Info Edge (India) Ltd
NSE:NAUKRI
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Info Edge (India) Ltd
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Ladies and gentlemen, good day, and welcome to the Info Edge Q3 FY '19/'20 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 third quarter FY '19/'20 results conference call. Like in the past, we will start with the overall financials and then our each business in more detail, followed by Q&A.As you would recall, we briefed you about the application of Ind AS 116 to our financials in our last quarter results call. For the sake of comparison with our last year's financials, we would also be calling out the respective numbers without adjusting for Ind AS impact in this call.The audited financial statements filed and other schedules on segmental billing, revenues, et cetera, along with the data sheet have been uploaded on our website, infoedge.in.Moving on to the stand-alone financials. Billings in Q3 were INR 299.5 crores, up 10.3% year-on-year. Revenue in Q3 was INR 320.5 crores, up 14% year-on-year. Operating expenses, excluding depreciation for the quarter, were INR 214.6 crores, up 8.5% year-on-year, and operating expenses readjusted for Ind AS 116 stood at INR 221.3 crores, up 11.9% year-on-year.Operating EBITDA stood at INR 105.9 crores versus INR 83.3 crore last year, an increase of 27.2% year-on-year. And operating EBITDA readjusted for Ind AS 116 stood at INR 99.2 crores, up 19% year-on-year. And operating EBITDA margins for the quarter stood at 33%. Operating EBITDA readjusted for Ind AS 116 margins stood at 31%.Cash EBITDA for the quarter was INR 85 crores, up 8% year-on-year. Deferred sales revenue stood at INR 457 crores as of December 31, 2019, versus INR 404.5 crores as of December 31, 2018, a growth of 13% year-on-year.The cash balance in IEIL and all its 100% subsidiaries stands at INR 1,514 crores as of December 31, 2019. This was INR 1,869 crores as of December 31, 2018.The slowing economy has had an impact on our business growth across different verticals, especially in 99acres and Naukri.As stated in our earlier call, we continued to invest behind product-led brands and data science inside the organization. We also continue to invest behind our strategy of building our Jeevansathi brand as reflected in high marketing spend in this vertical, and we also continue to invest aggressively in adjacent businesses and marketplaces.Moving on to the consolidated financial highlights. At the consolidated level, the net sales of the company stood at INR 335.06 crores versus INR 290 crores from -- in December 2018. For the consolidated entity at the PAT level, there is a loss of INR 62.12 crores versus a gain of INR 330 crores in the corresponding quarter of December 2018. Adjusted for exceptional items, PAT stood at a loss of INR 62 crores in quarter ended December '19 versus a loss of INR 93.11 crores in the corresponding quarter last year. Now let's move on to the Recruitment segment. In Q3 '19/'20, Recruitment segment's billing were INR 210 crores, up 8.5% year-on-year, while revenues were INR 230.3 crores, a growth of 13.1% year-on-year. Operating EBITDA stood at INR 134.1 crores, up 20.4% from last year. Margins were at 58.3% versus 54.7% in Q3 of FY '19. EBITDA readjusted for Ind AS 116 stood at INR 130.8 crores at a margin of 56.8%. Cash EBITDA for the Recruitment segment during the quarter stood at INR 113.8 crores, up 10.2% year-on-year.In Naukri, in our last quarter call, we had shared our concerns about several sort of sectors in the non-IT market slowing down, sectors like auto, manufacturing, real estate and [indiscernible]. This continued in Q3 as well. And we actually saw the slowdown spreading to other sector on IT sectors like FMCG, travel and retailing as well.Through Q2, the key driver for Naukri is growth. The IT and ITeS segment was unaffected by the current slowdown and that helped us. But we are now witnessing a slight slowdown in our IT and ITeS business as well, which is about 40% of our total revenue, and this impacted growth in Q3.However, on the JobSpeak side, on the user front and on engagement on the platform, we continue to do well. We saw strong metrics during the quarter. We had about 12,000 new CVs being added to the platform on a daily basis. The number of mods went up to 390,000 a day, and we have more than 0.5 million active postings on the platform.We reduced our marketing spend in Q3 given the tight sort of market. We spent INR 6 crores as against INR 10.5 crores last year in Q3. Even in Q4, we don't see our marketing spend going up significantly.SimilarWeb in the month of December '19 has updated their app estimation methodology, and this change in estimation has been applied retrospectively from June 2017 onwards. As for SimilarWeb, they have done this to improve reliability of their app data. And their app data is now at least 10% more accurate versus previous estimation where the app was underrepresented. This change has impacted our app and share for both Naukri and 99acres. In the case of Naukri, the time strength has remained the same over last year. However, the base has changed from 64% to 94%.Iimjobs, which is a business we had acquired a few quarters back, reported a billing of INR 4.87 crores for Q3 of '19/'20. This is a growth of only 10% from Q3 of 2019. The business operated at a breakeven level during the quarter. Going forward, we have decided that the Naukri sales team will also sell iimjobs products to its customers.Let's move to the other verticals now. In 99acres, which is our real estate verticals, billings in Q3 grew 10.9% year-on-year to INR 54.3 crores, while revenue grew 15.3% to INR 58.2 crores. EBITDA for the quarter stood at INR 1.7 crores. EBITDA adjusted for Ind AS 116 stands at a nominal loss of INR 0.2 crores, against the loss of INR 3.2 crores reported in Q3 of last year. Cash loss of 99acres during the quarter stood at INR 2.9 crores, against a cash loss of INR 3.8 crores last year. Overall collections in 99acres grew 11% in Q3, while expenses grew around 5%. All business verticals of new home, resell and rental registered growth. Resell and rental grew faster than new homes in Q3 on a smaller base.Number of clients continued to show a healthy growth in both the builder and developer segment. The average billing per client, however, saw some pressure in new homes -- in home clients. Some of our builder clients continued to face pressure due to the twin factors of lack of liquidity, stock financing triggered by NBFC's own funding woes and tepid end unit sales in new homes. While nobody can say precisely when the market will sort of bounce back, we feel it may be a while before it recovers.Live listings on the platform continued to increase and crossed the 1 million mark for the first time. Both broker and owner listings grew sequentially quarter-on-quarter. We continued to invest and focus on improving the platform experience in the business and drive more inquiry generation and repeat usage from customers.Moving on to the matrimony business. In Jeevansathi, billings grew 27.4% year-on-year in Q3 to INR 22.4 crores, and revenue grew 20.7% year-on-year to INR 21.4 crores. Operating EBITDA loss for Jeevansathi stood at INR 19.1 crores in Q3 FY '20, up from a loss of INR 15.2 crores in Q3 of last year. EBITDA readjusted for Ind AS 116 stood at a loss of INR 19.9 crores. The cash loss for Jeevansathi for the quarter -- during the quarter stood at INR 18.5 crores. Most of this additional sort of loss was on account of higher marketing spends in the category, which had us gain share.Moving on to the education vertical. In Shiksha in Q3, billings grew by 11.4% year-on-year to INR 13.3 crores, while revenue grew 15.8% year-on-year to INR 10.7 crores. We made an EBITDA loss of INR 1.7 crores in Q3. EBITDA adjusted for Ind AS 116 stood at a loss of INR 2.2 crores versus a loss of INR 2.5 crores in Q3 of '19. Cash profit for the quarter stood at INR 83 lakhs. We continued to sort of put more efforts into getting more and more high-quality content on the platform.Moving on to our strategic investments. Zomato announced additional funding sort of commitment from -- up to USD 150 million from Ant Financial. They also announced the acquisition of UberEATS. With this, Zomato is now market leader in food delivery. Zomato continues to drive efficiency across the organization. Early signs show that the acquisition is panning out well. Losses have been on a downward trend in Zomato for the last few months now.During the quarter, we also announced the sale of our stake in Meritnation for INR 50 crores and return of all outstanding loans amounting to INR 27.5 crores. Both signing formalities are in process.Recently, we announced the setting up of an alternate investment fund named Info Edge Venture Fund. The fund has been established with an initial commitment of INR 150 crores from -- INR 150 crores. We continue to invest in our new investment opportunities in start-ups through this fund. That's all from us this evening. Thank you, and we're now ready to take any questions.
[Operator Instructions] The first question is from the line of Sachin from Perfect Research Equity Fund.
I have few questions, listing them together. Number one, how big is the size of the opportunity for Naukri.com in India? How much can be the overall market growth from here in the long term? Next one, what thought process do we have in purchasing small stakes in investing company as even if they perform, they may not give a meaningful return in the long run due to a small stake, for example, 5.36% stake in Qyuki Digital Media recently?And the last one, given massive increase in the addressable Internet population due to Jio, do we see a massive jump in our addressable market in the future?
Okay. I think the first question was, what is the opportunity for Naukri in India? So it depends on how we define our market in the segment we currently operate, which is a white collar sort of active job seeker hiring space. We already work with 80,000 companies. In the Indian market, as the economy grows, more people get hired, more companies set up shops and our business will continue to -- will grow with the economy. Of course, we can grow at a faster rate if we are able to help companies hire more people through us, number one.Number two, if we are able to launch new products and services and get a higher share of their wallet. And number three, if we can enter new segments or adjacent segments to the ones we operate in. We are still a very small part of the total recruitment sort of spend of companies. Nobody has the exact number, but I suspect the company spend -- there are, for example, 8,000 or maybe even 9,000 recruitment firms we work with, which are sort of paid by companies.There are referral programs which companies run. There are advertising campaigns they carry out. So the amount of money spent on recruitment is huge, maybe a few billion dollars a year. We are still very tiny in the entire scheme of things. So the opportunity is huge. It depends on how you define the market and what strategy we choose to follow going forward.Second question was around why do we pick up small stakes in investing companies? Sanjeev?
So you gave the example of Qyuki. So look, that specific company, we've gotten at a slightly later stage than we normally do. And therefore, the valuation is at a certain place. And the issue is not how much percentage we own, the issue is how much X we will get from here? And how much money are we putting in? So we're putting in about $3.5 million, okay? And another $1 million is convertible in the next round valuation, $1.5 million, right?, so total of $5 million.
Total $3.5 million.
Total $3.5 million. And really it's a question of where the company goes from here in terms of valuation. And if you're getting into a slightly later-stage company, then you got to do a -- in terms of your return expectations, do adjustment for lower risk and, therefore, obviously, you cannot expect the same X in a later-stage company as you would in an earlier stage company. Clear?
Yes. And if I'm correct, your -- if I remember right, your third question was around the size of the addressable market growing because Internet penetration is growing, right? You're absolutely right. As more and more people get on to the Internet and as they sort of spend more and more time on the Internet, the addressable market for many of our sort of products and services will grow. For example, already, a lot of our growth in Jeevansathi comes from Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities. It is coming from Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities. Some of the -- so we are experimenting with the blue color sort of platform. We're sort of toying with the idea of launching one at some point in time. If we were to do that, a lot of our users will be sort of people who just got on to the Internet in the last 1 or 2 years.So, of course, the fact that there are more and more people now on the Internet and they are using the -- you are spending more and more time on the Internet, will in the long run sort of expand the opportunity set for our products and services.
The next question is from the line of Mukul Garg from Haitong Securities.
Hitesh, just wanted to focus a bit on the Naukri business. We know that you have been talking for the last few months about an overall macro slowdown kind of impacting growth, but the billing growth was weaker than, I think, probably what you were also expecting at the start of the quarter. Is that a correct assessment? And given that you are seeing weakness in the IT space as well, how should we look at near-term billing growth? Will it stay in single digit? Or do you think this was more of an aberration?
Well, the truth is, I don't know. It's very hard for me to say what's going to happen going forward. What we have said in the last call is that we were taken a little bit surprised by what we saw in September. We were expecting higher growth in the quarter, but then September was slower than expected. And the last quarter also turned out to be a slow quarter. Up until Q2, IT was -- at least, IT was holding. Last quarter, we saw IT services companies also slowed down their hiring. Now this may be an aberration, this may be a temporary phenomenon. IT companies may bounce back. At the end of the day, they're not indexed with the Indian economy, they are indexed to what happens in the rest of the world. But I don't know.So it's going to be -- what we certainly saw was that the non-IT market has slowed down even further in Q3. So markets like Bombay, markets like Delhi, growth was in -- in these markets was lower than growth in Q2 in these markets. And these are primarily non-IT markets.Going forward, is the slowdown going to get worse? Are things going to get better? We will -- only time will tell. A lot of our business sort of comes up for renewal at quarter end. So we can't even go by what we are seeing in January. We will have a better sense of what's going to happen only in a couple of months from now.
Fair enough. And on the margin side, there was very material improvement in the EBITDA margin during the quarter. Do you think there is more scope to kind of squeeze cost through ad reduction if the billing growth remains weak? Or do you think you will kind of start seeing pressure on profitability if billing does not recover or revenue growth does not recover?
See, we are not sledging our advertising. So we saw a decrease -- our ad spend decreased last quarter, and that may be the case this quarter as well, unless competition becomes very aggressive. However, we don't want to slow down or sort of curtail our investments in -- or reduce our investments in some of the newer products that we are building or the newer technologies that we are investing behind. So that -- those investments will continue. And yes, if revenue growth continues to be single digit for a while, then our margins will get hit, in my view.
Got it. I will get back into the queue, but just wanted to clarify the SimilarWeb number. If you can just repeat the market share including and excluding Indeed?
See, what's basically happening here is that a lot of these third-party sort of traffic sort of measurement companies, they basically keep tweaking their methodology. And every time they tweak their methodology, the numbers sort of in the report change dramatically. So one, I would not -- going forward, I would not read too much into what these guys are reporting because they sort of keep tinkering with their algorithms.Now, for example, what they're reporting for Naukri is 94% share, which until some time back was more like 65%. Now do we really believe these numbers? Frankly, I don't know. I don't know whether we should trust them anymore. Our traffic is growing. Our metrics are fine. So we don't have a problem, but it's not as if we have suddenly gained 30% share. It's just that they've changed their methodology, right?In 99acres, our share may have declined a little bit. But it's not as if we are getting hit in the market. It's just that they've changed their methodology. Now they may change their methodology again in the next 6 months and we will see a different number. So I would take some of these numbers now with a pinch of salt. What -- basically what is happening is that a lot of the traffic is moving to the mobile devices and to the app. And many of these sort of companies don't have a very good handle on how to sort of count this traffic. And maybe this is what is leading to this -- these periodic revisions from time to time in their methodology. So with -- I mean they claim that they get better with every change, but we don't know how far they still have to go.
[Operator Instructions] The next question is from the line of Aman Jain as an individual investor.
Hello?
Yes, please go ahead with the question.
My question is currently we have few businesses in our umbrella, which require good amount of management experience. So can you please explain why we are going and acquiring new businesses when our existing businesses need a fair amount of nurturing at this place?
I'm not sure I understood the question, but what you're saying is that our existing businesses require a fair amount of attention, so why are we going and acquiring new businesses? Is that the question?
Yes.
[indiscernible]?
Can you -- which business are you referring to? Because see, we are investing. When we invest, we don't run those verticals. We have an investment team, which manages the investments. From an acquisition standpoint, we haven't really acquired many new business. We've just acquired iimjobs sometime back, which is a small business, and which -- there are massive synergies with the current Naukri operation on that front. So we believe that we can grow that business substantially given our major distribution sort of muscle.As far as the internal businesses goes, see, we have a business unit structure, we have business heads in place for all our verticals. And they are fairly seasoned sort of people. They've been around for a while, and they'll focus only on the business which they run and nothing else.
And then my second question was regarding, like, referring to the last con-call where you've mentioned that you were funding start-up in its early stage, by virtue of which you used to get a substantial amount of X with a very little capital coming in. But we -- if we look at the last few acquisitions we have made, we are committing more capital and getting a relatively less X compared to what we invested in before. So I need to know like what has -- what made these changes? What changes can be attributed to that?
Your voice is muffled, but if I heard you correctly, what you're saying is, why are we investing more money at higher valuation in start-ups?
Yes, sir.
Firstly, if the valuation is higher, you [indiscernible]. But really, the issue is you assess the business, you see the stage is set. If it's a second or third round with the raising capital X, and you're already doing about INR 60 crores, INR 80 crores, INR 100 crores of revenue, so valuation will be higher. But the risk also will be lower, right?And we take these calls. We get some right, some wrong. Usually, the ones we get right will be more than the ones we get wrong, and that's why spend on the -- that's the quality investment. So we don't believe we are overinvested. We believe we're doing fine, and we'll continue on that strategy.
So sir, these changes can be attributed only to the valuation side and nothing apart from that, no?
Sorry, I didn't understand your question, sir.
Sir, these changes like mainly attributed to the valuation or, like, in which stage we are and nothing apart from that?
No, the valuation would depend on the prospects of the company, the state of the company, how much revenue it's doing, is it building IP, quality of team, is it a market leader, is it getting natural traction style of opportunity. We look at maybe 10 or 15 or 20 things before we invest. And yes, each business will have different valuation in our estimation.
The next question is from the line of Prince Poddar from JM Financial.
Sir, 3 questions, actually. One on the marketing spends, I see -- I think most of the marketing spend was decreased from Jeevansathi. Still, we have seen a very strong growth in the top line of Jeevansathi. Can you explain a bit what led to this growth?
Well, actually, we didn't reduce spend in Jeevansathi. We upped our spend on -- in Jeevansathi by over 25% this quarter. And as a result of which you got more profile and as a result of which you got more revenue growth. So we decreased our spending in 99acres and Naukri, but upped our spending in Jeevansathi this quarter -- last quarter.
Okay, okay. And sir, the second question is on the blue collar space where we are trying to do something. What are the challenges we're -- if any, we are facing in the blue collar space? And what are we doing to kind of crack that space? Is there anything specific we have been working towards?
No, no. See, we have right now -- it's very, very early days for us. We are -- we've just built a small product, then we're going to test market the product in 1 or 2 markets. And depending on that response, we'll sort of go back to the drawing board and make changes if required. So it's very, very early days. We are looking at the blue collar sort of play as a very long-term play. Maybe we'll have something sort of to report in about a year from now.
Okay. That's fair. And sir, the last one, which is very critical to understanding. Does this creation of AIF change anything? Because we have seen, in the last few weeks, there has been an increase in pace of investments. So I understand that we invest mostly as the companies come to us and if we find a good opportunity, but somehow it feels like, after the creation of the AIF, the pace of investments has increased. Does that change anything, that creation of AIF?
No, no. The pace of investment has not increased. The point is, it took 4, 5 months to float the AIF and while that was happening, they were deals that we were talking to and keeping them warm and parking them. And the moment the AIF happened, those deals came in for investment. So it's actually a backlog of deals that are coming suddenly, it's not that the pace of investment has gone up.As far as the strategy is concerned in the AIF, nothing really changes. We are still focused in the same sectors, same stage of deals. The AIF was done for multiple reasons. First, it infuses more discipline regarding the -- in the investing activity. It also puts some prudence and discipline in how much exposure we'll take in a single company. It also keeps one eye on exits as far as when national investments are concerned. It's also good from a -- it's more entrepreneur friendly from angel tax perspective. And it helps us to attract really high-quality talent in the investing activity. That's why we did it.
And we can assume that all the investments and follow-on investments will happen through this AIF going forward?
So as was said earlier in the press release that the follow-on investments in the earlier companies will happen from Info Edge subsidiaries. Fresh companies will be invested in, financial investments, not strategic, right? Financial investments will happen through the AIF. And the follow-on rounds in them will also happen through the AIF. There's a separate team now for strategic investments, which is going to look at start-ups and acquisitions -- investments and acquisitions in strategic areas, which are recruitment, real estate, matrimony and education investments.
Right. Okay. That's fair. If I can squeeze just one more question, sir? That -- the last quarter, we have been saying that most of the money raised in QIP was staying, and we were -- we had not been using that money for 99acres. But this time around, I see a big amount of money seems to have been already used, which is about INR 350 crores, out of that INR 750 crores. Can you just clarify what of this investment has gone into in 99acres?
I'm not sure whether you have the facts correct. I don't think there is any INR 350 crore investment in 99acres. I'm not sure because there is something around capital reduction that has happened. And if you are kind of -- INR 350 crores, if you are confusing with that?
In the -- okay. In the utilization of funds up to December 31 that -- referring to that? So I'm not sure if that just...
So there is a -- I think that is the reporting requirement that has changed and which require us to kind of present all the investment that would have happened up until date. This is a new requirement from SEBI to disclose from QIP funds what you have invested. This is the first time that we are disclosing that. It's the cumulative amount that you might be referring to.
Yes, yes. That's probably...
It's the 5 years investment that you are referring to. There's nothing that one quarter. We are just saying that's the cumulative amount for all the 5 quarters. And there was no such requirement earlier. So I think that's why probably...
The next question is from the line of Mukul Garg from Haitong Securities.
Sanjeev, just wanted to quickly check on the Zomato side. The -- I think you guys are saying that the migration from the UberEATS was quite smooth. Can you just help us what is the methodology you guys are following to measure how many people have successfully migrated and have started ordering via Zomato app? And if you can just update us on the burn rate as well?
So look, burn remains where it was a couple of months ago. So it hasn't increased materially since the Uber acquisition, number one. Number 2 is when you say migration is successful, the company is not revealing specific numbers. However, it means that everybody or a large percent of people who came to the Uber app and tried to use it, so a large percentage of them downloaded the Zomato app and ordered, right? But the company is not revealing specific numbers on this. What we are saying is that we are now #1 in orders, and we're also more efficient.
Understood. But in case of ordering on the Zomato app for UberEAT users, you guys have some data in terms of what percentage has actually placed an order versus what -- how much they were kind of doing on UberEATs? Anything you can share there?
No. The company has -- is not revealing that data for competitive reasons.
The next question is from the line of Srinath V. from Bellwether Capital.
I just wanted to find out what would be the traffic growth in 99acres and Naukri? If you could kind of share some percentage growth numbers? And also wanted to find out in the AIF structure, are we looking to raise outside money or -- and create a fund structure out of it? Or is it -- is the AIF going to be completely a captive operation?
So let me take this AIF investment. So right now, we have the approval from SEBI, and we have kind of registered ourselves. We have, as we said that, we have kind of done the initial commitment of INR 150 crore. And as we go forward, we will look into what more commitment is required. Just to kind of clarify, it's actually -- it does that because the AIF is more tax efficient and in many other ways, it's a more kind of investor-friendly in a vehicle that we have adopted it. Earlier we used to invest through subsidiary companies. Other than that, as Sanjeev also earlier explained that in terms of the philosophy, in terms of how we operate and all that, I think it's more or less same.As we go along, we can take a call if we wish to that, do we need to kind of get money from outside. But right now, we don't think that we have any intention to go out in market and raise money for AIF.
So it's just a structure change, but nothing else changes? It's the same set?
Look, the options are open, right? But as of now -- look, let me put it this way. In the last 3 years, we invested close to INR 800 crores from our own balance sheet or from our subsidiary balance sheets, right? We see no reason to change that pace of investment in the next 3, 4 years going forward. Now we have no announcements to make as of now on raising capital from outside. And as of now, we've capitalized it. But as we go along, we'll take a call.
Okay. And if you could share some traffic growth numbers, percentage growth numbers for 99acres and Naukri, just to kind of, given the slowdown, is it affecting traffic? Or is it largely only affecting the monetization? So I just wanted some clarity on that?
The traffic is still growing both in 99acres and Naukri, but for competitive reasons, we don't give our growth numbers year-on-year, yes.
[Operator Instructions] The next question is from the line of [ Ashish Das ] from Sharekhan Limited.
So question is on 99acres. I can say that number of paid listing has bounced back, the growth actually. So -- but our revenue growth has -- is moderated. So could you just indicate our realization has declined there? Or number of paid listing volume has -- is not converted much?
See, right, number of listings on the platform has grown. But we saw a dip in realizations in our new home business, which is not really a listing business, where a lot of, sort of, the spends on marketing solutions on the platform. So we saw a dip in that and that's why revenue growth is not in line with listing growth.
Okay. Can you give us some outlook on this business like we have seen the increase in the number of listing, but how are the markets? And how do you see in coming quarters?
See, the market for real estate continues to be very, very sort of tough. We've seen a lot in this sort of space over the last few years, starting with demonetization, RERA and GST and now the NBFC crisis, which is hurting both developers and is making it harder for people to get loans and stuff. So in pockets, there is activity and there is action. But on the whole, the real estate market continues to be tight. There aren't too many buyers in the market. It's -- so new launches have taken a beating over the last few quarters. And there is some sort of movement on cleaning up inventory -- old inventory. Government is trying to do a few things to ensure that projects that are stuck for a long time see the light of day. But it's a long sort of call.At our end, we continue to focus on improving our -- the experience of users on our platform. We're sort of investing more in our content quality. We're investing more in our algorithms and improving or trying to improve our user experience.We are trying to get more supply onto the platform. So we continue to work in all these areas. But it's not going to be -- it's going to be a while before the business starts going at a very healthy rate once again.
Okay. My last question is on Jeevansathi, like you highlighted that a lot of investments on branding side or marketing expenses has done, and you have -- I believe you must have gained some market share because a lot of listing has come on your platform. So is it sustainable? Or how is the competition you see in the matrimony segment?
So there is a lot of competition in this space. There are 3 players; us, Matrimony and Shaadi. In the North and West, we compete mostly with Shaadi. In the South, we don't really have a big presence. Ad spends of all the 3 players have gone through the roof in the last couple of years. At the same time, all of us have been discounting heavily in the market to acquire customers. So on the one hand, there is pricing pressure. And on the other hand, customer acquisition costs have gone up.We've upped our spending in this space, as a result of which we have gained share. There are sort of -- the number of registrations we get on a day-to-day basis is up over last year. We've made inroads in certain markets where we were very weak. But if we have to continue to do well, we have to -- we will continue -- we will have -- we will have to continue to invest. And we are prepared to do that.
So are you doing branding activities in other segments where you are actually weak in the Southern and Western side?
No, no. We are focused on a few markets. We are not spreading ourselves. We don't want to spread ourselves. We are not very active in the South. Most of our marketing activity is in the North and Western parts of the country, still.
The next question is from the line of Manish Poddar from Nippon India AIF.
I just wanted to get a sense that the 2 investments namely Zomato and Policybazaar, you had done them generally at the end of the down cycle last year. And this time across, given the outlook which you're giving for Naukri, you're doing a lot of investments right now. So are you trying to insist that the down cycle is done and this is the right time to invest? Or how is that? Just wanted to get your thought process?
There is no thought -- there's no strategy like that. There's no thinking of that nature that this is when we invest more or when we invest less. We invest when we believe that it's a good company, and we -- it's the right valuation, right deal, right market, right opportunity and then we invest. And just to correct you, we invested in Policybazaar in 2008, that was not at the end of the down cycle, that was actually boom time, and it was just before the Lehman crash when the market was really high. We invested in Zomato in June 2010. I mean the market had tanked and was coming back a bit, but it was not as if the economy was doing well. So -- but the market had come back in 2010 after a very bad year in 2009.So actually, both were -- none of those were down cycles. And we don't time investments, whether the market is up, market is down. We just look at -- in start-ups, we don't do that. In start-ups, we invest behind good start-ups. There are good people doing -- pursuing good ideas and you evaluate on several criteria and then you invest.
[Operator Instructions] The next question is from the line of [ Aditya Badaya ] from Fortune Wealth Management.
I wanted to ask one question about the AIF. I just wanted to know that is this new AIF rolled up in your consolidated statements?
No, sir. This AIF has come only in January. So we are not talking about the December one. So obviously, it is not included in it.
No, no. Going forward. Going forward, how will it go?
So we will look at how -- what the accounting requirements are, and I believe that SEBI has also come out with some new guidelines very recently around how to go about the NAV and how to disclose it and all that. So we'll look into it. And if it is required, obviously, we'll consolidate.
[Operator Instructions] We have a follow-up question from the line of Srinath from Bellwether Capital.
I just wanted to find out the broker contribution in 99acres is significantly increased over the past, say, 2, 2.5 years. So just wanted to understand what specific actions have we taken in that particular market to kind of see a significant mix change? And also, we -- as of last quarter, we have about 20,000 brokers that we bill. What kind of penetration -- market penetration? Is there any way that thing out of X number of registered brokers, we would have a 20% share, 30% share? Or is there any kind of indication on market penetration you could give on the broker side? That will be nice.
So it's not as if we have gone after broker or we have a very active program in place to get more brokers on board. We've expanded the sales team a little bit and that's helped us get more customers on the ground or more brokers on the ground. But maybe because of the nature of the market -- maybe the market is moving towards more brokers in certain cities. Like, Delhi has always been a broker-heavy city, but the Southern markets had very few brokers until some time back. Maybe that's changing a little bit as time passes.The number of brokers may have gone up, but it's not as if the amount of -- or percentage of business we get from brokers has gone up significantly. Just the number of brokers, because of our sales expansion, may have gone up over the years. So -- sorry, what was the other question you asked?
So we have listed that we have about a number of customers, about 20,000 broker customers, which has actually gone up from -- yes, 15,000 to 20,000. It has seen a significant growth over the last 2 years given the current market situation. So just wanted to understand what kind of penetration or -- it's a difficult question where there's a lot of unregistered brokers and so on. But if could you give us a feel on what would be the penetration that we would have in that particular market?
Very hard to say because you don't have to register to become a broker in India. So there's no data available on this. And there's a -- so brokerages are different from agents. So the number of brokerages or sort of firms which employ more than, let's say, X number of people in the broking business is -- I don't think that number is very, very large, and we have a regional penetration amongst -- in that set. But the number of people freelancing, agents, people that are working on their own, out of their own houses and doing sort of such activity is in -- very large. And we have no way of knowing how big that market is.
Even post RERA, there is no -- I'm -- you are...
RERA is mostly for new homes. So there are sort of only people who are selling -- channel partners who sell new home are the ones who have to -- who need to register with the RERA authorities. So there are lots of brokers who do resale, rental, commercial property, small deals here and there. There are brokers and there are subbrokers. There are agents and subagents. So it's a very large number of people who are employed in that industry. The number of brokerages or sort of companies or firms which employ at least 5 people is not very large, and there, our penetration rates will be very high.
[Operator Instructions] Ladies and gentlemen, as there are no further questions from the participants, I now hand the conference over to Mr. Hitesh Oberoi for closing comments. Thank you, and over to you, sir.
So thank you, everyone, for being on the call, and have a great evening. Thanks.
Thank you very much. Ladies and gentlemen, on behalf of Info Edge (India) Limited, that concludes today's conference. Thank you all for joining us, and you may now disconnect your lines.