Good evening and welcome to the Third Quarter Financial Year 2023 Results Presentation of Reliance Industries Limited. As always, we will start with Srikanth Venkatachari, who will give you an overview of the Reliance performance for this quarter. Over to you, Srikanth.
Thanks, Srini, and good evening, friends. Starting with the highlights. Consolidated EBITDA was INR 38,460 crore, which is 13.5% higher, and it was on the back of consumer business strength and upstream. O2C earnings improved with mid-distillate cracks. There has been, of course, as you know, margin pressure on the downstream chemicals, which we will talk during the presentation on the business. Overall, retail EBITDA was very strong on the back of store expansion, footfalls were good, and also their growth in digital businesses. On the digital side, we are seeing strong traction in subscriber growth as well as data traffic.
In as far as 5G coverage is concerned, we are now, you know, expanded to 100 cities. As you know, the target is to complete that by December 2023. Very strong growth in oil and gas segment almost, you know, we have doubled the earnings there. Finally, on the net profit at INR 17,806, it's marginally up on a year-on-year basis, constrained, of course, by finance cost appreciation and the Special Additional Excise Duty. Overall, fair to say that, you know, there has been strong growth across all the operating segments. Just zooming into each of the businesses, you know, retail, with INR 68,000 crores of revenue and close to INR 4,800 crores of EBITDA.
That's an EBITDA growth of 25% year-on-year. There has been margin expansion. There continues to be store additions, 789 stores in this quarter, taking, you know, the total to about 2,400 stores in this financial year. When you look at footfalls or when you look at, you know, the number of transactions, all on a quarterly basis, up 26%, each of them is upwards of 200 million in number. Even the registered customer base at 235 million is up 31% year-on-year. On the digital services side, INR 30,000 crore of revenue, close to INR 13,000 crore of EBITDA. Again, EBITDA up 26% year-on-year. ARPU at INR 178 there. Given the growth in data consumption, our subscriber base continues to grow.
We have added 5.3 million subscribers, taking the total to 433. We have added close to 23 million subscribers during this 9 months. Strong data traffic, you know, close to 29 exabytes, which is again 24% growth. On the O2C side, INR 145,000 crores of revenue with EBITDA almost INR 14,000 crores. This is up year-on-year about 3%, but sequentially up 16%. You know, when you look at it from a year-on-year point of view, strength in mid-distillates has been constrained by weak margins in polymer, polyester light distillates. Also, as you know, SAED was applicable, you know, on diesel and ATF.
Also throughput was slightly lower due to maintenance activity in this quarter. Overall demand environment remains pretty strong with oil growth. That is, I'm talking about India demand, I'm talking about oil 7%, polymer 8% growth year-on-year and polyester up 11%. On the oil and gas side, again, very strong performance. EBITDA almost doubling. In fact, it's 91% on a year-on-year basis. It's on back of higher realization. Now we're earning about $11.3 a million BTU. You know, with a stable production base of about 19 MMSCMD. You know, KG-D6, MJ field, that is on track for fourth quarter FY 2023. We delivered about close to INR 4,000 crores in upstream EBITDA.
Bringing these numbers together, as you can see, EBITDA and revenue have been strong on the back of digital services, on the back of retail, on the back of oil and gas. O2C contribution has been positive. This is despite weakness that I have mentioned in downstream. When you look at it at a net profit, you know, marginally higher on a year-on-year basis, though sequentially it's up 15%. When you look at it year-on-year, finance cost has been higher on the back of rate hikes by central banks across. As you know, through when you look at FY 2023, USD rates are up 425 basis points. Rupee interest rates are up almost 325 basis points.
From our point of view, when you put the context of about 36% increase in finance cost, against the backdrop of these kind of rates, you know, we have done reasonably well there. One of the main reasons for that performance comes on the mix that we have of currency versus foreign currency versus domestic, as well as the fixed floating percentages that we have that has helped mute the impact. Overall, I would say that, you know, this quarter has been driven by quarterly strong performance across all our business segments. This is just a bridge on a year-on-year basis that you can see the big jump has come from oil and gas, contributing almost INR 1,850 crore there.
Digital services, INR 2,700 crores. You can see that the retail is INR 1,000 crores. These have been the big drivers of year-on-year change. On a Q-on-Q basis, clearly, O2C has been the biggest driver of the contribution, almost adding INR 2,000 crores to the increase. This has been supported by mid-distillate cracks and, you know, had it not been for weak polymers and polyester sequentially, which has been lower, you know, margins, profitability would have been much higher. Oil and gas segment, you know, production has been stable, but the realizations, you know, improved. Overall, in retail, it's about footfalls, it's about store expansion, it is about festive season.
Our digital services, both, the growth momentum has come from customer add as well as low SUC charge that we saw in this quarter. On the balance sheet side, net debt at about INR 110,000 crore versus INR 93,000 crore in September. Largely on the back of, you know, CapEx spending for 5G rollouts, as well as we are ramping up our retail operations. You know, I talked about our efforts in terms of managing the overall liability side from interest rate optimization. I just wanted to highlight that, when you look at INR 110,000 crore of net debt, it is significantly lower than the annualized EBITDA that we have.
For us, the focus will continue to be on managing the balance sheet conservatively, while continuing to accelerate and execute on our growth plans. With this, I'm going to request Kiran and Anshuman to take us through the digital services part of it.
Thank you, Srikanth, and good evening. As Srikanth mentioned, the 5G rollout at Jio is now picking up momentum. In just over 100 days, we are already present through the 5G service in 134 cities across 18 telecom circles with multiple cities getting added by the day. More than 25,000 sites are already deployed with the 5G equipment. When we talk about sites, we are talking about all 6 sectors being activated to offer 5G services. In these markets where we have launched, we are also observing that there is obviously a phenomenal increase in the kinds of bandwidth that our early adopters are able to enjoy.
We are seeing consistent download and upload experiences in excess of 600 megabits per second. As also mentioned by Srikanth, the plan is to complete this rollout pan-India by the end of this calendar year, that is December of 2023. Likewise, another exciting frontier being unlocked by 5G is what we are calling JioAirFiber, which is about bringing our very popular JioFiber, which is our optical fiber-based service, something equivalent to that using the power of 5G. The very same services which are already being offered to millions of customers through JioFiber is now expected to be available through JioAirFiber as well. The home broadband aspect of it, once JioAirFiber reaches your home, we are already providing seamless Wi-Fi 6 coverage wall-to-wall for all of our customers.
We are providing them with very attractive fixed mobile convergence offerings, everything from the broadband as well as the mobile services that they can get from Jio as one bundle. Along with our fiber to home and JioAirFiber connections, we are also offering fixed voice for the home as well as for the societies where the multi-dwelling units, we are also offering Centrex facilities so that all the residents may have an intercom facility as well. The real hero use case of home broadband remains the large screen in the home. The live TV with obviously through our set-top box.
Multiple offerings, in addition to live, also the over-the-top services, all the popular media applications, being offered as part of that one integrated tariff. Looking forward, again, early rollouts of gaming and cloud gaming in particular, as well as advanced services through JioGlass of augmented reality and virtual reality with a number of exciting launches, being planned in the near future. Once the home is connected, again, there are a number of services that are under the works, looking to be launched in the near future.
The cloud PC, which is offering the power of a desktop or a laptop through a PC which is hosted in the cloud, so that through a very thin and affordable end device, consumers can reach into the cloud and have access to the full power of a PC being offered through the cloud, through obviously the broadband connectivity. A number of services for the home, including the home IoT, all kinds of sensors and actuators that can be enabled in the home. Of course, things like surveillance, so that you can have a constant eye on the home even when you are not in the house physically.
These are just a few of those services, but the very, very same power, like I said, of Jio Fiber now envisages to be offered to an order of magnitude, larger number of homes using the power of 5G through Jio Air Fiber. Another exciting thing that we were able to offer quite innovative, was really unlocking the power of streaming, and especially live events on a streaming basis, which has got tremendous transformative potential, especially when combined with the home broadband offering that I just mentioned. Jio Platforms through the JioCinema offering was the enabler for the FIFA World Cup which got concluded recently. To talk about some numbers using...
On the JioCinema app, we had north of 100 million viewers watching World Cup on a streaming basis. Of course, 80%+ through mobile, but also through a number of connected TVs which are already connected using home broadband. At the peak, this is a completely cloud-native implementation. We were able to scale very comfortably to north of 12 million concurrent users at peak. With on any given day, more than 30 million users coming and watching matches on JioCinema.
At the peak, through both the cloud as well as our edge network, especially the content distribution network or what is called CDN, which were deployed across the country, we were able to support cumulatively north of 20 terabits per second of cumulative media throughput being offered to viewers across India. These are records which compare pretty much anywhere in the world. Even these are the highest daily active users and peak concurrencies being seen in India so far. We are positioning ourselves to really beat all of these records comfortably as IPL comes around in a few months.
While I spoke about JioAirFiber, our optical fiber rollout also continues and we are scaling up quite rapidly vis-à-vis JioFiber as well. We continue to lead the industry with respect to net adds for fixed broadband in India. Very encouragingly, the quality of the subscribers are increasing, are improving on a day-by-day basis with a much higher mix of postpaid customers coming on board, and also people who are adopting to use our set-top box so that they can consume all of the exciting media and other services that we are offering for the large screen.
To help with the faster rollout in small to mid-size towns, we have also introduced a very innovative partnered model working with local cable operators and other partners, so that they take ownership of the rollout as well as ongoing customer engagement in those small towns, while we focus on the much larger towns. We are seeing that across the network, the engagement is extremely high, north of six hours of daily engagement on the Jio set-top box. Year-on-year, we have seen a 2x growth in the data traffic being consumed by the home. Both in terms of consumption of data as well as time spent, we are seeing very encouraging increases on a year-to-year, quarter-to-quarter basis.
When it comes to the enterprise side, again, of course, we are growing our enterprise broadband and enterprise fixed line offerings continue to gather momentum and adoption. On top of that, we are now building and in many cases, we have launched a number of industry specific propositions. For example, focusing on hospitality as a sector, we have created a solution which is what we call a Room as a Service. Everything from connectivity to entertainment to customer management, and of course, also helping the hospitality provider manage their operations, all as a single unified service. For the BFSI sector, we are offering what is called a Branch as a Service, which is for a small bank branch, everything that is required to operationalize it.
For contact centers, again, offering Contact Center as a Service in a box that people can operationalize a contact center, using the application that we are providing on top of the connectivity. When it comes to education, similar offerings to enable coaching institutes end to end. When it comes to logistics, again, what we call Warehouse in a Box, again, value-added services on top of connectivity.
Similarly, there are solutions that we are targeting for small manufacturers, for hospitals, for schools, and in general, work from home of any industry as a horizontal service, as well as for large enterprises, managing their entire IT landscape through what we call Smart Cloud Management, whether it is on-premise, hybrid or public cloud deployments, all using a single pane of glass through which they can control their entire IT landscape. This is a solution, of course, that we've been using in Jio for multiple years now, and this is now being productized and made available to other enterprises as well. In addition to connectivity, a number of interesting solutions being now developed on a rapid basis and also being offered to the market.
One other thing which is very exciting, which goes along with 5G as well as our fiber offering, is what we call edge service. As you know, as the content consumption rises exponentially, as well as real-time applications become more prevalent, providing these applications from centralized data centers is limiting after a certain scale. What we need are compute resources to be placed much closer to where the consumption is. Much closer to where the customers are. In a data center, obviously, we can create a lot of sophisticated IT and other environment management capabilities to manage these servers, especially when it comes to cooling. We can create pretty sophisticated types of cooling solutions in a large data center.
As you start going to the edge to create very small but very large number of such individual sites, all with the same kinds of IT environment, is becoming a problem. To solve that problem, our engineers have created this very innovative solution where we have created a server, designed in a similar way to how radio equipment is designed with very little cooling requirement, in fact no cooling requirement, and which can be placed on any rack without any of the OpEx or any of the surrounding infrastructure that is required to keep these servers running on a 24/7 basis. This is what we are calling our zero cooling solution.
This can be placed, even hundreds of these can be placed in a single room with nothing more than a simple exhaust fan, which will keep these servers cold and operational 24/7. This is an exciting area which will enable us to roll out edge locations on a rapid pace across the length and breadth of India. With this, let me hand it over to my colleague, Anshuman, who will talk about both the operating and financial metrics.
Thanks, Kiran, and good evening, everyone. I'm gonna summarize the operating and the financial results for the quarter. In this section, quarterly highlights. Jio Platforms continued with its strong financial performance. Revenue for the quarter came in at INR 24,892 crores, which is a 21% increase year-on-year. EBITDA at INR 12,519 crores. The EBITDA margin at the consolidated Jio Platforms Limited crossed 50% in this quarter. RJIL, of course, met that milestone several quarters ago. Subscriber traction continued to be healthy. Total subscriber base at 432.9 million. If you know, just think about industry growth rates, we are the only operator really steadily growing our subscriber base quarter after quarter.
ARPU came in at INR 178.2, which was a 17.5% increase year-on-year. Most of the increase over the last quarter was primarily on account of higher usage, higher consumption and people moving up on their tariff plans. The data traffic grew further to 29 exabytes for the quarter. That's a 24% increase year-on-year. Per capita data consumption at 22.4 GB. As Kiran mentioned, we are rapidly expanding our 5G footprint. We're in 134 cities now. Over 25,000 sites deployed across the 735 million bands in, you know, with six sectors. Really the focus now is on the transformative 5G rollout and the 5G, you know, JioAirFiber and the 5G mobility product that's going live in the market.
Moving on, I spoke about the consistent increase in Jio subscriber base. Overall subscriber market share continues to grow quarter after quarter. We've crossed 433 million subscribers this quarter. Our net gains on mobile number portability continue. Market share in overall broadband base is well over 50%. Summarizing the key operating metrics for RJIL, the connectivity business. Subscriber base at 432.9 million. That was a net addition of 5.3 million. Gross addition of 34.2 million during the quarter. The ARPU came in at INR 178.2. Total data consumption at 29 exabytes for the quarter, with per capita data consumption at 22.4 GB and voice consumption at 985 minutes per month.
All of these metrics have been steadily increasing and been fairly consistent through the last few quarters. The key financials for our connectivity business, RJIL. Operating revenues increased to INR 22,998 crores, which was an increase of almost 19% year-on-year. The EBITDA, of course, with the operating leverage growing faster at 24.9% year-on-year to INR 12,072 crores. That's an EBITDA margin of 52.5% against steady growth quarter after quarter. The consolidated financials for Jio Platforms Limited. Operating revenues at INR 24,892 crores and EBITDA of INR 12,519 crores. As I said, JPL at consolidated level has crossed 50% EBITDA margin. The profit after tax came in at INR 4,881 crores, which was a 28.6% year-on-year increase.
With this, I'm gonna hand over to Gaurav to take you through the Reliance Retail results highlights.
Thanks, Anshuman. Good evening to all of you. Let me start the presentation with the operating context in which we operated our business. The operating environment has been now maintaining at pretty much at normative levels as the impact of COVID has waned. Which means that we have been able to operate all our stores, distribution and fulfillment centers, processing centers, offices and facilities at pretty much pre-COVID levels of efficiency. This has also been evident from the fact that the customers have started to come back into stores for shopping. This being the first festive period post the impact of COVID has waned.
We have seen a sharp rise in footfalls. During this particular quarter, we have seen over 201 million customers who have come into various stores. Just to give you a sense on the footfall growth, last year during the full 12 months, we witnessed about 590 million footfalls. As compared to that in 9 months this year, this number is well over 550 million footfalls. The shopping habits of the customers with the normalization of the pre-COVID lifestyle has also resulted that they have been reprioritizing their shopping missions. We are seeing very strong and balanced growth across all our stores as well as digital commerce channels. A macro experience, the consumer sentiments remains cautiously optimistic.
What we saw during the quarter was that the discretionary spend was impacted with November being soft and December pickup being coming a little bit late due to delayed winters. All in all, I think the demand momentum remained strong in the festive period. With that said, moving on to the key highlights for the quarter. The business maintained revenue growth momentum for the business across all the consumption baskets. We saw growth across all the businesses from grocery, consumer electronics, fashion to pharma. Our operating leverage and efficiencies drove a EBITDA margin improvement, and we continuously deliver a strong profit performance. We continue to serve customers at scale. Our registered customer base grew 30% year-on-year. We are well over 235 million registered customers now.
Our customer engagement is strong at 265 million transactions during the quarter. That's a 30% year-on-year growth. That translates to nearly 3 million transactions a day, which is really at a scale, considering that we operate across over 7,000 cities. We continue with our store expansion. We operationalized over 789 stores during the quarter. That added additional 6 million sq ft of retail space to our operations. We again crossed a new milestone of 60 million sq ft of operational area across geographies and formats. Digital and New Commerce businesses continue to remain strong.
Our daily orders have grown 30% year-on-year, and our partnerships with carriers and merchant partners have been one of our big focus areas, and that has also scaled up 70% year-on-year. During the quarter, we have further strengthened our capabilities and also added to the product offering from our businesses. V-Retail, which is the Centro Footwear, Sosyo and Lotus Chocolate were the key acquisitions that we made during this period. On the revenue side, we delivered a growth of 17% year-on-year, a revenue of INR 67,623 crores. Grocery led the pack on growth with 65% growth year-on-year. Consumer electronics, excluding the devices part of the business, grew 45% on a year-on-year basis. Fashion and lifestyle business grew 13%.
There was a little bit of a delay in winter, which impacted some of the categories related to winter in North and East. The digital and New Commerce businesses grew 38% year-on-year and continue to contribute at 18% of revenue, at similar scale to last quarter. From a profit perspective, our EBITDA performance remains strong. We grew 25% year-on-year at INR 4,773 crores. Our EBITDA margin saw a expansion of 40 basis points at 7.9% of net sales. Our EBITDA margin from operations saw a margin expansion of 70 basis points and closed at 7.7% of net sales. This came in from a very favorable mix of channel sales, operating leverage and efficiencies.
Looking at growth across the business, we've touched the store count to 17,225 stores. Between the third quarter last year and now, we have opened close to 2,800 stores, added close to about 20 million sq ft of space during this period, from 40 million, going all the way up to 60 million sq ft of operating space. While our expansion in the retail side is strong. We have upped the total investments in our warehousing fulfillment capabilities as well. 17 million sq ft of warehouse space went up to nearly double at about 33.6 million sq ft of warehousing space, which is a 3x growth over where we started from a pre-COVID period.
That's a strong investment that we continue to make to support our front-end growth. From a workforce perspective, our total workforce stands at 418,000 employees. Looking at the financial summary. Our gross revenues are at INR 67,623 crores, which is a 17% growth. EBITDA from operations is 32% growth at INR 4,657 crores. EBITDA margin from operations, as I said in the previous slides, at 7.7% expansion of 70 basis points. Profit after tax is INR 2,400 crores, which is a 6% growth on a year-on-year basis. A very strong revenue and profit performance are delivered during this period. Looking at the businesses.
To start with consumer electronics, the business had a very strong quarterly performance, all-time high for the stores. It was delivered with very high footfall and average bill value as the customer came in with the festive cheer. During the entire quarter, there were several events that were planned all the way starting from Diwali to the Black Friday to Christmas and New Year's sales. There were a very high level of footfalls which also resulted into average bill values through the quarter. From a Diwali specific perspective, we saw a 40% year-on-year growth, which was led by offers and financing schemes. There was a growth across all the product categories, but mobile phones, TVs and appliances really led the pack with double-digit growths.
Digital commerce revenues grew with orders growing up 5x and traffic also growing up 35%, led by several activations that we did through the quarter. Our own brand and partner brands business that we continue to expand, that has doubled during this period. We have launched several variants of products, especially in electricals and small domestic appliances, and now also taking these products into new geographies, which has resulted in a strong traction for these brands. On the JioMart digital business, that business grew 55% quarter-on-quarter. Since this is relatively new, so the reference here is more relevant from a quarter-on-quarter growth perspective, and that has come from the growth in mobile phones and large appliances. Our merchant base addition has been 12% on a quarter-on-quarter basis.
Moving into fashion and lifestyle business. The apparel footwear business posted its best quarter, which was led by festive and wedding season. The growth came in across several categories, men's formal, Indian ethnic wear, Indian wear, kids wear, and footwear did particularly well. On the winter wear side, there was a bit delay in the pickup because of delayed winter. Over the fag end of December, we saw a strong pickup in that category as well. We continue to have focus on strengthening our own brands, and brands like Avaasa, Netplay, DNMX, Teamspirit have outperformed our other own brands as well as external brands.
The contribution of own brands between the apparel and footwear categories as well, in the range of about 70% and continues to really bring uniqueness to our offerings. Ajio, which is a destination for online shopping, that continues to grow strength to strength, quarter after quarter. This particular quarter was again a big cheer because of the festive sales and several events that went well, which helped in expanding our customer base by almost a third during this period. The focus on catalog expansion has been one of our big initiatives. We've seen the catalog grow 62% year-on-year, now live with over 1.2 million options.
We continue to add more and more unique brands to enhance the choice to our customers with 92 brands, particularly during this period. From our partner brands, which operates more in the premium and luxury space, that side of the business grew 38% year-over-year. The mall stores drove a lot of customer traffic, including new store launches and brands that we did during this quarter. AJIO LUXE, which is an online destination for premium products, that platform offers over 470 brands and is the most preferred option for customers looking at the most trendiest of the clothes and products across lifestyle categories. That business also grew 3x on a year-over-year basis. From the omni-channel perspective, we continue to strengthen our play.
We have now over 20 mono brand sites in the partner brand space that are operational. During the period, we launched TUMI, Hanky Panky and Portnova as mono brand sites. The jewelry business has also remained strong during the quarter, which was led by festive sales and wedding season. We leveraged our design capabilities to launch several new variants of collections. Diamond Delight went into its fourth edition, Anantara in the kids' side, and the Valley of Flowers for silverware were very strong launches. Dhanteras, which is, you know, a big festive period for jewelry buying, that saw its best ever performance with 38% year-on-year growth. Strong play from jewelry business as well.
Lingerie business, we continue to consolidate our presence across the spectrum of brands between Zivame, Moon and Clovia. All put together a 62% year-on-year growth across these brands. Our focus has been to expand the presence of these through new shop-in-shops and EBO locations, that continues to do well for us. During the quarter, we launched several new products ranging from curvy styles, maternity range, minimizers, and so on, leveraging our innovative and innovation-based strengths. On the Urban Ladder, which is into furniture and furnishings, that side of the business grew 21% year-on-year, which was led by two key events of Full House Sale as well as Very Merry Sale, which grew 30% higher traffic onto our platforms.
Our focus on ramping up the product catalog is evident from the fact that we are now increasing our catalog size to 2.5x on a year-on-year basis. That is also helping us to improve our customer experience because of making a much wider choice of products available to them. In addition to the existing product portfolio, we have expanded our presence in the design services side with the full spectrum from design all the way to delivery. On the grocery business, talking about the offline and digital commerce, really grocery was the business that really led the growth back, 65% growth on a year-on-year basis on the back of a double-digit like-for-like growth.
Very strong customer engagement through our flagship event called the Bestival Sale, which created a new high for us at 74% growth year-on-year. Our focus on delivering a very unique and improved customer shopping experience is in place as we continue to premiumize our assortment, bring in more wider choice both from grocery as well as non-grocery categories. That has continues to also drive our average bill values across the business. The business delivered very well-rounded growth across fruits and vegetables, staples, general merchandise, packaged foods, and HPC categories. On the digital commerce business side, we saw a huge uptick in traffic. Milkbasket, which is the subscription service, that grew double over the period as compared to last year as it extended its reach to now 20 markets.
On New Commerce business, our focus has been to onboard a wider set of merchants, and that we continue to expand across geographies. Our focus has also been to ensure that the level of services to these customers, especially on product fill and timely delivery, that continues to go up, for which we continue to invest in improving our supply chain infrastructure. We have added 11 new fulfillment centers during this period. On the Consumer Brands business, that business has doubled over a year-on-year basis. All categories, ranging from processed food, beverages, to home and personal care, all categories have really performed well for us.
The focus again there has been to bring in products with more regional tastes and preferences, and we continue to launch a large number of variants across processed foods, beverages and spices. Products like the Runner Energy Drink and the Joyland Masala Kairi are some of these examples of how we have been able to serve specific customer choices in very specific markets. We talked about launching of a independent brand in the quarter that got launched in staples category in Gujarat, and that is currently getting expanded into other categories and newer geographies as we're in a phased manner. We believe the acquisition of Sosyo and Lotus Chocolate will further augment our brand portfolio and help us create very unique offerings to our customer over a period of time.
Talking about JioMart, which is the cross-category horizontal platform, that platform does really well during this period, especially demand from tier 2 and beyond towns was really fast as compared to the metro towns. JioMart on WhatsApp, which was the partnership that was announced last quarter, that continues to do well. The active customer base has grown 37% month-on-month, so very, very strong growth coming there. The order value and the number of orders continues to grow. Orders have now grown 9x since the launch. This platform is helping us really democratize WhatsApp reach to hands of new customers who are otherwise not being able to shop on digital platform.
The focus on expanding the offering to the customers is there. We have expanded the catalog 71% on a quarter-on-quarter basis, which is also resulting in an uptick of non-grocery category contribution going up. And a big part of that is also coming from the seller base, which is getting expanded 83% on a quarter-on-quarter basis. These sellers are small and medium enterprises and artisans which are really helping us augment our product offerings in a very unique manner. The Tyohaar Ready Sale, which is the flagship event for JioMart during the quarter that really did well during Diwali. A 2.5x growth in traffic, 3x the app installations and 4x growth in daily active users.
Some very strong performance matrices that we saw during the period. Pharma business revenue doubled on a year-on-year basis across all the channels. The digital commerce orders went up 67%. The hyperlocal deliveries for us, which is really the only channel play, that went up 4x during the period as compared to last year. We successfully executed a large number of marketing events to keep that freshness and also a strong engagement with the customers. New Commerce revenues continue to grow. Our operations are now well extended into over 2,600 cities. I think that will be all from the retail business. I'll hand it over to Sanjay.
Thank you. The quarter gone by was a solid quarter in terms of the EBITDA growth. We have seen year-on-year growth of over 91% in EBITDA. Quarter-on-quarter, we've seen almost a 23% growth. This is mainly due to the sustained production in high gas price realizations. The reservoirs in the field have behaved as per expectations, and that has been the key driver behind the performance. Overall, the price realizations also have been higher. In KG-D6 we are seeing a weighted average price realization of $11.3, and similarly in CBM, we are seeing about $20.9. Next slide, please. Even as we continue to produce at a steady pace from the existing fields, we are now quite advanced towards commissioning the MJ field.
In terms of the drilling of wells, we are now completing the wells. A total number of 8 wells will be completed and connected. The floating production storage and offloading vessel had arrived in September and is at location. The hookups have been done, so the entire subsea production system has been installed. The hookups with the FPSO have been undertaken. The testing is currently underway. The marine systems testing is currently underway. Thereafter, the topside systems testing will be undertaken along with the pre-commissioning and commissioning. We expect to commission the field within this fair weather window.
We, the important facet is that once this production starts, by sometime in FY 2024 or a few months later, we should be able to achieve full capacity and therefore about combined production of 30 million standard cubic meters per day. The global gas outlook still remains quite robust. We've seen some cool off happen because of a milder winter. What we have seen is the demand, LNG demand in Europe has grown. Consequently, even though there has been a slowdown in the Chinese economy due to the lockdowns and so on, we still have some growth. We've seen Chinese LNG imports come down by almost 13%. Elsewhere in Europe, the storages continue to be at a much higher level, about 83%.
Plus there's some higher inflows coming in from Norway and the new FSRUs, you know, about 3 to 4 of them expected to be commissioned by the end of the year. However, there remains an uncertainty, again, because of the geopolitical uncertainties, and as well as the weather. We expect demand to be still quite robust given, you know, the Chinese demand is expected to come up in the subsequent months. In terms of domestic gas prices, as you, many of you may be aware, the Dr. Kirit Parikh committee reviewed various options and then came up recommending the removal of ceiling price for HPHT imported gas from January 1, 2026, post which it should be open market-based pricing.
At the current juncture, the ceiling price remains at $12.46 per MMBtu, and a revised ceiling price would be expected just before the first half of next fiscal. Overall, realizations continue to be higher and the EBITDA growth is expected with incremental production coming in from MJ. Thank you.
Thanks, Sanjay. Moving into O2C, I thought, let me just give the context about the energy markets in this quarter. Starting with the fact that crude prices were lower by 12%, averaging over $89 a barrel. The fall can be attributed to recession fears in EU and US as well as, you know, it was better than expected Russian supply.
As Sanjay alluded to the whole LNG environment, you know, those prices were also down by almost 34%, around $31 a million BTU. On the back of Europe being well stocked, and also the winter being mild in the fourth quarter of, you know, this calendar year. On the back of LNG prices, ethane prices also were significantly lower, and we also saw broadly the benchmark regional refining margins also lower, on the back of lower light distillates and fuel oil cracks, which of course was to some extent compensated by the fact that mid distillates were stronger. In essence, this was more about demand, you know, concerns which brought it down.
On the operating side, as we saw revenues at INR 145,000 crore, you know, higher by 10% on a year-on-year basis, and the same on the quarter-on-quarter on the lower side. EBITDA close to INR 14,000 crore, 3% higher on a year-on-year basis and a strong 16% growth there. When you look at the year-on-year side and as far as the performance is concerned, it, you can attribute that to mid-distillate strength as well as, you know, the benefits on the feedstock side. Of course, important for me to highlight that it was constrained by significant weakness in the chemical side. As you may have seen, polymer margins are anywhere between 26% and 44% lower.
Also on the polyester chain margin, if you were to see it is down 23% year-on-year. Also, this quarter was slightly lower on the throughput side. In this quarter we continued to see a SAED charge of close to INR 1,900 crore. When you look at the performance from a Q-on-Q perspective, you know overall, a strong growth there, despite the, you know, weakness that we have seen on the chemical side. Again, mid distillates holding pretty well there. Also from upward a few, we did well, you know, in terms of using the flexibility that we have in fuel and feedstock management as well as in the broader yield optimization that we have. This is the broader context.
If you were to see, you can see global oil demand, you know, at about 100, marginally lower, in some way, you know, there is lower demand in OECD countries offset by we are seeing some, you know, increase in the Middle East, Africa and Asia, of course, without China. When you look at it from a product perspective, you know, higher demand for gas oil and, you know, offset, and also demand was there for jet fuel also and offset by gasoline. Otherwise, when you look at from an India perspective, India oil demand, polymer India polymer demand and India polyester demand pretty strong. You know, polyester being up 11%, polymer about 8% and overall oil demand being 7%. There you.
It is on the back of, you know, enhanced economic activity, which we are seeing, infrastructure rollout. We are seeing in all those, as the, as the reasons for this kind of demand. Operating rates globally have been slightly lower and, you know, it's because of the winter storm in U.S., Canada in December, which was. There was also strike in the EU, but it was offset by some of the ramp up in new capacities. On the cracker side, slightly lower on the back of planned shutdowns. Just a bit more elaboration on the oil demand side. When you look at the overall product point of view, gasoline up almost 8% year-on-year on the back of automobile sales. You know, increase in tourism, mobility, we are seeing all of that.
On the high-speed diesel demand up 10% on the back of, you know, industrial side, mining activity side, you're seeing demand. Farm side has also been pretty resilient. ATF 24%. Again, there is a strong growth with the, you know, with the complete now domestic air travel is effectively above pre-COVID level. International flights are coming in. In a way, you know, all these are the drivers for the 7% growth that we are seeing. Individual product side, if you were to see polymer up 8% year-on-year, and there I would definitely flag the PVC. That's a sharp growth of 25% on the back of demand from both agriculture and infrastructure for pipes.
P and PP also saw 4% growth across sectors. On the polyester side, 11% up. Again, there, two products, PSF and PET. PSF up 16% on the back of higher cotton prices as well as seasonality there. PET, you know, we are seeing a lot of higher demand on the beverages side, but also it did benefit from the, you know, from having a low base to compare. When you move to the on the delta side, you can see this chart is actually, you know, it's falling to the right, which effectively year-on-year has been lower, quarter-on-quarter has also been lower. When you look at it from a quarter-on-quarter point of view, again anywhere between 5 and 18% lower.
In this case, it's been more about polymer prices declining between 7% and 15%. The naphtha, as a raw material, has seen a fall of only 4%, which has really shrunk the margins. We continue to optimize naphtha and ethane, given the flexibility that we have, and therefore we are able to extract more. On the polyester side, overall 19% fall on a year, from a quarterly basis. Clearly, PX and MEG is under significant pressure because of capacity additions as well as lower demand in China. PTA was range bound and overall polyester downstream that was clearly attributable to the COVID situation in China. Moving to the transportation fuel side.
You can see on the, on the first graph, you know, gas oil almost $41 a barrel, which is, which is almost flat there. Demand was higher by 0.5 million barrels per day. So it remains essentially the cracks remains pretty elevated. At the margin, the strikes also pushed gas oil prices up. While the inventory levels at 536 is higher, but yet it is below five-year averages. To some extent, the China export quotas and new refinery capacity additions, you know, they kept the rise there. On ATF side, demand has been essentially flat, but cracks did improve marginally on a quarter-on-quarter basis on the back of air passenger demand in Asia Pacific.
It was to some extent offset, but that's what we'll attribute that. Also, jet yield, you know, in favor of kerosene for winter heating season that also kept the, had its impact on the margins. Finally moving to the gasoline side. As you can see there, you know, you're seeing the crack spreads coming off on the back of, you know, higher supplies coming from China and Middle East. Also, there has been a buildup of gasoline because it's a co-product of, you know, as you produce gas oil. You're seeing that effect coming through. Overall, India demand, you know, we saw the India demand that remains pretty positive there.
This is the operating highlights. you know, throughput essentially normalized after the planned maintenance shutdown in September, October that we saw. From our point of view, we continued to maximize, you know, gas oil exports. What we also did was, given that there was strong reforming margins, we did two things. One, we sourced external feedstock and, you know, and for, and then converted them. We also optimized aromatics production, given the fact that, you know, the PX naphtha deltas were lower, so we're able to use it for better gasoline blending economics. We did that. We did well in terms of optimizing our cracker on the feed versus fuel economics that I talked to you about.
Overall, coming to the broader business dynamics, starting with demand side. Demand is expected to grow in 2023 by 1.9 million barrels. You know, we think that China demand will improve with the relaxation in the COVID-related restrictions. Polyester polymer will track Indian economic growth. On the margin side, so margins will be, will to some extent, so will support margin, but there is a limit because we are expecting some additions coming on the refining capacity side. Overall, I think middle distillates cracks will remain firm because, as I mentioned, lower inventories, it's lower than the 5-year that we talked about. There is this whole impending loss of supply from Middle East that's expected firm.
Polymers, in particular, I think the demand back in U.S. Of course, there are challenger recovery rates and competing PIs, et cetera, but, you know, those things are there. The possible challenges in China export quotas, you know, I think become higher, can offset the from a margin it can have. Overall price then. Coming to the last slide. This is the summary. As shared early growth has strong operating have delivered numbers. A lot of we managed sources through contact of the...
From a point of view of overall, the consumer demand is tail headed by festive from e-commerce addition, and we saw slides on every parameter of the number of registered customers, the number of tickets are all growing really well at about 20%. On Jio side, continuing to see increase in the number of customers and also ARPU on the back of higher usage. True 5G update that Kiran talked about, you know, more than 100 cities and our target to completely roll out by December of 2023.
Production at KG-D6, fourth quarter, that we are expecting to complete and which means that that can increase the overall production to 30 MMSCMD in FY 2024. We have a lot of effort going on on the green energy side and with the fast-track implementation of the gigafactories. In the coming quarters, we will continue to update on the progress there. With this, the presentation comes to an end. Thank you so much for being with us here. Thank you.