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Info Edge (India) Ltd
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Hi, everyone. Good evening, and welcome to Info Edge India Limited Q2 '23 Financial Results Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] Please note that 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, CFO. 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 some risks and uncertainties. Thank you first, Slide #2 of the investor presentation for a detailed disclaimer. Now I would like to hand over the call to Mr. Hitesh for his opening remarks.
Thank you, Ravi, and good evening, everyone. Hope you're all being well, and welcome once again to our second quarter earnings call. As always, we'll start by giving you an update on the stand-alone financials, and we'll talk about the market conditions in each of our operating verticals and then cover the financials of each business in more detail. And then, of course, we'll have time for Q&A and the end. The audited financial statements and other schedules on segmental billing, revenues, et cetera, over the data sheet have been afforded on our website in Forester.
Overall billings in Q2 grew to INR 542.9 crores, up by 31.4% from Q2 of last year. Billing for H1 23 stood at INR 1,067 crores and year-on-year growth of 45%. Revenue in Q2 stood at INR 531.8 crores, up by 46.7% from Q2 of last year. Revenues for H1 23 stood at INR 1,395 crores and year-on-year growth of 5.5%. And billings and revenues, along with acquired businesses like Zwayam and DSR stood at INR 59.5 and INR 49.5 crores, respectively. Operating expenses for the quarter, excluding depreciation and amortization, were INR 347.8 crores, up by 38.2% from Q2 of 2022. And operating EBITDA for the quarter stood at INR 184 crores versus INR 110.8 crores last year, an increase of 66.1% from Q2 of last year. And EBITDA for H1 2 stood at INR 347 crores.
Operating EBITDA margins for the quarter stood at stood. A compared to 30.6% for the same quarter last year. And EBITDA margin for H1 stood at 3.4%. And operating EBITDA, including acquired businesses stood at INR 189.6 crores, a year-on-year increase of 79%. Cash from operations for the quarter stood at INR 299.9 crores compared to INR 171 crores last year for the same quarter. And the business generated INR 33.8 crores of cash from operations in H1 of '23. Deferred sales revenue stood at INR 40.9 crores as of September 30, 2022, versus INR 562 crores as of September 30, 2021, an increase of 49.6% year-on-year. And the cash balance of Info Edge including the wholly owned subsidiaries stands at INR 3,250 crores as of September 30, 2022. It stood at INR 3,880 crores as of September 30, 2021. The Jobs peak index for the month of September was up 12%.
However, hiking slowdown in IT and IT segments September onwards. This trend continued in the month of October with a negative growth of 18% in IT and telecom sector. However, an early festive season also impacted the index for the month of October as down 3% year-on-year. However, hiring in Q2 remained upbeat with high growth in non-IT sectors like banking, real estate, insurance, travel, tourism, hospitality, retail, et cetera. The quarter saw demand for low to mid management provides gaining momentum across industries. We also experienced a vibrant real estate market during the last quarter. Strong momentum in new growth sales continued across top cities in Q2. We noticed an upward trend in property prices. We expect the unit sales momentum to continue in near term despite hikes home loan interest rates and as recently. We also expect builder clients to launch more new referential projects in the second half of the current financial year. University and College business are a little late this year. We expect the academic season to return to normal to the next year.
Moving on to our financials for the recruitment business. In Q2 '23, the recruitment segment billings were INR 45.6 crores, up 21% from Q2 of '22 while revenues were INR 411 crores, up 56.4% from Q2 2022. Billing for H1 INR 23 stood at INR 84.6 crores, a year-on-year growth of 51.7% while revenue stood at INR 805.2 crores for H1 growth of 61.5%. Operating EBITDA stood at INR 2 for the recruitment business stood at INR 254 crores, up INR 613 crores from -- up 61.3% from Q2 of last year. Margins stood at 6.8% versus 58.9% in Q2 of last year. EBITDA margins were 1.3 stood at 60.2%. Cash from operations of the recruitment business during the quarter stood at INR 28.4 crores, up from INR 1.6 crores in Q2 of last year. The business generated INR 55.8 crores of cash from operations in H1 '23. Cash from operations as a percentage of billing from the business stood at 66% for the quarter. Billings for Naukri India for the quarter stood at INR 36.2 crores, up 46.3% year-on-year, while revenues for the quarter stood at INR 352 crores, up 63.6% year-on-year.
Recruitment setting segment billing, including acquired businesses like Zwayam and Doselect stood at INR 403 crores, a growth of 44.8% Y-o-Y for this quarter. I am Jason Hires had a Y-on-Y growth of 47.3% in their billing numbers for this quarter. And Zwayam and Doselect also reported serious growth in Q2 of this year over Q2 of last year. The Naukri business continued its growth momentum. And the platform -- on the platform side, we just start increased top seeker traffic in the croton the quarter. Around 22,000 new CVs were registered per day during the quarter, a year-on-year growth of 12%. The active base for our mobile app is also continues to increase significantly month-on-month.
The sales team continued with their strategy of creating more awareness around the value generated from our products to drive deeper value optimized realization during the quarter. We increased our marketing expense during the quarter as we continue our sort of to invest behind our recently launched my kind of OE campaign, which targets for Gen audience. We also tapped our stake in coding into from 26.1% to 51% this quarter. We invested INR 135 crores. The investment shall help our recruitment business to explore and maximize business synergies in the learning space and take us towards our long-term goal of transforming Naukri from a job spotlight to a careers platform.
The AmbitionBox platform launched the second addition of our AmbitionBox to work in India Awards in Dupi. In the Education business sector, Q2 billings grew 31.3% year-on-year and stood at INR 248 crores, while revenue grew 20.1% to INR 25.9 crores. Billings for H1, INR 23 stood at INR 5.1 crores, a year-on-year growth of 30.9%, while revenue stood at INR 57.2 crores with a year-on-year growth of 29%. The Shiksha business made an EBITDA loss of INR 1.8 crores in the quarter versus a profit of INR 5.1 crores in Q2 of 2022. Cash outflow from operations for the quarter stood at INR 1.7 crores against a NIR 1.4 crore to quarter.
Moving on to the 99acres business. Billings in Q2 grew by 11.1% year-on-year and INR 757 crores, while revenue grew from INR 48.3 crores in Q2 of 2022 to INR 69.7 crores in Q2 '23, billing for H1 of INR 23 stood at INR 136.8 crores, year-on-year growth of 51.2%, while revenue stood at INR 136.1 crores, a year-on-year growth of 39.6%. The operating loss for the quarter in 99acres stood at INR 29.6 crores against a loss of INR 29.9 crores in Q2 of last year. And the business reported a cash flow cash outflow from operations of INR 19.1 crores for the quarter against a cash inflow of INR 4.4 crores in the same quarter of last year.
In 99acres, we are seeing more higher sort of revenue growth across all categories, resale rentals, commercial new homes. Responses on the platform continue to grow year-on-year. We were able to see increased inquiries for our clients with both with recent traffic growth and other multiple client delivery initiatives. We further increased our focus to improve reviews from residents and to get more transaction prices on the platform to help buyers and owners get more insights about the real estate market. We will continue to invest on platform content, client delivery and marketing in the months ahead as well.
Moving on to the matrimony business. vans. Billings in Q2 declined by 30%, 30.4% year-on-year to INR 16.9 crores and revenue declined by 28.7% year-on-year to INR 18.1 crores. billing for H1 23 stood at INR 34.5 crores, a year-on-year decline of 3.1%, while revenue stood at INR 41 crores, a year-on-year decline of 18.9%. Operating EBITDA losses for the quarter stood at INR 26.6 crores for the quarter against a loss of INR 21.2 crores in the same quarter of last year. Cash outflow from operations for the quarter stood at INR 29.8 crores against our INR 27.7 crores in Q2 of last year. Chemists the chat for free model has that helped in accelerated growth of platform engagement metrics. The growth in billings bottomed out in July and since has been steadily improved. Domisati team has continued to focus on improving the recommendation experience of the platform in addition to building brand studies in the category. Our IT platform is witnessed a growth of 152.5% during the quarter and registered revenues of INR 7.9 crores.
The business continues to evaluate new growth paths. And accordingly, all 4 what Naukri is designed to make them more user friendly. The consolidated level for the company as a whole, net sales of the company stood at INR 64.1 crores versus INR 366.1 crores in Q2 of last year. With the consolidated entity at the total comprehensive income level, there is a gain of INR 470.7 crores against INR 13,880.5 crores for the corresponding quarter in the previous year. The gain for Q2 FY '23 includes market mark-to-market gain of INR 34.5 crores on investments held in Smart tech Bazar. Listed companies being the difference between share price as it and beginning of the quarter. The gain of Q2 FY '22 had included INR 13,659 crores arising from the distinguished in that quarter and the mark-to-market gain, therefore, on the share price at that quarter end. Adjusted for the exceptional items, PBT stood at a profit of INR 148.7 crores in Q2 23 versus INR 69.9 crores in 2022. Thank you. We are now ready to take any questions that you may have.
[Operator Instructions] The first question is from Deep.
So Hitesh, first question is actually around 99 heaters. So what we've seen is there's a mix trend there. Billings have only grown 11%. At the same time, as losses have remained. So if you could just help us understand better what's happening in that segment? And how should we think about this segment going forward, especially that we are investing a lot more for brokers now? How should we think about 98% as a whole?
Yes. So see what we have seen in the market is that the real estate segment is back, property prices are going up. more real estate being bottle sold band was a gas earlier. The real estate market was in the rural term for many years, but it's sort of stone bumping back. There seems to be a shortage of supply because not enough projects were launched over the last couple of years due to COVID. At the same time, demand has picked up. So therefore, prices are going up in several pockets.
As far as our business is concerned, our business has been very badly because of COVID last year, which is why you are seeing solid growth in the first half in terms of revenue because of the low base. But I think the way to look at India is how are we trending month-on-month, quarter-on-quarter. So we are now at a point where we are -- we hit a rate of perhaps a heat-of-threat of about INR 25 crores a month. At the same -- and yes, our losses have gone up because we're investing a lot more in product development. We're investing a lot more in marketing than was the case in year. And partially, it's also because of the increase in competitive intensity in the space.
There are many more players who are active and they are spending a ton of money right now, and therefore, we are sort of being forced to respond to keep our share. How will things shape up going forward will, to a large extent, depend on how well we execute on the ground, number one. And so it will depend on how fast and how well we are able to execute as a team on some of the initiatives that we are pursuing inside the company. And 2, it will depend on how competition sort of behaves in the market if they continue to invest aggressively, then for a while, we may be forced to marketing investments to counter them. On the other hand, if competitive intensity starts to decrease, then that will be a different ball game.
But the overall market looks decent. We don't want the market to become unaffordable for real estate buyers. We don't want prices to go through the roof also. We don't want it to be a market where people launch projects and they get sold immediately because of certain surgeon activity because New not required. At the same time, we don't want a very core market also where nothing else. So fingers crossed. But after a long time, it looks like there is a buoyancy in the market and that should be good news in the medium term at least.
Right. Also, if you could help us understand a bit more about broader network. I see you invested a lot of money there. So if you can help us understand what is it? And any chance we are getting back into transactions or that is still not a place we want to explore?
Yes. So broker network and investment. We don't run the company. But yes, we have invested in the company, and the company was pursuing a very aggressive model until recently. They are basically in 2 different businesses. They enable high digits for new projects for developers, and they charge per site is it. So that's one model. And then they also sort of help organize home loans and they take a cut on that. So that's the second model sort of the second business airing. So now they want to make a transaction cut from developers. They've launched something in that area, early days still.
Next question is from [ Jay from Julius Baer ].
Am I audible?
Yes.
Yes. A quick question. Could you comment on the IT sector and the demand in that space, please?
Yes. See, for the last 7 quarters, the IT sector was on higher attrition rates are very high. You were massive with inpatient, tremendous hiding, again, mismatch of supply and demand, not enough supply, sudden surge demand. And that was great for our business. Now anecdotally, what we're heading from being in the market right now and what we are witnessing in our company also is that attrition rates have come down. a bit and things are normalizing. And therefore, I suspect growth in IT hiring will moderate going forward. And now how much will it slow down by really hard for me to say at this stage. Will it slow down? Definitely, will crash, I don't know for how long will it slow down? No idea again, it may depend on what happens to the U.S. case IT sector next to what happens to the U.S. than to what happened in India. So that's where we are with as far as IT is concerned at this point in time.
Next question is from of [ Rais ] from Citi.
Can you hear me?
Yes, we can.
Oh, sorry, this is Vijit. My question is, first off, on IT hiring, Hitesh, when you said also in the TV and in the press release that IT hiring is now normalizing. Just wondering, a, does normalizing mean back to pre-coding of levels? Is that the definition of normalizing here at the moment? And a related question in the overall recruitment space. Can you talk about any future investment plans in the other company that you invested in there, right, coding? That's the learning space, right? So how should we think about that going forward?
Yes. So again, very fun day is too early for me to comment on how this IT hiring will sort of shape up going forward. And October was also in the speeding because of the festival season, many companies sort of slowed down their operation in the festival season. But what I said earlier on the call is said, certainly, attrition rates are trending south in IT. I was the trading market is some time back. It is a more normal market now. Now that may not be the case with all companies, okay? Maybe some companies are doing better than others, some are not. Now -- so that's what I meant by things are being to normalize. It's not as if IT companies are laying off workers. We haven't have come across any such sort of case at this point in time. But certainly, they're negotiating harder the can take more time. They are not under as much pressure as they were earlier at least some of them. And attrition rates seem to be slowing down by how much, I guess, depends on the company.
Got it. And my second question was on Coating India's investment plans there. How should we think about that going forward from both cash. Yes.
So we've been an investor in Cotai for a while, and the good progress and which is why we've increased our stake from 25%, 26% earlier to now 51%. And the idea is to sort of deeply integrate with Notre going forward. Until now, they were mostly focused on providing education solutions to students on in campsite on campuses under gas students. But increasingly, they are looking to offer more and more courses, upskilling courses for working professionals as well. And over time, we will sort of integrate their offerings with an OP platform. It's part of our overall sort of vision, long-term vision to transform from just being a job board into a more sort of holistic careers platform, where sort of we help people not just find jobs, but we also help prepare them to sort of find the right jobs for themselves. We inform them and prepare them and sort of tease them as well. So that's the long-term dateline. Of course, a lot will depend on how the business sort of shapes up over time.
Great. So I guess, one last question around that. Is that more around the lines of online learning or there's off-line learning component there is the...
No, it's more -- it's right now only online.
Got it. Great. And sorry, if I can have one last question from my side. Just on the recruitment side. The non-IT recruitment sector, you've called out as some of those cases are picking up pace. From a more removing the whole low base of the last few years' perspective, how do you think that non-IT sector shaping up from here given that IT sector is normalizing. Should you -- or do you think the share of non-IT goes up from whatever 40%-odd of your billings or revenues to somewhere more closer to 50 plus? Or how should one think about that?
Well, the non-IT hiring piece is more indexed to the Indian economy and how GDP growth in India. Now partly, what we are seeing is a surge in hiring on the non-IT side because loan IT companies are pretty much sort of because of coal, they were shut for some time. They have data-workers, they were business have contracted. Now they are bouncing back there's defense travel, event shopping, range, everything, right?
And therefore, we are seeing a massive surge in demand for talent in spaces like retail, travel, hospitality, banking, financial services, insurance, telecom, because of IT sort of -- and so on and so forth.
So we have seen -- so there's more demand for sales professionals, finance professionals, marketing professionals, customer service reps -- and so now what had happened over the last 7 quarters was -- or at least for the last 4 or 5 quarters, was that IT demand had picked up and there was a surge in demand and which is why the share of IT in our overall mix perhaps went up by about 5, 7 percentage points. Now if IT haring slows down and non-IT companies continue to ramp up, then, of course, we might go back to how things used to be pre-covid for us. But that will depend on whether this non-IT space is sustainable and how sustainable it is. So if it's going to be like this for a while, then of course, the share of non-ad total hiring.
We have someone from Laburnum Capital who at ease the hand.
Yes. This is [ Amit Kadam ] from Laburnum Capital. So I had a question on the matrimony business. So we've had a change in strategy, I guess, over the last 6 months or so, if I'm not wrong. How is that playing out? Can you share some metrics either in terms of market share or traffic share like you do for other verticals? Because otherwise, we cannot make sense of what's really going on here. And second, just related to that is how much are we spending on marketing on a quarterly basis? And has that gone down post our new strategy or gone up? Just some numbers, broad numbers would be really helpful.
Yes. Yes. No. So I can't share all the metrics for competitive reasons, but we are very happy with the progress that we are making. We have gained substantial traffic share in our view over the last few quarters, especially in the communities where we are reasonable players. People are -- more people are registering with us. People are spending more time on the platform. We are enabling more matches and hopefully, more and more managers are also happening to us. And so we are very happy with gains in traffic share. And this is despite us story. We've cut down marketing spend also. So it's not as if we are spending casing money on marketing. Our revenue is down 30%. Our collection is around 30%, billing is down 30%. But despite that, we are perhaps losing only as much money as we were losing earlier.
And if the numbers continue to trend in the right direction, the losses in the matrimony business going forward, it will be much lower than what losses were in Q3 and Q4 of last year. So in Q3 and Q4 of last year, we had [indiscernible] marketing significantly in our major vertical. And since then, the marketing spend has been slowly trending down. Now we don't want to sort of cut marketing overnight also because we need to sort of get the word out that we are free, right, because people need to know that we have 3. So for some time, this marketing spending will continue. At the same time, we are working on new models and new way of needs to monetize the audiences, but early days on that front. So way to watch for the next few months, let's see how it goes.
Got it. Any sense of have we lost -- have you gained market share in terms of number of users?
Yes, absolutely. Like I said, we've been gaining traffic share on the user side in all the communities where we are present. So while we have lost market share as a revenue market share, we have certainly gained on user market share.
We have next question from the line of [ Vimal Gohil ].
So my first question was on the Naukri business. I just wanted to get a sense on the slowness that we've seen in the unique user. I do understand that partly it is because of the IT hiring slowing down. But should that essentially lead to a decline in user base for us? That is point number one. And the related point would be that you have more than made it up by increasing the revenue per unique user.
Unique user by, you mean what?
I mean customers or on the recruitment side or on the job. On the recruitment side, on the number of unique users unique customers Yes.
Which number are you referring because as far as we are concerned, we're not seeing any decline in unique customer quarter-on-quarter or year-on-year?
Yes, yes. Look, it's a sequential decline on the customer side.
So a lot of these customers are at the bottom. So they don't generate too much revenue for us. And often it's a function of how many hoods all in the quarter, et cetera, et cetera. So I would not read too much into that number. But in general, when the market slows down, then new customer addition does slow down a bit.
Got it, sir. And sir, just wanted to get -- again, I know you've sort of made up on the average revenue that you generated for unique. That was my second point. I mean, how much of that would you relate to more better mix and the addition of your other services like dosed, Wim, et cetera.
So we don't give the breakup, but when we sort of build more from a customer, it's mostly on account of one, sometimes to buy more services as we have launched so many new products and services. So a lot of customers end up buying some of these new services that we've taken to market. 2, we've seen serious good pricing gains over the last few years -- the last few quarters. And so that's been across the board, we realized better prices than we used to raise earlier when we went in to cover we were discounting heavily because the economy was slowing down and after injury covered also, we had to discount heavily to sort of retain because companies are not hiring.
But therefore, our pricing had gone down substantially over the last 2, 3 years. So that has now gone back to normal levels. In fact, we are working hard to sort of customers see the value that we're creating for them through some of the tools we've launched, sales anchors and customer analytics tools. And so that's helping us realize better prices. And thirdly, also what happens in a good market is customers need to hire more people, so they buy more volume. So it's perhaps -- so ARPU has gone up, it's a mix of...
Right, right. Just to understand that, you made a pertinent point that and how many -- what is the share of our customers who are using these add-on services that we have? Is the penetration up there? I mean, do we have some low-hanging fruit there? Or you have almost most of your large customers using your services already?
No, no, no. So we have a long way to go. Of course, there is more competition in some of these new spaces, and there are other players you're competing with. But penetration levels are nowhere close to even 20%, 30%, 40% in different products, but they are very low. But there is more competition as well.
Understood. And lastly, sir, just one question on coding India. I think you made -- you made a point on finding some synergies with the core acre platform. My belief is that coding winter would be a direct B2C sort of a model and our platform is more B2B. How are you sort of looking at synergies then are you looking to sort of cross-sell coating in to your existing enterprise customers? Or how will that transition...
Our platform is not B2B. Our revenue is mostly B2B, right? We have a B2C part of the business. So we have millions of topics who visit our platform every month. They spend a lot of time on the platform. They register on the platform, they apply for jobs on the platform. So there's a shortage of users on the platform. Revenue deferation is mostly on the B2B side. About 70% of our revenue comes from job seekers as agreement today, we have this fast-forward business where we sell services obese that's not the primary focus. -- but we get about 7% to 8% of revenue or 5%, 6% of our revenue from the jobseekers today. You are right, cotinine is a B2C offering right now. There is no plan of taking plan to make modest recruiters at the moment. And therefore, what we will do is integrate the coding meter offerings with our Naukri platform more and more going forward. And in the process, hopefully, we will break down the cost of acquisition -- customer acquisition for Code India. Got it, sir. It sounds interesting.
Next question is from Vivekanand of AMBIT Capital.
Hitesh, you said that the increased billing, you highlighted the 3 factors. Were they in order of importance in terms of contribution to the increased billing? Or was it just in no specific sequence.
No specific sequence.
And as far as the commentary on IT is concerned, you did mention that things are now normalizing. So would a sharp decline in attrition rate meaningfully weigh on the volumes right now? And is there a possibility that we might be looking at a potential decline in billing for recruitment if this were to play out, let's say, attrition declines by say, 5% industry-wide, would this meaningfully result in a sharp cut in the billing? Or are we looking at a situation where things -- this is like the new base where all the discounts have been withdrawn and all the pricing is back to normal levels.
It's really hard to me to say, I don't know how it's going to play out. We don't know for sure whether there is slightly -- I mean, there is a fall in addition but how much a attrition fall by is hard for me to say whether attrition fall for one quarter or whether this will be a sustained slowdown unclear at this point in time have companies overhired a lot to depend on that also, right? Or what we're still scrambling to get talent and suddenly now things are getting better. So if -- and I guess the situation will be different for different companies. So it's very hard for me to say. What I can tell you for sure is that attrition date seem to be trending south. Now how much South cones. And where will this finally stabilize, unclear to me. We have seen a foreign sharp fall in attrition in our company, but that's because many of our employees to deeply join start-ups and start-ups, as you know, are in big trouble.
But we don't make a lot of revenue from startups. We may mostly sort of make our money from IT services companies and from captives. In the past, we have also seen that whenever there is a slowdown or a recession in the U.S., the Indian IT industry gets hit for a quarter or 2. But in the end, the benefit because a lot of jobs -- more and more jobs are outsourced to India. I don't know whether that will happen this time around. But if that to happen, then business will start picking up again in a couple of quarters. The demand should for IT services companies should start picking up again. So early days, it's very difficult for me to say how it's going to play out.
Okay. Just one follow-up with respect to the billing trends. So when we look at the growth today, right, the Notre India 46 billion, 46% year-on-year billing growth, is this trend meaningfully different for IT versus non-IT? And secondly, on the billing side, would the segments of IT hiring, which is IT services, captives and, let's say, the domestic firms hiring for their IT needs. Is the billing trend very different on that count also...
Not very different for Q2, right? But what I said is that, listen, what they're picking up is some stories around IT highing going down going forward. So it could change going forward, right, but not very different for...
Okay. You are saying that even this quarter, the billing growth for IT versus non-IT was on a similar tangent, is it?
Yes, I would -- if I now idea is pretty solid, even in Q2 -- sorry, IT hiring growth for us was pretty solid improved as well.
Okay. Fair enough. So second question is on 99acres. Initially, you mentioned quite a bit about how you are seeing that the market is in a sweet spot for your platform. And of course, you feel that this momentum is here to stay. But just trying to understand this better. You had a couple of years ago, I believe you had done a reorganization focusing on specific verticals new launches, resale, rental, commercial -- so would it be possible for you to give an update on that, on where this is progressing, maybe segment-wise commenting?
So internally, this is how we are organized. We have teams that work on resale. We have a team which works on new homes. We have a team which works on rental, so we have to commercial. Of course, the commercial and rental part of the business are small. It's mostly new homes and resale where we get our revenue. Almost all sectors are sort of have bounced back. So there's a lot more commercial activity in the market as companies go back to working from office. There's a lot more rental activity in the market because a lot of people have sort of left there the cities in which they were working and going back home, they're all coming back. And therefore, there is a surging demand for bigger houses for more houses to rent. Suddenly, we are also seeing real estate prices go up, and that has bought -- brought a lot of buyers back into the market also.
And of course, people have seen, at least in IT, seeing very good saving increases over the last couple of years. So certainly, there is a demand for more housing as well. And at the same time, suppliers of new homes has gone down, there's less inventory because there were not enough new projects which were started during COVID. So on the whole, the whole market is looking attractive, and prices have gone up. At the same time, we worry about the fact that prices work too much in the -- still become unaffordable, and that will result in a lot of buyers sort of getting priced out of the market. And so market in the middle is at what was best for us.
Okay. My last question is on the number of customers that you report. That number, both on the builder and the broker side has gone up significantly. Compared to last year, actually, in the last couple of quarters, this number has been quite elevated compared to, let's say, the trends that were there in all 4 quarters of fiscal '22. So are the benefits of the billing completely in the base now in terms of the pricing interventions or multiple products that we would have sold to these customers or is there more scope to extract billings from these customers still we start looking for new customers to are? I'm asking because between fiscal '19 and, let's say, until 2Q or 3Q fiscal '22, the number of broker and builder customers were pretty similar, and now they seem to be 50% higher.
Sure of that because I hope you're not including owners as well.
No, no, no. I'm just talking about the 32,700 broker and 6,400 filter customers. So this is on your side back Slide #43.
Okay. No, maybe we can get back to you on this offline. We have seen, of course, our customer base went down during COVID, and H1 last year was impacted because of covid. And compared to, of course, H1 last year, we must have seen a strong recovery on the number of customers. But let me get back to you how much the numbers have actually gone up by. Let me just sort of recheck and get back to you.
So next question is from Mohit from Nuvama Capital.
I wanted to ask on the recruitment business, like IT, as we have already spoken about that the attrition rates are going down and that might moderate the growth. So just wanted to get your thoughts on other verticals like BFSI, which are also one of the hot white collar markets in India. Do you have any ambition to scale up on that front so that you can have elevated growth rates in the future? Because with the contribution, if I look at the contribution, it has emanated 60% tier the last so many quarters. So do you have any plans or you think you can increase your contribution share from BFSI sector?
See, our share what it is because it's a much smaller segment when it comes to hiring compared to IT, right? So there are maybe 10,000 IT companies or 8,000 companies on it. The number of BFSI players in the market is much fewer, and they don't employ as many people as IT companies do. Of course, we would want to up our wallet share from all BFSI clients, and we are working on that. But it's unlikely that they are sort of -- their share in our overall mix will change significantly over the next couple of quarters. Metro, that segment will grow faster than other segments if the market is doing well. But it's like 6%, 7%, it can become 10%, 12%, 14% overnight. It's not likely that.
Next question is from [ Rohan Kalahasti ].
So my question is towards the 90-acre side. So basically, I have just started following your company. And while on the Naukri front, you are market leading, the numbers are also improving quarter-on-quarter, and there are some really great numbers. From Dandekar point of view, what I understand is that in the last annual report of yours, there was a -- you mentioned that some shops have been issued, right? So that expenses would have included ESOPs. So basically, what I want to understand is that while we compare the Q-on-Q losses of this quarter and this half with the previous quarter and previous half year. Is there any component of Islo in that? -- because just to understand what the apple comparison would look like?
Yes. So both would include soft charges. But although I don't think that it will be significantly different on a consistent basis, they keep on giving the mistaken we charge you do as per the -- so when we are looking at the EBITDA numbers will be charged for.
Okay. And second question is towards your marketing spend now in the previous quarter call, you said that you are looking at a marketing spend of like INR 30 crores to INR 40 crores on a quarter-on-quarter basis. So going forward, do you still hold that number? Or do you expect it to increase or decrease?
Yes, it will depend on competitive activity, which is what I said earlier on the call also, could be INR 25 crores, INR 35 crores, it could be INR 40 crores, it will depend on whatever we need -- what we need to do to sort of defend our share in this market. So we decide on our sort of marketing spend on a quarter-on-quarter basis.
Next question is from Pankaj Kapoor.
My first question is regarding 99acres. If I look at the market share, the traffic market share, that has been sort of trending down. And if I look at -- there's only one player that is housing, which has gained market share. Is it purely because of the advertising budget, what they are having? Or do you think there is something else to it? Because the gains that they have done on the market share are quite significant. And if they are sort of sticking around then, we are not looking at the sort of a duopoly kind of market, maybe there are 3 very strong players with cannibal, -- so how do you see that? And my second question is on the margins of Info Edge. I mean you think 63-odd percent margin historically, they will slightly lower. But how should we see this in the medium to longer term?
Yes. See... Traffic chassis, it's a tractor business in military should take with the pitches all because there are different types of users on our platform. So there are people who are looking to buy new homes or people are looking to buy the retail properties that are people are looking to buy rentals. They're looking to sort of rent properties and so on and so forth. Now there are people looking to buy high-end properties that people looking to buy low-end properties. Now every user is not the same.
A rental user, for example, is very hard to monetize. On the other hand, while spending the marketing, you can get a ton of that into our platform. So this market share or traffic share business has to be sort of license like the traffic has been dining different ways to understand what's really happening in the market. But yes, you are absolutely right in saying that housing has been track share over the last few quarters. And we would like -- at least our team believes is mostly because on account of their higher marketing spend. They're splendid right now as a peak. And yes, there are more than 2 players which are sort of aggressive in the market -- in the market at this point in time. Now of course, it will take a while for the dust to settle down.
But yes, right now, there are many players competing. But the market which is also growing separately, but there are many more players. So let's see how this plays out. But all traffic is not the same. And as far as margins on implied or recruitment margins, the recruitment business go see if our recruitment business continues to grow at even 18%, 20% per annum, these margins should be easy to maintain. In fact, we can even better than going forward. But if growth slows down considerably, then of course, margins may take a bit of a hit. We don't expect the kind of wage pressure we saw in the last 1 or 2 years to continue going forward because we're seeing a slowdown in our attrition also unless things change again on that front. But if things change on that front, then of course, our billing growth also looks start looking at once again.
Sure. One small follow-up on 99acres. So you said that the all traffic is not same. Can you give some color on that? I mean...
Yes. I mean, for example, let's say we get 10 million users, let's say, I mean just picking a number. And if 5 million of those rental users, then a rental user is not as valuable as a resale buyer. On a retail buyer, you can make 10x than what you can from a rental user, right, as a platform. In fact, if -- on the and do, if the rental user is looking to rent property at less than INR 10,000 a month, for example, nobody can make money from that enters. So all users are not the same.
Sure. But I mean -- so can you give some color on -- does that mean that Housing.com could potentially have a larger share coming from the rental or some player who's stronger in the rental segment and you are stronger on the resell or -- and some other players stronger than the bid. Is that the case or...
I haven't looked at the housing numbers very closely, but yes, I can say for sure that if by user is much more monetizable than our rental ever.
Next question is from Ruchi.
This is [ Ruchi from Milan, are Capital ]. I have a couple of questions. First, so post pandemic, we have seen that digital intensity of enterprises has increased. Even if I look at the Naukri platform, you have a unique number of clients are up about like 26%. So could you highlight us have you seen a change in the behavior of, let's say, on strategic or beyond, so to say, large or mature users, has the lower base of customers shown some changes in terms of consumption pattern or usages?
Absolutely. For example, we have a small blue collar platform job here. We sort of -- and we've been seeing significant traction in that platform. We don't monetize right now. We are still getting more and more users to use the platform. And these are mostly blue collar to make INR 15,000 and INR 14,000 INR 22,000 a man-technicians, the delivery boys, data entry operators, salon workers and the traffic is growing month on month. So unquestionably, without doubt, I mean, everybody is around the Internet and everybody is becoming more and more comfortable using the Internet.
Even small businesses. Earlier it just to be very hard to get small businesses to use the Internet. But now everybody is used to smartphones, they're buying grocery online, they're ordering food online. They're buying insurance online. They are shopping online. So now it's making payments online. So I think pretty much everybody sort of now used to sort of -- I mean, they know how to operate a phone. They know how to make payments. They know how to post jobs and now how to post. They don't want to take pictures. They know how to take videos. So it's getting easier and easier with every passing month.
So my question was trying to understand, is naukri.com able to monetize that behavior.
So if we demonetize businesses and Earlier, it was perhaps -- so we have a sales team, and they have a telesales team and we have people sort of making e-commerce payments on the platform. Our telesales to e-commerce business has been growing rapidly, and that's mostly the business we get from small enterprises. These are mostly people buy online. We don't have sales people who reach out to them, train them, et cetera. But they're mostly small customers. So they're not a big part of our revenue, okay? But they are to our customer base, and they get this volume growth. Most certainly benefit from this trend. And like I said in our Java business, we have continued to sort of add on reserves. And these uses are not an or. And we haven't started monetizing them as yet, but we will monetize them at appropriate time.
Understood. One more question for Naukri platform. So IT hiring on Notre platform was down 3% Y-o-Y September quarter as per the job in tax. But yet, we saw 55% growth. So could you help us understand what drives this contrast? Is it completely explained by better hiring in? Or how do you see -- I mean matrix in September quarter compared to the Job seeking index minus 3 Y-o-Y growth in the quarter.
So 261 everything is not correlated to job listing take to a job seek index, measure a number of job listings on our platform, it -- and a lot of the hiring on Naukri happens to our deals product. right? So it is possible that database hiring was not hit as much as I improve job postings, right? That's one process that's one. The second thing is when companies buy Naukri products, mostly the big customers, they buy for a year, right? So even if there's a temporary lower hiring and we expect him to pick up going forward, the bar for the year, and it's one of those -- and they're more likely to cut down highly through recruitment consultants, they're more likely to cut down, adding through other expensive channels first, then through Naukri. So I suspect companies perhaps many companies have not experienced -- I mean, while they're seeing attrition slow down, they continue the hope that -- or they believe that it will still be tough to hire going forward. And 2, like I said, our database activity was not hit as much as our job posting activity last quarter.
Understood. One last question. This is for 99acres. So on the 99 acre platform, if I look at your quarterly revenue per paid listed, it shows quite a tough jump, about 93% Y-o-Y. In tandem, if I compare your big mix between broker and the builder, it hasn't changed much. It's kind of there, there. So can you help us understand what's driving this? Is it price increases that we affected or the new services, analytics is kind or mix change? How to read it?
Sorry,--the revenue per paid this thing is done 90% percent. What I can tell you at a very macro level, we had launched a premium listing product, right? And over the last few months, we've prepared many of our customers to freedom listings. And as a result of that, our average revenue per listing has moved up essentially in 1990. I suspect it's mostly that, but if there's anything else, we'll get back to you. Okay. So this is largely pricing increases.
So the next question, you can please go forward.
So first question is on or -- so just wanted to understand, to your previous comment that the pricing in the past has gone up decently well. And now if I were to look at your average billing per unique customer that is around 75,000 on number. Going ahead, how should we think about it? Like if there is a decline in a number of unique clients, how would this number trend basically, your realizations, how would they train going ahead, assuming that there is a slowdown in IT...
It also depends on how well the non-IT segment continues to perform well as. So certainly, the IT sort of -- if IT hiring source goes down, then we will not be able to affect major price increases with our customers in '19 realizations may not grow as much as we did last year, independent what happens right I think on the non-IT hiring, we expect our realization to improve going forward. And where we will end up as a company will depend on how much -- how fast and on IT business goes.
Okay. And secondly, taking on Naukri side, your -- if I were to look at your operating expenses for the segment, they have moved up from INR 110 crores last year 2Q to INR 164 crores this year. Now that's a significant jump of 15%. May I understand -- I know like where are these expenses going because we don't do a lot of marketing there, right? So what is the other moving part over there?
So there are 3 things happening here. One is we had to effect major sort of at increases last year because of high attrition and because that's what the market was like outside. In fact, for our -- in many parts of the company, we had to give saline twice last year. That is one. The other is, we've also sort of added more people over time because we have sort of move into adjacent areas. So we acquired companies. We have launched new verticals. And also, we have added a lot of people, for example, in the AmbitionBox, vertical. We added a lot of people in the Job vertical, wanted a lot of people in Zwayam, which we acquired something back, 2 select and so on.
So in many of these new areas, we are investing and investing aggressively. And so you added head count and a lot of this head count is products expensive head count, design head count. So I guess it's a combination of these 2 or 3 things which has led to operating costs going up. We've also invested more in we've also been investing more in marketing for the last few months. We bunched new campaign to target to reach out to the Gen audience, my kind of Naukri. So while our marketing spend is not a big part of our overall spend, it is likely to be substantially higher than what it was last year.
Okay. And just a last one on clarification basically on the head count. So if I were to look at the last 2 quarters' head count that has gone up 11%. So is this related to the employee additions in the verticals that you just mentioned or the it somewhere else?
Mostly in the newer verticals, so in all our businesses. So like I said, in JobHai, AmbitionBox and in the Shiksha studio vertical, we also built up our head count in tech and product 99acres. So in the fastest-growing part of the business, we've added more people in newer -- in the newer verticals, we are more people in some of these verticals year likely to monetize. Like JobHai not monetizing right. A big shift we have added people. That's another platform that we're sort of trying to build in-house. So the big shift team has also grown to some 1890 people over time. So we have a lot of these new areas we are investing in, where we are adding a lot of people because we're building new products. We are trying to innovate, a lot of them we were innovating earlier. We've acquired some companies, so that head count has also moved on to our books.
And will that addition slowdown in case your billings also slow down? Or would you continue to invest?
And so there will be pressure on margin also. Will depend on what kind of opportunity you see in these verticals. So if these verticals start responding well, and we see opportunity for growth, then we're not going to worry about the margins going up or down by a couple of percentage points. On the other hand, if these verticals require a lot more work, and we feel that we haven't got the product market fit right and then we need to tinker with them in more to sort of get our act together. Then of course, we will slow down investments in these verticals.
Right. And just one thing I'd just highlight, I think the data animating your presentation. So your sales servicing and client facing staff. Last quarter, it was showing -- now it is showing 63%. Historically, it has been around 60%, 62%. So I think there is an anomaly there. If I just wanted to get a sense of... We made a note of that.
We'll get back to you.
So next question is from Ankur from JPMorgan.
So just first question, Hitesh, you've highlighted several times that I think IT hiring is heading back to normalcy. Could you define what is normalcy? Is this sub 10%, 15% growth? Is it 15%, 20%? What's in your mind is normalcy?
I wish I could tell you because the till last quarter, even the IT part of our delicately well, right? What -- I was just -- but I'm beginning to pick up some noise in the market that, okay, company are saying listen highs come down, our business is not as it could. We're not likely to work 30%, 40% or whatever, as a growth may moderate going forward, and we are negotiating a little harder than they were earlier. That's what I'm picking up from our sales team. But October is also a very different month because see this year, Diwali was an October last time I remember, so actually slows down at this time. We will know for only in the weeks to come, just to what you perform this sort of thing would take. But overall, we are sensing that there's a slowdown in IT hiding.
Right. No, no, that's fine. I mean I'm not -- I don't have an issue with slow down. I was just curious about structurally what do you think is normal hiring normal growth for your business, given if IT goes back to, let's say, sub 10% growth or 8% to 10% growth.
I don't know. I mean, if they're growing, they will still need to add more people and overall growth is going to be a function of sort of gross additions, right minus campus hiring. That's one. And of course, we are -- like I said, we've been working on our products and services to ensure that we get more wallet share from our customers and we can help them hire our people. So it will be a combination of 2 factors, very hard for me to -- I mean the long term sort of number to be 20%, 15%, 25% is hard for me to say.
Understood. In IT, just how much of your business momentum depends on attrition versus underlying market growth?
Attrition is a big part of the whole story because attrition, attrition rates grew by 50%, for example, a company was -- had 10% attrition earlier and now it has a pet to 55% more people to stay at the same play, right? So attrition makes a huge sort of difference to our business. Attrition also results in each pressure and then there's rate pressure and also results in a lot of noise inside the company because the business people want to service customers and they want people onboarded quickly. And when that happens, companies won't think twice about whether they're getting at 10% this comfort year, 30% is going from 3, right? Because at the end of the day, we are a very small part of what they spend. So companies have billions of dollars of revenue in IT spend, less than $1 billion than us or less than $0.5 million or the month. So they would rather sort of give us whatever we want, then -- so on the other hand, of course, if demand picks up, that also helps. But if a company needs to hire 10% more people in earlier, that's okay, it's just 10% more people penetration rates go up by 30% or 40%, that's 40% would be okay.
Understood I mean your comment that growth is generally quite strong, both in IT and non-IT. So yes, that non-IT extremely strong because it patient close to 50%, if not higher. That is very surprising to me because in the past, we've really struggled to grow non-IT. I mean it's like pre-Covid. Could you maybe highlight if there's any industry driving this? Or are they just tech profiles in non-IT industries that are driving it?
Well, it's perhaps a bit of both, but you see a lot of non-IT companies had not hired for a while. And now things are getting back to normal. The business is growing much faster. If you look at our JobSpeak index, you get a sense some of these industries, jobs on them on our platform have been were up 70%, 60%, 80% over last year, cost different for different industries. But see, these companies had pretty much -- they actually shrunk in terms of head count of them over the last couple of years because of COVID. And so partly, it is sort of -- they're getting back to their normal peak over normal. And partly, it is also the disruption with good cost, right? People have good jobs.
Many people don't want to -- did not for a long time, want to go back to high contact sectors of the on partly, it is also, like you said, many of these companies want to digitize faster, right, than earlier, and therefore, they are hiring more digital talent. So that's also happening. So now whether this is -- now this may -- we will also go through a phase where this sort of continues to be the case or maybe another couple of quarters and then things go back to 10. But a lot will depend on what happens to GDP growth. In the past, we've seen a 6% GDP growth in India. People are very difficult to get. You start seeing wage pressure, you start seeing high attrition and you start hiring costs go up, retention is difficult. At 5%, 5.5%, we are somewhere in the middle at 4%, things start to slow down. Companies come under pressure. So a lot will also depend on for a couple of quarters, like I said, maybe event hiring because they laid off earlier. And then after that, a lot will depend on what happens with the economy and what the new normal GDP growth is.
Got it. Now I appreciate that comment Finally, in terms of the investment environment, how has that evolved for your investee firms. From your perspective, we've seen slightly bigger checks this time in existing investments. Have you recalibrated your investment style given the current investment/business environment? And are you stepping up versus other investors at this time?
Sanjeev, you want to take that?
Yes, I'll take it. So I think 2 have happened in our conduct and in the conduct of other investors. Number one is we are, of course, seeing many more deals because if funding is a little scarce, more and more companies will reduct to us. And that's only good because then you get a choice, then you get a benchmark. The second is we are going a little slow. So if you look at our Fund 1I, I think we deployed in a double with time because that was -- market was booming. We got -- we went in early, got round.
That fund is looking good, at least on paper, given the following rounds that have happened externally, posts are going in. In this front, we're going slower, we will take probably a full 3 years to deploy prosect -- and we are taking our time. And we are going into smaller rounds initially and then doubling down. So we are less trigger happy I'd say. And that is the case for the market. One big risk thing that's happened is that you want to start worrying a little bit more about where this company will get its next round from. And you want to think long and hard about that before you go in because all people per good yourself, if you have that for commission. In Fund 1, recently assume that half recent company will get a section pretty easy for other investors.
Understood. Now this because you did cross 50% in a couple of your investments, which showed either you were very confident…
So the strategic investments, that is coating India that is strategic. And there, obviously, we're very confident. We've been with the company for a while.
So this will -- do you think you expect them to merge with your existing business over time? Or will this remain independent in the medium to long term?
Yes. So like I say, coding, especially, we are likely to sort of work very closely with them going forward. We see them as a big part of our overall strategy of transforming Naukri into a career platform over time. We will deeply integrate their offerings with the Naukri platform over time. Now if -- and if you get a good response, then you see quarter to go after that.
Okay. So , I mean, if that's the reality why stop at whatever this is 50%, 60%, why not go the whole hog... I mean, if you get a good response, and it makes sense for both companies to sort of work even more closely together, then...
I mean part of it is out of the deal also yes. If you want to take out the founders, right, they'll ask for certain valuation right now, which we may mono be comfortable giving given where the company is today. At the same time, if you take out the founders completely, then they won't have an upside in the future, which is motivated. So it's -- I mean, online business, a lot of other people running it. And you got to retain the people keep some motivated and make sure they have a reasonable upside going forward.
Also it depends on the maturity level of the business. If the -- these businesses at the end of the day, both aisle actually and come are still tiny businesses, right? So -- and we won't think we can sort of take them in right now and scale them 10x or 20x from here, right? Because I don't think we have the management manage doing that. And therefore, we would want the this to stay motivated and keep working on these verticals for by at least.
Next question is from [ Paresh Bandari from Nora ].
If I look at the fixture slide in the presentation, I see an EBITDA loss compared to the usual quarterly profits. And also the sequential drop in revenue seems to be very high compared to your prior periods. So maybe you could you explain what's happening in that business? 2 things.
Partly, the education season has been moving for the last 2 years because of Covid. So a lot of fix revenue depends on when sort of what these taken through it and that may be shifting a little bit. But partly, it's also that we are investing a little more than we were earlier in our study about business. So we are ramping up head count in the study broad business. And that EBITDA's cycle, certain sort of you first hire people and you consent people, they are counseled, mostly you have counters. And the students are counseled over a fear of a few months and then they end up in a foreign university. And after a while you realize that revenue. So partly, it's that as well.
So do you expect this to come back to EBITDA positive in the coming quarters? Or do you think this trend could continue with your investments for some more time?
See, we were making at any profit. It's not as we've been making a lot of money. I think our focus right now in Sika is to grow the business and to add sort of more verticals of the business. We are not so first about making a profit in Chichester.
Hitesh, I think this question was asked. But could you give us some markers around your progress on your new strategy around the matrimony business. You spoke about traffic improving. But has the user engagement increased are the recent metric to really verify those higher traffic eventually going to help us...
Yes. So on the traffic side, they're not playing. We've seen CS gains. We increased our share in almost all the markets we operate in. We have many more sort of people resisting on our platform. They are spending more time with the platform. They are we are enabling more matches and hopefully, therefore, more marriages. So on -- we are very happy with the progress we are seeing on these metrics. Revenues are down by design. Our belief is in long term, the user share converts will ultimately sort of convert into revenue market share as well. Of course, we may have to discover new ways of monetizing going forward. We also believe that in the long run, the proposition may help us sort of lower our marketing costs as well, right? But that has to -- I mean, it has been seen how this plays out. We'll probably have a much clearer picture to present to you maybe in March, by March, April.
It's -- just my last question is on your core recruitment business. So we have already proven the business very well in India. We understand the ITS market very -- do you think time has come for us now to start thinking about maybe expanding to similar labor supply zones maybe like Eastern Europe, not now, but maybe from a medium-term perspective or some other countries where we could use our relationship with the existing IT companies and help them recruit there.
Honestly, that's not our focus at this point in time. We think India is a large enough market and the Indian market is likely to grow well going forward. Strategically, we've been adding more services to our offering so that we can take a larger suite of products for clients in India. We are still a very small share of the work. We still get a very tiny proportion of what they spend on recruitment as a whole. And as far as going international, sort of international -- you see what we've also learned over time, it's very hard on space non-plain any market, no matter how smart are the market. And therefore, if you have to go overseas, we will have to do acquisitions. So -- and would we go overseas just to sort of help Indian IT services companies hire more IT professionals unlikely.
Next question is from the line of Aditya Joshi.
A couple of questions from my side. Firstly, on the recruitment business. I think you had mentioned this in the previous question, but just to understand better, can you give some color on how these contracts are structured in terms of the time period, et cetera? Because just to understand what kind of a lag we can expect, for example, if IT hiring slows down now, it's not like IT companies are going to immediately modify or cancel a 1-year contract, as you mentioned earlier. So just to get a sense of what kind of lag we can expect if there is a slowdown. Is it on an average a 6-month contract or it more skewed towards 1 year, just to get some sense on that.
Chintan, do you want to take that?
Yes, sure. So we follow subscription model. And actually, just to clarify, we don't have cancellation type of clauses inside the part like most of the contracts, the collection is for the entire tenure has been kind of collected in advance. And yes, I think kinds are required us throughout the year, they renew year-over-year. These are all the clients who kind of typically subscribe for 12 months. So we would have more clients now with 12 months in the higher end. At the bottom, you will have clients they need us plot a month or 2 months or 3 months for some short term having they may not come back on the platform for quite some time. So most of them are type of contract elected in advance, and there are no real cancellation clause.
Got it. So it's not like companies make very quick short-term decisions, right? Even if there's a slowdown for a couple of quarters, it's -- they probably just let the contracts go on.
Yes. That's been the behavior in the past.
Got it. And secondly, just a very top-down kind of your view on what you think is the end game on the property side and the matrimony side? Is the endgame consolidation or to kind of bring maybe 2 strong players? Or you think these are markets that can support 3 or 4 players, maybe each focusing on a niche market or maybe a particular geography each -- like how do you see this kind of shaping up? Because competitive intensity does seem high and everyone is spending on marketing. So where does it all lead to finally, just a top-down kind of how you think about it.
See, of course, if there is consolidation, it is likely to result in better pricing and lower marketing costs. But there are just a handful players in every market and a lot will depend on how the people at the top of these companies think. Clearly, there is -- in the past, we've seen if there is one dominant there, it's like there is -- it's possible to make a lot of money in any market. If there are 3 or 4 or 5 players, then ultimately, that results in consolidation and no market can support 3 or 4 or 5 players for a very long time.
So anything on the horizon or it's difficult to kind of say in terms of consolidation, nothing seems…
Nothing is on the horizon. There's nothing which is likely to happen in the next 3 months as far as we know. What -- I mean what shape or form things will make in the next 2, 3 years, hard for me to say at this stage.
Next question is again from [ Uppal Karan ].
Yes. So Sanjeev and Hitesh, just a couple of questions on the investments. Do you have earmarked amount for the strategic investments that you're doing and follow-on rounds for your investees that are there on the balance sheet like ShopKirana or Astra? That's question one. And second one, Sanjeev, any update on the conditions under which you would consider part monetization of Zomato policy was or the lock-ins are not there anymore.
Yes. So I'll answer the second question first. I think First of all, why would we sell? We would sell if we need the money for some of the purpose, we would sell if we want to give back to shareholders immediately. We would sell if we believe the future is not bright, right? I would imagine we would sell under these circumstances. And while this issue is constantly open at our board level, there's nothing that currently gives us the indication that either any of these 3 conditions are operating, right? But like I said, it's always open for discussion, and we are flexible... Okay. Now at first budget is concerned for -- we sort of keep on estimating how much money we will need going forward, but operate rising.
Okay. As of now, compared to what our treasury is it's stop putting a strain on it, either the strategic investments or the follow-on rounds in the financial investments from the balance sheet. The real issue is what is the need of the company and whether it's worthwhile backing it further. So do we have this one night budget? You see one danger of having a budget, and I have seen with other companies where I have observed our work, our budget becomes an entitlement, right? And that is not a great thing. So we will obviously be open. We will look at opportunities. And our willingness to go to a slightly higher number in strategic opportunities because they're strategic may be slightly higher.
Sure. Sanjeev, actually, the question was in the context of the earmark the amounts that you have kept for the AIF. So I was asking more from that standpoint that...
We don't want to see -- look, we've got a lot of money in treasury compared to how much we're actually investing, right? But the truth also is that if you -- much money to invest, you end up running or holding your pocket because you're tempted to deploy too much because every opening looks good. If I look at the kind of funds, we see forte delivered rig returns even in the U.S, they usually are not very large funds, $150 million to $100 million, $100 million. To go beyond that, right now, at least I am personally a little uncomfortable. So it's good to be a little tight for money as far as the investing team is concerned. Makes sense. Thank you so much for the details... Now this is our current thinking, of course, things would change what is the current thinking. Sure. Thank... Add anything...
[indiscernible] line of Abeta..
So all the questions have been answered. So I just have one question, which is on the equipment business. So we have seen the recruitment margins expanding consistently from 55% to now 61% of -- so -- and in the context of the slowdown seen in the IT side. So can we see the margins heading back towards the pre-forward levels? Or is it more sustainable at current levels, the margins in the recruitment business?
Now see, what I have said in the past and now that the market is getting back to normalcy, if we continue to grow our note, we can continue to grow our billings by 15%, 70% per annum or 15%, 20% per annum, it should be possible to sustain these margins. If there is a serious slowdown and building contracts or for some reason or we have single-digit billing growth, then, of course, margins may shrink going forward. So not going to depend on how things play out in the -- how sort of revenue growth billing growth plays out in the next few quarters.
And any color you can provide on the margins or realizations in IT and like non-IT and how it has panned out in the few quarters?
Sorry, can you repeat that how margins have?
The margin differential between IT and non-IT...
So we don't track and report margins by a segment right now. But I suspect IT margins are better than non-IT margins because our billing per customer and IT is higher.
So this was the last question, dish. With this, we would like to conclude this conference. Thank you, everyone, and you may disconnect your line, please.
Thank you, everyone, and have a great evening.