Info Edge (India) Ltd
NSE:NAUKRI
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Info Edge (India) Ltd
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Good afternoon, everyone. We have 150 people with us. We'll start the call now. Vivek, you can go ahead.
Good evening, and welcome to Info Edge (India) Limited Q3 '22 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, our 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 risks and uncertainties. Kindly refer to Slide #2 of our investor presentation for detailed disclaimer. Now I would like to hand over the conference to Mr. Hitesh for his opening remarks. Thank you, and over to you, Hitesh.
Thank you, Vivek, and a very good evening, everyone, and welcome to our Q3 FY '22 Earnings Conference Call. Trust you and your love one are safe and in good health. As always, we'll first talk you through our quarterly financial performance and then we'll have time for Q&A. As we've done in the past, the audited financial statements and other schedules on segmental billing and revenues, along with the data sheet, have been uploaded on our website, www.infoedge.in. We'll first discuss our stand-alone financials. Overall billings in Q3 grew to INR 468.1 crores, up by 57.6% from Q3 of 2021 and 56% compared to Q3 of 2020. YTD billings stood at INR 1,184.6 crores, a Y-o-Y growth of 61%. Revenue in Q3 stood at INR 403.3 crores, up by 48.1% from Q3 of '21 and 26% compared to Q3 of 2020. YTD revenue stood at INR 1,074.6 crores, a Y-o-Y growth of 32.9%. Operating expenses for the quarter, excluding depreciation and amortization, were at INR 291.2 crores, up 42.7% from Q3 of '21, primarily driven by advertising and promotion expense. Operating EBITDA stood at INR 112.1 crores versus INR 68.2 crores last year, an improvement of 64.4% from Q3 of '21 and 6% from Q3 of 2020. YTD EBITDA stood at INR 318 crores, a Y-o-Y growth of 41.8%. Operating EBITDA margins for the quarter stood at 27.8% compared to 25% last year for the same quarter. Cash EBITDA for the stand-alone business for the quarter stood at INR 192.6 crores compared to INR 92.6 crores last year for the same quarter. YTD cash EBITDA stood at INR 452.5 crores, a year-on-year growth of 197.5%. The cash EBITDA for Info Edge, along with the acquired businesses like iimjobs and Zwayam stood at INR 200.9 crores for the quarter. That is a Y-o-Y growth of 113%; and INR 467 crores for the 9 months ending 31st December 2021, that is a growth of 205%. During the quarter, we also booked an exceptional gain of INR 217.8 crores. This relates to diminution recorded in value of investment in our wholly owned subsidiary that is SIHL, which has been reversed by a way of exceptional gain of INR 217.8 crores. The net worth of SIHL has significantly increased as one of its investments that is policy with our fintech has been categorized as financial investment post its listing and has been carried at mark-to-market value in the books of the wholly owned subsidiary. Deferred sales revenue stood at INR 622.8 crores as of 31st December 2021, versus INR 393.5 crores as of December 31, 2020, an increase of 58.3% Y-o-Y. The cash balance of Info Edge, including the wholly owned subsidiaries, stands at INR 3,855 crores as of December 31, 2021, versus INR 3,387 crores as of December 31, 2020. We'll now talk a little bit about the market conditions in our different verticals and then we'll discuss the financials for each vertical in a little more detail. We continue to see massive -- strong hiring trends across sectors in the recruitment space. IT clients' recruiter activity remains at an all-time high, primarily driven by high attrition in the sector and big wins for major IT firms in the current quarter and past few quarters. We see the current trend of high resource requirements and demand for our products to continue for a while. Consultants in Q2 '22 were in recovery mode as well. However, in Q3, they have started exhibiting strong growth in their daily interaction with the platform. This is clearly indicated by a 14% Y-o-Y growth in the number of searches. Non-IT clients, especially in sectors like real estate, FMCG and logistics and health care have also been hiring in large numbers through the platform. The JobSpeak Index for November and December clearly highlighted recovery in a few non-IT sectors like travel, hospitality, retail and tourism. We are also experiencing some revival in the telecom sector. However, since IT is the main -- IT being the main growth engine of employment in the country in the white collar space, we see maximum concentration of new jobs in South India in markets like Bangalore and Hyderabad. Moving on to the real estate vertical. Despite a temporary slowdown due to the third wave of COVID, we are still experiencing good momentum in the residential buyer segment. Low interest rates and home loans, people looking for bigger homes and incentives by government to the sector will continue to aid the residential home sales market for some time. With price correction over time, the sector is also a lot more affordable after a long time. We expect this trend to remain for some more time. Moving on to the Matrimony business. As this quarter was marked with the presence of the marriage season, which normally starts post Diwali, we -- post COVID, we saw a decline in activity on the platform after COVID 2. But we've seen users come back to the platform in large numbers post Diwali. So hopefully, things should get better from hereon going forward. The education segment has witnessed -- we witnessed a strong vibrancy in our study abroad segment, specifically after a brief contraction post the first wave of COVID in Q1 and in Q2 of last financial year. We also see a lot of interest in new colleges and universities and advertising on our platform. Now we'll talk about the financials -- segment-wise financials in more details now. We'll first cover recruitment. In Q3, FY '22, the recruitment segment billings were INR 356.5 crores, up 77% from Q3 of '21 and 70% from Q3 of 2020 while revenues were INR 298.5 crores, up 57.5% from Q3 of '21 and 30% from Q3 of 2020. YTD billings stood at INR 891.1 crores, a Y-o-Y growth of 75% while revenues stood at INR 777.5 crores, a YTD growth of 35.9%. Operating EBITDA stood at INR 178.7 crores, up 67.8% from Q3 of '21. and 33% from Q3 of 2020. Margins peaked at 59.9% versus 56.2% in Q3 of FY '21. YTD EBITDA stood at INR 455.3 crores, a Y-o-Y growth of 39%. Cash EBITDA for recruitment during the quarter stood at INR 245.8 crores, up from INR 118.3 crores reported for Q3 of '21. Cash EBITDA margins are at 68.9% of the billings compared to 58.7% in Q3 '21. YTD cash EBITDA stood at INR 583.4 crores, a Y-o-Y growth of 120.5%. Billings for Naukri India for the quarter stood at INR 309 crores, up 84.6% Y-o-Y. This is just the Naukri India business. While revenues for the quarter stood at INR 254.93 crores, up 63.2% Y-o-Y. YTD billing for Naukri India stood at INR 759.6 crores, a YTD growth of 82%, while their revenue grew 38.6% Y-o-Y and stood at INR 653.3 crores. The recruitment numbers I shared with you just now are stand-alone numbers and do not include iimjobs, Zwayam and DoSelect. Recruitment segment billing including the acquired businesses, iimjobs and Zwayam, et cetera, stood at INR 375 crores. That is a growth of 80% year-on-year for this quarter and 74% compared to Q3 of 2020, and INR 932 crores, that is a growth of 78% year-on-year for the 9 months ending December '21. iimjobs and hirist had a Y-o-Y growth of 91.7% in their billing numbers, closing at INR 12.7 crores from INR 6.6 crores reported in Q3 '21. Both Zwayam and DoSelect are in the process of integration with Naukri business teams, and we continue to devise a strong go-to-market approach for them. During the quarter, we also launched a [ new edge ] look of the Naukri home page to create a refreshing experience for job seekers and to ease the discovery of the variety of offerings that can help them in their career journey. Along with this, we have upgraded our employer branding portfolio also to create a new offering that allows employers to drive what we call an engagement with job seekers across all platforms, web, app and the mobile website and across all touch points. Employers now have the flexibility to tweak their brand positioning as per their target persona and leverage data-driven insights to understand the impact of these -- of their branding initiatives. This is a strategic milestone in demonstrating our commitment towards delivering the best experience for our users and reinforcing the perception of our brand as a modern platform -- modern recruitment platform. The quarter was also marked with more emphasis on value selling with high-usage customers, which resulted in better price yields and rationalized discounting across the board. Over the last few quarters, Naukri business through product enhancements and acquisitions, like iimjobs, RMS, Zwayam, DoSelect AmbitionBox, has been able to diversify its product portfolio. Together, these businesses have a strong potential to be a significant contributor to Naukri revenues in the next few years. The quarter also witnessed a 50% growth in new client acquisition versus FY '20 with growth across all segments. Growth in non-IT customer base improved from 23% in Q2 to 36% in Q3. A sizable portion of this growth is generated -- is being generated through online and retail sales. As far as our operating metrics go, we added 17,000 new CVs per day, which -- an increase of 11% year-on-year. And average CV modifications were at over 400,000 per day. Our traffic share in the job portal space continues to be in the mid-70s. Moving on to the real estate business. Billings in Q3 99acres grew by 17.3% year-on-year to INR 61.4 crores and 13% compared to Q3 of 2020, while revenue grew from INR 44.9 crores in Q3 of '21 to INR 58.6 crores in Q3 of '22. YTD billing for the business stood at INR 151.9 crores, registering a Y-o-Y growth of 34% while revenue stood at INR 156 crores, a Y-o-Y growth of 26%. Operating loss for the quarter stood at INR 22.6 crores against a loss of INR 3.4 crores -- INR 3.5 crores in Q3 '21. YTD EBITDA stood at a loss of INR 44.4 crores, up from a loss of INR 6.5 crores reported last year for the same period. The business reported a cash loss of INR 16 crores during the quarter against a cash profit of INR 3.6 crores earned in the same quarter of last year. YTD cash loss for the period stood at INR 42.9 crores against a cash loss of INR 17.9 crores for the 9 months ending December 2020. Business momentum continued in 99acres in Q3. We witnessed growth in our Y-o-Y billing for the quarter across all categories, new projects, resale and rentals; and across all client segments, builders, brokers and owners. We also experienced higher usage of the platform by our customers, specifically in the new and resale home segments. Our recently launched product, premium listings, also saw good adoption amongst brokers. Daily listing postings on the platform were similar to last year, but listings from owners grew 15% year-on-year. And traffic in Q3 grew 3% Y-o-Y. We also witnessed 5% year-on-year growth in the number of responses on the platform. The rental category grew faster than other categories. New plans and e-commerce experiences for older clients, a wider range revamped commercial investment section, application -- a new application to self-verify properties and a digital brand campaign were rolled out in Q3. The business teams are also working on improving the customer delivery initiatives for a few of our top clients. Moving on to the Matrimony business. Billings declined by 6.5% year-on-year in Q3 to INR 24.5 crores. They were up still up 9% compared to Q3 of 2020, and revenue declined by 1.9% year-on-year to INR 24.2 crores. YTD billing for the business stood at INR 73.8 crores, a year-on-year growth of 0.3%, while revenue for the 9-month period stood at INR 74.8 crores, a Y-o-Y growth of 5.4%. Operating EBITDA losses stood at INR 37.2 crores in Q3 of FY '22 against a loss of INR 27.6 crores last year same quarter. YTD EBITDA loss stood at INR 81.6 crores, a year-on-year increase of 10%. Cash loss for the quarter for [indiscernible] stood at INR 35.9 crores against a cash loss of INR 26.4 crores in Q3 of '21. YTD cash loss for the period stood at INR 81 crores, a year-on-year increase of 12%. With the marriage season setting in, marketing investments were scaled up in November, December as improving trends of traffic led to sequential growth in sales. Profile acquisition and site engagement is also up, and an overall recovery in sentiments and interaction in the platform is being seen in the matchmaking market, which was temporarily hit by the second wave of COVID for the last few months. Investments. We continue to make investments improving the tech backbone of the platform. New verification mechanisms were launched for our NRI users, which helps improve the quality of matches in that segment. More privacy options were offered to users to make the platform experience more secure. A fresh iOS app experience has been in the works and will be available to users this week, which should significantly enhance platform engagement on the app. Moving on to the Shiksha business. In Q3, billings in Shiksha grew 51.4% year-on-year and 94% compared to Q3 of 2020 and stood at INR 25.7 crores while revenue grew 65.7% year-on-year and 105% compared to Q3 of 2020 to INR 21.9 crores. The YTD billing for the business stood at INR 67.7 crores, a Y-o-Y growth of 72.6%, while YTD revenue grew 59.5% and stood at INR 66.2 crores. We made an EBITDA of INR 2 crores during the quarter versus an EBITDA of INR 80 lakhs in Q3 of last year. Cash EBITDA for the quarter stood at INR 7 crores, a year-on-year growth of 55%. And YTD EBITDA stood at INR 14.7 crores, a year-on-year growth of 26.7%; while YTD cash EBITDA stood at INR 18.1 crores for year-on-year growth of 27%. The Shiksha business team has again been able to pull through a strong quarter with reasonable revenue growth. The recent momentum is backed by positive sentiments among students who are now more involved in online searching for universities and colleges. And at the same time, also private colleges have realized the worth of online marketing on platforms like Shiksha. Our study abroad business has also seen an encouraging response from students. We continue to make -- invest in making content -- our content more comprehensive and more student-friendly and in building deep domain expertise in this space. Moving on to the consolidated financial highlights of the quarter. At the consolidated level, the net sales for the company stood at INR 419 crores during Q3 of 2022 versus INR 277.6 crores in Q3 '21. For the consolidated entity at the total comprehensive income level, there is a profit of INR 4,562.8 crores versus INR 678.1 crore for the previous quarter ending December 31, 2020. Adjusted for the exceptional items, PBT stood at a profit of INR 2,621.1 crores in Q3 of '22 versus a loss of INR 6.9 crores in Q3 '21. Since investment in PB Fintech is held by our wholly owned sub-companies, joint venture companies, mark-to-market gain on such investment after being categorized as financial investment post suggesting amounting to [ INR 448.2 crores ]. Net of deferred tax liabilities of [ INR 552.9 ] crores on the data listing has been included in PAT of consolidated financial statement. The mark-to-market loss of INR 151.2 crores, net of deferred tax asset of INR 19.5 crores, which reflects the change in fair value of such shares as of quarter end over fair value in listing date has been recognized as other comprehensive income as per the accounting policy of the company. While computing the impact on PAT and OCI, 50% of gain/loss recognized in joint venture [ mix sense ] is considered. Okay. I hope you understood that. Thank you, and we are now ready to take any questions that you may have.
Thank you, Hitesh. Team, we'll now begin the Q&A session. [Operator Instructions]
The first question is from Vivekanand from AMBIT Capital.
I have 2 questions. So the first one is on the gross margin. You said that the margins have -- I mean they have improved substantially and have remained elevated for the last 2 quarters even though your employee cost seems to be rising. So any thoughts, Hitesh, on how one should look at the operating margin in the group and now that there is more clarity on a normalization perspective?
Yes. So our margins are going to be a function of what kind of revenue growth we are able to get going forward. In the past, we have said, listen, at 15%, we can maintain margins at 20% growth. We start improving margins, right? Now -- but what is different this time around is that there is massive wage inflation across the board. So listen, our sense of this is that unless we sort of started spending aggressively on marketing, margins should sort of get even better going forward if we continue to grow at 20%-plus. That's our current take. But like I said, a lot will depend on whether we up our investments in marketing or not. Right now, it doesn't look like we're going to get very aggressive on marketing, at least for this quarter. So -- and then, of course, next year, it will be a much higher base and we'll have to grow on that higher base to improve margins even further, even more.
Okay. My second question is on the JobSpeak data that was very encouraging till September, but then we've started to see next moderate. Is this just because of Omicron? Though I'm not able to reconcile the JobSpeak Index movement with your comments, which seem to indicate that there hasn't been much adverse impact of the Omicron wave?
Yes. So right now, at least the sense we're getting to the market is that Omicron, it's impacted our 99acres business again to some extent because in real estate, unless people go out and actually see houses, they don't buy. In the job market, on the other hand, people are happy to sort of sit at home and give interviews and even recruiters are happy to hire people without even meeting them, right? That's a new trend. So we don't expect our recruitment business to get hit because of Omicron, at least that's been the trend so far in January. But real estate could take a hit in January. We are hoping that Omicron will hopefully be behind us in the next couple of weeks, and we'll be able to go back to office and things will go back to normal in all verticals. At a very macro level, unless things get worse from here on the Omicron front, we don't really expect it to impact our Q4 billings as a whole.
Okay. And what about the JobSpeak data that saw some moderation in the last 3 months? Is that also something that you have factored in your guidance or your commentary with respect to the optimism?
Yes. So we continue to be optimistic. I mean, like I said, attrition rates are still high across most companies. Salary is also moving up. In fact, we expect -- we were hoping that the non-IT sort of sector will also bounce back very strongly this quarter. That may have got delayed by a month or 2 because of Omicron. But up until now, we were seeing a lot of our growth because of IT companies hiring more than they were hiring earlier. Then of course, some non-IT sectors have started to recruit. But going forward, we expect the other sectors to also start sort of hiring more in more numbers. Now of course, Q4 last year was a good year, right? We grew -- we had healthy growth in Q4. So we can't expect the kind of growth we got in Q3 and Q4. I mean if we get that kind of growth, we'll be very happy. But this -- but compared to 2020, 2022 sort of -- Q4 should be very, very good.
Can I just add something here? You see, you raised the point of the JobSpeak moderating last month. That kind of correct contradicts what we are experiencing from our sales team and client feedback. It is possible that for 1 month, it moderated because when Omicron was headed up, there might have been [ 15 million ] of uncertainty because people were unsure about how serious it will be. But given the fact that Omicron is now waning and it is not so serious in terms of [ healthy ], I think we are optimistic.
Yes. Am I audible?
Yes. You're audible. Anand, you're on mute.
Yes. [ Nitin ], go ahead.
Yes. So my first question is regarding the recruitment vertical. So a number of large IT companies, they have indicated in their Q3 results commentary that attrition is expected to cool off in the next 2 to 3 quarters. So should we expect to see a lag impact of this in the Naukri business? That's my first question.
Also attrition numbers cool off then, of course, it will have an impact on our business because -- so when companies -- unless companies continue to grow rapidly in terms of overall head count. So gross hiring is basically a function of attrition plus new additions -- new addition. Now that is really what decides company budgets and how much companies spend on us, to a large extent. So if attrition numbers fall drastically and new hiring also doesn't pick up then, of course, companies will spend -- may not budget as much for recruitment as they have budgeted till now. So yes, I mean, if attrition numbers cool off then that will have an impact unless new hiring picks up as well.
So my perspective here was, will the drop in IT hiring be made up by the non-IT businesses picking up like as it was seen in your commentary this quarter?
Actually very hard to me to say. I don't know how much non-IT hiring will drop by. I don't even know whether non-IT will drop. So -- and we are expecting -- sorry, IT. I mean, IT. I don't know how much IT hiring will drop by. I don't even know when it will drop and if it will drop. As far as non-IT hiring goes, we are expecting non-IT hiring to bounce back because it was sort of hit big by COVID -- because of COVID and non-IT companies, at least in some sectors, we saw some recovery in last quarter in sectors like travel, retail, hospitality after a long time. But -- so we're expecting -- I mean, if this Omicron is now behind us and we don't get another wave then, hopefully, these companies will start hiring again going forward. Now whether it will make up for the decline in hiring because IT companies slow down, it's hard for me to say.
So next question is regarding the Shiksha business. So we have seen a very good scale-up over the past 2 to 3 years. So what is the vision here for the next like 3 to 5 years? Where do we see -- how big do we see this business becoming? And what are the profit subverticals are we expected to add here?
See, we don't know how the big the business will become in 3 or 5 years. Our goal remains -- so this Shiksha is basically an education sort of counseling, stroke information sort of platform and to -- for people looking to get into colleges and universities in India. And to this, we added a study abroad vertical some years ago and that business has also sort of started doing well for us. Now of course, our desire is to grow this sort of platform. We get a few million users on our platform every month. Our desire is to sort of offer more counseling services, offer better information, offer more comprehensive content on the platform. Our desire is to grow their study abroad business and take it to the next level. And we also have a small Naukri learning business inside Naukri, right, which is again an education business, which is basically about online process. So while Shiksha is more about off-line colleges and universities and Naukri learning business is more about helping people figure out which online courses to sort of study. So the idea here is to sort of grow all these verticals into more comprehensive sort of platforms, which -- so that they become the first -- so they become the preferred way of sort of searching for education information in this country. And as you know, there isn't a lot of information available. A lot of colleges and universities won't put out a lot of information. It's not available in the public domain unlike it is the case overseas. And parents and students in India have to spend a lot of time figuring out which college, which course, especially after class 12, even after that. So the vision is to just make it easier for them so that they can take the right decisions. As you know, this is a very important sort of decision for a lot of parents and students, right? And if we can sort of play a role in that journey then, hopefully, over time, everything else will follow. Now whether -- how much will that -- this translate into in terms of revenue over the next 3 to 5 years, hard for me to say.
Okay. And my last question is regarding ShopKirana investment. So recently, there was news about ShopKirana raising money at around $38 million led by Info Edge. So what valuation was the money raised at?
So look, for competitive reasons, we are not announcing that because whenever the co-investors, right, the other VCs don't necessarily want to announce the valuation and we have to abide by that. And also a company may or may not want to announce it. So we can't just disclose the valuation, unfortunately.
Next question is from Gaurav Chopra, Union AMC.
My question on the margin -- can you hear me?
Yes.
Yes. Sorry about that. Yes. My question was really on the 99acres business. What we have noticed is if I were to look at the recent numbers that some of these real estate players have sort of reported, they have been extremely strong. But if you look at our listings, it continued to sort of remain flattish. So what explains that and if you just highlight the market share trends in our real estate business. And secondly, if you could just highlight our market share trends in the overall recruitment segment, are we facing tough competition from the likes of LinkedIn, et cetera. Yes, those are my 2 questions.
Yes. So the 99acres platform caters to different segments within the real estate business. So we have a new homes section. We have a resale section. We have a rental section. We have a commercial section. Listings are normally more representative of the resale market and not so much of the new home market. So the developers you mentioned, the developers who are listed and who've released results, they are mostly -- they operate in the new home space. And there, we offer very different solutions to developers. So that is not necessarily reflected in listing growth on our platform. Listings, we get -- listings mostly are representative of rental growth and resale growth. And what has happened over -- in 99acres over a period of time is one that we treat our business model, we don't necessarily want more listings because what happens after a while is you end up getting a lot of spam listings. So we are encouraging -- developing a lot of our broker partners to put up fewer listings, but put a more general listings on the platform. So we are trying to sort of change behavior in some sense. On the other hand, if you look at owner listings, they have gone up because owner listings are generally very genuine listings. There is no spam and owners list on our platform. Those listings are up 15% year-on-year. Now as far as overall trend trends in the market go, we have -- so there was a period -- over the last few years, when real estate went through a lot. We had RERA, we had demonetization, we had GST, we had all kinds of other issues in real estate. And the business was slow for a long time. But 99acres kept growing. I think now we are -- our sense is that we are entering a phase where some of these issues are actually behind us. But of course, Omicron and COVID have played spoilsport for a while now because every time we have Omicron, every time we have a wave, activity just freezes in the market because people just refuse to step out of their homes and brokers shut shop. And unfortunately, we make a lot of money from brokers. We're not -- and if they stop advertising, we stop getting revenue. And they've been very cautious. We are hoping that activity will return to the real estate market post Omicron once again and their business will start to grow. Having said that, what has also happened in real estate over the last 18 to 24 months is that there's a lot more competition than was the case earlier. There are many players, which have got funded over time. So there are newer -- there are lots of players in the -- there are lots of new sort of brokers, e-brokers, who are active or spending a lot of money on marketing. There are players like NoBroker who have raised a lot of money, were active in the market. housing has seen a change in ownership. They are a lot more aggressive than they were earlier, housing.com. MagicBricks continues to be aggressive. So there's a lot more activity in the -- there's a lot more competition in the real estate space than was the case earlier. And that -- and this competition then is likely to and result in sort of more marketing from all the players to fight for share and more marketing spend to fight per share. And this is also likely to result in depressed sort of pricing because players have need to discount to get customers. So that may be the case in this space for a while till the dust settles down as far as the business of portal goes. As far as the job market is concerned, there's been no material change in competitive activity. LinkedIn and Indeed continue to be 2 big players who are active in the market. Naukri is, of course, the largest job board. We are not seeing any major sort of activity on the start-up front. And -- so on the whole, I mean, not much has changed in terms of competitive activity and market share in the job space. Now let's see how it plays out going forward.
Next question is from Vijit Jain from Citi.
Just my question is in the recruitment business, what is the total unique customer base for 9-month FY '22? This number has been fairly stable for the last few years, right, and now obviously it looks like from 3Q number at around 68,000, 69,000, there should be a jump in FY '22. Is that jump largely also coming from IT and related sector hirings? Or is it broader than that? That's my first question.
I don't have the 9-month number with me right now. Chintan, do we give out the number? If yes, can we get back to Vijit.
And back on those numbers, I think we do give you an investor presentation.
Sure. And my second question is the employee expense that has risen. Is that almost all wage hike related because the total head count hasn't grown that much, right? And related to that, I think in 1Q, you had shared that your total tech staff head count was around 700. Where is that number at the moment?
Yes, yes. So basically, what has happened is that while our tech head count has gone up, our overall head count have been the same. Our tech head count is up. One, because of the acquisitions; and two, because we're doing a lot of new things inside the company. So we have a -- and some of these new things are not revenue generating. At this point in time, for example, we have a JobHai business, a vertical that we are trying to -- a blue-collar business that we are trying to sort of build inside the company. We have some people working on the blue collar platform. We've been investing more behind our AmbitionBox platform. So that platform does not generate any revenue right now. We have a small team working on our BigShyft, which is our premium tech hiring platform. That team does not generate any revenue. So we have a lot of internal sort of R&D stroke, new business effort, new product development efforts going on, which we have scaled up over the last 12 to 18 months. We're investing a lot more in these efforts. And none of these efforts generate any revenue right now. So the tech cost has also gone up -- has increased, for one. Of course, we've also given salary hikes and we had, in fact, given 2 salary hikes to -- in tech last year -- this year. And we also upped our head count in some of the newer sort of things that we are doing.
So Hitesh that number was, 700, I think, if I'm not wrong for about 6 months back. Do you have the current number on the head count tech side?
Yes. So I don't recall the exact number, but if we are referring to the same number, then what was 720, 25 some time back, is now, I think, close to 800-plus, 825, 850.
Thanks, Vijit. Next question is from Suji Guntupalli from Kotak AMC.
Yes. My first question is on the IT hiring front. Of course, you mentioned that irrespective of how the IT attrition may look like over the next 2 to 3 quarters and irrespective of the fact that the growth numbers might be very strong, deal wins might be very strong, there has been a view that IT companies are now taking that this sort of a lateral hiring is not sustainable. So they should be focusing more on the fresher hiring and they should be correcting the pyramids. In that context, they're focusing more in terms of getting -- hiring from colleges, giving advanced offers in colleges so on and so forth. So how do you see that impacting the activity on Naukri going ahead probably 2, 3 quarters down the line?
Look, I don't think I said that our billings would be good with respect of what happens to hiring IT companies. We are strongly indexed to IT hiring. Close to 50%, 60% of our business is now indexed to IT hiring. And if IT hiring slows down, it will have an impact on our business. So if -- and yes, while we have a campus hiring product and we work with a lot of IT companies for their campus and off-campus hiring efforts as well, that's still a small part of our business. So if IT hiring changes structurally for some reason or our attrition rates suddenly drop and -- or if IT companies stop hiring for some reason, it will have an impact on our business. And you will see the impact very soon. It was not as if the impact is going to be delayed. So I hope that, that doesn't happen because that's not what we are hearing from our customers and from our salespeople on the ground at least.
Sure. And secondly, on the 99acres side, right? At the real estate side, you mentioned that the competitive intensity has increased quite a bit, and we are seeing similar trends even in the Matrimony segment as well, right? Number of players present competitive intensity has been high for quite some time. We have been investing with the hope that we'll probably become #1, #2 players. So what's your outlook on these 2 segments in that backdrop? And by when can we see some maturity in these 2 industries.
So real estate -- listen, real estate is a tricky one because we are a leader in real estate. And I mean, our revenue base is pretty solid. Like for the last 2 or 3 quarters, I think -- for the last 2 quarters, we've averaged about -- we've done about INR 130 crores in terms of billing in the last 2 quarters. And Q4 is normally our largest quarter. This year, it may get impacted a bit because of Omicron, but normally Q4 is also very, very good. So we have a healthy business in real estate, and it's growing. But yes, there is a lot more competitive activity. There's a lot of easy money which has gone into the sector. There are new players who enter the sector and -- in the hope that this will be a large sort of category over a period of time. So it's difficult to say how this is going to play out. We, of course, will continue to invest because this is the time to invest because we've been very patient for the last few years, even though we went through a lot in real estate, you know how bad the real estate sector was for so many years. I guess the next few years from a market standpoint look good. It's very likely that the real estate sort of sector will grow at 10%, 15% per annum at least for the next few years. If real estate remains affordable, if interest rates remain modest, that is likely to happen. And therefore, I think we should take a slightly longer-term view on real estate. We should continue to invest aggressively in this space because -- while we may not be a dominant player, it's not as if anybody else is dominating or is a leader. So it's still open, the market is still open. And we are a leader. So we should do whatever we can to protect our position in this market. If that means we have to invest a couple of hundred crores over the next couple of years, so be it. As far as Matrimony is concerned, the matrimony market is more mature because it's been a prepaid market for the longest time. We are the #2 player in matrimony. We gained share for about 2 or 3 years in between. This year -- this quarter was not so good for us. But we'll be hoping that business will bounce back, and we'll at least start growing it in 10% or more going forward. Now in Matrimony, I think we have to think a little out of the box. We'll have to do things a little differently than we've done them till now if we want to continue to gain share in this market because it's not a very high-growth market. It's a market, which grows at a rate of 10% per annum. There are 3 players. The other 2 players are also well established. We don't have anything very unique to offer at this point in time. So I think we have to work hard on creating a new strategy in this space if we want to get anywhere in the medium term. Having said so, we have a few ideas, and we are working for them and let's see how this plays out.
Just one follow-up on the real estate part. By the very nature of this industry, probably we can assume that this will continue to be fragmented for a long period to come. right? In that context, do we see it ever converging with the recruitment, a Naukri kind of a business where we have "winner takes it all" kind of a proposition and we are the #1 by a wide margin?
Well, it could happen. I think it's possible. I mean if you get the network effect going, if we are able to deliver superior customer value, if we create a better a experience for our users and our competitors, anything is possible. There is no reason why, globally at least, there are some very good case studies. There are some real estate sites, which are actually bigger. Most real estate sites in most countries are bigger than job boards in those countries. So it is possible. It's just that I think people see that and they know that there is a lot of value to be created in this space, and they're waiting to last it out and they are waiting to invest. They don't want to sort of give up given what they're seeing in jobs and given what they're seeing in other sort of categories. So will we get to 70% share in the next 12 months? Answer is no. Could we get there in 5 years? It will depend on how we execute and how much we're willing to invest in this category.
Next question is from Mayank Babla from Dalal & Broacha. Next question is from Amit Jeswani, Stallion Asset.
Just wanted to understand the rationale behind the investing more money in the Jeevansathi business. We lose broadly INR 100 crores a year. Shaadi's never made money. The opportunity size is very small at INR 700 crore to INR 800 crores. We're not market leaders. The market leader itself is INR 400 crores. Are we putting bad -- like good money behind bad money? Shouldn't we just shake and move on from this market and probably reinvest in so many other opportunities out there?
So Ami, so listen, so when we invest -- we believe actually when we invested, we sort of grow our market. We'll grow our share, we'll grow our business. Now sometimes some of these -- sometimes these things work out, sometimes they don't. We actually saw reasonably good growth in our business over the last 2 or 3 years, and we were gaining -- and we gained share. Last 1 or 2 quarters have not been so good. I don't think we should give up on this business in a hurry even though it's a INR 7,800 crores market today, the truth is, it will be -- in 10 years, it will be maybe a INR 3,000 crore market, INR 2,500 crore market. There is nobody who has even 50%, 60% share -- I mean, there's nobody who's -- I mean no one company is a dominant player in this market. So -- but like I said, I think it's about time that we started thinking a little differently in this space. We need to do -- we can't be doing the same thing and expect different results, right? So we need to think a little out of the box, go back to the drawing board and rework our strategy in this space. And as far as investing in other verticals, see, nobody is being -- it's not as we are diverting money from other verticals or cash which could have been spent elsewhere to Jeevansathi. We are sitting on INR 3,800 crores the company is generating in terms of cash. We are looking for newer places to invest in. So it's not as if we are distracted or we are diverting sort of resources from other verticals to the Jeevansathi business.
So you would be -- likely will continue reinvesting money till the time we can get like a better on this thing in Jeevansathi, right?
Well, may I add something?
Yes, please.
Yes. Amit, see, it's like this. The play over here ultimately has to be consolidation. If you consolidate 1 or 2 of the other sites, you get pricing power. Straightaway, the total industry size go up, you get higher margins, right? And it's a question of sort of waiting and trying and hoping for the best, and we want to be the buy-side and not the sell-side. It may take some time. It's not that we've not been trying. It may take some time.
But there are only 2 other players, Sanjeev. Are you looking to buy anything? Have you ever spoken -- have you had...
No. We can't comment specifically on that. All I'm saying is the play is consolidation. We want to be on the buy-side, and we are waiting.
Thanks, Amit. Mayank is back.
Sorry about the previous time. Am I audible now?
Yes. Go ahead, please.
Yes. My question is directed towards Chintan, sir. Sir, could you please explain to us the -- it's an accounting question. Could you please explain to us the accounting treatment of these newly listed like Zomato and PB Fintech. So from henceforth, the mark-to-market gains or losses will be in the other comprehensive income in all the quarters going forward. Could you please explain that to us?
Yes. That's correct. So henceforth, all the gains and losses because of mark-to-market would be in other comprehensive income.
And the -- okay. And so there will be no other tax implications or anything? This will just be other comprehensive income.
There are notional gains and losses arising because of mark-to-market. There is no real transfer of shares or transfer of assets happening. So there are no capital gains. So there's no real tax impact. It's just accounting notional gain or loss entry.
So the tax incidence will happen when you actually sell?
Sure. sure.
Next question is from Pranav Kshatriya from Edelweiss.
Yes. my first question is regarding this -- the trend in the advertisement market, especially on the real estate side. So you have Google, Facebook on one side and then you have this vertical-specific platform like MagicBricks and 99acres and NoBroker, et cetera. So can you explain how the trend has been for the shift to digital is happening? Are the Googles and the Facebooks of the world gaining more market share? Or is it the more vertical platforms are gaining market share from the print and other forms of advertisers?
So listen, we don't have Google and Facebook numbers for real estate advertising. They don't report their -- they don't give out numbers by verticals and so on. So we don't have the exact numbers. But you see where Google -- let me just explain. See, where Google and Facebook do a great job of is in the new home launch market, right? So whenever a new developer launches, especially a big developer launches a new project, they want to quickly get the word out. Earlier they used to do a lot of print advertising. Today, they do some print advertising, but they also put a lot of money to work on Facebook and Google because they're able to get the word out very quickly. Once the dust settles down and the project becomes like a regular project, then what happens is they start spending more money on portals, right, because portals have a 365 -- 24/7, 365-a-day audience and so on, right? Now our goal, of course, our goal is to sort of get developers to shift their ad spend over time from print to online and from Google and Facebook to platforms like 99acres. And therefore, we keep working on improving our delivery, our experience, our sort of responses to our users. So on the resale side, on the other hand, it's not as if brokers use Google and Facebook to advertise. For rental listings, people don't use -- our clients don't use Google and Facebook to advertise. So that business mostly goes to portals like ours and MagicBricks. And even on the new home side, Google and Facebook mostly make money -- a lot of money from the bigger developers, not from the smaller developers. So there are -- for example, we in 99acres with over 5,000 developers in the country, big and small, right? So we have developers who may sort of do one small project and launch 10 units. And then we have developers who launch thousand units -- thousands of units every year. Where Google and Facebook do a good job is at the bigger developers.
Sure. My second question is regarding Matrimony and possibly there could be some repetition to the earlier question. But my thought was that if you look at the competitive intensity for the market, which is reasonably consolidated, is very high in that segment. So is -- the consolidation is the first thing to happen or possibly there is a rate hike to drive the market, that should happen. So what are your thoughts on that?
So we don't really -- so we are a small player in that market. We are, of course, very large in North India. We are the #2 player in North India and in Hindi Belt, but we are a tiny player in the grand scheme of things. So we don't really decide the fate of that market. Of course, we have been spending more aggressively than earlier. And we've been running aggressive price discounting because that's what our competitors have been doing. But you're right in saying, see, if -- one is, of course, companies could consolidate. The other thing which could possibly happen over a period of time is that people cut their ad spends and people up their prices because, really, we are giving everything away very, very cheap to our users. Now whether that will happen or not, I don't know how these things will play out over a period of time. So let's see.
Sure. I mean, I take that response. But even you are the smallest player, I think you are the one who actually said possibly another pace of discount and because the pricing can't be very different because the offerings are so similar. And...
Well, if our competitors are actually much bigger than us and they have the network effect going for them. They have a much higher market share. They should be able to charge much higher prices and get away with it.
Next question is from Ankur Rudra from JPMorgan.
Good to see the growth surprises on Naukri continue this quarter. Just a question on pricing, given how strong the demand has been and how -- how you're seeing this continued -- what are you thinking about the opportunity to take price hikes this year on all the products you have?
So we've taken a price hike on some of our products. And we also managed to sort of realize more than what we were realizing earlier. We've cut discounts for lot of our heavy users over the last few months. As a result, our realizations have improved significantly over the last 12 months. Of course, we are also sort of seeing more volume growth. We have added new customers as well. And we are also selling more products than earlier because we have these sort of new things in our portfolio like iimjobs, via DoSelect and others. Now -- so going forward, I think a lot will depend on how hot the market is. In a hot market, it is easy to take up prices. If there is wage inflation, it's easy to take up prices because for the same number of people who are being hired through you, companies are saving much more money because otherwise they would have had to hire to consultants and they would have to pay a lot more, right? So some of these some things are also a function of how hot the market is, if the market continues to be hot, you can expect us to take a price increase also, you can expect us to get higher volume also, you can expect us to add more customers also. You can expect us to sell more volume also, everything will happen. If the market cools down for some reason, then we'll have to be careful.
And if we think about it on a year-over-year basis, Hitesh, what's the broad split of the billing rate growth between volume, price and maybe new products have been added?
Chintan, do you have a sense of that?
I think it's really hard to really kind of give a precise number to that, because there is a particular deal, there would be an upgrade, there would be a new product, there will be a volume increase and there would be a price increase as well. And at the end of it, finally, it's a form a deal where sales guys just go and kind of say, "Okay, this is the final price for you." So it depends on how you want to allocate and the methodology of allocation, the numbers would differ. So it's very, very hard to kind of really give a precise number to that.
But a substantial chunk of our growth this year would be better realizations. Because for a long time, we were discounting very heavily. One, because of COVID, we were forced to give very aggressive discounts for about 3 or 4 quarters. So -- and even before that, when we went into COVID, the economy had started slowing down. For the last 2 quarters, growth was 4%, 5%. So during times like these sales people tend to discount more. So I suspect there are -- a lot of the growth that we've seen in the last 3, 4 quarters would be basically us getting our pricing back and also to some extent.
And this will be equally true Hitesh for the billings number and the revenue number or more true for one of them?
More true for billings, I'm assuming, I don't know Chintan?
Over 3, 4 quarters, it will even out, right?
Yes. 3, 4 quarters it will even out. Yes, that's correct.
Okay. Just in terms of the -- this question has been asked before, I just wanted to take another stab at it. The trend on Naukri JobSpeak index versus your commentary about the growth you see out there. Maybe for the December quarter, could you give us a sense if the billing rate growth you saw in October was similar to December? Or was it an acceleration or a deceleration? Just to see how the trend is playing out in Jan as well and how that goes ahead?
So listen, one I just want to clarify this Naukri JobSpeak index. We have never said that it is correlated to our growth, okay, numbers. And this is -- while it's -- it is correlated, but it's not a direct correlation, right? There is a correlation, but it's not a 100% correlation. Like -- what happens in good time, especially is that we get a lot of revenue from our other products. So people sort of use our database also a lot more and database revenues, I think 50%, 60% of our total overall revenue. Then people buy more branding products. People buy our shortlisting and screening services. We've been selling our new products also in the market. So none of these things are captured in the Jobspeak index. Jobspeak index basically is a parameter of listing from the platform and nothing else, right? And even for the same listing, right, on the platform, if in a bad year, companies are looking to hire 10 people, they may be looking in a good year to have 20 people because they have just many more requirements, right? So it's not even an index of the number of openings on the platform. It's an index of job listings, right? So I just want to clarify that because one should not read too much into the JobSpeak index also. It's correlated, but it's not 100% parameter of what's happening.
Ankur, the way look at it see, we sell mostly annual solutions, a lot of revenue is that, right? The JobSpeak index is listings for that month and the rate of change in that over the previous year, previous month, whatever, right? Now if this Omicron coming in and possibility is running at 29%, 30% in Delhi NCR there will be some freezing of some activity for some time. If that freezing is for 10, 15 days, it will impact JobSpeak for that month [indiscernible] about it. But it would not impact billing or revenue. Now if this thing continues for 3, 4 months, surely, it will impact billing and revenue. [Foreign Language], which was thankfully short-lived. It does not impact us.
Understood. This is very helpful color. So I'm just assuming there's no change in the duration of the billing period or the contracts or the vouchers that you're seeing?
No, no, nothing. We haven't altered our policies at all.
Okay, absolutely. Could you maybe give us an update where is the proportion of revenue or billings for IT or in overall technology as part of the billings right now?
Okay. So listen, if you do a client-wise thing, then we estimate that about maybe 35%, 36% of our revenue is directly from IT stock, IT-enabled services companies and maybe another 13%, 14%, 15% is from recruitment firms who hire for IT clients, right? But if you go by, by activity in our platform to see okay, which kind of seats are being accessed because the other trend that we're seeing is a lot of the non-IT companies are also hiring for IT, right? So in our database they may be classified as non-IT companies or banks or financial services companies or insurance companies, but they could be hiring IT talent. So if you look at the demand for IT talent in our platform, I mean, today, at least close to 60% of the demand on the platform is for IT professionals of some sort, right, of some type. That's how it is today. Now that could change going forward. Like I said, IT market has been buoyant. The non-IT market has been down for a while, and that could change in the next few months. But that is what it is right now as we speak.
Understood. Just last question. Any change in the thought process about the Hindi type of business model? I know you've historically not tried to do that. Have you rethought that, any sort of update in terms of how you're thinking about what they're doing and sort of dealing with that sort of competition?
So to be honest, we haven't given it too much thought, but it's a project which we have nurtured inside the company. We're looking at how to revive our listings business. Our listing business is a tiny part of our total revenue. And indeed, is mostly a listings platform and that's where we do well. So we've got a group of people trying to figure out what we can do going forward to revive our listing business. Now as a part of that project, we would, of course, look at the Hindi model also and see if that makes sense for us.
Next question is on Rajesh Kumar, he's an Individual investor.
Rajesh, you're on mute.
Can you hear me sir?
Yes, Raj. We can hear you now.
I just wanted to know like, will you be providing additional extra things for the Naukri things, so that like if you give additionally competitive exams for the freshers, then the -- it will be easier for the HR to shortlist the candidates. Something like additional features you will be providing to the Naukri because the competition from LinkedIn all it's quite high nowadays, right?
No. So we have been doing a lot of stuff. So we, for example, like I'd mentioned, we acquired a platform DoSelect some time back. And DoSelect is a talent assessment platform. And we've been taking this platform to all our clients and they use this platform to conduct tests and hire sort of people through us. As a part of our first Naukri business also, which is our campus hiring because a lot this testing happens on campus and for freshers. We offer testing solutions to a lot of our customers. So we've been sort of following with this idea for a while, a lot of our customers now use our services, and we'll be doing a lot more in this area going forward as well.
Next question is from Mukul Garg from Motilal Oswal. Mukul is lost. We'll take the next question.Next question is from Srinath. He's from Bellwether Capital.
Can you hear me guys?
Yeah, please. Go ahead.
Yes. So we have -- I got dropped out for 10 minutes in the middle. So I'm not sure if this question has been asked. We have made a significant number of investments in this quarter of 4B networks, Adda247, DoSelect and so on, Redstart Labs. Could you spend a minute on each of these companies and kind of help us understand what was the thinking behind these investments, some seem strategic, some seem like financial. If you could help us understand that, that would be really great.
Yes. What have we announced, Chintan are what we [indiscernible].
So we can just explain what our strategy is for investment because there are financial and there are strategy...
Okay. Shall I go with that?
Yes, please.
So we've been now investing since 2007, that's 15 years in other start-ups, right? Initially, we invested only from the balance sheet, right? And we used to call all investments in our head, we say they're all strategic investments, right? Then we got a little bit more discerning. And we said, you know what, investments in the 4 verticals that we operate, which is jobs, real estate, matrimony, education classifieds. In these 4 verticals and the adjacencies is what we will call strategic, the rest we will financial. So then we bifurcated investments into strategic and financial. Over time, as some of the investments began to do well and we got a better handle on stuff, we kind of figured that. Listen, it's a little unwieldy to keep investing from a balance sheet. From a pure regulatory point of view, it's better to have an AIF, right? So in 2019, we started an AIF and all fresh companies that were outside the 4 verticals, which we operate, those investments went from the AIF. However, follow-on rounds in the older companies, which are financial investments, continue to go from the balance sheet and the continue to do. So ShopKirana is financial, but it is invested balance sheet, right? So there are 5 or 6 companies where investments are still going from balance sheet that follows our graphs. There's a whole bunch of investments which we have made, which are strategic investments, which go from the balance sheet or a subsidiary, and they continue, right? Redstart is a different case. Redstart is a subsidiary of us, where we are taking very small bets in deep tech companies, right? And it's not a lot of money in Redstart, but we are taking very small bets in deep tech companies to figure out it's a bit of an experiment to figure what happens there, right? And that's how our investment is organized. So Redstart, we look at it as a infusing capital into a subsidiary that is investing in small checks into deep tech companies, maybe 10 or 12 of them so far. And Adda247, well, there are other financial investors and therefore, they put some financial investment, we can't call it strategic because the moment there is the financial investor in there other than you, you have to regard it as financial investment. As a strategic investor, you have to be the only investor there. And there's a whole bunch of investments that are strategics, right. Do you want to name some strategic investment, Hitesh?
Yes. So you mentioned DoSelect, so DoSelect is an acquisition, it's not an investment. It's a 100% acquisition, offered the assessment platform I just mentioned. iimjobs jobs is 100% acquisition. Zwayam is a 100% acquisition. So these 3 are acquisitions. And then we have a few where we own between 25% to 50%. Broker Network is a real estate investment. We own close to 50%. NoPaperForms is an investment in the education space, we own about 49%. Then there is Greytip HR, we own about 20-odd percent, 25% in Greytip. And then we have Coding Ninjas, where we own about -- we own other 25%. So these are -- I mean right now classified as strategic investments, but it's early days, and let see what happens to them going forward. Sometimes strategic investments over time become financial. And sometimes financial investments over time become strategic as well.
Can you kind of help us understand how this all comes together, at least on the strategic side. Again, I'm not looking for any numbers or valuation or nothing out of the numbers. Like where do these fit in the broader scheme as in? What will be our intent to bring them in and so on?
Yes. So like Sanjeev said, you see strategic, in our head, we define as investments in the spaces we already operate. So we have a recruitment vertical. We have a real estate vertical. We have a matrimonial vertical, singles vertical, and we have an education vertical. So anything we sort of do in any of these spaces broadly is classified as strategic where we are very clear that we would like to own this business and run it and we see tremendous synergy with Naukri or with any of the verticals we already operate in, we would rather acquire, right? And if that is an option. Sometimes it is not an option, but we like the asset. And sometimes, we want to watch the business for a while before making up our minds, right? And so in such cases, we end up investing and not acquiring upfront. And sometimes, we may believe that this may become synergistic with what we have not today but maybe 3 or 4 years down the line, then we would want the [ 20-odd ] to sort of stay vested and to sort of stay motivated and we may therefore continue to invest for a long time and -- but take more and more ownership over a period of time. So that's our thinking. Now -- but like I said, some of these are experiments, and we are not sure when we invest. Over time, some of them may become more strategic, and we may like to acquire a higher and higher sort of ownership in these companies. And sometimes, we may feel that maybe it doesn't make sense. And maybe -- and at this point in time, those investments become financial.
So let me elaborate. There's a company called NoPaperForms. Now we got into that as a financial investment, saying that, listen, this is not really strategic. And we bid the first 2 rounds of that business, right? And then we need to rethink and stay you know what active with the strategic. Okay, and we're the only investor there. And so now it will be strategic investment and that's how we are handling it. That's how companies have evolve from financial to strategic or the other way around.
Perfect. And just 2 more in that. One is a Greytip and one is Univariety. Any broad...
Yes, so Greytip is an HR services company. It's not recruitment, but it's HR services, which is why we took a view that it's not strategic, maybe right away in the sense that we may not want to acquire it, but may we want to watch this space down a little bit and then we make up our mind over a period of time, right? And Teal is a real estate analytics company. So we had a tiny -- it's a tiny set up right now. So we want to do again sort of see how that space evolves. But like -- there is a little complex, sometimes financial becomes strategic and then it will become financial again. So there we are very clear...
Are they getting integrated into our product or where our sales teams are marketing them? Or how does this work once they become strategic?
Yes. So no. So we sort of -- we don't sort of, up until now at least, we have not really partnered with them in any significant way to sort of take their products to market or anything of that sort. Of course, we talk to them. We bounce ideas with them, we mentor them sometimes and so on, but we've not really -- in any significant way, let me put it this way, taking any of these products to market through our system, for example.
Got it. Got it. Last one, Sanjeev, just wanted to find out what is your broader understanding and view on the quick commerce space, given that one of our large economic interest is deploying significant economic interest in this space. Again, I'm not looking for any numbers as such or anything at all, but broader understanding of how do you kind of see this place paying out over the next 3 to 5 years?
So look, it's going to be a massive, massive demand in the top line. I think the real challenge will be getting to profit and they'll hopefully figure it out along the way. But it's a huge space.
Next question is from Prateek. He is from Antique Stockbroking.
Can you hear me?
Yeah, Prateek. Go ahead.
First question is on a clarification on like when we see the consolidated results, there is a share of net profit from associates. There's a large swing from negative number to a INR 2,400 crore kind of number. So is this some restatement or some one-offs which has been reported here?
Yes. Chintan, do you want to answer that? Chintan, are you there?
Yes, and also it's largely, it is because in this quarter, if you're looking at Q3, it's primarily because Policybazaar got listed. So Policybazaar was an associate company it got listed because we had certain special vibes in that organization till it was a private company. Since it got listed and now we are like any other shareholders, it is now classified as a financial investment. So the gains which have happened -- and this Policybazaar by the way was held by our source than a 3 of different subsidiary companies. So that's why it's part of the consolidated environment, right? So when we consolidate all the gains that happened in those subsidiary companies, till the date of listing, I think they all are coming by -- we have consolidated when it comes to the Info Edge consolidated results. After that, what are the gains and the mark-to-market gains and losses are there, that is now accounted as another comprehensive income.
But that happened with Zomato also in quarter September to December month?
The difference is that in Zomato shares were held directly by Info Edge, right, that's why it is part of this stand-alone, while Policybazaar was held through different JVs or different subsidiaries.
Okay, and that clarifies. Second question is on -- with the recent impact on stock prices of tech companies globally and India, have we seen anything in private space in terms of valuations?
So look, the space remains as busy as earlier. There have been statements made by Sequoia, by SoftBank and by Tiger that private valuations are going to correct. But we haven't seen evidence of that on the ground just yet. When we go out and talk to companies and we compete, and see, there are 2 things. One is, if there are committed tools of capital for private markets in India, right, then their mandate is to go to private market. So that pool of capital does not reduce. And if they have an investment period of 3 years, they have to invest in 3 years with all these funds. So structurally, they can't go anywhere. Now it's a question of negotiation, whether you can get something cheaper or not, and we have yet to see evidence of that. It may materialize. But in general, my sense is that -- it takes 6 months for private markets to correct after public markets are corrected 4 to 6 months, maybe 8 months. It does not happen immediately. We've seen that earlier.
Sure. And one last question. So one investment company -- one of the investment company announced 2 small investments. I think these were early-stage investments or relatively early ones. So are these the kind of investment where we also compete with them in terms of investment opportunities?
No. No. In general, no, we don't. And in general, look, if one of our investing companies wants to invest in a company and we all -- we generally defer to them. So because those guys are not interested in financial investments. And if we are going after a company, it's a financial investment. So [Foreign Language], those strategic investment will always get priority over a financial investment. Even internally when you see a company, it looks like it could be in a gray area, strategic or financial. We always go to the strategic team first and say [Foreign Language].
Next question is from [ Shashank from Macquarie Capital ].
Just one clarification on when do we see the acquired operating businesses being integrated with the stand-alone numbers, iimjobs, DoSelect, and Zwayam -- the stand-alone reported numbers?
Chintan, are you there?
On iimjobs, actually, we have already begun the process and of the court hearings and shareholders' meetings and creditors approval. So everything is already there. Final hearing is also done almost now probably 4 or 5 months ago. Before the return order comes, judge retires and maybe I'm told that now the hearing will happen again, and then we'll get the order, but it can happen any day. So iimjobs should be done, and Zwayam and DoSelect may take more time. So it's a court-driven process. So unfortunately, it's -- we have limited control on that.
Next question is from [ Nitin Jain ].
So I would like to dwell a little up on one of our ad tech investments Adda247. So it seems to be scaling up quite well. We have around 15 million [ MAUs ] on the platform. So -- and this is why the focus has been solely on exams for government jobs. So is there any plan to broaden the offerings on the platform like outside of government jobs?
Adda247?
Yes.
Actually there's truckloads of government jobs out there. If you -- and almost all of them are entrance exams. So whether you are looking at a job that constable in Maharashtra somewhere or you are looking to get hired by BSNL as a technical assistant or you want to join as a railway engineer apprentice through the SCRA exam. There are many, many government jobs out there. This companies till date largely been focused on banking. And we have massive scope for expansion right now within government jobs. So -- and the number of in India want government jobs is very, very large. So it's a large market, lots of empty space for them, which they will expand into. I don't think -- I mean you never know yes, because they're independent companies, they're independent management team. But as of now, there's been no conversation about going after the government jobs.
And that's primarily because within the government job itself, there is a lot of scope for expansion?
Yes.
Vivek that was the last question we had for the day. We may wait for some time. [Operator Instructions] There is a question from Utkarsh Solapurwala from Damos Capital..
Can you hear me?
Yes, Utkarsh. Go ahead.
So my question is on Zomato. So what is the capital allocation policy on of Zomato when they think of investing strategically in many of the companies like Grofers because Sanjeev...
So, no, Zomato was independently listed company. And so we are sort of being told -- that we should not be talking about Zomato on your conference call, so because Zomato is independently listed, you will have to talk with them actually on the capital allocation policy about, apologies.
Okay, sir. And second question is on 99acres. So there are similar platforms like NoBroker and others, which are also performing activities like listing of the -- listing of homes and et cetera, on the platform. But there is no single company that can provide actually an end-to-end home buying starting from bone searching to providing some help like the legal services. Because in India, many times actually, when you buy real estate, it is a daisy business where the records are not clean. So people generally they prefer brokers who looks after most of the stuff and then buy -- actually from the brokers and not directly from the 99acres. So are we planning to do something like that?
Offer an end-to-end service in 99acres?
Yes.
No. Right now, there is no plan to offer an end-to-end service in 99acres. But so we have teams, however, evaluating opportunities constantly, and we are not saying that we will never do it. But at least, I don't see us doing anything like this for the next 2 quarters.
Next question is from Srinath from Bellwether.
Hitesh, just wanted to understand if you could give us a qualitative view on 99acres app usage or eyeballs. Because I just wanted to know that, see, the sales numbers in Knight Frank, they're all still the same as 2019. So the growth hasn't come yet, but there's been a lot of commentary that demand is actually kind of funneling in and that would be seen in pre inquiry stages with more footfalls on the app and so on. So if you could give any qualitative understanding of whether you are seeing a ramp-up on the app or on the site? That would be great.
Yes. So I think it's been a little sort of -- so like the [indiscernible] different sort of waves at different points in time, COVID waves. There have been periods where we've seen more activity than 1 or 2 years ago, there have been periods where we've seen less activity. It's very difficult to say what's really happening in that market. Overall, I would say it's been flattish in terms of activity. It's not as activity has gone down, but it's not as if it's like gone up significantly as well. We've seen more activity on the rental side for sure. On the platform, some markets are doing better than other markets for us. Now that could also be a function of our competitive position in those markets. Small towns did very well for us for the last 2 years, have done well for us over the last 2 years. Now maybe that's because people went home, and a lot of people sort of are operating from home and maybe they want to upgrade their accommodation. So hard to say because there have been, all those changes which sort of have been sort of impacting this market. What we have also picked up -- however, what we picked up anecdotally from a lot of our customers was that there is at least for some time in between, and this may have changed once again in the last 2, 3 months because of Omicron -- month or 2 because Omicron, is that a lot of the more leads in quality, we're actually converting into transaction. So while the number of inquiries may have remained the same, more people were sort of ending up buying or closing a deal, right? But this is anecdotal, so we don't have data on this. Overall, I think come maybe February, come March, we'll have a better sense because hopefully, COVID will be behind us. And hopefully, companies will start to open. Employees will start to go back to work, and the market will go back to being normal. And we are -- at least the team seems to be of the view that given that interest rates are still low, home loan rates and real estate is much more affordable and salaries have actually also gone up in the last 12 months. There is likely to be renewed interest in this market. Also, because of COVID, there weren't too many new launches over the last 18 to 24 months, and therefore, inventory in most cities are also lower than what it was 2 years ago, right? So let's see, that's where it is, and let's see how it plays out over the last -- next few months.
Perfect. And one last question for Sanjeev. After the QIP, you had kind of articulated a strategy for us in terms of concentric circles that we would look at from a point of view of doing a transaction to augment our existing businesses. So just wanted to understand where are we on that? Have we kind of stayed to the course on that particular path? Or are we looking at a different strategy going forward and that particular or set of deals did not fructify. So was that a valuation issue or the deal flow itself given that large deals don't come that often. So just want to understand how you have seen this thing going forward?
The strategy -- the intent remains the same, right? However, it's about doability, and it's not happen. But look, we have done a few acquisitions. And so if you look at DoSelect, you look at iimjobs, you look at Zwayam, those are acquisitions. They're not big acquisitions. But if you added the total cost of these acquisitions, Chintan, what will be?
So all 3, Zwayam, DoSelect and iimjobs should be around INR 180 crores, INR 190 crores?
So that is INR 200 crores you've done. It's not a big amount because, I mean we didn't do QIP of this. But look, we'll keep on adding stuff. We'll keep on looking for the big one and we keep on talking.
Got it. So we have broadly same trend...
Part of the last QIP was also because, look, COVID had happened, we do know what all happened. If you want to buy something, right? It's good that money in the bank already rather than go hunting for money afterwards when you actually put -- strike a transaction and then we find the market that is not good enough. Of course, in hindsight, we're doing better off to raise money now than at that price [ better life ].
We also made some part investments. It's not fully acquired company like this [ V1 ] but there are other strategic investments, like, for example, 4B Networks. We have made some part investments in Shaadi.
We'll have Nitin Jain next question from FairView Investment Advisory.
Yes, my question is again on our investment portfolio. So after Zomato and PB Fintech, we you have any other invested company, which is closer to probably listing or becoming a unicorn?
Not from the balance sheet. But from the AIF, the ixigo has filed, but that is a late-stage investment for us, not an early stage. So we can't say that we got it early and stick 10 years and work with them and help them make it happen or we can't say that.
That was the last question Vivek till now.
Thank you, everyone. On behalf of Info Edge, we conclude the conference. Thank you, and you may disconnect the lines now.
Thank you. Bye-bye.
Thank you, everyone. Have a good evening, and stay safe.
Everyone stay safe.