Ladies and gentlemen, good day, and welcome to RateGain Travel Technologies Limited Q1 FY 2024 earnings conference call. This conference call may contain forward-looking statements about the company, which are based on the beliefs, opinions, and expectation of the company as on date of this call. These statements are not the guarantees of future performance and involve risks and uncertainties that are difficult to predict. As a reminder, all participant lines will be in the listen-only mode, and there will be an opportunity for you to ask questions after the presentation concludes. Should you need assistance during the conference call, please signal an operator by pressing star then zero on your touch-tone phone. Please note that this conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to Mr. Bhanu Chopra. Thank you, and over to you, sir.
Thank you, ma'am. A very good afternoon to everyone, and thank you very much for joining the earnings call for RateGain Travel Technologies Limited for the first quarter of this new fiscal year, 2024. It's great to connect with all of you, and I'm excited to share some key updates from this first quarter. Joining me on the call are Mr. Tanmaya Das, our CFO, and Mr. Divak Anand, our head for Investor Relations. We announced our first quarter results for the financial year 2024 earlier today. I hope you've all had a chance to go through our financial results, press release, and investor presentation that are available on the stock exchanges and are on our company website. We continue to move from strength to strength and remain optimistic on the travel industry as activity in key markets remain above 2019 levels.
The sustained growth of our customers' businesses is creating an opportunity for these businesses to focus on new digitization and technology initiatives, thus driving an increase in spending and therefore building more momentum for RateGain. I'm happy to share some of that momentum is already visible in our business as our operating metrics for Q1, which is traditionally a soft quarter for businesses, have improved significantly compared to last year. Our annual recurring revenue touched a new high at INR 858 crore, growing at an impressive 80% year-on-year. Our quarterly revenues stood at INR 214.5 crore, growing at 79.8% year-on-year.
We continue to champion sustainable growth by driving margin expansion each year-on-year, with a Q1 margin of 17.6%, compared to 10% in Q1 of last year on the back of operating leverage across our business, the inherent strength of our SaaS-based business model as we scale up. In line with this, our revenue per employee has improved to INR 1.2 crore, improving 53% year-on-year. This is a metric we track that highlights productivity and potential to scale up the business without adding additional manpower. We are witnessing strong growth in our Adara business on the strength of the platform and ability to provide solutions that generate high return for our customers.
We continue to focus on the low-hanging fruit of bringing it back to an INR 100 million run rate and believe that we have the right team in place to make it happen as we continue to further invest in this business to drive growth. Adara's brand recognition post-acquisition has improved significantly, where they are once again thought of as a thought leader and premium partner for brands and DMOs. Basically, our product bases our product proposition, our renewal conversations are turning into upgrades, and more clients are choosing to activate performance marketing with us. This is our AI modeling capabilities leading to improved performance. Our new contract wins grew multifold to INR 59.3 crore compared to INR 18.9 crore last year, highlighting the strength of our comprehensive digital marketing offering and the adoption of technology across clients to drive efficiencies and optimize their revenues.
With a healthy conversion in Q1, our pipeline stands at INR 361 crore. We generated a healthy free cash flow of INR 15 crore, as opposed to INR 4.8 crore in the previous year, a significant improvement on the back of improving profitability. Generative AI and its adoption by companies continues to be at the forefront. The investments related to developing the right solutions and access to the right data set to generate accurate and useful results continue to be a constraining factor, as mentioned by us earlier and reported also by some tech majors, as it in fact starts to show on the bottom line. RateGain, with its own AI-powered data lake and travel intent data, is suitably positioned to solve for use cases across digital marketing and competitive data, helping companies control costs while improving outcomes.
We continue to explore attainable and scalable way to use Generative AI and track use cases that have commercial viability in our industry. Global travel continues to remain strong, with 17 out of 22 key global destinations having fully recovered over 2019. The Global Health Travel Index by Skift, which is an industry benchmark to measure growth, stands at 104, showing steady month-on-month improvement. The Summer Pulse report from Adara also highlights the sustained strong demand for both international and domestic travel in the Americas, reaffirming travel as a key sectoral theme for the next few years.
The momentum in the industry is driving policy change, attracting new investments into the industry, and unlocking new opportunities for players like RateGain to consolidate their position through strategic investments in R&D and acquisition, to have a larger share of a thriving market as the industry looks at adopting more technology to engage with travelers. Let's now understand how these changes are impacting each of our business units. The DaaS business, which now includes the Adara Data business, contributed to 32.9% of the total revenue for Q1. This unit grew at a strong pace on the back of healthy traction across OTAs, airlines, hotels, car rentals, and cruise liners. We continue to see incremental volume demand coming from our existing enterprise customers.
Given the importance of AI, most of our enterprises are deploying AI capabilities for their decision support systems, helping in revenue management and digital marketing. The main ingredient for training AI models is data, thus we are seeing exponential growth in data needs of our customers over the last couple of quarters. We expect to see this continued trend, which will continue to drive very strong growth for our DaaS unit over the next several quarters. Distribution segment accounted for about 23.7% of our total revenue. Volumes growth held steady in the past quarter with continued demand across our enterprise segment on both OTA and GDS channels. We continue to be the partner of choice for large hotel chains as they undertake digital transformation products to modernize their distribution ecosystem and optimize their presence across channels.
Our order book will begin to monetize some very large projects beginning of this quarter. We will see full deployment play out in Q3 and Q4, which will poise this segment for good growth in upcoming quarters. Booking.com recognized us as a premier connectivity partner for the sixth year in a row, which is a validation of the reliability of the connectivity platform we provide to our partner properties and to ensure a seamless experience for their guests. Our MarTech business, which now includes the Adara business, contributed to 43.4% of our total revenues for Q1 on the back of leading hotel chains, airlines, and destination management organizations trying to achieve higher returns for their marketing investments.
We solidified our positions with destination management organizations and continue to see good traction in the U.S. market, with large enterprises, including hotel chain, select upgrade digital media offerings, to drive higher ROI on their ad spend. We believe that the inherent strength of the Adara platform complements our digital marketing offerings to drive higher returns for our customers and fits in perfectly our vision of integrated tech stack geared towards helping our customers to acquire guests, engage and retain them, and have a wallet share expansion with them. Given the traction we see, we continue to invest in building out commercial teams and bringing back ex-Adara folks to fuel the growth and our quest to get back to glory days of Adara of $100 million run rate. I'm confident these additional investments in sales and marketing will continue to accelerate our growth of our MarTech solution.
Our focus is now to drive RateGain to a new goal of doubling our revenues in the next three years. We've already started to lay the foundation for driving that growth by focusing on bringing in the best talent to scale RateGain. At the beginning of fiscal year 2021, we had restructured RateGain to drive more autonomy for each of these business units, with the appointment of general managers, helping them drive healthy growth across each vertical, helping us cross a major milestone of $100 million ARR. Over the last few months, we've had leaders from marquee companies such as BCG, Netflix, and Deloitte join RateGain's leadership team to leverage their experience to build a world-class organization.
As we look to further strengthen our leadership team, I'm delighted to announce the appointment of Peter Strebel, the current chairman of Omni Hotels and ex-CEO of Wyndham Hotels, as our new President for Americas, effective immediately. David is a two-time CEO of Wyndham Hotels and Omni Hotels and a hospitality industry veteran with a deep understanding of building and scaling commercial operations and marketing teams, playing an instrumental role in creating and driving business development strategies to increase awareness and capture market share. Along with Peter, I would also like to welcome another travel and hospitality veteran, David Feller, as a board advisor. He will be instrumental in helping RateGain scale up its technology offerings in line with the vision of creating an integrated tech stack, RevMax platform, and establish strategic partnerships.
Peter has vast experience, having worked with Google, Booking.com, and having led the Amazon's division of travel and hospitality practice, which was a PNL of $2.7 billion. As we welcome Peter and David, I also wanted to take a moment to thank Chinmay Sharma, our outgoing President, Americas, for his immense contribution in guiding our business in Americas over the last 5 years, and wish him the best of luck. On the people front, we saw a healthy improvement in our attrition rate quarter-over-quarter. We now stand at 17.1%, and we continue to adopt best practices for an engaging and conducive work environment focused on employee welfare and growth. We've launched various initiatives in the past few quarters as we work towards making RateGain the employer of choice.
In line with this, I'm proud to mention that RateGain was recently recognized by Comparably as the best company for career growth and for diversity. I'd like to now ask our CFO, Mr. Tanmaya Das, to take you through the performance of Q1.
Thank you, Bhanu, and a very warm welcome to everyone on this call. I'm proud to report that the company has posted another strong set of results in the first quarter, with continued improvement across all key operating matrices, contributing to robust revenue growth and margin expansion year-over-year. Steady performance on top line and bottom line in a seasonally soft quarter underlines the strength of the business model and the value we are delivering to our customers. Our new contract wins grew threefold as we continue to mine and build a strong pipeline. This is on the back of continued traction with existing clients and new clients that we will be monetizing in the coming quarters. With operating leverage playing out, we witnessed significant margin expansion and continued on the path of sustainable growth, unlocking value for our stakeholders.
Adara continues to build on its momentum and delivered a strong quarter across growth and margins, underlining the strength of the platform. Our organic growth approach continues to be a key pillar of our growth strategy as we focus to build a comprehensive revenue-maximizing solution to further deliver value to our customers for our goal of doubling revenue in the next three years. For the quarter gone by, the company reported a revenue of INR 214.5 crore, with a year-over-year growth of 80%. We had well-rounded growth from all three verticals, with DaaS growing 139%, distribution at 27% and MarTech at 88% for the full year.
EBITDA grew by 217% to INR 37.8 crore for the year, with the first quarter margin coming in at 17.6%, as against last year, 10%, and holding the steady sequentially. With wage hikes given in the first quarter, our operating costs grew by 65% year-over-year, with revenue growth coming in at a faster click of 80%, as operating leverage continues to play out as we scale up. The Q1 EBITDA is much higher than the guidance given in last quarter of 13%-14%. Other high-margin businesses like DaaS, saw significant growth with increased demand of data volumes from our key customers, coupled with continued successful integration of Adara, beating revenue growth guidance.
Adara continues to outperform with strong revenue growth as it continues to see strong traction with new contract wins, and we have been able to reignite some of the lost relationships in the past few months. Adara, which was loss-making before the acquisition, registered 10.35% EBITDA in Q4 FY2023, and this quarter, the EBITDA margin has expanded to 15%. This business has very high operating leverage, and with growth, we can expect the margins to further increase. Our PAT grew three times compared to last year, coming to INR 24.9 crore, up from INR 8.4 crore. Sequentially, the PAT was lower on account of one-time benefit of deferred tax asset benefit, which positively impacted the PAT last quarter. Without the one-time benefit, the PAT grew sequentially by 15%, up from INR 21.6 crore to INR 24.9 crore this quarter.
The company continues to have strong customer relationships that are helping in building scalable, predictable and sustainable revenue streams. With 115 customers added in this quarter, our customer count crossed 3,000 for the first time and now stands at 3,057. Gross revenue retention and net revenue retention stood at 90% and 110% respectively. One of the key metrics that we track is the revenue per employee, which saw a healthy increase of 53% over last year and stands at INR 1.18 crore. With that, our current pipeline stands at INR 361 crore.
We continue to have strong balances, where our net worth saw a 15% increase compared to last year, and stood at INR 732.2 crore. Our cash and cash equivalent balance for the quarter stood at INR 344.1 crore. In terms of guidance for FY 2024, for the full year, we're confident of beating the growth guidance given last time, and similarly, we would be looking to exceed the 17% margin guidance given for the full year. With that, I would like to conclude my update, and we are happy to open the floor for questions. Thank you.
Thank you very much. Ladies and gentlemen, we will now begin the question and answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may press star one on their touchtone telephone. If you wish to remove yourself from the question queue, you may press star two. Participants are requested to use handsets while asking a question. Ladies and gentlemen, we will wait for a moment while the question queue assembles. The first question is from the line of Ankit Kanodia from SmartSyncServices . Please go ahead.
Yeah. Thank you for taking my question, and congratulations on good set of numbers. My first question is related to, if I see your, gross recurring revenue and net recurring revenue, and compare it with, what the numbers were exactly a year ago in Q1 FY 2023. The net recurring, the gross recurring revenue at that time was 99%, and today it is 90%, whereas the net recurring revenue, today is 110%, and it was about 105%. If you can throw some more light as to what is going in these numbers, that would really help us a lot. Thank you.
... Look, 90% gross re-recurring revenue, gross retention, the gross revenue retention, which is called GRR, is a SaaS benchmark, and 90% is a good metrics for SaaS companies. We, we try-- On the NRR front, anything between 110%- 120% is a good benchmark for SaaS companies. We track them pretty seriously. This shows the mining of existing, you know, existing clients, because our clear strategy is to land and expand. Majority of our growth, if you talk about, is coming from existing clients, and that's how the net retention rates... We continue to try to increase the net, net revenue retention.
No. My question was basically why GRR is falling and NRR is increasing? What does that mean?
Yeah, I mean, it's GRR. Look, the GRR was 90, between 90%-95% historically. It has slightly decreased because our brand engagement and brand monitoring business has seen some voluntary churn because we, we know we let go some loss-making accounts. That's why there is a, the, the net retention ratio, net revenue retention has decreased a little bit. From all other business parts of the existing business, you know, has, has been growing significantly. Like some of the DaaS customers, where the data volumes, request that we're receiving is, is, is going through the roof. Those, those relationships are expanding.
Sure, sir. My second question is related to the margin. If I understood correctly, I believe DaaS and distribution are high-margin business, whereas MarTech, the margin is a little lower. When I see our growth in the last one year, the growth has been phenomenal in MarTech. What is leading our EBITDA margin to grow in percentage terms? If we are getting more business through relatively lower margin category, still our EBITDA margin as a percentage is increasing. What has led to that increase? If you can share with me.
I think DaaS. Yeah, I mean, DaaS and distribution have grown at a healthy pace. If you see, you know, the DaaS business over the last three, four quarters have gone through a significant growth path, and that has really helped improve the margin. Even distribution, last year, there was a 37% growth, and this year we are registering a 27% growth. Those two segment have really, you know, growth in those two segments, which was much more than the guidance that we had given, has really, you know, helped us to improve the margin.
Sure. That is it from my side. I will come back in the queue if I have any more question. Thank you so much.
Thank you.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Kaushik Jhaveri from AK Investment. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Thanks for giving me the opportunity. Firstly, congratulations for great set of numbers, team. Particularly, I have a question related to management. I see that we are giving a lot of focus on the revenue, but I see the cash flows, right? When I see there, our amount is stuck significant in the receivables. That is, I see 30% of sales. There is a contingent liability also we have. What is the update on there and on the receivables part? Can you give some clarity here?
Yeah, I mean, receivables, the DSO is around, currently around 75-80 days at this point of time, and it continues to improve year-over-year. I think we are coming back from a, you know. Obviously, COVID was two years back, but still the aftereffects are there, little bit. Some of the large customers who had given extended credit periods, and we're trying to cut them down, but it's still at 75, 80 days. The conversion is good. There is no significant bad debts happening or, you know, allowance for doubtful debt provision that we need to take, you know, we need to take. The collections are happening, but it is, it is more than, you know, what it should be.
You know, it should be either ideally around 60 days, which we are continuing our effort to do so at this point of time. On the contingent liability, I think both the cases were in a very strong position. There is no further updates. We have won those cases at appropriate, you know, levels, and department, you know, either can, may go for an appeal or not, but in both the cases, we're in a very strong footing.
Great. Great. Can you give more color on the why in a SaaS-based business, in the, in this sector, when you are giving a value addition to the customer, why receivables also, we need 60 days? Can you explain further here?
We are now SaaS-based, but we are enterprise-focused company. Our customers are all big customers, and the payment terms sometimes ranges from 30 days to 90 days. In certain cases, as I told during COVID times, we had given extended credit period for these enterprise customers. Our ticket size is much higher than a normal, you know, SaaS companies, where the ticket size is very low.
In couple of years then, we'll go back to again, 60 days. Is that assumption correct?
Yeah, that's the, that's the effort, and it should You should see continuous improvement in that area.
Okay, okay. The next question I have is on the QIP, because at the time of IPO also we have raised some fresh issue, and again, we are coming with the QIP of, I think, massive INR 600 crore. I'm trying to understand this. We always look for acquisition, and this time are we going big on acquisition or, rather than... Currently we have acquired Adara, so we are in that ramp-up phase. By when we are targeting this acquisition, if it's in your plans, can you throw some light here?
Yeah. You know, we have a very, very active M&A pro program that we call Programmatic M&A. There's a dedicated team to it. You know, we are seeing a very, very robust pipeline there. As you guys already know, we are very fiscally disciplined on what we are willing to pay. This, you know, this proposal on QIP is really to create a war chest for M&A activity, so it's fully going to be focused on, you know, any, any big opportunity that might come along and, and creating a war chest along the same. It's more of a enabling resolution. We haven't yet, you know, determined at what time we will do.
As we understand it, it is, you know, it's a window of a year, and at the right time, we want to act on it because as opportunities become available, and the forecast of opportunities that we see right now. You know, we do feel that we will be served better by having a war chest available. You know, we are also getting a lot of conviction and confidence in how, for instance, we've turned around Adara and other deals that we have done, that we have now the M&A playbook to consummate and drive these synergies. There is confidence to do more, and this just enables that.
Okay. Like, we have seen your execution in the past, we truly believe that. Which area are you focusing here? Because there are DaaS, we have our own AI-related products, and in the MarTech also, we have acquired, we have scaled that, and currently with Adara also, we are doing good. Which part you are seeing that where value addition can be more fruitful here? Because it's come-
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah. There, there, there are, you know, bunch of companies that are in adjacent spaces in MarTech, in DaaS, and distribution, you know, which helps us realize that vision of having one integrated tech stack. Our focus continues to be in key markets of Europe and U.S., which is where majority of our revenue comes from. Those are, you know, in terms of geography, those are the markets that we're looking at, and, you know, capabilities are going to be continue to be the areas that we operate in.
You know, as we've talked about our TAM being, you know, north of $8 billion. There they continue to be adjacent use cases in these, each of these business units that we look to solve for. Not everything that we need to build, we can acquire as well. Whatever opportunities we are exploring, you know, fall perfectly in each of these buckets.
Okay, okay. Lastly, I have a question on the... Since for the quite some time, we have been working on the products, right? Then with our R&D team, like, RevAI or multiple, this one.
Yeah.
Currently we are ramping up, ramping up our sales also. Where do you see that, like, however, the SaaS revenues grow, right, like a hockey stick? From which year we can expect that the green shoots happening? Currently, we are seeing that, but I'm asking-
Yeah
... which year are you really bullish or you're, you're seeing that, "Okay, now the things can start firing," yeah?
Yeah. You know, the good news is that we've already planted the seeds two, three years ago. As you can see in the numbers that we are reporting, you know, and a lot of the adjacencies that we launched these products in, we're seeing some very, very good traction. I continue to feel that we haven't even scratched the surface. The, the, the foundational thing about RateGain is that each of the areas that we operate in is, has such a massive opportunity that, you know, I, I do not believe we have reached the tipping point yet, where we can see, you know, exponential growth in each of these areas. When do I see that happen?
I think it's happening, like I said, because, you know, when we came to into the market, you know, we were an INR 350 crore company just a year and a half of years ago, and now approaching INR 1,000 crore. Yes, there is some, you know, revenue which is inorganic, but we are seeing some very, very, you know, healthy organic growth, even though the pace has almost tripled. I mean, I would say that some of those hockey stick effects you're already seeing in our revenue. Like I said, the good news is there are so many seeds in planted that we will continue to see this trend, you know, over the next two-three years. You know, thankfully, the... there is tailwind in the industry also that will be continue to benefit us.
... Thank you. Before we take the next question, I'd like to remind all participants to please limit your question to two per participants only. You may rejoin the question queue if you have a follow-up. The next question is from the line of Karan Uppal from PhillipCapital. Please go ahead.
Yeah, thanks for the opportunity. Two questions from my side. First, can you clarify what's the organic growth in this quarter?
The organic growth is around 25%. You know, that's the guidance we had given.
Growth in YOY, you are saying?
Yeah, YOY. Yeah.
Okay. Okay. In terms of MarTech, what led to such a strong growth? Is it due to Adara? Because there was some post-churn which was happening within, within the MarTech, right? Yeah, that's the question.
Yeah, within MarTech, as you know, we have got two segments. One is the paid digital media, and the other is the brand monitoring and engagement. Brand monitoring engagement, where we are seeing the churn because, you know, we are letting go some of the loss, loss-making accounts. There we don't have that growth, but the paid digital media organically has grown around 24%-25%.
Okay. Rest, I believe, is due to MarTech. Sorry, rest is due to Adara.
Yeah, that's the inorganic expansion, yeah.
Okay, okay. Last question from my side is in terms of the overall growth for this year. You had previously guided, you know, individual segments like DAX to be at 30%, distribution 15%, MarTech around 20%, you have grown very, very high rate in, in a, you know, weak quarter, so to speak. What kind of a realistic growth we should expect in all three segments going ahead, as well as what kind of margins are you factoring in for full year?
Yeah, we will be beating the guidance that we had given last year, but at, you know, what levels we will reach, I think it will take us another one more quarter to see how the H1 pans out. Yes, you know, whatever guidance we had given last time, it seems we will be beating them. I think more precise answer I'll be able to give in next earnings call.
Okay. On the overall growth, can you give any range? Maybe 20% was the organic number which we had shared last time.
Yeah, I mean, the last time also from a including organic and inorganic growth, we talked about a 55% growth, right?
Yeah.
That I think, you know, we, we will be beating that. By how much and all, I think it would be better to give a better guidance after the H1 ends.
Okay. Well, thanks a lot, and all the best for FY 2024.
Thank you. Before we take the next question, a reminder to the participants to please limit your question to two per participants only. Thank you. The next question is from the line of Rohan Nagpal from Helios Capital. Please go ahead.
Hi, thanks for the opportunity. I just had a couple of questions on the revenue distribution or the revenue mix. If I look at, if I look at the revenue by engagement, this aggregation that you've provided, there is about 30, there's about 37% of the revenue that is transaction-based. In prior quarters, the only transaction-based revenue you were generating was generated through distribution. This time the transaction-based revenue is far in excess of the revenue contribution of distribution. Where exactly is that incremental transaction-based revenue coming from?
Yeah, that, that's correct. Earlier, it's 25% was majorly contributed by distribution segment. Now the, you know, Adara Media segment is also a transaction-based model, when we charge to the customer, we charge on per impression basis. That's why there is a shift in that number.
Oh, got it. Okay, that's helpful. Sorry, would it be possible to sort of spell out what the Adara Media segment is exactly?
Yeah, I mean, so Adara has two, two revenue segment. One is the data segment, where which is part of the DAX, and the other is the, is the media segment, where, which is part of our paid digital media segment. We charge our customers based upon per impression basis, and that's how it is part of the transaction model.
All right. Okay, and then the other question I had, again, on revenue mix. If I, if, the number that you cite as subscription revenue is 63.1%, but if I go back to the revenue by engagement disaggregation, subscription, what is explicitly subscription revenue is 25%. The only way to get to 63% is to add subscription-
Hybrid.
Hybrid. Could you give us a sense of how much of that hybrid is a contractual, revenue amount that you can expect to receive, and how much of that hybrid is contributed, through a transaction, or, like, usage-based, I mean, usage-based billing?
I think, all the hybrid revenue has a minimum subscription, right? That's why we categorize it as a-
... part of the subscription revenue. How much out of that will have minimum subscription and how much is exceeding? I don't have that data ready at this point of time. Maybe in a follow-up call, I can share the more details on that.
Could you give a broad sort of brush of what that sort of looks like?
No, that is that we don't look at that way, so I, I won't have that data ready.
All right, fair enough. Thank you. I'll join the queue then. Thanks.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Shobit Singhal from Anand Rathi. Please go ahead.
Thank you. Congrats on a good set of numbers. Can you give us the breakup, organic growth breakup between the DaaS and MarTech segment?
DaaS is 30%, organically grew in Q1, and that's what the guidance we had given. Distribution was, like, 27%, and MarTech as a combined, is around 20%.
Okay. Second question is, sir, how is the progress on RevMax platform under distribution segment? What would be the timeline where it will start contributing meaningfully to revenue?
Yeah. We've actually had a beta release with a couple of clients, and we've also won a very large order with one European chain that we are looking to monetize by Q3. As we sort of gain trust and confidence of the marketplace, we will look to accelerate our efforts. We've actually begun to, you know, hive off a sales team, a commercial team, just to focus on, you know, taking this platform out as well. You know, in terms of meaningful contribution, I do believe that it's at least a year or two away. Now that we are approaching, like, INR 900,000 crore, you know, to get that kind of revenue impact, I think it's some distance away.
I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm very bullish on the kind of traction that we are seeing, and these are very, very large deals. We will see, like, a hockey stick type of impact on this, you know, whenever we see it in the years to come.
Okay, sure. Sir, have you given any guidance for Q2 FY24?
No, we are standing by, as Tanmay a mentioned, our guidance was 55%-58% overall growth and a 17% margin. As you saw on our Q1 numbers, we've comfortably beaten those numbers, and we do believe that the guidance we gave, you know, we'll continue to exceed that. You know, given the acceleration that we are seeing in pretty much all our business units with the order book that we have. I've talked about how we continue to recalibrate and invest in adding more salespeople incrementally. For instance, we are seeing some, like our growth on MarTech, especially Adara, has been really, really good. As you might recall, the business was $100 million, came down to $25 million. We are seeing now very good growth there.
What we're doing is, given they had let go of a lot of people during the time of COVID, we are bringing them back. As a matter of fact, just in the month of July, you know, we added, like, four people back who were ex Adara salespeople. On the back of strong growth that we are seeing, and if you see our LTV to CAC numbers, they are also market-leading metrics. We get the confidence to continue to invest in our sales and marketing, and our goal will be to beat the numbers that we've guided for this year. Which, which we're very confident that we will. I think to Tanmaya's point, we just don't know by how much is the delta going to be.
Okay, sure, sir. Thank you.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Kshitij Saraf from Tusk Investments . Please go ahead.
Hi, good evening, team. Congratulations on the great results. I have a question. Just beyond the numbers, we see NRR at 110%. Wanted to get a sense of what's really clicking. Is it the pricing change to everything, more transaction or subscription-based on the MarTech side? Is it the hunting you've been doing and winning the large contracts? How would we think of the growth which has come along?
in terms of-
Yeah.
Yeah, go ahead, Tanmaya.
Yeah. NRR denotes the growth of our existing relationships, right? As I talked about, like, both in DaaS and distribution, I have got very marquee customers, who are the big, either the hotel chains or the big OTAs or car rental companies. Both in... You know, particularly in DaaS, the data requirements for these companies have increased significantly with the, with the, with the business growth they are experiencing. That is number 1, why the NRR has, you know, grown, grown pretty, pretty healthy. On the distribution side also, as you know, the volume growth is also there, because of, you know, the, the, everybody's operating at a higher level than the pre-COVID levels. The volume growth in the existing clients are also there.
... these two reasons are where the NRR has grown from 105% to 110%. Bhanu, you want to add anything?
No, that's good.
Okay, thank you. Secondly, when we look at a revenue growth guidance of sort of doubling in the next three years, are you thinking of any inorganic moves here? I'm just trying to think of, you have the RG Labs on one hand, and then you have a very robust M&A pipeline on the other. Are you going to look to acquire for scale or for a certain skill set that you want to add? Any thoughts there would be really helpful.
Yeah. It's gonna be a combination of really three things, right? Like I said, you know, within the existing product set as well, we are seeing, you know, quite an acceleration, and we are continuing to invest more in the sales and marketing there. You know, we added more people in Latin America. We're bringing back ex-Adara folks. We've really taken on digital marketing also in a big, big way, and we're seeing, you know, a very, very good return on ad spend there. We continue to invest in that area. From a, you know, if you look at the 4x4, 2x2 matrix of BCG, right? One is to continue to penetrate your existing products, and we are seeing some very good traction there.
I, I would say, you know, given the organic growth that we are seeing, you know, we'll continue to see that growth basis that penetration strategy and making our products incrementally better. The RevAI, Uno, our integrated tech stack, the RG Lab initiatives are really, you know, new products to our existing customers in that BCG matrix, which will be the, you know, the, the opportunity to add, like, an, an accelerator. Really the third accelerator is, is really M&A. But as we've demonstrated, if you look at our past record, we continue to acquire at least one company a year since 2018, except for the COVID year. Even today, as we speak, we have a very robust M&A pipeline.
I'm very confident that, you know, given the pipeline that we have, we will continue to at least do one deal a year. You know, with the combination of those three levers, it gives us the confidence that we can double our revenue.
Thank you. Thank you, Bhanu and Tanmaya, and all the very best.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Miten, an individual investor. Please go ahead. Miten, your line is unmuted. Please go ahead with your question. As there's no response, we proceed to the next question from the line of Darshil Zaveri from Crown Capital. Please go ahead.
Hello. Good evening, team, and firstly, congratulations on a great set of results. Hello, am I audible?
Yes.
Yeah, yeah. I wanted to ask about, so our doubling of revenue in three years, so we are taking FY 2024 as the base of what we'll double in three years, right? Or is it FY 2023? That's one clarification I wanted. With the increase in the revenue and we see our good operating leverage that we've always had, so what would be the ideal margin range that we could operate under?
Yes, we are talking about FY 2024 as the base. Let me also qualify the doubling of revenues as a aspirational goal. I, I don't want you guys to come back and tell me, "Hey, you committed to this." This is what we are aspiring to and, you know, given, like I said, the, the product set that we have and how-- what percentage of the market that we have, the opportunity that's ahead of us. You know, in, in fact, also, the team that we are building, you know, it's, it's... I can tell you it's no, you know, it's not a small thing. Nobody asked me the question on appointing Peter Strebel. You know, this is a CEO of, you know, two very, very large hotel chains in the U.S.
To be able to attract that kind of talent and you know, how we are now in that, in that position to upgrade talent, to take the company to the next level, it gives me the confidence that it's a very, very doable objective that we set out. On your question around margins, as I've stated previously as well, you know, our mature products are actually, you know, north of 25%-30% margin. In a steady state, I do believe that we could, you know, near that number. It is, you know, the fact that the opportunity is so large ahead of us, that we continue to invest in R&D and building up our commercial team.
For whatever sales and marketing investments that we are doing today, you know, there will be a lag of at least 2 to 3 quarters, and we continue to invest sort of in that fashion, given the opportunity is so large. You know, that's why the, the margins are much lower, because we're still a growth story. In a, in a steady state, I, I see me, you know, at least, let's say, at a, you know, INR 2,000 crore number. I'm very, very comfortable to say we should be anywhere between 25%-30% margin.
That, that's very great to hear, sir. Sir, one more question regarding our inorganic strategy. With the growth that we are seeing, maybe organic would count for maybe 20%-25% of our growth, and a lot of our growth will come from our inorganic sector, or how will it be?
I, I think, what you just stated is a fair way thinking, you know, to think about it. If you do a 25% growth, you can actually double the company in 4 years. I do believe very, very strongly that given the tailwinds that we have, the acceleration in our products and sales and marketing, that, you know, we can achieve that 20%-25% organic growth. Then in addition to that, you know, our inorganic play, which, you know, we've demonstrated that we have a playbook that will add to the rest. That gives us the confidence of, you know, aspiring to that goal of doubling revenues.
Okay, great, sir. That's great to hear, sir. Thank you so much for answering all the questions, sir, and all the best for future contacts. Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Prolin Nandu from Goldfish Capital. Please go ahead.
Hey. Hi, Bhanu. I hope I'm audible.
Yes, yes.
Yeah, Bhanu. Yeah, again, coming back to this aspiration of having 25% growth, right? Sorry, doubling your revenue in three years' time on a base of FY 2024. Like, I mean, I mean, that's a 25% kind of a CAGR for 3 years, right? In some sense. That is something which we are already doing organically, right?
Yes.
My question is that, is this not a very low bar to have, right? Given the sectoral tailwinds, given how small we are in the overall scheme of things, given the size of the opportunity and given some of the people then to whom we are recruiting and, you know, healthy profitability also. I'm just trying to, I mean, are you, are you being overly conservative in giving this number? Because that's a 25% CAGR for three years. You, you mentioned that you will double your revenue in four years, but no, it's three years, right? In some sense.
Yeah.
You are also mentioning the inorganic part, right? In some sense, for which you have a, you have a INR 600 crore kind of enabling resolution. I'm just trying to figure out what am I missing in terms of, you know, between the quality of growth comments and the, you know, quantum of growth aspirations that you have.
Yeah. These are very good points. I mean, look, from, you know, from my perspective, we came into the market, we were at, you know, INR 350 crore. A year and a half later, we are run rating close to INR 900,000 crore. Now I'm saying that we're gonna double in three years. From my perspective, in like 4.5 years, people who invested at INR 350, now the company is growing, like, in a matter of 4.5 time, years, about six times. I don't think a lot of companies in the history of, you know, Indian stock exchange or stock market would have accomplished that. I'm very, very comfortable taking on that target, and there's still a lot to do, you know? It's easy to put these numbers in an Excel spreadsheet, but...
be very confident about it, but there is a fair degree of work to be done to execute on it. You know, I, my, my belief on setting goals and targets is that, you know, they, they should be little stretched, but not as stretched that they're not achievable. You know, so we, we want to continue to have this habit of saying things that we would deliver on, which I, I hope we have demonstrated that we have done. Look, could it be more? Yes. But I do think that for me and for the team at RateGain, this is very much an achievable target, and that's how we want to pursue it.
Sure. Sure. no, because, I mean, I was just trying to figure out whether are there any, other, I mean, any part of the business that you think are going to be a drag or going to grow at a lower, pace going forward? That's what I wanted to probably check with you, right? Or is it like-
Yeah. Look, I, I don't see any. Everything that we do, there is clear demonstrated track of it having a product-market fit, meaning that the customers need the product. As you scale, I think the eye needs to be on the execution. I don't worry about the opportunity, I worry about execution. You know, I've been an operator for now 20 years, and I don't take that part of execution, you know, softly or easily. I do feel like there is a tremendous amount of work cut out for us, and I think all of us would be very, very happy if we are able to achieve that goal of, you know, getting to a INR 2,000 crore with a 25%-30% margin.
No, that, I, I agree, I agree with you. Bhanu, to be very honest, you have demonstrated that execution, right? I mean, since your listing. My second question would be on margins, right? In some sense, we are already at 17%. You want to hold on to that margin of 17% by the year-end as well. Clearly, you have talked about efficiencies in Adara and some of the other businesses as well, right? We are, we are to enter some of the seasonally strong quarters, where probably transactional revenues will also be much more stronger, right? What are the pushes and pulls that you see in the margins going forward, right? I mean, for us to have that 17% number.
Sorry, I, I missed the question. Can you, can you repeat it again on the, I think it was around margin, right?
Yeah, it was around margin. I'm saying that we are already, in Q1, we are at around 17%, and we are saying that for the whole year also, we are guiding for a 17% kind of a number. You have, I mean, in your previous comment, you have mentioned that Adara is a very highly operating, leverage kind of a business, right? I mean, there the margins can turn positive, right, going ahead.
Yeah. Yep.
Then we are also entering some of the very seasonally strong quarters, right? Where transaction-
Yep, yep.
revenue can also go up. I mean, I, I see more of the pulls in the margin part of it, but if you can help me understand what will drag it down for the next nine months, that would.
Yeah. Well, you're absolutely right. We guided for 17%, and we were actually had guided for about 13.5% at Q1. We ended up coming at 17.6, which is, which is again, great execution by the team at RateGain. My belief is that we will exceed that 17% margin, but, you know, we don't want to commit to, you know, what that delta will be from what we guided at the beginning of the year. You know, it's something that we wanna sort of wait and watch and probably come back to you guys at the end of H1, where we can give a realistic number. You're absolutely right. With everything that I see in the business, usually H2 is greater than H1.
There's no reason for me to believe that, you know, there's gonna be anything dramatically different, given all the, you know, investments that we are doing, short-term investments, which I'm refer to as sales and marketing. They usually only have a lag of one, two quarters, where after which they begin to fire as well. We have a pretty large order book on distribution. We are looking to monetize that, beginning this quarter and next quarter, which should also see a very nice, you know, jump in our distribution revenue. Yeah, I, I, I don't, you know, see anything out there that causes any cause of concern. I, I believe our H2 should be better than our H1.
You know, as we, as Tanmay stated also in his opening remarks, that we do believe that we should be exceeding our, the guidance that we, you know, offered at the beginning of the year.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Rahul Jain from Dolat Capital. Please go ahead.
Yeah, hi. Thanks for the opportunity. Just can you confirm what is the precise inorganic number in this quarter?
Rahul, we grew 80% year-over-year. Okay? Out of that, 25% is organic, rest is inorganic because we have to consolidate Adara.
Tanmaya, the reason I was asking this, because this is leading to very difficult math for me, because, if I do that, it is appearing that the Adara business has grown 60% Q-Q, and we just had a 15 days advantage. Am I reading right, or is there some wrong in my calculation?
Maybe, no, I think the calculations are right. Maybe I can send you data, you know, separately. The QOQ improvement in Adara is around... One second. Sequentially, it is a growth of around, yes, 58%.
Okay. Is there any seasonality in this business, or there is some spillover that has come up from the previous quarter?
No, there is little bit seasonality in Adara business. Generally, this quarter is a pretty strong quarter for them. I think this quarter and the quarter of October, November, December are strong quarters, and the other quarters are a little bit softer, but they are not materially softer.
But then if you just, simply do this current revenue into four, for MarTech business, this take care of all your, requirement for the year in terms of the guidance on the top end. Are you indirectly implying the other two business would not grow in this year?
No, Rahul, I think. Look, as I said, you know, because Adara business is new for us, okay. There is little bit of seasonality in the business as we talked about. We want to have a clear H1 data before we commit for any new guidance, okay. I think we need to see some more patterns, because we are currently also investing, which, you know, into sales and marketing, which returns are yet to come. We need more, more time to commit to a new, well, a new, you know, earnings guidance.
Thank you very much. Ladies and gentlemen, that was the last question for today. I would now like to hand the conference over to Mr. Bhanu Chopra for closing comments. Thank you, and over to you, sir.
Yes, thank you, everyone. As you saw that we had a very, very strong quarter on the back of the overall tailwinds in the industry, great execution by the RateGain team, and as, as I mentioned now, all, all heads are focused on this new aspirational goal of doubling revenues, and we appreciate everybody's support. Thank you.
Thank you. On behalf of RateGain Travel Technologies Limited, we conclude today's conference. Thank you all for joining. You may now disconnect your lines.