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Info Edge (India) Ltd
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Ladies and gentlemen, good day, and welcome to the Info Edge (India) Private Limited Q2 FY '18/'19 Results Conference Call. Joining us on the call today are Mr. Hitesh Oberoi, Managing Director and CEO; Mr. Chintan Thakkar, CFO; and Mr. Sanjeev Bikhchandani, Vice Chairman. [Operator Instructions] Please note that this conference is being recorded. I now hand the conference over to Mr. Hitesh Oberoi. Thank you. And over to you, sir.
Thank you. Good evening, everyone, and welcome to our second 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. In the end, we'll be happy to take questions. For your information, the audited financial statements file has been uploaded on our website, infoedge.in. We've also provided segmental billing, revenue, profit before taxes and DSR movements in our data sheet on our website. First, talking about the stand-alone financials. Billings in Q2 were up to INR 261 crores, a growth of 29% year-on-year. Revenue in Q2 went up to INR 265 crores, up 18% year-on-year. Operating expenses, excluding depreciation for the quarter, were at INR 182.5 crores. The increase was largely on account of marketing expenses and higher product development costs. Adjusting for some base effects, operating expenses went up by 24% this year. We took additional initiatives during the quarter in line with MCA requirements and CSR.Operating EBITDA stood at INR 82.5 crores versus INR 88.8 crores last year, a decrease of 7% year-on-year. However, there was a onetime CSR expense of INR 2.7 crores in Q2 of FY '19, and there were INR 9 crores worth of write-back in Q2 of FY '18. Adjusting for these base effects, the EBITDA for Q2 FY '18 and Q2 FY '19 would have been INR 79.8 crores and INR 85.2 crores, respectively, indicating an increase of 7% year-on-year this year. Operating EBITDA margins for the quarter stood at 31.1% versus 39.4% in Q2 of FY '18. Adjusting for the above base effects, the write-back and the CSR expense, the margin would have -- movement would have been from 35.4% in Q2 of FY '18 to 32.2% in Q2 of FY '19. EBITDA adjusted for ESOP noncash charges stood at INR 83.9 crores versus INR 94.3 crores last year. Adjusted EBITDA margins for the quarter stood at 31.7%. Cash EBITDA for the quarter stood at INR 80 crores, up 11% year-on-year. And deferred sales revenue stood at INR 415 crores as of 30th of September 2018 versus INR 30 crores -- INR 35 crores as of September 30, 2017, a strong y-o-y growth of 24%. The cash balance stands at INR 1,864 crores as of September 30, 2018.Yes. The recruitment business and the real estate business continued to drive growth this quarter. The focus of investment during the quarter was on product development and marketing. Aggressive marketing spend by our competition slightly impacted our market share, but we kept innovating and expect to gain share in the long run in Jeevansathi. Marketing spend in Jeevansathi led to an increase in registration and paid transactions. Moving on to -- for the business results by segment. We'll first discuss the recruitment segment. In Q2, recruitment segment billings were INR 184 crores, up 26% year-on-year while revenues were INR 191 crores, a growth of 16% year-on-year. Operating EBITDA margins in the recruitment segment were at 54.5% versus 59.3% in Q2 of FY '18. EBITDA margins adjusted for ESOP noncash charges stood at 54.8%. The majority of incremental spends in the recruitment business was -- were on product and tech hiring and on marketing. Adjusted for the INR 4 crore write-back last year in Naukri, the margins for Q2 FY '18 would have been 56.9%. Cash EBITDA for recruitment during the quarter stood at INR 98 crores, up 20% year-on-year.In Q2, in Naukri, we added an average of 15,000 new CVs every day. And the Naukri database grew to over 60 million CVs. The average number of CV modifications were 350,000 per day. Our traffic share in the traditional job board space continues to be 70% plus. We continue to invest in our recruitment tools and systems business as we add more and more clients to the product.The growth in billing this quarter in recruitment was aided by a strong uptick in customer acquisition as well as a decrease in discounting. The pickup in the IT sector hiring continued this quarter and are one of the key factors for billing growth. Consultants as a revenue source also revived during the quarter and with a strong growth in billing. Certain non-IT sector -- sectors like auto, industrial products, construction, banking and finance, insurance, oil and gas and BPO and some other smaller sector also did well for the company in terms of growth, as also indicated by the Naukri JobSpeak index. Moving on to the real estate vertical. Billings in Q2, 99acres grew 50% year-on-year to INR 50 crores while revenue grew to 38% to INR 45 crores. We continue to invest in marketing -- aggressively in marketing during the quarter resulting in an EBITDA loss of INR 4.6 crores versus a normal profit of INR 40 lakhs during Q2 of last year.Just pointing out here that last year, we spent nothing on marketing in Q2 in 99acres. EBITDA adjusted for ESOP expenses in 99acres stood at -- at a loss of INR 4.3 crores versus a profit of INR 1.8 crores in Q2 of last year. Cash EBITDA profit for 99acres during the quarter stood at INR 60 lakhs. So 99acres made a small cash profit this quarter at the EBITDA level of INR 65 -- INR 60 lakhs. Our traffic share amongst the real estate portals slightly declined during the quarter hovering, but still hovered around the 50% mark based on time spent. The decline was primarily on account of aggressive spending on marketing by competition as well. Talking about billing from -- we continue to serve -- grow both our broker business and our builder business, and we had started slightly monetizing owners as well. We will continue to invest in 99acres as we try to consolidate our position as we believe the real estate market is another vital part as witnessed for our high growth for the last 4 quarters now. And the key focus for investment in 99acres will continue to be marketing and investment in product and technology, along with data quality.Moving to the matrimony business. Jeevansathi billings grew by 4.2% year-on-year in Q2 to INR 17.9 crores, owing to continued aggressive pricing and activity by competition. Marketing spend from competition continued to be high and that impacted our marketing spend as well. Revenue grew 3.7% year-on-year to INR 18.4 crores.We continued trying to -- in Jeevansathi, we're continuously trying to consolidate our position as we penetrate deeper into the regions and communities we operate in. Our focus continues to be volume and not value growth. Our operating EBITDA losses in Jeevansathi stood at INR 7.2 crores in Q2 FY '19, up from a loss of INR 3.2 crores -- INR 3.6 crores in Q2 FY '18. Adjusted EBITDA loss stood at INR 7.1 crores at Q2 in Jeevansathi versus a loss of INR 3.7 crores in Q2 FY '18. Cash EBITDA for Jeevansathi during the quarter stood at a loss of INR 7.4 crores. More than 90% of users now access Jeevansathi from the mobile platform. And the mobile -- Jeevansathi mobile app continues to be best in the category. Moving on to the education vertical, Shiksha. In Q2, Shiksha billings grew 52% year-on-year to INR 8.6 crores, partly on account of the low base while revenue grew 7% year-on-year and reached INR 10.7 crores. We made a small EBITDA loss of INR 33 lakhs versus a small profit of INR 1 crore last year at the EBITDA level. Adjusted EBITDA loss for the quarter stood at INR 22 lakhs versus a small profit of INR 1.5 crore last year. Cash EBITDA loss for the -- for several quarters stood at INR 2.4 crores versus a INR 3 crore loss in Q2 last year. We continuously continue to invest efforts into improving the quality of content available on the Shiksha platform.Moving on to our strategic investments. Zomato continues to witness very strong growth in the delivery space, and they recently announced a funding -- an additional funding of USD 210 million from Alipay. We also announced investment of INR 20 crores in print or document services during the quarter, and we continue to evaluate the investment opportunities from time to time. This is all various remarks today. Thank you. We are now ready to take any questions.
[Operator Instructions] The first question is from the line of Vivekanand Subbaraman from AMBIT Capital.
You mentioned the share among traditional sites of your traffic is around 70% in recruitment. Just wanted to understand what is the share if we include Indeed also? And anything to call out in terms of the decline -- year-on-year decline in average resumes added, what's going on there? Is it -- and notwithstanding the buoyancy in the job market, why is that we are seeing some sort of a decline there? And lastly, on the recruitment side, if you could just throw some light on how competitive activity is with respect to both Monster and Indeed, both of them seemed to be highlighting very aggressive KPIs on the traffic side.
Yes. So if you sort of include Indeed, our traffic share I think will fall to 60% or slightly less than that maybe. We continue to sort of -- see, but what -- ideally, what's happening? See, what's happening is that we are focusing increasingly on quality of traffic and not quantity of traffic. And that's one reason why our resume acquisition has also sort of declined because we've realized over time that there are certain types of resumes, which recruiters want. And we are now directing our spend increasingly on getting -- acquiring those types of[Audio Gap]So it's very cheap to acquire resumes from small towns and from Tier 3 cities. Everyone there is looking for a job. You can acquire those definitely very cheap, especially with mobile penetration sort of going to the roof. But unfortunately, many of these sort of resumes when we acquire them, we have realized, over time, that these are not in demand as far as recruiters go. So we have sort of defocused our efforts on acquiring more resumes from these kind of cities. We are focusing more on quality. And so -- because that's what we think is going to -- is sort of going to help the business in the long run, right? As far as Monster is concerned, we haven't really noticed any sort of gains at -- on traffic, not -- neither have we seen gains on the customer side in the market. So I don't know what you're referring to but at least, we haven't noticed any significant gains as far as Monster is concerned. And the one thing -- the one comment I want to make on traffic is it's very easy to get traffic. You can -- people talk about app downloads, people talk about visits, people talk about visitors. One has to look at bounce rates, one has to look at engagement, one has to look at whether the visitor is actually in demand from recruiters. We are in the matching business. India is country of 1.25 billion people. It's not very hard to get an extra 5 million people or 10 million people on the platform. We can get them very cheap. You can even get app downloads up all night, you can -- it maybe costs INR 1 or INR 2 to get an app download. But are these the downloads -- are these the people your recruiters want? That is the question. And are these -- is this traffic monetizable? So we are sort of increasingly realizing that it's not about quantity, it's about quality. And both in 99acres and in Naukri, our focus going forward will be on getting quality visits and quality visitors on our platform.
Right. So you are saying that the competition is focused on volume rather than value and that's the reason why the average resume are added...
No. I don't think he said that. I think he said, we're looking at traffic. You have also have to consider these issues. That does not mean competition is focusing on this and not on that. We don't know what they're focusing on. But when examining who's focusing on what, also ask this question. That's all we say.
And we are focused on quality and not quantity.
Fair enough. So can you give some insight on -- into the traffic of 99acres in terms of the monthly active or unique visitors over a quarterly or a monthly period? I think that's the data point that we have not been able to find out. Any sense on that? And how does that compare with Magicbricks?
So in terms of traffic share, we've kind of been averaging -- when you look at traffic share in terms of time spent and if you look at bounce rates and Google, et cetera, we've been sort of averaging around 50% for quite some time now. And if you look at us, whether it's Magicbricks, we think it's like a 60-40 split on time spent. But that's what we think. And again, I'm looking at traffic quality and not sort of -- I mean, maybe they have as many app downloads as we have. Maybe they sort of have as many visitors as we have. But I'm looking at quality visitors there. I'm looking at bounce rates. I'm looking at engagement. I'm looking at time spent. We're looking at all these metrics together to sort of arrive at this conclusion. That's what we think. In terms of numbers, traffic numbers on -- for 99acres, just give me a second. So what I can tell you is that our app traffic is up more than 100% year-on-year. App has sort of reasonably high-quality traffic, especially visitors come back. And it's sort of onetime sort of app download traffic. Our traffic year-on-year is up 60%. We have close to 4.8 million app downloads to date. And we had about 20 million sort of buyers visiting our platform in a month on the average.
Great.
Visitors -- visits not buyers. 20 million visits from buyers.
The next question is from the line of Arya Sen from Jefferies.
Firstly, could you repeat the numbers you mentioned at the beginning of the call? The CSR expense was how much this quarter and what were the other one-offs in expenses?
Yes. Yes. So last year, in Q2, we had a write-back of INR 9 crores.
Right.
Right? And this year, in Q2, there was a onetime CSR expense of INR 2.7 crores. So if you don't adjust for any of these, then EBITDA declined 7% year-on-year. But if you adjust for these, EBITDA increased 7% year-on-year.
Understood. Understood. And -- okay. And if I look at your numbers -- so if I look at outside of recruitment and 99acres, the losses seemed to have gone up. Now you have mentioned about INR 7.2 crores of EBITDA loss in Jeevansathi?
Yes. In Jeevansathi, at an EBITDA level, we lost INR 7.2 crores this year, up from INR 3.6 crores last year. And this year, we had a small EBITDA loss of INR 33 lakhs this quarter.
Yes. Is there anything else? Because that doesn't fully explain the higher losses outside of 99acres and recruitment. Is the CSR coming as part of others or something like that?
Just one second. Chintan?
I don't really get your question. I mean, this is at the EBITDA level.
Yes. So at the EBITDA level, basically, the others' loss seems to expanded versus last quarter and last year same quarter. Part of it seems to be Jeevansathi, which you've said is -- made the EBITDA loss of INR 7.2 crores versus INR 3.6 crores. Shiksha, there doesn't seem to be a very material change. Is there anything else which explains the higher losses in...
Yes. Even in 99acres, we lost about INR 4.6 crores at the EBITDA level. We made a slight profit last year in Q2.
Only in Q2.
So in Q2 last year, we had...
That's fine. But I have the 99acres number. But is there anything else? So the CSR expense comes as others, is it?
No, no. Arya, there would be certain corporate. These are the segment level numbers that Hitesh has given, right, whether it's the recruitment or whether rates. And there would be a corporate phenomena headquarter expenses that would explain that gap that you are talking about.
Yes. So would CSR come in that?
Yes. CSR would be in that.
Okay. Understood. Secondly, on Zomato, a couple of things. I mean, any disclosure on what is the current burn rate? And also the strategy seems to have changed very materially from last year when home delivery was less than 30%, it is now almost touching 90%. So what is the -- what has changed to sort of lead to this change in strategy? And historically, Zomato has said that it's not economical to do home deliveries. So what has changed now? Any color on that? And particularly, on the cash burn rate that they are currently clocking because they've revealed some of the growth numbers, but not the cash burn numbers.
No. We are unable to disclose that because the company doesn't disclose it, okay? So we don't know this. So we'll not grow -- give out the -- we're unable to give out the burn numbers. As far as strategy is concerned, this was done I think 2 or 3 quarters ago. And we had announced it. That the company is now going to go into home delivery more and more and is going to expand under the bot Runnr while -- in the bot Runnr, we -- has not discovered it. So this is not a new strategy. This is now -- it's been around for about 9 months or possibly even a year, right? And the reason for the change in strategy is I think the company reassessed and realized, they looked at the market and it was transactions. And if we want to be the leader, we will have to do transactions. So transactions now in India are front and center.
So how does that -- I mean, how does -- so does one ultimately look at charging a conveniency to the customer? Is that the future? How are you guys looking at it in terms of -- I mean, given that you still own 27%?
When -- so in some cases, the -- Zomato does charge a delivery fee. But I think the primary goal right now is to get to #1 spot and stay there. And do what it takes to do that. So the revenue model will evolve over time, but the immediate goal is to remain #1.
Right. And any plans to improve disclosure on the burn numbers, given that it's now a very reasonable contributor to your share value and your disclosure standards are very high anyway?
Look, the disclosure of burn numbers will be led by Zomato and not by us. And that's a conversation that we had with them, so I cannot comment on that right now.
Also any update on Policybazaar?
So Policybazaar continues to do well. They're sort of in the process of closing out the one that was announced. It is a dominant market leader. It is getting into the health insurance space by launching a new scheme they announced. It is -- Paisabazaar continues to grow. So overall, things seem to be going well there well as earlier.
The next question is from the line of Dipan Mehta from Elixir Equities.
Sir, it's been at least more than 10 years since you acquired 99acres and Jeevansathi, and some of the others more than quarters. And still, we are struggling to get them into the black. And I don't know going forward, how many more years it will take before they start contributing meaningfully to the bottom line considering that the recruitment business is just becoming larger and larger in size. So is there some time line or internal channel in the management that beyond X number of years, you could think of some other options like disposing them off or spinning them off or selling it off to private equity or something? Because every year, the losses do not seem to be decreasing. One of the quarter, you make a profit and again, go into a loss. So one would easily conclude that intrinsically, the business may not make profit in 10 years-plus and there'll be no progress that you can have in the bottom line front? Would like to know your policy-wise thinking that what is eventually the outcome of the other businesses which are not contributing to the bottom line?
Actually, we are quite happy with the progress we are making in both 99acres and Jeevansathi. And I'll tell you why. See -- of course, we sort of have a process. We sort of evaluate our business from time to time. We review the performance every quarter, and so on and so forth. For sometimes, when you start new businesses, you sort of -- are a little early in the market. You -- so often it's a question of timing. In the case of real estate, what has happened is that the market has been really, really tough for the last 5 years. Real estate is a very deeply cyclical category. So you go through these deep cycles. The market could be down for 5, 7 years, and then when you see a revival, you could grow by 40% a year for the next 10 years. Who knows? Right? So but the truth is that real estate is the last category, and we are the leader. We have more than 50% share of the market. Our business run rate is now tracking INR 50 crores a quarter. We did a -- we made a small cash profit this quarter. If you want, we can sort of still -- you can take breakeven, let's make a little bit of money. But given the size of the opportunity and the size of the pie, we want to continue to invest in the business. Also what happens is the business plan evolve over time. We started the resale and rental site, and then we added a new product, a new sort of home platform to us sort of portfolio of products. So tomorrow, if sort of these parts of the business are doing well and we see opportunities in other areas, we could sort of say, "Okay. Let's do even more in real estate." But the truth is that real estate sites worldwide are actually even larger than job boards. So once you reach that level -- in our business, we don't capitalize anything. So a lot of the expenses, which are sort of upfront, are sort of operating expenses. But once you hit a certain level, then you have high operating leverage. And I think you are sort of slowly getting to that point in real estate. As far as matrimony is concerned, we are #3 player nationally, but we have become a not strong #2 player in the north and west. If you'll -- our strategy sort of changed about 2 years ago, we started more -- focusing more on volume growth rather than value growth because in our kind of -- in these kind of businesses, it's important to get the network effect going. And once you get the network effect going, then you can figure out what to do next. But unless and until you get a lot of people running your platform, you have no future. So we -- so the strategy was still focus on volume. And that really worked for us. Our volume growth in Jeevansathi, I think more than 200% over the last 2, 3 years. And so as a result, Jeevansathi is now on a very solid footing compared to where it was 2, 3 years ago.
Can you provide any guidelines that in 3 years or 5 years or some point of time that you will start meaningfully contributing or then you will take corrective action?
Excuse me, this is the operator. Ladies and gentlemen, there seems to be a disconnection from the management line. We request you to please stay connected while we reconnect them. [Operator Instructions] We have the management reconnected. And so we have Dipan Mehta in the queue.
Yes. We were disconnected. But my question was, is there some time line for guidance on your projects maybe 2 years from now or 3 years from now that even the losses will be narrowed or come back into profit. But that -- every time, what is happening is that the losses of the other is clearly reducing the overall profit of the company and that does impact the valuation and the growth numbers and all the other various parameters that we are marking the company on.
I would not see them as losses. I would see those as investments into the future because our -- in the long run, we want to sort of diversify our portfolio, get into new categories, build new revenue stream. And like I said, our investment are in the nature of OpEx. We don't do CapEx. And we have high operating leverage. So once we reach a certain size and scale and after that, it's easy to make profit. We are sort of getting there in 99acres. It will take some more time for us to get there in Jeevansathi. We don't have a time frame to evaluate businesses if we -- we sort of review our businesses every year and if they -- if they actually looks good and if we think we can do a good job going forward, we continue to be in those businesses. And the total losses in -- in Jeevansathi, for example, we spent less than maybe $10 million and see sort of launched the site. And in 99acres, we spent maybe $30 million, $40 million overall in total. So compared to what the other companies are spending out there, I think what we are spending or what we're investing is a small section of what others are investing.
So [ CapEx ]?
Yes.
The next question is from the line of [ Ajay Modi ] from Agrawal Investments.
So my question continues to the last question that you said. So as you said, you don't have a time line and you evaluate businesses annually. But I mean, if you could throw some light on how big is the matrimony or this traditional matrimony site, how big that space is. And also how big is education as a space for you. And I mean, again, by barring 99acres and Naukri, you are not leader in the other 2. So when do you see going -- taking over that leadership position in Jeevansathi?
So we do about INR 70 crores a year in Jeevansathi. And with the matrimony market is probably INR 500 crores, INR 600 crores. And -- but we mostly operate in the north and west. We don't operate in the south. We have gained share over the last few years in matrimony. We are focused on volume growth, not value growth at this point in time. We believe that there could be an opportunity to sort of do some things differently in the long run in the matrimony space. The assets that we have built has some value. We get -- thousands of marriages happened in our platform every month. We get 10,000 -- we get close to 100,000 registrations every month from people looking to get married. We are creating value. It's just that we are not able to monetize that value right now in the way we would want to. So -- but hopefully, something will sort of happen over the next 2 or 3 years in the space for us, which will help us monetize the brand that we have created. In Shiksha, in education, in the category which we operate, we are leader. So it's just that we are not dominant, and it's a very different business. There's more lead gens are than marketplace. So -- and we're not losing too much money. Shiksha has been breaking even for the last maybe year or 2 now. Sometimes, you go in the red. Sometimes, you make a little bit of money. There's so much talking about bandwidth. It's not talking about a lot of investment. We are trying out a new -- a few new things in Shiksha. And if they work, then this could become a reasonable business for us in the long run.
But so -- again, I understand Shiksha again is not a big -- I mean, doesn't consume a lot of time. But it still takes away a lot of your effort as a team, which can be spent on other bigger things. But apart from Shiksha, also on Jeevansathi because as I, as an investor, analyst, see this space, it is quite evolving. I mean, you have new age or, so to say, serious dating apps like TrulyMadly, which also now come out calling as they did -- they are doing a lot of marriages on their platform. So I mean, is there a conjunction -- I mean, is there a difference between the space that you are in, people call it, traditional matrimony? So I'm just trying to understand how because that's -- it is, too, evolving and it's tremendously competitive now from the dating apps also, which are trying to be marriage matchmaking apps. So just trying to get a sense of how big that space could be for us. I mean, if I look at your year out, what size can Jeevansathi really become? And if it doesn't become that, when do you see -- take a call to say goodbye to these pieces? I mean, it is still consuming a lot of time and effort and capital, which can be I think used otherwise, like your team investing in the Zomato or Policybazaar, which are more transactional and annuity-based.
So let's take it one by one. So traditional matrimony is a very, very large scale. And we are actually -- and in my view, it's going to be a growth market for the next 50 years. Because yes, in a country of 1.25 billion people, maybe the population will grow to 1.75 billion over the next 20, 30 years. Hardly, maybe 10% or 20% of the people, who are sort of in India today use sort of online methods or -- the other part of that consideration is for them when they look at getting married. Many communities today, large communities, some places like in states like U.P. where we operate, maybe 90% of U.P. does not even think of online matrimony when people sort of think of getting married. Yes, there may be a small percentage of the population, 1% or 2% or 3% of population today in the large metros like Bombay, Delhi and Bangalore, which is probably looking at dating sites. But they are also -- they're looking at dating sites for dating. They're not looking at dating sites to get married. When people want to get married, they still come to Jeevansathi or the other players in our space. So it's not about what is cool or what is hot or what is trendy, the truth is that the online matrimony market is a large market. People are still getting married. And they will continue to get married for many years. And large communities today, large, large that are very -- so in places like Bihar and U.P. and Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Assam, Uttarakhand. And in Haryana, when -- some people today don't even consider online matrimony when they look to get married, when they're trying to get married. And that will change, we believe, over the next 10, 20 years. Yes. So why should we sort of continue it because we think this is long-term growth market. We are executing well. We have made progress. We are getting good traction. Our traffic is growing. Our engagement is growing. Our market share is growing. We are trying on a few strategies. It's not as if we are investing hundreds of crores in Jeevansathi. We mentioned the sites like Zomato and other -- I mean, they have raised hundreds or millions of dollars. And they are still not profitable. And many of these companies -- actually, Flipkart has been around for 10 years, if I'm not mistaken. I mean, many of these companies have also been around for 10, 20 years. So I mean -- so but the truth is India has a long-term growth story in all these categories. You said penetration is sort of still growing. Indians are getting richer, and they're getting better and better as they're getting more sort of savvy about using the Internet. And therefore, we see an opportunity and therefore, we will continue to sort of stay invested for a while at least.
Hitesh, I mean -- let me put it as a simple question. I understood your argument and I buy your argument completely. I just want you to answer a simple question, whether you don't share it with us on this platform, it's okay. But do you have a Plan B where -- I mean, how would you say goodbye to this or when would you say goodbye to this provided this business is not happening? Do you have a process already in place is what I'm trying to understand, whether there is a yes or no that is what I'm looking for, I think.
Yes. So Sanjeev here. The answer is no. We are committed to this business. We will make it happen.
The next question is from the line of Shaleen Kumar from UBS Securities.
I just want to understand what exactly is your read of rebounds in IT sector hiring. Is this something is happening off of fresh hiring? Or is more of a renewal of the job retention hiring, what's -- what exactly is happening, any sense on that?
Well, see, we are not used for campus hiring. So we are used by companies when they want to hire people who are not on campus. Basically, actual hiring. A bulk of the hiring on our platform is full of people between 1, 2, 10 or 20 years of experience. So if we are seeing growth in IT, it's because companies are hiring -- doing a lot more actual hiring than they were doing earlier. That does not mean they don't -- in most campus hiring than they were doing earlier. They're probably doing both.
Sure. But any sense -- when I said fresh hiring, I mean new position hiring or is it attrition hiring? Any sense on that? I mean, it could be a lateral, but expect a new -- is it a new position hiring they're doing? Or is it the attrition? Is it hire -- attrition has gone up. Any sense on that?
Actually, right now, we don't have a sense. But because the companies don't share their headcount numbers with us. But maybe attrition also gone up a little bit, maybe, but we'll have to check.
Right. And among your existing customers, like what kind of realization increase you're seeing? So if -- again, like -- what I'm trying to ask you is what is the number of customer you add? The other segment has a realization increase you take so -- what is the contribution of realization increase?
Just 1 second. We don't actually give out these numbers. But normally, what happens is when we see an uptick in hiring, 3 things happen. One is volumes go up, so customers hire more people. And therefore, they buy more logins, more passwords, more listings. Two, we are able to realize better prices because companies are in a rush to hire, so they don't haggle that much. Thirdly, we also end up adding a lot of new customers because -- and there is a lot of business activity, a lot of new companies all set up shop at that. So normally, sort of when we see an uptick, we see an uptick in all 3. And when we see a downturn this year, sort of -- all 3 correcting as well.
Okay. Okay. But no sense on realization or something like that like...
No. No. Definitely, that realization is definitely gone. I don't have the exact number, maybe they went up by 10% or so.
The next question is from the line of Manish Adukia from Goldman Sachs.
A couple of questions both on the real estate side. First, if you can comment on the underlying real estate market. You, of course, seen very strong growth the last few quarters. But what kind of visibility do you have in terms of growth outlook for the sector as a whole over the next 2 or 3 quarters in terms of haggling rate cycle, et cetera? How do you see that impacting the underlying demand? And second, you mentioned some market share loss. I think it was in the 99acres business. If you can just shed -- throw some more light as to what led to that and how do you think about -- they were significant also. If you can mention which player was it that you lost market share to. Was it primarily in Magicbricks?
Yes. So in real estate market, the real estate market has been in a down for the last few years. And every now and then, we have a false start. So I don't -- really going to do any comment on what the future holds in real estate. But yes, the real estate was depressed for a long time, and especially Q2 last year was a terrible quarter because of that era sort of rollout. And for all, for a while, all sort of new home marketing actually came to a standstill last year. So we are sort of -- so the reason we sort of got 50% growth this year on billing is because of a bad Q2 as well. Of course, we want to execute better and the market is improving a little bit, prices are more stable. There are more launches than there were earlier. There are more transactions. There's a little more action in the affordable housing sort of segment. So all those things are also true. But last year, as I said, Q2 was a bad quarter. Whether we expect the next 3 quarters to be great as well, only time will tell, right? Look, I don't want to really comment on real estate because of the nature of the sort of industry. Market share was -- see, a little -- market shares in real estate have been sort for us. I mean, sort of we have been at 50% range for a while now. But periodically, when there is sort of a lot -- when there is a competitive, actually, market share may go up a little or go down a little. So if we are on TV, we may go from 50% to 52%. If somebody has no TV, we may go from 50% to 48%. So that's what I meant by sort of we may have lost a point or 2, which is sort of nonmaterial in the grand scheme of things. We have to look at market share for the year to get a better sense. So we are sort of stable as far as market shares are concerned. As you have said, competitive activities -- we cannot really be also spending a little more on advertising. Last year, for example, we spent nothing on advertising in Q2 in 99acres because we knew that business had come to a halt because of RERA. And therefore, we made a regional profit also in Q2 last year. This year, we've spent close to INR 15 crores in marketing on 99acres alone. And despite that, we made a small cash profit.
I just wanted to -- I know it's incredibly difficult to forecast what is likely to happen in the real estate market going forward. But I just wanted to get your sense in terms of currently wherever you are in terms of whatever you are seeing in the market trends. Like you said, prices have been stable, et cetera. I mean, do you think that the real estate market for now looks like it's likely to stay stable? I mean, of course, things can change overnight. But where you are right now, you think things are stable?
Yes. Actually, I would have said this to you maybe 2 weeks ago because if you're asking this question, I think we're very stable in real estate. But then there are some news articles about there being a fund crunch in the NBFC space and how NBFCs lend to developers and how because of that real estate activity make it good. So I don't know. So no, I don't really want to comment on what's going to happen in real estate going forward. Maybe you guys know more than we do.
[Operator Instructions] The next question is from the line of Ravi Menon from Elara Capital.
I just wanted to check on 99acres ratio of paid listings. That seems to have improved significantly. And while revenue policy is slightly down q-on-q, it's still up more than 30% y-o-y. So what would you attribute this to?
So like I sort of mentioned earlier in the call, our focus is increasingly on quality and not quantity. So -- and real estate has this problem where you get a lot of junk listings from the platform, a lot of listings are buy -- where we have spam. We've tightened our controls with -- to sort of billing sector checks on duplicate listings and so on and so forth. We are not encouraging people to post multiple listings like some of our competitors do. So we are sort of a little -- be a little tough and all in the interest of our -- both our customers and our consumers because if there's less spam, you get more traffic. And if there's more traffic, both our consumers -- our customers also benefit. So we've been tightening the screws on quality. And that's why you're sort of seeing what you're seeing. So the listings may have -- sort of the listings they -- may also go down in the future, who knows. But as long as we get the right sort of quality of listings, then we -- and we're fine.
Great. I'm seeing on Naukri, where you said IT starting to pick up on this quarter at least your -- the revenue and industry themes have been more in infrastructure than in IT. So is the booking trend similar? Or you think IT will see faster growth in coming quarters?
So actually, this -- so we sort of look at others, this is IT, non-IT and consultants. So if billings grew 25%, 26%, we saw about a 25% growth in IT, a 24%, 27% some growth in non-IT and a 20%-plus growth in consultants as well. So -- and yes, some small segments may have grown faster than IT also. But so going forward, a lot will depend on what happens to the Indian economy because the non-IT sort of pieces in Naukri are more indexed to sort of hiring an Indian that -- and what happens within GDP growth while the IT sort of piece is more indexed to what happened in the U.S. And last year, for example, there was a lot of noise around automation, machine learning, AI, taking away jobs and how IT companies are not going forward. I mean, today, we don't read about that anymore. I mean, in fact, IT companies are adding people. The rupee depreciation is also helping. But I can't really comment on what will happen going forward.
Sure. And last thing on how you make investments in the industry sense. We've been hearing that the check sizes that startups are asking for has gone up here now. Even at the idea stage or seed stage, people are asking for at least $1 million or more. And given that you've cashed out some, I'll say, stake in Zomato. And you've got a lot of cash now. Would you look at more late-stage investments as well?
So look, typically, our track record is that we like to be the first institutional check into a company. And we sort of believe in all that, look, we have the ability to spot good startups very early. It's worked for us so far, and we'd like to stay with that. It gives us adequate ownership of -- and a decent average cost once we invest over 2, 3 times. And we are not finding that startups are in the first sort of check-in, they are asking for an inordinate amount of money. We are able to discuss and go in with the kind of ticket sizes that we like to invest. And we have not noticed a shift or a change, right? What is happening, however, is that, look, the winners or the likely winners in very many areas have been picked by the investors and capital is coalescing around these winners, large capital. So it could be a Zomato and Swiggy in restaurant delivery; a Policybazaar in insurance comparison; until recently, a Flipkart in e-commerce; and Ola in taxi aggregation and so on. So the thing is that maybe about -- and Oyo in hotel aggregation. The thing is that maybe 70%, 80%, 90% of the capital that's going into private companies in the net sector is going into maybe a dozen companies, okay? And then much smaller ticket sizes are spread across a much larger base of earlier-stage companies. And those who make the cut beyond that, the early stage, they get the second round and the third rounds. But the big ticket money only comes in after winners have been picked in large spaces.
The next question is from the line of Vivekanand Subbaraman from AMBIT Capital.
So in 99acres, just continuing the question that I had on traffic. Is there any change in the traffic trajectory with respect to organic versus inorganic traffic or possibly a reduction in customer acquisition costs and metrics like churn that is resulting in improved monetization and also a continued increase in billing that you need to be aware of? And is this sustainable? That's what I'm trying to get at.
See, there are two parts. This is one, this is sort of is our traffic growing. And two, is our traffic sort of engaging more with our platform? The answer to both is yes. Our -- like I mentioned earlier on the call, our app sort of traffic is up 100% year-on-year. Our overall traffic is up more than 60% year-on-year. Time spent on the platform is also sort of healthy. We have more advertisers on the platform than earlier. Our data quality is a lot better. Our algorithms are sort of far, far superior to what they were a year, 1.5 years ago. So on the whole, we are very happy with the progress in terms -- which the site and the platform is making in 99acres compared to maybe 3, 4 -- where we were 3, 4 years ago, maybe we were up 200%, 300%, if not more. It's just that the industry was in trouble. All our customers are losing money, many were sort of going out of business, many went bankrupt, et cetera. And if your customers are all losing money, then it's very hard to make money yourself. Us, I think, sort of hit rock bottom. I think we will get better from hereon, that's the hope. That's the hope. And the truth is even when this is happening, we were growing. And while the overall ad market may have declined by 60%, 70% from where it was 5, 7 years ago, we've grown maybe more than 150%, 200% in terms of revenue. Even this quarter, we grew 50% in terms of billing. So the growth means -- is the truth -- is that the best sort of search a property is to search online, right? If you want to sort of see all the options, if you want to do your research, you'll have to come on. There's no other way to know what's happening in the market. India is very, very opaque when it comes to real estate. The sites created a lot of transparency -- and therefore, we get a lot of traffic. And as sort of interest in real estate picks up, the traffic is only going to increase. It's just that if you're not able to monetize the traffic very aggressively earlier, once the market sort of -- once transactions pick up, hopefully, that will also follow.
Right. Just one follow-up. We were witnessing a consolidation of brokers over the last 2, 3 years, given that the macro conditions were very challenging in real estate. But builders were broadly steady at around 16,000, 17,000. Are we seeing any increase in the number of builders and brokers also on the platform? And last question on 99acres is on the user market, which you mentioned being at a nascent stage, do you see an opportunity in the user listings space also? If so, can you explain that a bit more in detail?
So we did not seen a massive growth in the number of brokers and builders we're dealing with. But what we are sort of seeing for sure is that builders are advertising more projects. So a builder could sort of do 1 project a year, some builders do 3 projects a year, some builders may do 10 projects a year. Some builders may -- a project may have 10 builders, a project could have 100 builders, a project could have 1,000 builders. So what we definitely see is that builders are advertising more projects on our platform than earlier, number one. And their advertising their projects a longer period than they were earlier. This probably means that platform is sort of working for them because projects are not sold out in 1 or 2 months; sometimes, they take years to sell. So we are seeing sort of -- yes, a few more builders than earlier. But we are seeing these builders advertise a lot more projects than they were -- than they used to in the past. And we are seeing them advertise the projects for longer, right? As far as the owners are concerned, there's a lot of owner traction on the platform as well. We get thousand of owner listings every day. The site is actually free for owners to list, and we started monetizing owners a little bit as well. But it's more like a premium month, they're allowed to list for free and then pay for some value-added services. It's a small part of our revenue today, owner listings.
The next question is from the line of Aditya Joshi from Karma Capital.
So my question is relating to Zomato. So what is the kind of wage inflation for the ground staff or riders the company has witnessed in this quarter in at least past performance?
Sorry, over -- repeat your question. We didn't hear.
So I thought -- look, the pay point for delivery, right? They don't give out wage inflation data. But look, I think if Zomato or Swiggy or any other delivery boy works for 12 hours a day in a day let's say, for 25 days a month, he will make a very, very decent salary or compensation because their incentives can be linked to it. There are tips linked to it. And then of course, there's a per delivery charge, right? So it's hard work, but they'll make a decent salary.
Got it, sir. So sir, is there any kind of scarcity of riders in major metro cities across India? Is that something we should bring up?
So attrition is high. There's competition of riders. But the bases of riders are expanding. Zomato has gone from, I think, a few thousand, very few thousand riders in January this year to about over 70,000 right now and growing every month.
Okay. Got it, sir. Sir, my next question is relating to -- related to Jeevansathi. Sir, what -- or what could be our market share in the north markets? And what kind of market share are we foreseeing, say, 2025 or maybe 2030? And what kind of growth rates do you expect in the market?
So we -- actually, our market share in the north is closer to 30%, 35%. And in terms of volume, it may be even -- it may be closer to 35%; in terms of value, it maybe 25%, 30%. 20%, 25%, 20%, 30%, I have no idea. I have no idea. If you - I mean, you can do the math. I mean, if you can do the business even at 15%, 20% per year, we double every 5 years. That's just organic rate of growth.
Okay. Okay. Got it, sir. Sir, my last question is again with respect to Jeevansathi. Sir, what is the kind of risk that you seeing or foreseeing from the small communities that are getting their own app and having their small group kind of a thing with their app? So sir, what is the kind of risk there that you foresee?
Actually, right now, we haven't come across too many successful sort of apps or people or communities doing this. So I don't really want to comment on it. Right now, they're not even on our radar. They're a very tiny fraction of the market if they exist.
The next question is a follow-up from the line of Shaleen Kumar from UBS Securities.
Just I wanted to check on Hitesh comment regarding 99acre. So it has the mix of broker versus builder. Is there a material change in that? And are we treating in our revenue scheme for 99acres?
See, actually, I think long term, the trend is sort of more towards brokers because as markets sort of mature and as market sort of become larger, what we see and normally see is sort of more brokers set up shop and builders sort of often go through brokers. But in this particular quarter or quarters that was -- given that -- the builder business is in fact had the most revenue last year. Our builders also grew rapidly at a very healthy rate over last year because of low base. But long term, I mean -- and when I say long term, I mean over the next 5, 10 years, where we see the market going, we see the market moving more, more towards channel by channel brokers.
Where do we stand right now, Hitesh, like proportionate wise? Any sense?
I guess 51% is the...
So the fact...
50% is broker, 24% is...
Yes. So it's -- currently, it's more like 50-50. But brokers would also include channel partners, people who do resale and new homes.
Ladies and gentlemen, this was the last question for today. I now hand the conference over to Mr. Oberoi for his closing comments. Over to you, sir.
Well, thank you, everyone, for being on the call, and have a nice evening.
Thank you very much, sir. Ladies and gentlemen, on behalf of Info Edge (India) Private Limited, that concludes this conference call. Thank you for joining us, and you may now disconnect your lines.