Welcome you to the second quarter FY23 financial results presentation. Like always, let me start off with the consolidated financials and then hand it over to Kiran and Anshuman for the digital services part of it, and then to Gaurav for Reliance Retail, to Sanjay for the E&P upstream business and then I will take it back to complete both the O2C as well as the final set of comments. Starting with the results for this quarter. Our EBITDA at close to INR 35,000 grows up 14%, led by consumer businesses and upstream. Net profit at INR 15,512 was marginally up on a year-on-year basis. Earnings were impacted by lower O2C contribution.
Of course, we did feel the impact more on a quarter-on-quarter basis. In O2C, was impacted really by product volatility and product margins, the fact that demand was subdued and the introduction of the Special Additional Excise Duty. The retail consumer parts of the business did exceptionally well with robust retail revenues and EBITDA also being strong. We saw growth across consumption baskets. We saw increase, rebound in footfalls and also benefiting from the strengthening of the digital channels. On the digital services side, you know, customers, the number of customers were 428 million and, you know, strong growth in ARPU on a year-on-year basis. Of course, oil and gas benefiting from sustained production and the increase in the selling price for domestic gas.
Overall, diversified earnings streams did cushion the volatility of the energy markets. When you look at each of the segments, starting with revenue, retail INR 65,000 crore of revenue, EBITDA INR 4,400 crore. Growth rates, revenue up 43%, EBITDA up 51%. Store count well above 16,000, 16,600 to be precise. We added 795 stores, and this is over and above the 793 stores that we had added in the previous quarter. The number of transactions up 45%. You know, record footfalls, 180 million footfalls, so this is 23% above pre-COVID.
What is very heartening is the launch of JioMart on WhatsApp, and the important point there is 37% of orders were from customers who are new to JioMart. Moving to digital services side, close to INR 30,000 crore of revenue, EBITDA INR 12,300 crore. Revenue is up 21%, EBITDA up 29%. ARPU at INR 177, you know, with improving subscriber mix. Strong growth, healthy growth in customers. We added 7.7 million subscribers in this quarter. The engagement statistics as reflected in many parameters, including the fact that the consumption of data per capita was 22 GB per user. On O2C side, revenue up 33%, EBITDA down 6% on a year-on-year basis.
Strong middle distillate cracks with tight supply and growth. Again, that demand coming from oil to gas switching. However, you know, we did see weak polymer margins amid you know, volatile feedstock prices. We saw lower demand, we saw on the polymer side. Polyester was kind of stable, but earnings impacted because of high crude costs. You know, the OSPs were significantly higher, freight costs were higher, insurance costs were higher. Importantly, we did have the introduction of SAED on transportation fuel that was worth about INR 4,030 crores in as far as the EBITDA is concerned. We also had lower volumes. That was of course planned turnarounds that we had.
Quarter-over-quarter, you know, EBITDA was impacted by 40% because of the sequential decline in margin as well as SAED. Oil and gas, a strong story. EBITDA up 3x over what it was. You know, we had realizations of $9.9 a million BTU. This is almost 2.75x of what it was in the previous quarter last year. Production remained stable, and it's contributing to 20% of gas production. We are on track to commission the MJ field, which Sanjay will talk about in his section. When you bring this together in consolidated numbers, year-over-year revenues up 32%. Oil prices being high, retail strong growth. EBITDA led by retail, by digital services, by oil and gas segment.
There was subdued O2C contribution as we saw. Net profit also effectively flat on a year-on-year basis. We did see increase in finance costs on the back of all the central bank actions globally. Also, we did see increased depreciation on the back of an expanded asset base, the fact that higher network utilization as well as the upstream production, which results in higher depreciation. Therefore, when you see overall, that really explains why the net profits were flat. Just to emphasize that SAED also is one of the contributors for why it was a flat net profit on a year-on-year basis. This is the bridge, INR 30,000 crores in 2Q going all the way to INR 35,000 year-on-year.
You can see the strong performance of oil and gas. You can see the strong performance of retail and digital services. Lower by INR 752 crore, essentially on O2C, on the back of weaker polymers and aromatic margins, introduction of SAED. Growth in oil and gas, we talked about. On retail and digital services, you know, we again talked about those factors. All in all, 14% growth, we saw. On a Q-on-Q basis, the big impact on O2C side and overall, some amount of competition coming from the other businesses. We did see a strong fall on the O2C side. This is the levels of gross debt and net debt.
March was INR 34,815, and net debt now is INR 93,253. Just to highlight that, the first half of FY 2023 CapEx was completely funded by cash profits, so it is well funded there. These CapEx is really, you know, in line with what we have been talking about in terms of growth across all our sectors on O2C, on new energy, on Jio, as well as retail. This is all part of the planned strategy. The point I was making is that it is completely funded by the cash profits. The increase in debt that you are seeing is really attributed to higher working capital, given the significant dislocation in energy markets.
It has got the impact of translation of foreign currency liabilities, the rupee depreciation. As you know, the debt has to be restated in today's rupee terms. Also that, while we bought the spectrum where it's spread over 20 years, the first installment has to be paid. That is also contributing to overall, to the increase in debt. This is where I will now hand it over to Kiran and Anshuman to take us through digital services.
Thank you, Srikanth. We can go to the next slide. Another great quarter with a very strong performance. If you look at all these metrics, which we report regularly. Still number one in AGR market share at 45%. In terms of the subscriber market share, 36% of the total market. 428 million customers. More than 28 billion GB of data delivered in this quarter. Daily run rate of more than 13 billion minutes of voice. As I alluded to earlier in the presentation, now exceeding 22 GB of data consumption per user per month. Of course, on the big screen proposition that we offer, which is our Jio Set Top Box, I think the engagement continues to grow, and now it has exceeded about six hours per day.
Next slide, please. Customer engagement continues to grow. If you look at the chart, today it is obviously 22 GB. If you just compare it to like-for-like basis from two years back, these numbers are nearly double over this period. ARPU has also grown as a consequence, and today our ARPU of INR 177 on like-for-like basis is an industry-leading performance. Of course, the 5G rollout that is now underway will substantially improve both consumption as well as the subscriber mix. This is expected to improve both the per capita usage as well as ARPU on a going forward basis. Talking a bit about the 5G proposition that we are bringing to market. We believe it is quite differentiated from everybody else in the market.
We call it the True 5G advantage. There are effectively four components of what we count as the True 5G advantage. Number one is what we call the standalone architecture, which is the most cutting-edge architecture of 5G that is being deployed anywhere in the world. Number two is the unique spectrum holdings that we have to launch 5G services. Number three is a unique technical capability that we call carrier aggregation, which allows us to combine all of the spectrum holdings across the multiple bands that we have into a single unified data highway. Number four is a rich tech partner ecosystem that we have built, which is enabling us to deliver solutions which are quite unparalleled in the country. Next slide. Now, picking one each of these elements in turn. What is standalone architecture?
Just to mention it, conceptually it is a completely standalone version of 5G which unlocks the full potential of 5G as a technology. To contrast it with what everybody else in the market, other competitors in the market are looking to launch, which is called non-standalone, which still leverages the 4G network in terms of the core signaling capabilities. What does SA have over and above the NSA capability? Obviously, being a completely standalone 5G network, we are able to deliver absolute lowest latency, end-to-end latency that 5G enables. Which means that things like cloud gaming, augmented reality, and a number of real-time enterprise use cases can only be supported on SA. Of course, being a completely undiluted version of 5G, we get better speeds.
Looking to enterprises, advanced capabilities like network slicing, which is creating a virtual network dedicated to a certain enterprise or a segment, is only possible with standalone architecture. As we start rolling out the Internet of Things, the 5G capability to deliver massive machine-to-machine type communication is also only possible with SA. Of course, SA delivers, being a pure 5G implementation, superior power efficiency and therefore it's more green and sustainable as well. Number two, we spoke about the unique 5G spectrum footprint. If you look at the 5G spectrum holdings across all the operators, we are today, if you look at our holdings, it is nearly equal to the combined holdings of the other two major players in the market.
More than the quantity itself, in terms of the quality, we have the sub-gigahertz spectrum in the 700 MHz band. We have what we call the mid-band, which is the sweet spot for 5G services in the 3.5 GHz band, and obviously millimeter wave, which is where we have phenomenal capacity for a variety of use cases in the 26 GHz band. This combination of holdings means that through the sub-gigahertz and obviously the mid-band, we get deep indoor coverage. Obviously as we get into the millimeter wave, we have near fiber-like speeds that we can deliver over the wireless spectrum.
Talking about carrier aggregation, this is a technology which allows us to combine all of these three spectrum bands and treat it, as you can see in the graphic, to the right, you can treat it almost like a single unified data highway. What that means is when it comes to uplink, which is where most of the constraints are from the low power devices talking back to our network, we can leverage the 700 MHz because that gives you deep indoor coverage. On the downlink, for example, we can now combine the mid-band as well as the millimeter wave combination. Really mixing and matching these spectrum holdings for what they are good at and treating them as a single logical and virtual unified data highway is what carrier aggregation is all about. Next slide.
Talking about the deep partnerships, pretty much the who's who in this industry, everybody that matters is partnered with Jio. If you take Qualcomm, they have deep intellectual property assets, and we are working very closely with them to create the next generation 5G infrastructure, especially focused on the millimeter wave and the sub-gigahertz frequency bands. Since they have intellectual property that is used by a number of players in the 5G ecosystem, they're also a strong partner with us to really go and develop and shape that 5G ecosystem and make sure that we have the richest possible ecosystem in India.
Meta, who is now working on the next wave of immersive technologies, they are an investor and a strong partner working very closely with us to really use 5G to bring those next set of immersive experiences to India. Google, again working very closely with them, especially on Google Cloud, to offer everything from private 5G stack that is basically taking the technology that we have developed and hosting it as a private stack for enterprises. Again, they can do that on GCP today. Of course, a number of other 5G-enabled solutions which ride on top of our network. Again, a deep partnership with GCP to be able to bring some of those cloud-native solutions.
Intel, another investor and a strong tech player globally, using their technology and expertise to build the next generation cloud and edge data centers, which will obviously be required to unlock the next wave of applications that take advantage of 5G. From the network perspective, pretty much every leading vendor is today working with us. Nokia, Ericsson, Samsung, Cisco, just to name the most prominent of them. Looking at the True 5G strategy, there is a strong story that we can tell for pretty much every segment. If you look at homes, really accelerating the rollout of near fiber-like broadband to homes and really looking at not just bringing broadband, but also streaming television consumption.
If you look forward, which is really what's happening globally, interactive television experiences really is the first wave of things that Indian homes can expect, thanks to True 5G, bringing that home broadband connectivity. On the mobility side, obviously accelerating that consumption that we saw, the near doubling of consumption on the mobile network over the last two years. We see that trend growing. 5G is a core foundation to support that growth and of course, bring in the next wave of high quality customers onto Jio. Small and medium businesses is an underserved segment, pretty much like homes. Again, not just delivering broadband, but also working with a number of ecosystem partners to deliver cloud-native and edge-enabled solutions for businesses.
Of course, enterprises, again, using the power of True 5G to support a number of use cases, things like smart factories and so on, which is again using a combination of True 5G and edge computing. If you look at it, really transformative set of solutions and capabilities that we're delivering to pretty much every segment in India. Next slide, please. With that, I'll hand it over to Anshuman, who will talk about our operations and financial aspects.
Thank you, Kiran. I'll cover the operational and financial results for the quarter now. We had a good, strong financial performance for the quarter. In Jio Platforms Limited, consolidated revenues came in at INR 24,275 crores. That was a growth of 22.7% year-on-year. The consolidated EBITDA came in at INR 12,011 crores, which was a higher growth, 29.2% year-on-year, really reflecting the operating leverage more than anything else. IUC impact has started. There was an element of IUC impact in this quarter, but not the entire bit. The data traffic growth was very healthy. During the quarter, the total data carried on the network was 28.2 exabytes. That's another 22.6% growth year-on-year.
Per capita data consumption at 22 GB per user. The subscriber base at the end of the quarter was 427.6 million. ARPU increased to INR 177.2, really through increased usage and subscriber quality of subscriber base. As Kiran mentioned, we are gearing up for our 5G rollout, pan-India rollout by the end of next year. A lot of progress already been made on that front. The operating metrics all look quite good. Our customer base, 427.6 million, where we have leadership both in the customer subscriber market share and revenue market share. We are continuing to grow every quarter. ARPU came in at INR 177.2. The data traffic increased 23% year-on-year.
The per capita data usage is 22.2 GB and per capita voice consumption at 969. The voice consumption came reduced slightly from the previous quarter, which could be a combination of reasons, including, you know, people becoming mobile post-COVID world and COVID era and therefore back in offices, etc. That piece of consumption may have gone down and also the impact of OTT communication apps. The key financials for RJIL, the connectivity business, which continues to show very strong, healthy and consistent growth. This quarter, the operating revenues were at INR 22,521 crores and EBITDA at INR 11,601 crores. The EBITDA margin increased 51.5% for this quarter and EBITDA growth of 29% year-on-year, fairly healthy.
The consolidated JPL financials now, where the quarter operating revenues for the quarter was at INR 24,075 crores. EBITDA at INR 12,000 crores and net profit at INR 4,729 crores. All of these growing by anywhere between 22%-30% year-on-year basis. With that, we come to the end of the operating and financial summary for this quarter for Jio, and I'm going to hand over to Gaurav for the update on the retail business.
Thanks, Anshuman. Good evening to all of you. Let me start the presentation on retail performance by spending a minute on the operating context. The quarter has been quite normative for us as the impact of pandemic has been waning quarter after quarter progressively. That can also be seen from the boost in footfall that we see against the pre-COVID period as a compare. A 23% growth over the same period is a strong number for us. In absolute terms, it was a period for highest footfalls at 180 million customers who visited our stores across geographies. This was also a period where we saw growth across all town classes across all the channels as well.
While stores also grew, we also see continued growth in demand in the digital commerce channels. When looking at the consumer side, the sentiments remains upbeat. The spends on discretionary category continues to grow. That is also visible to us through the growth in all our discretionary categories as well. Pradeep, we can move. With that said, talking through the key highlights. The quarter business delivered all-time high revenues led by broad-based growth across the consumption baskets. It was a very well-rounded growth for our businesses. We also delivered our highest ever EBITDA for this period. Operating leverage efficiencies and also favorable mix really drove margin improvement. We continue to operate at scale.
We registered over 221 customers now, which is a growth of 28% year-on-year. Our transactions grew over healthy 45% year-on-year to cross 250 million transactions. That resolves to over 2.5 million transactions on a daily basis. Which is a very large scale operations across geographies and formats. Our accelerated store opening program continues. We opened 795 new stores during the period, but more notably, we added 9.2 million sq ft of space, which is a 20% growth over last quarter, and possibly one of the largest expansions of retail space by any retailer around the world in a short period.
We are the only and the first retailer in the country to be able to cross a milestone of 50 million sq ft of retail area. The digital and new commerce businesses continue to drive strong performance. Our daily orders were up 53% year-on-year, and our merchant base continued to scale up and doubled over last year. We continue to also strengthen our capabilities through partnerships and acquisitions. In August, we unveiled the JioMart WhatsApp integration initiative. We also made investments into Insight Cosmetics to further bolster our game into the beauty business. Looking at some of the growth pillars for us. Business grew 43% year-on-year to touch INR 64,920 crore against INR 45,226 crore last year.
What was enabled by growth in grocery and pharma, which doubled over the same period. We also saw strong growth coming from consumer electronics and fashion lifestyle businesses which grew by over 40%. Digital and new commerce, both channels put together, they grew over 60% year-on-year, and they also had a very steady contribution at 18% of the overall revenues for us. While the revenue growth continued strong, our profit delivery was at its best, so EBITDA was at a new high of INR 4,404 crores, against INR 2,913 crores last year, which is a 51% growth. EBITDA margins saw a 30 basis point improvement at 7.6%.
EBITDA margin from operations was 130 basis point margin expansion year-on-year at 7.4%, and that was led by a very favorable mix of revenues across the consumption baskets and also operating leverage and efficiencies. In particular, EBITDA in grocery, fashion and lifestyle and consumers, all of these consumption baskets we saw doubling year-on-year. Our efforts in expansion are on track. We opened 795 stores during this period to end the total store count at 16,617 stores at the end of September. Notably, I said 9 million sq ft of space added. When we compare it to previous periods, that's more than twice that we saw in the previous quarter and over three times that we saw over last year.
While we continue to add more space through geographies for better touchpoints with our consumers, we also continue to strengthen our capabilities on the back-end supply chain side. During this period, we added nearly 5.5 million sq ft of warehousing fulfillment space, taking our total supply chain area to about 31.4 million sq ft. This is also a quarter where we crossed over our total employee base to 400,000 employees. We added 35,000 people onto the rolls, taking our total employee base to 414,000 across businesses. Looking at the financial summary for the business, gross revenue 43% up at INR 64,920 crores. EBITDA from operations grew 76% to INR 4,286 crores.
EBITDA margin saw a 130 basis point growth at 7.4%. Total EBITDA, 51% up at INR 4,404 crores. Profit after tax at INR 2,305 crores, which is a 36% growth. Also a very strong growth on a sequential basis across. Let's look also more closely on consumer electronics. It had a very strong quarter. Our stores delivered a strong performance led by higher footfall. Conversion remains very steady with high average bill values. This was also a period where our, which is our after-sales and installation business, that business also registered its best ever quarterly sales. 15th August period is also becoming increasingly a big shopping period where customers look for major shoppings.
For consumer electronics, we saw that period to be our best ever Independence Day sale period with 60% growth year-on-year. Some of the factors like instant discounts, affordability schemes, cross promotions, all of that added with more color for consumers to buy products for. Reliance Retail formats, because we operate across some cities, rural, towns or regions of the country, so increasingly more and more national, international brands, they see Reliance to be a partner for launching, and we've seen a large wide number of launches on new products. iPhone 14, OnePlus 10, Samsung flip phones, HP Victus laptops. I mean, these are some of the launches that we've seen this period.
I think from broader perspective, there are a tremendous number of launches which are helping customers to just widen their choice space, and they continue to come and shop at our stores. The period also saw a broad-based growth across categories. Categories like phones, TVs, washers, they grew 30% year-on-year. Our own brands business has doubled on a year-on-year basis. We all saw the merchant base through which we sell our products as well as licensed brands like Kelvinator, BPL. That merchant base grew 10% on a sequential basis. JioMart Digital, which is the new commerce part of the business, that business also grew 25% on a quarter-on-quarter, as well as merchant base continued to get ramped up. We added over 25% merchants on a sequential basis.
Looking to the fashion and lifestyle part of the business, apparel and footwear, which is largely driven by trends extension formats, trends footwear. Offline business really posted their best ever quarter. I think the entire festive shopping, change of season, EOSS, all of these factors really combined helped deliver a very strong double-digit like-for-like growth for our stores. We also launched multiple new formats in the mid-premium to mass categories. Azorte, which is a tech-enabled format, Centro, which is a fashion lifestyle department store format, and Fashion Factory, which is a brand for less format. These three new formats were launched.
Our focus on innovation and serving customers to what they are looking for. I think those categories really help us to launch new formats. Our growth across categories like men's formals, women's western wear were strong as customers continue to refresh their wardrobe as normalization has set in. Also saw a big pickup in categories like sarees and Indian ethnic wear on the back of festive shopping. On the Ajio side, Ajio continues to grow strength to strength. Every quarter has been, you know, further growth. This quarter also, it had its best ever quarter performance. All the metrics had a very healthy growth.
The catalog continues to be a very, very strong reason for customers to keep coming back and see that to be a destination for their choice of fashion. We now operate over 1 million options on the site. We also added about 85 million in this quarter alone. On the new commerce side, where we work with external merchants as partners, we added over 42% merchants on a year-on-year basis and also extended our coverage into new geographies to ensure that we also bring fresh fashion and better brands, especially the regional brands of their choice. We added over 60,000 new SKUs and 427 brands to them.
On the partner brand, which is more on the premium and luxury brands, that business saw 80% growth year-on-year because of better footfalls, expansion into new format which got launched, new geographies, and so on. Ajio Luxe, which is really a destination for luxury and premium brands, that business grew 3.5x year-on-year. We have over 42,000 options live on that destination format. We also launched Rowan, which is a new format from Reliance as a toy store, which is a small format, typically around 500-1,000 sq ft in size, selling more affordable toys. That format got launched during this quarter, and we'll also see a further ramp-up as we go along.
We also launched Starter through its apparel line and also extended Gap brand into kids wear as some of the big initiatives in the partner part of the business. On jewelry business, the festive sales started to really bring back growth in this quarter. The network expansion also grew, and combined, the business grew 16% on a year-on-year basis. The business has been leaning on to its capabilities for product designs and through all the in-house design labs that has created for jewelry. It has launched seven collections during this quarter alone and getting tremendous level of response from our customers. Lingerie, we had a very broad-based growth across all the brands that we operate now, Zivame, Amanté, and Clovia.
The Grand Lingerie Festival, which is a very large event, from Zivame that continues to do well. It also drove a double-digit volume growth for the brand and had a very positive reaction from the customers as well from the choice perspective. This is also a category where there's a lot of product innovation happening. We continue to expand into new product lines in shapewear. We also launched product lines using sustainable products on the bamboo-based fabrics. A lot happening on the lingerie part of the business as well. Moving on to grocery. Grocery delivered its best ever quarter. Overall for grocery, we doubled our business on a year-on-year basis. From a store perspective, high double-digit digital like-for-like growth led by higher footfalls and average bill values.
Two key events, Full Paisa Vasool as well as Diya Aur Di sales. These are two flagship events, and both the events saw 65%, 96% respectively growth on a year-on-year basis. A lot of traction from the consumers to come and shop on our format. Our focus on making our stores more engaging for the customers, that is being done through premiumization, also localization of a lot of assortment from a customer's perspective. Launch of a range of local rice as staple options, launch of low-calorie potatoes, branded coconuts. These are some of the examples of how we have been really driving premiumization into the stores.
From a category, because this is also an early buying season from a festivities point of view, was driven by sweets and confectioneries, as well as staples, F&B, and dairy. We continue to strengthen our own brand play as well. We launched several products and brands during this period. Some of the notable ones include packaged water under the brand called Sure, and some of the other brands like Masti and Maestro Gio. I think these are the brands that also launched a large number of new products. On the new commerce side, the merchant base continued to scale up. We grew 4x year-on-year on the merchant side. Revenue all-time high for the business in this segment as well.
To continue to strengthen fulfillment and supply chain capabilities to ensure that all the fill rates and the SLAs for our supply chain are delivered on time, we commissioned 57 new facilities, and we continue to add more and more infrastructure to ensure that our customers are able to serve better. That is also visible from the cohort where we see that customers who are now well over a year into the platform, their buying is now well over four times than customers who have just joined the platform. Talking through on the JioMart and Milkbasket. JioMart is you know a horizontal play across all wide categories, and we continue to add and bolster its capabilities through expansion of catalog and also seller base, which grew multifold this quarter.
We talked about the launch of WhatsApp JioMart initiative. Although it's still early and that initiative is gaining momentum week after week, what is heartening to see is that it has really democratized the access to online shopping. We have seen 37% of the customers who have come from WhatsApp are customers who have actually shopped first time on JioMart. It is really taking us to a new set of customers, and we'll continue to see that growth as we go along. Some of the other initiatives like Diwalidi sale, which also grew in our stores that registered 2.5 times growth in traffic as well as 3x installations in-app.
While the Milkbasket business, which was acquired last year, that business is now fully integrated into our JioMart business, and we continue to grow that business, capitalizing on festivities, events, and that has doubled over last year. Looking at pharma. Pharma business also grew two and a half times year-on-year, and that has been very stable across all the channels. We saw digital commerce orders up 95%, and also nearly 85% of those stores are now hyper-enabled, hyperlocal enabled, so the delivery to the customers can be serviced through the nearest store, which ensures better delivery times and happier customers because they get access to the products on time. Our new commerce business has had a very steady growth path. Our operations are now expanded to over 2,500 cities.
In furniture decor business, which is led by Urban Ladder, that business also saw very strong revenue growth over last year, led by footfalls. Our flagship event, the Full House Sale, really drove revenues for the business with 30% growth year-on-year. That happened through a broad base of categories, including the bed, dining room, living room, seating and essentials. As we look into the second half of the year, which is also marked by winter, which is very strong buying for northeast as well as west part of the country, also festivities, and wedding season coming in, we will ensure that the growth momentum for the business continues with a focus on, number one, to be looking at expansion of our stores as well as digital commerce channels.
We would be looking at continuing to onboard more and more merchants through our new commerce initiatives across the categories, including increasing the share of wallet for all the onboarded merchants. Also to continue to invest in supply chain capabilities, which has been really a big enabler for all our stores and channels and drive efficiencies. Also strengthen our capabilities in product development, which is really one of the big cornerstones for our formats. Strengthen people capabilities, which will be also supplemented by a lot of training efforts that we wish to undertake. That's all from my side.
A good evening to everyone. Just to give you an overall outcome of the second quarter. Now, it was a solid quarter for the oil and gas business. As you can see, the EBITDA was up by nearly 16%, and margins were up to 82.3%. Mainly on the back of higher gas price realizations, sustained production, the field performance has been very much in line with our expectations, which is a big positive, and also in terms of higher exchange rates. Overall, we saw good growth in EBITDA in this quarter. Next slide, please. With respect to the NGA gas condensate field project, we are very much on track for first gas by the end of the year.
The offshore installation campaign has been completed, so the subsea production system has been installed. The phase two drilling and completion campaign is currently underway. We've completed one well, and we're on track for completion of seven wells. Further, the FPSO has sailed from Geoje, South Korea, and it has been at the Kakinada outer anchorage. We're just finishing up a minor balance works on that FPSO, and now it's ready to sail in a few days towards location. The next set of activities would include the hookups, the offshore testing, the pre-commissioning and commissioning, and thereafter the introduction of hydrocarbon for first gas production, which is expected by year-end. Next slide, please. Just to give you a perspective on the gas markets and the LNG outlook.
LNG markets remain quite tight despite supply of LNG being at a peak level. The shortfall in supplies due to the conflict still remains. Consequently, we have seen prices go up to almost $98 per MMBtu, although it's more or less now settled at $45 per MMBtu and less. The EU continues to refuse sourcing gas from Russia. They even looked at the EU joint purchasing so that they do not have the imbalances in pricing. Meanwhile, they're also looking to save gas for a safe winter. That policy is currently underway. Overall, Asian LNG continues to track at the EU prices.
As we don't expect any major capacities of LNG coming in before the year 2026, we expect the markets remain tight for LNG. In India, the gas market remains quite resilient. We had seen consumption of about 163 million cubic meters per day during the quarter. Slightly less, this may be due to the elevated costs and prices, particularly of LNG. Now, the LNG demand came down lastly because of the production, particularly from the KG-D6 gas. In terms of prices, two things. One is, the government announced the revised price for the second half of the year. They revised it from $9.92 in the first half to $12.46 per million British thermal units for the second half.
That implies we should expect better realizations in the upcoming quarter. Meanwhile, there's also been a committee formed under Dr. Kirit Parikh, and this committee is looking at the national gas pricing. It is represented by the upstream industry through the AOGO. There is also representation from the consumers as buyers. Potentially the upstream producers are saying that, you know, there should be marketing and pricing freedom pursuant to the policies and the contracts. India, the solution to pricing the elevated prices, the incremental production, as we have seen in the case of KG-D6. These investments will have to happen in frontier areas where there seems to be larger potential. For such investments, you'll need a huge scale of investments, $ billions.
For that to sustain marketing and pricing freedom will be very important, particularly as costs are market-driven, so prices need to be similar. Whereas we are also seeing a representation of the consumers who, you know, who have been projecting that there needs to be some kind of cap, particularly on APM gas. We are still awaiting the recommendations. This is expected to come out in the next few weeks. Overall, the outlook for gas LNG looks quite tight in the near future. We expect the realizations to remain firm. With the augmentation of production from MJ, we expect the earnings to go upwards. Thank you and a very happy Diwali to all of you.
Thank you, Sanjay. Moving to the last section on O2C. Just two slides on what the energy market or rather how the energy markets were. As you know, a lot of volatility. We have seen prices for oil between $125 and $85, LNG prices anywhere from $35 to $71 a million BTU. Crude prices for the quarter did ease on the back of SPR release. We saw increased production from Saudi. We also saw that Russian supplies were fairly resilient. LNG prices, you know, were very strong on the back of you know, uncertainty of supply as well as strong demand. Ethane prices actually came lower on the back of that. It was actually tracking US gas.
It was also tracking the fact that petrochemicals were weak, and also that the Freeport LNG terminal had an extended outage. Interesting on the refining side, you know, we saw everything. We saw historic highs in June to even briefly negative territory in this quarter. Overall, you know, it was about macro uncertainty. It was about geopolitical uncertainty, which was underpinning the energy markets. Move to the next slide, please. Just a pictorial, and you can see the graph to the right of the dotted line really tells you about the markets. You can see the fall in the prices of oil starting from $125, much lower. Of course, on gas, you saw the other way around, but volatility went up and, you know, averaged much higher than previous quarter.
Ethane prices, a sharp fall during the quarter. On the light distillates side, again, interesting, you saw $40 cracks and then almost zero. Mid distillates, touching 75+ and then, you know, trading around 40. Singapore refining complex, you know, $35 at one time, almost zero. This is the kind of environment in which the O2C business was operating in. Next slide, please. In that context, when you see revenues and EBITDA about close to INR 12,000 crore, it was on a year-on-year basis lower by 6%, and a quarter-on-quarter by 40%. When you look at EBITDA on a year-on-year basis, there was strength in mid distillates cracks. It was, however, offset by significant weakness in petrochemical margins.
Of course, the fact that SAED-related cost was very much there. It was about INR 4,039 crores to these numbers. Had it not been for that, the EBITDA would have been INR 11,968 crores plus INR 4,039 crores. When you look at the petrochemical side, the margins declined anywhere between 15%-30% and on the back of subdued demand in both China and India. MEG was particularly weak. Also of course, in this quarter, the production meant for sale was lower by 3.6% on a year-on-year basis, given the planned turnarounds in the refinery units.
On the QOQ, the explanation for QOQ is more about all about margins, lower fuel margins, lower downstream chemical margins, and of course, SAED remains a common factor for explanation for both year-on-year as well as quarter-on-quarter. Next slide. In this context when you look at these are the relevant demand parameters. You can see that oil demand strongly up 1.2 million barrels per day, and this is on the back of you know, opening up, removing of all the curbs, and importantly, gas-to-oil switching. You know, because gas prices were so high, demand was strong. On the polymer and polyester side, you can see the percentage is between 1%-2%. Stable, I would say.
You know, we saw stable demand in almost every use between agriculture, health, hygiene, consumer durables. We saw it everywhere, but it was growth rates were small, but demand was stable. Operating rates both for cracker as well as refining did see a pickup on the strength of the basis that middle distillate cracks was strong and you know so people were using their production to the maximum extent possible. In this backdrop, yeah, supply was possible because of the increased utilization. Specifically on oil demand, you know, 10% growth on a year-on-year basis. Gasoline demand up 9% on the back of automobile sales, you know, tourism, we have seen that.
On high-speed diesel, that was also up 11% because economic activity was normalized. We saw farm demand, also, as one of the reasons. We also saw commercial vehicle sales increase, so all of them explaining the high HSD demand. ATF was in percentage terms sharply up 64%. However, as you know, it was coming off a lower base. Load factors definitely in September was at 84% well above the 73% we saw in 2021. Yeah, that's the demand side. When you look at demand in polymer and polyester, you know, I talked about the 1% growth in polymer. This was more led by PVC. We saw strong growth, 7% up.
However, both, you know, PP was impacted by low demand in EU and US on some of the applications of PP. Also there were outages, you know, among Indian producers, and therefore that impact did impact demand. Polyester side, 2% up. We saw good growth in PET up 11% and also stable fiber, but PFY was low. There was stable domestic consumption overall there. This is where you can see a very sharp fall and, you know, some of the explanation for why earnings were weak or didn't grow that much, weak on a quarter-on-quarter basis as well as, you know, on a year-on-year basis. You look at polymer deltas anywhere down on a quarter-on-quarter basis between 12%-26%.
If PP, PE, PVC, all of them. The point being that polymer prices were lower between 17%-30%. That prices on an absolute prices softness was way beyond, you know, the input price, which is naphtha, which was down 19% on a QOQ, thus essentially affecting margins. Some of the improvement in the debottlenecking of logistics constraint, and freight, et cetera, also meant that it resulted in lower realization. On the polyester delta side, chain delta has been broadly flat, as you can see, you know, $600 there per ton. There, we saw margins were actually on downstream was between 25%-30%, but really offset by weak PTA and MEG margins.
That's something that you know, we saw. That's why overall it didn't change. PX margins firmed up as integrated players like us optimized PX production to capture higher gasoline margins. We did that. Overall, that's a lot of impact on deltas and therefore its implication therefore on the overall EBITDA. Next slide. On the transportation fuel side, as you can see, demand for gas oil was up for this quarter. All these explanations are, you can see, on a quarter-on-quarter basis. Overall, we did see a fall in cracks from 52 to 42, but it still has remained broadly elevated because of the gas oil switching that I talked about.
The fact that even inventories, while it has gone up, it is significantly below the 5-year averages. Also, some of the China export quota also eased some of the supply constraints. That's how we see. Year-on-year, you can see that $8 for gas oil became 41. That also explains why the overall fall in margins rather than EBITDA earnings is much more muted on a year-on-year basis. Similarly, on ATF kerosene, we did see a sharp growth, almost 0.9 million barrels per day. Primarily, I would say is in Asia-Pacific. Cracks remained elevated, but did decline on a quarter-on-quarter basis. Sequentially, we see most of these margins are strong, but on sequential basis is lower. That's.
That is to explain why Q-on-Q was also lower. Next slide please. On gasoline side, as you can see, demand is strong, almost 1 million barrels, of which half of them was here, in the Asia-Pacific. Again, cracks, if you were to see $30 becoming almost $9, and that is because, you know, U.S. demand was not up to the expectations on the back of, high petrol price at the pumps, at the pump level and also lower discretionary spending. We also saw that, the fact that because gasoline gas oil was so much in demand, refinery utilization rates that we saw earlier on also meant that higher gasoline supply, so that put pressure on gasoline.
The fact that tanker rates continued to be, you know, high had an impact on the inventory levels that were being held, and therefore it did pressurize cracks there. On the operating rates, I mentioned about lower throughputs, and that is on the back of both, you know, plant turnarounds in both the primary and secondary units of SEZ for maintenance and inspection. We did increase naphtha sourcing to capture reforming margins, because as you saw, gasoline was good at the earlier part of this quarter. We focused on maximizing gas oil exports given the demand.
Aromatic production, again, you know, we rationalized that in favor of gasoline given the economics and, thanks to the fact that the gasifiers performed very well, meant that we didn't have to import any type of LNG and therefore keep a control on the costs. Next slide please. Bringing down to the last slide on the O2C business. We do expect demand to be continuing to be strong this year, which is almost two million barrels increase on a year-on-year basis. All the sanctions and all that will mean that, in as far as some of the products are concerned, Asian and Middle Eastern refiners could benefit a bit there.
Margin environment, middle distillate definitely, given where gas prices are, we continue to be in demand. The polymer margins, we are looking forward to it improving on, you know, as and when China opens because the feedstock prices have been pretty attractive for conversion. On the demand side, again, opening up means fuel demand is good. Gas oil switching continues to be a factor everywhere, even more so as winter sets in. Festive season, which we are seeing now in this quarter should also is benefiting or should benefit. On the challenges side, as you know, overall GDP growth, weakness, inflation, monetary policy, interest costs, all of them, you know, are definitely areas of concern. Freight rates continue to remain high.
The Chinese export quota means that it is just for the, you know, keeps the market supplied insofar as margins are concerned. Really to summarize, you know, given this backdrop and the whole set of slides which I talked about and including, what Sanjay talked about on the LNG environment, we have seen that kind of volatility. In that context, I think the performance, it's a strong performance, it's a resilient performance, given the kind of, volatility, macro as well as energy. You know, I had mentioned that, consolidated EBITDA for quarter two on an aggregate, was INR 34,663 crore, means a growth of 14.5%.
Had it not been for SAB related cost, which is INR 4,039 crores, the growth in EBITDA would have been almost 28% higher, and this would have also translated to a healthy net profit growth on a year-on-year basis. However, I would say that given that equal mix now that we have between consumer, business, and energy, we have been able to weather this volatility pretty well. As you saw in Gaurav's presentation on retail, the store expansion that we saw, the omni-channel retail strategy, you know, the footfalls, the digital channels that there are, all of them are kicking in very well. Similarly, on the Jio side, customer addition, almost 7.7 million customers in this quarter.
The improvement in the customer engagement metrics remain very good. Kiran talked about the 5G services and why the standalone is, you know, provides us with a lot of opportunity to grow. As Sanjay talked about, you know, the KG-D6, the MJ field commissioning by year end will mean that, currently we are at 20% of production, we can be 30% of India's gas production. Looking forward to that and also the fact that prices will be higher. Let me take this opportunity to thank you all and wish you all a very, very happy Deepavali. Thank you so much.