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Hi, everyone. We are about to start. We have about 100 people with us now. Vivek, you can start the call.
Sure. Thanks. Hi, everyone. Good evening, and welcome to Info Edge India Limited Q2 '22 Financial Results Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] This conference is being recorded.Joining us today from the management side, we have Mr. Sanjeev Bikhchandani, Founder and Vice Chairman; Mr. Hitesh Oberoi, Co-Promoter and Managing Director; and Mr. Chintan Thakkar, Chief Financial Officer.Before we begin today, I would like to remind you that some of the statements made in today's conference call may be forward-looking in nature and may involve risks and uncertainties. Kindly refer to Slide #2 of investor presentation for detailed disclaimer.Now I would like to hand over the conference to Mr. Hitesh Oberoi for his opening remarks. Thank you, and over to you, Hitesh.
Thank you, Vivek. Good evening, everyone, and welcome to our Q2 FY '22 -- '21/'22 Earnings Conference Call. Trust you and your loved ones are safe and in good health. With the number of new COVID cases on a declining trend, thanks to the massive effort put in by the government in vaccinating people across the country, we are foreseeing normalcy return to our life -- daily life gradually. That's a good news.We will now talk about our quarterly financial performance. And then, of course, we'll have time for Q&A. And as always, the audited financial statements and other schedules, segmental billing, revenue, et cetera, along with the data sheet, have been uploaded on our website, infoedge.in.We had an excellent quarter. Overall billings in Q2 grew to INR 402.2 crores, up 61.3% over Q2 of last year and up 31% -- 34% from Q2 of 2020. Revenue in Q2 stood at INR 351.7 crores, up 37.3% from Q2 '21 and up 11% from the pre-pandemic levels. Operating expenses for the quarter, excluding depreciation and amortization, are up -- were INR 245.4 crores, up 20% from Q2 '21 and 13% in 2020. And operating EBITDA stood at INR 106.3 crores versus INR 51.6 crores last year, an improvement of 106% from Q2 '21 and 7% in Q2 '20. Operating EBITDA for the -- margins for the quarter stood at 30.2% compared to 20.1% for the same quarter last year. And operating cash EBITDA for the quarter stood at INR 165.9 crores compared to INR 45.7 crores last year and INR 82.5 crores in Q2 of '20. During this quarter, our investee company, Zomato Limited, has came out with an IPO of its equity shares, and such shares have been listed on NSE and BSE on July 23, 2021. We also participated in the offer for sale as selling shareholder and sold 49.3 million shares and report a total consideration of INR 375 crores and booked a gain on sale of investments of INR 357.14 crores under exceptional items. Effective listing date, Zomato Limited has ceased to be a joint venture that is a jointly controlled entity and hence has been reclassified as financial investment, which will be fairly valued at each reporting date in accordance with Ind AS 109. Accordingly, unrealized mark-to-market gain of INR 8,941.2 crores till date of listing of Zomato has been credited to P&L through exceptional item. Unrealized gain of INR 7,339.8 crores from date of listing till quarter end has been taken to other comprehensive income in accordance with onetime irrevocable option available under Ind AS.Deferred sales revenue for the quarter stood at INR 561.2 crores as of September 30, 2021, versus INR 371.9 crores as of September 30, 2020, an increase of 50.9% year-on-year. The cash balance of Info Edge including the wholly owned subsidiary, stands at INR 3,880 crores as of September 30, 2021, as against INR 3,325 crores as of September 30, 2020.As one can see from the above numbers, the company has experienced remarkable billing growth in Q2 '21/'22. A similar trend was also observed in traffic and interactions across all our platforms. The growth trajectory in the recruitment business that started in Q4 of '21 has carried on in this quarter as well. With the September '21 JobSpeak index reflecting almost 60% growth y-o-y, we observed improvements in hiring sentiment in both IT and non-IT industries. While the index for IT and ITeS vertical grew by 173%. Index for other verticals like banking, insurance, retail, hospitality grew in the range of 40% to 60% -- 70% year-on-year. We've also released our -- towards JobSpeak index recently, and the growth rate trajectory in recruitment across various verticals continues.The tech talent market remains very competitive, and it's posing a challenge to hire the best talent in the market for all companies. This is also reflected in our higher personnel costs during the quarter in our financials. We are also seeing a revival of the real estate segment post the impact of COVID-19 second wave that had hit the country in Q1. There is sizable growth in loan books of all major finance companies. With low prices and higher personal income, the country is having -- seeing a higher affordability -- housing affordability index. In fact, it's the highest in the decade. According to the traffic on our platform in terms of new listing and user queries have also been showing encouraging trends.In Jeevansathi, we continue to -- the strategy to invest in our brand and user experience. We focused -- continue to focus on increasing our share in the Hindi belt. During the peak of the second wave of the pandemic, the subdued sentiments didn't hamper the steady progress in the growing number of users and billings. We're also seeing more interest in our education portal from both students and institutes.We'll now talk about financial and other highlights of the recruitment segment. In Q2 '22, recruitment segment billings were INR 291.1 crores, up by 73.9% from Q2 '21 and 39% from Q2 of 2020. Revenues were INR 256.5 crores, up by 40.5% from Q2 '21 and 13% from Q2 of 2020. Operating EBITDA for recruitment business stood at INR 153 crores, up 52.3% from Q2 '21. and 23% from Q2 '20. Margins peaked at 59.6% versus 55% last year.Cash EBITDA for the recruitment business during the quarter stood at INR 192.8 crores, up from INR 85.4 crores reported for Q2 '21. Cash EBITDA margins were at 66.3% of billings compared to 51% in Q2 of '21. Recruitment numbers shared above are stand-alone numbers and do not include iimjobs, Zwayam and DoSelect. iimjobs and hirist had a year-on-year growth of 110% in the billing numbers, closing at INR 10.9 crores from INR 5.2 crores reported in Q2 '21. Our recent acquisition of Zwayam also reported a Q-on-Q growth of 40% during the quarter.A wider and comprehensive recruitment offering ranging from [indiscernible] to iimjobs, hirist and B2B offerings like Zwayam, RMS and DoSelect to customers are showing promising sort of strength in the market. On the product front, we made significant investment in upgrading the foundation of the platform, which is essential to drive faster and scalable innovations in the future. A lot of emphasis is placed on data classification and taxonomy, with new age companies were building changes and adding new roles and changing the industrial taxonomy and the platform. With these building blocks now in place, expect that continued investments in the data science and UX [ states ] of the product to drive and create more and more stickiness going forward.Resdex renewal rates have been progressing since -- well since last quarter and are showing improvement. This quarter also witnessed a growth in Naukri India billing by 60% over Q2 of 2020. This is just a Naukri India corporate business that I'm talking about here. Because recruitment segment consists of Naukri candidate services, Naukri Gulf, Quadrangle as well. Just the Naukri India enterprise or B2B business grew by 60% over Q2 of 2020 and about 82% over Q2 last year. There's also -- we are seeing a sizable uptick in sales of usage-based products in all our business -- in our business verticals. Of course, we also rationalize discounts and up prices on some products this quarter.This quarter also saw a significant growth in new CV registration on the platform. We added an average of 19,798 CV every day, up 20% compared to Q2 of 2020. Average CV modifications were 539,000 per day, up 20% Y-o-Y.Moving on to 99acres. Billings in Q2 grew by 45.9% year-on-year to INR 68.1 crore, while revenue grew from INR 36.3 crore to INR 48.3 crore. Operating loss for the quarter stood at INR 21.9 crores against a loss of INR 7.2 crores in Q2 of last year. Business was -- at a cash level, however, the business was cash neutral in Q2 2022 against a profit of INR 3 crores earned in the same quarter last year.The 99acres business also saw a strong recovery post COVID second wave in Q2 in all business segments. Billings grew 204% over Q1. We had a strong momentum exiting Q2 as well. We saw daily listings on the platform of 29% over Q1. Renewal rates bounced back this quarter and are back to pre-COVID levels. There's a marginal change in the product mix with few customers now focusing on upgrades and higher-value services being offered on the platform.
There's a problem which Hitesh is facing. He's just joined back. Hitesh, you're on mute now.
Hitesh, unmute.
There's some [ group's ] challenge we're facing. Hitesh will be back in a minute.
He's back.
Can you see me now clearly?
Yes, Hitesh, [ you're ] audible.
Okay. Thanks.
Hitesh, you may have to just repeat from daily listing on the platform grew by 29%.
Sorry, daily listings? Okay. So we saw -- okay, so 99acres business saw a strong recovery in Q2 in all business segments after a slow Q1. Billings grew 204% over Q1. We had good momentum exiting Q2 as well. We saw daily listings on the platform grow 29% over Q1. Renewal rates bounced back in the quarter and are back to pre-COVID levels. There's a marginal change in the product mix with fewer customers -- with few customers now focusing on upgrades and higher-value services being offered on the platform. Overall, responses on the platform grew well with growth in every category. Rental and commercial markets also recovered well besides new home and resale.Our improved platform experience is helping generate more employees for our clients. New premium listings were launched for brokers and resale, rental and commercial. New home pages on desktop, new solutions for advertising and discovering co-working office centers are also rolled out in the quarter. Reviews and locality insights were further improved and scaled up in the quarter. We expect this momentum to continue at least in the residential buying segment. Low interest rates for home loans, people looking for bigger homes, stamp duty incentives in some states will hopefully continue to aid residential home sales. Market is likely to remain affordable for some time. Now of course, all this could change every year if real estate prices start going through the roof.Share of the online medium and overall advertising spend of builders will hopefully continue to increase as advertisers further realize the cost efficiency of digital versus the offline medium. And we will continue to invest aggressively on improving our core platform experience in all our business verticals within 99acres storefront and in marketing our brand to further improve our competitive position. This space, of course, also a lot more competitive than earlier, thanks to a lot of money flowing in into this sector.Jeevansathi, billings declined marginally by 1.6% year-on-year in Q2 to INR 24.3 crores, and revenue grew 6.7% year-on-year to INR 25.4 crores. Operating EBITDA losses stood at INR 21.2 crores in Q2, down from a loss of INR 33.3 crores last year. Cash loss of Jeevansathi during the quarter stood at INR 21.7 crores against a cash loss of INR 32.7 crores in Q2 last year.The surge of COVID cases in the country caused a slowdown in the initial part of the quarter. This, however, continued in the quarter with many users putting off Matrimony surge in this period. Business continued to -- however, on product development, we'll focus on improving verification mechanisms and smoother communication flows on the platform. Users are now offered increased privacy by allowing them to completely hide their contact details and encouraged to use on-site chat and voice video calls to connect with other users on the platform.On the verification front, Jeevansathi now has 55% of the daily actives verified through a government-issued ID number. We now also offer newer base for NRIs to verify their profiles, helping improving their -- helping and improving their user experience.Moving on to the education business. In Q2, billings grew 74.7% year-on-year to INR 18.9 crores, while revenue grew 60.8% year-on-year to INR 21.6 crores. We made an EBITDA of INR 5.1 crores versus an EBITDA of INR 0.9 crores in Q2 of last year. Shiksha exhibited strong growth in billing and collection in Q2. It has deepened engaged -- in Shiksha, we are working hard to deepen our engagement with private policies and universities for undergraduate admissions as well in addition to post-grad courses. And we continue to invest in making our content more comprehensive, more student-friendly, more real time and in building the domain expertise. This should help us in generating even more responses for our customers going forward.At the consolidated level, the net sales for the company stood at INR 364.07 crores versus INR 260.9 crores for Q2 of last year. For the consolidated entity at the total comprehensive income level, there is a profit of INR 13,805.5 crores versus [ INR 331.8 crore ] profit for last year's same quarter. As explained earlier in our commentary on stand-alone financials, we hereby further clarify the impact of the listing and OFS on our consolidated financials. We have booked a gain on sale of investments in Zomato Limited for INR 357.14 crores under exceptional items.We also booked an unrealized market -- mark-to-market gain of INR 7,867.7 crores till date of listing of Zomato. It has been credited to the P&L through exceptional item. And unrealized gain of INR 7,269.36 crores from date of listing till quarter end has been taken to other comprehensive income in accordance with onetime irrevocable option available under Ind AS. Adjusted for the exceptional items, PBT stood at rupees -- at a profit of INR 66.6 crores in Q2 '22 versus a loss of INR 31.6 crores in Q2 '21.Thank you. We are now ready to take any questions that you may have.
Thanks, Hitesh. Thanks, Hitesh. We'll now begin the Q&A session. [Operator Instructions] Anand, you may start the Q&A now.
Yes. Our first question is from [ Nitin Jain ]. He's a private investor.
Yes. So my question is related to the recruitment business. So do we see any business model or any new age business coming and threatening the traditional hiring business, wherein it is more passive, as in the applicant goes on to the Naukri website, uploads his résumé and then if the recruiter is interested in the applicant, and they reach out to him or her? And a follow-up to that is, where do we -- like what kind of a threat do we see from Apna.com, which is seeing like super growth numbers recently?
Well, to answer your first question, that's what actually happens in Naukri today. People upload their résumé, and recruiters contact them, right? It's not just a job application platform. About 70% of our revenue comes from our database product, which operates the way you mentioned, right? And of course, we are trying -- throwing more and more AI and machine learning at the problem to improve the experience for both job seekers and recruiters so that they don't have to spend a lot of time searching like earlier.So -- and to answer your second question on Apna, but to answer your other sort of -- the other point you raised, if we see a threat -- a lot of threat from startups and other verticals. Well, not much has changed in the last few months. Of course, there are a bunch of startups like always trying out new things. We also are trying to disrupt our own model internally. We've been investing in JobHai and BigShyft inside the company. We're trying to build new products to see how we can sort of change the experience for job seekers and recruiters. But early days for many of these companies. Nothing material to report on that front, at least at this point in time. So the threat -- I mean, the competitive situation has not changed dramatically for us in the last few quarters. The same -- I mean, LinkedIn and these continue to be other big guys in the market.As far as Apna is concerned, well, Apna is -- I think they're looking at -- they're targeting the blue-collar markets. While we, the Naukri business, operates more in the white-collar space. And I think it's still early days for them. I mean, I don't think we are sort of -- we see them as competition as yet. But of course, they have raised a lot of money, and I'm sure they're trying to sort of build a good product. But early days, we don't see them as competition at the moment at least, at least in the space in which we operate.
Okay. And so just if I can dig a little deeper on the hiring business. So what you mentioned about JobHai or filling the white spaces in this business, my point is a little step further. Do we see any disruption coming to this business? And how are we preparing for that?
So like I said, see, we have continuously -- see, we have a very strong sort of product development team in-house, and they keep working on making changes to the platform, the sort improve the experience of both job seeker and recruiters. So we are -- we continue to experiment with a bunch of things. One is, of course, we've been -- we've acquired some startups. Like I mentioned, we have a recruitment assessment business now. We have a software business in Zwayam. We have DoSelect. We acquired iimjobs some time back. Inside the company, we've been investing very aggressively in doing the platform which we use in Naukri by throwing more and more machine learning and data science at the problem to provide better recommendations, better alerts, improve our search quality, improve our data quality on the platform. So these are areas that you can [indiscernible] we've invested. We also have -- we've also been a place to where you can research information on companies. There's lots sort of news, salary data, interview questions on AmbitionBox.At first, Naukri business also has had a good quarter. It grew more than 100% last quarter year-on-year. So there's a bunch of things we're doing inside. We're experimenting with -- we've test launched, we've test marketing, sort of blue -- JobHai, which is our blue-collar platform in the NCR market. If the results are encouraging, we'll roll it out nationally. We are trying to build a digital agency platform through BigShyft, early days again. We are experimenting.So we have a huge team working on some of these things inside the company. Outside, of course, there are a bunch of startups, and they are trying out various things. Has anybody become very large? The answer is no, we are not. I mean, there's nobody who's even, I think, even 5% of our size at this point in time, startups I'm talking about. So outside, our competition continues to be mostly LinkedIn and the other established players who have been around for a while. Of course, things could change in 5 years -- in 3 years, 4 years, 5 years. Who knows.
Next question comes from Vivekanand from AMBIT Capital.
Am I audible now?
Yes, Vivekanand.
How should one see the equipment billing in light of your previous commentary of the Board evenly spread out collection for this business post COVID? I mean, Hitesh, what I'm trying to get at is, what is the trend line growth now for this business as it appears now that we are past the COVID challenges? That's my first question.Second one is on the AIF book. Could you give us an update on how much [ employees ] has been deployed until now? And any thoughts around increasing or decreasing the side of the book, given that the deployment, we have been seeing news reports that deployments have been happening quite frequently?
Yes. Let me take the first question. So you're absolutely right. See, last year, we had muted Q2 because of COVID. I think recruitment billings were down maybe 13%, 14%, 15% last year. And on the back of that, of course, the growth this quarter looks very, very solid. And you're right in saying that Q3 was a normal quarter last year. So last year Q3, was, I think, flattish over Q3 2020. So that -- so now, of course, so if I just sort of extrapolate growth to slow down in Q3, year-on-year growth to slow down in Q3 compared to Q2, unless, of course, the recruitment market gets worse or it gets even better from our standpoint. So it's a red hot market right now.We saw a lot of our growth in Q1 and Q2 was driven primarily by the IT market recovery. And -- but now that we are also beginning to see are some green shoots in the non-IT market. So even attrition rates are growing in other functions. Talent is getting harder to find. Salaries are going up. So I think -- yes, so if the market goes crazy in the other verticals as well and all bets are off, but yes, otherwise, year-on-year growth should slow down compared to last year, compared to last quarter in Q3 because the base will be higher. But it's very hard to say, I mean, right now, how it's actually going to play out.
Can I take the second part of the question on the AIF?
Yes, yes.
Yes. Thanks. So look, we have no announcements to make right now, except to say one thing that, look, we remain committed to investing and we'll continue investing. But as of now, what is the status of the first fund? We are not making any announcement right now. We have seen from the Zomato, in particular, experience that, look, it does pay. It is profitable. It creates value for shareholders. It is a good return on our investment. And therefore, we continue to stay committed to the course of investing and investing judiciously. So as and when this fund is fully invested or at least some of the projects, we will evaluate our options.
I just want to make one more point. All the comments I made with respect to billing growth, right? Because in our business, revenue growth is different from billing growth as you were seeing this quarter as well. So billing growth may slow down vis-a-vis Q2, but revenue growth may still be better because we recognize revenue with a lag. So let's see how it plays out going forward.
Our next question comes from [ Sachin Jain ], [ Axis Mutual Fund ].
Yes. So just wanted to delve a bit deeper on 99acres. So given a lot of competition which is happening. So going ahead also, we would be spending more on keeping and taking away the market share, like that's what I'm assuming.
You're right. I mean, it's a very competitive market, and the market is also likely to grow faster going forward. And there are many more players and with all money flowing in. And there are -- also it's not on just one segment anymore. 99acres is new homes, it's resale, there's rental, there's PG, there's commercial. So there are various sort of segments and subsegments within the larger sort of real estate overall -- within the overall real estate umbrella. And we are likely to invest more and more in marketing going forward in this market.
Next question is from Sudheer Guntupalli from ICICI Securities.
Yes. My first question is on the margins part. Of course, we have seen margins trending up significantly because of the strong growth that we have seen in this quarter. Hitesh, how do you look at the margin trajectory now? Do you think that it has more or less peaked out? Or if the job market continues to be very vibrant and growth continues to be very strong like we have seen in the current quarter, there is still some more headroom for recruitment segment margins to inch up?
You're right in dependent growth. So if the market continues to remain red hot, and we -- I mean, it's -- then margins only improved, but if things start stabilizing a bit, then margins should stabilize or sort of maybe inch down a little bit going forward. It will depend on growth from here on.
Sure. So there is no thought process around margins more or less flattening or peaking out or anything of that sort in this segment?
See, we don't really target margins. We basically set targets for sales growth, and we invest in product development. And then margins, a result of what happens in the end as -- that we go to market. So it's not as if we have a target margin in mind which we want to maintain as a company. We don't [ work like that ].
So I'd like to add something there. See, you got to understand that one is if the market is red hot, it's good for our sales. It's not so good for our wage bill. It's not so good for our own employee attraction, retention, attrition. And therefore, while sales will go up, so will to some extent our cost because -- which is one of our biggest costs. So where the balance is, you got to figure that out. And as Hitesh said, we don't target margins.
Sure, sir. And Hitesh, just an extension to that. In 99acres, how do you read the margin trajectory? If I were to marry the one of your previous comment about a higher intensity of investments in marketing and sales. So if growth continues to be strong, how can we expect the margin trajectory to be in 99acres?
I don't know. See, it will depend on competition to some extent. It will depend on what opportunities we see for ourselves in the long run. Again, here, we again, like we're not targeting margins. We are -- if tomorrow, we have to lose INR 200 crores a year in 99acres to make stuff happen, we will lose INR 200 crores a year. And on the other hand, it's not required, it's not required. So I think the long-term game in any Internet business is leadership, and I think we have to do whatever it takes to establish and retain leadership in all the segments we operate in, if we want to stay in the game.
Sure. And just one last question on the 99acres part. So recently, of late, we have seen very increased aggression from Square Yards, and they are talking about offering an end-to-end product suite or, let's say, enabling transactions on the platform vis-a-vis just a listing sort of a platform. So how do you look at 99acres responding to this sort of increased competition or higher intensity of competition? Do we also have plans of making it more end-to-end product and transaction-enabled platform, or we continue with our current theme?
See, in the short term, we have all those plans. We will continue with the model we have, which is basically a marketplace model. Square Yards is not a market place, it's a brokerage, right? And there are several brokerages we work with. Today, they are all our customers. We are not looking to set up a brokerage in the near future, nor are we looking to change our model. But like I said, what I'm telling you is likely to hold for the next 2 quarters. The situation is constantly evolving. It's a changing market, really dynamic market. I can't say what's going to happen a year from now, but this is what our -- like -- I mean, unlikely that we will change what we're doing for the next 2 quarters at least.
The next question is from Mayank Babla from Dalal & Broacha.
My first question is regarding, sir, what is the plan with the money raised from the OFS from Zomato's listing? If you could expand that out for us.
Yes. Do you want to take that? Or should I take it?
Yes, go ahead, [ just take it ].
Look, the money wasn't that much when you compare it to our total capital pool. We got what, INR 350 crores? How much is it, Chintan?
Yes.
INR 350 crores? Okay. That's a little more tax, and then the rest of it comes. I mean, it just adds about maybe 7%, 8% to our -- maybe 10% to our fund balance. So there is no specific plan for it. All money is fungible. We will obviously use it for -- whatever we use our cash balance for will be part of that.
Okay, sure. And sir, second one is just a suggestion. I don't mean any offense, Hitesh, sir. Sir, in the initial remarks, if you could go a little slower would really go a long way for analysts, sir.
I'll do that. I'll keep that in mind going forward.
And we also put out the transcript on our website. So maybe that will give you a chance for...
And in a couple of hours? How long will it take?
Yes, actually key takeaways go immediately after the call. So...
Sure, sure. I understand, I'm just saying now.
The next question is from Dheeresh. He's an investor.
Yes. Congratulations for a good set of numbers. I just had some more directional question in recruitment vertical. So given that we have a strong performance, the market looks good, Anand, like you said, red hot. Do you have any adjacencies, monetization, for example, the ambition box seems to be doing really well, right. So do you have any more monetization platform -- monetization plans around these platform extensions or as such, the data itself of the large pool that we have?
If for the next few quarters, we are going to be focusing on monetizing of course, our main Naukri platform better. We see a lot of opportunity there. And we sort of got some new products, repackaged some of our existing products. We've taken a price hike, recurring discounts, so one. Two, we are also trying to scale up our iimjobs business, so that's a business we acquired some time back. So we are now using the Naukri sales team to sell that product, that suite of products to our customers. Three, we recently also acquired Zwayam and DoSelect. So these are new products in our portfolio. So for the next couple of years, we are also going to be using our sales team to sort of sell these products to our existing customers. So now, of course, the team is working on developing new products. There are new ideas and so on. But this is where most of the revenue is going to come from for the next year or 2.
Got it. Now just 1 connected question, just for -- as a business model understanding, for Naukri particularly, now we have seen -- if we see last 5 years, right, or maybe even extend it to 10 years, people used to switch less when there were -- less start-up ecosystem. Fast forward, the [indiscernible] will happen more. Does that auger well for us in terms of a business model?
Absolutely. Because see, in the long run, our revenue and our growth is a function of how many people get hired to our platform. And how many people get hired from our platform is a function of one, of course, our market share and some of those things, but also a very natural level of attrition rates in companies, growth plans of companies. So if a company has an attrition rate of 10%, they need to hire 10%. I mean -- and they have 5,000 people, they need to hire 500 people to stay at the same number. But if that attrition rate goes to 25%, they need to hire 250 people to stay at the same number, right, just to stay the same. And then they have to hire for growth. So if attrition rates at companies go up and if that becomes a new normal for whatever reason, could be because of economic growth, could be because of higher economic growth or COVID or digital transformation or whatever, right, then that’s going to be a big plus for our business on the revenue side. But like Sanjeev mentioned earlier, it also means that we have to work harder to retain and attract talent for ourselves, and it also means higher wage bills for all companies, including us.
Next question is from Aditya Grover, he's an investor.
Am I audible?
Yes. Go ahead.
Yes. I want to understand what's the trend in more and more start-ups to your portfolio starts, which have invested in like the welcoming your investment fund again in the further rounds and upcoming rounds. So like Happily Unmarried, if I'm naming the startup correctly, the biggest owner in that. So what's the trend in like -- so they have so much options. The funds -- have so many funds that are looking for a startup. So how they look the -- I mean, Info Edge, again, upcoming around coming into them?
Sanjeev, you want to take that?
Sorry, could you repeat the question? I lost my audio for a bit.
Yes. So in Happily Unmarried, if I'm naming the start-up correctly, I've seen your stake has increased year-over-year. So what's the trend in your portfolio companies? How easy it is now for you to increase stake in your present portfolio companies in which you have invested, because there are so many options in...
Yes. So the question really for us is do we want to do the gymnastics? Do we want to meet the provider? Do we want to -- we don't mind diluting. Now the answer is different for different start-ups. Okay. Now 1 consideration is if there is enough external money coming in and these new investors have deep pockets and the company's going to require a lot of capital going forward potentially, we would want more pockets on the table. And therefore, if somebody is coming in with a demand and "Listen, I want x more percentage shareholding," you may even do less than the operator, right?On the other hand, if the company is looking good, and when others don't have faith, right? We may put the whole money assets, although we are increasingly vesting time to do that, because we have seen in the past in a couple of companies that, look, we ended up losing money. Because if you are doing financial investment, you need more than 1 pocket on the table. We did the first 400 Zomato solo, but eventually by the fifth round, as the requirement of capital kept going up and up. It was beyond earnings or beyond our risk appetite, we had to sort of go out and get external capital, and that worked for the company. So I think the key is to do what's best for the company, the investing company and not just our company. And it's different in different cases with different considerations. But what is pretty clear to other investors now, enough of them, if they look Info Edge is regarded as a decent real estate investor. So we're getting enough follow-on investments or inbound interest into our portfolio companies from other investors that is happening. Not every company but in enough companies.
Vivek from AMBIT Capital is back.
My question is pertaining to the merger of prior fiscal year with the stand-alone entity. So if you could give us an update on when that is likely to justify when will the billing of equipment stand-alone include the iimjobs billing also. And what are the pending processes? Second is do you have similar plans for Zwayam and DoSelect as well given that now they are 100% owned and, I don't know, your sales team seems to be promoting these products in tandem.
Chintan, do you want to take that?
Yes, sure. So Vivek, on iimjobs, our thought process is over. We are just waiting for the final copy of the order. I think this quarter, we should be kind of merging it all along with our standalone numbers. I mean, it could -- it took a little longer than what we had expected because of COVID. There's a lot more pendency in the court. And even after the hearing was done, it took out kind of more time to get the orders out. But I think this quarter, we should be hopeful that it should be done. On Zwayam and DoSelect also, of course, this is subject to finally, Board approving it. But as a model, we have found that iimjobs' model worked very well for us. So we are likely that we would follow the same model. But so far, we haven't kind of got a resolution done about process started for that. So legal indication may take a while. But business integration, as Sanjeev has already informed that we have already started a little bit of leveraging our sales and distribution muscles to help Zwayam and DoSelect. So that part has already begun. The legal process may take a while.
I have 1 more question on the recruitment business. So Hitesh, you said that the India billing grew much faster than overall billing for recruitment. If you could give us some color on whether the billing was driven by mostly higher quotas on your resume database access? Or was it linked to value-added products that the customer is surprised to or was it just volumes? That will be all.
Yes, I don't have the breakup right now, but all 3. So we were able to realize higher prices. We were able to sell more volume, and we were also able to add a lot of new customers last quarter.
Thanks, Vivek. The next question is from Vijit Jain from Citi.
Hitesh, sir my question, I have 2 questions. One is on just the Info Edge ventures side. Just a color on how -- what is your investment level in ship rocket right now? They've been through a couple of rounds of funding with you in the last 6 months, right? And second is you and Zomato have both invested in Shiprocket now, and you also have another company called Shipsea, which is kind of in the related business. So just an overall sense of how you're thinking about the space specifically? And that exact number on how much your investment currently is in that business would help.
So Shipsea is in a very different business from Shiprocket. Shipsea is essentially a B2B SaaS company for shipping companies globally. Of course, we won a chunk of this in the currently in India, but they are now also following overseas. So that is almost no connection which your profit does not compete does not complement. Do a different target customer and form different problem. As far as Shiprocket is concerned, look, in the AIF, we have got a pocket where 10% of the fund can go into the HD investments. And for both Shiprocket and [ Go-is-Go ] were from that pocket, right? Now Shiprocket is a company we've been tracking for 8 or 10 years. We've known them for a while. We almost invested in 2012, but somehow, I think we made mistake not investing in that then, but you've done very well and you continue to do well. And we believe there's a logistics to say there, which is very, very interesting. Because ultimately, there will be many, many e-commerce companies which don't want to -- we do a lot of sales we can which are not on Amazon or Flipkart, which means that they need less to support for their direct sales. And Shiprocket is essentially targeting that market, and it is doing quite well. So that's a logic and rationale. Zomato came in and everyone asked Zomato why they came in and everyone asks Zomato why they came in this industry. Now I really can't speak for them. But look, Zomato sees themselves as delivery company. They see the logistics and other grocery items and other stuff as adjacencies. And therefore, the came in.If you Google -- if you look at AIF, it'll appear, our financial investment, and obviously, we will have some work prime, looking at it.
Okay, good. And sorry, Sanjeev, if I can ask, what's your shareholding and your profit at the moment?
I'm not sure we've announced it because what happens is that when you go into a company, there are other investors there. And you sign agreements which you will not disclose anything beyond what the company disclosed, and therefore, we stay with that. But look, it's not very large because it's the same company and we weren't doing that much money.
Yogesh Aggarwal.
Yes. Am I audible?
Yes. Please go ahead.
First of all, congratulations team on a great set of performance and good to see your financial investments yielding good windfall gains. My question was regarding Zomato. So going by what Zomato has told about their strategy going forward. And I just wanted to have your thoughts as an investor, right, that they believe that they want to replicate a Tencent or an Alibaba or an Info Edge. But 1 key difference, what we observed is that Zomato vis-a-vis these players, they had a kind of a cash cow business, which they funded these investments with whereas Zomato is as of now making losses for and going for growth, right? So in future, maybe in the next 1 or 2 years, do you see a risk of dilution at Zomato? And how do you see this playing out, given that the current kind of our shareholders, right, the Anchors, Info Edge or [indiscernible] may not want to put additional capital.
So first of all, no offense meant. [Foreign Language]
That's correct.
Okay. We went calling in menu. In strict accounting job, am I right? Chintan?
That's correct.
[Foreign Language] Now see secondly, is that Zomato in its own head, it has its own rupee. It's not Alibaba or Tencent or an Intuit. They're independent thinkers, and they've always been independent thinkers. And therefore, they're following the strategy that they believe is right for their company. They, for instance, are only investing in adjacencies. Info Edge didn't just invested -- we invested in several nonadjacent businesses, right?And they believe their strategic synergy can be derived from many of the businesses that they're investing, if not now, in the future. For example, if they believe that groceries is a big part of the future of potentially, they will look at investments in grocery delivery. They will look at investments in logistics that can help to grow sales also. And somewhere, hopefully, their thing, it'll all add. Now as far as investing from -- money based from the market versus money from operating cash flows, look, a more conservative approach would be, hey, make a profit, okay, with that property investment as opposed to this capital investment. That's probably the way Info Edge would have run, because we are more conservative. Zomato is -- has always been a little bit more dynamic, nimble, risk takers than we have been, and it has worked for them, and what we do works for us. So I don't say 1 approach is necessarily beating the other. But look at it this way, we have 18, 24 years to 25 years almost, 24 years to reach maybe INR 11 billion market cap. They have taken 13 years to reach whatever INR 13 billion, INR 14 billion market cap. Maybe they have a high-risk approach, but they've got it, right? And I'm not saying high risk versus low risk or low risk versus high risk. I think there are 2 different approaches and the following that approach, and we accept it.
Next question is from Prateek from Antique Stockbroking.
Yes. My question is regarding the investment space again. So there was a comment from one of the, I think, your investors recently that investors are feeling like commodity due to this liquidity surplus and level of competition is so high that there are many rejections and disappointments in each months. So in that context, I mean, I think in one of the calls earlier, we have mentioned that we have been meeting several companies, like, on a daily basis or a quarter basis. So even -- as also now, we are chasing companies or companies are coming to us. I mean in what context we should see this statement...
Both are happening, yes`. Both are happening. While it is -- there are some identified good companies which a lot of investor chase, there sometimes you're going to hit a gem, which others haven't found yet. You could go ahead. There are sometimes you've got a situation where you simply can't get it. You're too late, far too -- because we already got in and so on. Sometimes you get a situation where a company only flipped overseas. They're in a constrained industry, a flipped company and so on. But as long as, look, see in a fund, we've invest in 20, 25 companies maxing out, 28. It's not as we will do 100 companies in the size of funds that we are doing. So to get to that number, I think there's enough -- if you work hard enough, work smart enough, you would dig deep. You meet a few hundred companies every month. You're okay. You will find your investments.We also now -- we also now -- see, a lot of good companies now come as the references from our investee founders. And we found referred deals are often in the best. And the founder or the investor, which in many cases has happened with us. It works well.
Sure. And my second question is related to the prior question on, like, Zomato investing in adjacencies. So Zomato was able to raise $1.2 billion from market towards various -- I mean, as was suggested, towards various organic and inorganic growth initiatives. So obviously, this IPO happened and now is behind and they are able to raise the money. But had this IPO not happened so still like, let's say, if they would have been going to private capital investors asking for, I mean, for fundraise. So they still would be investing in these adjacencies, suggesting that like, for example, you may look at say, profit or I mean...
Sorry, that's a counterfactual situation, which I don't have the answer to. But I don't want to advise them to obviously be a little careful and first get the core business order until they understood. But look, that's my advice. Like I said, [indiscernible] in there. So I don't know, they might have. Who knows?
Okay. And just last question. On the billings side of matrimony segment, this number of INR 25 crores, how do we see that on a quarterly basis? Like 2, 3 years down the line in Jeevansathi segment?
Two, 3 years on the line is going to be very hard -- it's very hard to really predict what's going to happen here, can't say.
Next question from [ Chhavi Chinwali ].
Am I audible?
Please go ahead.
First of all, congratulations to the whole Info Edge team for today's PolicyBazaar, a day and a half, in the way, one of the lower key, and also the sentiments of the Padma Bhushan Award. So my question is regarding this data privacy build that's been around...
Just a clarification, it's Padma Shree, not Padma Bhushan. Padma Bhushan is 2 levels higher, just to clarify..
Sorry, sir. So it's regarding the data, where is that seen around for quite some time now and it's been said that it will take for the discussions in the winter departmental. So just wanted to know how would this impact the startup space and also the Internet space? Because there's a lot of approvals would be required and many people are becoming aware, have started denying the pools, like regarding locations and all of that. Would that environment come to be? Or any other vertical or any other distance start a business sector in?
Sorry, I didn't catch the question. Vivek, you got the question?
Why, I also didn't get something, related to privacy, no?
I'll take it. I'll take it. See, if I got you right, what you're saying, it is a privacy bill, and all kinds of approvals will be required to get more data on users. And would that therefore impact our business. Is that correct?
Yes. Not just in offline business, but like many other businesses. Those require locations, like all those businesses that are smooth with their locations. There many people have like becoming aware of the fact have started denying the locations all the time. New people are around and all of that. So would that impact the business, the advertising spaces and all of that? That's the basic question. You will see like it's still ahead of the time, but have you, like, managed to come out different or have a plan to that aspect?
See, I can comment on our business is we don't see it impacting our businesses because in our business, we ask for all this data and people give it to us willingly because if, for example, you're looking for a job, you can't -- we just want to know where you're based and more than -- and jobs that are more than happy to share where they're based. It's not as if we are sort of taking this data and selling some other adds edge to then end. Yet they sort of willingly give this data to us, and we use it to improve experience of both job seekers and recruiters. Similarly in real estate, I mean people willingly give us their location data or whatever other data because they want to sell their property or if they want to buy a property. They need to sort of share this information with us. They do with Jeevansathi as well. So I don't see this impacting our businesses, because we are very transparent about what data we collect. We don't use it on the sly. We are -- so it's -- what you see is what you get on Info Edge. We don't take data from people's mobile phones. We don't sort of kind of do any of those things. So as far as our businesses are concerned, of course, I'm not very, very familiar with the bill, but their location piece, we don't see that impacting us. But of course, one will have to study that bill in more detail to see if they could potentially impact on our outlook. As far as the other sort of Internet businesses go, I mean, I guess the impact will be different on different businesses depending on their data policies.
Yes, sure. I'm anticipating that. And I have -- just again, that happened to my sibling a couple of days ago. A call got to him. Like, he was registered on the North key website with some job and all of that. So a call got to him saying that they're talking from the North, the headquarters and they want to know if he's still looking on for jobs. And if he is, then, like, he'll have to pay a certain amount of tens of thousands of rupees and all of that. So like is it extracted already from the application? Or it comes through the data, like internal mail data and all of that. So that was -- where the basic revenue . So that was where the basic question was directed.
So I...
Yes. Let's talking about some for forward key. So we are not chasing the -- the impression is that this was that call was from only asking for money for the job application, I don't think that's what do. That's not our model. In fact, we aggressively tell and message everyone that they should not be paying specific for any job.
See, we have a free platform. Register for free. You can apply to also job for free. There are some candidate services for which we charge. Like if you want your resume developed, we can help you write your resume. There are some places -- but I'm aware of -- see, but what we are also sort of experiencing and we are actually a victim here is that there are many people outside or using our brand name to free job seekers, right? So people get ahold of this data from wherever they get data. And then they sometimes call them and say, listen, we're calling from North Korea and we can help you with your job and we can help you, lineup interviews with you. And if you pay us money, we'll get your job or we line up interviews. That's got nothing to with us. Right.
Yes, I think that turned to be a fraud linked course because it was not verified on Google or all of that. So we actually -- didn't actually go further on it. But yes, it was just some of the questions that had something to do with data privacy and it's hard raising it in front of a new person then -- during the business.
How if get off-line, send us details. In fact, we can stay on this call and we would -- see we can help you look into this.
That was the last question. [Operator Instructions] Hitesh, there's a question from [ Hitesh Sharma ].
Yes, I just wanted to know by any chance, are you planning to have a brick-and-mortar situations as well in your current line of business?
No. I mean we are not looking at expanding offline in any major player in any of our workplace.
Hitesh, there are certain aspects of our client engagement that are offline. For example, the Naukri sales team for the bigger part goes and meets clients. Earlier, it's face-to-face. Now all Zoom. Once COVID's over, maybe it's face-to-face again. Likewise, in [indiscernible] similarly. But the product and platform itself is online and the consumption is online and the user is online.But there's, of course, a telephone element also sometimes where you have a call center to make a sales, where you have a call center to do training, you do Webex training. So the core product is online with some facilitation support, which sometimes is offline. But no, I mean, we are not-- what I say to you, we're not planning to have a core product that's offline.
The reason for asking was that like the specialized placement consultants like 3P or someone else, are you planning to have some separate channel for the extremely senior people?
No. See, like I guess I've seen -- I mean we could continue to sort of focus on improving our online platform and improve the experience with all kinds of job seekers. We have a separate vertical for freshers. First Naukri, we have -- we just acquired iimjobs. We have a lot of premium job listings there for premium job seekers. We are -- we continue to work on improving the experience for all kinds of job seekers on the Naukri platform by using more and more machine learning and data science to personalize it and so to ensure that people get relevant jobs , et cetera. We are not looking to set up an off-line business to help senior job seekers or anything of that sort at this point in time. We have a small business recruitment firm called Quadrangle inside the company. That's a tiny business for us. We do about INR 18 crores a year from that business. That -- they work more like a placement firm, but that's a very small part of our business.
But Hitesh Sharma. The point is that as long as -- I think actually, we have -- Vivek, how many placement concerted clients do we have?
Yes. 14,000, 15,000.
We have 15,000 placement consultants who use Naukri. So when you go on a Naukri, you are potentially -- you can get helped by 15,000 specialized placement companies as opposed to us doing our own.
Yes. Sir, I am only talking like directors and all the senior people like something like that. That's all right. , because that is then going on...
No. We have no such plan. We have no plan to launch a separate vertical or a separate line of business offline or online for very, very senior people, not at the moment at least.
Congratulations, again, to Mr. Bikhchandani for being awarded Padma Shree then.
Thank you so much.
I really feel proud about it. I've been using Naukri, I think, maybe like 35 years. My exterior 35 years, 37 years U.K. sites. So whether for recruitment or for looking for, I've been doing something many times. Thanks a lot.
Thank you so much. Thank you so much.
Any more questions please? Sir, we are done with this session.
Thank you, Vivek. On behalf of Info Edge, we conclude this conference call. Thank you.
Yes. Thank you, everyone, for taking the time out for this call, and have a great evening.
Thank you, everyone.
Thank you very much. Bye.
Thank you so much, everyone. We conclude this call now. You may disconnect your lines. Thank you so much.