Ladies and gentlemen, you are connected to RateGain Travel Technologies' Q1 FY 2026 Earnings Conference Call. Please stay connected. The call will begin in a couple of minutes. Ladies and gentlemen, I repeat, you are connected to RateGain Travel Technologies' Q1 FY 2026 Earnings Conference Call. Please stay connected. The call will begin shortly. Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, good day and welcome to the Q1 FY 2026 Earnings Conference Call hosted by RateGain Travel Technologies. 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 speak to an operator by pressing * then 0 on your touchtone phone. Please note that this conference is being recorded. I now hand the conference over to Mr. Bhanu Chopra, Chairman and Managing Director from RateGain. Thank you, and over to you, sir.
Thank you, Mr. Chopra. Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining us today for RateGain Travel Technologies' earnings call for the first quarter of FY 2026. I am joined by Rohan Mittal, our CFO, and Divik Anand, our Head of Investor Relations. We announced our Q1 results earlier today, and I hope you had a chance to review our financials, press release, and investor presentation available on the stock exchanges and on our website. We started FY 2026 with strong momentum. In Q1, RateGain recorded new contractments of INR 81.7 crore, a six-quarter high, growing 37.7% year-on-year. This includes our highest ever new contractments for RateGain, excluding Adara, which grew by 53% year-on-year to INR 46.1 crore in the first quarter.
These numbers validate the strategic investments we have made since the start of the year in scaling our go-to-market (GTM) engine, expanding presence across key geographies, and strengthening our product and leadership. In line with this approach and given the growth potential in APAC and Middle East, we've expanded our GTM headcount from 15 to 55 in the region, and this has helped us grow our revenue within the region at 22.2% compared to the same time last year. We also saw a healthy uptake in new contractments. We continue to see offshoots from the investments we've been making, and we'll continue to double down on these investments. This is the traction we see in these markets. In the previous quarter, we also spoke about our continued investments in building an AI-first portfolio. We are now seeing early results from these efforts.
UNO VIVA, our AI voice agent, is progressing well, with initial deployments underway and strong interest from regional players. RG Insights, our real-time analytics solution providing deeper visibility into distribution performance, is now used by over 30 partners and praised for feasible use, real-time insights, and clean interface by our customers. Smart ARI, our AI-powered ARI management engine, has helped partners reduce ARI traffic by 45% surrounding casting bookings. With that, let's take a brief look at our business case. On the back of new AI capabilities and our ability to deliver at scale, the DAS business has seen expansion of key existing customers across product lines and verticals. AI-led capabilities for route performance and price intelligence are driving strong momentum, supported by new signings and positive feedback from revenue teams. We announced key partnerships with TezJet, Air Montenegro, Cypress Airways, and others.
In Car and Rev AI, we've seen expansion across key enterprise accounts and new key signings. For the OTA segment, I'm pleased to announce we won a very large deal and one of the largest travel tech companies, expanded key strategic accounts, and secured a major deal in LATAM. Distribution continues to be a key area of investment for us, especially in the mid-market segment. We recently announced partnerships with Cloudbeds to redefine how hotels, hostels, and vacation rentals optimize their distribution strategy using AI-powered capabilities. We see a clear opportunity to evolve from being a connectivity provider to helping hotels drive incremental revenue. UNO continues to be a key investment area given traction in APAC and the Middle East, driven by our expanded GTM efforts. In our MarTech business, Adara continues to perform well this quarter with steady growth in both new and renewal business.
Within Adara, our renewals grew by 41% compared to Q1 of last year, a great validation of the value and ROAS we are delivering to our customers. We're seeing good traction within the PMO segment, which remained a key contributor this quarter. We saw healthy demand across key sectors, including airlines, financial services, hospitality, and entertainment parks. Demand booster also saw a consistent increase in client acquisition across regions, reinforcing the relevance of our solutions in helping hotels drive direct demand. RateGain continues to lead industry conversations on the future of distribution and hospitality. This quarter, we released the second edition of the State of Distribution 2025 report with New York University , SPS, Tisch Center and HEDNA . It gives us insights from over 700 hotel brands and 21,000+ properties. The report highlights how distribution is becoming leaner and more integrated.
It reinforces our focus on building solutions that simplify operations and support faster and more connected decision-making. In line with broader industry trends, the Skift Travel Health Index supported a 3% year-on-year increase in global travel performance in the first half of 2025, supported by Brazil and North America, APAC, and Latin America. Booking windows have softened and there's growing caution in leisure spending, but overall travel activity remains steady. We also see some commentary of leading travel brands, which talk about improving demand for the second half of the year, reinforcing optimism across the sector. We also continue to invest in strengthening our leadership team. This quarter, we raised three key appointments. Parijat Tiwari has joined us as Executive Vice President and General Manager for Distribution. He will lead the global strategy, innovation, and growth of RateGain's distribution business.
Parijat brings over 17 years of experience in strategy, operations, and digital transformation across diverse industries. He joined us from PayTm and has held positions at BCG and Kearney. He holds an MBA in strategy and finance from IIM Calcutta. Ashish Sikka has joined us as Senior Vice President and Business Head of UNO. He joins to lead UNO, RateGain's PR first phase, combining CRS Channel Manager, Booking Engine, and VIVA with responsibility for product strategies, innovation, and global adoption. He has over 17 years of experience in strategy, transformation, and regional leadership at firms across India, Europe, and Southeast Asia. His prior roles include leadership positions at e-com Express and OYO. Sanchit Garg has also joined us as Executive Vice President and General Manager of Rev-AI and Car Business.
He oversees global strategy, operations, and growth for RateGain's Rev-AI and Car verticals, working closely with regional teams to scale innovation and performance. He brings the entrepreneurial experience, having founded a Sequoia-backed startup and has held senior leadership roles at Lazada and Group One. He's an alumnus of IIT Delhi and IIM Calcutta. Continuing with our vision of AI-first organization, this quarter, we also introduced REMO, RateGain's first AI employee, as part of our People and Culture team. Designed to foster a more inclusive and empathetic workplace, REMO creates a safe space for honest dialogue, reflection, and employee well-being. Alongside product innovation, we are also investing in AI literacy and adoption. Over 300 employees have been trained on core AI concepts and use cases, with more training sessions underway. These skills are being applied across engineering, sales, marketing, and support to drive faster execution and better decision-making.
Also, I'm pleased to share that RateGain was once again recognized by Great Place to Work in India as one of the top 100 companies to work for in 2025. The company was ranked 77th, making a 23-place drop from previous years. We also won the Economic Times Award for Best DVD Campaign for the State of Distribution 2025 report. These awards reflect the commitment of our teams and the culture we continue to nurture. With that, now I'll hand it over to Rohan to walk you through the financials. Thank you.
Thank you, Bhanu, and a very warm welcome to everyone on this call. It's a pleasure to connect with you all today. Starting with an update on the numbers for the quarter one, FY 2026, we have reported a revenue of INR 273 crore, which reflects a growth of 5% year-on-year. Our operating margins came at 18.2%. We continue to maintain a healthy margin with a relentless focus on cost control. This reflects in the fact that our quarter one margins also carry the impact of annual rate hikes, as well as the investment ramp-up, as was mentioned in the last quarter's call, to drive the next leg of growth. Our PAT grew marginally compared to last year and stood at INR 46.9 crore in this quarter. Our Market vertical witnessed strong growth in this quarter at 16.5% year-on-year growth, with continued strong traction in Adara.
That business continues to build momentum on the back of a strong value proposition, delivering superior ROAS for our customers. Our DaaS vertical degrew 3.1% in this quarter, and this was mainly due to the shift from Adara DaaS to Adara Market. This has been a strategic call and focus for us since the acquisition of Adara, given that Adara Market is higher up the value chain in terms of offering to our customers, and we own the entire relationship. Organic RateGain DaaS, including Adara DaaS, grew at 5.9% year-on-year, with continued traction in key subsegments of travel. We continue to drive investments in our UNO RevMax platform within our Distribution business and are committed to scaling this up in the coming few quarters. Along with this, we continue to establish key partnerships with travel software companies to scale up presence across our established customer base.
As management, we are committed to drive investments in key areas which will help us deliver growth in line with our aspirations, and I'm happy to see the traction in this quarter. Our new contract wins came in at a six-quarter high, growing at 37.7% compared to the last year and stood at INR 81.7 crore. This was also the highest ever new contract wins for RateGain, excluding Adara, with both DaaS and Distribution outperforming. New contract wins within the DaaS segment grew by 68% compared to Q1 last year, with a large order win with one of the largest travel tech companies on the planet. In Distribution as well, our new contract wins in quarter one came in at over 65% of the entire new contract wins of last year. Along with this, we saw strong growth in the APAC and Middle East markets.
This has been a high investment market for us for the past few quarters, and we continue to see positive traction with the customers. We continue to see steady growth in our North American market in quarter one as well. With continued traction across key customer segments and geographies, we have a healthy pipeline in tow, which currently stands at INR 512.3 crore. We've added INR 41 crore of fresh pipeline in quarter one itself. We continue to have a strong balance sheet with our net worth currently at INR 1,740 crore, and our cash and cash equivalents at the end of the quarter stood at INR 1,281 crore. With that, I would like to close my remarks. I'm happy to open the floor for questions. Thank you.
Thank you very much. We will now begin the question and answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may press star and one on their touchtone telephone. If you wish to remove yourself from the question queue, you may press star and two. Participants are requested to use handsets while asking a question. Ladies and gentlemen, we will wait for a moment while the questions are assembled. We take the first question from the line of Jyoti Singh from Arihant Capital Markets Limited. Please proceed.
Thank you for the opportunity and the consolation on the good setup number and a good deal wins execution. I wanted to get a sense on the new pipeline contract. We came from a major geography like North America and Europe, and how are you tailoring your offering in these geographies versus India or Asia specifically?
I'll address the second part of your question about which geographies we are focusing on from a GTM execution, and let Rohan fill in on the numbers specific to the pipeline. As I remarked in my opening remarks, and something that I've been saying across the past three quarters, we've been really investing in the GTM engine specifically for the SMB market, which is quite prevalent in APAC. We have increased our GTM strength from 15 to 55 people, and that's really yielding very, very good results. Similarly, we have made some incremental investments in Europe and the U.S. as well. Our focus really on executing on UNO and the SMB GTM machinery has been in APAC, and that's why we see a good amount of growth in the business, in the APAC business from last year.
We will continue to see that growth over the next few quarters as well. Rohan, do you want to fill in on the pipeline?
In terms of the pipeline, our current pipeline stands at INR 512 crore. There is a healthy representation across North America, Europe, and ASEAN markets. We don't disclose the exact numbers across these markets, but there is a very strong healthy representation across all three markets. I can tell you that if you were to look at the year-on-year numbers, our Northern market, which is the North American market, and APAC markets have registered the strongest growth. This is just a reflection of the pipeline and the investments that we've done in these markets.
Okay. Thank you, sir. Just one more question. On the revenue side, like 49.1% of revenue now from the subscription and hybrid model. How do you see the shift impacting customer lifetime value and upsell potential?
Can I take that, Bhanu?
Yes, please.
If you look at the numbers, our transaction business, our transaction revenue has grown from 40% to almost 51% if you were to look at the year-on-year number, while my subscription and hybrid business brings up the rest of the business. From a customer lifecycle point of view, we mentioned that the renewal in our Adara business, which primarily contributes to the transaction business, continues to be exceptionally strong. We are trending at north of 35% renewal rate on a year-on-year basis. Even if it is a transaction business, we continue to retain those businesses and expand those businesses over a longer period of time. We are not seeing any major concerns or any concerns for that matter on owning the lifetime value of those customers.
Okay. Sir, on the margin side, a very good show on the margin, 18.2% this time, and largely our growth, our margin guidance, 15%- 17%. If we can dive further, will we remain the same guidance or any changes on that side as a lot of good deal wins execution?
Yeah. On the margins, I can take that. Okay. Jyoti, on the question on margins and revised guidance, you know we want to stick to the guidance that we've given at the beginning of the year, and we really want to forego this thing of actually revising guidance every quarter. It puts unnecessary pressure on us. We will stick to the guidance that we have provided at the beginning of the year, and our aspiration and effort will be that we exceed that.
Understood. Thank you so much, sir.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Rahul from Dolat Capital. Please proceed.
Yeah, I hope my line is okay. Yes, yes, Rahul.
We can hear you.
Yeah, yeah. Thanks. Basically, if I look at the booking input that you have shared both on the overall and non-Adara part of it, it is pretty up. You have also separately commented on Adara renewals. It's 40% up. Can we say that the current pain from a distribution point of view is behind us? Within that, it's only the Adara part of the business which continues to remain, and the challenge in the rest of the businesses are up for a good double-digit plus growth.
Yeah, I think, Rahul, that's a good summary because, as you noted, on the distribution side of the business, Q1 alone, our new wins were equivalent to 50% of the new wins of all of FY 2025. We have a very, very good order book, and even from a pipeline perspective, we are in a very good place.
Yeah, I would say that given the focus on distribution and something that I've said all along, eventually, I see it as a very high-growth area given the investments we are making in UNO and new areas like smart distribution. The other part of the business that you mentioned about Adara Data, you know, that has subsided, and we're not too worried about that because it's a strategic call that we made that we want to be more in managing the business versus the data business. Overall, Adara business continues to outperform. Yeah, overall, it does seem like we are now behind the pain. Given the GTM execution and the wins that we are seeing, I feel very, very confident that we should see much higher prospects of growth from here on.
Right. Bhanu, just to further, if I may, draw you on that.
One part of the question, which was on the Adara, I think this business in FY 2024 used to be around $15 million, give or take. Can you tell us where it is now, where it was in FY 2025? What is structural potential here for this year, next year? Any input on that part would be great. Taking cue from your distribution comment, is it safer to assume sequential growth from this point to continue in that?
On the Adara, yeah, on the Adara DaaS business, I'll defer to Rohan on the exact numbers, but directionally, like I said to you, it will continue to remain stagnant or maybe a little bit declining. Like I said, we're seeing a very, very good growth on the other side of Adara business, so I'm not concerned about it at all.
As I noted on the distribution, again, directionally, we've had some very, very good wins, and we have a very large order book. Now, it's really in terms of seeing sequential growth. It's our ability to monetize the order book that we have, but you know directionally, it should improve from here on.
On the numbers side, Rahul, last year, Adara DaaS as a percentage of total revenue was sub 7%.
Okay. Okay. This must be.
Total revenue of RateGain, yeah.
Yeah. Last question from my side, just trying to understand, is there some bit of realignment that we have done within the three subsegments, the way we define it? The reason of asking this is the aberration in the quarterly performance in the three segments has become very, very stark. You know, or is there a mix of seasonality that has evolved in a different manner, which is driving this kind of movement?
No, there hasn't been any change in alignment on how we categorize the revenue, Rahul. In distribution, there is some amount of seasonality between different quarters. Similarly, there is some seasonality in the Adara business as well. Some amount of aberration that you may see in our distribution business is, last quarter, we had some one-time collection of a bad debt. You know, something that I've noted earlier also on the distribution side, we have one of our big OTAs that has consolidated, as a result of which we continue to see some declining. Given the new order range and the order book, we're able to, as we monetize, we're able to recover on that.
Sure. Fair enough. That's it from us. Thank you.
Thank you. We take the next question from the line of Karan from Phillip Capital. Please proceed.
Yeah. Hi. Thanks for the opportunity and congratulations on the setup numbers. The first question is in the market segment. If you can, just mention about the segmental breakup within MarTech. It needs to be within paid digital media, brand management, and Adara. If you can highlight how are these subsegments doing, what is the overall contribution of these three subsegments to total markets, and what's the outlook in these three subsegments? Thanks.
Yeah. In the market business, Adara continues to outperform. On the social media, which is around brand engagement and brand monitoring, that's a business that has declined over the last couple of years, and we continue to figure out a way on how we pivot that. We do feel that we are at a point where the focus on product innovation should land us at a good place on how we pivot the business.
We are experimenting in launching the self-serve, and there are some experiments underway, but it's a very small part of our business. Overall, we are at 82% or 83%. On the paid digital media, as I had noted a couple of quarters ago, we had lost one major client, which was acquired by a big hotel brand. As a result of which, we see some intrusion, but the new wins that we have and the continued momentum, you know, this is going to be an area of growth and focus. Now that we have really started to focus on the integrated suite, we are now going into the market with UNO, which is our, you know, starting with our direct booking stack, where we are bundling the paid digital media along with the booking engine, along with the VIVA, along with the channel manager.
That's seeing a very, very good traction and also very healthy contract wins as well.
Bhanu, can you give us a ballpark number in terms of the strength between these three segments?
Rohan, can you help me with that, please?
Bhanu, from a Q1 revenue point of view, Adara would typically contribute close to about 65%- 70% of the business. The ball and the social media business would contribute to less than 5%, less than 6%. The balance is all paid media.
60%- 70% is of MarTech. It's not of the total revenue, right?
Yes, of MarTech.
Okay. Great. Thanks for asking that question. Secondly, I wanted to take on DaaS and distribution. Bhanu, you had mentioned in the previous few calls about pricing pressure within these two segments. Is the pricing pressure still there? Just an update on that would be helpful.
Yeah. There is no new conversation on pricing renegotiations. We actually haven't seen any of that happen in this quarter. Even in the future outlook on renewals that we are having, we continue to insist on CPI increases in our contracts. As I mentioned, a couple of contracts were legacy contracts in distribution that we had acquired and that have to have a relook. Most of that is now behind us. The mention of pricing pressure maybe was more of an anomaly than a trend. We don't see any of that anymore.
Okay. Great. Do you want the outlook on U.S. geography, please?
Some of the listed hotels and airlines have spoken positively on the demand driven. What are you seeing in terms of outlook from U.S.?
Yeah. If I have to talk about macro level, I would say the U.S. is kind of holding steady. More focus is on domestic tourism and travel versus international given some policy. The demand is holding steady. Europe is similar, but it's really APAC where a lot of investment continues to happen. In fact, over the last one or two quarters, every conference and event that I've been at, all the hotel majors that you talked about, their CEOs are present there and looking to really invest and double down. It really marries in well with our strategy to continue to increase our investment in the APAC region. If you think about our competitors, they are mostly based in the Western economy.
I see very strongly in the next year or two, in our backyard, in our neighborhood, we will be the most dominant player.
Okay. Great. Thanks a lot, and all the best.
Thank you. Before we proceed with the next question, ladies and gentlemen, in order to ensure that the management is able to take questions from all the participants, please limit your questions to two per participant. The next question is from the line of Pratap Maliwal from Mount Intra Finance. Please proceed.
Hello. Am I audible? Yes, Pratap, you are. Hi, sir. Thank you for taking my question. I just wanted to ask that I was going through your PPT. I don't think the annual recurring revenue number is mentioned on this quarter's PPT. Could you help us with that number, please?
Rohan, do you want to take that, please?
Bhanu, the have stopped publishing our ARR numbers from this quarter onwards. The reason for that is now 50.9% of our business is transaction business. We don't think it's the right metric to track going forward.
Sir, even in previous quarters, a substantial portion was transaction-based, and I believe we were taking that into account based on certain estimations in our ARR calculations, right? What has changed?
You're right about that. If you look at the last quarter, if you look at the entire last financial year, the transaction business was contributing 42.4%. Since that number has crossed the 50% threshold, that's why we've taken a call to start publishing the ARR numbers. If you still need some additional clarity on the annual recurring revenue, which will come specifically from our subscription and hybrid business, I'm happy to connect offline and shed some light around that.
Sure. That would be great. Just one other thing. I noticed that our NRR number has been declining, and we've come to about 100% right now. Do we see any concerns regarding our client churn, and you know how are we trying to make up for this?
If you're looking at GRR and NRR, the GRR, which is really on the churn, has been hovering around 90%, which is very, very healthy for SaaS companies, and we continue to be on track on that. The comment that I had made previously also is that, you know, given the fact that we are investing in the GTM engine, a lot of focus is also now on new mobile wins. If you notice that we are selling more, but perhaps we haven't done as great a job of selling to our existing customers. I think it's an aberration.
I don't think this is a long-term trend as we hunt for new logos because the idea is you bring in new logos, and ultimately, we will be able to cross-sell and upsell to them. Overall, on the GRR, NRR, I'm not too concerned, and I think it's good. Given the fact that GRR has remained, you know, at 90% or thereabouts, which is very healthy, I do think that the NRR number over the next couple of quarters will probably maybe move up as well.
Okay. Sure. Thanks for taking my questions, and congrats on the productivity.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Rishika Agarwal from Bastion Research. Please proceed.
Hi. Thank you for the opportunity. I have a couple of qualitative questions. My first question is regarding the industry maturity. I wanted to get a sense on how mature the industry is to which we are catering. If we add a new client in the DaaS segment, is it a client who's not already using such services from us or our competitors? Or is the industry mature to the extent that the clients which we will be acquiring will mostly be from competitors? If I could get a sense around this?
Yeah. It's a great question. It really depends on where in the lifecycle the product is. Some of our traditional products, and I've given this analogy previously also, we qualify our products as, you know, babies, teenagers, and adults. I would say for the most part, on products that I would categorize as adults, which are our DaaS style, there is healthy growth of the industry. In 50% of the cases, the new win will be a disbursement deal, and in 50%, it will be new customer acquired. When it comes to newer products, like our VIVA, our smart distribution, our approach to going in with an integrated platform like UNO, which I would categorize as more of a teenager, in those cases, it's more of a greenfield, and the opportunities are very, very large.
Similarly, with our babies, which are experimental products, some of them make through depending on what we realize in the product market cycle, and some of them, unfortunately, you have to kill. It really depends on where we are in the lifecycle. Given the progressive nature and AI-first mentality of the company, we continue to launch new capabilities that we are seeing as an opportunity. As you can imagine, AI is quite a transformational event for tech industry and our ability to drive a lot of cost efficiencies and revenue opportunities for hospitality industry. I'm very excited about everything that we are doing, and I feel a lot of it is going to be greenfield. It will take some time to reach a typical point, but once you do on some of these products, you will see a tremendous amount of scale.
Okay, thanks. That's helpful. The second question I had was, as we can see that our business mix is tilting a lot towards market, which is our highest growth segment. As we move towards market, is it, is my understanding correct that we'll be moving from a platform-led business to an employee-intensive business?
No, that's an incorrect assessment. If you look at our market business, it's completely digitized. It's AI-led. Everything that we do is done by permissions in terms of how we spend the marketing dollars. In fact, if you think about the transformations that AI is leading in the market area, we are at the forefront of it in terms of doing the creative, in terms of devising multi-channel programs that optimize the spend to deliver the highest return on our spend. Even if I look at the revenue increase and the number of people that we have, it's nonlinear. We will continue to see expansion of our margins in that business, versus what the growth was.
Okay. Thanks. Thanks for correcting that understanding. That's all from my side.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Shailesh Naik from S Code. Please proceed.
Yeah. This is Shailesh Naik here. I had a response query regarding the client number nine. I think that is, sorry. Where you have a client sound. Now, when you say this client sound, is it a unique client or is there a product, different products where you count them as a different client? Secondly, what is the issue? Why are they declining from 2024 to now? Every quarter, we are having customers. Is there some niche which we are trying to change, or are we declining certain sets of customers? That is what I wanted to understand from the customer question. Hello. Yeah. Directionally, you know, we are actually increasing the strategic customer count. It's not by any means a worrisome trend. The decline that we see is because of some long-tail customers that may have churn. I'll let Rohan give more color.
Yeah. The way to look at that is that the way we represent our clients, certain clients are represented at a master level, and certain clients might be represented at an individual property level, for example. They may belong to the same master client, but we may not have the contracts for all the properties which are run by the master client, and therefore, we will represent them at an individual level. That's how we calculate and submit our client count. The churn number is a very, very small number, 23 accounts on a base of 3,22 4. As Rohan mentioned, that's just some churn on the long-tail side. To answer your second part of the first question, we are not declining or trying to move to a certain direction actively that a certain product has to grow faster than the other.
We are actively investing and pursuing growth in all of these categories of business, DaaS, distribution, and market. This is just a reflection of how and where we get traction in a particular quarter. You will, as Rohan rightly said, there is no cause for concern there. You should not construe this as a long-term thing there.
Long-term, we would be looking at increasing the client count. That is the metric the way we should look at, right? That is how we are saying. The right metric is to see that the client count has to go up, and that is the kind of growth. Is that the way I should look at it in the long run?
I'm sorry. Your voice is a bit muffled. I could not really understand your second question. Could you please repeat that?
Yeah. Basically, I believe the client count is a metric which is to be looked at as a number of, as a growth, and the client count as somewhat correlated. Is that the way I look at it, or it has no correlation? More focus is more on depth or width?
Let me put it this way. Let's say we signed up a master account, and there are 1,000 properties in that master account. We may initially start with 100, and gradually, our intention would be to obviously scale up to 1,000.
Do you count that as 1,000, or do you count that as one client?
That varies from product to product. In certain products, we will count it as one. In certain products, it will count as 1,000.
There's another slide where you have given the segment-wise growth rate. There you have mentioned that, let's say, that is minus 3.1%, which you have mentioned. In highlight, you are mentioning that RateGain's DAS growth is 5.9%. I didn't understand that. Is that something different than this too? What does that mean exactly? This is slide number 10.
You're aware of that. The way to look at that, and I included this in my opening remarks, is there are two parts to this. One is the RateGain organic DaaS, and the second is the DaaS business that we inherited as part of the Adara acquisition about two years ago. There was a strategic call that the Adara DaaS will migrate to Adara Market, which is continuing to show very strong growth, as you can see in the market business. We are calling out the RateGain organic DaaS growth, which is excluding the Adara DaaS. The RateGain organic DaaS continues to show strong growth numbers.
Thanks a lot. Good luck, sir.
All right.
Thank you. We take the next question from the line of Mayank Babla from Enam Asset Management. Please proceed.
Hi. Thank you for taking my question, and congratulations on the new contract forms and the margin for comment. My first question is around, you know, if you could give us some sort of clarity or insight on the growth for the five-time shift, given that we've signed, we've had a great quarter in terms of new contract wins. I'm asking this because the last time we won around INR 84 crore of new contract wins was in Q3 of FY 2024, and I'm unable to compare this because there was no Adara in the days back then. How should we look at growth for FY 2026?
As I indicated earlier, we'll continue to hold the targets that we gave at the beginning of the year, which is a 68% growth and 15%- 17% of margin.
Okay. That means you would, can we expect that there might be some impact in the next quarter in terms of margin?
There is, because yeah, there is. Look, you know, something that I just said earlier, we just don't want to be having the pressure of every quarter revising guidance. We want to stick to what we have provided earlier, and our endeavor would be to exceed that expectation. If you're asking me, do I see anything in the next two quarters that I see as an impact? No, I do not see anything. In fact, I see a lot of optimism, and I am hoping that we continue to outperform on new wins. We've also started this quarter, which is Q2, in quite a fantastic way in terms of new contract wins. I'm hoping we continue to deliver on that promise. There is no foreseeable impact as we speak today.
Okay. Essentially, you mean to say that we are moving away from that whole format of giving guidance, and it would be if your aspiration would be to beat that whatever guidance you've given Q4? Or it's safe to assume that we would beat that guidance, right?
I think that is correct. We are foregoing this habit of revising guidance every quarter. We want to stick to what we have delivered at the beginning of the year, and our endeavor would be to meet and beat.
Sure. Thanks. We'll take our message.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Miten Shah, an individual investor. Please proceed.
Yes. Thank you for giving me the opportunity. I would like to know, you know, what is the status of acquisition? We have been rating social, and we can understand it takes time, and there were events which were been eluded. Do we see Guestara as a rising competition, and any plans there of being a potential acquisition candidate?
Sorry, I didn't follow the second part of the question. I think the first was around the status of M&A. I didn't follow the second part of the question.
The second part of the question is, are we aware of Guestara as a rising competition? Guestara as in G-U-E-S-T-A-R-A. Are we aware of this company as a rising competition? Could this be a potential acquisition candidate? Have you ever looked upon it? That was my question.
On the M&A side, I will sound like a broken record.
We continue to have very, very active conversations, and our pipeline continues to be robust. However, we are extremely disciplined about creating shareholder value by ensuring that what we pay has meeting certain IRR and payback thresholds that we have. I'm pretty confident something will happen. Whenever it happens, I think the investor community will understand and will also appreciate how patient this just does get rewarded. I am very confident that we will, in our M&A journey, continue to make the right deals that will be extremely value-driven that we have demonstrated in past deals such as Adara. To get the right deals, you have to be patient. On your second point about the company you mentioned, no, I'm not aware of them, but we'd love to connect offline and get more details about this company. Also, maybe your voice is a bit muffled driving your domain quite actively.
We'll connect offline and get more information about this company that you mentioned.
Yeah. Just repeat the spelling as G-U-E-S-T-Guestara, A-R-A, Guestara.
Yeah, Bhanu, I've got a detail. I'll share this with you.
Sure. The next question would be, you know, by the tariffs, because a majority of revenues come from North America. Sorry. We cut off in the middle. Can you repeat the question, please?
Yeah. Would we be affected by the tariff from the U.S.? You know, as a major revenue comes from North America in terms of revenue.
I think about the tariffs, no. There is no impact on us because the tariffs are more on the goods, and we are a tech company, so it does not impact us.
All right. All right. Yeah. Thanks a lot. And share me the key if you get an opportunity once again. Once again, thanks a lot for being the opportunity. You should all the best.
Thank you. Thank you, sir.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Darshil Jhaveri from Sapphire Capital. Please proceed.
Hello. Good evening, sir. Thank you so much for taking my question. Hopefully, I'm audible.
Yes, you are.
Yeah, some of my questions have already been answered. I just want to know from a business point of view, how do we see the next few years? I think FY 2026, as we said, maybe is an investment year and we are trying to get into a lot of new, new more products. What do we see maybe FY 2027 looking at? In terms of travel, what we can see and what you've been alluding to also, that the second half can be much better right now. How do we see that? I just wanted to grab your two thoughts on it.
Yeah. Our endeavor this year has been really to go back into an investment mode, largely integrating out our go-to-market (GTM) machinery, which has been to see results. I don't think this is the end of it. We will continue to double down as we see traction in certain key markets, including APAC. Our focus is building out the GTM machinery, continuing to launch our AI-powered product suite. I feel very excited about the integrated suite that we are building that will allow us to participate in some sort of a fee for every booking that a hotel makes irrespective of the channel that it comes from. If you think about the industry size, that's almost $700 billion. If you are participating in taking a percentage of that, it can be a very, very large business for us.
I'm very excited about that vision and future that we have built for us. Looking at near-term, given the investments we are making into the GTM machinery and product innovation, our endeavor for next year and the year after that is to get back to double digits and hopefully get to that 20% organic growth stock that I've indicated in the previous calls as well.
Okay. That helps a lot, sir. Sorry to ask again about the acquisition, but the current growth that you said, double digit, is organic, right? Not including the acquisition?
That is correct.
Okay. Fair enough, sir. On the acquisition side, is there anything that, you know, maybe that can happen in this year, or how do we see that, sir? Because just right now, the market conditions are better than what they were.
Yeah. Look, as I said, we are in active conversation. Something can happen this year. Absolutely, something can happen. I don't think we would commit to anything as of this point, because, like I said, we are very disciplined about what we would pay. Sometimes it takes some time to get reading of the minds, especially with the seller. Can we arrive at that number sooner than later? Who knows? Like I said earlier, I do feel very, very confident that our patience will pay off.
Okay. Fair enough, sir. Just like last question from my side, sir. In the transaction-led model, is the profitability better or similar to like a subscription or, you know, hybrid model? I think now most of our revenue is coming from the transaction side. I just wanted to know, is the overall margins better? How do they move around, sir?
Rohan, do you want to take that piece?
Could you please repeat that?
I think our transaction-based revenue is now more than 50%, where it was around 30% last year, I think. In that, how do the pricing of transaction-based happen? Does this give us better margins, or is it like, because there are more direct costs involved in the transaction, the margins can become a bit less than what we used to do previously? I just wanted to understand how does the economics of that work.
If you look at our, this quarter's presentation, you'll notice that there is a slight dip in our gross margins while our EBITDA has largely stayed flat. That's actually, in part, the answer to your question. As the mix changes to our transaction business, which is largely market, the gross margins have slightly come down from standing at about 74%-75% to about 72.8%. We didn't expect them to come down any further. However, at an EBITDA level, which is what is most important, the transaction business continues to operate at an EBITDA amount of 17%- 18%. We don't see any EBITDA impact coming in by virtue of the transaction business gaining a larger share of the total revenue. There can be a slight impact on the gross margins. Does that answer your question?
Yeah. Yeah. That helps a lot, sir. I just want to know, like, one two OTAs, we are thinking of those legacy contracts will be on the sunset. How much of that would impact our revenue in this current year? What would its contribution be in FY 2025 and what could it be expected in FY 2026?
Okay. If you were to look at the sunset OTA that we have spoken about in the past, almost 60% of the impact that was supposed to come out has already come in on a year-on-year basis between quarter one FY 2025 to quarter one 2026. Only about 40% of that is balanced. That number will account for a very small number of the total revenue as of date.
Okay. Okay. Fair enough, sir. Yeah, that's it from my side, sir. Thank you so much, sir.
All right.
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, due to time constraints, we take that as the last question and would now like to hand the question over to Bhanu Chopra, sir, for closing comments. Over to you, sir.
Thank you, Ashi. As we look ahead, I am incredibly excited about the future. Our ongoing investments in go-to-market acceleration and AI-powered product innovation are laying the foundation for sustainable long-term growth. These are not just tactical bets. These are strategic moves that position us to lead in an evolving landscape to deliver more value to our customers and scale efficiencies. The momentum we are seeing is just the beginning, and we are confident that the steps we are taking today will translate into even greater impacts and shareholder value in the quarters to come. Thank you all for your continued support.