Good evening. Thank you for your patience, apologies for starting this first quarter of financial year 2021/2022 [audio distortion]. I hand over now to Srikanth Venkatachari, who will start with the overall performance of the company for this quarter. He will be followed by Kiran and Anshuman, who will talk digital services part of our business. Followed by Dinesh Thapar, who will present the retail section, and Sanjay Roy will talk about the exploration production business, and Srikanth Venkatachari will talk about the O2C. Over to you, Srikanth.
Yes, sir. Yes. Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, I'm little sorry about the delay in this. Like in usual, we will do the first seven, eight minutes on the consolidated numbers and then do the individual businesses. Moving to the first slide. It's been a record quarterly EBITDA, strong performance in O2C and digital services. Our EBITDA is at INR 27,550, is up 28%. Net profit also on a pre-exceptional basis at INR 13,806 crores, which is 67% higher, and this is on the back of normalized tax provision. When you look at O2C, this is the fourth sequential quarter of growth. A significantly lower impact of second wave as compared to the first one. We believe that demand is on track and in the next one to two quarters, we see that kind of recovery.
Retail was definitely impacted by restricted store operations. Of course, we were able to mitigate to some extent by ramping up our digital commerce. On the digital side, we continue to see good traction in subscriber growth as well as data usage. In some sense, I would say, not affected by second wave, barring some of the FTTH rollouts, which did get impacted. The fact that network was superior and very high customer engagement helped. On the oil and gas side, the benefit coming from ramp-up of KG-D6 production. All our strategic growth initiatives are on track. When you look at the numbers, you can see that there has been a strong year-on-year growth, up 57%, as well as profits that we saw. Overall, when you look at quarter-on-quarter revenues, it is lower by 8%, and that is because of curtailed retail operations.
It was to some section, it was offset to a great extent because of higher realization in O2C as well as the KG-D6 ramp-up. The overall EBITDA was improvement clearly led by O2C, digital, and oil and gas, which helped to offset actually the retail weaknesses. On the finance cost, this will be the fourth consecutive quarter of lower finance costs. Now finance cost is 50% lower on a year-on-year basis and 16% lower on a quarter-on-quarter basis. That is on the back of the fact that we have been able to repay our liabilities on the back of capital inflows as well as very proactive optimization of our liability cost. When you look at PBT, the benefit of better EBITDA as well as lower finance cost translates itself in PBT growth both on a year-on-year basis as well as on a sequential basis.
On the tax side, the tax amount is higher on a year-on-year basis as well as on a Q-on-Q basis. This is because tax provision in this financial year is at a normalized level. Even after considering this, the pre-exceptional net profit at INR 13,806 crores, is 67% higher on a year-on-year basis and only about 2.8% lower on a Q-on-Q basis. In summary, strong operating performance despite the pandemic-imposed challenges. Next slide. This is just the breakup of the EBITDA, and we will see it in the subsequent quarters. Strong operational performance. You can see O2C up 50% year-on-year and also sequentially up by 7.2%. We benefited from a very favorable margin environment as well as optimization in our feedstock and energy costs.
Retail sharply lower at 46% because of curtailment of store operations and lower footfalls, but compensated by good traction in our omnichannel. Our digital services both up sequentially as well as year-on-year. We maintained customer addition as well as very strong usage growth that we will see. On the oil and gas side, a 66% jump Q-on-Q on the back of ramp-up of KG-D6. Benefiting really from a diversified business mix. On the balance sheet side, we continue to have more cash than debt, and the levels are slightly higher than what we saw in March by INR 361 crores. For us, we have a very strong balance sheet.
We have a very strong cash flow generating businesses which will help us in our growth initiatives and to drive long-term value. Just one, a few slides on each of the businesses before I hand over to Anshuman. Overall, when you see the O2C environment for demand and margin, very strong growth in demand. We are seeing that reflected in transportation margins, which are at a four to six-quarter high. We are also seeing that kind of strength in downstream chemicals. Q-on-Q, domestic demand for fuels has been impacted, and in the O2C section, I'll make the case that why it is compared to Q1 last year, why the impact has been very muted in as far as O2C is concerned. When you look at it on year-on-year, obviously, there is strong demand growth across.
From an operational standpoint, we saw the numbers, EBITDA INR 12,231 crore, which is up 7% Q-on-Q as well as almost 50% year-on-year. We had higher feedstock going through. We were able to optimize light feed cracking. We were able to very swiftly flex our business model, moving from domestic to exports when you saw the wave two come through. Also benefiting again from energy cost optimization because we're accessing a lot more of domestic gas. Next slide. On the Digital Services, the healthy growth of customers, 14 million-plus, with taking our total customer base to 441 million. Our churn rates have declined. It's below one now at 0.95. We are also seeing a very strong growth in as far as per customer utilization. It is up 18% to almost 15.6 GB. We've benefited from the ramp-up in infrastructure and the customer focus right through this quarter.
When you look at it from overall, therefore, the revenue standpoint, 18% growth year-on-year in RJIL revenue. EBITDA up 21% our EBITDA margin now at close to 47%. On the retail side, beyond doubt, there has been significant restrictions that has definitely disrupted our stores and logistical operations. Footfalls at 46% of pre-COVID. This is very similar in some sense to how it was in Q1. While sentiment is reviving, I would say we characterize that as being cautious. Having said that, we continue to grow more than 100 stores. Actually, we have 700 stores which are at fit-out ready at this point in time. Vaccination overall, we have done very well and more so in the context of retail, a lot of front-end facing staff there. We have vaccinated 99%+ of the people.
On the revenue side, gross revenues at INR 38,000 crore, up 22% year-on-year. EBITDA at INR 1,941 crore is about 80% year-on-year, though sequentially it did fall by about 46%. The big push here has been, or the drivers have been really on electronics and fashion, where we saw better trading conditions compared to last year. The scaling up of our digital commerce and merchant establishment has come in very useful. Now they contribute almost 20% of our retail sales. With this, I'm handing it to Anshuman.
I'll kick it off, Srikanth. Kiran here.
Yes. Sorry for that.
No problem. I think getting into digital services, a quick highlight for the quarter, some of it Srikanth mentioned, but again, highlighting here. The connectivity business is continuing to sustain the momentum of growth. We close this quarter with a total customer base of 440 odd million customers, and in the last quarter, we have added, on a net basis, 14.3 million customers. Overall data traffic on Jio's network crossed 20 exabytes for the quarter. 20 exabytes would be 20 billion gigabytes for the quarter. ARPU is pretty stable at around INR 138. Even though the subscriber count has been increasing steadily, the ARPU has been pretty stable.
There's been a very clear focus on ramping up our infrastructure and especially operationalizing the additional spectrum that we acquired recently, as well as a number of customer-focused initiatives, all of which have contributed to a real increase in the customer experience and therefore the customer engagement and utilization of Jio services. In spite of COVID-related challenges, the financial performance has been pretty strong. The revenues are at INR 18,000 crores, which is a year-on-year growth of nearly 20%. The JPL EBITDA are up nearly 21% year-on-year to now reach INR 8,892 crores, with a nearly 47% EBITDA margin. Also significant are some of the key partnership announcements that we have made in the last quarter.
The most prominent of them was with Google to use Google Cloud to power Jio's own 5G solutions, which we'll talk about in a minute, as well as for sustaining a lot of growth that we are seeing in multiple of our sectors, spanning retail, both the traditional retail as well as JioMart, and in a number of digital services, prominently JioSaavn in music and JioHealth. It is not just the hyperscale cloud, but also the relationship is extending to the edge cloud infrastructure that Google Cloud is setting it up and the idea being that when we talk about low latency solutions like 5G, edge becomes very important, especially in use cases like gaming, video entertainment, and so on. Again, we'll be looking not just to deploy our own 5G components, but also to work very closely with Google Cloud to develop edge use cases based on 5G.
Likewise, the relationship with Microsoft that we had announced last year, that is now reaching a stage of early operationalization. We have already operationalized 10 MW capacity of Azure cloud data centers. To remind everybody, our partnership was to jointly create a cloud infrastructure for India using the Azure capabilities, but Jio building the infrastructure to power that. 10 MW of initial capacity has been created in two locations, Jamnagar and Nagpur. We are currently bringing on certain pilot customers who can start using that to run their workloads, and planning and work is already underway to enhance that capacity over the coming quarters. Similarly, we have an announcement that we had made on the partnership with WhatsApp. Some of the early use cases are now already in the market. There is, of course, a lot of exciting work which are ongoing.
Talking about some of the use cases that we have already launched. Certainly, the ability to recharge through WhatsApp using the WhatsApp bot framework is already operational. The smart bots are able to recommend the top three plans that customers may want to choose, and likewise, reminders for recharge as well as all the other notifications. WhatsApp is being increasingly used as a channel. This is just early part of the engagement. There's a lot more joint product development work that we are doing, all of which will be unveiled in the coming quarters. To also highlight that it has not always been purely about business growth. There were a lot of initiatives that we launched, keeping in mind the need to alleviate the hardships and the pain and suffering being experienced across the country.
One of the concepts that we launched in the last quarter was targeted at our JioPhone users, who are typically from the bottom of the economic pyramid. We thought we should extend an arm that even if there is some delay, but we continue to offer up to 300 minutes of outgoing calls for all JioPhone users so that they are never disconnected if they have to make an emergency call or reach out to near and dear ones. When they do the data recharge, we ensure that if they are buying one, we are also giving an extra recharge, because in these trying times, you never know when that might come handy.
From a data loan, even if they run out of data, we were offering something called emergency data loan, where they can continue to use data for some time until they are able to get to a recharge whenever next convenient to them. The network itself, we have been in a very focused way increasing our network capacity. Like I mentioned a little bit earlier, we recently acquired additional spectrum in the auctions that happened, and I'm glad to report that nearly almost all of that spectrum has been operationalized, resulting in a very significant increase in customer experience that we've been able to notice right across everything from indoor coverage to download speeds to video experience and so on. A vast majority of customers are able to get in excess of 10 Mbs per second speed.
We also find that this additional capacity has unlocked a nearly 26% year-on-year increase in per capita consumption to now over 15.5 GBs per month per customer. Interestingly, what this additional spectrum investments have done in addition to increasing the customer experience, it has also created an additional step change in capacity, which we believe will hold us in good stead to onboard up to the next 200 billion customers on our network. Talking about a significant innovation that our engineers have been able to make, which is Jio 5G. What Jio 5G is a complete end-to-end 5G stack, which has been developed within in-house by Jio engineers, which is completely cloud native, which is fully software-defined and end-to-end managed. Not just the 5G components themselves, but also the entire management framework to manage such a complicated network.
All of those have been built internally. As you also know, many of you may know that we have also now received the approvals and the trial spectrum to initiate 5G field trials, and we are initiating this using our own Jio 5G stack that we have developed internally. We have received 100 MHz in the 3.5 GHz band, also called the N78 band, which DoT has allocated for trials. The entire network, which is also quite satisfyingly what we call in a standalone mode, so not as an overlay on 4G, but a purely standalone 5G capable network. All the components are now installed in all of the data centers across our country.
Obviously, because of the fact that we are a zero legacy network, we'll be able to, as soon as we get the operational spectrum, be able to quite quickly and seamlessly upgrade our offerings from 4G to 5G. We are also working to build certain, what we would call showcase applications in various verticals, everything spanning from healthcare to education, entertainment, and retail, specifically highlighting the capabilities of 5G. One of the examples is a 5G-connected ambulance that we are developing so that all the capabilities of a hospital emergency room can be extended to an ambulance, no matter where it is at any point in time. This we are doing in collaboration with our Sir H. N. Reliance Foundation Hospital. Similarly, ability to deliver rich augmented reality and virtual reality content.
Taking advantage of the low latency, high bandwidth capabilities of 5G to students at home as well as in the classroom. Again, we are developing these concepts together with Reliance Foundation School. All of these would hopefully showcase enough of those capabilities and in addition to delivering these use cases, also prompt other ecosystem partners also to step up and use the 5G capability that we are creating to come up with literally hundreds and thousands of innovative solutions like this. JioFiber continues to build traction. I think, as we kind of mentioned in his preamble that because of COVID and the fact that JioFiber requires a lot of physical activities, both on the streets as well as within buildings and homes, this has been, obviously a challenging year for such work.
In spite of that, I'm glad to report that JioFiber today is now used by more than 3 million connected homes. Obviously, as things are improving, as we're coming out of the phase two, fingers crossed this will pick up and we'll have a strong ability to increase this base in the coming days. Of course, all the work which we were doing in the public spaces, fortunately, that was not as impacted. Today, Jio's optical fiber is physically present outside more than 12 million premises. What that means is as soon as the COVID situation improves, the ability to convert those proximities into actually consuming customers is extremely high. Engagement metrics for those people who already have JioFiber, we have been seeing a steady improvement.
For example, on average, a JioFiber home consumes nearly 300 GB of data every month, we are seeing that month-on-month, this trend is going up. In terms of engagement, we also have a set-top box offering that we are offering. It's something that connects to your TV, we have the large screen experience that we have created through this box, we are finding that we are experiencing more than five hours of engagement on average per household. Again, multiple devices are connecting because we extend Wi-Fi in the home on the back of Fiber. On average, we are seeing up to a half dozen devices per home, these numbers are again increasing. It's a winning product. I think now it's a question of physically deploying as the macro situation improves across the country.
You can see the momentum is continuing from a customer base perspective. To highlight, in June of last year, we were a shade under 400 million. Today we are at 440 million. Data traffic, like I mentioned, we were at 14 EB or 14,000 crore GBs for the quarter, you can see that we are exiting now at nearly 20 EB, which is a 40% increase year-on-year. From an operating metrics perspective, I'm not repeating the customer base, in terms of net additions, similar quarter last year, we added nearly 10 million customers. That has now grown to 14 million net additions this quarter. ARPUs are holding quite steady quarter-on-quarter. Data consumption, 14,000 crore to 2,000 crore. Per capita, from a shade over 12 GB per customer per month to now in excess of 15 GB per customer per month.
In terms of voice minutes, a shade under 1,000 crore minutes per day that we were carrying on our network to now in excess of 1,169 crore minutes per day. Even on a per capita basis, that number has grown from nearly 750 minutes per user per month to now in excess of 800 minutes per month. Overall, it shows an increasing customer engagement, a growth in the customer base, and obviously, growing consumption and therefore growing revenues when it comes to connectivity part of our business. Maybe at this point I'll hand it over to Anshuman, who can just walk us through the financials as well.
Thanks, Kiran. I'll quickly summarize the financial performance for the quarter, starting first with RJIL, the connectivity business, where we reported revenues of INR 17,994 crore for this quarter, which on a like-to-like basis was an 18% growth over the same quarter last year. The dip in March 2021 that you see is on account of the IUC regime moving to bill and keep. The EBITDA also showed an upward growing trend. RJIL had EBITDA of INR 8,631 crore for the quarter. That was a 19.3% growth year-on-year, with a 48% EBITDA margin. The margin has been holding fairly steady even though we've been expanding network capacity, we added more spectrum. Moving on to the Jio Platforms Limited financials. These are consolidated financials at the Jio Platforms Limited level, include the RJIL as well as other subsidiaries.
We had operating revenues of INR 18,952 crores for the quarter and EBITDA of INR 8,892 crores. The EBITDA margins again were steady at 46.9%, or 4.4% higher than the same quarter of last year. This quarter, it was important for us. This is an important one because of the tough circumstances on the ground with the second phase of COVID, where in April and May we had a lot of challenges on the ground. There were things beyond the normal call of duty that we were doing, and expenses went up also because we did give out benefits to customers, given the tough circumstances. Kiran spoke about the JioPhone offers that we gave away during the quarter. Yet we managed to hold on to the EBITDA margin, and that was good. EBIT at INR 5,727 crores and net profit grew 44.9% year-on-year to INR 3,651 crores for the quarter.
Moving on. Just a slide summarizing the thoughts at this point in time. This was a tough quarter for the business because of COVID-related disruptions. The on-the-ground situation was not good, especially April and May, both months. Even now, the recovery is just about beginning. Hopefully things will keep getting better. It was a tough quarter in that perspective. From our point of view, we are very optimistic about the overall demand scenario and our ability to service that demand. That is where, while there have been challenges and a delay in incremental monetization of our FTTH and digital platforms, but we see a long runway ahead of us, both on the mobility side with what we have done with our network capacity and devices, 5G rollout, and even on the fiber to the home and enterprise side, where the demand has been extremely strong.
Our services have been taken up wherever possible to render those services, and customer traction has been extremely high. Hopefully, if things keep improving, we will see more traction with our products on the field. With that, I am going to hand over to Dinesh to take you through the summary of the results of Reliance Retail.
Thanks, Anshuman. Good evening, everyone. Before I get started to talk about the performance of Reliance Retail, a few comments on the operating context. It has been a challenging quarter, though improving. I'll talk about how we're seeing it. There were significant restrictions that were imposed. We'd spoken about it in April when we had our last call. As different states went into a staggered phase of lockdowns and restrictions, the second fortnight of April and May were particularly challenged with operations being ceased across to most of the network. We started to see some signs of easing coming across in June, and it's getting better. The direction of change is getting better as we look into July as well. Business for the most part of the quarter was confined to essentials, which for us was largely the grocery portfolio.
Not the entire portfolio, because even within our grocery stores, it was only the essentials part of it which could have gotten sold. Seamless logistics was clearly impacted due to the constraints. I want to say that, between wave one and wave two, while supply chains were clearly a lot better prepared, the restrictions that were imposed across the breadth of the country, across the states, meant that there was some impact on mobility and really logistics, particularly last mile and fulfillment. Across the store network, we had about 26% of our stores that were fully open through the quarter, 35% partially open, which meant that they opened for only certain hours in the day or certain days of the week. Within that was a story of two parts. Grocery partially open for 70% thereabout, and non-grocery stores for about 30- odd- %.
Really 60% the network was opened in some form, whether fully or in part, which compared to about 50% last year. Much better trading conditions compared to same time last year. I think it's important to also point out that whilst store network was open for this period of time that I just mentioned, the 60- odd-% , you're aware that even for the period of time that they were open, we could only operate for certain hours. Therefore, what we've tried to do is to give you a sense that even those stores are open, they're not really operating at full efficiency at the moment. If you look at it across the months, in April, 70% was really functional from an operating hours perspective. That went down to 25% in May as more and more restrictions were imposed.
It started to get better in June as there's been progressive easing across the states. Like I said, as I look at July, we are encouraged with the direction of change. It quite hasn't gotten back to the levels of April as yet, but it is trending upwards. Footfalls have dropped to 46%, which is about comparable to the same time last year when wave one struck, but significantly lower than the 88%, 90% that we saw in quarter four, which was just about the time that business started to see some level of normalization come back. Consumer sentiment, which was significantly impacted with the outbreak of wave two latter March, early April thereabout.
In the way we're seeing it, has started to improve and has started to revive, although it remains very cautious. Therefore, as we see the situation, it's still quite uncertain because many moving parts across the country, across the various states. We remain very optimistic seeing the direction of change in July. In terms of the key messages, I think I mentioned this the last time around. As a retail business with a very, very significant proportion of its team out in the field, out in operations to run the store network, to run our distribution centers, our warehouses, and our frontline operations on fulfillment, it was really important to secure our operations and to secure employees. As we exited the quarter, we had over 99% of the retail team that have been vaccinated across the breadth of the country.
The last little bit that's left is really to do with conditions of people who've gone through ailments, gone through medication, and therefore have a lead time before which they'll get vaccinated. Significant progress in that one. In terms of business, there's been an uptick of revenues at 32%. You'll see the headline number's at 22%. If I stripped out the effect of the petrol retailing business that was transferred out, comparable business, which has continued, is up 32%. Grocery has remained very resilient. Grocery's done well. It served the needs for essentials right through this period ever since COVID struck us. There's been a step up across the other consumption baskets, most notably in fashion and lifestyle and our electronics business, where we've seen better trading conditions relative to same time last year.
EBITDA a tad short of INR 2,000 crore in this quarter, but up 80% over same time last year, buoyed by the revenue build back that has happened on fashion and lifestyle and consumer electronics. Of course, boosted by the investment income that you have now seen for a couple of quarters. Our expansion thrust continues. We were able to commission 123 odd stores, primarily in the month of April. Not too much that has happened after that. There are about 700 odd stores that are ready to be fitted out and just await commissioning. As operating curbs are lifted, this will come to market and get commissioned. Of course, there is another pipeline that we have that is in various stages of development.
What we've continued to do is to scale up digital commerce and merchant partnerships, and that you would make out from the next chart that I say is standing us in very good stead in times like this. Double-clicking onto revenue. Robust revenue performance, 32%, like I said, year-over-year up. That's excluding the impact of the petrol retailing business that was transferred out. Groceries remain very resilient. It's done well, and it's continued right through from quarter one of last year, and it's continued to serve the needs of customers, even in a very constrained era. There's a bit of a misnomer saying, but groceries continue to operate under significant restrictions as well, and that business has been very resilient. There's a build back that has happened on fashion and lifestyle and electronics.
From what you just heard on the Jio numbers and the RJIL numbers, clearly connectivity has seen its consistent uptick that has been used to seeing now for some quarters. Here's the big piece which I think we've been investing in and talking about. Digital and new commerce has partially alleviated the impact on the shutdown of the store network. What was under 5% same time last year, and virtually nothing before COVID had struck, because the only digital commerce business we had at that point of time was AJIO and fashion and lifestyle, has contributed to about 20% of sales, of the retail sales in this quarter.
It gives you a sense of the fact that these revenue streams, which did not exist up to about one year back or 15 months back today, have meaningfully contributed and alleviated the impact of the restrictions that we've been faced with. Petrol retailing, I've just spoken about. That's a drag that we've seen for a few quarters, and will be now on the base as we go forward. EBITDA at about INR 2,000 crore. First quarter this year was a little under INR 2,000 crore, up 80%. Quarter one last year was in the ballpark of INR 1,000 crore. Fashion and lifestyle has been the biggest contributor to this because that's where revenue has come back in some way.
Clearly on better trading conditions, although very constrained relative to the last quarter that we saw, which was quarter four, but better than the first quarter of last year when the first set of COVID restrictions were imposed. Electronics has continued to be on momentum, done well, and on better trading conditions and higher store days, has done better this time around. We've continued to remain razor-sharp focused, given that we're a retail business, relatively lower margin business on managing our costs, and that's continued to contribute to the resilience of our EBITDA, even in times like this, as revenue's been pulled out. The results continue to have a boost from the investment income. This quarter's been about INR 550 odd crores.
We've said this in the past that the reason it's here is because over a period of time, as we deploy the resources that we've put into surplus investments in which we're earning this investment income, we expect it to get replaced by EBITDA from really the new streams of business that we invest in. Store expansion, 123. That number could well have been over 1,000 this quarter, but like I said, we were constrained. April was pretty much the only month we could really put up a few stores, 700 in the offing and many more at various stages of development. The larger message I want to leave with you is that the thrust on expansion continues and very strong emphasis around it. Financial summary, quick headlines. Revenue came in at INR 38,547. That was 22% on reported numbers basis.
EBITDA was up 18%, INR 1,941 crores, profit after tax was more than double over same time last year at INR 962 crores. Of course, sequential results have been impacted by the fact that I just mentioned significant restrictions. If I just use two data points, we had about 95% of the store network that was operational in quarter four, relative to, like I said, 60% between a mix of fully open and partially open. Footfalls, which were 88%-90% last quarter, were close to 45% this quarter. It gives you a sense that the sequential results are not strictly comparable. They're not apples to apples in terms of the operating environment. To give you a quick sense of what's gone behind each of these businesses. Consumer Electronics on a year-on-year basis is up 1.8x.
The investment that we made to activate Reliance Digital, which is the digital commerce asset that we have for our electronics business, has meant that it has seen the highest ever sales in this quarter. That's a record on that one, and we continue to grow in momentum on that part of the business. Low footfalls for whatever little amount of time that the store network was open. We did see lower footfalls. Those, as has been the case now for a few quarters, was partially offset by higher conversions that we are seeing and larger ticket sizes. Across the breadth of our businesses, this is a trend that we are seeing clearly. Conversions are at a much higher than pre-COVID levels and build values clearly trending way above averages of pre-COVID.
This is a business which has invested in hooking up its entire network, runs truly omni-channel, so clearly a seamless experience that you run between offline and online. The entire omni-channel promotions that we ran, the financing ties that we have with banks are very compelling offers, exchange offers, and clearly the strength of partnerships that we have with brand vendors to really be able to launch a range of products provided a boost to sales. In many ways, I keep saying this, the secret sauce that this business has to do well is continue to play out for this quarter. They've just continued to execute really well despite the constraints that they've been faced with. Broad-based double-digit growth across all categories pretty much.
I think building on our experience from the last time around, this time recognizing that there was uncertainty, there was an early phase of execution that we did on air care so that we didn't miss out the summer season. An early loading and a good early execution and pre-planning that we had done on that category meant that we were able to catch clearly that season. We continue to build out our own brands business. Strategically important, we are building out this portfolio. This is anchored around two brands, primarily at this stage, which is bp and Kelvinator. Between a mix of the portfolio and its presence across general trade, not just our own stores, across general trade, each of those are growing. Looking at Fashion & Lifestyle, our apparel and footwear business, and this is the one I mentioned.
Clearly, better trading conditions, and I talk about trading conditions, I'm talking about store operation days and footfalls, has meant that this business is 3x over same time last year. The business has continued to do well. Regional activation, in-store activations, because here's where we are challenged, right? We're not able to control the footfall because that's restricted and constrained by the context. As customers come into store, what we're doing is to really activate very impactfully within store, and that's led to higher conversions and higher bill values, at least offsetting the lower footfalls that we have. Our small town performance has been very resilient, and I've said this for a few quarters. It's continued to bear out in the current quarter as well. Across the breadth of our business, small towns have been far more resilient.
They did drop, but clearly not to the extent that some of the larger towns did. They're contributing meaningfully to our business right now. In the fashion & lifestyle business, for example, the operating metrics, the economics that we have on small towns is clearly well above the average. Very encouraging to see that. Of course, the hyper local capability that we have for fashion & lifestyle. We've built out AJIO in a big way, but now we're building out fashion on JioMart, and we've hooked up our trend stores for hyper local fulfillment, and that's now been extended across 450 odd cities. AJIO's had a fantastic run. AJIO, in many ways, rose to the occasion first quarter last year when the store network in fashion & lifestyle was shut down. It has grown ever since, quarter after quarter.
Pretty much an improvement on all operating and customer metrics. Monthly active users, traffic on site, orders, all up 4x year-over-year. The point I think I mentioned the last time around, we're growing momentum on this business significantly. The revenue that we clock per quarter on AJIO now is equal to the revenue that we did for a full year in the period pre-COVID. That's the business which has continued to be on momentum, and is now contributing very meaningfully to our apparel and footwear business. Successful execution of events, and with each event, clearly operating metrics getting better and customer metrics getting larger. We've ramped up capacities, and this is the next thing that we're now investing in significantly.
Whether it is last mile fulfillment, whether it is supply chain or distribution center capacity or fulfillment center capacity, or it is indeed the technology platform, we're now investing really for new peaks that we are starting to see on this business. On merchant partnerships, we're scaling up. Of course, we were constrained. Many markets across the country were shut down because of the restrictions, and these were Fashion & Lifestyle markets, clearly not deemed to be essentials. As markets opened out in June, we started to bring the business back. We're currently present in a little under 2,400 cities, poised for further expansion in the months ahead as markets start to open out. We're expanding the portfolio. We're doing everything that is required from a capability standpoint, right on assortment, right on seller onboarding, to prepare this business for significant expansion in the months ahead.
On Jewels. I think Jewels has had a very good run. Revenues are up 2.5x over same time last year. Higher operating days. Importantly, I think we think better product mix. More jewelry, lesser gold coins, that always augurs well. Of course, when sentiment is a bit weak, diamond contribution does take a beating, as it did in the case of Q1 last year as well. Diamond contributions come off a bit, the good part is within gold, we're seeing a better mix, which is veering more towards jewelry, less towards just holding gold coins. We continue to leverage design capabilities. Collections are doing well, well-received.
The virtual gold voucher facility that we pioneered was to really be able to lock in gold for customers who couldn't visit stores but wanted to lock in the price at that point of time, and then they would redeem it once stores open. That was met with a very encouraging response. I think Reliance Jewels continues to receive a lot of external acclaim. It's now something that we've seen for many quarters and just reflects the way this business is being built out. On our luxury and premium brands business, clearly, the emphasis on digital commerce, which is now about 30% of this business, has really been able to salvage revenues at a time when most of this store network has shut down. Large part of the store network is in malls, which still remain shut.
We continue to expand the portfolio, AJIO Luxe, which I'm hoping many of you would have experienced by now. The offering on that from our premium and our luxury brands has been extended, and there's more in the offing. Strong rebound on Hamleys as U.K. has reopened. Let's recognize that a lot of the traffic that we saw in the U.K. business was really domestic traffic. The foreign tourists into U.K., which is also a sizable contributor to the Hamleys U.K. business, has not yet happened. At least we've seen a good rebound from the domestic traffic on the U.K. Hamleys business. We continue to expand the partnerships. This time around, we've announced a joint venture with Creative Artists Agency and the Global Brands Group, which is really brand management companies, which will just expand the portfolio that we have under this business.
On grocery, I mentioned very resilient double-digit growth in the continuing business. The quarter-on-quarter performance was impacted by operating restrictions because it is a bit of a misnomer to say that grocery did not see any constraints. The reality is the grocery network was also subjected to the same limitations on operating hours and the restrictions on portfolios that could be sold. The quarter-on-quarter performance clearly was impacted, but it remains resilient otherwise, in terms of the essentials part of the portfolio. Our stores were reorganized to ensure that wherever footfall was happening, we were absolutely offering a safe shopping environment. Broad-based growth across categories, typical categories that do well in times like this and led the performance was staples, processed foods, and parts of the HPC business.
We've continued to leverage relationships with key vendors to ensure better availability, and I did mention that supply chains were not as broken as they might have been, given the suddenness of the first wave last year. Clearly, between partners and ourselves, we were completely, as a network, better prepared, and that just ensured better availability this time around. We worked very closely with them on activations and promotions to really bring the best to customers. We continue to focus, it's a strong emphasis and a strong priority within the business to now build our own brand portfolio over here. We've now had the launch of our own brand called Puric InstaSafe, which is built around the proposition of hygiene. We're now looking to extend that into general trade as we scale up our new commerce business. JioMart has really came, in many ways, to the rescue.
You just heard me make an overarching point saying that in a quarter when the store network was stifled, digital commerce and new commerce in many ways contributed to about 20% of the business. JioMart continues to scale up further. JioMart's just about completed a year. It was born in May of last year, and it's grown from strength to strength. It's continued to grow scale. Orders on JioMart have been up 25% quarter-over-quarter, which means over the last quarter as well. There is continuing momentum that we are seeing on JioMart and very high levels of repeat. We are seeing over 75% of repeats on JioMart, which is very healthy. We've now extended coverage to about 218 cities. Our Kirana partnerships are up by a 1/3 over last quarter. We continue now to build capabilities for faster onboarding.
As curbs are lifted, you could expect a rapid acceleration of our onboarding on Kirana partners. Looking ahead, let me again say it's a big priority for the retail business, given the dispersion and where our employees are working, clearly in the frontline, to continue and finish this whole journey on vaccination. Vaccinating employees, their families and partners, and securing operations is clearly a foremost priority. A lot of them are falling due for their second shot over the next few weeks. We remain very steadfast and committed to our medium-term and immediate-term priorities, which is to accelerate the new store opening. It's been stalled by clearly the operating restrictions. We're looking to get back to that as markets open and as operating curbs are lifted.
Scaling up digital commerce, we think it's a way of life, and we're therefore preparing for this and we're expanding capacity. JioMart will continue to expand its play. We've spoken about how we're taking it horizontal across categories and how we're growing the assortment on JioMart. We will continue to grow new commerce partnerships across business and across geographies, and there's enough preparedness right from infrastructure to teams that are now in place to really be able to enable this. Launch and scale up new businesses. JioMart Digital, which is our foray in new commerce in the electronic space, is due for launch in the months ahead. Subscription services is very much in the offing. Building up the marketplace is in the works. Expanding beauty is clearly in the offing.
Then newer businesses that we had acquired, which is Urban Ladder and Zivame, very much being invested in and plans that we have to exponentially grow each of them. An integral part of the priorities within the retail business is to really also build the larger ecosystem. What we're doing is to expand design centers and really look to see how we invest in design, research, and development across the country. There's a fair amount of work that we've progressed in that direction that is awaiting execution. We're looking to develop the vendor ecosystem and fast-track the supply chain infrastructure augmentation, which again, has been stalled by the current circumstances, but for which a lot of readiness has been built. We will execute, therefore, as the situation eases out and normalizes.
Last week we announced the acquisition of a controlling interest in Just Dial, and we're very excited about that acquisition in the context of the larger retail priorities and how we're going to be building out New Commerce and the retail plans. There is some part of the process of the acquisition which needs to be completed over the next couple of months, and as we do that alongside business teams are engaging on how we can really leverage this acquisition for the retail plans and really grow the business. Very exciting space, and that's really going to be a priority for us over the next few months. Let me end by saying that we remain very optimistic about the direction of change. Many moving parts, but clearly July has been a better month than June in the first 20 days that we've seen it.
In terms of store operations, it's a tad lower than where April might have been, but it's trending upwards and we're very optimistic with that direction. We remain very strongly committed and confident to be able to restore the growth momentum that you've been used to seeing in the Reliance Retail business in the pre-pandemic era as soon as operating conditions normalize. With that, thank you, and let me hand it over to Sanjay. Sanjay, over to you.
Thank you, Dinesh. On the oil and gas segment, as you're aware, we commissioned the R Cluster field in December of last year and the Satellite Cluster field in April of this year. On the back of that, the production ramp-up is underway, and we are very much on track. In the quarter gone by, we produced about 36 BCFE, which is actually almost at par with what we had produced in the entire year in FY 2020. Based on the strong production growth, we are now seeing revenues at 10 quarter highs and EBITDA at 22 quarter highs. As you're aware, we have now achieved an aggregate production of about 18 million standard cubic meters, which is slightly ahead of our plans. As part of our monetization, we had conducted four rounds of bidding, one round for CBM and three rounds for KG-D6.
We pioneered the auction process in India for domestically produced gas. We have successfully contracted 18 million standard cubic meters of gas. What we saw was, again, the demand levels have been restored to the pre-COVID levels. There has been strong, intense competition in the auctions. You had participants from the fertilizer, power, steel, as well as refining and petrochemicals, and resellers. All in all, there was intense competition and we were quite pleased with the outcomes. Now, with the strong rally in gas prices, we expect that we should at least have a 50%-60% increase in gas prices starting from the next half onwards. That's the outlook. Again, many good triggers. We believe that gas has an important role to play as we transition towards decarbonization. That's the outlook. If you go to the next slide, please.
Just as a comparison, as I was mentioning earlier, in FY 2020 we produced about 39 BCFE as compared to that in the first quarter of this year itself we've produced 36 BCFE. That's the kind of growth and we expect to sustain this growth and augment it with time. 95% of the production has been from KG-D6. Currently, we are contributing nearly 20% of India's gas production. Next slide, please. All right. On the basis of this production growth, we can now see the top-line growth in the revenues are at highs when we look over on a quarterly basis over the last 10 quarters. Similarly, EBITDA margins will continue to improve.
We've seen an improvement of almost 940 basis points Q-on-Q, this will continue to improve as we see the increase in production and increase in prices and the operating efficiencies that we expect will play out to improve the EBITDA margins. Once again, the whole point out here is that prices are expected to improve based on the sustained rally in gas prices. As I mentioned earlier, we expect that from next half onwards, we should get higher realizations, that is 50%-60% in KG-D6. Next slide, please. The KG-D6 MJ field, which is currently under development, this is not a deepwater field. It's a gas condensate field. It comprises of wells connected to a subsea production system, which is tied back to a floating production storage and offloading vessel. All of this is currently underway.
Our second offshore installation campaign will commence from later this year, around November. Our development well campaign is currently underway. The drilling and completions is underway right now. Both the FPSO as well as the subsea production system is on track for first gas in the third quarter of FY 2023. With the augmentation of production from MJ Field, we expect to cross the 30 million standard cubic meter mark from KG-D6 by 2023. That's the production outlook. Meanwhile, we are also making efforts to consolidate and leverage our understanding of the basin, the geology, and even leverage the existing deepwater infrastructure we have. We're looking at exploration prospects in the block KG-UDW1, which we expect to mature this fiscal and potentially look at drilling. If successful, we can tie it back to our existing infrastructure.
That's the outlook in terms of the future growth. Thank you. Over to you, Srikanth. Thank you.
Yes, thank you. This is the last section from a business standpoint on O2C. The environment, as you know, consumer sentiment has been rising. Vaccination drive and monetary policy support has meant you're seeing it in the global oil demand, which went up by 1.2 million barrels per day on a Q-on-Q basis. We saw similar trends in demand for both polymer and polyester, more so because of demand in U.S. and Europe. Mobility indices wise, it's at 88% now. 88% of the pre-pandemic level. In early part of January, it was closer to 60%. You can see the demand there and the mobility there.
Q-on-Q demand was impacted by second wave. As I will try to make a case in the subsequent part of the presentation that the demand for both polymer and polyester were significantly lower than what we saw in the first quarter of FY 2021. When you look at it from a year-on-year growth for oil, up 19%, polymers demand up 28%, polyester up about 200% plus. Also, it is reflected in operating rates. If you see the cracker operating rates globally, it was at 82%, slightly higher than what it was in the previous quarter. We saw that even in the refining operating rates at 76% versus 74%. Clearly, there is the demand environment and increased mobility is showing in as far as the business is concerned. When you look at the feedstock price environment, again, you saw oil close to INR 69.
This is the average price, up 13% Q-on-Q. This is 11-quarter high. It was obviously supported because of global fuel demand and also supply management by OPEC Plus. We saw that translate in terms of higher cracker feedstock prices. Both naphtha and ethane were up between 8%-9%. The prices were higher because crackers started operation post the Arctic freeze. We continue to see global supply chains being impacted, with high sea freight and container shortages. When you look at the product margin environment, you can see that in the margins again with transportation fuels at four to six quarter high. We are also seeing it in the downstream petrochemicals where year-on-year PVC delta up 43%, polypropylene is up about 15%, PTA 72%, PX 14%. A strong rebound in as far as the margin is concerned.
This was the slide I was referring to. If you look at the numbers on the left, we have plotted the deltas for PE, PVC and PP. These are really the bar graphs. We have plotted the demand on the left-hand side and delta is on the right-hand side. The demand is really versus the pre-COVID, which is the fourth quarter of FY 2020. If you were to see first quarter FY 2021 demand, the weighted average demand dropped by 25% in first quarter of FY 2021. When you look at it in first quarter of FY 2022, the demand is down by 15%. I would like to highlight that despite the Q-on-Q fall, you can see that demand is almost at the pre-COVID levels. Again, when you see the year-on-year, the growth is about 28%.
We have seen it in the demand coming through in health and hygiene, in FMCG, in packaging, in polypropylene with polypropylene copolymer for oxygen concentrators. When you see the delta, you can see that quarter on quarter PVC deltas have been actually stable, flat, I would say, while PP and PE deltas are down between 6%-13%. Still year-on-year, if you were to see, the deltas are actually 30%-40% higher than the pre-COVID levels. This is further aided by the fact that it is coming on the back rather of global recovery, and also the fact that logistic constraints are helping maintain these kind of deltas. When you look at standalone products like PP and PVC, they are well above the five-year averages that we have seen. In polyester, actually, you can see the more stock.
In the first quarter of FY 2021, you saw that demand had effectively collapsed by 72%. In this quarter, that is at one quarter FY 2022, you can see that the fall is only 30%. Even though it is 84% of pre-COVID, but you can see the sharp growth versus same time last year. In that sense, the growth has been 203%. PET demand continued to be impacted by lockdowns in this, in fact, it will be the second consecutive summer season where it has got impacted. However, when you look at the deltas, it is very interesting because you see that the deltas have, in fact, were on fourth quarter of INR 520 and first quarter 2021 were flat at INR 540, and then when you compare it to year-on-year, it has seen a 15% year-on-year growth.
In the first wave, when demand collapsed, yet you saw that deltas were maintained because China inventory buildup of both PX and PTA. They did that because it was driven by low absolute prices, so therefore, prices really didn't fall. Similarly, in the second wave, too, while deltas have got maintained because there has been a strong growth in polyester chain margins, polyester chain in China. Therefore, the chain deltas have remained, in that sense, flat. Now the broader polyester market integrated chain margins are actually now approaching five-year averages. On the fuel demand side, you can see that if I were to work with third quarter of FY 2020 as the base, because for transportation fuel, that is a better proxy of pre-COVID levels. You can see that gasoline is almost 97%. Gas oil is at about 94% of pre-COVID.
Clearly, ATF at 62% is a little far away from that kind of number. You may have noted that the global mobility indices are only about 12% lower than where they were pre-COVID. You are seeing gasoline and gas oil demand coming up. As I said, there is increased leisure travel pushing up hotel room rates and gasoline demand in the U.S. When you look at some of the data on domestic air travel in the U.S., they have actually come back to the March 2020 levels. The clear driver for demand is going to be still jet fuel, which is still 38% away from the levels in pre-COVID. As the economies open up, you should see a bounce back there. This is just a pictorial representation of the direct relation between mobility and transportation cracks.
In all the three geographies, Europe, U.S., and U.K., you can see the sharp rebound in mobility, and you can also see corresponding cracks go up. Both gasoline is now a six-quarter high. Gas oil is also seeing quarter-on-quarter improvement, but the fact that there is weak ATF means that it does weigh on gas oil cracks. ATF also, while it's on a lower base, you did see a quarter-on-quarter improvement with domestic travel in both U.S. and Europe. Bringing it together, overall, you see that revenues sharply at INR 103,000 closes sharply higher than where we saw in 1st quarter. EBITDA, as I mentioned earlier on, higher by almost 50% year-on-year and it's about 7.2% higher on a quarter-on-quarter basis. There has been a margin expansion by almost 60 basis points. This is on the back of transportation fuel cracks.
It is also on the back of Q-on-Q improvement in deltas, especially PX, PET, and yarn. Also for us, the feedstock flexibility that is naphtha versus ethane helped. The fact that we are accessing enhanced domestic gas also helped reduce our energy cost. We are working at full capacity. Most importantly, we were able to flex our business model from domestic back to exports, similar in some sense to what we did in first quarter of FY 2021. Here, just on the operating performance side, our throughputs were indeed higher by 1.6% on a Q-on-Q basis. We did maximize straight run fuel oil and also some of the arbitrage barrels from a cost point of view. We did have an unplanned FCCU shortage, which impacted gasoline PE, PP. FCCU restarted and has normalized.
As a strategy, we did push more of jet fuel because there was a sequential improvement in demand. We focused on that. As I mentioned earlier on, the placement in export markets helped mitigate the consumption in the domestic market. I also did want to take a second to really highlight the extraordinary work by our Jamnagar team in as far as medical grade oxygen is concerned. They were able to meet the daily requirements of almost 100,000 patients during peak-COVID. The air separation units operations were increased. We also curtailed our gasifier operations to maximize oxygen production. We didn't even hesitate for a fraction of a second to substitute that by imported LNG. This has been something which has given us great satisfaction to be of a small help in the second wave of COVID.
On the near-term drivers, we do see oil demand, but still going to be inch short of what it was in terms of peak. Also, the global polyolefin supply is coming through, but we are confident that strong Asian demand will absorb this. As vaccination pace increases and COVID containment happens, it will drive consumer confidence. On the margin side, the reduction in Chinese export quota, as well as demand recovery, especially in the U.S., we believe will support gasoline margins. The international logistics constraints continue, and in that sense, it is adding its bit in terms of maintaining some of the margin there. We continue to be very constructive on the polyester chain integrated deltas. On the demand driver side, clearly, it all linked to mobility, road, air, as and when, which will pull demand up.
From the domestic side, we are seeing across the board demand in healthcare, food packaging, FMCG, and as far as our petrochemicals are concerned. Also PE and PVC continue to benefit from some of the favorable policy initiatives. Of course, from what we have to look out for is, clearly, if there are more lockdowns, especially in Southeast Asia, yeah, that could have an impact. Similarly, domestic side, if there were fresh restrictions, those things could have an impact in as far as the pace in which you'll get it back. Very high crude prices and oil prices can have an impact on demand, but we'll rather watch that. I'll just bring all this together in a summary. This quarter, it's a record EBITDA. Overall, when we put all the businesses together, I would say the impact of second wave has been minimal on financial performance.
With overall global mobility expected to improve, we do expect demand to remain firm. That is the context in which we remain constructive about both the demand and margin environment. As Sanjay highlighted, the oil and gas is poised to be a significant value and growth in the coming years. Jio will continue its leadership position with new offerings in both the JioPhone Next, the JioFiber, as well as enterprises business, and not to forget mentioning about 5G. On the retail side, we are positioned for strong recovery, led by digital commerce. Sanjay talked about the fact that between digital and some of the new merchants, it's now close to 20% versus what it was as 4%. We are also adding stores, and we are seeing a strong revival we expect in consumer sentiments.
Our focus now is on accelerated start to the clean and green energy business initiative that we announced in great detail in our AGM speech. All in all, diversified portfolio across consumption baskets, very strong balance sheet underpins our robust outlook for growth in our forward. Thank you all for being on the call.
Thank you, Srikanth.
Thank you. Sir.