Ladies and gentlemen, good day and welcome to Tanla Platforms Limited Q3 FY 2026 Earnings Conference Call. As a reminder, all participant lines will be in the listen-only mode, and there will be an opportunity for you to ask questions after the presentation concludes. Should you need assistance during the conference call, please signal an operator by pressing star, then zero on your touch-tone phone. Please note that this conference is being recorded. I now hand the conference over to Ms. Ritu Mehta. Thank you, and over to you, ma'am.
A very good afternoon and a warm welcome to our Q3 earnings call. Joining with us today are Uday Reddy, Founder, Chairman and CEO, Deepak Goyal, Executive Director, Anupam Bhatra, CFO, and Anuradha Chava, GC and Company Secretary. Before we start the call, let me draw your attention to the fact that today's discussion may feature statements that are forward-looking in nature. All statements, other than the statements of historical facts, could be deemed forward-looking in nature.
Such statements are inherently subject to risk and uncertainties, some of which cannot be quantified or predicted. A detailed disclosure in this regard is mentioned in the results presentation that is uploaded on our website. Audio recording and transcript will be available soon. Hope everybody got a chance to go through our presentation and the shareholder letter. The management will be happy to answer any questions, and we will now open the floor for Q&A. Michelle, if you could open the floor for Q&A. Chairman
Thank you very much. Ladies and gentlemen, we will now begin with the question and answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask questions may please press star and one on the touch-tone phone. If you wish to withdraw yourself from the question queue, you may press star and two. Participants are requested to use only the handset while asking a question. Ladies and gentlemen, we will wait for a moment while the question queue assembles. You may please press star and one to ask questions. The first question is from the line of Amit Chandra from HDFC Securities. Please go ahead.
Yeah, thanks for the opportunity. So my first question is on the enterprise side. Obviously, we have seen the recovery there in terms of growth, both in the OTT side and the enterprise, excluding the OTT. If you can throw some more color in terms of whether this is more led by seasonality or this is led by some structural changes that are happening in the enterprise business except OTT, because last quarter we mentioned that there was some impact from some client-specific drawdowns. So where are we in terms of the stability of the existing portfolio? And also in terms of the domestic messaging volume, how the volume has picked up and how the telcos are seeing for price hike in this segment.
Deepak, you want to take this one?
Yeah, yeah, sure, sure. Hi, Amit. Deepak here. So overall, we have seen a good quarter, as reflected in the numbers, and it is not just about seasonality, but overall, I would say that we did pretty well. If you look at the volumes on the SMS side, our volumes are growing. We have, in fact, winning a lot of new customers, and we have added net new customers to our portfolio, and those customers have ramped up. We have also tried to mix a little bit. We focused on more profitable routes. We focused on customers sending messages to outside of India, and we've grown that. That has also brought in some additional profitability. On the OTT side, you must be aware, as we speak today, we have been recognized by Meta as the Partner of the Year.
So we are their most preferred partners now. Though we had, as we discussed on the last earnings call, there was a bit of incentives withdrawn by Meta. But still, overall, this business is growing. And we are also trying to add charge for our additional services for bots and everything. So that is also giving us additional revenues and bottom line, which is contributing to the bottom line. And we feel that this is going to sustain for the next for the future also.
Okay. You mentioned about, obviously, the WhatsApp OTT business, the volume growth is back. But more from a Meta perspective, they have been very volatile in terms of pricing. First, they have cut the pricing. Now, again, there has been a pricing increase. So how do the enterprise clients view this? And also, is it any price hike there is going to impact the adoption of WhatsApp as an alternative channel? Or are you seeing very strong demand there in terms of adoption? Or also, in terms of pricing, why there is so much volatility from the Meta side?
See, Meta is known for this. When they see there is strong demand, they would increase the prices. Okay, so there's nothing new that is happening on the ad business also, and that is happening here as well. Having said that, I would say that customers continue to ride on this channel as they see great ROI coming in. But we would also say that we also have an alternate channel that is RCS available for the customers, and they are trying that as well, which is far, far cheaper. And even there, the ROI is pretty good. So if certain customers find, then we have another rival channel available with us. Even at RCS, as you are aware, we are the largest. So it is working well. But just to answer your question, yes, the demand remains quite strong for WhatsApp.
Yeah. You mentioned about that you have been adding new customers, and we have seen that the new customer addition has been pretty strong over the last two quarters. But if I see the revenue added from these customers, there has been a sharp decline in terms of what we have added in this quarter. So if you can explain how the journey of a new client is and what actually defines a new client in terms of whether we start at a very low engagement level and then we ramp up within that, and how much typically is the ramp-up timeline in terms of when we onboard a client?
See, for a customer to fully ramp up, it takes a good three or four quarters once we onboard a customer. I also mentioned a couple of quarters back that we are focusing on our existing customers also to increase our wallet share where we are already present. So that exercise also worked very well for us. And in parallel, we were working on adding new customers as well, which we did. And you would see the results in the coming quarters.
Because, as I said, it takes time to build all the solutions and everything and ramp the customer. We have to work on a lot of use cases. So that work is going on in parallel. But I can tell you that our engine is going pretty well on both the sides, on the existing customer sides, where we are continuously working on increasing our wallet share. We are also working on adding absolutely net new customers, which were never there with us.
And lastly, last question from my side, on the platform side, obviously, we have a stated strategy there in terms of scaling the platform business. But are we satisfied with our performance in terms of what we have achieved in terms of the platform business? Because the growth has slowed down versus what we have done maybe one or two years back. And in terms of the new platform launches outside of India, we have onboarded some new customers. So what is the ramp-up timeline there, and when we can see some strong growth in the platform segment?
Yeah. So Amit, it's a good question. In fact, we have one deal on our ATP in India. So we're going to go live anytime soon. So we should be able to start building probably, if not January, probably in February itself. So that's one bank that we added on ATP to start with. Secondly, we have delivered fantastic impact to our Indosat customer, and they are pretty happy. So we are also in discussion with other telcos. But as you know, it's a gigantic platform. It takes a bit of time to sell this platform. But once you deploy, it's a tightly integrated with the network, handset, and SIM. So it takes a bit of time, but we are doing whatever we can do from our side to sell more of our platforms in the international market.
Okay. And so in terms of launches, are we there in terms of whatever launches we have to make on the platform side, or we are still working on some new products, some new innovative products? Because we are always ahead in terms of understanding the industry trend and coming up with some innovative products. And that has been our strength on the platform side. So anything if you can share with us in terms of what we are working on and what can be the future growth drivers on the platform business?
Amit, I'm afraid I cannot really tell you what are the platforms that we are working on right now, but definitely, you get to hear something good in this quarter. Our innovation engine, along with the GTM engine, is going very, very good. It's solid. But our innovation team is working on a platform, and we have to go live by the end of this quarter. And as and when we go live with both telcos and enterprises, we should be able to update our shareholders.
Okay. Thank you, Uday sir, and all the best for the quarter. Thank you.
Thanks, Amit. Thanks.
Thank you. We'll take the next question from the line of Deepak Chokhani from Ability Capital. Please go ahead.
Thank you. Good evening, sir. Deepak Chokhani here. So quick two questions. With a strong bank balance of 1,000 crore, do you think our existing businesses have enough time for us to continue growing, or should we be considering investing or incubating other businesses which are related to our business? That's question number one. And question number two is we haven't seen any domestic mutual fund participation in our shareholders' list. So what efforts are companies making to attract them? That's it. Thank you.
Hi, Deepak. So we have a strong balance sheet. We have good cash balance. And honestly, our efforts are more to do with addressing the existing TAM currently because it is growing at a decent pace. Likewise, there are certain products that we have which are category creators in themselves. So there, we are not limited to the current CPaaS TAM, but Wisely.ai has geographical attraction. So we would want to continue to invest our energy in the near term in accelerating the growth on the existing platform that we have built, not just in India, but to go global.
That is one. But having said that, we continue to invest. Like Uday mentioned, we are working on a new platform. So we want to expand our TAM with the innovation engine that we have and cater to greenfield opportunities. So we do spend a decent amount of funds from our funds on the new innovations that we are doing internally. That is one. And.
On the same point, you think we have enough? The enterprise and the platform business have enough TAM for us to continue growing in the near future? It seems like things have kind of saturated in terms of the market or the top line, and not only for us, just for the entire sector.
Deepak, it has not saturated. It is actually growing at almost 8%-12% range year on year, and with OTT changing the landscape, honestly, the market is expanding. In that sense, digital adoption is going through the roof, UPI transactions, etc., so there is enough market opportunity there, but at the same time, having said that, you know that we have geographical expansion aspirations, so we would want to expand our geographical territory so that we are able to increase access to a larger TAM.
Okay. And the next question was basically, I mean, are we making any efforts to attract any? Because given the mutual, at least the domestic mutual fund flow has been so huge, and I sometimes wonder what efforts are we making to attract them.
Yeah. So Amit, so sorry, Deepak, there, I think what we are trying to do currently is, obviously, we need to engage more. So we are going to increase our coverage. We're going to increase meetings with the set of investors in the near future. But obviously, our first endeavor was to make sure that we get back on the growth trajectory, which I think we have started demonstrating quarter-on-quarter improvements in the number. And now that the growth momentum is back, we obviously have taken a note of this internally. Also, we have discussed that as management, we would want to go out and engage with both the domestic funds as well as foreign institution investors. So we are going to focus on that aspect as well.
Okay. Thank you, and all the best.
Thank you.
Thank you. We'll take the next question from the line of Jyoti Singh from Arihant Capital. Please go ahead. Go ahead.
Thank you for the opportunity. Sir, as you explained, a lot of things on the industry side, but wanted to understand how competition is evolving in India, in the CPaaS market, and especially from a global CPaaS player and telco platform, and another question on the OTT and RCS that are gaining traction, so how should we think about the growth trajectory going forward two to three years?
Deepak, you want to take this question?
I couldn't hear it properly. Can you please repeat?
Yeah. So wanted to understand on the competition side, CPaaS market, especially from global CPaaS player and telco backed platform. And another question on the OTT and RCS gaining traction. So how we should think the growth trajectory of traditional SMS versus newer channel over the next two to three years?
Deepak Goyal, are you there? Deepak Goyal, are you there?
Yes, sir. He's connected.
Oh, I see.
He is connected. Yeah. Deepak sir, please unmute yourself and speak.
We are seeing a good amount of growth coming in on the SMS side also, as Anuradha just mentioned, that the UPI transactions are going through the roof, so these all attract certain transactions that attract SMS-based notifications and OTPs and so on, and likewise, if you look at OTT, now the focus is not only on the top 200 or 300 large enterprise customers who are into B2C business, but TAM is increasing to SMEs, and there are hundreds and thousands of SMEs there, and now the focus by OTT players is how we can build solutions for them, right, and that market can be really, really huge, and that's where we are putting a lot of focus on whether it's voice or otherwise, so a lot of work is going on that, so both SMS and OTT are going to grow in the future. I think your other question was about the competition from the international players.
International.
Am I right?
Yes, sir.
Yeah. So I mean, if you really see, the Indian market is quite complex. And almost every large CPaaS player had their presence in India, or they still have it. Let's say, for example, Twilio came, and Twilio bought ValueFirst. And ultimately, we acquired ValueFirst, and now they're with us. Since it's there, but they're not doing that great. Infobip is almost on the verge of collapsing in India. So yeah. So if you really look at the international players, they don't have much presence left in India anymore, which we predicted three years back as well.
Okay. Thank you, sir. And also wanted to understand, currently, our annualized revenue on the customer cohort grew around 30% approximately. So how much headroom remains for wallet share expansion within the top 20 and 30 customers bracket?
See, there is still room. Okay. And we feel that we have quite, I mean, I can't quantify in the percentage right now, but there is still room left, and there is work in progress for that.
And also, Jyoti, just to add to what Deepak said, basically, we are trying to focus on accounts, basically wallet share that we have, and not just on the large customer cohort, but also customers which are between 20-50 million per month kind of number that we generate. So then we are targeting to focus on the lower end of the pyramid as well so that we bring them on the higher ladder on the pyramid. So we would want to focus on those segments as well. So that's why I think overall, there is still a lot of headroom available for growth by focusing on increasing the wallet share on the other segments as well from the cohort.
Thank you so much, sir.
Thank you. A reminder to all the participants that you may please press star and want to ask questions at this time. The next question is from the line of Abhishek Chauhan from Eklavya Capital. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Thank you. And congratulations for a good set of numbers. What I see from the presentation is that your enterprise communication finally is going at a double-digit rate right away. And if I project from your previous conferences, what I gather is it is because the pricing situation has become much better. So my question is, do we see the pricing pressure in enterprise communication to remain stable and the market share to remain stable, or can they turn volatile again?
Abhishek, in the near future, we would want to assume that there will be stability. However, having said that, competition environment is still active, and there is continuous pricing pressure that remains. However, both from a sourcing side as well as from the selling price side, we have been able to maintain this thing, and our growth is also increasing. So in the near term, it is stable. But because we operate in a highly competitive environment, long-term view is difficult, but near term is stable.
Thank you. I think that's all from my side.
Thank you. Parshvin, you may please press star and want to ask questions. The next question is from the line of Dharvi Sharma from Mudita Growth Partners. Please go ahead.
Thank you for the opportunity. So I have an industry-wide question. So globally, we are seeing that banks and especially financial institutions, they are moving from OTPs to pass-throughs. Also, do they replace their pass-throughs? I want to understand what are your views on it. Do we see SMS OTP volumes going down in the future? I want to have some understanding as to how does it impact our terminal value, in your opinion.
Deepak, would you want to answer that?
Go ahead.
Dharvi, can you please repeat the question?
Sir, so my question is, are we moving on the global banks and financial institutions?
Sorry to interrupt you here, Dharvi. Can you please use your handset because your audio is not clear, ma'am?
Yes.
Hello. Am I audible now?
Yes, ma'am. Ma'am, I would request you to please use your handset and keep it a little bit far from your mic so that we can understand what you're saying.
Yes.
Please go ahead, ma'am.
Yes. So my question is that globally, we are seeing that banks and especially financial institutions, they are moving from OTPs to pass-throughs. Also, two-factor authentication is being replaced by pass-throughs. So in my opinion, the SMS volumes of OTPs should decrease in the future. So what are your views on it? I want to have some understanding as to how this decrease in volume, if it happens, how does it impact our terminal value. So if I could get some views on it from your end.
So Dharvi, while brands are using new ways of authenticating a user, at the same time, I think OTP continues to grow and remains the most secure channel. So we have not seen any drop, decrease in the volumes in OTP, even when the new technologies are being made available. And also, I think even if, let's say, the OTP use case shifts from SMS, there are many more use cases that are being growing in the market. Like we mentioned, notifications are going through the roof because of the transactions that happen on digital channels. So we don't see any impact on OTP traffic in the near future.
Thank you so much, sir.
Thank you. Parshvin, you may please press star one to ask questions. The next question is from the line of Rahil Shah from Sapphire Capital. Please go ahead.
Good afternoon, sir. Can you hear me?
Yes, sir. Please proceed.
Yeah. So just do we have any, firstly, any guidance when it comes to our top line and margins? Mainly on the margins front now, we have done well in this quarter. So what is the steady-state range, first of all? When can we expect?
Rahil, we would not want to give any guidance on any number. Sorry, because it will be forward-looking. But as we said, we are aspiring to continue to build on our growth momentum, and I think it should continue.
Are we paying equal focus across all the platforms and channels we have, or is there a certain area where the company is spending more to get more market share?
On both. We are focusing on both segments, and you would see that on both of them, we are growing continuously, so focus is there on both the segments.
Okay. Yeah. Thank you, sir.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Gopinath, an individual investor. Please go ahead.
Hi. Good evening, everyone. Can you hear me?
Yes, sir. Please proceed.
Yeah, so I have three questions. The first one is on the ValueFirst international business acquisition. I know the approvals haven't come through, and it's hard to exactly know when the timeline will be. But do we know why the approvals are taking so long to happen, right, for the acquisition to go through? That is question number one. And it was also mentioned that some 40 crores of RSAs are being amortized under the employee expenses.
I wanted to understand how much of it has been amortized this quarter and how long will that process happen. And the third question is, I mean, I am not sure if I have this information right, but NIC, National Informatics Center, is a customer of Karix. I believe that the SMS to government organizations has gone to some other firm. How much of an impact would that have on the bottom line and the top line starting next quarter?
Yeah. First question.
Hello, Gopinath. Let me just answer the question regarding regulatory approvals for the ValueFirst international. Like you said, it is pending, but we cannot tell you the timeline because regulatory approvals are approvals, and we are constantly in touch with the regulator. We are trying to resolve it, and we will update the market as and when we have an update from the regulator. Having said so, we just want to inform. Yeah. Please go ahead.
No, sorry. In timeline, I understand, but do we know? Do we understand the reasons why it's taking a lot of time?
Why it's taking a lot of time? There are some questions, and we're just responding to the questions from the regulator.
Okay. Okay.
I have another second question. Yeah. On the Deepak, you want to take on NIC?
Yeah. Yeah. For NIC, sir, it's like this. That firstly, when you talk about what would be the impact of the top line and bottom line, then the impact is in terms of bottom line, the impact is not material, number one. Number two, I would say that when NIC floated this RFP, they came up with a very stringent eligibility criteria, which requires a lot of different kinds of certifications and.
So Deepak is here?
Deepak, sir?
Okay, so what is it?
Yeah. You're there. He's there, sir.
Yeah. In the meanwhile, Gopinath, let me answer the second question around VF RSUs. The vesting is over two years, and this is the third quarter of that vesting.
Understood. Roughly INR 5 crores a quarter, I mean?
Yes. Yes, so Deepak, are you there?
Hi. Uday, am I audible?
Yeah. Yeah.
Yes, sir.
Yes. Yes. You're audible. Yeah. You are talking about NIC.
Yeah. Yeah. So I was talking about NIC. So firstly, I would say that you asked for what would be the impact on our top line and bottom line. So I would say the impact is not material. It's not much if we really lose it. But just to give you more details about it, when NIC floated the RFP, they came up with a very strict eligibility criteria, which requires a lot of different kinds of experience and certification, security audits, a lot of stuff. And what we have found is that there are serious anomalies as to whom this tender has been awarded. And we have raised this with NIC, and we are waiting for a favorable response from their side. So it is not yet over as far as we are concerned.
Got it. Got it. And another thing to add, great job on the Tamil Nadu e-Governance Agency product launch that you had. Any idea on how the volumes and when the volumes might pick up, or is it how do we make money out of it? Is it again per message basis there, or how is that contract going to work out?
Yeah. Yeah. We always work on per transaction basis, and this is our focus on going on to each and every state in the country and enable them to be able to communicate and interact and engage with the citizens over there. Let's say, for example, Tamil Nadu is a very, very interesting project. We have already worked for more than three months to activate our bots for more than 55 various government departments in Tamil Nadu. They are very, very happy with it. And the service has been launched. It will take some time to ramp up where citizens would understand that they can reach out to a particular number to ask for various things from the government.
They can, in fact, interact with the government department directly and vice versa, where if there are any government schemes out there, any new developments out there, they can reach out to the citizens. So this has been built for that. And we believe we are working very closely with them, and we believe that it will bring very good volumes for us in the near future. But I cannot say in terms of what revenues and all that, but we feel it's going to be a pretty good one.
Right. Are there any projects underway going on with other governments similar to that of Tamil Nadu?
Yes. Yeah. We have many more states in the pipeline with us because each and every state wants to go for it, and we are.
Excuse me, sir. Sorry, you're not audible.
No, I got it.
Yeah. Yeah.
Yes, sir.
Yeah. Yeah. So I was saying that, yeah, we are working with various other states as well.
Yeah. Thanks a lot for the update. This is hoping for the best. Thank you.
Just to tell you one more thing, we are with NIC. We are very strong on WhatsApp. Our company, ValueFirst, they are the primary providers for WhatsApp services over there, and that is growing very well over there.
Thank you, sir. Ladies and gentlemen, that was the last question for today. I now hand the conference over to Ms. Ritu Mehta for closing comments. Thank you, and over to you, ma'am.
Thank you, everybody. In case any questions remain unanswered, please write to Investor Helpdesk. Thank you.
Thank you, ma'am. Thank you, members of the management. On behalf of Tanla Platforms Limited, that concludes this conference. We thank you for joining us, and you may now disconnect your lines. Thank you.