Ladies and gentlemen, good day, and welcome to the Q1 FY 2024 earnings conference call of Tanla Platforms Limited. 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 touchtone phone. Please note that this conference is being recorded. I now hand the conference over to Ms. Ritu Mehta from Tanla Platforms Limited. Thank you, and over to you, ma'am.
Hello, and a warm welcome to our Q1 earnings call. Joining with us today are Uday Reddy, Founder, Chairman, and CEO; Deepak Goyal, Executive Director and Chief Business Officer; and Aravind Viswanathan, CSO. Uday will share his perspectives on business imperatives and strategic progress made by us. After opening remarks, we'll be happy to engage with the participants and address their questions. Before I hand it over to Uday, 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 statements of historical fact could be deemed forward-looking in nature. Such statements are inherently subject to risk and uncertainties, some of which cannot be predicted or quantified. 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 on the website soon. Now I hand it over to Uday.
Thanks, Ritu. Good afternoon, everyone. Thank you for joining this call. I would like to make six points before we get onto the Q&A. First point is, we have given a very detailed investor presentation and shareholder report, which proactively addresses a lot of potential investor questions. It is our intent to be the best-in-class on governance, and we are constantly improving our disclosures to provide more insights on our business to investors. From Q1 onwards, we have started reporting a bit for both digital platforms and enterprise communications business to help investors track these businesses separately. The second point is our financial performance. We have delivered exceptional results in a seasonally weak quarter.
I have always talked about importance of the financial discipline. We run our business at 20% EBITDA, with a 76% conversion of gross margin into EBITDA, while generating a strong cash flows of almost around INR 90 crores. The third point is on investments. We have invested close to INR 15 crores on our new platforms in the current quarter, and we have made a big bet on the enterprise business with INR 375 crores acquisition of ValueFirst from Twilio. Our fourth point is on our innovation. Wisely ATP, our patented anti-phishing platform, is our landmark innovation. We completed proof of concept, three leading banks on Wisely ATP, and the Q2 will be the quarter focused on accelerating our GTM and our commercial closures. The fifth point is on our enterprise communication business.
We are now in the phase of price expansion in this business, and we have visibility of price increase in some parts of our domestic business over the course of Q2. Finally, we completed the acquisition of ValueFirst India business in July, and we will complete the acquisition of international business by end of Q2. We are very excited by the synergies, and we are on the track to move this business to double-digit EBITDA in a couple of quarters. In summary, we are firing on all cylinders, and I'm sure it's quite evident from the presentation and the notes which is distributed to all of you. Now I'd like to hand it over to...
I'm very happy to take questions from you now. Ritu?
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, we will now begin with the question-and-answer session. Anyone wishing to ask a question may please press star and 1 on your touchtone telephone. If you wish to remove yourself from the question queue, you may press star and two. Participants are requested to use handsets while asking a question. Ladies and gentlemen, we will wait for a moment while the question queue assembles. The first question is on the line of Meet Raj from Equirus Capital Private Limited. Please go ahead.
Yeah, thanks for the opportunity, and congrats on a very good set of numbers. First question is in terms of the new contract with world's largest e-commerce company. Just wanted to understand what is the nature of business that we are that we have signed the contract for, and what is the revenue potential for FY 2024 from that contract?
Deepak?
Yeah. Meet, I'll ask Deepak to give you a context on the kind of business we will do on the, on the customer that you mentioned.
Sure. Sure.
Yeah, hi, Deepak here. We have signed a contract to serve them for all their terminations into India, all their messaging termination into India. It has NLD, which is domestic type of messages, and it has ILD messages as well. It has both. It's a mix of both, and we signed for both the messages. It's a comprehensive contract that we signed with them. As far as, you know, the size of contract is concerned, that is something which we will not be able to share at this point.
Okay, okay. Second is in terms of the proof of concept that we have done with 3 of the largest banks. In the letter to shareholders, it is mentioned that in Q2 beginning, the commercials will be closed. Just wanted to understand what is the revenue potential from those banks, basically?
Deepak.
Yeah. We have, you know, we have signed up a proof of, I mean, we have completed POC with the, with the three banks. As Uday mentioned, you know, in this quarter, in Q2, we should be able to sign all three banks, you know, commercially. In terms of the numbers, I think we would be able to share, you know, post-Q2. You know, let us first, you know, get, you know, commercial sign.
Okay. Apart from these three banks, how is the pipeline looking for that product, with respect to-
The pipeline is very solid. We initially ourselves only, you know, started with 3 banks, because we just wanted to see whether things are working fine or no. Now we have already in Q1, we have met lot many other customers, and we have a great interest coming in from those customers as well. You know, in Q2, you know, the target is not just to sign these 3 customers, but to sign many more. We are in advanced stages with them as well. I forgot to add one thing about our, you know, the e-commerce customers, the global e-commerce customers, that we are the only one with whom they will be having now direct connect.
All this while they were working with international, you know, providers. Those international providers in turn would connect with the, you know, the domestic providers in India.
Okay.
Now this is the first time they got connected with directly with the, you know, with the direct provider, you know. It's volumes, and we are very hopeful that, you know, we would be able to ramp up their, most of their volumes, maybe in next two to three months time.
In that e-commerce company, what would be our peak market share, once we go, at full throttle, both in NLD and ILD?
See, we always try to go, beyond, you know, you know, 60%-70%. This is what, you know, you know, we would target for.
Okay, okay. Last question is in terms of the pricing. We have some visibility of price reset in Q2. Just wanted to understand what would be the quantum, percentage, if you can share some color, and how will it play out?
Let me start on that, then maybe, you know, I'll ask Deepak to add on it. This is a little dynamic thing. you know, to quantify now, I think for all of your questions, that's going to be our answer that, you know, most of the quantification of these will be clear by end of Q2, right? Therefore, we will probably, you know, be able to address these from a financial standpoint at the end of Q2. I think there is a larger message in terms of how the market is playing out, so from a price perspective. Maybe I'll ask Deepak to give color on that, because that's quite exciting.
As we go through this process, we will discover in terms of the impact, and that we will communicate as part of our Q2 results.
Okay. Okay, sure.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Balaji Subramanian from IIFL. Please go ahead.
Good afternoon. Thanks for taking my question. Congrats on a great set of numbers, and appreciate the extra disclosure. I just have one question. It's more of, you know, how the industry is headed in the medium to long term. If we look at the kind of deals that have happened in the last one and a half months in the sector, I think probably, you know, what we are seeing is CPaaS players either selling themselves to larger enterprise players or telcos, so that CPaaS becomes one of the many offerings which these companies offer alongside other offerings like cloud, security, et cetera.
Keeping that in mind, you know, how do you think Tanla is kind of going to compete with these players who will be probably, you know, looking at bundling, and there could be some cross subsidization, et cetera, as far as offerings are concerned? That would be my only question. Thank you.
Before Uday answered this, Uday, I just want to say, you know.
Yeah, yeah.
A few things here. Hi, Balaji. If you, if you really see, you know, Tanla acquired Karix a few years back, now they acquired ValueFirst, Gamooga. If you see, Tanla is already providing bundle of services, right? If so, it is not just, you know, if you, if you really look at it, you know, Tanla launched Wisely ATP, which is absolutely different product. It's not a CPaaS product. It's a, it's a, you know, it's a security product. It's a, you know, it's a anti-phishing product. Okay? Which gives us a, you know, very huge credibility, a big handle with all our, you know, large BFSI customers and so many other customers, you know. It gives us a huge, I mean, I would say edge over others, right?
This is, you know, so we are already doing that. Over to you, there.
Thanks, Deepak. Balaji, anyway, Deepak has covered most of the points. The way we see is that, you know, the enterprise are not just looking for bandwidth or voice or any of the telco services. What they're looking at, and there is a huge competition there. That's number one, right. Number two is, as Deepak mentioned, like, you know, they are looking at products which are going to protect their users. The, that is our customers' customers. That's number one. Number two is they also would like to work with someone like Tanla, who's going to help them compliant, okay. We are the ones who have helped all the enterprises in India to comply with the CCPA 2018 June regulations.
That's number one, right?
Right.
The PDP is around the corner, okay? We are very, very conscious about the act, right, and the bill. We are developing, we are investing a lot of products and platforms and services, to cater to the enterprises. We don't have any competition. If you look at our bouquet of offerings, we don't have absolutely no competition in India, and probably looks like we don't have, we will not have any competition outside India also. What the telcos are buying the assets, I think they have a plain vanilla, connects. We are not there to compete with them.
Thanks a lot. That is quite helpful. All the best.
Thank you. Thank you much.
Thank you. The next question is on the line of Deepak Sukhani from Rets Capital. Please go ahead.
Congrats, Uday and Tanla team, on great set of numbers and excellent presentation, disclosures, and the Q&A materials. I have three quick questions. First is, I can see CapEx of almost 100 crores in the last six months. Can you kindly elaborate what are these for?
Sure. Let me take that, Deepak. I think 2, 3 big things, right? One is obviously we have accelerated our platform investments, right? With Wisely ATP and, you know, some of the other platforms that we've been building. That is one big ticket for the CapEx. The second is in terms of the innovation center that we had done, right? Between these are the 2 big tickets that has kind of increased. I think you will see a normalization because the innovation center CapEx is largely done, right? The platform investments will continue to happen, because that's the bread and butter of our business. We will continue to see some amount of CapEx as far as that is concerned.
Does this include any new platforms which you're working on, or just the existing ones which are under offering?
Which is under development, a lot of them, right? We've talked about, you know, Wisely ATP as an example. Some of them will get commercial, but in some sense, you know, and Uday keeps talking about it, we are on a perpetual motion of innovation, right? We can't rest on existing. We keep building and coming out with new platforms. You know, I think this is something that will continue for the quarters to come.
Got it. Thanks. My second question is, the world's largest e-com contract, usually these are bidded to low-cost bids. I may be wrong. My question is: Did we get this contract based on better pricing or better tech offering?
Deepak, better tech offering, Deepak?
As I, as I mentioned earlier, you know, this tech giant was looking for, direct, you know, providers in India. Obviously we were their first choice. You know, we were in, you know. This is how they selected us after thorough, you know, discussions over, for the period of a year.
Great. That's amazing. Thank you. My last question is Wisely ATP, will it primarily be only for BFSI sector, or do you think any other sector could potentially use them?
Deepak, any brand whose name is getting misused would be our potential customer. Let's say, for example, you get, you know, you might be getting messages from Adani Electricity or Tata Power and all of that your electricity is connection will get disconnected, right?
Right.
You know, these are all scam messages. Even those are affected by all these, you know, phishing messages. There are job frauds, you know. Jobs have been offered, you know, using Amazon's name or Flipkart's name or maybe State Bank of India name. It's a very, you know, if you really ask, the TAM is really big, but, you know, our initial focus was the BFSI. That's why I mentioned BFSI, but it will move to a lot of other verticals as well.
Understood. Thank you so much. All the best.
Thank you.
Thank you. We'll move on to the next question. That is on the line of Amit Mishra, an individual investor. Please go ahead.
Hi. Hello, am I audible?
Yes, sir, please proceed.
Good day, everyone. Thank you for giving me opportunity to ask questions. Firstly, congratulations, are in, should be, you know, should be given to the whole team. Very, very good performance in Q1. Also, you know, the client additions, which are very, you know, very good. 80 odd clients we have added. Less said is better, you know, it's about the disclosures. It's unparalleled in the industry. I have not seen such disclosures from any company. Thanks a lot. We are setting example in CG for the rest of the market, I would say. I have two questions. First one is on the partnership with Kore.ai.
We did a partnership with them in June 2022, according to what we discussed earlier, they deal with pretty large accounts. I wanted to know, they have longer lead time, I think Deepak mentioned earlier, 6-8 months. I want to understand where we are in that partnership. Have we done any, you know, onboarded any client or we are doing POCs with them, or if there is no progress? Can you please give some color on that? Deepak can know that both.
Deepak?
Yes, sure. Hi, Amit. Yeah, as far as our core relationship is concerned, you know, yes, as I mentioned earlier, you know, the lead time is pretty large. You know, we have in fact one couple of customers already, but, you know, it'll, you know, it takes time to in fact even onboard them. Currently they are on the onboarding stage. As any new relationship, you know, because they are based out of U.S., you know, they were handling American customers, and then now in India, you know, so any new relationship takes its own time and go through its own ups and downs. We are into that phase. We are, you know, I mean, we have a solid pipeline for that.
We have met many customers and, you know, right now we are just going through the phase of, you know, understanding better about their requirements and how Kore.ai can serve them. It is taking some time, but it is, it is on track.
Right. which geography we have this one customer with Kore.ai?
India itself. We actually closed one of the, you know, good banks in India.
Okay. Other geographies, nothing so far, but we are still making contacts, or, you know, setting GTM.
We have one very, you know, one customer very advanced stage in Indonesia as well.
Indonesia. Wow, great!
Yeah.
Thank you. For the second question, actually, it relates to enterprise business. This is, you know, I've been noticing, you know, we have these, you know, Q1 and Q2, and I've noticed in the past we have solid jump, you know, this is how I think industry is organized. From Q1 to Q2, there is solid jump. We used to have, like, in 19, we had 24%, 20, we had 28%, 21, we had 34% from Q1 to Q2. Of course, last year was little bit disturbed because of, we lost a customer, a big customer. Is it fair to say that this is sort of a thumb rule of, like, Q1 to Q2, we can assume, like, 20%+ sort of jump?
I understand that it's a festival season in India, the campaigns, the preparation and everything starts in Q2. Is it fair to assume, on an average?
I mean, firstly, Q2 is not a festival quarter, you know?
Yeah, I know, I know. But the revenue profile, when you start preparing for that, probably, I don't know. But the revenue jump is the biggest in Q2. I just wanted to get some sort of, you know, is there, it's kind of a business, how business is set up in CPaaS industry, or it's specific to Tanla, and what could be the fair % to assume, you know?
It will be tough to give any, you know, specific number right now, Amit, okay? Just want to tell you that, in Q1, we have some, you know, uptick because of IPL also, which is not there in Q2, right? We, you know, we are.
Can you put a number on IPL jump? Is it possible?
That numbers I'll leave it on Aravind, but I'm just giving you a little, you know, high level, this thing, right? Yeah.
Aravind-
Yeah, Aravind, please.
Yeah. I'll tell you just before that, right.
Right.
Just it give you a little bit of a context. Q2 has historically been high because, you know, in couple of years that you mentioned, we had an ILD price increase in July, right? That has really skewed the market in many ways because those price increases are high. We had certain amount of ILD price increase benefit in Q1 this year. That's something that one needs to normalize when you look at historic data, right?
Okay.
That's one point. It is difficult. See, IPL is more a season in terms of where multiple customers do incremental spend, right? You don't really call out. You just know that there were more volumes in some form, right? That we've seen in due to IPL. The domestic business historically picks up in Q2 vis-a-vis Q1, right? I think, you know, there are multiple factors now with other pieces of business becoming large, right? That it's not only one dimension. It is difficult to kind of quantify, and I don't want to kind of be cornered into a guidance for Q2. When you're looking at historic data, it's important to note that there are multiple other factors beyond that also needs to be accounted for.
No, no, guidance was not the intention to get, but I noticed, like, 3 years in a row, like, 19, 20, 21, we had 24%, 28%, 34% uptake in Q-- from Q1 to Q2. That's okay, that we can leave it at that. Just if I can squeeze one more question. For the combined entity for Tanla and ValueFirst, eventually, where would be our total employee strength? What is the comfortable level you see where we will end up?
Comment there. It's too early to comment. Yeah, sorry, Aravind, go ahead. Go ahead, go ahead.
Sir, no, I thought let me give the facts, right, and then we can move forward, right? If you look at overall, as we announced, ValueFirst are about around slightly more than 450 employees, and Tanla has been at around, its consolidated Tanla is around, you know, slightly over 600, right? The combined entity would have, you know, would have a headcount between 1,000 and 1,100, right?
Right.
That's where we start as a base, right. Uday, I'll leave it to you in terms of, you know, thought from there.
No, I want to say the same thing, thank you.
Sure.
Thank you. A reminder to the participants, anyone wishing to ask a question, may please press star and one. The next question is on the line of Ram Tavva from XLR Limited. Please go ahead.
Yeah, hi. I have a couple of questions. The first question is related to the Tanla ATP. Tanla ATP, what would be the total addressable market for this ATP in the future to come? I mean, not immediately in the next few quarters. Probably if you can say a couple of years, in terms of revenue, what will be the total addressable market under the protect, right, under the protect segment of Tanla ATP? That's the first question.
Ram, sorry.
Sorry, Aravind.
I could not hear you.
Wisely.
Okay.
Can you hear me now?
Wisely ATP.
Yeah.
Wisely ATP.
Yeah. What would be the total addressable market for the next couple of years, or if not more, the total addressable market under protect Tanla ATP, Wisely ATP?
Yes.
In India.
Ram, as Deepak mentioned, like, you know, we are about to close, commercials with very large banks in this quarter.
Mm-hmm.
We are pitching to other brands as we speak. I think we will come to know over a period of time, over the course of 2 quarters. What's the TAM, like, you know, and so on so forth? It's too early to comment.
Because, see, I saw one of the slides in your presentation. Under protect, you mentioned that $0.3 billion will be by 2023 or 2027, be the total addressable market under the product category, Tanla ATP and Network. I just want to understand on what basis, whether that entire $0.3 billion will be the total addressable market for us?
Yeah. Uday maybe let me...
Go ahead, Aravind.
Sure. You know, I think what we have done there, right, Ram, is, you know, it's wrong to look at it as just an ATP market. You know, we've talked about how our platform addresses all the buying centers, right?
Mm.
Across engage, communicate, protect, and experience, right? You know, we have compartmentalized our existing platforms under these four buckets. What we have accessed the market, we are talking about protect, it's an overall protect market, some of which get addressed by our existing platform, but we will keep innovating and building in new platforms there, right? The good way to look at it is that Wisely ATP would be a subset of the number that we have mentioned there in terms of $1 billion, $300 million or so in India, and which will kind of, but it is not to say that it's only ATP, it covers the entire spectrum of customer spends there.
You could say that when you look at Wisely as a platform of platform, and if you look at protect as an area from a buying center standpoint, that has this kind of potential, and ATP is one of the products. That's not a reflection of TAM or ATP per se, but it's a larger discussion in terms of how to look at our business.
Okay, got it. I have another question, because maybe this question may look bit naive to which I'm very naive to this subject. I want to understand who would be the potential customers for Tanla ATP? Is it the telcos or even the enterprises? Why I'm asking this question is, normally, the fraudsters, when they send a phishing SMS, they choose one of the enterprises as a target, and they send a SMS to the users, and they try to swindle the money through various ways and means. Right. Is it the telcos who will filter using this Tanla ATP? If it happens to be the enterprises, how are they going to do it? For example, let me take example of HSBC Bank. HSBC Bank, by themselves, they don't send any phishing messages, right?
How HSBC will be a potential customer for us, for the HSBC customers, for the sanitation. I hope I put the question properly.
Yeah. Ram, the, it's a good question. The way it works is the ATP platform has to be deployed with the telcos. Okay? We need to have a deployment with the telcos to start it. That's the number one point, right?
Yeah.
Number two is, the bank is the one who has to protect their users. Okay? In this example, bank has to pay the money to us, and then we keep our revenue share and pay the remaining amount to the telcos. The bank is the spender, and ourselves and the telcos are the earners. That's how it works.
Unless until the telco decided to charge the mobile user directly.
Okay. In India, what we decided is to charge directly to the enterprises, not to the users, because of the low ARPU in India. If the ARPU is very high in certain markets, like mainly Saudi and so on, so forth, probably we can look at charging the users, but in which case, we don't need to really approach all the enterprises. Whichever the user wants to safeguard himself from the scammers, they can always subscribe to our subscription. That's what we're looking at as we speak.
Okay. You mean to say that the HSBC Bank will pay for these services, which are the SMS that have been sent to HSBC customers, right?
Yes. Yes. Yes. We want to charge per user per month.
Okay. Okay. I saw the news that TRAI urged the other telcos to come up with a kind of solution similar to our ATP. Any update pertaining to other telcos? Any progress on that?
Yeah, we are in touch with all telcos, and as we speak, we are running the POC with one of the largest telcos in India. We already deployed with the VL and Elliot, but we are now, we are doing the POC with one of the largest telcos in India. Of course, we are talking to all telcos.
Okay. I have one suggestion. I mean, I wrote a few questions to the investor relations, but I hardly receiving any response. Probably if you can just look into it from the investor relations, to get a proper response for the questions what we asked.
Sure, Ram, you know, thank you for that feedback. Let me look at it and, you know, personally respond on that.
Sure. Okay. Thanks. Thank you very much.
Thank you. The next question is on the line of Mohit Motwani from Nuvama. Please go ahead.
Hi, thanks for the opportunity and congratulations on a great set of numbers. I got disconnected in between. Don't know if this had already been answered. First question on the ILD price hike you have already mentioned. Can you give some color, maybe not quantify, but some color on the growth in this quarter? How much was it, of it was driven by, you know, the volume growth, and how much of it was price driven? Not numbers, but maybe some sense on that.
Roughly, I would say that 50% of our growth, right, has come through pricing. There has been a lot of organic growth across all dimensions of the business, also in beyond the pricing piece.
You mentioned 50%, right? If I heard correctly.
Slightly more than 50%. Slightly more than 50%, yeah.
Sure. That's helpful. One more question: there were some articles which suggested that, you know, WhatsApp has, you know, increased the pricing of the messages. Has it impacted any volumes at your end? Have you seen any pressure on volumes from the customers?
Yes, you know, I would say so volumes, we have seen some pressure on the volumes, but since the price has gone up, so overall, you know, the revenue remained, you know, intact. What we are seeing is that, you know, as, you know, when the price go up like that, like this, customer takes some time, you know, because that, you know, in WhatsApp, a huge amount of messaging happening on promotion side and customers who are rethinking about their marketing strategies. We feel that, you know, next, you know, two or three months time, those volumes will be back, because WhatsApp was actually able to give them a great ROI.
Sure. Sure. That's all, helpful. Thank you so much for answering my questions.
Thank you. The next question is on the line of Amit Chandra from HDFC Securities. Please go ahead.
Sir, thanks for the opportunity. You mentioned that, around 50%-60% of the growth in this quarter, for the enterprise business is ILD price hike linked. In terms of the volume, you know, if you can share some light, how has been the volume growth, you know, especially on from the angle of transaction and promotional messages? You know, if I'm not wrong, promotions were under pressure, and we have seen some pickup in the promotional messages. How has that split been in terms of transactional and promotional messages? Transactional messages has been growing, but promotional has started growing, you know, maybe this quarter.
Maybe I will. Yeah. Arun is good. I was just saying that, you know, we did see volume growth in the quarter, in the domestic business, right? I will ask Deepak to give color, is what I was saying. Deepak, over.
Amit, your question is around NLD business, right?
Yeah, NLD. Yes.
Yeah, yes. See, Amit, you know, traditionally, the Q1 is generally weak on promotional side because customers are still working on the budgets. They exhausted all their budgets by March, and new budgets are getting sanctioned and stuff like that, and things go a little slow. You rightly said, the transactions are on the higher side, and the promotions are not so high. That is there.
What has happened for us is, one, as I mentioned earlier, you know, because of IPL, because we have certain customers, you know, there are certain, you know, those, fantasy, gaming companies and a lot of other customers who do campaigns around IPL, so we got some, you know, support from there. We also, one, you know, we have been getting a lot of, new customers the last 6 or 8 months' time. We have seen, you know, that some new business is also getting added, so that support came from there as well.
Okay. Now, also, have you seen any kind of a shift of, you know, volume from, say, the traditional SMS to the WhatsApp side, especially on the, you know, on the promotional, you know, messaging side? Also, you know, we have seen, consolidation in the industry, you know, that has been happening. We have gained market share also. Is that change our, you know, equation with telcos in terms of our sourcing costs with them? Is that we have a, you know, higher market share, and we can ask for better pricing in terms of sourcing cost?
Okay, I'll give you your second question. On the first, yeah, definitely when you have, you know, you have a better leverage, you know, your volumes are higher. Obviously, you know, you get some, you know, price advantage. There's no, you know, it goes without saying it happens. As far as, your the first question is concerned, that, you know, the volumes are shifting from SMS to WhatsApp. I would say WhatsApp has created, you know, it added more to the, you know, our overall, you know, numbers. Let's say, for example, I just tell you, there's a BFSI sector. The BFSI, they just don't, do not do any promotion on WhatsApp, okay? They mostly use it for, you know, for transactions and for user-generated messages and stuff like that. There is...
There are e-commerce companies and, you know, there are certain segments which actually rely more on WhatsApp, and they do it on WhatsApp. Then there are other, you know, segment which find WhatsApp very expensive. What they do is they would still use WhatsApp, but. I just want to tell you, when a enterprise is sending messages, price is very high on WhatsApp, but if user is asking, user is initiating a conversation with WhatsApp, the price is very low. What customers do, they would send a SMS campaign, right, which is much cheaper, which will have a WhatsApp link. If a SMS wants to, if a user wants to, you know, initiate a conversation, okay, it can just click on the link, and a conversation gets, you know, initiated over WhatsApp.
The overall it becomes cheaper. Here you get volumes on SMS as well as on WhatsApp. It's like that, it's mix of all of that, right? But, yes, definitely, ROI on WhatsApp is definitely good. It's no doubt about it.
Okay. Sir, my second question would be on the, you know, Wisely ATP. As you said, that the ATP product is being deployed at the, you know, at the telco level. Is it, you know, particular telco will only have a single, you know, like, product for integration, or there can be multiple, you know, product installed by, you know, a single telco?
No, yeah. Okay. Yeah, sorry. If they go by, they go with one supplier, not with too many.
Okay. You know, can they have their own, you know, because you're not, you know, it is not like a true block which is being built via, you know, the, you know, which is being built by the aggregator, but it is, you know, the telco will build the bank or the entity for the ATP services. Is it that the telco can have their own, you know, platform? Also, in terms of the, in terms of revenue share, how that will be split? Is it in the final stages or is it still under consideration in terms of the revenue share, you know, between telco and the aggregators?
If you are asking, like, maybe if the telcos can outsource in terms of the development and develop it, yes, absolutely, yes. They can. But this but we don't see any competition as in today. In future, I don't know. That's number 1. Number 2, like, you know, we are about to close the commercials with the telcos. Probably we should be able to come out with the explanation in the Q2.
Okay, sir, thank you, and all the best.
Yeah.
Thank you. The next question is on the line of Tejas Shah from Laser Securities. Please go ahead.
Hi. Normally, sir, we do acquisition, if you've seen the last acquisition, which was basically via stock. This time, I think you have opted for cash. Have we not thought about stock, sharing Tanla shares and doing the acquisitions?
Are you referring to ValueFirst acquisition?
Yeah.
No. That's the history, right? We have paid full cash.
No, I know. Normally, Tanla history is basically wherein, you know, you do acquisitions via stock, wherein we give issue Tanla shares to the acquiring company, and there's a locking period for 12 months, 18 months, or whatever, and then, you know, the business goes on. Any particular reason why we are looking for why we look for cash this time?
A couple of things, right. One is like when we acquired Karix, it's partly cash, partly stock. Okay? It's not 100% stock, right? I think, if I remember correctly, 55, 45 towards cash, right? So is Gamooga. It's not completely stock, like, you know, partly cash, partly stock, I mean, shares, right? When it comes to those days, we never had such a, I mean, we never had so much of cash to pay to acquire these companies.
Okay.
Our option is always to acquire with cash, but we don't want to dilute. That's not the... That's our goal intent. The situation now is different from where we left 2 years ago.
Okay, thank you. Second question is on the Vodafone. Now the telco is normally in problems. We hear it outside. How quicker we get the payments from Vodafone? Is it within 30 days, 60 days, or it is much more?
Sorry, your voice is not, is breaking.
Uday, I can answer this question. I heard that, right. From our perspective, the important point to note is that, you know, we are a customer, you know, Vodafone being our customer, right. We have to pay them.
Okay.
for the services, right? From that sense, you know, I don't think we have a financial exposure because for, you know, all of the things, you know, the amount that you know, we are a much, a multifold larger customer on Vodafone.
Okay.
Vodafone is to us. That's really not something which is very relevant from our perspective.
Okay. I understand. Thanks so much.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Anil Nahata, an individual investor. Please go ahead.
Yeah, hi. Uday, it's very good to see the progress that we have come over in one year from the challenging times. My first question is on the line of international business. With the Value First acquisition, now we are having two more geographies besides the UAE business. What is the kind of directional sense that we are pushing for in the next two years for our international business?
As it is, like, you know, we are operating out of Middle East for the last couple of years, and we are growing the revenues quite quickly like. That's number 1, right? With the acquisition of ValueFirst, we now have access to 2 more large markets, which is Saudi and Indonesia. We have our plans, and the 2 largest markets are very close to us, in the sense like, we can offer our platform, and we also can offer our enterprise communication APIs to in this market. Definitely, yes, we have larger plans for our international plan.
That's what if you want me to, I mean, this is what you want to hear from me, right? Yes, we have a very serious plan to expand ourselves into international markets so quickly.
Uday, if I can, though I know you're a bit averse to giving quantification, but if I can look at, let's say, for example, today, less than 10% of our revenues will be from the international markets. Can we look at a situation where we are looking at 20%, 30% of the revenues coming from the international market over the next 2, 3 years?
You yourself said, man, I'm quite averse to giving any forward-looking statements, so let's leave it like that.
Okay, fair enough. The second question that I had was in terms of the NLD price. You mentioned that there's a three-year cycles by which the prices sort of, change in the market, and in the shareholders letter, you also mentioned that. Can you just give some more color onto that? Is it that something that you are looking at in terms of telcos increasing the price of the NLD SMS, or is it just a better improvement in the marketplace?
Absolutely, right. The telcos are the ones who has the control on the price increase. They have already sent out the price increase to all of us, and it is effective from first of August. We also have kind of sent out emails to our enterprises, our customers. This.
... and what is, and then I have to protect HCF users as well. Okay? It is a telco and enterprise coverage, and whether it is A2P and P2P. Yes, it's a combination bit of both, the telco, enterprises, and A2P and P2P. It's not complicated structure, but it sounds little complicated, but we crack this formula, right? Effectively, like, you know, we are here to protect the bank's users. Okay, right? If I go and commit to the bank, saying that I'm going to protect all your so-and-so telco users, okay? Then I say that I'm going to cover 60% or 70% of my deals on the A2P traffic. That's how they going to pay us the commercial side.
It all depends on the coverage.
Understood. That's a good point. Basically, you are protecting your coverage of the A2P message and of the P2P message, and doing a deal with the telco on that basis.
Yes. The user, the coverage of users and the volumes in terms of both A2P and P2P.
Understood. Uday, one question finally, I mean, both our presentation was very nice, this time I did not find any mention of the Truecaller messaging. I mean, I saw a huge amount of volumes in the IPL season on Truecaller, my phone was virtually having business chats on Truecaller on a daily basis. Can you give some clarity on what happened on Truecaller? I mean, I was hoping it might have exceeded 1 billion messages a month or something like that.
Yeah, I think we have covered in the presentation, we probably might not have called out Truecaller as a channel, right? I think it comes under... Aravind, does it come under YG?
YG.
It comes under YG, OTT. What we've done is we've kind of consolidated across, right? You're right. We've called out volumes at an overall level, and then we've not broken down at the, you know, what is the component of individual one. You are right. You know, we see a good uptick in ILD, OTT in Q1, which are in Q4, and that is what kind of if you've seen our overall platform gross margin, which is accelerated to 30% plus in the current quarter, a lot of it is driven by, you know, what we've done on the ILD, OTT channel.
Okay, thank you very much, Aravind and Uday, and Deepak, all the best to you. This is extremely good progress from last year's Q1. I hope we can accelerate this progress further. Thank you.
Thanks, Amit.
Thank you.
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, that was the last question. I now hand the conference over to the management for their closing comments. Thank you, everyone. That was the last question for today. In case we could not take your question, due to time constraint, feel free to reach out. Good evening. Thank you.
Thank you, members of the management.
Thank you.
Thank you, members of the management team.
Thank you.
Ladies and gentlemen, on behalf of Tanla Platforms Limited, that concludes this conference call. We thank you for joining us.