Q1 2027 Info Edge India Ltd Earnings Call
Speaker #1: Good evening, everyone. I'm Alan Vencel, joined today by my colleague Vivek Binitranjan. Thank you for joining us. We'll wait for a couple of minutes to allow participants to log in.
Speaker #1: We need to be currently have 90 participants on the call. Over to you to get us started.
Speaker #2: Thank you, Anand. Good evening, everyone. Welcome to InfoEdge India Limited, earning conference call for Quarter 1 FY 27. Joining us today from management, we have Mr. Sanjeev Bikchandani, founder and vice chairman.
Speaker #2: Mr. Hitesh Obroy, co-promoter and managing director. And Mr. Amrish Raghuvanshi, chief financial officer. Before we begin, I would like to draw your attention to the detailed disclaimer included in the presentation for good order's sake.
Speaker #2: Kindly note that this conference call is being recorded, and all participant lines will remain in the listen-only mode, and there will be an opportunity for Q&A after the opening remarks conclude.
Speaker #2: Now I'll hand over to Hitesh for his opening remarks. Thank you, and over to you, Hitesh.
Speaker #3: Thank you, Vineet, and very good evening to all of you. And thank you for joining us for InfoEdge's earnings call for the first quarter of FY 27.
Speaker #3: Before I cover the individual businesses, let me give you our overall read of the quarter. This was a better quarter than the ones we saw through FY 26.
Speaker #3: Standalone billings grew by over 14%, driven primarily by recruitment and 99 acres are two largest businesses. Which together account for around 90% of our billings.
Speaker #3: Both businesses delivered healthy growth during the quarter. While Jeevan Sathi was profitable, and Shiksha remained under pressure as user behavior continued to evolve. With that backdrop, let me briefly touch upon the financials before discussing each business in more detail.
Speaker #3: The detailed numbers are available in the earnings deck. At the standalone InfoEdge level, revenue grew 12% via wire to rupees 824 crores, operating profit grew 33% to rupees 334 crores, at an operating margin PBT margin of over 40%.
Speaker #3: Cash generated from operations grew by 25% to rupees 225 crores, and cash balance at the end of Q1 was rupees 5,034 crores. Now let's cover each business in a little more detail.
Speaker #3: Starting with the recruitment business. Recruitment billings grew by over 17% in Q1. Revenue grew by 13%. Operating profit grew by 25%. At an operating PBT margin of 58%.
Speaker #3: Cash from operations grew by 36%. As discussed in the previous quarter as well, the quarterly billings can be influenced by the timing of customer renewals.
Speaker #3: Some clients choose to renew earlier, while others defer renewals into subsequent quarters. Adjusting for these timing differences, we estimate the underlying billings growth in Q1 at around 15%, representing a relatively better outcome than the growth trajectory seen over the previous few quarters.
Speaker #3: Now, what drove this improvement? We believe the falling key themes stood out in the recruitment business this quarter. One, growth in our core India B2B recruitment business improved during the quarter, supported by better enterprise renewal rates.
Speaker #3: Hiring activity remained largely stable. Led primarily by replacement hiring, with some improvement in incremental hiring. The premium segment continued to perform relatively better than the broader market.
Speaker #3: The improvement was broad-based rather than concentrated in any one segment. Tech, IT, and BPM grew by 15%. GCCs by 31%. And other sectors combined grew by 12%.
Speaker #3: While growth for the recruitment consultants remained under pressure at 1%. Billings growth was supported by both volume improvement and pricing improvements. Additionally, newer monetization levers such as AIRX Talent Pulse and other value-added offerings contributed to significantly higher RPU and expanded our revenue opportunity per customer.
Speaker #3: Job seeker, the job seeker business, Naukri 360 continued to outperform, with billings growing by over 35%. The paid subscribers as a percentage of monthly active users improved from 1.3% to 2.6% over the last six quarters, supported by increasing adoption of our AI-powered offerings, such as our job seeker agent Neo, our AI mock interview offerings, and our AI resume builder offerings.
Speaker #3: The business also operated at a healthy PBT margin of 63%, aided by the increasing share of self-serve offerings. Job head also operating on a much smaller base, doubled its revenue while maintaining a similar level of investment.
Speaker #3: We continued to see encouraging traction in this business. Finally, Naukri Gulf grew by 12%. Below the 20% growth trajectory it had maintained before the recent geopolitical disruptions in the Middle East.
Speaker #3: We believe the long-term opportunity remains intact. Over the past few years, the business has improved from being a break-even business to operating margins of over 35%.
Speaker #3: And we believe there is an opportunity for growth to improve over the once the regional environment stabilizes. Platform activity in Naukri remained healthy. Our database now contains approximately 118 million resumes, with over 25,000 new profiles being added every day.
Speaker #3: Alongside 850,000 daily profile modifications, and millions of other behavioral interactions across the platform. These data assets remain one of our biggest competitive advantages. Every new resume every profile update and user interaction on both the job seekers and site and the recruiter site improves our matching capabilities.
Speaker #3: Recommendations and AI models while further strengthening the network effects of the platform. AI has now deeply embedded across the recruitment platform. It is improving candidate matching and recommendations, recruiter productivity, and customer experience, while also enabling new workflows such as JD creation and CV summarization.
Speaker #3: AI has also creating new monetization opportunities through products such as AIRX and Talent Pulse. Commercial adoption of AIRX are agentic AI offering RESTEX offering for recruiters continues to accelerate.
Speaker #3: As of the end of June, AIRX was live across more than 4,000 enterprise customers and recruitment firms, with over 10% already converted into paying customers.
Speaker #3: Adoption spans sectors such including IT, BFSI, sales, finance, healthcare, BPO, and core engineering. Our AI-powered talent intelligence talent and intelligence platform Talent Pulse now serves more than 600 paid customers, ranging from large enterprises to smaller organizations.
Speaker #3: Encouraged by the early traction, we are now scaling both AIRX and Talent Pulse to several thousand more customers. Over the next few quarters. The Naukri platform is now steadily evolving from being a job board into a more comprehensive recruitment operating ecosystem, spanning sourcing solutions across the premium mid-market and value segments, salary and tally talent planning tools, AI-led productive recruiter productivity capabilities, employer branding, assisted hiring services, and assessments.
Speaker #3: Our growth strategy is built around hiring volumes, our share of hiring, and our revenue per hire. Hiring volumes depend on the broader microeconomic environment, so our focus remains on expanding market share and revenue per hire.
Speaker #3: In the premium segment, we continue to deepen our presence through the Naukri top-tier Premium X IM jobs and high-risk offerings. We believe there is meaningful headroom to monetize these further, since several capabilities are currently offered at no additional cost.
Speaker #3: We are also expanding employer branding solutions to increase monetizations within existing relationships. In the mid-market segment, where we are a clear leader, our focus is on improving recruiter productivity through AI-led sourcing automation, while expanding adjacent offerings such as job marketing, talent intelligence, data products, and assisted hiring services.
Speaker #3: Job head remains a medium-term strategic opportunity in the value segment. We are building a simple AI-enabled platform to serve three large and growing segments: SMEs, enterprises hiring full-time, and gig workers, and recruitment firms with the aim of creating a scalable marketplace for India's value hiring ecosystem.
Speaker #3: On the job seeker side, we see a similar evolution from job search and discovery towards a broader set of offerings, including career insights, personalized advice, upskilling and interview preparation, delivered through Naukri 360, Naukri Minis, and AI-powered agents such as Neo.
Speaker #3: These self-serve AI-enabled offerings typically carry high margins, and acquisition of coding ninja should help us expand further into upskilling. We believe this is a meaningful opportunity enabled by our AI capabilities and data assets.
Speaker #3: More broadly, the drivers of growth in our B2B recruitment business continue to diversify. Organic hiring growth and pricing remain important, but AIRX, Talent Pulse, employer branding, and premium offerings are steadily becoming incremental contributors.
Speaker #3: Over time, these levers should help us grow faster than the underlying hiring market. Moving over to the real estate segment, 99 Acres deliver a strong quarter, validating the investments we have made over the past 18 to 24 months.
Speaker #3: Billings grew by around 17%. Revenue also increased by 17%. Operating PBT losses reduced significantly by 89%, and the business moved close to break-even during the quarter.
Speaker #3: We continued to strengthen our leadership position across every key operating metric. Consumer traffic leadership remained firmly intact. With web time share at 49%, app time share at 55%, and iOS time share reaching 69% as per similar web.
Speaker #3: App traffic DAUs continued their strong growth trajectory, growing 38% year on year. On the supply side, live resale and rental listings from brokers grew 30% year on year, live new project listings increased 27% year on year, while owner listings grew 23% year on year during the quarter.
Speaker #3: Strong traffic leadership, expanding supply and platform experience improvements, translated into higher customer engagement. Property inquiries across all categories combined grew by more than 38% year on year, reflecting healthy demand and improving marketplace activity.
Speaker #3: AI-powered recommendations, enhanced property discovery through our proprietary data-driven discovery engine, further conversational AI simplifies listing creation on the platform. Perhaps the most encouraging aspect of the quarter was that we delivered this growth while optimizing our overall expenses, including our marketing investments.
Speaker #3: Strong willing growth alongside disciplined marketing spend demonstrates the benefit of market leadership and gives us greater confidence that 99 Acres is on the right path towards sustainable profitability and growth.
Speaker #3: We can, in the real estate business, we continue to see a significant opportunity in the new project segment, which we estimate to be over 5,000 crore market, expanding our presence in this segment remains an important strategic priority in the medium term.
Speaker #3: 99 Acres shots 99 shots, which we launched in NCI last year, is an important initiative in this journey. Early customer engagement gives us confidence of its utility to buyers.
Speaker #3: We now plan to expand the offering to more cities. Through FY26, we deliberately invested behind the business to convert a strong competitive position into clear market leadership.
Speaker #3: Much of that investment phase is now behind us, and the business is beginning to demonstrate meaningful operating leverage. With leadership established across traffic, supply, and customer engagement, significant headroom for monetization, and disciplined marketing investments, we believe 99 Acres is well positioned to sustain healthy growth while becoming cash generative during FY27.
Speaker #3: Moving to over to the matchmaking segment, our matchmaking portfolio comprising Jeevan Sathi and I delivered billings growth of 20% year on year. Jeevan Sathi grew by 14%, while I continued its strong momentum with billings growth of 44%.
Speaker #3: The portfolio also operated a near break-even on an operating PBT basis. We continue to hold more than 45% profile share in the Hindi-speaking markets, and still lead those markets on users, logged in daily.
Speaker #3: The business continued to focus on driving more monetization levers on the platform by experimenting with new paywalls and launching new offerings to drive value, convenience, and affordability.
Speaker #3: The business made some improvements in its recommendation engines. Through AI investments and will continue to make them for the foreseeable future. I and Arikay continue to grow aggressively in the quarter, driven by better conversions and the launch of new value propositions for users.
Speaker #3: Our focus remains on strengthening our position, where we already lead and improving monetization. Moving on to the Shiksha business, Shiksha's billings declined by 23%.
Speaker #3: Revenue declined by 12%, and the business management maintained operating PBT profitability. AI-driven changes in search behavior have been affecting Shiksha's traffic for several quarters.
Speaker #3: In line with expectations, this is translating into a billing impact as reduced referred search traffic from Google affected client delivery outcomes. We expect this headwinds to persist over the near term.
Speaker #3: To navigate this and sustain growth, Shiksha is investing in domestic counseling capabilities and AI-driven voice bots to scale and complement these efforts. As adoption and monetization of these services improve, we expect them to offset the AI-led impact progressively.
Speaker #3: The study abroad segment saw softness in certain markets, particularly the US and Canada, driven by evolving student preferences. And broader macro factors in these geographies.
Speaker #3: We are actively broadening our destination coverage with increased focus on the UK, UAE, and continental Europe to better align with where student demand is moving.
Speaker #3: Few points related to AI. I've already covered business-specific use cases of AI. Our company-level AI is also changing how we operate. Driving efficiencies of 15 to 20% across some functions.
Speaker #3: It is increasingly being used across marketing. Pricing, lead qualification, telecalling, and customer engagement, while accelerating content creation experimentation and product development. One question we are often asked is whether AI poses a disintermediation risk to our business.
Speaker #3: In our view, it does not. Across recruitment, real estate, and matchmaking, we have built strong positions over many years. We have proprietary data from both sides of the marketplace.
Speaker #3: Millions of user interactions every day and over two decades of domain knowledge. We believe these strengths become even more valuable in an AI-driven world.
Speaker #3: Take Nocre as an example. We not only try to understand what a job seeker is looking for, but also what an employer needs, how urgent the requirement is, and which candidates are most relevant.
Speaker #3: That understanding comes from years of proprietary data and continuous learning and cannot be replicated easily. In fact, it improves as the platform gets used more and more.
Speaker #3: Shiksha is different. The challenge there was never our matching capability. A large part of user traffic came through a distribution channel that we did not own, as AI changed how users search for information.
Speaker #3: That dependency became a disadvantage. That is an important distinction. Where we own both sides of the marketplace, AI strengthens our business by improving matching recommendations and customer outcomes.
Speaker #3: Where we relied more on third-party distribution, AI-driven changes in user discovery and search behavior created headwinds for the business. This is how we think about AI risk across our portfolio.
Speaker #3: This also explains why we have continued to increase our investments in AI over the last two years. We have invested across infrastructure, talent, and tools, because we believe AI enhances the value for data products and marketplace positions.
Speaker #3: Finally, on monetization, our approach is straightforward. Better AI-driven outcomes improve customer experience, which drives adoption, and over time, customer spending in most cases we are not charging separately for AI.
Speaker #3: We are using it to make our core products more valuable. Where AI is sold as a standalone offering such as ARX, enterprise sales cycles are naturally longer.
Speaker #3: We remain focused on delivering strong customer outcomes and the commercial traction we are seeing gives us confidence that we are moving in the right direction.
Speaker #3: Before I close, a brief word on our investment portfolio. We continue to build a diversified portfolio of investments across artificial intelligence, deep tech, and consumer tech.
Speaker #3: So far, we have invested over 135 companies with an invested value of approximately 5,000 crores through our balance sheet directly or through our AI apps.
Speaker #3: The portfolio is performing well. A few companies have already listed on public markets, and several others have gone on to raise follow-on funding from credible external investors.
Speaker #3: Our approach has been to identify promising founders early, invest ahead of consensus, and stay invested for the long run rather than seeking quick exits.
Speaker #3: We believe this portfolio builds predominantly over the last five or six years, will continue to create meaningful value for our shareholders over the medium to long term.
Speaker #3: With that, I'll stop, and we are now happy to take your questions.
Speaker #1: Thank you, Desh. Anand, we can start with questions. I guess we already have a few questions in the queue.
Speaker #3: Yeah. Thank you so much, Vinay. Yeah. Just a second. First question is from Sachin. Bank of America. Sachin, go ahead and ask your question.
Speaker #2: Hi. Thank you for the opportunity. I have a few questions. First question is on Nocre. When we look at a 13% YOI revenue growth, roughly 8% is coming on the back of higher realizations and 4% led by increase in billing customers.
Speaker #2: So I wanted to get a bit more clarity out of that. How much of that increase in realization is because let's say there is more hiring at the higher end, and how much is because of new initiatives like ARX and others, which are sort of leading to RPO increase?
Speaker #2: And in terms of let's say increased 4% increase in the billings customer, and I do understand how the overall billings growth is increased, but would be great to have a sort of a broad understanding how much of that is largely led by GCC, how much is IT, and how much is non-IT.
Speaker #2: Thank you.
Speaker #3: Yeah, see, at a very high level, about I think one third of our revenue growth, you could attribute to more renewals and higher volume.
Speaker #3: From certain segments, of course, premium hiring is growing at a faster clip. So premium CV views on Nocre are growing at more than 25%, but on a small base.
Speaker #3: So but we don't monetize them separately. So we monetize our database offering, but of course, we try and estimate the value we deliver to all our customers.
Speaker #3: So premium CV views on Nocre are growing at a faster rate, much faster rate than overall volume growth. But overall, we saw higher enterprise renewals.
Speaker #3: We got some pricing growth, and we estimate about that about maybe a third of our growth was a result of our newer offerings which we are pushing more aggressively in the market like ARX and Talent Pulse and so on.
Speaker #3: Was I able to answer your question? Now, as far as your GCCs and IT and non-IT, so GCC billing growth was 31% last quarter.
Speaker #3: I think I gave out the number. IT companies, revenue from billing from IT companies, grew by 15%. Tech IT and BPM, and the other sectors, non-IT sectors, combined grew by 12%.
Speaker #3: Growth, recruitment consultants were flattish. So about a fourth of our revenue slightly more than a fourth of our revenue comes from recruitment firms. And that revenue was that billing growth there with them was like just 1%.
Speaker #2: Thanks, Desh. Pretty clear. Second question, is on the let's say the outlook for the billings growth. Now, from what you're seeing, these trends appear to be sustainable, which is premium hiring, picking up GCC and IT growth, remaining strong.
Speaker #2: So is it fair to say that gone are the days of billings growth of 10 to 11%, but directionally no real reason why billings growth can't increase?
Speaker #2: And I'm saying that because this has a theme is also seeing in other markets like Japan and the US. Where we do see premium hiring picking up, and on the back of it, the incremental realizations or ARPUs in that market are also moving up.
Speaker #3: So I think the joke of the pack is the middle segment. A large chunk of our revenue comes from mid-tier hiring, and their volume growth has not been what we would want it to what we would want it to be.
Speaker #3: Of course, we are seeing more premium hiring. There's a lot of hiring happening in pockets. AI, machine learning, data science, data engineering, ing, hiring talent is in demand.
Speaker #3: And there are early signs. Early signs, but very, very early signs. I don't know if they will if the market turning a little bit.
Speaker #3: Okay. Now, whether we'll grow at 10% or 15 or 8%, I don't know going forward. We had one good quarter, we are very bullish on our new offerings.
Speaker #3: So at least the initial response in the market seems to be very encouraging. We've managed to sell ARX to over 400 clients in Q1.
Speaker #3: In July, we were able to sell ARX to another maybe 300-odd odd customers. So ARX penetration is growing at a rapid pace. And of course, but these are early days.
Speaker #3: Customers are going to try it out. If they like it, they'll come back and buy more. If they don't like it, they may not renew.
Speaker #3: So early days, but the initial response is encouraging. We are also happy with the response we're getting for our Talent Pulse offering and our Salary Pulse offering.
Speaker #3: So on the new products, we are more confident than we were six months ago. Premium hiring, again, continues to grow at a rapid clip.
Speaker #3: But premium hiring in terms of volume is a very small fraction of the hiring which happens on Nocre. But it's growing at like 25, 30 percent.
Speaker #3: And that's where the market also seems to be moving to. So we are confident. And we are not monetizing all our assets. Very aggressively right now.
Speaker #3: So a lot of the stuff we still give out for free. On IM jobs, on high risk, premium X tool is also free, for example, right now.
Speaker #3: So if this trend continues and if you continue to gain ground, then there'll be more monetization opportunities on the premium front going forward. Value hiring, again, we are very confident because but it's a small job has still small for us.
Speaker #3: But it's doubling year on year. So again, from a medium-term standpoint, I think this will become a reasonable sort of business for us. Middle segment is where there's some volume pressure, right?
Speaker #3: So let's see how that plays out. Consultants, again, were flattish for us. But we've launched some new offerings for consultants as well. So let's see what kind of response we get to those offerings.
Speaker #3: Now, if they GCCs, they continue to sort of hire, and there's a reasonable activity on that front. And there, we are senses that over time, more and more high-value jobs will move to India.
Speaker #2: Got it. Desh, you did mention one third of your growth is coming from new initiatives, and you also mentioned that these are all incremental.
Speaker #2: So is it fair to say that incremental EBITDA margins on all these businesses should be high, and hence directional margins should start improving in the Nocre business?
Speaker #3: See, we are still investing very aggressively in AI. So we don't want to slow down our investments in AI. So a lot will depend on if customers like these offerings and if they come back for more.
Speaker #3: And growth accelerates, margins should get better. Our investments in AI will continue. So let's hope that plays out. On the job seeker side also, we've seen a massive we've already seen a massive improvement in margins.
Speaker #3: So our job seeker business used to have an EBITDA margin of 35, 40 percent and used to grow at 18, 20 percent for the last couple of quarters.
Speaker #3: Now it's been growing at 35 percent. And the EBITDA margins have improved to 62 percent, mostly because of two reasons. One, because of our AI offerings, new AI because we made the model more self-serve.
Speaker #3: So on the job seeker front also, on the job seeker front, actually, a lot of the revenue actually our AI revenue run rate on the job seeker side is closer to seven, eight crores a month now.
Speaker #2: Thank you. And last question is on 99 acres. I completely get your point that if this is a business with a 50% plus traffic market share, directionally margin should improve.
Speaker #2: But OXLIT, we have seen some fluctuations in PBT. Last quarter, it was profitable. This quarter, loss-making. Anything to read too much into the 1Q PBT for 99 acres?
Speaker #2: Is it more seasonal and should directionally margins be strong going ahead?
Speaker #3: So see, we see, last quarter, we our billing growth was, I think, flattish or low single digit. And we've been we've been grappling with some internal sales issues.
Speaker #3: I think slowly, one by one, we're fixing them. So this last quarter, we saw a 17% billing growth. And costs were kept under control.
Speaker #3: Now, of course, our internal effort is to try and accelerate billing growth to see if we can push billing growth beyond 20%. Let's see when that happens.
Speaker #3: And also, because there is less competitive activity, one of our competitors, housing, was sold recently. And they were burning to 50 crores a year.
Speaker #3: We are hoping that they'll try and cut their burn. And so there's less pressure on cost for that reason. So now, if you're able to continue to grow revenue at 18, 20 percent per annum or more, and if you are able to and if there's not enough there's not a lot of pressure from competition, then cost should also stay under control.
Speaker #2: Anything to add?
Speaker #3: Sajin, just to clarify, last quarter profit that you're talking about, there was a one-off accounting adjustment which led to the profit. So last quarter, profit numbers was three crore.
Speaker #3: And there was an accounting adjustment of 20 crore. If you take that out, the losses were actually 17 crore. That's the right number to look at.
Speaker #3: So last quarter, business delivered 7 crore loss. That sequentially became minus 2 crore this quarter.
Speaker #2: Yeah. Thanks, Vineet and Nithesh, very clear. All the best.
Speaker #1: Thanks, Sajin. Next question from Vivek from MBT Capital. Vivek, go ahead and ask your question.
Speaker #4: Yeah, thanks for the opportunity. My first question is on the 15% normalized number you mentioned. Does it also take into account the favorable base of 1Q FY26, where you had at that time cited that deal closures were delayed because of regional tensions?
Speaker #4: So that is just from a bookkeeping perspective and related one is on you have GCC share and growth mentioned in two different slides of your investor deck.
Speaker #4: Slide 9 and slide 36. So slide 9 mentions billing growth of 31%. And the data pack, which is slide 36, mentions the GCC share in billing distribution jumping sharply to 23% from 17, 18 percent.
Speaker #4: So if I look at the disclosure in the second part, which is slide 36, it seems that your billing has grown from GCCs at 50% plus rate.
Speaker #4: If you can explain the difference to us, it'll be very helpful. Those are my bookkeeping ones. And then I have another two questions, which I'll ask after you answer these.
Speaker #2: Nithesh, maybe I can take this one.
Speaker #3: Yeah, yeah.
Speaker #4: So Vivek, so on the GCC, if you recall, last quarter, the GCC growth was minus 1% that we had announced. And that time, we had mentioned that there were a few large GCCs who deferred with renewal that time, that did not happen by March.
Speaker #4: But eventually, that renewal happened in April. So therefore, on in quarter one, you see a higher growth number. And therefore, you see a higher so 31% is the growth number.
Speaker #4: On slide 9 that you see, and slide 36, 23% that you see is the billing distribution, right? So that's the two and a half percent one-off timing difference that Ritesh called out in his script earlier.
Speaker #4: So if you normalize for that, then GCC broadly been growing 15, 17 percent and is around 17 to 18 percent of our overall billing distribution.
Speaker #4: Okay. And on the first part related to the last year's base being benign, was that adjusted when you highlighted the 15% number?
Speaker #3: Yeah. So Vivek, every quarter, there are some clients who renew early. They are always some clients who defer renewal. And there are some clients who will come in early.
Speaker #3: So this is this happens every quarter, right? So normalizing for that net trend, what was the difference, that is what we called out. So that exactly to your point, it takes into account what happened last year in the base.
Speaker #4: Right. Thanks for these answers. Just to drill down a bit on the AI monetization strategy, I think you mentioned that one-third of your incremental growth was driven by some of these new initiatives.
Speaker #4: AIREX being one of them, perhaps most significant of them. So just Hitesh, to understand this better, are clients aware that they are paying separately for AIREX, or is it bundled with the?
Speaker #3: No, no. There's a we charge per mandate. So we are selling AIREX at rate card rate of 3,500 rupees per mandate. To recruit to companies.
Speaker #3: And we've recently launched AIREX for consultants as well, which is at a lower price point. So yeah, clients are buying AIREX separately in many cases.
Speaker #3: I mean, they know what they're buying. And they're paying for it separately.
Speaker #4: Okay. So just to understand the sales architecture here, are the same salespeople who handle the client billing for your RESTEX, are they the ones who have the conversation for AIREX as well, or is the architecture any different?
Speaker #3: No, it's the same sales team, but we have a team of specialists sometimes who support them.
Speaker #4: Okay. So you are convinced that there is no cannibalization, right? Because previously, we saw that you had a product suite called Nokri RMS, and then that saw initial focus, but then it faded later.
Speaker #4: So are you confident that this is sustained?
Speaker #3: See, it's still very early days. So a lot of the sales right now are small sales. And we are basically first, I'll tell you how we went to market.
Speaker #3: We first, we have a free trial. So the beginning of the quarter, we rolled out a free trial to 4,000 customers. On our platform.
Speaker #3: And we got some usage going. And then we started following up with customers who were using it. And then we went to them and said, listen, maybe of course, we went to some of them and also we went to clients who were due for renewal and said, this is our new offering.
Speaker #3: And this is our agentic offering and this can help you save time, etc. So it may be a good idea for you to try this out.
Speaker #3: Now, enough clients now, out of the 4,000 we gave free trials to 400 sort of paid us something for AIREX. Now, it is possible that there was some cannibalization, hard for me to say what exactly happened in the field, but most of them are aware that they're buying AIREX and they're paying for them paying for it separately right now.
Speaker #3: And in most cases where we're selling AIREX, we are able to get upgrades. Right now. That's what happened in Q1. On Q2, we've rolled it out for 10,000 clients, the free trial.
Speaker #3: And in July, we saw further increase in AIREX sales. So let's see how this plays. There could be some cannibalization. I'm not saying because like I said, consultants, we're flattish last quarter.
Speaker #3: Many consultants downgraded. Volume growth is actually the biggest concern with consultants right now because what happens in a slow market is clients insource. They don't outsource up to consultants.
Speaker #3: And consultant business gets hit first because they're the most expensive way to hire. Now, it is possible that in many cases, some consultants would have downgraded, but because of AIREX, they are at least giving us what they gave us last year or giving us a little more than last year.
Speaker #3: So but there is genuine demand and usage and traction for the product right now.
Speaker #4: Right. That commentary helps. My last question is on the TAM that you see for candidate offerings and premium hiring. How big are you in terms of percentage market share within these two sub-segments?
Speaker #4: Who are you competing with right now, and how big do you think these segments can become for you? Let's say in three years, five years, if you execute well.
Speaker #3: See, on the job seeker side, we don't know. I mean, frankly, we've been surprised by the growth that we've got ourselves. So this business used to, for the longest time, grow at 18 to 20 percent per year.
Speaker #3: For the last couple of quarters, it's grown at over 30 percent. And growth seems to be accelerating right now. And one reason for that is that we made it more self-serve.
Speaker #3: And the second reason for that is our AI offerings. So our sense is previously, maybe one, one and a half percent of all people who are on Nokri or monthly active users of Nokri used to pay for some paid offering.
Speaker #3: That number has over the last few quarters moved to around two and a half percent. So there is still technically, there is still a lot of headroom for growth.
Speaker #3: And so let's see, we are also excited about upskilling. And we completed our acquisition of Coding Ninja just some time back. We believe in this market, where so much is changing and AI is evolving very rapidly, everyone needs to upscale, but not everybody has the time to go to school.
Speaker #3: And nobody wants to take a lot of time off from work. So if we are able to launch but Coding Ninja has been doing a good job, has done a good job of launching long-form courses for working professionals.
Speaker #3: We believe even short-form courses may work. So we are trying to see how we can what else we can do in upskilling. And at a very high level, see, I did make this point about Nokri.
Speaker #3: Transforming, it used to be a job board and a job search platform. We are making on the recruiter side, we are doing a whole bunch of things to make it like the recruitment operating system.
Speaker #3: For all companies. And on the job seeker side also, we want to be seen as a career platform. So we want to help job seekers understand what skills they should be acquiring, how they should be preparing for interviews, how they should create their resume, what possible career trajectories their career could take.
Speaker #3: Now, a lot of this is now possible because of our enhanced AI and data capabilities. We have data nobody else has, right? And if you can leverage the data and use it to add value to job seekers, nothing like it.
Speaker #3: And some of these services will be free. Some stuff will be free, some will be paid for. So that's where we see Nokri going.
Speaker #3: So I don't know. Depending on how we execute, this could be a very large market. And depend on the recruiter side. Like our AIREX offering is positioned as turning recruiters into super recruiters.
Speaker #3: So what used to 24 hours with AIREX. And that can help recruiters release recruiter time to do other things. More value-added stuff. Similarly, our salary and talent planning tools are being used by a lot of companies for salary benchmarking, and talent planning.
Speaker #3: Now, again, this is data only we have. This is data nobody else has. So only we can offer these tools. And these products to customers.
Speaker #3: Now, so we already have about close to 6, 700 customers for our talent pulse and salary pulse offering. And the response is very encouraging.
Speaker #3: So basically, we are using AI to offer new products to innovate, to offer not just improve features and functionalities and on our platform, which is and not just to improve our own productivity, but now we are bringing to innovate and offer products which were not possible to offer without AI.
Speaker #3: And which can create new revenue streams for us and help us grow our TAM.
Speaker #4: Right. Excellent. Thank you very much for the detailed answers and all the very best.
Speaker #2: Thank you, Rick. Next question from Vishit Chen from City. Vishit, go ahead and ask your question.
Speaker #1: Yeah, hi. Thank you for the opportunity. My question, similar to what you just mentioned a little while ago on GCCs, underlying growth rate in that mid to high teens, YOY, if you strip out all the various adjustments, where would you say tech, IT, and BPM is?
Speaker #1: Because that also seems to have accelerated pretty meaningfully. YOY. So would be good to know where that is when you strip out all the timing-related issues there.
Speaker #1: That's my first question. And then I'll just come back for one more.
Speaker #3: Yeah, Vineet, you want to take that?
Speaker #2: Yeah. So Vineet, there's nothing material to call out in that segment. It was largely in the GCC that I already called out. So I don't think there's much to read into tech, IT, BPM segment.
Speaker #1: Got it. Thank you. And then related to all the comments that Hitesh made on AIREX, so it looks to me like if I understand it right, there is a contribution from AIREX that you have on direct monetization, which is mandate.
Speaker #1: That is still relatively early, but you're seeing pretty notable impact of it in your ARR retention or better conversion of existing customers. And that part is what is driving the one-third extra growth that you called out.
Speaker #3: And along with talent pulse and some employee branding offerings, like Ambition Box, etc.
Speaker #1: Got it. Perfect. And my last question is on the B2C side. So two things that you mentioned here, one that growth is predominantly online and that you've gotten your paid conversions up to two and a half percent.
Speaker #1: And so my question is twofold. In general, A, because it is predominantly online, so most of the growth here, even the acceleration that you see right now, should be directly flowing through into the margins.
Speaker #1: So that margin 63% can go up to even 80% in that sense.
Speaker #3: So we've already seen an improvement in our job seeker business margins. We used to be operated at an EBITDA margin of 35, 40 percent till about a year back.
Speaker #3: And now our operating margin in that business, EBITDA margin is close to 60%. By 63% last quarter.
Speaker #1: Got it. And in general, where can that conversion go? Do you need new products for it to go up to 5 or 10 percent?
Speaker #1: Do you think, or because you mentioned acceleration, right? So I'm just wondering what is the EBITDA margin?
Speaker #3: Yeah, I don't know. See, partly it could also be driven by the fact that the job market is a little tight right now. And partly it's because of our new offerings.
Speaker #3: And partly it's because of self-serve and therefore lower price points. Right? And which people are able to become customers. And we continue to believe that we can enhance our offering suite.
Speaker #3: So upskilling it, I mentioned that, is one other sort of area we are sort of experimenting with, offering short-form one-month upskilling sort of courses.
Speaker #3: At low price point, 5,000 bucks, 7,000 bucks. But early days, and coding ninja is going to help us sort of do that. So and we are also sort of building some career advisory and career planning offerings for job seekers.
Speaker #3: Now, we'll figure out how much we should give away for free, how much we should charge, what we should charge for over time. But yes, we would want to offer more and more services to job seekers over time.
Speaker #1: Correct. So Hitesh, your comment on coding ninjas in one sense, does that mean that some of these short-form lessons and offerings become introduced to the candidates directly on Nocre platform?
Speaker #1: That may not have been the case so far.
Speaker #3: Yes. Yes.
Speaker #1: Got it. Perfect. Thank you so much. Those were my questions.
Speaker #2: Thanks, Vishit. Next question from Gaurav from Access Capital. Gaurav, go ahead and ask your question.
Speaker #1: Yeah, hi. Am I audible?
Speaker #3: Yes.
Speaker #2: Yes, go ahead.
Speaker #1: Hi. Hitesh just wanted to again double-flick on the Nocre billing growth. So from so basically, there are three elements of this growth, right? There is one, your volume growth, right, from higher billing customers.
Speaker #1: Then there is premiumization, which is essentially either through AIREX or more premium hiring. And then there is obviously an absolute price increase, which you would have probably taken, right?
Speaker #1: So if I can just see that your billed customer growth is roughly around 5%. And you're basically mentioning that AIREX is still relatively it started monetization, I think, so in the mid to during the quarter sometime.
Speaker #1: So it'll still be relatively less. So maybe the premiumization is more from higher better what more premium. Sort of hiring activity. And then the price hike will be the remaining sort of 5-ish percent.
Speaker #1: So is this sort of match roughly the way is this match correct from what I just mentioned?
Speaker #3: Yeah, Vineet, you want to say something?
Speaker #2: Yeah. So Gaurav, I don't think one should look at this customer growth of 4, 5 percent direct contribution to billings. Because generally, new customers you add necessarily they don't sign up on the same R2.
Speaker #2: The new customers that we are adding, so they generally are in tier 2, tier 3 markets, more on the SMB side. And their R2s are lower than what other customers pay.
Speaker #2: So that is not a material contributor to billings growth. The way we will look at it is one-third broadly, like Hitesh mentioned, came from volume.
Speaker #2: A small subset of that is customer count growth, right? Another one-third came from price increase. And third is new offerings which Hitesh already highlighted.
Speaker #2: That's how one should look at the mix of the billings.
Speaker #3: See, and new offerings are it's not just AIREX, but AIREX, talent pulse, branding offerings, three or four of them.
Speaker #2: Yeah.
Speaker #1: And this is assuming that 15% adjusted growth number, not the 17%. And so now the next point is that AIREX, the salience will only keep increasing.
Speaker #1: So we should expect more support from this segment going into say coming quarters, on the billing growth is would that be a fair statement to make?
Speaker #3: Yeah, see, I tell you what. See, the thing we have worried about is volume growth. Because volume growth is a function of net hiring.
Speaker #3: In the economy. And if for some reason hiring slows down, then volume takes a volume growth takes a hit. So AIREX, talent pulse, at least for some time, there is a lot of headroom because we have just started selling them into the market.
Speaker #3: Right? So as we get better at selling them, if the products are successful, and we know only after one renewal cycle whether they're very successful or not.
Speaker #3: But in the beginning, I'm sure a lot of customers would want to try them out. And we've got a pricing model in place now.
Speaker #3: And at this price point and through this and with this go-to-market motion, it seems to be selling. So there we'll continue to do well for some time, at least.
Speaker #3: Pricing, premium hiring will continue because we believe that in the economy, we will see more premium hiring going forward. There's a that's the trend.
Speaker #3: That's a shift. Every company after a while will want to hire AI talent, machine learning talent, coders who get AI, content creators who get AI, marketeers who get AI.
Speaker #3: HR managers who get AI. I think that is going to be that trend is only going to accelerate. They may hire fewer people, but they will hire better quality people over time.
Speaker #3: And that should help us where their wages will be much higher. Now, volume growth is where the real challenge is. Will companies continue to hire as many people as earlier?
Speaker #3: Now, that is going to be a function of two things, in my view. One is whether the economy can continue to grow fast. Because if the economy continues to grow fast, it'll create jobs.
Speaker #3: And two, whether more and more jobs get outsourced to GCCs in India. Right? Right now, it looks like GCCs are growing faster. They're adding more jobs than IT services companies.
Speaker #3: Net jobs. And if that trend continues, it should benefit us. And again, GCCs also do more premium hiring than IT services companies.
Speaker #2: Got it. And how should
Speaker #1: we obviously, it's the next step is to it's just a lot of time for next year. But assuming that the volume growth sort of sustains at this, would you be comfortable taking another quantum of this hike or the next hike will be some sort of predicated on what happens to the volume growth, say, in the coming few quarters?
Speaker #3: See, we are working on a bunch of things. Now, things will become clearer with time. A lot will depend on what kind of response we get from our customers.
Speaker #3: And what kind of response our new offerings get. For example, if our new offerings are very successful, and if they actually if recruiters see a lot of value in them and if they feel then over time, our take rate should go up.
Speaker #1: And just last question for me. On the margin front, this question was asked earlier, right? In, I think, a couple of times in terms of how do we think about the margin trajectory.
Speaker #1: Now, these new initiatives, you obviously put investments, but as you monetize them, technically, the margin should see some sort of expansion. But or you would say that the continued investments will be an offset to whatever benefit you're getting from the monetization of these initiatives.
Speaker #3: So see, if we are able to grow our top line at in the teens, okay, margin should improve. But if for some reason, top line growth comes in at 8, 9, 10 percent, then it'll be hard to improve margins.
Speaker #1: Thank you so much.
Speaker #3: Yeah.
Speaker #2: Thanks, Gaurav. Next question from Kunal from Barney Entry Advisors. Kunal, go ahead and ask your question.
Speaker #4: Hey, thanks for the opportunity. So I have three questions. One was on employee headcount and employee cost. When you look at the employee cost, which has been subdued, and we also see that headcount has been coming down both Q1, Q2, and Q3.
Speaker #4: I just wanted your thoughts on how do we even look at employee cost from a medium to longer-term perspective, given the fact that we've been investing so heavily on AI?
Speaker #4: And I understand when you said self-serve, on the job seeker side, would that mean release of some employees on that side? And all parts of the business.
Speaker #4: That was the first question. The second one is on 99 Acres. You spoke about like, of course, we've been gaining market share there. The competitive intensity seems to be better now.
Speaker #4: From a monetization perspective, what are the levers that we have from a 3 to 5-year perspective? How should one with the same monetization level?
Speaker #4: Of course, we see operating leverage over the period of time. Are there any other levers that one can think on 99 Acres? And the third question is on AI RX, where you spoke about per-mandate pricing.
Speaker #4: From a longer-term perspective, how should one think about this pricing? As you said, the take rates can go in. Will it be sold in a similar mandate pay from a longer-term perspective, or it will be bundled in the overall take rates that we charge?
Speaker #4: These would be my three questions. And also on AI Pulse and AI Talent, if you can also talk about their monetization model. It would be helpful.
Speaker #4: Thanks.
Speaker #3: Okay. So let me see if I can answer all these questions now. As far as headcount goes, our headcount is down year on year.
Speaker #3: We are see, we continue to hire in job. We continue to hire in our in our AI team. We continue to do some sales hiring here and there.
Speaker #3: But everywhere else, we are trying to become a little more efficient. We are encouraging our people also to use more AI tools. And see if we can get become more productive.
Speaker #3: So and of course, we are trying hiring better quality talent as well. Now, but it's not as if so but if our business continues to grow, at 15, 17 percent per annum, then I think over time, we'll start adding people once again.
Speaker #3: Now, it may we may take a break for a quarter or two, but after a while, we'll start adding people again. But in the newer in the businesses where we are investing and where we are seeing growth, where we are still building our teams, job AI etc., we continue to invest.
Speaker #3: In 99 Acres, we've already sort of, like I said, we're gaining market share. There is not that much competitive pressure seems to be easing a little.
Speaker #3: And we are confident of being able to deliver revenue growth without adding too many people. So for a while, we may not hire. In our consumer businesses, both Jeevan Saathi, IL, and the candidate services business are becoming more and more efficient.
Speaker #3: So and they're becoming more and more self-serve. So they are actually the headcount has gone down over time. In Shikshaw, we've been sort of, I think, flattish.
Speaker #3: As business is under pressure, so we don't want to hire too many people there. So let's see how this plays out. Gulf also, because of the nature of the market, right now, we're not hiring people.
Speaker #3: But yeah, but it's not as if we are not going to hire people going forward in our headcount may start growing once again once our if our business starts growing in the teens.
Speaker #3: Now, in sorry, your second question was around 99 Acres. Yes. And monetization and what was the question? Sorry.
Speaker #4: So it was on any other levers for monetization apart from what we already do with competitive intensity kind of going down?
Speaker #3: So see, the 99 Acres business, we have a secondary business, and we have a primary business. And we also have started monetizing owners. So here, we see an opportunity to over time to monetize more owners.
Speaker #3: So the owner model is freemium right now. So we only a small fraction of the owners pay us today. But over time, this number could grow.
Speaker #3: But it's a small part of our total business. Less than maybe 7, 8 percent of our revenue comes from owners today. Two, the primary market, see, here, we do well in markets where we work in channel partners, but we're not able to monetize builders effectively.
Speaker #3: So a lot of the marketing spend is from builders, and they are a small part of our revenue. But we need to make our product work for them.
Speaker #3: But so that's so some of the stuff I spoke about 99 short, etc., is an attempt in that to direction. So medium term, we see an opportunity to create more value for builders and see, if we become the number one real estate platform in the country and everybody acknowledges it, and it's where everybody starts their search, then I'm sure builders would want to market on 99 Acres.
Speaker #3: And spend more money on 99 Acres over time. So that's a medium-term opportunity. For us. So these are two segments where we think we could do better over time.
Speaker #3: And but we'll have to offer better products and services to them. ARX, see, basically, see, this is something we've been working on for a while, but we were not able to figure out the right go-to-market.
Speaker #3: And for ARX, and we were not sure of how to sort of take this to market because it's complex. And there are implications for our business model.
Speaker #3: So but we've taken a call to go ahead with this mandate model, per-mandate pricing model. Now, our P0, the primary goal here is to get customers to use it and to benefit from it and to see value in it.
Speaker #3: And I think this mandate model may continue. If it's successful and it works for us. It could also evolve over time. So right now, we are not saying that this is the right business model and that this is cast in stone.
Speaker #3: But I think what we are doing right now seems to be working. It's getting us customers to try us. The price point is very reasonable right now.
Speaker #3: And it's and if we get good feedback and if renewal rates are good, then we'll figure out how to sort of evolve this pricing model.
Speaker #3: Right now, this is what it is. And on similarly, on TalentPulse, etc., we charging we are charging right now on the basis of consumption.
Speaker #3: So on the basis of number of reports being viewed and some features which are available in premium version, something there's a base version, there's a premium version, there's an enterprise version.
Speaker #3: So there are sort of different types of reports which are available depending on which version you buy. And then also, and also the pricing, the function of how many reports you consume and so on.
Speaker #3: So that's how it is right now.
Speaker #4: Okay. Thank you. All the very best.
Speaker #3: Yeah. Thank you.
Speaker #1: Yeah. Thanks, Kunal. Next question is from Sophnil from Jim Financial. Sophnil, go ahead and ask your question.
Speaker #5: Hi, everyone. Thanks for the opportunity. My first question is a continuation of the previous participant's question on ARX. So did I hear you right, and you said that the average relation per mandate in ARX is around 3,500.
Speaker #5: And a related question to that is, how do you judge that the recruiters are benefiting by using ARX? And what are the parameters that you think you will get judged on?
Speaker #3: So yeah, the pricing is 3,500 rupees per mandate for companies and 2,500 rupees per mandate for consultants. This is the launch price. So let's see where this pricing goes over time.
Speaker #3: Now, see, for the first step is to sell. Second step is to get customers to use it. And then once they start using it, they'll give us feedback on whether it's working well for them or not.
Speaker #3: The proof they're putting is actually in the eating. So if they are able we are what we've been telling them is, listen, we can turn your recruiters into super recruiters, what used to take seven days earlier can get done in one day.
Speaker #3: Internally, we track a lot of metrics of, of course, we track usage by customer. We track who's using it at the customer end. We track which jobs the customer is using it for.
Speaker #3: We track delivery through the offering, how many sort of CVs were shortlisted, how many were screened, what happened to them ultimately, how much time did we take to deliver, those CVs to the customer.
Speaker #3: So we have internal dashboards to track usage and etc. But in the end, the customer has to come back and say, listen, it worked for me, and which is why I said we need to wait for one renewal cycle because if it works for the customer, he'll come back and renew.
Speaker #3: If it doesn't, then they'll negotiate.
Speaker #5: So what will be the renewal cycle in that case? I mean, typically, you would have seen in the past.
Speaker #3: So it's like this. See, for a lot of customers, they're trying it out. They're saying, okay, give us 10 mandates, 20 mandates, 30 mandates.
Speaker #3: You want to try it out. So with them, once they use their these mandates, we'll get to know whether they want to renew or not.
Speaker #3: With a lot of them, it is okay. Give it me X mandates, which I will use over the year. So a lot will depend on how fast they consume these mandates.
Speaker #3: And which is why driving adoption is the next step for us. We've sold, but now we need to get them to use these ARX, these mandates, the sooner they consume them, the one, we'll get feedback.
Speaker #3: And two, of course, we can also get renewals if they're happy.
Speaker #5: Okay. And the other question is with respect to the size of the clients who are so you said there are 600, 700 clients who have started using ARX.
Speaker #5: Now, are these big, large corporations? The typical IT companies, and working on very large mandate? Or these are the consultants or smaller enterprises? Working on four mandates, five mandates, I mean, a very small.
Speaker #3: See, all times, see, they're not your SMEs. They're very few SMEs who are using ARX right now. But there are enough consultants who are on ARX, and there are enough mid-sized companies and large companies who are using ARX.
Speaker #5: Okay. And so you had around 1.5 lakh paid clients last year, right? Fully. Now, realistically speaking, if the opportunity plays out the way you're thinking, how many enterprises do you think will ultimately end up taking this service?
Speaker #5: And without cannibalizing your existing business.
Speaker #3: See, we've rolled out free trial to 10,000 customers. So and these are some of our largest and highest paying customers. So I mean, theoretically, we feel that all 10,000 of them should be able to use ARX.
Speaker #5: So that is the easy part that you're talking about, like you can capture. Yeah.
Speaker #3: Yeah. Yeah. And these 10,000 customers, of course, account for a large part of our revenue.
Speaker #5: Got it. Very helpful. Thanks a lot for the question.
Speaker #1: Sophnil. Next question is from Aditya from Macri. Aditya, go ahead and ask your question.
Speaker #2: Yeah. Thank you. So Hitesh, two questions. So first is on the job seek index. And I just want to kind of reconcile the trends which you're seeing there versus the growth we're seeing in the reported results.
Speaker #2: So when I kind of look at the aggregate trends in the job seek index, it still seems sluggish, right? So if I look at aggregate, on a rolling three-month yearly basis, it's about 5%.
Speaker #2: Some of your larger sectors like IT, financial services, all that is, say, flat down. So in that context, how should we think about squaring the two in terms of the billings growth which you all are reporting versus the sluggish overall kind of job seek index?
Speaker #2: Because you do seem to be doing much better than the job seek print. So that's the first one. The second was in terms of clarification, could you speak about the average contract period for your billings?
Speaker #2: Has that been extended? Is there any kind of differences today versus, say, 12 months back, which we should think about? Thank you.
Speaker #3: Yeah. So let me ask second question. No difference in the contract period. Job seek is basically measures volume growth. Right? It's not doesn't measure premiumization.
Speaker #3: It doesn't tell you about our new offerings. So while our revenue growth is a function of premiumization, pricing increases, new products being rolled out in the market, and also volume.
Speaker #3: That's it. I've been observing what's been going on in the company in the last three, four months. Five months, maybe. And what I see happening is the sales team fundamentally trying harder.
Speaker #3: Okay? And under Hitesh, directly under Hitesh, I mean, going and making more efforts, more sales calls, better sales calls, and selling new products. So it's a bit of both.
Speaker #3: And therefore, you will find that our billing growth is maybe going faster than what job seek index might otherwise indicate.
Speaker #2: Thank you.
Speaker #3: It is the second part of the question if you want to answer that.
Speaker #4: Sorry. Which is?
Speaker #1: No, I guess Hitesh already
Speaker #3: answered that. There is no change in the contract duration.
Speaker #4: No change in the contract. Period. Duration.
Speaker #3: Hitesh, we have a few questions in the chat box. Maybe I'll read them for you.
Speaker #1: So before that, Vineeth, Vijith is back, I think. Maybe have a follow-up question. I'll just take him. Vineeth, go ahead and ask your question.
Speaker #2: Yeah. Yeah. No worries. Thank you for the opportunity. I had just one question for Sanjeev. Would you say looking at now clearly for the core business AI starting to monetize early days, I know.
Speaker #2: And there's been a lot of noise about whether applied AI revenues will come to Indian companies in general. Do you see that in the broader investment companies and portfolios that you guys have?
Speaker #2: And in the new companies that you're looking at right now, your confidence level in general in India monetizing AI now versus maybe six months back, would be great to know your.
Speaker #3: Confidence level is just that now we are seeing results coming. Which proves that the earlier confidence was validated. I think what we are seeing at InfoEdge and Nokri particularly is the culmination of efforts over the last four or five years building an AI-specific team, Gen AI especially.
Speaker #3: Gradually, with painstakingly, I think you add a few people every month, every quarter, and now we've got over 150 people in Gen AI plus machine learning.
Speaker #3: And we are building products, innovating. First in Nokri and now increasingly in the other businesses. I think we're seeing results of that inside the company.
Speaker #3: What we are seeing outside is we are seeing enough companies who are monetizing well, including in our portfolio. And some are pre-revenue, but many, many, many are now began to monetize rather well.
Speaker #3: So I think India will and Indian entrepreneurs and founders and companies will make money. No matter what the opportunity is.
Speaker #2: Thank you so much, Sanjeev. Appreciate the color.
Speaker #1: So Vineeth, that was the last question online. We can take the questions on the chat.
Speaker #3: There are a few questions in the chat. I can read it out. So one question is on international expansion. We have been doing quite well in Nokri Gulf.
Speaker #3: Are we thinking to expand to other markets like Asian markets like Singapore, Hong Kong, etc.? And is there any margin difference between IT hiring and GCC hiring?
Speaker #3: Are there any differences from a margin point of view?
Speaker #4: So let me answer the first question. Right now, we are not thinking international expansion. Now, if it becomes easier because of AI at some point in time, some of our could some of our products go international?
Speaker #4: I don't know. But right now, there is no sort of plan to expand more internationally. And so what was the second question, Vineeth?
Speaker #3: So Hitesh, question was around is there any margin difference in IT versus GCC?
Speaker #4: Oh, GCC versus IT. So generally, GCC hiring tends to be more premium. Hiring. And so and GCCs in the beginning, when they set up shop in India, they tend to invest a lot more in brand building.
Speaker #4: And they also need help with salary and talent planning. So but like I have said earlier, see, when they start in India, they tend to start small.
Speaker #4: And they normally don't hire through job boards like ours. They tend because but once they reach a certain size and they start to grow, then they start to use our tools and offerings.
Speaker #4: So when they start using so our tools, I am sure from GCC customers are much higher.
Speaker #3: Then if there's the next question is, if GCC and IT hiring has been doing well, then why are consultants going at a muted showing a muted growth?
Speaker #3: That is one. And second is, what is the plan about around job hire? If you can throw some color around FY27, FY28, now do we look at job?
Speaker #4: So IT services companies are not hiring a lot. Is from what I can see. And what tends to happen when hiring slows down is that companies tend to hire more through their in-house teams.
Speaker #4: And their in-house teams depend on platforms like Nokri to hire. Because hiring through consultants is still expensive. And that's why the consultant business normally comes under pressure during a slowdown.
Speaker #4: So the market right now is a very modest hiring market. It's not a hot market. For IT hiring at least, or IT services hiring at least.
Speaker #4: And that's why I think the consultant business consultants are impacted. And therefore, our revenue from consultants is also impacted. The second question is around job hire.
Speaker #4: And the market for job hire and.
Speaker #3: Oh, so broader like what is the plan around job hire and how do we think about it in next two years?
Speaker #4: So see, job hire is we've been working on this platform for the last few years. We've started monetizing it about 18 months ago. Last year, we did about 15 crores.
Speaker #4: We would like to more than double this year. In job hire. It's a freemium model. We focused on Delhi to start with. Now we're taking it national.
Speaker #4: So we are going to slowly we are slowly expanding to target is to now take into take it to 18 cities over the next few months.
Speaker #4: Traffic is growing. Recruiters and job hire are growing. The check sizes from customers are also growing. So we are but it's still a small business.
Speaker #4: So but can it do if we execute well, can it get to 100 crores in maybe two, three years? And more? Yes, it can.
Speaker #4: Over a five, seven-year period, can it become a really large business? I think it can. But it will not move the needle on top line in the short term.
Speaker #4: Of course, we are investing in job hire. So we are burning close to 50 crores a year. And as top line starts to grow, this burn should either remain the same or start moderating.
Speaker #3: And Hitesh, last question is on 99 acres. So given the acquisition of housing by Aurim, would we be able to accelerate the growth and the path to 30% margins ahead of what we had already mentioned?
Speaker #4: Well, that will be an attempt. A lot will also depends on depend on what happens to housing and how Aurim executes. But our gut feeling is that competitive intensity will go down.
Speaker #4: Perhaps they will spend a little less on marketing. Going forward. And that will reduce the pressure on us to spend a lot of money on marketing.
Speaker #4: And it's so and like we've been gaining share for the last few quarters, gaining traffic share. And I think we have we are lagging on monetization, if you ask me.
Speaker #4: And part of the reason is because there is a lag between delivery and being able to monetize. And part of the reason was also that we were restructuring our sales team.
Speaker #4: Now, if all goes well, top line growth should pick up. Going forward. And cost should remain in control. Now, will we get to our ultimate goal of 30% margin or even more faster?
Speaker #4: I hope so. Let's see.
Speaker #3: Hitesh, we can now just take the last question, I guess. We can only stay in the queue. We can just take the last question.
Speaker #2: Vivek is back. So think good and ask your question.
Speaker #1: Hey, thank you for the follow-on opportunity. My questions are now on 99 acres. So the first one is, you've been sharing details of how segments have been growing within 99 acres as far as traffic, usage, goes.
Speaker #1: Now, to help us understand billing and retention, from some of these segments, if you can double-click on that, that would be great. And second question on 99 acres is, as far as productizing AI goes, are there any initiatives that you have which you are under development, which are yet to be launched which will perhaps be coming out in the market, like AI Rex for recruitment?
Speaker #1: Last one is on the go-to-market challenges that you spoke about. Can you elaborate on that and by when do you think the sales architecture will be retooled such that the lag that you currently talk about between adoption and monetization gets addressed?
Speaker #1: Thank you.
Speaker #3: Yeah, see, 99 acres business, just to so that there's a primary business. There is a secondary business. And there's an owner business. About maybe about 45, 47 percent of our revenue comes from the primary business.
Speaker #3: Equal amount of revenue we get from the secondary business. And we get about 7 to 10 percent of our revenue from owners. Which is also in some ways secondary revenue.
Speaker #3: Now, within the primary segment, there is a new launch business. And then there is an under construction. And there is an almost ready-to-move-in sort of these are three different categories.
Speaker #3: We don't do well in the new home launch and that's where the bulk of the marketing spend is, by the way. That marketing spend today goes mostly to Facebook and Google.
Speaker #3: Now, we are building products. And this money is mostly spent by builders. We do well with channel partners. And the good news is that more and more builders business is moving towards channel partners.
Speaker #3: In the north, for example, Delhi, NCR is our largest market. And it's by far our largest market. And one reason why it is our largest market is because one, there is a lot of secondary, which happens in NCR.
Speaker #3: Two, the primary market is a primary sales are mostly through channel partners. And we do well with channel partners. We don't do very well with builders.
Speaker #3: Right now. So but the trend is that more and more business nationally is moving towards channel partners and channel partners will grow stronger over time.
Speaker #3: And that works for us as well. And more and more houses are getting sold through secondary brokers, etc. And as more new homes get sold, more secondary the secondary market also develops.
Speaker #3: Think of it like the used car market. So that's the now, our focus is to become the very, very strong in the secondary business because secondary business, frankly, there's no other option.
Speaker #3: People have to go through a portal today. You can't use Facebook. Facebook and Google are not used for secondary, right? And when we and then secondary gets its traffic.
Speaker #3: And this traffic, we then monetize in many ways. So that will continue to be our focus. Channel partners will continue to be our focus.
Speaker #3: And we are trying to see how we can get more revenue from builders over time. Right? So as AI offerings in 99 acres go, they are not developing AI native products right now.
Speaker #3: We but we are using a lot of AI to improve the experience on our platform. We are using more AI in our search. We are using more AI in our recommendations, in our app notifications.
Speaker #3: And in general, to improve the experience on our platform. As of now, and of course, we are also using AI for a lot of other stuff which I don't want to talk about.
Speaker #3: To generate help, generate more leads for our customers and so on and so forth. But are we looking to monetize pure AI offerings in 99 acres in the near future?
Speaker #3: We have something called an AI listing. Okay? But I would not really call it an AI. It's like an AI, a real AI offering.
Speaker #3: So that's not on the horizon at this point in time. As far as our sales issues go, see, we did some we've been doing some restructuring.
Speaker #3: And I think it's largely behind us. It most markets we are okay. NCR may take a month or two more to sort of get back to normal.
Speaker #3: And after that, we should be fine.
Speaker #1: Right. Thanks for the detailed answers, and all the very best.
Speaker #2: Thanks, Vivek. Vineet, that was the last question for the evening.
Speaker #3: Thank you, everyone. On behalf of InfoEdge, we can now conclude this conference call. Thank you for joining.
Speaker #4: Thank you, everyone, and have a great evening. Yeah.
Speaker #3: Bye.
