Info Edge (India) Ltd

NSE:NAUKRI

Earnings Call Transcript 2019-Q1

[Operator]

Good day, ladies and gentlemen, and a very warm welcome to the Q1 FY '19 Results Conference Call of Info Edge Limited. Joining us today on the call are Mr. Hitesh Oberoi, Managing Director and CEO; Mr. Chintan Thakkar, CFO; Mr. Sanjeev Bikhchandani, Vice Chairman. [Operator Instructions] Please note that this conference is being recorded. I'm now glad to hand the conference over to Mr. Hitesh Oberoi. Thank you, and over to you, sir.

[Hitesh Oberoi, Co]

Thank you. Good evening, everyone, and welcome to our first quarter FY '18/'19 results conference call. We will first take you through the quarterly financial performance of the company. Then, we will cover each business in more detail. And in the end, we will be happy to take questions.The audited financial statements file has been uploaded on our website, www.infoedge.in. We've also provided segmental billing, revenue, profit before taxes and DSR movements in our data sheet on our website.Firstly, talking about the stand-alone financials. Billings in Q1 were INR 283.3 crores, up 17% year-on-year. Revenue in Q1 was INR 259.5 crores, up 17% year-on-year. Operating expenses excluding depreciation for the quarter were INR 175.3 crores, up 15% year-on-year. This was primarily due to an increase in marketing, hiring in certain products and annual increments.Operating EBITDA stood at INR 84.3 crores versus INR 70.3 crores last year, having increased 20% year-on-year. Operating EBITDA margin for the quarter stood at 32.5% versus 31.6% in Q1 of last year. EBITDA adjusted for ESOP noncash charges stood at INR 88.1 crores versus INR 79 crores last year. And adjusted for EBITDA margin for the quarter -- adjusted EBITDA margin for the quarter stood at 34%. Cash EBITDA for the quarter stood at INR 112 crores, up 14.2% year-on-year. Deferred sales revenue has increased to INR 420 crores as of June 30, 2018, versus INR 354 crores as of June 30, 2017, an increase of 19% year-on-year. The cash balance for the company as a whole stands at INR 1,980 crores as of June 30, 2018.The recruitment business and the real estate business continued to drive the growth for the quarter. On the expenses side, we spent more on marketing as compared to Q1 of last year, and we hired additional resources to invest in changing technologies. Additionally, there was some impact to the increments which take [ amounted to crores ].Moving on to results by segment. We'll first cover the recruitment segment. In Q1, recruitment segment billings were INR 210 crores, up 15.4% year-on-year, while revenues were INR 184.1 crores, an increase of 15.2% year-on-year. Operating EBITDA margins in recruitment segment were at 56.8% versus 55% in Q1 FY '18. Employee costs were higher because of increments and some net hiring in the division. EBITDA margins adjusted for ESOP noncash charges stood at 57.8%. Cash EBITDA for recruitment during the quarter stood at INR 132 crores, up 15.6% year-on-year.In Naukri, in Q1 FY '19, we added an average of 18,000 fresh CVs everyday, and the Naukri database grew to about 59 million CVs. Average CV modifications were [ 350,000 ] per day. Our traffic share in the job portal space continues to be in the mid-70s excluding Indeed and around 60% including Indeed. And we continue to invest aggressively in our recruitment tools and systems business as we add more clients for the products.There were some -- we saw an uptick in new customer acquisition last quarter, and there was also some pickup in IT sector hiring, leading to higher billing from IT companies this quarter.Non-IT companies -- sectors like auto, industrial products, construction, banking, finance, insurance, manufacturing, BPO and some other smaller sectors also did well for the company in terms of growth as also indicated by the Naukri JobSpeak index. Revenue from consultants did not grow as expected.Now we will talk about other verticals starting with 99acres. In the real estate business, 99acres, billings in Q1 grew 39% year-on-year to INR 41 crores. Revenue grew 34% to INR 42 crores. We continue to invest in marketing -- we continued to invest in marketing during the quarter, resulting in an EBITDA loss of around INR 11.5 crores versus a loss of INR 9.6 crores in Q1 of last year. Adjusted EBITDA after adjusting for ESOP expenses stood at a loss of INR 10.7 crores versus a loss of INR 7.1 crores in Q1 of last year. Cash EBITDA loss in 99acres during the quarter stood at INR 11.7 crores versus a loss of INR 8.7 crores [ in Q1 of last year ].Our traffic share amongst real estate portals remained around 60% during the quarter based on time spent as per SimilarWeb. Broker billings form 50% of the overall billings, while builder billings stood at about 45% of the billings for the trailing 12 months ending June 30, 2018. Homebuyers continue to prefer retail and rental properties over new launches which was evident from higher Q1 billing growth on account of agents. Owner billings stood at about 5% of total billings for the last 12 months. We will continue to invest in marketing for 99acres as we try to consolidate our position in real estate classified business since we believe the real estate market is now on a revival path. The key area of focus of investment in 99acres would include marketing and more investment in products and technology. And during the quarter, we exceeded the [ sales inquiry ] by our builder partners across the country.Moving on to the matrimony business. Jeevansathi billings grew 1% year-on-year in Q1 to INR 18.2 crores, owing to aggressive pricing and activity by competition during the quarter. Revenue grew 4% year-on-year to INR 18.6 crores. Higher marketing expenses in the quarter aided higher traction as number of paid transactions improved year-on-year. We have started looking -- we are looking to consolidate our position as we penetrate deeper into the key regions from [ the businesses ] we operate in. We are likely to continue to spend on marketing going forward as well.Operating EBITDA loss in Jeevansathi increased to INR 5.6 crores in Q1 FY '19 from INR 4.1 crores in Q1 FY '18. Adjusted EBITDA loss stood at INR 5.5 crores in Q1 versus a loss of INR 3.5 crores in Q1 FY '18. Cash EBITDA for Jeevansathi during the quarter stood at negative INR 5.4 crores. More than 90% of our users access Jeevansathi from their mobile, and the Jeevansathi mobile app continues to be the best in the category.Moving on to the Shiksha business. In Q1, Shiksha billings grew by 22% year-on-year to INR 14.1 crores while revenue grew 11% year-on-year and reached INR 15.3 crores. We made an EBITDA profit of INR 3.1 crores in Q1 versus a profit of INR 2 crores in Q1 of last year. Adjusted EBITDA profit for the quarter stood at INR 3.3 crores versus INR 2.9 crores last year. And cash EBITDA was INR 2.1 crores versus INR 0.6 crores in Q1 of last year. We continue to make our efforts -- all efforts to improve our products and user experience in [ kikarathsan ].Talking about our strategic investments. The Policy Bazaar deal was announced in the quarter and will be concluded after statutory approval. And we will continue to evaluate the investment options from time to time.That's all from us. Thank you. And we are now ready to take any questions.

[Operator]

[Operator Instructions] The first question is from the line of Anuj Gupta from Progress Research (sic) [ Perfect Research ].

[Anuj Gupta]

Among the invested [ companies ], can you please throw some light on any companies which have shown extremely impressive growth and could become big like Zomato or Policy Bazaar?

[Hitesh Oberoi, Co]

So I think both Zomato and Policy Bazaar [indiscernible] shown impressive growth, and which is why there is constant [indiscernible]. And we have seen Policy Bazaar concluded an investment round recently a little bit [indiscernible] investment round. So these 2, I think, are continuing to do well. The others are work in progress.

[Anuj Gupta]

Also, could you please share some numbers on the potential opportunities on the market size for Naukri.com, 99acres.com and Jeevansathi?

[Hitesh Oberoi, Co]

See, I mean, there is no sort of data available, but what I can tell you is that, see, we work with over 70,000 customers in Naukri alone, and we estimate that about 20% to 25% of all hiring happens through Naukri in all these companies. And they're all spending on offline recruitment firms. There's a lot of spending on referral hirings. There's a lot of spending on [indiscernible] hiring still. So it's hard to say, but the total market, I mean, one can just hazard a guess, could be close to $1 billion if not more as far as recruitment goes. And then on top of that, there is temp staffing, and there is contract staffing and so on and so forth. And here I'm just discussing the white-collar space. And then there is blue-collar hiring as well, which is a separate market altogether. Today, it may be very small, but it could go -- grow going forward. So the market for recruitment is probably upwards of $1 billion. In real estate, I mean still -- the real estate was at its peak a few years ago. I mean, real estate firms were spending about INR 3,000 crores to INR 4,000 crores a year on advertising in offline media like newspapers and hoardings. That spend have come down a little bit because the real estate market has been in the doldrums for a while now. But I'm sure it's still upwards of more than INR 82,000 crores. The online portals today, of course, get a small fraction of that, and that market may start growing once again as the industry starts to recover. So the opportunities at both these places is really large, but you need the right products and services to sort of be able to capitalize on these opportunities.

[Operator]

The next question is from the line of Vivekanand Subbaraman from AMBIT Capital.

[Vivekanand Subbaraman, Media Analyst]

So on 99acres and recruitment, how much of the billing growth was organic? And how much was driven by potentially longer-duration subscription packages? And on recruitment, can you give us any segment -- you gave a brief description of various segments. But could you give us a more detailed segmental color? And do you think the environment is now conducive for price increases there? And lastly, on 99acres, can you please update us on the various key markets like Delhi NCR, Mumbai, Bangalore and billing growth in these markets?

[Hitesh Oberoi, Co]

So in none of our -- as we said, we don't sell products beyond a year. So I mean 99%, 98% of our sales are of subscriptions that are less than a year. So we don't sell multiyear subscriptions. As far as Naukri is concerned, about close to 25% of our -- 27%, 28% of our revenue comes from IT companies, another 25%, 26% of our revenue comes from recruitment firms. And then all the rest comes from another 40, 50 industries. During the quarter -- last quarter was -- as I said on the call was at -- we saw a slight slowdown in IT, which impacted our billing growth last quarter. This year we -- this quarter we saw slight revival in IT. Only time will tell whether it sustains, but markets like Bangalore, Chennai and Hyderabad did well for us last quarter. As far as 99acres is concerned, we saw billing growth in all the markets that we operate in. Of course, Delhi and Bombay are 2 large markets, followed by Bangalore, and then by markets like Pune, Chennai and Hyderabad. But we saw growth in almost every city.

[Vivekanand Subbaraman, Media Analyst]

All right. And just to understand the duration packages, and -- is it so that the -- you said annual packages. But is it also the case that brokers have the option of taking shorter-duration packs and, therefore, when things improve, they start looking at taking longer-duration packages, say, up to a year. Is that understanding correct or...?

[Hitesh Oberoi, Co]

You're right. Because they're buying shorter-duration subscriptions, both in the equipment and in jobs. And you're also right that when the market starts to look up, people sort of feel more confident and then they're more willing to commit to longer-duration packs than when the market is not so good.

[Vivekanand Subbaraman, Media Analyst]

Is that the case right now? And if so, is it time to press for price increases? Or how should we see the market right now?

[Hitesh Oberoi, Co]

Well, we'll have to do a more detailed analysis and then we can get back to you on this. But see, anecdotally, yes, you know that we are seeing a lot more confidence, like I said, we saw revival in IT. IT was -- IT hiring was hit for a while. Q1, we did okay. Last -- but you must also remember that last year Q1 was impacted because of GST. So we are growing on a slightly -- a low base. We have to see if this will sustain going forward. And yes, if it sustains for the next 1 or 2 quarters, then we could look at a price hike in the businesses that we operate in.

[Operator]

The next question is from the line of Arya Sen from Jefferies.

[Arya Sen, Equity Analyst]

My first question is for Sanjeev. Specifically on Policy Bazaar, at one point, you had sold down some stake. Last year, you invested a bit, but maintained stake. This year you've actually increased stake over there. So what has changed over the last 2 years? What has made you more positive? And what's the outlook on that business from a 3-, 4-year perspective?

[Hitesh Oberoi, Co]

So what has changed is our perception of the risks in the business. When we sold down, it was 2 reasons. One is to facilitate the entry of other investors. So like [indiscernible]. Also at that time, the risk perception was different. Subsequently, I think the business from our side improved, at the same time certain regulatory changes have occurred, which has caused us to believe that Zomato [indiscernible], and therefore, we maintained our share. We defended our share in the last round. And now we feel more confident that it's going to be a very really valuable business and therefore we have actually increased our exposure, to summarize [indiscernible]. And our next 3, 4 years, look, right now the business is growing rapidly. And the other site, Paisabazaar, has also begun to do well, although it's still losing money. We will have to take it year-by-year, quarter-by-quarter and then see that growth. It's very hard to predict stuff 3, 4 years out. But right now, it's looking very good.

[Arya Sen, Equity Analyst]

Right. And the risk position that you talk about is -- you mentioned regulatory risk. So what specific regulatory change was this? And is there anything outside of that?

[Hitesh Oberoi, Co]

I think 2 things. One is, I think there's now much, much deeper understanding in the environment about the fact that Policy Bazaar is good for the consumer, right, and therefore, it's a model that help take a stake, and therefore, it must be encouraged. I think certain price ceilings were relaxed a bit on what they charge. So these 2 things led us to believe that [ we can now assume ] business growth.

[Arya Sen, Equity Analyst]

Right. Secondly, any update you can provide on Zomato, specifically on the online ordering and delivery part? What is the current run rate of orders? And how much is being -- how much of the fulfillment is being done by Zomato itself through Runnr and any other updates that you can share on Zomato?

[Hitesh Oberoi, Co]

So Zomato is increasingly delivering more and more of its orders through its own delivery system, which is Runnr and others, right, and less and less increasingly through third parties. Although it's still got more third party than a Swiggy which is entirely for delivery and pickup. And the run rate, I mean, Zomato has sort of announced something, which is I think about 12 million orders a month run rate. Of course, Swiggy has not so high a number, but the gap is narrowing. But we -- Zomato expects to catch up and overtake in a few months.

[Arya Sen, Equity Analyst]

Sorry, you're saying 12 million? Because in the annual report, it says 5.5 million, so that has -- in 3 months, it's gone to 12 million, is that correct?

[Hitesh Oberoi, Co]

Yes, there's a rapid increase in Zomato online order business.

[Arya Sen, Equity Analyst]

Is there some seasonality to it?

[Hitesh Oberoi, Co]

Zomato has announced publicly, so you can [indiscernible].

[Arya Sen, Equity Analyst]

That's right. But is there some seasonality to it do you think?

[Hitesh Oberoi, Co]

I don't think so. In fact, actually, some [ orders ] are increased.

[Arya Sen, Equity Analyst]

Okay, okay. Fair enough.

[Hitesh Oberoi, Co]

The Football World Cup [ might have played a role ] so we don't know. But right now, growth is so rapid that we don't think [indiscernible].

[Arya Sen, Equity Analyst]

Right. And are they still continuing with that policy of discounting the commissions they charge to the restaurants?

[Hitesh Oberoi, Co]

I think they are spending substantially on marketing, right. They don't reveal the exact numbers to the public. But yes, I mean, they have raised capital. The strategy has changed. This is going to be a more capital consumption business going forward. They're looking to grow the market, and they're looking to grow the online ordering piece.

[Arya Sen, Equity Analyst]

Right. Secondly...

[Hitesh Oberoi, Co]

At the same time, Zomato Gold has done very well and continues to do well. And they've recently launched Piggybank, which is a loyalty program, and that has again come out publicly that has -- within 48 hours of launch [ it has locked up ] a large number of subscriptions and sign-ups. So that seems to be Zomato. Apart from online ordering, I think, Zomato is gone a second layer or third layer or fourth layer, which is all [indiscernible] interesting: advertising and Zomato Gold and Piggybank, which is the loyalty program.

[Arya Sen, Equity Analyst]

Right. And could you also clarify what is your current stake in Policy Bazaar after all these investments?

[Hitesh Oberoi, Co]

Yes. Chintan?

[Chintan Arvind Thakkar, CFO & Whole Time Director]

So I think, it will be roughly -- roughly it should be about [indiscernible] because all the rounds have not yet closed. But whatever we have announced together, it would be [indiscernible].

[Hitesh Oberoi, Co]

Between 28%, 30%.

[Chintan Arvind Thakkar, CFO & Whole Time Director]

Yes, close to that.

[Arya Sen, Equity Analyst]

Okay. And Chintan, also if you could clarify on the rights offer you took this quarter of INR 160 million, that is on account of which investment specifically?

[Chintan Arvind Thakkar, CFO & Whole Time Director]

So I think, very specifically, it is about Canvera, although I mean in our book it is the subsidiary company to which we are holding. But if you have to go to the ultimate impairment on asset -- impairing asset, then it's in Canvera.

[Arya Sen, Equity Analyst]

And the adoption of IND-AS 115 basically has had no impact on you, including on how you recognize the sales incentive, which you are now continuing to recognize as it is expensed, that's what you've said, right?

[Chintan Arvind Thakkar, CFO & Whole Time Director]

Yes, yes. Because we have all the contracts which are kind of 12 months or less than 12 months, then have the option to kind of continue with the current accounting. So we have continued with that.

[Arya Sen, Equity Analyst]

So this is a more conservative treatment, effectively?

[Chintan Arvind Thakkar, CFO & Whole Time Director]

Yes, that's correct.

[Arya Sen, Equity Analyst]

And lastly, I missed the number on EBITDA for the recruitment business, which Hitesh had mentioned earlier?

[Hitesh Oberoi, Co]

[indiscernible] Cash EBITDA for recruitment for the quarter was INR 132 crores.

[Arya Sen, Equity Analyst]

You also mentioned operating EBITDA, right?

[Hitesh Oberoi, Co]

Yes, operating EBITDA was INR 104 crores.

[Operator]

The next question is from the line of Ravi Menon from Elara Capital.

[Ravi Menon]

Just wanted to check on the revenue per customer. It seems like that's gone up quite a bit for Naukri, nearly 18% Y-o-Y. So what's led to the sharp increase? So I didn't hear you mention anything about pricing going up.

[Hitesh Oberoi, Co]

See, normally what happens when the market starts looking up is that we will be able to add more customers because more businesses start hiring. So we are able to upgrade customers because [indiscernible] you need to hire more people than they were hiring earlier. We get -- we are able to push volume. And thirdly, discounts also sort of come down because businesses are in a hurry to hire. So we had a good quarter, but like I said earlier, this is on the back of a poor quarter -- first quarter last year, which was impacted by GST. So we are not saying that the market is back. But if this sustains, yes, we [indiscernible].

[Ravi Menon]

Right. And Jeevansathi, I'm not sure, have you stopped sharing the revenues for that?

[Hitesh Oberoi, Co]

Sorry, I didn't get that. Can you repeat?

[Ravi Menon]

Jeevansathi, I think I missed when you called out the revenue number. Could you share that again, please?

[Hitesh Oberoi, Co]

Yes, yes. So billing in Jeevansathi was flat. Revenue was up 4% year-on-year.

[Ravi Menon]

Great, okay. And also Zomato, we saw that they've announced 2 figures: one is with restaurant B2B business; and secondly, talking about grocery delivery to consumers as well. So any thoughts on [indiscernible] and what sort of capital this would require?

[Hitesh Oberoi, Co]

Sorry, I couldn't understand your question.

[Unknown Executive]

[indiscernible] grocery and [indiscernible].

[Hitesh Oberoi, Co]

Yes, so as of now I think these are just poles in the water. I don't think that in the immediate term they require a lot of capital, and then we'll see how it goes.

[Operator]

The next question is from the line of Atul Mehra from Motilal Oswal Asset Management.

[Atul Mehra, Research Analyst]

Just couple of questions. One is in terms of the staffing business, in terms of the recruitment engine. What part of the recruiters is basically temp staffing firms, which are like the more organized top players?

[Hitesh Oberoi, Co]

Yes, we don't have the breakup right now. We don't track it like that.

[Atul Mehra, Research Analyst]

And in terms of -- and in terms of just on the staffing business once again. So if you were to maybe segment this to, say, if you have about 80,000-odd clients, but if you were to segment it in terms of the top, say, 5%, 10%, so how would they contribute to revenues?

[Hitesh Oberoi, Co]

The top 10% give a little over 60% of our collection and billing. And if you take it to 20%, it'll probably be upwards of 85% [indiscernible].

[Atul Mehra, Research Analyst]

Top 20% is 85%?

[Hitesh Oberoi, Co]

Top 10%.

[Atul Mehra, Research Analyst]

Top 10% is 60%, top 20% is 85%.

[Hitesh Oberoi, Co]

10%, that's about 8,000 clients.

[Atul Mehra, Research Analyst]

Right, right. Got it. And just one number on Zomato in terms of what would be our unique customer base now in India? And similarly, what would be the Gold member customer base?

[Hitesh Oberoi, Co]

So they don't announce these numbers. So I'm not at liberty to disclose them. But both Gold and restaurant -- so you see, more and more restaurants are now preferring to do delivery and to do advertising for the delivery as opposed to pure advertising for many people to [indiscernible]. So it's in bit of a flux there [indiscernible]. So -- but overall, [indiscernible] into total revenue number.

[Operator]

[Operator Instructions] The next question is from the line of Karan Uppal from Haitong Securities.

[Karan Uppal, Research Analyst]

Just a question on IT pickup. So what's the outlook there? And which part of the IT hiring is currently you are seeing the traction? Is it in the lateral space or in the fresh recruitment?

[Hitesh Oberoi, Co]

IT growth was slow for us over the last 1 or 2 quarters. Q1 was, of course, okay, so IT sort of hiring. Numbers picked up for us, and markets like Bangalore, Chennai and Hyderabad did well. I don't know what's really going to happen going forward because like I said, our growth was also impacted last year because of GST and other sort of things happened in the economy. [indiscernible] is confident that this will sustain, but we'll have to wait and see what happens. Then -- and when we say -- when we sort of say IT, we actually mean IT services companies, foreign development companies, e-commerce companies, domestic software companies, back offices, MNCs, all these are clumped together under the IT heading.

[Karan Uppal, Research Analyst]

Okay, okay. Secondly on the advertisement spends for this quarter. The numbers have been [indiscernible] slight. Last quarter, it had a very nice pickup. So what's the outlook over there?

[Hitesh Oberoi, Co]

On advertising?

[Karan Uppal, Research Analyst]

Yes.

[Hitesh Oberoi, Co]

Yes. So we could see the spend on both Jeevansathi and 99acres. And that's why our ad expenses are poor compared to last year. So on advertising, we take it quarter-by-quarter. We don't have a budget for the year. We run some ads, see the response to the advertising. And then basically the response [indiscernible] spend more or spend less. Sometimes we're also driven by competition. So if competition is aggressive, we get aggressive. It's going to be hard for me to tell you what's going to happen going forward, but on the whole, we will continue to invest more in advertising than building product development in [ our online ] business.

[Operator]

[Operator Instructions] The next question is from the line of Ankit Kedia from Centrum Broking.

[Ankit Kedia, Research Analyst]

Sir, could you share some operating data for Jeevansathi? In the last 2 quarters, we have aggressively invested in Jeevansathi in advertising. Even in the IT end, we ran some campaigns for Jeevansathi. Data sheet, I think you have stopped carrying some data points for Jeevansathi. So if you can just share some data points on that?

[Hitesh Oberoi, Co]

Yes. So we are -- at the beginning of starting the Jeevansathi, we've been investing aggressively in marketing to get volume growth, and we have stopped disclosing our numbers for competitive reasons.

[Ankit Kedia, Research Analyst]

Sure. So will the advertising campaign continue in quarter 2?

[Hitesh Oberoi, Co]

Yes, of course, we'll continue to advertise, like I say [indiscernible] in both Jeevansathi and 99acres. But what we do is we advertise, we see the results, we see the response to the advertising, then we tweak the campaign. So sometimes we up the budget, sometimes we lower the budget depending on the response we get. So the budget will fluctuate from quarter-to-quarter, but we will continue that pace.

[Ankit Kedia, Research Analyst]

Sure. My second question is regarding 99acres. You said you are seeing some green shoots in 99acres, growth in every city we have witnessed. So do you think this is sustainable and we can for sure assume that these growth rates will sustain going forward?

[Hitesh Oberoi, Co]

Well, we've been now growing at about 35%, 40% for the last 3 quarters in 99acres. But what we must remember is that before that growth was impacted for about 4 quarters: one, first because of demonetization, then because of the [indiscernible] GST. So this is growth which is coming off a low base. Whether it's going to sustain going forward or not, only time will tell.

[Ankit Kedia, Research Analyst]

Sure. And in Naukri, you mentioned you want to focus on products and technology. Could you highlight some new things which you have done on the product and technology side in Naukri?

[Hitesh Oberoi, Co]

Yes. So there are 3 or 4 areas we are investing in, in Naukri. One is, of course, the whole mobile piece and for the personalized user experience. So over the last few years, both -- more and more traffic has sort of migrated to the phone. And here in Naukri, we get about 70% of our users on the phone now. So we concluded to sort of invest aggressively and improve the user experience on our app, for example. Then we sort of made the foray over the last year in the enterprise applicant tracking and regular management space. So we built [ fewer ] products under the RMS umbrella, which we are now sort of -- which we continue to invest behind and which we are pushing in the market. So that's the second big area of investment for us. Thirdly, we put together a data science group and a machine learning group to sort of use these technologies to improve our machine [indiscernible]. So that's the current area in which we are investing on the product and technology front. In addition to this, there are a whole sort of other sort of features, which we keep sort of working on improving, and many of these things are a small sort of improvement -- incremental improvements which you don't get to see, but they make [ lasting impacts ] on these as well from time-to-time.

[Operator]

The next question is from the line of Ritesh Bhagwati from Rockstud Capital.

[Ritesh Bhagwati]

Well, just wanted to know on Zomato, like there are some talks going on like where Zomato is further looking to raise money to the tune of $400 million. That's like the rumors going on. So I just want to know from your end, like do you guys would be participating in those rounds, like how you did in Policy Bazaar and maintain the stake or like increase the stake maybe?

[Hitesh Oberoi, Co]

Well, look, we always like to support our existing companies. All are doing well. Now having said that, we did exit to a certain extent [indiscernible] in the last round. I think that we have invested [indiscernible] in Zomato [indiscernible] for us to have an option to participate. Having said that, we are unable to confirm or deny or make any comment on whether a round is happening or not. So we'll take it as a [ cost ]?

[Ritesh Bhagwati]

But then would we be participating to maintain our stakehold? That seems to be a pretty good investment for us, and it could be...

[Hitesh Oberoi, Co]

Look, I cannot comment whether the round is happening or not. So that's why obviously cannot comment on whether we're participating or not. But like I said, we are -- that there is -- in some of our companies, there's so much [indiscernible] but we have the option of not participating.

[Operator]

The next question is from the line of Karan Uppal from Haitong Securities.

[Karan Uppal, Research Analyst]

Sir, apart from IT, which other sectors you are seeing growth and what's the outlook over there for the rest of the year?

[Hitesh Oberoi, Co]

So in Q1, we saw growth across several sectors: auto, industrial products, construction, banking, finance, insurance, BPO. So many sectors did well in Q1. I can't really comment on which sectors are going to do well going forward. We feel -- I mean, like I said, first quarter last year was -- also impacted because of GST. So the scope is coming off a little bit, but the sales team is a lot more confident than they were at the same time last year.

[Operator]

The next question is from the line of Miten Lathia from HDFC.

[Miten Lathia]

Would you have the number for unique visitors on 99acres on a Y-o-Y basis [indiscernible]?

[Hitesh Oberoi, Co]

Sorry, can you repeat that?

[Miten Lathia]

The growth rate in unique visitors on 99acres on year-over-year basis for quarter 1, would you have that?

[Hitesh Oberoi, Co]

I don't think we'll give out these -- we don't give out the unique visitor number on 99acres.

[Miten Lathia]

You mentioned you are at 60% traffic share to this one, and it was...

[Hitesh Oberoi, Co]

50% traffic share. Well, the traffic share [indiscernible] because it is a function of both unique visitors and time spent on the site.

[Unknown Executive]

And this data is from third parties?

[Hitesh Oberoi, Co]

SimilarWeb is the source we use.

[Operator]

[Operator Instructions] As there are no further questions, I now hand the conference over to Mr. Hitesh Oberoi for closing comments.

[Hitesh Oberoi, Co]

Well, thank you, everyone, for being on the call, and have a great evening.

[Operator]

Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, on behalf of Info Edge Limited, that concludes this conference call for today. Thank you for joining us, and you may now disconnect your lines.