained in our savings business, the, you know, margins have- Sorry, the take rates have reduced in the last, 1 to 2 years, and that was as Sarbvir explained earlier, there were capital guarantee products, which were a significant proportion. They are reducing, and the ULIP part is growing, and the ULIP has lower take rates. And, you know, it, it's good you kind of mentioned it that way, assuming our product mix did not really change much, from 62 to 52. Actually, savings has grown, you know, fairly, fairly rapidly. But, that alone would not explain it. It is the decline in the savings, take rate, which would explain the 10 percentage gap that you're talking about.
So see, if you think about it, 1.6% sales to get 1.5x the revenue. So that is, on a percentage basis, a decline of about 7%. If savings was about 20-25% of our business, and that declined by 15%, that would pretty much kind of cover a bulk of the explanation.
Right. Right. So the percentage of savings you're saying has decreased, like, in terms of total mix?
No, the percentage of savings has not decreased.
Okay.
If anything, it has increased a bit, but that increase alone would not explain the shift. What would explain the shift is the decline in the margin of savings. See, savings might have been at a higher take rate earlier compared to where it is right now. It's at almost, you know, 60% of the take rate of the company.
Got it, sir. My second question is, you know, your health insurance premium has been very high, you know, this year than last year, but I just want to understand why the ARR in your renewal revenues, you know, it has reported a sequential drop. I'm sorry if this was clarified before, but I just want to understand that.
Sequence was in quarter-on-quarter?
Yeah, yeah.
See, look, the crazy thing is actually our, you know, insurance, premiums and revenue in Q4 and Q1 are very similar. That in the insurance industry is unheard of, yeah. Like, whose Q1 is going to be equal to their Q4? So I think the right number to look at, that's why we put it in the presentation, is the 12-month rolling number. That is the right way to look at it, because that takes care of seasonality. And then you see the actual growth quarter-over-quarter. It's like, yeah, it would be a bit unfair to compare, the period. Half the industry goes on holiday in Q1. So, you know, Q1 and Q4 comparison is a bit unfair.
Okay, got it. Thank you. That was it. Thanks.
Thank you, Yash. We'll take the next question from Shreya Shivani, CLSA. Shreya, please unmute yourself.
... Yeah, hi. Thank you for the opportunity. Okay, I have three questions. First is a data keeping question: Have you shared the premiums for POSP, Dubai, and corporate business for the quarter? And if you can share that, please. Second is on the health insurance industry. So this is more to do with the industry and how it could impact a distributor, such as yourself. So a lot of the manufacturers at different point in time, since the past two years, have been taking different price hike, and you did mention about the problem with the affordability in the business, affordability for the end customer.
So, what has been your experience with the customer behavior when such price hikes have come in, or will we start seeing this behavior change or any impact from that behavior only once the renewals from second quarter or third quarter starts kicking in for you guys? Do you expect the porting out. Like, the customer may still be on your website, but they may port out from one manufacturer to another manufacturer. Do you expect those trends to pick up, or any concerns if you have around that? And third is on your traditional saving products, which is par and non-par. If you can help us understand, have you had any discussion with insurers in change in commission structure or deferment of first year commission? Any color on that will be useful. Thank you.
So first of all, for your health keeping question, POSP is about thousand... Sorry, not health keeping, sorry.
Data keeping.
Data keeping. Health is so much in my mind these days.
Yeah, yeah, data.
Data keeping. POSP is INR 1,000 crore odd, Dubai is INR 213 crore, and corporate is about INR 272 crore, right? So that, let me get that out of the way.
Thanks.
Okay, so first of all, the price hikes that happened in the industry are actually something that happened about 15-20 months ago. We've now been through a reversal of that cycle, so that happened then. It is not as extreme right now as it was back then. And our renewal rates have held up. In fact, they are only improving. So we don't see that issue. As I explained, our porting is lower than the market. So how do I say it in the simplest form? We are the solution, we are not the problem, is one way I would leave it. And I think we have superior disclosures. We have enough data to kind of prove that. We have better sustained claims ratios, and we have better claims settlement rates.
So as I said, we are part of the solution, not part of the problem. There is another side of the problem, which is a fee for service model. I think that's unsustainable in any country, not just India. Wherever you look in the world, if you have a fee, you know, a fee, free flowing fee for service model for healthcare, essentially, every healthcare provider is looking at room rent per bed. And today, you are seeing people having INR 60,000, INR 66,000 room rent per bed. That, at a fundamental level, forget about insurance, forget about anybody.
Yeah.
Who is the average customer who's buying these insurance policies?
Yeah.
This person has an income of INR 6 lakhs to INR 10 lakh a year. That's the bulk of the people who buy these policies, right?
Mm.
How can a person like that afford to spend INR 60,000 on a, for a room rent? Whatever. It's impossible, right? So I think our healthcare facilities are really not taking care of that next 20%. It's not an insurance problem. This is-
Yeah, yeah.
There's nothing the insurance guys can do about it, right?
Correct, correct.
I think, that model needs to be fixed.
Mm.
We would, you know, try to figure out how we can play the most important part in that. I think that model does need to be fixed. What we need to do is, our healthcare today is for the top 4% of the population. We need to figure out how the next 20%, 25% of the population is going to be handled.
Mm.
Unless that is done, prices will keep going up year on year, because that's gonna be an issue.
Sorry, I-
Yeah, that is correct. Yeah.
Sorry, I just want to add some color. Pricing, you have to understand, over the last 4 years, 2 years, they didn't go up at all because of COVID.
Yeah.
After two years, we had one big sort of round, and then now it's much more normal, as Yashish explained.
Mm.
The reason we are able to handle these price hikes, and yes, they do play a part when they happen, especially when they are very high, is two things. One is that we are selling a lot of the products that are available on our platform, if you see. They are essentially modular products. There's a, a new design that over the last 15, 18 months, we have sort of worked with our partners to introduce. In these products, one of the features that they have is that the no-claim bonus cumulates very strongly from year to year to year. So there are some which are 5x over 4 years, there are 7x. Now, there are some which are even having unlimited, you know,
Mm.
sum insured. Now, when you have these kind of products, and when their renewal comes up, we actually find that the renewal rates are higher on an NPV basis than any other product. Because the customer, supposing you started with INR 10 lakh and now you're at INR 20 lakh or INR 25 lakh, your ability to change becomes much less, because the person who's going to sell you a fresh INR 25 lakh product will be much more expensive. So that is one way that we are handling this thing. And the second, which is, I think again, Yashish touched upon it-
Mm
... is the fact that when you are paying up for a product, you want to ensure that you'll get that service. So the promise that we have around claims, the fact that people are getting more and more confident in our ability to handle those, that claim, is also helping us on the renewal, on the renewal side.
Mm.
So I think these are some of the, right now, I would say, tangible things that we are bringing to the table on the health side.
That's, that's very useful, especially this, this product that you've spoken about, that you've partnered with your insurers. So the insurers are not offering it on any other distributor, or it's, it's very exclusive with Policybazaar? Is it like that?
...No, as you know, there are, you know, by regulation, there can be no exclusive products in the country.
Yeah, yeah. Correct. Correct.
These products are offered. The reason that I think we have an advantage on them is the fact that-
Mm.
because we have better disclosure, because we are able to price the customer better on our platform.
Mm.
It is more economical to offer these to our customers, versus others. But of course, you know-
Yeah.
Reinsurance companies are free to operate.
Shreya, Shreya, Shreya, what is a good quality distributor? A good quality distributor is somebody who wants to sell more consumer-centric products.
Yeah.
Which may, at times, have even lower take rates compared to other take rates.
Mm.
A good quality distributor is one who does decent disclosure of customers-
Mm
... compared to the rest of the market, so that companies really understand the risk at the point of inception and do not have to put in that effort at the point of claims.
Mm.
A good distributor will work with insurance companies and with its customers to create products that allow the customer to stay in the same product for a longer period of time.
Yeah.
A good distributor is not one who just keeps porting customers from left, right, center. Right?
Correct. True.
That's why I said we believe we are a good distributor. We have enough data to prove that. We believe on the claims side, we have now put in enough ability to really solve for claims. We are getting a lot of positive feedback for that from consumers. We believe that is one of the biggest reasons why our fresh growth is what it is. Nothing else explains it. Nothing has changed in our business model, except for the fact that we have gotten much deeper on the claims side.
Yeah.
Of course, we continue to work. So you may have the same product, but somebody else may not be as keen to distribute it as you are.
Correct.
Because you are more focused on those pieces. I think it's not fair for us to say more than that.
Sure. And so last question on the traditional savings products. Any color you can give on any communication from insurers on commission structures, et cetera?
Obviously, we know we can't discuss anything related to our insurers.
Okay.
I'll just give you a sense.
Yeah.
We don't sell participating products on our platform.
Yeah.
Non-Par is also a small portion of our mix.
We don't plan to expand into that sector right now. It's a limited portion for us?
Yeah. Right now, we have no plans to-
Okay.
Move in it.
Okay, okay. Thank you so much.
See, at a fundamental level, whenever lower take rate products become available, you will more often than not find Policybazaar as a distributor jumping towards them.
Mm.
You would find many distributors having an aversion toward them.
Got it.
You know, you can be the best judge on who's going to be the eventual winner. The eventual winner, according to me, will be the one who goes for more and more consumer-centric products.
Yeah. True. Thank you so much, yeah.
Thank you.
Thank you, Shreya. We'll take the next question from Nischint Chawathe. Nischint, please unmute yourself.
Yeah, could you give some color on, you know, your market share in retail health? You know, you've been growing very fast for the last 4, 5 quarters. You know, just curious to understand, you know, how the headroom would be.
We have our fingers crossed. We just hope this growth continues for the next three years. The fact that we just invested $3 million in additional capacity is just showcasing our hope and confidence, both, I would say. I hope we are not proven wrong, and we have confidence we won't be proven wrong. Let's just leave it there. I think it's, there's no point discussing market shares and all.
No, fair point, but I'm just saying that, you know, a single player, you know, how much market share can a single player sort of... I know you are a, you are a-
I think we are quite small in the big scheme of things.
Yeah.
I think we are overall maybe 3%-4% of the overall insurance piece. I think looking at it in a very segmented, granular way, may or may not be the right way. So I'd say, yeah, it—you know, we, we, we also worry about those things that you're talking about. They're not for this discussion here.
No, no, I, I just want to be very clear. We are right now, we are nowhere near any such issue that you are, I think, trying to refer to. We are a very small part of the industry. There is a lot of work to be done in terms of getting, you know, a lot more Indians to be covered, right? 5.5 crore Indians have retail health insurance, so we are very, very small.
Let me give you-
There's a lot of opportunity ahead.
Let me give you a data point, which you perhaps are already aware of. In the U.S., health insurance industry is $800 billion. In India, the health insurance industry is about $10 billion. I know the U.S. economy is bigger and their healthcare is bigger and all that stuff, but it's not that same difference of, you know-
Eighty times.
Almost 80X is not really explained. So I think my fundamental belief is health insurance probably needs to be 8-10 times bigger, not grow at 15%, 20%. I think nothing grows in this linear manner. So at a very fundamental level, some issues need to be solved for health insurance to be, you know, 8-10X of where it is right now. And we are working hard to solve those issues. Rather than worrying about, okay, you know, what share has who become, it's too. India is not a country, in my opinion, where you think about these things. You think about how you can change, so that the overall structure can change, so that it can become 5X, 10X, rather than worry about, okay, who has how much share of what and so.
It doesn't grow that way, according to me, and I don't think industry will grow that way. In my opinion, either the industry will do well or it will not do well. Currently, in my opinion, it's not doing well, and that's because of issues. Yes, we are doing well, but overall there is an issue and we all know that, and I think that issue needs to be resolved.
... And if one is kind of, you know, looking at around, I think, I think you mentioned around 70%+ growth in health and life and, you know, more or less similar. As I said, you know, roughly 70%+, you know, what would be the increase in lives covered for you versus, let's say,
Similar, yeah. There is no increase in-
Ticket size.
In ticket size. There is no meaningful increase in ticket size. In fact, there is actually... Yeah, it's, it's pretty much the same.
It is.
So there may be some price increase, but an equal amount of multi-year coming down, so actually, ticket size is flat. So if our precisely if our total premium has grown by 78%, I would say the number of lives have also grown by 78% for us on fresh business.
Sure, but, and just finally, you know, within your product mix, do you kind of have some thought process on concentration levels and, you know, how you would want to toggle around various products?
See, our focus is what we've always said, coverage for social security for the middle class. What is social security? It is term insurance, it's health insurance, it's child cost planning, child education cost planning, it is pensions, it is all of those. Yes, we also do motor insurance, we also do two-wheeler insurance.
We have a tech platform that does it, but our focus is extremely clear, where we believe the middle class, defined as anybody earning between INR 50,000 to, let's say, INR 500,000 a month, maybe INR 400,000 a month. In that band, 200-odd million people, there is a solution that they require, and that solution needs to cater to their social security. Their social security, if they lose their job, if they die, if they fall sick, there are some serious financial consequences of that, and we are, you know, trying to make sure those consequences don't happen for them, and they are covered for them. That's basically our focus. Yeah, and I just want to add that the way. See, we have, obviously, a fantastic team which runs the business. We are only representing them.
I think they don't worry too much about the mix and all that. Everybody tries to do their level best to drive the growth of their business that they are running. So if you're running motor, you are trying to do the best for motor. You're not really thinking that whether, you know, what the health guy is doing. So I think we have very fiercely independent teams, and they take their, I think, jobs very sincerely and very seriously. And so there is no, you know, mix that we are trying to reach. We are basically letting everybody do the best that they can, and we try to give them the resources and, you know, encouragement and support. So that's how I would say, that's how practically the company, you know, functions.
Perfect. Thank you very much. Those were my questions and all the best.
Thank you, Nischint. We'll take the next question from Nidesh Jain, Investec. Nidesh, please unmute yourself.
On the reinsurance business, is there any update on the reinsurance business, which we proposed, I think last year?
No, we are. So we got a license, you know, a few months ago. We have, we have set up a small team, led by one of our, I would say, one of our strongest, managers. He and along with his team are working on it. We'll. I think it'll take us a while to figure out. Our focus continues to be that how can we leverage the fact that we are so big in retail? How do we use that retail and, you know, create better propositions for customers? And I think over a period of time, you will, you will see some progress on that.
This business will be on reinsurance booking or reinsurance manufacturing?
No, no. We are, we are clearly not manufacturers. There are two things we do not do. We are never an insurance company, we are never an NBFC. Those are two things we just do not do, at least as of now. If anything changes, we'll let you know, but there is no intention of changing on those two.
Okay, sure. Second is on the Paisabazaar business. Is there a thought or process to build a similar business to POSP, aggregating small DSAs all across India? And if yes, how we plan to do that?
So I think Paisabazaar, we are spending a bit of time reviewing the strategy, to give us some time to kind of come back on that. Currently, we have a business which is non-POSP, which is mostly unsecured credit. There is a possibility we could build a POSP business on the secured side. There's a possibility we could just—There are two, three players that exist, right, on the POSP secured side, each doing about INR 600 crore of revenue. There are three players out there, as I see it. And we feel that is an opportunity that we might leverage, but we really want to be very precise about our, you know, direction on Paisabazaar before we act from here onwards.
Yeah. And lastly, if you can share the EBITDA and contribution margin of the credit business for the quarter.
We're not, we're not sharing,
Credit and insurance separately. We will be sharing pick up for EBITDA.
I, I think he said it in the similar way.
It's the same ballpark, yeah. It's the same ballpark. There is... Yeah, I think, insurance is, is higher. Just looking at the numbers, insurance is higher. There's-- But it's okay. It's, it's similar ballpark, yeah. So if the total is 14%, maybe all is between 10%-15%, yeah.
Cool. Sure. That's it from my end.
At EBITDA level, at EBITDA level, on the contribution side, again, they are similar. In fact, I would say the credit business is at slightly higher contribution, as you would expect, because the operating cost on the credit business is usually lower. So the credit business, if anything, is on a slightly higher, on the contribution side and, slightly lower on the EBITDA side.
... Okay, thank you.
Yeah, because there is a cost to running an infrastructure, and the cost is there, so on.
Thank you, Nidesh. We'll take the next question from Jayant Kharote, Jefferies. Jayant, please unmute yourself.
So I was just joking, on an annual basis, Sarbvir and Naveen's costs are quite similar. But of course, Sarbvir's business is about four times bigger, so that automatically makes the ROI at, at Paisa a little harder. But, you know, I'm sure Naveen has a team as well, and Sarbvir has a team. Sarbvir's team is bigger, but it's about twice the size. It's not four times the size. So anyway, I'm just sort of sharing that every business has to have a certain amount of fixed cost.
Hi, Yashish, and congrats, the whole team, for the great set of numbers. Growth certainly looks heady. On, on the contribution margin, just picking your brains. If I look at this INR 3 million investment, the actual contribution margin might actually have expanded this quarter to north of 45%. But you also mentioned to another question that the higher contribution or mix change from health and savings would have led to some lower margins. So I'm just trying to marry the two and understand what has happened.
Yeah, we are at this moment, we are focused on growth, yeah. And, you know, we are confident and hoping and praying that the growth continues. And, from whatever inquiry base, et cetera, we can see we are where things, things feel good. So in preparation for that, we don't want to optimize. As I said, as a company, we are in that phase where we are growing like a kid, and at this point we don't want to optimize on the input of protein. There will be a time when we do that. It's, it's not right now. But I'm sure that time will come, and that's a very easy thing to do. Trust me, that's a very, very easy thing to do. It's not a difficult thing to do when we want to do it.
But it's not something that is the focus right now. But you're right, we spent about $3 million extra, in this quarter on the operating cost than we had to, if we just had to maintain just this quarter's sales. That is more in anticipation of future quarters, higher growth, et cetera.
Is it fair to assume next quarter, if current growth rate continues, this recovers, or-
Yeah, nothing happens in quarters. Yeah, don't get into all that, right?
Yeah.
The only thing I can predict very precisely is renewal rates and renewal premiums, which I've already done. You know, nobody can say what will happen in September, yeah.
Understood.
Yeah, we have some idea of what's going on in August, but, you know, and July, but we can't. It's very difficult to predict here.
No, I was trying to say the new OpEx that you have done, this, this-
No, I don't, I don't want to get into that business of-
Okay.
You know, what will it be next quarter and all that stuff. No.
Understood.
Where we can be, we are, and we are very open about it. Where we can't, we can't yet.
Okay, understood. And one question which I have asked you last quarter as well is the renewal take rate. It seems to have again moved up to a very healthy 7%+ number. As the renewals stack up in the next three quarters, you confident of maintaining this one?
That must be just a product mix shift or something.
Yeah. It's a shift, you know, between products, but there's nothing in it. It's not like we've negotiated better rates or anything like that. It's a very fairly, I would say, stable equilibrium right now. And, yeah, we're just continuing with it.
Okay. Thank you, and congrats once again for a great set of numbers.
Thank you.
Thank you, Jayant. We'll take the last question from Sanket Godha, Avendus. Sanket, please unmute yourself.
You can hear me, right?
Yes, yes.
Yeah. So, one basic question which I had is that you said that you spent almost INR 25 crore on creating capacity. Just wanted to understand, this has been done on core or predominantly on POSP?
Core, core, core. Only core.
Okay. Okay, and one second question, which I had on POSP revenue recognition, and to the extent I understand the sector, in the past, the payout to the POSP were done by the insurance companies directly, and you get the net part in the top line. Now the payout is happening at a gross level to the distributor, and you guys pay down to the POSP. So that got effective from which quarter? Probably from the second quarter of the last year. I just wanted to understand how things have changed.
So, Sanket, while I respect the question, it's an irrelevant question from... So there's, there's no such change in our system. In our system, the revenue we were reporting, the revenue we are reporting are, are like for like, apple for apple. There is no, you know, game there. If I was to just look at, premiums alone, this quarter, POSP premium was INR 1,000 crore.
Yeah.
You know, in Q1 last year, the premium was INR 360 crore.
Right.
So that is what explains it, right? So obviously, if the premium has grown something, there's some revenue also attached to that.
Got it. And lastly, when you said you invested INR 25 crore in core, is it largely to strengthen your offline strategy within the core or...
Yeah, there is no such, there's no such precision. There would be both capacity build. Capacity is both at the call center and at the feet on street. Please appreciate, feet on street is about 20% of sales right now.
Mm-hmm.
It's not just feet on day, and I'm sure it happened in many ways, right? You would go into different linguistic centers.
Yeah.
You would go into new places. And when we say investing ahead of capacity, it is capacity which would not have delivered value in this quarter. But obviously, our hope is that within three to six months, that capacity starts to break even, not just hope. That's, that's all our data is pointing in that direction. And, yeah, I think, I think it's just that. It's just we, we built it up a little faster than we usually would have.
Got it. And lastly, the 78% growth, what you said in life and health, that is only reflected to core, right? It is not the POSP and core put together.
No, that is just the fresh business. That's just the core business, and that's just the fresh business. See, please understand, our value driver is our fresh health and life business of the core.
Yeah.
The POSP business gives us a lot of volume. It's not a long-term profit driver for the company. Long term, maybe 5% of our profit might lie in the POSP business, right? Maybe 10. It can't be more than that, right? So when the engine works, we feel very happy because that engine working delivers all this renew... Renewals are not earned in the same year. As I said, I can't change my renewals too dramatically. If we say 45, it could be 44 at worst, it could be 46 at best, right? It won't change much more than that in any given year. It's vastly the work of the past engine that is paying off now. But the engine of growth is this.
At a very fundamental level, when we look at our NPV dynamics, that has grown at 78%, and I think that is where we feel good.
Got it. Perfect. That's it from my side. Thank you very much.
Thank you. Thank you very much, everybody, for joining today. We appreciate your time, and hope we could clarify a lot of your questions. Thank you. Have a great day.