This has been an extraordinary quarter. Extraordinary when you look at it from point of view of macro volatility. Extraordinary if you see it from point of view of energy market shock. Extraordinary when you think of it in the context of what kind of supply chain dislocation that happened. In that context is where when you look at the overall performance, I do want to say that it's been an extraordinary performance too. The kind of agility we have shown has been incredible, and I'll tell you why it is. Starting with the numbers, top line up 25%, primarily because of oil prices. It is also a fact that Jio top line was also up 12%, even retail was up close to 12%. It's not just about O2C.
EBITDA has been strong. When you look at EBITDA and recurring EBITDA, because last time, same time, we had the INR 8,900 crores of Asian Paints. That is why right through the presentation, I have backed it out. Otherwise, it just doesn't make comparable numbers, and it doesn't make sense with those numbers like that. When you look at that, our overall EBITDA is more than INR 54,000 crores, we are up 10%. Net profit at almost close to INR 23,200, again up 6%. When you see the numbers, strong performance by O2C up 17%, JPL 15%. Those were the standout performance, and we will also talk about the other businesses. Again, consumer businesses is now again back to, it's about 50% of the overall mix.
Cash flows continue to be strong, more than from a cash profit point of view, really funding the overall CapEx. Moving on to O2C, specifically 30% up on revenue basis, INR 17,000 crores, that's up 17%. When you see the components of the performance, starting with, of course, high distillate margins, we saw that significant 250% more, 300% more. I just wanted to say that those numbers are there, but I think those numbers are on a flat crude basis, and it doesn't provide for the fact that you had to pay higher differentials to acquire the crude. Broadly, performance is on the back of higher spreads. Deltas, even chemical deltas, three to four years high. You always talked about the benefits of ethane cracking, and when you see it in this quarter, while oil prices were going up, actually ethane prices went down.
Therefore, all the cracking that we do with the help of ethane, that was enormously valuable. I think the whole challenge in this quarter was about getting the crude, given the kind of dislocation we saw in the Middle East. Therefore, getting crude from Latin America, getting crude from the U.S., Canada, Africa, Russia. The challenge has been to get the crude, because finally, we were running the refinery at almost full capacity. Also, the other reason for the performance also comes from the actual placement. Quickly the ability to reroute traffic back from Europe, where we were exporting to actually more deficit markets in Asia and Australia. That also helped to give us some of the margins back. Of course, all this is there, but on the back of it, earnings were impacted by, of course, SAED was there, under recoveries in retail was there.
We had a planned turnaround, which meant that production meant for sale was lower by 10%. LPG diversion, as you know, happened, a requirement. Also, gas had to be diverted for the other priority sector, which means that we had to use more of liquids to run the refinery. I'm saying all this to lay the context about this performance is after providing for all this. In that sense, is what I said, it is extraordinary. Overall, oil and gas year-over-year revenue is up 3%, almost EBITDA flat, slightly lower, and in a sense, KGD 6 production was lower. KGD 6 price realization was lower.
Kind of offset because CBM production was higher, and actually the realization on CBM was higher, and the liquids, even though it is small, the significant jump in liquid price meant that we were able to almost keep it flat too year-over-year basis. On JPL side, as I said, 12% on revenue side and about 15% on margin, and we also got the benefit of margin expansion. We had market leadership, which was on the back of coverage, tech, use cases. When you now see the number of customers, we have 533 million customers, and with about 285 on the 5G network. One of the points in the 12% year-over-year growth is the fact that while connectivity was 11%, some of the digital services growth was about 20%.
It also helped pull, and that came on the back of content, cloud, compute, IoT, and managed services, which Anshuman will take you through. Now, also traction on the FWA, and of the 29 million fixed broadband subscriber base, now half of it is through Jio AirFiber. On moving to retail side, INR 90,000 crore, it is 12% higher if you were to remove the impact of RCPL, which was there last time, it is 12%. EBITDA is INR 6,309, which is slightly lower on a year-over-year basis. Here, two points I wanted to mention that this reduction is a conscious play. We are focusing on ramping up the digital commerce across verticals and as we focus on the hyperlocal delivery infrastructure. It is about trying to create significant scale in terms of building up the digital commerce business.
It will be backed, of course, by physical infrastructure, but also on the back of attractive value to the customer. We think of it as a few quarters. We want to build this and build the digital business, which I think then sets the stage for us for creating opportunities in the future. Dinesh will take you through the strategy that we have. JioStar actually did well, INR 13,000 crore top line and income from operations, when I look at income from operations up 30%. Again, very strong performance in the context of what was happening in terms of ads, et cetera. RCPL continues to do well, and this is at INR 8,600 crore is 2X of what it was. Again, each of the brands that we have built on Independence on the beverages side, on Campa, very strong growth there.
The focus there, as you know, is building the robust manufacturing and the supply chain infrastructure. Those initiatives are absolutely going full swing. I am not going to spend time because we talked through the numbers. Overall, as you can see, 25% up revenues, about 10% on EBITDA and PAT 6%. As I said, same time last time was INR 8,900 crore plus of Asian Paints. If I were to back out for that, this is the kind of overall numbers. You are seeing finance cost up 19% and depreciation up 9%, primarily arising on account of the capitalization in Jio. As you know, between March 2025 and March 2026, more than INR 1 lakh crore of assets were capitalized. Therefore, it means higher depreciation. It means that the interest that was getting capitalized now flows through the P&L.
That really more reflects what we have done in terms of the Jio capitalization. Overall, we talked through these numbers on O2C oil and gas. I am not going to spend time because each of the individual businesses will also talk about it. Overall, when you see from a net debt point of view, it is slightly lower than what it was in March, INR 123,000 odd. CapEx of close to INR 39,000 crore. Yeah, we had an upgrade in the Moody's rating to Baa1 and, of course, with S&P an A-. Overall, the balance sheet is healthy and supporting our CapEx initiative, both in the O2C side, new energy side, and also as we build more on the hyperlocal strategy on retail and, of course, on RCPL and the data center. The cash flow momentum is enormously valuable to support those CapEx. With this, Anshuman.
Thank you, Srikanth. Good evening, everyone. Update on the Jio results. Some key highlight numbers for the quarter, 533 million subscribers in connectivity. That is a net addition of 35.2 million over the last 12 months. Out of these, 285 million are 5G users, which is a net addition of 73 million in the last 12 months of 5G users. The home fixed broadband connects has increased to 28.6 million, out of which 14 million are AirFiber homes. Now, a lot of the growth is really coming through the AirFiber connectivity, and we are also kind of encouraging that because the last mile becomes much more economical and time efficient in being able to do that. Financial numbers, INR 39,173 crore is the revenue. That is an 11.8% year-on-year growth. EBITDA at INR 20,865 crore, that is a 15.1% year-on-year growth, with an EBITDA margin of 53.3%.
That's 150 basis points higher than the same quarter last year. 69.4 exabytes of total data traffic on the network, 27% growth year-on-year. All of these metrics is showing fairly healthy performance and the growth momentum continues. In terms of performance highlights, double-digit EBITDA growth. This is when we've now, as we had spoken last quarter, all of the 5G related expenses and assets have been fully capitalized, so all of those are getting expensed now. Even after that, we had double-digit EBITDA growth for the quarter. The digital services growth is 20% year-on-year, which outpaces the connectivity growth, which has been the trend over the last several quarters. It's of a smaller base. Nonetheless, it's growing and growing well, and we're being able to monetize services across content, cloud, IoT, and managed services, and a few others, which are smaller in scale.
That piece is doing quite well. We are the world's largest standalone 5G operator outside of China, with 285 million subscribers on our network. This is as of 30th June 2026. Per capita data engagement increased to 43.7 GB per user per month, which again, is amongst the highest globally for any operator. Another interesting stat, that 5G data traffic is now one and a half times of the 4G data traffic on our network. It's growing much more rapidly, and we are also encouraging pushing a lot of data usage to that. On the FWA, we have spoken about this in the past and we have included it in the DRHP, so all of you have heard about this. Our proprietary stack is doing very well. We have a 78% FWA market share of the net additions in India.
One other important piece of update for the quarter, there's this PCT rankings of the World IP Organization. We are the only Indian technology company, technology innovator to be in the global top 20 rankings, and this has been a significant jump in our rankings over the last year, with almost now, I think around 4,500 odd patents which have either been awarded or are in the process, are under evaluation. Clearly establishing our technology leadership. These patents range from across telecom related products, network, OSS, BSS, the 4G, 5G code that we run ourselves. The full network stack, and then a few other things around consumer and digital services. On the mobility side, strategy continues to remain the same.
Add consumers, extend market leadership, where we have some inherent advantages or advantages that we've worked on, unique advantages through our superior 5G experience, which network is now pretty ubiquitous, and it's helping us gain both 5G market share, also incremental customer market share. We are able to do unique use cases, we've again spoken about this in the past, I'll not dwell on this, because of the SA architecture, we have been able to offer customers differentiated value propositions. These are things like URSP as well, which gives much better quality of service, of course, with the device supporting. The other bit for us on the mobility side and which is both a cause and an effect is using our network and our customer base as a gateway for digital services.
We are able to offer and really become the entry point for a whole bunch of digital services like the OTT video, compute or really AI use cases now increasingly. We spoke about the Gemini partnership last quarter, music, cloud gaming. All of these are helping us or helping these to access customers, and in the process, helping us monetize our customers better, but also these are becoming modes for us to get customers onto the network and retain them. Another area of focus for us has been to transition more and more customers who are on the 2G networks onto 4G, 5G. We continue to do that by enabling more digital offerings for those customers through the JioBharat devices, but also affordable plans with partner OEMs. That continues to be a focus area for us.
Amplifying circularity of scale and digital services bouquet, it's a nice circle from our point of view because each is contributing to the other. On the home side, really using our end-to-end service offerings that we offer at home, the set-top box as a gateway where we are able to push through a lot of content and other services as well. Gaming and cloud PC being some which are now being used by people on the set-top box. The JioTV OS, which replicates pretty much the set-top box on any smart TV, as a TV application. We kind of don't need the set-top box, the hardware piece in every instance. That's something that again we are popularizing more.
JioPC and JioGames, we've spoken about this in the past, but these are being offered through our set-top box or through the JioTV OS, and becoming increasingly popular with customers. The idea is also to now to do more coverage expansion. With the FWA, it's becoming much more possible to be present across the country and be able to connect homes and enterprises very quickly. The bundle services to unlock latent demand, and where the entry point may not be through broadband, we try and get it through digital content and make that as the USP for offering the service to homes. In most cases, the broadband adoption is fairly quick and fairly fast, even if that's not the primary reason for somebody taking a connection.
On the Jio homes, we have 65% share in incremental net additions over the last 12 months between FTTH and fixed wireless. A lot of that coming in through the fixed wireless. For the enterprises, where traditionally companies have had service specific play, most of the traditional telcos focusing on connectivity and then maybe adding a layer or two of some of the other services. We have really focused on offering it as managed services, where it's a combination of connectivity going in with a bunch of managed services, which are important and useful for enterprises across security, Wi-Fi. Managed Wi-Fi is picking up quite well. ERP, analytics, surveillance, and a whole bunch of other services that we are able to offer as bundled services.
Being able to offer this at short notice in specific locations is something which is very important for enterprises and is helping us win more accounts because of a combination of the FWA and the managed service offering that we are able to give to the enterprise customers. Coming to some key numbers. For RJIL, the connectivity business, the key operating metrics: 533.3 million total customer base. As I said earlier, 73 million additions to the 5G customer base and 8.6 million net additions to the broadband connections in the last 12 months. ARPU came in at INR 215.6. That's a INR 7 increase year-on-year. All of this, again, it's without any tariff increases or tariff actions that have happened in the last 12 months. Total data consumption grew to 69.4 exabytes; per capita data consumption at 43.7 exabytes. Monthly churn has been reducing every quarter.
On the financials for RJIL, the material subsidiary of JPL, their operating revenues came in at INR 34,212 crore in this quarter and the EBITDA at INR 19,590 crore at a 57.3% EBITDA margin. That's a healthy 130 basis points improvement over the last 12 months. EBITDA growing at 13.2% year-on-year. JPL operating revenues at INR 39,173 crore, as I said in the earlier slide as well, which was at 12% growth. EBITDA grew faster with the operating leverage. I'll reiterate this is after considering all of the 5G networks being fully capitalized now; EBITDA margin at 53.3%. EBIT INR 13,407 crore and profit after tax at INR 7,764 crore. The finance cost has gone up. It's really because we are now expensing it, the capitalization; we're not capitalizing it.
While the gross interest cost has really come down because our overall debt number has reduced, but the net interest cost has increased on a year-on-year basis or even from the previous quarter, and that brought down the PAT. With that, I'm going to hand over to Dinesh for an update on the retail business.
Thanks, Anshuman. Hi, good evening, everyone. On the retail business, just to capture the key metrics, on the operating side, our number of customers have grown 11%. Transactions have grown 46%. Revenue growth is about 12%. That shows that the number of transactions is g rowing much faster than revenue, and that's a function of the growing contribution of digital commerce in overall revenues. Digital commerce is picking up. The revenue contribution is growing across consumption baskets because of which the average transaction value is coming down. Unique customers served during the quarter is up 8.5% on a year-on-year basis. We continue to add new customers who are coming across our retail platform. These are customers who have shopped across at least one of the platforms.
In terms of top-line growth, as you would recollect, RCPL business was de-merged out on 1st of December, Q1 had the full revenue. Adjusted for that, the underlying revenue growth is 11.6%. On a reported basis, the growth is 7.4%. Grocery digital orders are up 116% on a year-over-year basis. Both the number of orders are increasing as well as the average order values are increasing. EBITDA margin is at 7.9%. It is down 80 basis points on a year-over-year basis. But if you recollect, last two quarters, Q4 was 7.9%, Q3 for it was 8.0%. As we increase the growth of digital revenues, margins have come down. It is a function of that, and that is a consistent trend over the last three quarters. We continue to invest in technology and infrastructure for dark stores to enable online commerce and which is driving the growth in costs.
If we look at revenue of 7.4%, 11.6% adjusted for the overall business. Each of the consumption baskets have grown strongly. All our three major consumption baskets, whether it is grocery, fashion or electronics, all three of those consumption baskets have grown in double digits. The LFL growths are quite healthy. In electronics, it is actually double digits. Both grocery and fashion, the numbers are in single digits. The share of online is growing across consumption baskets as well. Profit after tax is down primarily because of increase in depreciation and finance cost. EBITDA is more or less flat for the quarter. Just to give a three-year roadmap for how we are thinking about the business, right? We are looking at growing our online businesses pretty rapidly during this year. We will expand dark stores. We will grow our omnichannel platforms. We will grow JioMart.
Also focus on improving the operational metrics around availability, speed, reliability. Market by market, we are looking at expansion from a unit economics perspective. Each market, the unit economics, we need to have a clear path to positive unit economics. Accordingly, we are evaluating each and every market and focusing our investments in that manner. What we believe is with the scale that will come in this year, the benefit of that scale will convert into value in terms of margins and cash generation over the next two years, because as we are looking at acquiring high-quality customers, as those customers experience the proposition, as the repeat rates go up, basket values grow over a period of time. That will help improve, grow the overall business, and help improve overall margins.
In addition to that, we will look at the product mix, growing share of our own brands, increasing monetization, increasing marketplace income. We will use all these levers to improve economics, which will start reflecting meaningfully in the numbers, going forward over the next two years. As I covered, 2027 is basically laying the foundation and scale the business with discipline. While we will grow quite quickly, we will also look at the quality of business, not just the volume. The order density in each and every dark store, the repeat rates, the fulfillment cost, the contribution margins, we will look at all of these. We have defined targets for each of those metrics, and we will evaluate how they go, and wherever they do not make sense, we will cut that down. Growth will be quite disciplined.
What we believe is as the benefit of density, as the benefit of mix, productivity improvements, better inventory turns, monetization kicks in, we will start seeing good return on capital on these investments. EBITDA and cash generation would accelerate over the coming years. This year, as I said, we will look at the four key pillars. Customers, are we getting the right customers? How many of those customers are active? What the repeat rates are? What the order frequencies are? What is the level of experience? What's our NPS? What's the customer trust? We will focus on those so that we're getting the right quality of customers. On the commercial side, what is the basket size, the mix, what is the own brand contribution? Finally, what's the delivered gross margin that we are getting?
Operational excellence in terms of ensuring availability, on-time fulfillment, cost per order, returns, cancellations. We will look at in each of those, this thing being best in class. Finally, the financial contribution in terms of contribution margin, working capital, and EBITDA. This year, online growth, we will focus on, but it will be quite measured. The growth will be funded from existing profits, and the absolute numbers will grow. That was just to give the foundation, the framework of how we are thinking about the business. Now moving on to the update on the consumption baskets. On the grocery side, big-box stores, we have 1,000-plus big-box stores, which are hypermarkets, and that's something we are scaling quite quickly going forward as well. The LFL growth is quite healthy at 7%, so we are growing faster than what the industry is.
This is pure online, this is not big-box growth because wherever we are serving online from these stores, the big-box growth is even higher. Another interesting data point, when we look at omni-channel customers, we are getting higher wallet share from them. Omni-channel customers, if I look at quarterly data, they've spent 2.7 times more than what a pure offline customer is spending. There's clearly incremental wallet share and value that I'm able to capture. Also, when I look at the growth of this, an omni-channel customer, how they were spending earlier versus how they are spending now, even on a YOY basis, the growth in spending is 20%-25%. People are spending more, and people who are converting to online are effectively spending more and over a period of time that's growing.
On the online, the digital commerce side, as I spoke about, orders are up 116% on a YOY basis. The share of digital in grocery B2C is accelerating. Just for reference, it's almost doubled over a YOY basis with the revenue scaling up. On the 3P side, the active seller base is up 26%. We have the widest network, covering 5,500 PIN codes. Not just our grocery stores and dark stores, even 2,500-plus digital and fashion and lifestyle stores are also live on the network. It's a true cross-category play, where we are able to deliver in, grocery is less than 30 minutes, but even other categories, less than two hours, with a much wider assortment than what a typical dark store would offer. We redesigned the JioMart app, it went live during the quarter, the feedback and reviews has been quite good.
The conversions have improved. When we see the hard data, the conversions are better on the new app. The average order values are improving, so there's good acceptance of the new app from a customer perspective. The focus, as I spoke about, is on improving the repeat rates, order density, reliability, optimizing the delivery cost, and contribution margin per order. We will scale this business aggressively, but with the right unit economics. Investments are concentrated in micro markets where there's a clear path to unit economy positive economics. We will go market by market and prove. Wherever it doesn't make sense, we will pull back down on that. Moving on to B2B. Pretty steady, healthy growth here again. 15% increase in average bill value. Multiple category staples, DFB, beverages, all continue to show pretty strong traction. We continue to attract new customers and engage customers.
The number of active transacting customers, while we have 4 million customers onboarded, every quarter, we measure how many customers are active transacting with us and what's the average bill values. Both of them are on the right trend. Moving on to the electronic side. As I spoke about, the LFL growth is quite healthy at 16% on a YOY basis for the big box stores. resQ has grown on a 27% on a YOY basis. As most of you would be aware, last quarter was a challenging quarter in terms of, for electronics because of the availability of memory capacity is a big chip shortage. Because of the brand partnerships we had, and we were able to pick inventory early, we got their support.
We were able to mitigate the impact of global shortages, while other players had that impact, which had led to pretty strong performance in the business. Across categories, whether it's ACs, laptop, mobiles, small appliances, we have done exceedingly well. We are also strengthening our omni-channel integration with all the big box stores are now live on JioMart, where all the entire grab-and-go assortment is available on the app, and it gets delivered within two hours. Moving to fashion and lifestyle. 4% LFL growth. Our AJIO Rush, if you look at it, this is our quick commerce offering within two to four-hour delivery for fashion. The number of orders were up 136% on a quarter-on-quarter basis. This is something that we launched two, three quarters back, so there's no full-year track record, and the base was small, so we are reporting on a quarter-on-quarter basis.
Shein has crossed app installs of 30 million+. In fact, we went from almost 11 million to 30 million during this quarter, there's significant acceleration happening there. Our share of digital commerce in apparel and footwear is at 27.5%. It's almost up 5% on a YOY basis. I think the theme is consistent, where across channels, we are making investments in growing online business, and we are seeing pretty strong traction. That's a quick update on the retail business. I'll hand over to Ketan to cover the FMCG.
Good evening. This quarter, we delivered INR 8,600 across revenue on FMCG. This was double the growth as compared to last year. On daily essentials, we clocked INR 3,200. Independence has been recognized as India's most trusted brand in 2026/27. On beverages, we delivered INR 2,900 crore, which was more than 50% of our last year's revenue numbers. We continue to get double-digit shares in all key markets. All other FMCG categories also showed significant momentum. Home care, personal care, processed food, confectionery, chocolates, everything had started giving us good growth. This is where we feel a lot of growths would be coming during the next quarters. We continue our focus on pan-India distribution. We have now more than 5,000 distributors, and we reach more than 3 million retail outlets. More than 80% of our sales is through external channels. On international, now we reach more than 40 markets.
As said on daily essentials, we were rated as one of the most trusted brands. We continue our South India distribution momentum to the acquisitions which we had done, which is on Manna and Udhaiyam. Edible oil is a key category for us, and we have been seeing some great traction on edible oil. We have now some dedicated facilities, and we are also exploring a facility in West Bengal. On the entire category, we grew 1.7 times the last year. On beverages, as I said, we are now the number three NARTD player in India. We continue to have double-digit shares. We also continue to expand in markets. For the next quarter, we plan to enter into Australia and African markets. On average, this was almost two and a half times growth of what we had in last quarter. On FMCG businesses, all other categories we have done scale-up.
For example, in football, we participated through our alliance ships where we had dedicated packs for each and every country which was participating. Similarly, on SIL side, we continue expanding our portfolio, and now we have introduced in May, vermicelli was the last launch. We continue scaling up our entire range on Velvette. We have entered Glimmer, which is one of our other brands. We have been concentrating on soaps, personal care through this, and we have seen significant demand there, and this quarter has been a very good momentum, and we continue to concentrate on it. Similarly, biscuits, confectioneries, and all also show us very good traction. On facilities and supply chain, we continue setting up facilities at a robust pace. We have set up one of the greenfield plants, which is one of the largest beverage plants in Asia.
We have commissioned it partially and should be completely ready. This is also an integrated food park facility where for all other categories also the work has started. Like I said, on edible oil, we are now working to set up a facility in West Bengal. On advertising, we were the number one advertiser on linear TV during IPL. We had the highest share of value on 60 brands. We continue. I think we reached almost 220 million mobile users, 34 million connected TV devices. We have also built a biggest mural in Chennai, on there, which we call it iconic city. On updates on Sosyo, which was a joint venture, now we have acquired a majority stake. We have also completed operational transition on Toni & Guy, Brylcreem, Badedas, and Matey. These were the brands which we had acquired last year.
The sales for this have been commenced in U.K. and Europe, and also Australia. We are preparing for India launch on this. Also, happy to say Goodness Group is where we had acquired last year. We have now officially manufactured Campa cans in Australia, and we'll be doing a launch during the end of this month. Thank you. I hand it over to Ishan now.
Good evening, everyone. I'll walk you through our media business. This was a good quarter for JioStar, where we set new benchmarks on engagement and on consumption. In this quarter, we crossed over 530 million users on the platform, and on IPL in particular, we crossed over 700 million people on the platform. As you can see the trend over the last four quarters, it's upwards and to the right, and we're very excited about the engagement that we're seeing across both our sports and the entertainment portfolio. This was also an important quarter for us to lay the foundations of future growth. I wanted to call out a few initiatives. The first is we launched Tadka, which is our own in-house micro content hub.
In the short two months since it's launched, in the first week of IPL, we saw over 100 million users engage with the content of the platform. The second is our deep integration with OpenAI, and specifically with ChatGPT, where we launched what we call conversational discovery on the platform. Here, we have changed the search functionality on the app to be much more conversational, where now a user can talk to JioHotstar in their own native language, irrespective of wherever they are in the country and whatever Indic language they speak. Finally, we also have our own in-house AI media studio, which we call Jamz. We use Jamz to launch our first ever fully AI-generated micro content, micro drama that now sits on Tadka. We expect that this will allow us to launch much more high-quality content at scale across our short-form content.
I'll spend just a couple of minutes on the highlights on sports and then on entertainment. As you can see from the slide here, IPL 26 turned out to be our biggest IPL ever in terms of consumption. We saw 7% growth over IPL 25 on overall reach, and specifically on CTV. We saw a 19% growth in overall consumption. That's very important for us as we see the transition from TV to digital. The second big highlight for us is the Women's World Cup, which just concluded recently in the U.K. This is an upward trajectory that we're seeing ever since the women's team won the World Cup last year. It led to a much higher consumption on WPL. We're seeing the same trend continue on the Women's World Cup with triple-digit growth on both digital as well as CTV viewership.
We're very bullish about this as we look ahead. On the entertainment side, we saw fantastic engagement across multiple properties, and I'll just call out a few over here. The first is "Drishyam 2" turned out to be the most-watched movie of all time on JioHotstar, and this was built on the back of the first Drishyam movie that we had in the previous quarter. In terms of our unscripted shows, "Laughter Chefs," which we launched in a number of different languages, as you can see on the screen, saw strong growth over the previous seasons. We also launched a spate of originals, of which "Pritam and Pedro" saw the highest ever opening for a Hindi special, and is on track to potentially becoming the largest ever special ever seen on JioHotstar.
We also launched movies in both Tamil and Malayalam, which broke records for us on the platform. In terms of the operational performance, there are a couple of other highlights that I wanted to call out. On digital, we also launched our first-ever foray into commerce, along with a partnership that we did with Swiggy. If any of you have not yet tried this, please try it tomorrow when India will play England on the JioHotstar app. It allows you to complete an entire transaction on the app itself without you ever leaving the content stream. This is something that we saw a lot of take-up and a lot of positive feedback from both our partners as well as from consumers. On the sports business, I wanted to reiterate how big IPL has been for us, and it remains the biggest acquisition funnel for the entire platform.
It's something that we expect will continue to drive a lot of activation across our user bases. Digital entertainment overall saw its watch time grow by 16%. What's also critical is we saw JioStar maintaining its very strong 34% share in linear TV. Finally, very quickly on our overall financials. We closed the quarter with overall revenue of INR 10,946 crores, that's a 14% increase in overall revenue. You'll see that translate to a 14% increase in our PBT as well. I wanted to call out the operational challenges that the business faced in this quarter, specifically around the real money gaming ban on advertising that was part of our base in the last quarter. We were not able to do that in this quarter. As well as the U.S.-Iran war in the Middle East, which had an adverse impact on the overall ad market.
We saw strong growth in overall digital advertising, especially on the entertainment side. That's what was able to balance out the growth across our overall business. With that, I will hand over to the oil and gas team.
Good evening to all. I think the numbers have been exceptional. If you look at the revenue, grown by about 30%+, EBITDA 17%, then we have had the EBITDA margin, of course, a little down. We'll just go through some of the reasons why it's been exceptional. Of course, fuel cracks have been quite good. Ethane also, my colleague will be speaking a little later on that. That is I think crude prices have risen, but because of the production in the U.S., ethane has been within a good range, which helped the economics. A lot of volatility and supply disruptions are what we've seen. Refining capacity, both in the Middle East and Russia, has been affected. All these were some advantages which resulted in the high good numbers. Having said that, there were also headwinds and challenges.
We had under-recoveries on the domestic sales, also on our sales to PSUs. SAED has been a bit of a drag. What gets missed in the course of this presentation, I will be showing you what are the product margins, which look like an astronomical growth or exponential growth, but it may not really reflect into the profit because there are certain headwinds like crude flat price, which you see as a Brent or Dubai, and the margin, okay, ultimately, which a refinery gets can be different because there are huge premiums, like some of the OSPs in the Middle East went as close to $20 a barrel. Normally, we are familiar with a couple of U.S. dollars of premium, but we've seen a premium as high as close to double digits.
We also had the freight rate, which probably was 10x against typically a U.S. dollar or so from the Middle East. We saw actually rise to 10 times that price. Insurance costs also, multiples. It was on a lower base, but still, multiples. Those are the kinds of costs which have risen sharply, therefore, you'll find that the EBITDA margin may be a little lower and may not reflect the cracks alone. I just thought there could be a lot of questions around this, so I just thought I'll address that. Another thing is, of course, LPG was badly required in the country. All of you are familiar with the difficulties faced. We consume about 3 million tonnes in the country, and 2 million tonnes is imported, roughly, give or take. Most of that 2 million tonnes comes from the Middle East.
With the closure of SOH, suddenly that wasn't coming. All the domestic refineries were asked to increase production, and we increased the production almost fourfold from where we were producing in February. In March, we increased it and took it up to almost fourfold. That actually affected the petrochemical production as well as certain high-grade gasoline components, which we produce and export to the U.S. In fact, some of you must have read that in California, there was a bit of high prices, and it was attributed also to the lower availability of Alky from India. These were certain headwinds which we faced. Throughput wise, I think rest of Asia had runs which were down by maybe 15%-20% during this crisis, whereas Reliance have been able to maintain a very high throughput, almost 96%-97%.
We had the shutdown, let's say we lost some capacity. Other than that, we were almost close to 100%. Just in April, we had some bit of an issue. Otherwise, we were able to operate the refinery throughout at close to 100%. Even the secondary units, which are the big ones, which give the margin, like the gasoline and diesel and all that, we could run all our secondary units also at high throughputs. Alky, of course, I mentioned that because of the higher LPG, which was required, there's been a reduced production. Also on gas, you must be recalling that the government actually regulated the gas available because they wanted to make it available to the city gas distribution and things like that. We could actually maximize our gasifier throughput, which helped us reduce our reliance too much on gas.
Of course, we had to burn some other fuels. This helped us during this period of tightness. On the feedstock, what did we do when the SOH was closed? Obviously, we had to scout around. We were agile, and we could diversify our basket to Latin America besides AG crude. Later in this period, we actually found that some of the AG crudes were discounted, we could also source some AG crudes gainfully. In respect of petroleum products, also because the cracks ran up significantly, we did take certain logistical advantages because we chartered a lot of vessels. We could take advantage of that and actually move the cargoes a bit to gain from the better margins that were available in the market. We met all our contractual commitments. Having said that, wherever there was flexibility, we moved to more advantageous markets.
This is the price of Brent crude oil. Between last quarter and current quarter, we're talking of an increase from USD 68 a barrel to USD 104.5 average. Of course, there were days in between when the prices went significantly higher than this because of the SOH closure. Why exactly what happened in the Middle East was besides crude, also product LPG got affected, also significant amount of naphtha comes from the SOH. All this got suspended during the SOH closure, also most of the Middle East countries had to cut their production because of the inability to evacuate the crude. Only a few countries like Saudi Arabia from Yanbu, some crude from UAE, which is connected to the pipeline to Fujairah, that could move out. Oman, of course, is outside the SOH, Strait of Hormuz, they could export.
Otherwise, Middle East production almost came down by about 12 million during this period. Of course, there was some production because they were still consuming for their own requirement. Even refining capacity was down because products could not be evacuated. Of course, the ceasefire announcement helped some improvement in the traffic. We were thinking it's getting normal. Of course, all of you have read about the recent hostilities again that have started, because of which it's virtually closed. A few ships may be slipping through, by and large, the flow is affected. I mentioned about the refining capacity utilization. It dropped everywhere, we could maintain a high throughput level operating rate. Oil demand, as a consequence of the very high prices that we have seen, particularly for petroleum products. Asia Pacific particularly took the brunt of these high prices.
The impact was more in this region, Africa, as well as Asia Pacific, where many countries actually did not do their normal buying. Of course, India was isolated from this, we saw our demand reasonably strong, whereas other countries actually scaled down their imports, and that's why the demand has actually declined. If the prices remain like this, of course, we'll have to see how it goes, but the projection is for demand to be a little lower during the current year but rebound next year once things stabilize. Gasoline dropped by about half a million barrels a day, diesel by about close to 1 million barrels per day, and jet kero by 0.15.
Looking at the cracks, of course, I mentioned that the cracks went up significantly from $10 for petrol, which we saw in Q1 2026, up to $26 in the current quarter that has just passed by, gasoil from $16-$ 63, and ATF from $ 14-$ 62. I was mentioning in the very first slide that this could reflect as the margin should have been higher, or the profitability should have been higher, I told you that there were challenges also on the crude oil, freight, and other reasons. Domestic oil demand was reasonably healthy. We have seen from 10.8, it's gone to 11.4 again for petrol, and for diesel from 25 to 25.7, and ATF been more or less stable at about 2.3. Two products which really saw reduction was LPG and naphtha. This is because LPG was managed.
The demand was managed because all the consumers were asked to move to other alternative fuels, either electric induction or some other possibilities, then more and more of piped natural gas. This was the emphasis. Then many of the commercial establishment were restricted from use. There was a rationing. All these things actually caused the LPG to go down. Naphtha also because many of the petrochemical units also were affected because of lack of feedstock. This caused the overall demand in the country to go down. If you look at the fuels, particularly, in India, it's been robust because we've been insulated from the price rise. MS growth because of car sales have been growing pretty strong. That has helped in the petrol growing. Diesel, of course, we have the one is, of course, mining, railway, the construction industry, and agricultural demand also.
Actually, the monsoon was slightly delayed. Maybe we'll see the impact a little later in June. We've had deficit, there is some pickup in the demand for diesel. ATF, of course, there were a lot of flight cancellations, it's been marginal. It's been flat rather, sorry. RBML, they had to undergo, I mean, whether the impact of this SOH closure and the prices at the retail level were not increased. That did cause some pain. Things are looking up and they're much better now. If you look at the market share effectiveness, our retail outlets, our new format, and we try to have a lot of efficiency built in. Our effectiveness as compared to the competition for petrol is about 1.7 times.
We do, on the same outlet, we are better than the competition by 1.7 times. Same way for diesel, almost 2.4. Those are the kinds of effectiveness that we have. With lower number of retail outlets, we're able to do better. Outlets itself is about 2,221 as compared to the last year, it's almost more than 230-240 outlets higher. Charge points, CBG, CNG stations, and convenience stores, that's something which we're continuously building on. Also on e-mobility, CBG, and CNG, we are continuing to build. Of course, this is on a low base, so the numbers of 52% growth and 68% growth are pretty impressive. Yes, we are working on all these fronts. Going forward, how does it look like? We have, of course, seen a gradual increase in the SOH, probably over the last few days, things have dramatically changed.
We'll have to wait and see how this pans out. What we notice is some of the producers inside the Gulf, because they've been affected for so long, are willing to take some risks and bring the vessels out. We are keeping a watch on this. We'll monitor and see how to effectively source oil. I talked about the oil demand. Definitely many countries have reduced their imports, and therefore the demand is down. A rebound is expected next year. Another important factor is if you look at why the crude prices did not go up despite the SOH closure and 12 million barrels, out of 100 million barrels of production, 12 million barrels not being available, even for a short period of time, would have caused the price to definitely spike and remain at above INR 100 for a long, long time.
That's what history has shown us. Almost 5 million barrels of that has actually come into the market through releases by particularly the IEA countries, and China has been notably absent from importing oil during this crisis. They've returned in a small way, but they've been absent. That also actually helped the prices remain low. As and when the countries begin to import and replenish their stocks, we may actually see support for the prices going forward. Of course, refinery margins, we believe can be robust because if you look at the Middle East, there's definitely loss of capacity in Kuwait and Bahrain, most of the refineries are badly affected. In Qatar, gas is affected. It will not come back soon, which impacts the diesel market and therefore the refining margin. Importantly, Russia has lost more than 40% of its capacity.
What we find is that the Ukrainian ability to penetrate deep into Russia and take out refineries almost at will, okay, is causing a lot of pain in the market in terms of supply and demand. Russia has already banned the export of gasoline and jet some time back. More recently, they've also banned the export of diesel. That shows the seriousness of the thing. 40% of Russian capacity is not small. Okay? It's several million barrels. They're the third-largest refiner in the entire world, and they have lost significant capacity. All this point towards reasonably strong cracks in our view. That's what the market suggests. What we will be working on is, of course, high asset utilization. That's what we would like to do, ensure that the refineries are operating reliably.
The trading teams will be agile to source the oil under all different circumstances, whatever it may be there, go out anywhere and get the oil so that we operate the refineries fully. We have a pretty integrated chain, so how exactly we would like to meet the requirement. Already we have started to increase our petchem production. All this we will do, and we believe these are the steps we will take to navigate this difficult, challenging, and volatile market. Sorry. I think I went to the end. Yeah. Amit.
Thanks, Srini. Last quarter was an absolute rollercoaster quarter. The volatility in prices of raw materials was absolutely phenomenal, and that also led to the volatility in the prices of products as well. When crude oil prices changing 5%-10% in a day was completely unheard of, and that was happening so regularly during this quarter that it became the operations really, really difficult and challenging. While the Naphtha went up 61%, $903, during the quarter, it even crossed $1,000 a ton. Even at that reported price, there were significant premiums of almost $100 a ton, and the availability was still a constraint. Add to that, significantly higher freight rates. The cost of making ethylene from Naphtha shot up like anything. That resulted in a lot of capacities going under operating in the whole of region, within the country also.
Add to this, the LPG control order that also restricted the availability of LPG as feed for ethylene. Finally, availability of natural gas also was restricted severely as gas from Qatar got blocked because of the Hormuz blockage, which meant that a couple of capacities where natural gas was being used as a feed for ethylene also got impacted badly. The situation in U.S. was different because the oil prices were high, their oil production was high, their associated gas production was high, and the ethane prices therefore were softer. Polyethylene, typically in our markets, all the supplies from Middle East were blocked, biggest sources of polyethylene, and that resulted in prices and deltas with Naphtha shooting up sharply. PP also, the prices were very firm, although deltas were up only 3%. PVC was a completely different story.
China has a huge capacity of PVC, which is coal-based, and they upped the operating rates of those plants, which meant that availability of EDC remained in plenty. Whereas the availability of EDC, mainly from Middle East sources, was hampered because of the Hormuz blockage, and therefore the delta of PVC was actually lower by 10%. Polyester chain, PTA and paraxylene operations were hampered in the biggest region, which is China. The simple reason was the availability of crude was restricted, and the priority was being given to fuels. The deltas for polyester chain went up despite sharp decline in the MEG delta. Ethane has always been an evergreen feed, and in this particular quarter, it got even more highlighted. The Naphtha cracking margins have been weak for last couple of years. This year, this quarter was no different.
The delta of ethane and Naphtha cracking was phenomenally higher, if you see the last part of the data. Because for us, almost 70% of the ethylene, the feed is ethane, we were significantly in an advantaged position for the business. The demand of products was impacted badly because of multiple reasons. One reason, of course, primary reason was the prices were high. Number two, the availability was restricted. All the supplies from Middle East were severely hampered. Three, even the consumption was hampered because LPG supplies were not there. Natural gas supplies to industry were also curtailed. All in all, polymer demand was down 22%. As I mentioned earlier for the reasons, PVC was least affected, and polyethylene was the highest affected product out of the three. Polyester side also, the demand was impacted, the filament and staple.
Here, there was one more factor, which was the LPG availability also meant that the food supplies to a lot of casual labor, which work in the polyester downstream industry in the spinning area, was impacted. There was a kind of a mini exodus of that labor from main producing areas like Surat, et cetera, to their villages. The gas supplies, again, in this area was also restricted, which meant that the operating rates in the downstream were curtailed, and that resulted in lower demand for staple and filament. Coming to the situation now, we see that the FTAs, especially the U.K. FTA, which has been signed recently, we expect that it'll give a fillip to the textile and the polyester export opportunities. There are new capacities of crackers in China which are expected to come, although they have got slightly delayed of late.
They will definitely keep the pressure on the operating rates up. For us, our advantage remains, ethane remains a big advantage. That gives us a significant fillip in terms of the cost position. Our effort will all be there to keep our operating rates high. We have talked about this earlier in these interactions, that we had ordered three new ships for ethane. We have already got delivery of first of them. As we are talking, it is reaching the U.S. ports to get loaded, and by next month, we should be getting it. The delivery and the subsequent two ships are also likely to get delivered in next couple of months. What this will mean is that our competitiveness with respect to Naphtha cracking will further increase. We had got impacted earlier.
I had talked about it in earlier interactions that because of the Suez blockage, our ships were going through Cape of Good Hope, and that had partly reduced the availability of ethane for us, which will get compensated with this change. Disciplined operations and optimization of feedstock is going to be our strategy going forward. Thank you.
Good evening, everyone. Just as a recap of the quarter gone by. Revenues were higher by almost 3.2% year-on-year. Mainly, we've been trying to manage, offset the natural decline in KGD 6. We've seen higher price realization from condensate, nearly $107 per barrel. That's been a big driver. Secondly, we've seen better performance in the CBM campaign 2 wells. Now we've crossed 1 million standard cubic meters of gas. This is a turnaround story in CBM that we are seeing, that's encouraging us to do more campaigns as we go along. In KGD 6, whilst there is a natural decline, it's lower than what we had expected, so we have a plan to offset this natural decline, which I'll talk about shortly.
In terms of price realization, yes, the ceiling price is lower by almost $1.14. That's what's capping off the upside compared to the elevated prices that we are currently seeing. However, we do expect because of the elevated prices of energy and commodities all around, we expect in the second half the prices to go up, reflecting the elevated prices that we are currently seeing. CBM obviously benefits by not having a price ceiling. We obviously have realized a lot better in CBM. On the production, as you can see, there is a steady decline. Two things are going to happen. One is we are getting a rig next month. We are looking at some initial exploration activities in the KG Basin to accrete reserves. Thereafter, we have a multi-year, multi-well campaign, essentially to set off the natural decline.
There are some additional opportunities we are seeing within the existing fields. We are ensuring that the rig is there to undertake those wells. In CBM, again, like I said, we will continue with the multilateral program, the 40-well program. This we expect to undertake in both the blocks with time to come. In terms of gas prices, yes, we have seen gas prices when the war was underway, being much higher because of the stranded volumes in the Strait of Hormuz. When the ceasefire happened, it eased off. We saw prices come down. Again, it's still much higher than the pre-war levels. With what we are seeing now, the likelihood is, as long as this escalation remains, prices will continue to remain elevated. How does that position us in CBM? Yes, we can get better price realization.
In KGD 6, we have a ceiling price. Again, the ceiling price is expected to go up by at least a dollar. That's our expectations based on the calculations from what we are seeing in the first half. In the second half, we should see at least a dollar upside from here. If you go back about six to 12 months back, we were all worried about the possibility of the glut. I think, what has happened as a consequence of the events that have unfolded, that effect has been, to some extent, offset by the current escalations that are there. In India, obviously, the consumption mirrored the supply. To that extent, year-on-year, 10% lower. Again, India has had ways of looking at sourcing the gas through other destinations besides what was coming from Middle East earlier.
To manage that, we are looking at North American supplies from Nigeria, Oman, and so on. Sorry. In terms of the policy circular that had been issued by the government for prioritizing the gas from the PSC blocks, which is essentially to CGD and to fertilizers and so on, that has been rolled back. Again, we have to see how things shape up, but it does not affect the price realization as far as we are concerned. In terms of the contracts we have, we are maximizing the value based on the ceiling price. As such, like I mentioned, currently, the ceiling price is $8.9, which is almost $1.14 lower than what it was the previous half. Again, we expect this to trend upwards and go towards $9.9 in the second half. That is the outlook. Thank you.
Good evening, everyone. This last quarter has been from our perspective about the disciplined execution at scale. Across our various projects, renewable generation projects, manufacturing, and green fuels, multiple programs are progressing at rapid speed and in parallel. First on downstream, we already executed the large green ammonia contract with Samsung C&T, which demonstrates the commercial traction of our ecosystem. We continue being in discussions with various strategic partners to tie up our balance capacity. Getting to Kutch renewable ecosystem, which is probably one of the largest globally. We continue to progress well the execution on the ground. The engineering is progressing well. The project development continues to progress. We expect to start installation after the monsoons in Kutch, and as the transmission network gets ready, we will start supplying power from Kutch this year.
We continue to keep preparing for execution at scale, which we have announced at 55 MW of solar PV per day and 150 MWh of battery installations per day at the peak capacity. All of this round the clock power ultimately comes to Jamnagar to feed our refinery, our new energy projects. The data center, which is again scaling up at speed, we provide the green power for that, as well as the entire greenfield complex that we are building in Jamnagar. Along with the Kutch, we have also started executing our generation assets at multiple locations across the country for captive as well as C&I requirements. Coming back to Jamnagar and the green energy giga complex, we continue to make good progress. Already achieved a production of around 1 GWp of solar modules, along with our solar cells, all ALMM certified.
We are on track, and I have got few pictures to also demonstrate that, to achieve 20 GW annual capacity for our solar PV manufacturing in integrated fashion. Our battery manufacturing is also progressing well. We will achieve 40 GWh capacity this year, and we have announced the scale-up through our AGM up to 120 GWh capacity, which effectively positions us one of the largest globally when it comes to energy storage capacity. What differentiates Reliance is effectively this integration across the value chain, coupled with our world-class engineering and our manufacturing excellence. This integrated platform positions us to be one of the lowest cost electricity and energy producers globally, and serving India's requirements as well as export, and also providing our self-sufficiency in energy for India. Few quarters back, I presented an aerial view of Jamnagar site.
I'm just repeating it here to demonstrate what we are building in Jamnagar. Which, to be frank, is very few companies globally can even aim for. What is demonstrated on the picture is not an individual factory or a building, but effectively a fully integrated manufacturing ecosystem for solar PV manufacturing, from polysilicon, to wafers, to cell, to modules, to glass, all at a single location. What it delivers is effectively the lowest cost across logistics, supply chain efficiency, inventory management, material traceability, quality management, and lowest cost of the production. There is no other site in the world which can command or claim for similar integration across the value chain at scale, what we are being able to deliver. Starting with our wafer pilot plant, which is fully executed, and now we have moved to giga scale manufacturing and commissioning in next few quarters.
Few pictures on the slide, from ingot pullers to fully grown ingot in our pilot plant. Polysilicon, which is effectively the most critical part of the entire solar value chain, and where we continue to progress well in our construction. Now are nearing towards the completion of the construction and handover of the facilities for start-up activities and commissioning. Solar cell, we have already announced that we have commissioned now a few lines of solar cell and continue to expand that capacity each quarter. This is one of the most technologically advanced solar cell manufacturing in the world with HJT technology. More importantly, the level of automation, the level of integration, is unparalleled, delivering effectively the highest quality solar cell with the highest efficiency and the utility scale size. Again, few pictures on the solar cell. Solar PV module, again, we have already announced.
We have walked you through various demonstrated pictures, including through our AGM presentations. A few additional pictures here. PV module continues to be one of the most automated module manufacturing at this scale in the world. The last few pictures I want to leave you is with the battery gigafactory. We already had shown you the progress on the container and continue demonstrated progress on the ground. On the right side, you're also looking at the battery cell manufacturing. Just to make a note, this battery cell manufacturing has a capacity of around 40 GWh. What you see on the slide is a 400-meter width and nearly one kilometer of length of this battery cell.
We are going to commission it this year. These are effectively the slides I wanted to present on the new energy, which effectively over last few quarters, our focus has moved from strategy to tangible execution, demonstrated progress on the ground at scale. Across our integrated portfolio of renewable generation assets, manufacturing, and green fuels, our focus is now towards achieving integration at scale and cost leadership, which is what we continue to drive towards. Thank you.
Hi. Manish Adukia, Goldman Sachs. A couple of questions on telecom and one on retail. On telecom, Anshuman, digital services revenue growth of 20%. In your opinion, or are you happy with that growth run rate given just the base of that business? Your connectivity business until a few quarters ago, was growing at high teens to the order of 20%, despite a much larger base. Digital services coming off a low base is already at 20% growth. Do you see possibility of this growth accelerating in the foreseeable future, and if so, what could drive that acceleration? From a margin profile perspective, today that piece operates at a lower margin compared to your connectivity business. As that business scales up, do you think there's room for margins to converge to your connectivity business for that business, and how do you see that interplay? That's the question, please.
I'll be a bit careful in answering that because, we are in the process, and I don't want to give any forward-looking kind of statements. Firstly, yeah, that growth number is increasing. There's scope for far more monetization on the digital services. The point I was making was it is higher than connectivity and it's growing, but there's scope for a lot more there, of course, and because of all the products and technologies that we have developed. The margin also is a function really of the revenue itself. As the revenue grows, the operating leverage and something like that, where you've got a team sitting and making IP. With revenues growing, that cost does not go up. In fact, normally tech services and products would have much higher margin than connectivity.
For now, we are investing in those and the margin is therefore still low or lower than connectivity. It should pick up. Going back to your question about high teen growth in the connectivity, yes, whenever the tariff increases and the flow and impact of that, it happens that way. Otherwise, without a tariff increase, you've seen the growth trends over the last few quarters.
Sure. Thank you. My second question on the ARPU number for the quarter. On a quarter-on-quarter basis, we've seen about 1% or less than 1% growth. This despite mix improving in the favor of fixed broadband, an extra day in the quarter. Wireless probably seeing data consumption increase. Despite that, if the ARPU growth is less than 1% quarter, which means underlying ARPU is actually under pressure, what explains that? Why would ARPU underlying not be improving despite all these positive tailwinds?
The underlying ARPU is not under pressure. We are still in the ARPU mix improving, if you're referring to homes, et cetera, as you would have seen, notice we are promoting that service. Therefore, the ARPUs are not necessarily higher there than mobility. That's one impact that we see. Otherwise, as I've spoken in the past as well, on a purely organic basis, without any tariff action, having a 4%-5% kind of tariff ARPU improvement is what we've seen practically happen on the ground. It's not because of any pressure on the ARPU. That much should happen. I think we're more or less in the similar trend, except that we have some of those promotional offers going in for the home business at this point in time.
Thank you. Just my last question to maybe Dinesh on quick commerce. This presentation, you certainly spent quite a bit of time on digital commerce. In terms of JioMart in particular, given just the investments you've called out in dark stores. One, how long do you expect these investments to continue, and how would you measure success in this business, in your opinion? What would you-- let's say two to three years now, you, of course, called out on the overall retail business EBITDA doubling. Beyond that, specifically in the quick commerce business, what are the kind of targets, if any, you are looking at?
In the context of high competitive intensity in that space, if you can again maybe remind us of one or two places where you are differentiated versus your competition or what could help you do better in terms of profitability or growth versus competition.
Sure. I think without getting into specific numbers, we will continue our expansion of our dark store network. At this next 12 months, nine to 12 months, it will continue. We are focusing on expanding the network, going deeper into the markets. That investment will happen. The fixed cost investment is not very high. CapEx is not very high, but when you go, you set up a dark store, you add the fixed cost, and the order ramp up, et cetera, happens over a period of time. As I said, we will be quite disciplined. We are taking a view on which markets it makes sense, where there's enough demand, markets are ready. We are going that way, and we'll be quite disciplined about it. Where our assumptions on the profitability don't hold up, we will scale back from those markets.
We'll go in a quite a disciplined manner, just not chase volume growth or some vanity metric on number of orders. That's something we will not do. What we have said is we are consciously making investments in that business, which is showing up short-term pressure on margins. Absolute numbers will increase, as I've outlined. The percentages for the short term could come down because we are investing in that business, and there is a cost to serve which is over and above that. Your next question about what is our advantage. I think there are two or three things which we have which differentiate us. One is. We have a lot of customer data, within retail itself. We do understand who the customers are, where they are, what their behavior is, because we have transaction data over the last 20 years.
Almost 400 million customers are part of our loyalty program. That's our big differentiator. Understanding of the right assortment, what sells. There is a bit of science in that. We do have, again, a lot of data. We do have a very strong process, to understand when we go to a new market, what kind of assortment sells there. There are some differences between quick commerce and stores in terms of the way purchasing behavior people have. We are appreciating that, and we are learning that. I think there's a big advantage in terms of knowledge base that we have built. We are present in over 1,000 markets in grocery. That's, I think, second. Third is we are able to leverage our existing infrastructure as well, which is a big advantage to us. Why?
When I open a new dark store, it's an added cost, but when I open a dark store within a store, that's not incremental cost for me. The fourth part, I would say, is the supplier relationships that we have and the scale that we have that gives us better margin. That's again another advantage. I do know for a fact our terms of trade are significantly better than some of our other peers. That's something that, again, provides a competitive advantage where I can give a very good price to the customer while still maintaining my margin. I would say these are three or four things which will help us differentiate ourselves.
Yeah. Hi, I'm Vivekanand from Ambit. Two questions. One is on retail. Dinesh, the guidance that you shared on 2x EBITDA over the next three years, how confident are you, and what are the intermediate checkpoints for the next three-year journey that you look at, given your investment appetite to ramp up online commerce? That's my first question.
It is a target that we are taking. That is our ambition. We wouldn't be putting it out unless we were confident about it. We feel reasonably confident. It is a stretch, but we feel confident that we should be able to achieve that. In terms of the milestones, as I said, revenue growth this year, the share of online will grow. A lot of growth because there's a natural limitation to how much you can grow your offline revenues. In today's world, you don't need to necessarily set up a lot of stores everywhere to serve the customer. You have a few stores, and then you can supply to the customers at their home. Revenue growth will come, and as scale comes up, by definition, operating leverage will come. That should lead to incremental positive EBITDA.
As far as our absolute EBITDA is going up, we are happy, and that's why if you look at it, we have not put any margin target. What we are saying is we are looking to double our absolute EBITDA number.
Okay. Very clear. Thanks. The second one is for Anshuman. That's my last question. Anshuman, can you help us understand how you look at the platform services revenue? Is it by the kind of sector they are from or large versus small corporate? Is it retail versus, let's say, B2C versus B2B? How do you look at the platform revenue internally when you target mining customers? On a related note, do you have some sort of an order book here? Is there a gestation period for this revenue to come to you? What is the decision-making cycle like? Thanks.
Look, I'm going to be generic here. We have different products and services for different customer segments, enterprises, B2C, even within that, industry verticals. In the past, we've spoken about industry vertical and vertical-based offerings that we have got. The teams are made for those products and services and verticals in whichever is the best manner for those products and services to be taken to market. That's the way we really review it as well. There are teams which are focusing on different aspects about the product. Of course, we have targets, we have plans, we then monitor against those. I don't think I'll be able to say anything more beyond that given this period.
Sure. Thank you very much, and all the best.
Balaji from IIFL. Anshuman, I have two questions. One is on these 1,600 LEO satellites that you intend to launch over a period of time. If my memory serves me right, maybe a few months back, your stance was that satellite would be more of a complementary technology, especially in India, where broadband prices are cheap and the coverage is ubiquitous. What has really changed in this time? The other one would be, what would be the kind of investments that you are looking at in the next five to 1 0 years on these satellite rollouts, and how would you plan to monetize those?
I'll only answer the first one. Complementary technologies also need to be focused on, and we have to work on every technology that is available, and we'll invest when the economics is proven. How much we'll invest, what the outlook is, et cetera, again, not possible to speak about at this point in time. You've seen the facts. We have the application, and we have spoken about that a little bit in the DRHP. Beyond that, at this point, I don't think we should be talking.
This would entail serving global customers as well, right? Because satellite is something which you can't tie it down to a particular country.
You guys know the business as well as most people do, if not better. Yeah, if it's a LEO constellation, you have to figure out the geographical spread as well.
Thanks.
Yeah, Aditya.
Aditya Suresh, Macquarie. Anshuman, you're the man of the moment, two questions for you again. First is on the prospectus. You speak about the large potential in the overseas markets. Whilst acknowledging the large potential, maybe if you can speak about, how should we think about what's addressable over the next two years, whether it be FWA, taking your JioBharat overseas, UBR, whatever it is, right? Whatever you can comment on the addressable opportunity in the near term, that'll be fantastic. Second is, can you maybe comment about the leadership changes in Jio, which have come through? The third was on the Meta partnership. How is that progressing?
On the first one, really, we can't say anything beyond what is written in the DRHP. We've spoken about products and services which we think can be taken to other markets. There's some bits of the addressable market covered in the industry expert report. Beyond that, I don't think we can comment at this point in time. On the second question around management changes, right? Routine in nature. You all have seen Pankaj Pawar being involved with Jio pretty much from day one, in fact, even before that. He's been running the current connectivity business and a fair chunk even of the digital services businesses, and those are being monetized a lot more now, and those are going to the market. It was kind of natural, and KT is focusing on the intelligence. He's leading the intelligence AI initiatives for the group.
It was just kind of logical, and now is a good time because we had to frame the whole org. You shouldn't read too much into it. Pankaj has been driving the telecom business and also the monetization of the digital services business for a while now, and you all have seen him in action for several years. He's been the MD of RJIL, the connectivity business, for a fair bit of time, and he was on the board of JPL as well. On the third one, the Meta partnership. The partnership, we are doing lots of things with them, and we always keep on doing that. We try to explore areas where we can work together.
The recent one that we announced, that's not from Jio, that's actually from Reliance and the intelligence business of Reliance, is the development of a data center, 168 MW data center in Jamnagar, where we as a group would be providing end-to-end services. That's not only just building the data center building, but managing end-to-end, providing network power, connectivity, managed services completely end-to-end.
We are very excited about that project, and in fact, we think that's a big opportunity not only for us, for the country, and it will get scaled up a lot more, and there'll be benefits for all of our various businesses, and there'll be benefits for Meta as well, who are for the first time diversifying in a big way not away, U.S. is their priority, but looking at a different market to develop this kind of critical infrastructure.
Hi, this is Puneet from HSBC. Thanks. Just continuing on the Meta part. When do you think the first 168 MW is likely to come up? Will you do it out of your own balance sheet, or are you looking for partners there?
A little early to answer the second part. We are doing it on our own balance sheet, and it is part of the intelligence business. We will figure out with that whole business will also evolve. We believe it is going to be fairly large. We have the balance sheet capacity at this point in time with the group to fund it, but we will see how it really evolves. There is a clear timeline for the commissioning of that project. It is commercially sensitive; therefore I am not going to speak about it, but it is much faster than what traditionally data centers have taken in India, and we have a clear plan between Meta and us to be able to deliver it in that time period.
This entire 168 coming all at one shot. It is not in modules.
That will come in all in one shot, yes.
Okay. Secondly, if you can also talk about the CapEx plan for the year. You have done about INR 39,000 crore in the first quarter. How should we think about the full-year CapEx plan? Some direction into where it is incrementally going in the midterms.
I think we have stayed away from commenting very specifically on CapEx. Generally, you know what is our overall framework in terms of what is the EBITDA to debt and all those ratios. That's one aspect of it. You could recall, I've always also highlighted, we look at our international credit ratings, where we stand with S&P and Moody's and so on. We have all these factors, and therefore, everything that we do from CapEx, et cetera, is all looked through this prism of rankings and ratings. What that means is that it gives, you can call it flexibility. You can say that we have a way in which you can phase programs, phase CapEx
To your questions, maybe even evaluate partners at the appropriate time. A lot more of options absolutely available across these projects. Yeah, stopping short of saying what is exactly the set of numbers that we will do. You also know broadly how the larger CapEx is in Jio, et cetera, have scaled down. What we talked about in the context of retail, yeah, specific to hyper local 1. As Dinesh explained, the investment is more in the nature of trading off EBITDA or EBITDA margins rather than a very specific physical CapEx. Yeah, long-winded answer, but it is just to lay the context.
Okay, thank you. Lastly, on the consumer piece, you talked about of EBITDA, there was also an expectation of a much higher growth rate on the revenue side. Are you satisfied with what you're doing right now, or is there something else that you need to do? Also in the same business-
Question is on retail or RCPL?
Both. The retail part, actually.
Retail.
Retail.
Go on.
No, revenue growth, in the context of the market, if you look at this quarter, it's healthy double digits. All the consumption baskets are doing well. That's a good thing. I think as we are looking up at scaling up of digital commerce. That can be scaled disproportionate, it's not limited to. Setting up stores takes time physically. You have to set up each and every store. Online can be scaled up much faster. As the share of online grows, one would expect revenue growth to accelerate from where it is today.
Understood. Thank you so much.
Yeah. Hi. This is Prabal here from ISec. Three questions. Firstly, on the energy front, in terms of the refining business, is it possible to quantify how the LPG to propylene mix has sort of moved in the sense that how much has our LPG yield improved if we look at the quarterly run rate? How much has propylene volumes probably fallen, even if you can get a rough range for the last couple of quarters?
Are you asking how much propylene was dumped into LPG? Is that the question?
Roughly, yes. If we can get a sense.
Ooh.
You don't have to get into very complicated ones. If you can't answer it or you don't want to answer, just say that.
It's a very complicated answer, because there was some propylene which got directly dumped into the LPG, and there was some propane which got dumped into LPG, and that propane would have also generated some ethylene and some propylene when it was going to ROGC. It's a complicated answer and difficult to put a number onto it. It was substantial. Despite that limitations of feedstock in our system, we were able to perform much better financially because our cost of cracking ethylene and propylene versus the market price, the delta had opened up substantially. The pricing of the polymers was actually linked to the naphtha, and our cost structure remained where it was.
Amit, can I just say that so we were following a government order in terms of what it is, and I think the easiest way for me to highlight is you can also see the production meant for sale, and you can see the component of how much of the polymer production has got impacted. That's probably the nearest we can come in terms of quantifying.
Got it, sir. That brings me to the second question, what you just mentioned about ethylene cracking advantage. Typically, and I'm sorry if you've already covered this in the presentation, what is the kind of mix today we are at in terms of ethylene, naphtha, and ROGC? If one were to look at it in terms of percentage .
Ethylene and ROGC, sorry, ethane and ROGC put together constitutes about 70% of our ethylene.
Got it. Sir, with the additional ethane that we are tying up in terms of the additional VLECs, is that mix going to move even more towards ethane and ROGC if these pricing trends, let's say, continue?
Yes, a little more.
Got it.
Little more, yeah. It will increase further.
Got it. The third question was just on retail, sir. Is it possible to quantify roughly the orders that we are getting from the digital hyperlocal segment compared to, let's say, competitors or a range that you want to mention?
We don't disclose the number of orders. I guess what we disclose is how we are going on a year-over-year basis. The growth continues to be healthy. If you look at over the last several quarters now, I guess three to four quarters at least, we have maintained 100%+ growth in the number of orders.
Got it. Thank you very much.
Just wanted to decompose the O2C performance to understand how the trajectory would be, say, now or this quarter. Is it fair to say that crude availability challenge is lesser right now, number one? Number two, there would be some kind of impact due to inventory losses last quarter because of rather dramatic move down in crude price towards the end of the quarter. That pressure will be lesser this time. Finally, on the ethane part, because of the increase in days of voyage due to the change in route, how much were you finally importing instead of the 1.5 million tons? I think that was the original contract, right? What would you start doing it now once you have these ships?
Regarding crude and inventory valuation, what you mentioned. There's too much of a hypothesis in this. If you ask me, what will be the availability, normally, crude is purchased maybe 45, 50 days in advance, so immediately it's not a concern. If you ask me beyond that, I really do not know. Okay? I can give you some answer, but no one can say with any degree of confidence how this is moving. What we are tasked is get the crude somehow, which we will be working towards. Valuation also, a few days back, what was the price, and today it's $85 plus, and it's $70 plus. I'm sorry, but it's too hypothetical for me to really give an answer on what is likely to happen in future and things like that.
Maybe to add, I guess a week back, if you had said this crude availability going to be very easy, the answer would have been.
No, I'm saying that it was very challenging last quarter.
No. Things improved, therefore, till last week, if the conversation was one would have said, now back to where it is. The challenges can be as much as what we saw in the first quarter, but we have seen the toughest time in terms of being able to access and get that kind of crude from all over the world. The team is very confident of being able to handle all of this volatility.
Our original volume that we had designed the system was for about 1.6 million tons. Because of Suez getting blocked, we were short by about 7%-8% kind of number. With new ships coming in, we will not only catch up that, but we will go beyond that. With all trips, when all the three ships are there, we'll be substantially higher than that number.
Okay. Maybe, Srikanth, what I was trying to get on to with some of these pressure points getting highlighted that, of course, it depends on how worse the situation becomes and whether it improves, et cetera. The current run rate of profitability for this particular month so far would be far better than where the last quarter was. Is that a fair understanding? I know the current run rate may not represent anything, because it might change by the weekend. Yeah.
Oh, that's a very sophisticated way of asking that question. No. Overall, I don't think even assuming one were to answer that'll give us any more clarity and confidence about how the quarter can look. Everything is based on assumptions. Yeah. Plus, there is so many other things as what we talked about in the context of some of these measures on upstream was removed, we don't know how that will evolve. We don't know what will be the under recovery. A lot of imponderables are there. I don't want to even hazard. The fact remains, what are the facts that remain is that refining and broadly, structurally it is short, and you are seeing those aspect very much right through any kind of resolution also, cracks have behaved in a certain way.
Also, on some of the capacities, as Amit talked about, both on the polymer products, polyester products, there are some advantages. I think structurally, yeah, we are in a good place right through, and some of these volatilities, we'll live through that, and maybe it is beneficial too.
Okay. Just one last thing on FMCG. Any sense of profitability? I know the revenue numbers have been given, but anything on EBITDA, maybe at least the trajectory, one. Secondly, for the essentials part, I think earlier presentations you've given revenue of Independence as a brand. Where does that stand and what is Independence and what is the others part of that essentials?
Like we have announced, the target continues to kind of grow leadership in all categories, we've anyway announced the target is to kind of take this to INR 100,000 crore on FY 2030. We continue to kind of build on capacities, working to gain leadership. EBITDA, I would put it across since the concentration there, yeah, we are breakeven on EBITDA terms, but the EBITDA will improve as a scale, and all the supply chain is kind of put it across. Yeah, right now the concentration more on the market share. On the daily essentials part, we have Independence. We have equally Good Life also, so it's all put in together.
What's the number of Independence like you used to give in the last two quarters?
We can share that later. This was a total number of the entire staples category.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Okay. We'll take one last question.
Hi. Good evening. This is Nitin from PhillipCapital. Thanks for the opportunity. Just wanted to have some sense on the unit economics of operation in refining and petrochemical. You did mention about your advantages in terms of operating cost. If you can give us some sense where those numbers stand and specifically how they have moved over the March quarter, this quarter, and how do you expect it to be in next few quarters. Because there have been number of changes, RE user has come down, you've increased liquid fuel consumption and so on and so forth. If you can give us some sense around that.
This is going to be tough, my friend. First of all, even the deltas that you are seeing, $60 delta, mid-slates, et cetera, you have to ask yourself, are those accessible deltas given the fact that there is significant premium to buying crude, there is significant logistic cost in transporting, there are significant cost in insurance. When you talk about unit economics, it becomes very tough. All these costs have to be seen in the context of what deltas you are able to realize. Sometimes if the realization is good, you are able to afford these. I will find it impossible to even try and attempt to say what it is. We are trying to say and highlight the volatility exactly to explain that it has been enormously challenging to be able to do.
In that context, say INR 17,000 crore and which is up is a very strong performance. Even assuming there were these numbers, it is not a steady state number, it is very tough for me to even attempt a crystallization of those numbers.
Suppose if we exclude the raw material aspect from the entire cost economics, we focus only on your operating cost.
That is the point I am saying. The refinery is what it is. Nothing has changed. It is the aspect of getting crude. It is the cost of getting crude. It is the placement. It is the realization of a premium. Yes, to the extent that if you are using a lot of liquid fuels, maybe your cost of fuel, cost of operating goes up. In the broader context of what we have done with both the gasification project as well as we are not using a lot of liquids, for example, for our cost. All the other variability comes on the back of the other things that I talked to you about.