Info Edge (India) Ltd

NSE:NAUKRI

Earnings Call Transcript 2020-Q4

[Vivek Aggarwal, Executive Vice President of Finance]

Ladies and gentlemen, I'm Vivek Aggarwal, moderator for the call today. Good evening, and welcome to Info Edge India Limited Q4 and Financial Year '20 Results Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] Please note that this conference is being recorded. Joining us today from management side, we have Mr. Sanjeev Bikhchandani, Founder and Vice Chairman; Mr. Hitesh Oberoi, Co Promoter and Managing Director; and Mr. Chintan Thakkar, Chief Financial Officer. Before we begin today, I would like to remind you that some of the statements made in today's conference call [Audio Gap] detailed disclaimer. Now I would like to hand over the conference call to Mr. Hitesh Oberoi for his opening remarks. Thank you, and over to you, Hitesh.

[Hitesh Oberoi, Co]

Thank you, Vivek. And good evening, and welcome to our fourth quarter annual results conference call for '19-'20. We hope that you and your families are healthy and safe in these difficult and challenging times. This is the first time we're doing it on Zoom. So hopefully, this will go through without any glitches. So like with every other company, the pandemic and the resulting lockdown started impacting our business operations in the second half of March. But the fact that we are a new age digital company helped. We were proactive and moved our entire workforce of over 4,600 people to working from home by the third week of March, a few days before the lockdown was announced in India. And after some starting trouble, things settle down pretty smoothly on this front in less than a week. Now all key processes such as billings, collections, vendor payments, payroll, servicing customers continue to run effectively in this new work-from-home environment. Our websites, digital platforms and customer-facing apps have also been running smoothly without any hiccups. And the internal control and financial reporting environment has also been maintained effectively. As a company, we believe that the health, safety and wellbeing of our employees is paramount. Our HR business partners and the facilities team are in constant touch with all our employees to provide support as required. Various webinars are being held to engage and motivate employees and to enable them to stay strong and optimistic in these trying times. At the same time, our offices are prepared to be in a ready to move in position as we continue to monitor the evolving situation. Once things start improving on the COVID front, we will slowly and steadily get back to working from office regularly. As you all know, we operate in multiple categories and businesses, we expect the jobs and real estate business, which are both directly indexed to the economy to be more impacted due to the various disruptions and the emerging economic situation compared to the matrimony and education verticals we are in. In these -- in a challenging and uncertain business environment, like the one we are in now, we believe in conserving our resources. Accordingly, we have restrained our discretionary spending in areas like marketing, for example. At the same time, however, we are committed to investing in the various levers of our business, which help create value in the long term. This includes key tangible and intangible assets, such as brand, people, platform, IP, network effect, technology, innovation, et cetera. Our fixed and committed costs for FY '20 were approximately in the range of INR 600 crores. This includes fixed salary, facilities and technology running expenses. We are a 0 debt company with a negative working capital cycle in a business-as-usual environment. We have cash and cash equivalents of approximately USD 200 million at the overall IE group level, including our AIF and the ESOP Trust. We are well positioned to fulfill our existing contractual obligations. Besides this, as you all know, we own sizable investments in various startups, which can potentially be monetized under certain circumstances. Further yesterday, the Board of Info Edge approved an enabling resolution to raise further capital of up to USD 250 million. That is up to INR 1,875 crores. This is, of course, subject to shareholder approval. We also believe that hidden in every crisis are opportunities. We are conscious of the fact that going forward, there could be opportunities to invest more aggressively in some of our core operating businesses, including M&A activities and strategic stakes in emerging startups in adjacent and related areas. Before I move on to discussing our financial performance for the quarter, I just want to point out that Q4 is normally our best quarter with the highest billings, and the bulk of these billings are booked in the month of March and that too in the last couple of weeks. Though the impact of lockdown was contained in the last 2 weeks of the month, it significantly impacted the quarterly billing for our 2 large businesses 99Acres and Naukri. Now let me walk you through the quarterly and annual financial performance of the company, post which we will cover each business in more detail. And in the end, we'll be happy to take questions. The audited financial statement slide and the data sheet have been uploaded on our website, www.infoedge.in. Let's discuss the stand-alone financials first. Billings, and this is at the company level. Billings in Q4 were INR 331.9 crores, down 8% year-on-year. FY '19-'20 billings stood at INR 1,268.7 crores, up 7.8% year-on-year. Revenue in Q4 was INR 322.8 crores up 10.3% year-on-year and FY '19-'20 revenue stood at INR 1,272.7 crores, up 15.9% year-on-year. Our operating expenses, excluding depreciation for the quarter were INR 226.3 crores, up 12.4% year-on-year. For FY '19-'20 as a whole, expenses stood at INR 870 crores, up 14.9% year-on-year. A major proportion out of the INR 113 crores incremental expenses were on marketing and tech enhancements of the platform. Operating EBITDA for Q4 stood at INR 96.5 crores versus INR 91.3 crores last year, an increase of 5.8% year-on-year. And operating EBITDA readjusted for Ind AS 116 stood at INR 90.3 crores versus INR 91.3 crores in Q4 of FY '19. FY '20 operating EBITDA stood at INR 402.7 crores, up from INR 341.3 crores last year. This was up 18%. FY '20 operating EBITDA readjusted for Ind AS 116 stood at INR 377.4 crores, up by 10.6% compared to last financial year. Operating EBITDA margins, readjusted for Ind AS 116 for the quarter stood at 28% versus 31.2% last year. For FY '19-'20 EBITDA margins readjusted for Ind AS 116 stood at 29.7% versus 31.1% last year. And EBITDA adjusted for ESOP noncash charges and Ind AS 116 for Q4 stood at INR 97.5 crores versus INR 96.5 crores last year. And FY '20 adjusted EBITDA stood at INR 401.7 crores versus INR 356.5 crores last year. Adjusted EBITDA margin stood at 30.2% versus 33% last year. For FY '20, adjusted EBITDA margin stood at 31.6% versus 32.5% last year. Deferred sales revenue has reduced to INR 465.6 crores as of March 31, 2020 versus INR 474.4 crores as of March 31, 2019, a decrease of 2% year-on-year. The cash balance at the Info Edge level, group level and AIF stands at INR 1,544 crores as of March 31, 2020 versus INR 1,550 crores as of March 31, 2019. Cash flow from operations stood at INR 76 crores during the quarter versus INR 131 crores in Q4 of FY '19 and INR 302 crores for the year FY 2019-'20 versus INR 296 crores INR for FY '19. Exceptional items in stand-alone financials for Q4 amounting to INR 37.2 crores include diminution in wholly owned subsidiaries such as SIHL INR 23.8 crore, Smartweb Interent INR 3.6 crores, Allcheckdeals INR 14.4 crores and NewInc INR 3.7 crores, reduced by a gain in NISL INR 8.6 crores, which arose primarily on account of impairment in value of investments and associates, joint venture companies and a piece of land we own in Noida.Similarly, exceptional items for FY '20, amounting to INR 123.3 crores include diminution in wholly owned subsidiaries, such as SIHL INR 127 crores, Smartweb Internet INR 18.6 crores, INR Allcheckdeals 14.4 crores, Meritnation INR 9.3 crores, NewInc INR 3.7 crores reduced by gain on NISL INR 8.6 crores, which arose primarily on account of impairment in value of investments and associates, joint venture companies and the piece of land in Noida.Moving on to our -- some of the key initiatives for the year. We were investing, as you know, in multiple areas. And during the year, some of these efforts have started making an impact on our business operations. During the year, we pushed the pedal on investment in the Jeevansathi business, especially on the acquisition front -- profile acquisition front and the iimjobs brand, and this has started showing up in our billing numbers. We are experimenting with launching some niche and some new marketplaces like JobHire and BigShyft. These businesses are very, very early, but these could be large opportunities over a 10 to 15-year period. We also invested in a few startups that are strategic to our core operating businesses like GreytHR an HR sort of payroll and operations provider for small and medium enterprises. Coding Ninjas which is an e-learning business and Teal, which is a property analytics and intelligence business. These investments gave us deep insights and learning -- give us deep insights and learnings in adjacent businesses and the different operating models being experimented in the market. We'll continue to invest aggressively in areas of like technology, product, design, AI and data science to improve the user experience and develop new products in all our businesses. We have started building a healthy pipeline of innovation, new products and features, keeping in mind the long-term emergence of opportunities in the recruitment and other verticals and we would, in fact, accelerate its pace into FY 2021. Such investments are mostly in the form of people costs and IT infrastructure and hence, likely to pass-through P&L as incremental operating expenses. Moving to the consolidated financial highlights for the year. At the consolidated level, the net sales of the company stood at INR 1,311.9 crores versus INR 1,150.9 crores for the last financial year. For the consolidated entity at the total comprehensive income level, there is a loss of INR 248.6 crores versus a profit of INR 589.1 crores for the last financial year. Adjusted for the exceptional items, PAT stood at a loss of INR 427.8 crores in FY '19-'20 versus a loss of INR 24.4 crores in the last financial year. The aggregate top line of the investing companies in FY '19-'20 grew to INR 3,877.6 crores versus INR 2,030 crores in the last year, an increase of 91%. Now let's start. Now we'll move -- get on with discussing business results by segment. And we'll first take the recruitment segment. In Q4 in the recruitment business, on account of lockdowns in the last of fortnight of March '19-'20 our recruitment segment billings closed at INR 244 crores, down by 6% compared to Q4 of '19, while revenues were INR 230.6 crores, growth of 11.2% year-on-year. The operating EBITDA margins in the recruitment segment were 56.9% versus 52.9% in Q4 FY '19. EBITDA margins readjusted for Ind AS 116 stood at 55.5% versus 52.9% in Q4 of the last financial year. EBITDA margins readjusted for Ind AS 116 and ESOP noncash charges stood at 57%, up from 54% in Q4 of last year. For the full year FY '19-'20, recruitment billings grew 8% to INR 915.6 crores, while revenue grew from 15.4% to INR 906.8 crores. EBITDA margin stood at 55.6% compared to 54.7% in FY '19. Margins readjusted for Ind AS stood at 54.2% in line with margins of FY '19 at 54.7%. We booked a 14% year-on-year growth in our billing numbers until Feb '20. But due to the lockdown, the growth of billing in the last 7 days was to the extent of minus 43% year-on-year, resulting in a de-growth of 6% year-on-year in Q4 of FY '20. The billing for Q1 '21 up to May 20 was also short by INR 69 crores year-on-year. All sectors of the economy were hit because of the lockdown, some were impacted more than others. Manufacturing, construction, auto, travel, hospitality, retail were more impacted than IT, health care and pharma. SMEs were impacted more than large businesses. In Naukri, in Q4 of FY '20, we added an average of 13,000 fresh CVs every day, and the Naukri database grew to about 69 million CVs. Average CV modifications were at 415,000 per day in Q4. Our traffic share in the job portal space continues to be in the 90s. We are speeding up our product investments in RMS, the recruiter management system, as automation and technology will play a critical role in work from home, remote collaboration and high productivity expectations post COVID. We also recently launched our Naukri FastForward transition services as a product offering to companies who are laying off people and want to help them with their career transition. Naukri.com has also launched a step-up initiative to support job seekers who have lost their jobs in the pandemic. Support is also being provided to various customers. We are prioritizing access and discovery of recently laid off and immediately available to join job seekers by recruiters to facilitate their hiring during the time -- at this time of crisis. The Step-Up microsite also provides a live tracker highlighting active jobs from companies and industries that are currently hiring as well as a host of resources around hiring insights, webinars with industry experts, upskilling courses and curative content on work from home, productivity, job search, placement and interview preparation, et cetera. We have an update on iimjobs.com as well. iimjobs reported a revenue of INR 21.8 crores for FY '19-'20. The business has been growing at 20% plus for the last 3 financial years. We successfully integrated the sales team of Naukri and iimjobs in Q4, and were on track to deliver a record sort of quarter for iimjobs till COVID hit us in March. But all in all, we are hopeful that this integration will pay off in the long run for both iimjobs and Naukri.Moving on to the other verticals. In 99acres, starting with 99acres, as stated earlier in the call, the real estate segment has been impacted by the long period of lockdown. And accordingly, the billings in Q4, degrew by 24% Y-o-Y to INR 50.7 crores, down from INR 66.7 crores. This was largely due to the impact of lockdown in the month of March. Revenue for the quarter grew 3.6% year-on-year to INR 56.4 crores, up from INR 54.4 crores. For FY '19/'20, billing and revenue grew by 3.5% and 18.8% to INR 213.9 crores and INR 228 crores, respectively. Q4 EBITDA stood at INR 2.2 crores against a loss of INR 2.9 crores last year. Q4 EBITDA readjusted for Ind AS 116 stood at INR 0.3 crores compared to a loss of INR 2.9 crores last year. EBITDA for FY '20 stood at INR 8.4 crores against a full year loss of INR 22 crores booked for the last financial year. And EBITDA readjusted for Ind AS 116 impact stood at INR 88 lakhs. For Q4, adjusted EBITDA, adjusted for ESOP expenses and Ind AS 116 impact stood at INR 1.8 crores versus a loss of INR 2.2 crores last year. And for FY '19-'20 as a whole, adjusted EBITDA adjusted for ESOP expenses and Ind AS 116 impact stood at INR 5.17 crores versus a loss of INR 19.56 crores last year. The key business highlights on 99acres, all business verticals of new home, resale and rental were impacted in Q4 due to the lockdown in March. In FY '20, resale and rental businesses grew slightly faster than the new homes business in the year. The number of broker clients grew at a healthy rate, 15% year-on-year. Broker billings form 53% of the overall billings in FY '19-'20, while builder billings stood at 41% of the billings. Owner billings contributed to about 6% of the overall billings for the business. We continue to experience -- we continue to experience the growth of owner listings and broker listings on the platform, making the platform more comprehensive and vibrant in Q4. Traffic growth slowed to single digits in Q4 due to the lockdown in the month of March compared to mid-teens growth in Jan and Feb. And brand, which is our top of mind share versus our nearest competitor [ MB ] continued to be stable at the 56% to 57% level in Q4 in spite of TV spends by competition. The extended lockdown has worsened the sentiment in the industry, which was already reeling under the liquidity issues prior to March, and buyer demand is likely to remain muted in both the new home and resale segments for the next 3 to 6 months. Billing for Q1 '21, up to May has declined by INR 20 crores year-on-year. However, we are seeing some revival of traffic and demand on our platforms as the lockdown restrictions are being eased in various parts of the country. Emerging markets have been the first to bounce back. Traffic is also slowly bouncing back in places like Bangalore. Markets like Mumbai, Pune and Delhi continue to be impacted because of the lockdown and because of the rising number of COVID cases in these cities. We continue to invest aggressively on improving our core platform experience in this downturn in all our business verticals to come out stronger post the downturn. We are also looking to take appropriate measures to reduce operating cost of the business without impacting our platform experience or client experiences given the slowdown. Moving on to the matrimony business, the Jeevansathi business, billings for the quarter 4 stood at INR 23.8 crores and year-on-year growth of 20.4% or INR 19.8 crores for Q4 of '19. FY '20 billing grew by 18.4% year-on-year to INR 87 crores from INR 73.5 crores in FY '19 and revenue grew to INR 84.7 crores from INR 72.3 crores in FY '19 an increase of 17%. Aggressive marketing spends during the quarter, along with improved realizations helped higher sales growth during the year. We are thus looking to consolidate our position as we penetrate deeper into our core markets. We plan to spend considerably more on marketing across all our core markets as we move into FY '20 -- FY '21 to strengthen our brand presence and increase our profile acquisition rates. Aggressive marketing spends during the year along led to an operating EBITDA loss of INR 63.2 crores for FY '20. This was an increase from the INR 33.8 crores loss we booked in FY '19. Losses in Q4 FY '20 stood at INR 18.8 crores compared to a loss of INR 5.9 crores in Q4 of FY '19. EBITDA, readjusted for Ind AS 116 and ESOP expenses stood at a loss of INR 19.2 crores for Q4 of FY '20 versus a loss of INR 5.6 crores for Q[Audio Gap]For FY '20, operating loss adjusted for Ind AS 116 and ESOP expenses stood at INR 65 crores versus INR 33.22 crores in FY '19. Moving on to the education vertical, Shiksha. We made significant traffic share gains during the quarter in Shiksha. Shiksha continues to gain traffic year despite high competition from different players in this segment. In Q4, billings de-grew by 8.5% year-on-year to INR 13.4 crores from INR 14.6 crores reported in Q4 of FY '19, while revenue grew 2.8% year-on-year and reached INR 13.2 crores. FY '20 billings and revenue grew 5.8% and 10.8%, respectively, and stood at INR 52.1 crores and INR 53.3 crores. In Q4, we made an operating loss of INR 1.5 crores against a profit of INR 60 lakhs in Q4 of '19. EBITDA readjusted for Ind AS 116 stood at a loss of INR 2 crores. FY '20 operating profit for Shiksha stood at INR 1.2 crores versus a profit of INR 90 lakhs in FY '19. EBITDA readjusted for Ind AS 116 stood at a loss of INR 90 lakhs. And adjusted EBITDA for Ind AS 116 and ESOP charges loss for the quarter stood at INR 1.4 crores against a profit of INR 90 lakhs in the last financial year. Adjusted EBITDA for Ind AS 116 and ESOP charges for FY '20 stood at INR 86 lakhs, down from INR 1.9 crores last year. We continue to invest in making content comprehensive and more student friendly and invest -- and continue to invest in building deep domain expertise in this vertical. This will help us in generating more response to our users going forward. Moving on to our strategic investments. COVID-19 and the ensuing lockdowns had a significant impact on the operations of our investee companies, like Zomato, ShopKirana, Gramophone. ShopKirana had a temporary dislocation, but has seen bounced back. Zomato has faced disruption, but it's now bouncing back on top line and has also reduced its burn considerably. It has sufficient money and has some inbound investor interest as well. Gramophone has faced an initial dislocation, but has since bounced back. Policy Bazaar, on the other hand, continues to benefit from the growing digital penetration. This is also helping them to improve the overall profitability of the business. However, Paisabazaar has been impacted by moratorium extensions. They are exploring expanding business into nonlending categories. They have reduced their headcount substantially to meet their profitability targets for the year. During the quarter, we also announced the launch of Category II SEBI approved Alternative Investment Fund, the Info Edge venture fund. Since launch, we have already made 4 investments in Qyuki, Dotpe, FanClash, Truemeds through the fund. We also did follow-on rounds in our -- some of our earlier investee companies Medcords and Univariety in Q4 of FY '20. And we continue to evaluate new investment opportunities in the light of changes brought in by COVID '19. That's all from me today. Thank you. And now we already take any questions that you may have.

[Operator]

Yes. So question queue is building up. We'll start taking questions one by one. So the first question is from Ritesh Bhagwati.

[Ritesh Bhagwati, Assistant Vice President]

My first question pertains to core business. So how do we see our Q1 and Q2 business shaping like given the current situation in the economy, if you can roughly quantify like on a Y-o-Y basis? Like will it be like 30%, 40% down? Or can we expect like mid-teens like on a ballpark basis? So that's my first question. And secondly, my second question pertains to our investment portfolio. So during the quarter -- during this quarter, basically, have you done any write-offs or are there any write-offs in current or upcoming quarter? So these are my questions.

[Hitesh Oberoi, Co]

Yes, so Q1 has been terribly impacted by the lockdown for most of April and May, India was shut for business. And that's -- even now sort of things are opening up slowly. So we saw our traffic dip by almost 80% in the month of April in both -- in 99acres; 60%, 70% dip in Naukri. Traffic has since then started recovering. We are back to minus 20%, minus 15% levels in both Naukri and 99acres. In emerging markets, we are seeing growth as well. In Jeevansathi has been no impact. I mean traffic has been growing and revenues have been growing even through the lockdown, its digital growth was not impacted at all. Shiksha, what's happened is the education season, the admission season has got delayed by 3 to 4 months, so that's impacting our spend in that category. But hopefully, business will come back in Shiksha sooner than later as colleges start opening up. But in jobs and real estate, they are our 2 big verticals, revenue growth is going to take -- revenue will follow with a lag. So traffic has started bouncing back. Like I said, we are down to -- we are now down minus 15%, minus 20% from where we were before the lockdown and from the same time last year. But revenue will take some time to come back. In the month of April, for example, our JobSpeak index was down 60%, in the month of May also it was down 60%. So right now, chances are that Naukri, the Naukri business will -- the Naukri business will degrow in terms of billings by more than -- by close to 50% in the quarter. In 99acres, we saw our billings decline by 86% in the month of April. We saw a 72% decline in the month of May. And June will be hopefully better. But again, it's not as if business is going to bounce back immediately once the market starts to open up. So Q1 will be quite bad. Q2, very hard to say because a lot will depend on how much India opens up. Chennai, for example, opened up, but there was a second lockdown. Suddenly now there's a second lockdown and things are shut again. If -- in Delhi and Bombay, it's a wait and watch situation, let's see what happens. All chances are that things will open up. But if the number of COVID cases go through the roof, who knows the government may sort of lockdown things once again or may slow the pace at which things are opening up. So Q2 is very hard to say what will happen, fingers crossed. Q1, of course, has been terribly impacted.

[Ritesh Bhagwati, Assistant Vice President]

On the investments.

[Hitesh Oberoi, Co]

Revenues look a little different because there's some deferred revenue, which will come in Q1. What I was -- what I was talking about our billings.

[Ritesh Bhagwati, Assistant Vice President]

And my question pertaining to investments portfolio, like have you taken any write offs? Or are we going to take any write-offs in current or coming quarter?

[Hitesh Oberoi, Co]

Chintan, do you want to take that or...

[Chintan Arvind Thakkar, CFO & Whole Time Director]

Yes. So there are some small write-offs that have happened, and that may have happened through our subsidiary companies, but ultimately would have impacted our stand-alone financial results as well. Nothing really as a major item. There are 3 or 4 companies. I think 3 companies where we have kind of completely written off. And there's 1 small company where we have taken a part kind of a write-off. These are all the companies which we had invested at least 2 or 3 years back. There's nothing which is of a near future that we invested that we have to written it off. We also have written off little bit of -- there's a piece of land that we have in Noida and obviously some of the valuations would have changed in the recent events. So we have kind of taken a little bit hit over there as well. But other than that, there is nothing significant, but we are evaluating, and we are assessing the situation as we go. And if there is anything that's happening in this quarter and next quarter, we will constantly look at what the projections are. We'll get the valuation reports. And if there is any requirement for write-offs, then we would take this kind of provision write-offs.

[Ritesh Bhagwati, Assistant Vice President]

Last question, if I can squeeze in. Like we have a good cash and equivalents on our balance sheet. What is the reason for raising QIP of INR 1,800 crores?

[Hitesh Oberoi, Co]

Do you want me to go first? So we continue to sort of, like I said, we see opportunities and invest in all our verticals. We have been -- there are some operating business that we run inside the company. We see some opportunities to aggressively invest in them once the market starts to recover. Two, we continue to make sort of investments in some strategic sort of start-ups. In the last few months alone, we invested in Coding Ninjas, Teal. We did Univariety before that, GreytHR. So these are some adjacent areas where we see a long-term opportunity. We continue to invest in these areas. Inside the company like I mentioned, we're also sort of piloting BigShyft and Blue Collar very, very early. We're revenue test marketing in 1 or 2 cities right now, but if these businesses show potential, then we would like to scale them up also at an appropriate time. And we are also conscious of the fact, like I said in my talk earlier that there could be a crisis sort of -- in every crisis, there are opportunities. So who knows there could be some M&A opportunities which come our way in the sort of months and quarters to come. And if there are such opportunities, we would like to be ready to grab them as when they come our way. So that's the reason more than anything else. Chintan? Sanjeev, do you want to add any?

[Chintan Arvind Thakkar, CFO & Whole Time Director]

Yes. I just want to clarify that this is an enabling kind of a resolution that we have taken from the Board. So it says that it is up to whatever INR 1,800 and odd figure that we will raise. It's not necessarily that we are going to raise the entire amount. We will see as we go. And I believe that this resolution once approved will remain valid for a year. So we'll look into it once we get the approval. Sanjeev?

[Sanjeev Bikhchandani, Founder & Executive Vice Chairman]

Having said both these things, what we do believe in this changed environment post COVID, I think the funding environment has changed, I think, with Chinese investments being constrained. I do believe we will get enough inorganic opportunities to expand and if we see a good one, we'd like to be prepared and ready for it. We are expecting some of this in the months ahead.

[Operator]

Next question is from Mukul Garg, Haitong Securities.

[Mukul Garg, Research Analyst]

So I think Sanjeev, I would probably follow-up with the first question on the QIP. While we understand that this is an enabling resolution, if you look historically, you generally don't do late-stage investments in areas where -- which are very unrelated to what you guys are doing. And the amount which -- for which you guys are kind of taking the approval is meaningfully large with very few outlets where you can kind of expense it out. So is it possible to kind of give some color on areas where you see opportunities? And where do you think this kind of cash can be invested?

[Sanjeev Bikhchandani, Founder & Executive Vice Chairman]

First of all, this is not for investments or minority stakes. I mean, this kind of raise will -- if it's used will be probably be used for acquisitions or at least majority stakes, right? Now the way we look at it, we look at it in concentric circles, right? The first concentric circle is that we got to do stuff in the 4 verticals where we already operate businesses, which is jobs, real estate, matrimony and education classifieds. Now this -- here we are -- we call these strategic investments because they are in the 4 verticals where we already operate adjacencies or even possibly acquisitions, right? The second concentric circle is going to be -- do we want to diversify into a fifth vertical and make an acquisition there. Now that is a bigger decision and is less likely to happen because you see these are businesses that we run ourselves, right? And we have to be clear we can run it before we acquire something there, right? And the third will be stuff we want to do, which is not in the 4 verticals that we are in or not even classifieds maybe. And those are financial investments, usually, and they will be through the AIF. But the AIF, we're not raising money for the AIF, we are raising money mostly for the concentric circle, number one. And are we going to get good -- acquire a meaningful business in the 4 verticals that we operate.

[Mukul Garg, Research Analyst]

So Sanjeev, just to follow-up on this, the first concentric circle which you mentioned, and I think that's the point I was trying to ask. If you look at the opportunities to acquire businesses there, most of the potentials out there are relatively smaller compared to the amount of money which you are trying to raise. So do you think it is -- you guys will be able to do multiple transactions if the opportunity comes up do you have the bandwidth to do it? Or would you like to focus on just 1 at a time?

[Sanjeev Bikhchandani, Founder & Executive Vice Chairman]

Well, so bandwidth is something we keep on discussing. Certainly, we'll not do 3 at the same time. I think one at a time makes sense. But you may be surprised by what opportunities there are out there or can emerge over the next 6 to 9 months. Because when money dries up, suddenly we have less competition, and we are able to then look at acquisitions in a more serious manner.

[Mukul Garg, Research Analyst]

Got it. And the second question is for Hitesh. Hitesh, can you help us with the marketing expenditure on the Naukri during this quarter? And second, on the P&L levers on the cost side, which you might have for fiscal year '21, given that top line will remain constrained. Do you think it is possible to keep the fixed costs stable at current levels? Or do you expect them to increase, given that you're still kind of investing in your team?

[Hitesh Oberoi, Co]

Yes. So we've substantially brought down our marketing spend in both 99acres and Naukri in Q1. We have, in fact, opted in Jeevansathi because we are seeing -- we're still growing in that vertical. But in both 99acres and Naukri, we brought it down substantially over last year. Like I said, we were -- traffic was also severely impacted in the first 2 months of the quarter because of the lockdown. Now traffic is slowly bouncing back, but not because we are marketing, but because we're seeing sort of people are coming back into the market. At least job seekers are coming back into the market, buyers are coming back into the market for real estate slowly and steadily. But we don't want to advertise in a hurry till the situation stabilizes. So for 99acres and Naukri, our ad spend in Q1 was substantially lower than last year or even Q4 for that matter. In Jeevansathi, we'll continue to sort of invest aggressively. As far as our other costs go, we are not expanding our workforce. So -- but we're not laying off people right now, either, nor have we announced any cut in salary. What we have done is we have frozen salaries. We have not announced any [ increments ] until now this year. And -- but it's not as we have said no to doing it for the year as well. If the situation improves in the coming months, and then we will revisit our decision on this front. Strategic hires, there is sort of -- there is some important position which we would like fill and the slowdown is actually a good time to hire people. So the good -- important positions, which have been sort of open for a while, we would like the opportunity to fill that during the slowdown. But that's not going to be substantial cost. The numbers -- the workforce numbers will -- we have some campus offer hires sort of an offers which we made over the next few months. But otherwise, we're not even replacing the people who are leaving right now.

[Mukul Garg, Research Analyst]

Got it. And just a follow-up on that, especially in Naukri business. Given that the condition of Q1 and early Q2. In the hypothetical scenario, if Naukri sees a decline in top line for the full year, do you think you will be able to maintain the profitability of the business? Or based on your past experience, how much of a cut in margins can happen? What do you -- what are your rough numbers indicate?

[Hitesh Oberoi, Co]

Yes. Sorry, very hard to say what's going to happen this year, it's a very uncertain sort of situation. In business, if billings fall by 5%, 10%, 7%, 15% year-on-year, we can still sort of maintain margins. But if we see a drop of 30%, 40%, 50% this year over last year, it's going to be very, very hard to maintain margin. I mean, even if we cut down all our discretionary expenditure. So a lot will depend on how things play out over the next few quarters. Q1, of course, like I said, is over, and we know what happened in Q1. And we are hoping that every subsequent quarter will be better than the previous quarter. And if you get back to sort of base at least by Q4, I think we'll be happy. But very, very hard to say how things are going to play out in the next few months. Like I mentioned to you, what we are seeing, at least in the real estate business and this may be true for India as a whole is that the emerging markets, the smaller cities are bouncing back faster, the markets in the South are bouncing back, like Bangalore and Hyderabad are bouncing back faster. But markets like Bangalore -- sorry, markets like Mumbai, Pune, Delhi, which are seeing a lot of COVID cases are still very, very impacted. Now if these markets bounce back faster, then, of course, we'll be on a good wicket in the second half of the year. But if it takes a few more months for the COVID situation to stabilize, then we don't know how things will play out.

[Operator]

Okay. The next question is Vivek from AMBIT.

[Vivekanand Subbaraman, Media Analyst]

First question is on the category of real estate. So we know we actually shed one subsegment of the business, Allcheckdeals a few years back. And given the opening commentary on opportunities that would emerge in the strategic businesses, could you talk about the real estate category. Do you think that there are new opportunities emerging there and how do you expand the addressable market there? We've seen that the fixed costs of the business have grown over a period of time, but monetization hasn't caught up. So how should we think about the category? And are there any strategic opportunities there? That's question, one. I'll ask the others after this answer.

[Hitesh Oberoi, Co]

Yes. So real estate at a very macro level, is a very vast category. I think in any country, maybe say 10%, 12% of GDP is basically real estate. What has unfortunately happened in India over the last few years is the real estate sector has been through a terrible slump. And that has been compounded by stuff like GST, RERA, demonetization, NBFC prices and now of course COVID and the lockdown. In fact, the lockdown [Technical Difficulty] the most in April and May because how can you -- how do you buy a house not even visiting it? Or how do you rent a house without visiting it. So almost all activity came to a halt for a couple of months. Long term, of course, there's a lot of opportunity in resales in real estate. It's not as if all the advertising spend has moved online, only a fraction of the spend -- of the ad spend in real estate is on portals. There is enough money being spent on Facebook and Google as well, which we think can migrate to online portals over a period of time, number one. Number two, will the real estate, the online portals today, companies like ours, portals like ours and Magicbricks mostly operate in the buy sort of segment. So we play a little bit in new homes. We play a little bit in resale. Entire segments like rental, for example, we don't really have a big play in the segments like commercial real estate, we don't really have a big play in. Over time, as we get more and more data on our platforms, there could be place possible in real estate sort of information services, right? But unfortunately, the sector has been through so much that all the companies in the sector, the builders, and the developers and the brokers have been very, very badly hit for the last few years. Many of them have shut down shop. Many of them have restructured. Many of them are short of capital. Many of them are -- they are struggling. And we are hoping and waiting for the market to stabilize a bit. Because once you have a stable market is when people start investing more. Even buyers sort of quit the market a few years ago because of all these investors and buyers quit the market for these very reasons, reasons that India was expensive, is unaffordable. Projects were delayed. A lot of people lost a lot of money. And the quality of real estate was also not great. Interest rates were high. But what we're seeing now is that, one, interest rates have started falling, real estate is -- because prices haven't gone up for the last 10 years, they've become more affordable than it was 5 years ago or 7 years ago. RERA has brought some stability into the market. Builders are consolidating. The ones who are left are sort of -- are more sort of sufficiently sort of capitalized and so on. So our sense is that the real estate sector may start -- slowly start bouncing back. So -- and real estate is deeply cyclical. So the cycles are long, and we've been through a terrible cycle for the last few years. And hopefully, once things stabilize, we will be in an up cycle for the next few years. And once that happens, buyer interest would be back, new projects will get launched, real estate spending will go up and, hopefully, by the end of quarter, would have also established themselves well and they'll be able to capitalize on the surge in demand for real estate. So that's a long-term sort of view. In the short term, the business is impacted, like I said, especially markets like Bombay and Delhi and Pune which are almost -- which are not -- which are still short for business.

[Vivekanand Subbaraman, Media Analyst]

Okay. The second question is on the work-from-home and business continuity plan. You mentioned that you were quite fast in adapting to this. And secondly, we've also seen that businesses seem to be more willing to renew or invest in mission-critical services like connectivity. Do you think this applies to your business also, for example, companies being very dependent on the database product? And does that have any implication on the number of accounts that your current salespeople can service or possibly give you opportunities to retool some of the sales staff to other projects or improve productivity? And maybe thoughts on hiring also in this new work-from-home world for your own business.

[Hitesh Oberoi, Co]

Yes. So it's early days, right? It's difficult to say, of course. All of us have been reading about various articles in various publications about how the new world could be different. Now see, as far as our business is concerned, see, we are mission critical if companies want to hire. If companies don't want to hire, we are not so essential. What tends to happen in a slowdown like this is that attrition rates fall and companies postpone sort of hiring plans, and that's why our business has been hit. But once the market sort of starts to open up once again, I think attrition rates will start going up. Job seekers will look for new opportunities. And companies will start expanding and start heading -- and start sort of spending on new projects. And that's when hiring will go through the roof once again and we become even more critical, which is why in a slowdown like this of the nature we are seeing right now, the database product, most companies continue to use because it's the most sort of essential application for them when it comes to hiring. But products -- our branding products, for example, will take a hit because it's not as compelling that a job seeker brand is important to companies at this point in time. So as the market bounces back, we'll come back, hopefully, and come back stronger. In 2008, '09, we saw a 25% decline in billings[Audio Gap]or about -- between the subsequent year, we saw a 45% growth in billings because once companies started hiring, again, business came back fast. Now I don't know how this pandemic or this sort of crisis will pan out, but that is what happened in 2008, 2009, 2010. To your other question on sort of -- was it around work from home and what do you think is going to happen?

[Vivekanand Subbaraman, Media Analyst]

I think, for your own business, how do you look at productivity of your own sales staff? And does work from home have any implications on your future tech hiring also given that you would no longer have any NCR constraint, possibly?

[Hitesh Oberoi, Co]

Yes. So like I said, we were able to successfully migrate 4,600 people to working from home almost overnight, and it's now been almost 3 months. And when we -- when I talk to people in the various sort of verticals we have, what I hear from them is that the product and tech and data science and UX guys are saying, listen, we are probably even more productive than we were in office. So as far as they are concerned -- of course, they miss office. They miss the benefits of working together. But they're saying -- at least, they're claiming to be more productive than they were finally -- when they used to work from office. But not all sort of -- we have all kinds of people in the company. There are, for example, a lot of people in telesales and operations. Many of these people don't have access to the best connectivity in their home. Many of them don't have big houses. So they are forced to operate out of small rooms. So there, I suspect productivity has been hit to the extent of 5% to 10%. And this is a large part of our workforce. And then you have the field salespeople. Now the field salespeople love going out and meeting customers. So for them, to sit at home and make Zoom calls is maybe not what they love to do. But they have been fast to adapt to how the scene has changed. And clearly, there are some long-term opportunities there because if this becomes the new normal -- I mean, like sitting today, we have -- on our previous investor calls or analyst calls, we used to have maybe 100 analysts. Today, we have more than 300 analysts. People sitting everywhere are able to log in. This experience is far better than the experience maybe on the voice sort of system. Similarly and when it comes to making sales calls, previously, for example, if I wanted to meet a customer in Bangalore, I would think twice and thrice before traveling to Bangalore for one meeting or a sales head would think twice about going to Bangalore for one meeting. Today, sitting in Delhi, you can talk to virtually any customer anywhere on Zoom and have a very productive meeting. And what would have otherwise taken 2 days can now be done in maybe 2 hours, right? So there are long-term sort of implications of this. And now a lot will depend on how fast -- how long this crisis lasts. If things come back in a hurry, then -- people have a very short memory. Then we'll go back to working like they used to work earlier. While, on the other hand, if this crisis continues for a while, we will all be forced to innovate in terms of the way we work. We're already training, for example, our sales team on how to make Zoom calls, how to present through Zoom, how to conduct client meetings, how to engage more sort of on Zoom meetings and so on and so forth. Clearly, if the Zoom call becomes the new normal, then you don't need branch offices everywhere. We can pretty much operate from anywhere and may call some customers. Hiring also could, in many ways, become both more local and more global at the same time, global because today -- and for so many years, we've thought of opening an office in Bangalore to hire -- to set up a second development center. We've never done it. But today, we don't mind hiring sort of a lot of people in Bangalore and making them work out of Bangalore because you've got used to the idea of working from home. At the same time, the low-end jobs will become more local because if this COVID sort of thing continues for a long time, people may not want to commute for long to get to their place of work. So in the jobs which don't pay a lot, people would rather hire even more locally than they do today, right? So many things could change, but a lot will depend on how long this crisis lasts, in my view.

[Operator]

So the next question is from [ Kunal Sangoi ].

[Unknown Analyst]

Yes. Thanks. My question is with regard to the in-house vertical, the education vertical. So there is always a change in environment and a new change in environment. Basically, do you see -- what kind of opportunity do you see with this -- within this vertical that currently would present? There is always a trigger for the change. Do you think the current crisis presents some acceleration? Or in terms of the product investments, what do you think would be the adjacencies that we would like to expand into over here?

[Hitesh Oberoi, Co]

Yes. So the education vertical has a -- we see a lot of opportunity in the long run. If there are 2 sectors that have benefited because of COVID, they are edtech and health tech, as you all know. So inside the company, we continue to sort of focus on our Shiksha business, which is like a marketplace for discovering colleges and courses. Now of course, what is likely to happen going forward is that online courses will also become very, very big. All our surveys are showing that job seekers in this pandemic are spending a lot of time and money in upskilling themselves and by doing courses online. So inside the company, we are actually working on building the Shiksha type of platform for online courses as well. So that's the next thing on -- as far as Shiksha is -- or education tech business is concerned. A lot of Indians are also going overseas for education. And of course, things keep changing. And -- but the general trend is that more and more people go overseas every year for education. We've also started sort of building a small study-abroad business in Shiksha.com, where we're playing the role of an online counselor. And everything is being done online. So we are using technology to sort of counsel and coach people and get them to apply to colleges and universities overseas. It's a very tiny sort of business. Again, baby steps, but that's something we are sort of doing right now inside the company. I would say, as you know, we have made a lot of strategic investments in a lot of education businesses. NoPaperForms, they are looking at how to -- they're building software for colleges and universities to make them paperless, to make the admission process paperless. We have Univariety. They're focused more on schools, career counseling and coaching and careers through an alumni sort of stuff through the school network. And then we just invested in Coding Ninjas as well, which is IT sort of courses online, teaching stuff to students and working professionals. So let's see how this evolves. It's very, very early. We are sort of still figuring things out. Internally, like I said, we are focused on more discovery and study abroad and courses and colleges and counseling and stuff like that. Outside, we are sort of investing in sort of more sort of areas which have to do with education as well.

[Unknown Analyst]

Second question is with regards to the QIP, potentially. So Sanjeev, you did mention the restriction because of the Chinese investment. Probably, there could be opportunity. Would that also include defending our percentage stake in some of the invested companies also? Would that be a major percentage?

[Hitesh Oberoi, Co]

Sanjeev, you are on mute.

[Sanjeev Bikhchandani, Founder & Executive Vice Chairman]

Sorry. So the 2 big ones are Zomato and Policybazaar. They both are well funded enough, and they've got enough investor interest. We are unlikely to be required or called to invest there. The others, we will take on a case-by-case basis, and the ones that -- but we don't need to do a QIP for that. It's not large sums of money, right? The QIP is because we sense strategic opportunities will emerge over the next 6 to 9 months. So we want to be ready to raise as soon as we -- whenever we want to.

[Operator]

Next question is from [ Shailesh Desai ].

[Unknown Analyst]

Sir, 2 questions. One is on 99acres. They have seen market -- traffic share rather dip through the whole of last year and almost up to May in 2020. Now the overall market is bad is one thing, but how do you view market share defense in this?

[Hitesh Oberoi, Co]

A lot of those changes that you see, market share, are because of -- often because of the changes in the way SimilarWeb reports traffic share. So periodically, they revise their algorithms, and the data starts looking very different. If we look at brand share, which is -- such as a Google or our brand name versus, let's say, our closest competitors, then we have been averaging 55% to 56%. I do agree that we lost a few percentage points in the last 3, 4, 5 months because we were not aggressive on the advertising front. And our competition is very aggressive, both Housing and Magicbricks were very aggressive on the last -- for the last 3, 4 months on advertising. Since then, they've cut back on that spend. And we are hoping now that they've cut back on advertising spend, our share will come back. These gains of 3%, 4%, 5% -- these sort of changes of 3%, 4%, 5%, we can get back any time when we start our plays. So I would not worry too much -- I would read too much into them.

[Unknown Analyst]

All right. And secondly, one clarification. You're saying Zomato has sufficient interest from investors, I mean, who are not currently invested. So even though...

[Sanjeev Bikhchandani, Founder & Executive Vice Chairman]

No, it both -- it's got interest from both internal investors and from external investors.

[Unknown Analyst]

Okay. So if there are any restrictions on internal investments, investors upping their stakes, you'll have opportunities from external also, right?

[Sanjeev Bikhchandani, Founder & Executive Vice Chairman]

Yes, but I'm not talking about those who have restrictions but internal investors who don't have restrictions as well.

[Operator]

The next question is from [ Sagar Jadhav ].

[Vivek Aggarwal, Executive Vice President of Finance]

Sagar is on mute.

[Sanjeev Bikhchandani, Founder & Executive Vice Chairman]

So may I just add on, sorry, to the last answer here? So look, what people -- what overseas investors actually were seeing in Zomato is that food delivery has really picked up post COVID. In India, there were logistical issues, where delivery boys don't travel, restaurants are still -- many of them are still shut. But once those are over, delivery, we expect it to be a big, big, big business. Now that's what people are saying. But we don't know, right, until it happens. And -- but India would be different logistically. Now having said that, this is -- some investors are happy.

[Operator]

Next question is from [ Abhishek Jain ].

[Vivek Aggarwal, Executive Vice President of Finance]

I think Abhishek is also on mute. [Technical Difficulty]

[Operator]

Abhishek is back.

[Unknown Analyst]

Yes. I have 2 questions. First question is, now we are seeing NRIs coming up with their own delivery platform, I have read in newspaper. What kind of competition do you see -- which you see in -- from NRI coming up with own platform, first thing? Second question, what kind of volumes you have seen in current quarter, what in last 3 months? If you should throw some light especially on the Zomato platform. And third question, what is the liquor business -- now the liquor business, as we have got the platform, is there right now? So liquor, maybe what kind of opportunity we are seeing, sir? Because now Zomato and other players are also coming.

[Sanjeev Bikhchandani, Founder & Executive Vice Chairman]

So look, Zomato is focusing on food delivery from restaurants and cloud kitchens. They did do groceries for a while, and then they stopped after the crisis was over. They were trying to help out. Liquor hasn't really been done yet. And liquor is a tricky business on the policy -- it's a tricky business given the kind of nature of the business, but we'll deal with that as -- should it happen. It's highly regulated, requires government clearances. It's got a different kind of distribution and trade. So we don't know what will happen there. But really, it is a food delivery company, right, food from restaurants and cloud kitchens. There has been -- there was immediately a substantial hit because restaurants were closed, delivery boys don't travel out. Some delivery boys have gone home to their hometowns. Now as restaurants come back and enough of them come back, there has been a bit of a bounce-back. It's still way below what it was, let's say, a year ago -- or what it was in February, not a year ago, what it was in February. Having said that, the burn is substantially down and that people are moving to a better unit economics model. People -- discounts are less. And we are making positive money above -- after becoming all variable cost in each quarter, right? Now specific numbers, the company has not disclosed, so we can't give it to you yet. But the companies are hoping next 2, 3, 4 month, every month, it will come back more and more. Of course, if COVID make a comeback -- kind of strong comeback, then there might some stop-start. But right now, it's been coming back steady.

[Unknown Analyst]

And what is your view on NRI coming up with its own...

[Sanjeev Bikhchandani, Founder & Executive Vice Chairman]

We have yet to see what that effort will be, but it's kind of hard to have 10- or 20-some restaurants collaborate for a delivery platform that's owned by NRI, an NRI industry association. I mean -- and they're allies with Zomato, and Zomato depends on them. They depend on Zomato, all these restaurants, the restaurant partners. Having said that, what they will be able to do with their own delivery platform remains to be seen. I'm a little skeptical.

[Unknown Analyst]

Sir, have you paid larger amount -- larger incentives or salaries to the delivery boys during COVID period last 2 months?

[Sanjeev Bikhchandani, Founder & Executive Vice Chairman]

Where those has been -- delivery was in short supply, it has happened. But Zomato has been -- has passed those extra costs onto customers. The margins have actually improved a lot.

[Operator]

The next question is from [ Deep Singla ].

[Unknown Analyst]

My first question is to -- for Hitesh. Basically, before this quarter, Naukri always had an overdependence on IT. And in 2007, '08, we saw billing cycle drop by 25% to 30% because of this overdependence. What is your view going forward, that we will be able to diversify our dependence from IT to different industry? And how do you see this pan out?

[Hitesh Oberoi, Co]

Well our dependence on IT is high because a lot of the white-collar jobs are in IT. And if the other industries start -- like, for example, the infrastructure sector -- we produce -- publish this JobSpeak index, which we've been publishing over the last 12 years. Jobs in sectors like infrastructure, real estate, construction, mining, oil and gas, I mean, they've been sort of -- these sectors have not been adding jobs. These companies have not been having you for years now. Telecom was also very badly hit for a long time. So if these parts of the economy start to recover -- manufacturing, I mean, nothing much to talk about in India as far as manufacturing is concerned. So because 70% or 65% should be, in the Indian economy, services, most of our revenue came from services, and of that, IT service is a very large part. Now even as things stand today, actually, some of the domestic companies have been much more than the IT companies when it comes to business. If you look at our JobSpeak for April and May, we are down 60%, but IT is down 30%, 40%. Sectors like auto, real estate, all these sectors, shopping, around 80%, 90%. So our sort of -- ultimately, we cater to anybody who wants to hire, and our product works for everybody. And where there is hiring is where we go. So if more hirings happen in IT and allied industries, that's where our revenue will come from. On the other hand, the other industries pick up faster, if they start creating jobs faster than IT companies can create jobs, then our revenue sort of mix will change. So we are a barometer of -- in some ways, of what's happening in the job market in the white-collar space more than anything else.

[Unknown Analyst]

Makes sense. Sir, my last question is more about Naukri was -- is always a cash cow for us a business. And we were always as a winner in this industry from last like decades. Like, now LinkedIn has come into this space, and you look around and you see a lot of high-quality hiring where you had a software developer for above INR 10 lakh and INR 12 lakh is going through Linkedin or to AngelList. And they have a lot of cash to burn out because Microsoft is backing them. Like, what do you think, like, will be the future of LinkedIn and Naukri coexisting in this space? Because they killed Monster.com in U.S., like.

[Hitesh Oberoi, Co]

That's not true. I think people think that Naukri killed Monster, but -- sorry, LinkedIn killed Monster in the U.S., but that's not really true. See Linkedin has become a big player only in the last 3 or 4 years. And Monster started going down post 2008. And Monster lost -- in the U.S. lost share to CareerBuilder and then to Indeed. So Indeed became a big player in the U.S. People sort of miss out on the fact Indeed is now very big in the U.S. And both Indeed and LinkedIn coexist in the U.S. Monster also continues to be around. So we, of course, continue to see LinkedIn as competition, and we are aware of the fact that LinkedIn is now backed by Microsoft, which is one of the -- probably the most valuable company -- one the most valuable companies in the world today. All of these boast a lot of technology at their disposal. However, we believe that for a certain sort of type of hiring, our platform works better than other platforms. We are a more -- we are a cheaper, faster, more efficient way to hire certain types of talent. We are not seeing that everybody is getting hired through Naukri.com. In most cases, companies to draw about 30% to 50% for the IT in Naukri; the rest, they source other platforms still. So there's a lot of scope for us to improve our offering to our clients to help them up there hiring through Naukri from 30% to 40%, to 50%, to 60%, to 70% or wherever we can get to. At the same time, we consider the fact that a lot of the premium hiring, that's not happening through Naukri, which is why you are seeing the efforts. One, of course, we are trying to improve our experience on our platform. Two, we are investing in new areas, so we -- in new portals. So we just acquired iimjobs.com. So the premium sort of hiring in the nontech space, a lot of it, actually, you'd be surprised, happens through iimjobs, a very popular brand in that segment. Internally also, we are experimenting with BigShyft. Now BigShyft is positioned as the platform for hiring high-end talent. Early days, early days, but we are seeing what we can do to disrupt that space. So -- and there is some sort of hiring which will not go through us. It's a very large market, $1 billion, maybe $2 billion a year on hiring. We could get INR 800 crores, INR 900 crores out of that. So we still have a long way to go. And I'm sure both LinkedIn and us can coexist in this market for a long -- coexist -- not just coexist but also grow in this market for a very long time.

[Operator]

The next question is from Vijit Jain from Citi.

[Vijit Jain, Research Analyst]

So my question is on Jeevansathi and in context of that comment you made on the QIP. Now within Jeevansathi, my understanding is that the market has always been quite fragmented. There are 3 large players. You are 1 of the 3 large players, but your market share in the revenue side on that would be probably less than 10%. So my question is, a, do you think the elevated marketing would just get you a higher market share in that segment? Or are you also looking at making a number of acquisitions? So in that context, are there smaller matrimonial businesses out there that you think you could just acquire? Could that be like a series of acquisitions here and there, wherever you see a decent business? That's my question.

[Hitesh Oberoi, Co]

Yes, you're right that we are the smallest of the 3 large players in this category. We have a market share from maybe about 12%, 13% nationally, but all our revenue comes from the North and West. So when you sort of -- let's just look at the North and West. Our market share is maybe closer to 25% or so. And if you look at the North, our market share is closer to 35%, 40%. So we are a reasonably strong player in the markets in which we compete. Nationally, we're the smallest of the 3 large players because we don't have anything coming from the South. And marriages in India happen within the same caste and community and linguistic groups and often -- and therefore, it's possible to build a large business in the North and West than building a business in the South, unlike jobs, for example. So we are committed to this space. We see an opportunity in the long run to build a large business. If there are companies available for acquisition, we are more than open to the idea of acquiring them, provided they sort of -- we think they can create value for us in the long run and help us get to the #1 position or the #2 position over a period of time. If that is not an option, then we are committed to investing and growing the business organically as well. That may take longer. And it's probably a more uncertain route but will probably cost a lot less if you are successful.

[Operator]

The next question is from [ Krish Shula Panwala ] from [ Diverse Capital ].

[Unknown Analyst]

Yes. So what are your views on Amazon entering the food delivery business?

[Sanjeev Bikhchandani, Founder & Executive Vice Chairman]

Well it's too early to say. They just have a small operation in Bangalore. Let's see what happens there. We're waiting and watching it, but Zomato is pursuing its business plans independently. But just one thing I want to say, the nature of the logistics operation in delivering food is very different from delivering other products on Amazon and product sales, right? Because food, you have to deliver in 45 minutes, and that's it. Somebody orders, deliver in 45 minutes. The speed is very local. The network is much more intense and is immediate. And there are 2 peaks in a day: there's lunch, and there's dinner. And then there's sort of a lower-demand rest of the day. So whereas in e-commerce and other products, you could club your orders, you can deliver tomorrow, a day after, 1 day, 2 days, 3 days. And there's a route you can plan, and the guy can carry 10 packages and deliver them in sequence. So the nature of the operation is different. It's not as if the current Amazon network, therefore, will be very, very useful here. And I had asked Deepinder right about a year ago how many delivery boys do we have versus, let's say, an e-commerce company group like Amazon. He said we have about 8x more because we deliver only in those 45 minutes twice a day. And that's why it's different. So let's see what happens. I mean Amazon is a big company. It's a cash-rich company. It's good at execution. It's a good logistic company. All of that is there. But I think restaurants need a special focus.

[Unknown Analyst]

The second question is, what would be the structure of the AIF we have created?

[Sanjeev Bikhchandani, Founder & Executive Vice Chairman]

Well I mean, it's type 2 AIF. It was announced in January. So there's the AIF. There's the AMC. There's a trust, and there's a fund. And we are now looking to get an external investor into the fund all approved, probably 1 and take it forward from there.

[Unknown Analyst]

Sir, do we have created a separate management team for AIF or it would be internally managed?

[Sanjeev Bikhchandani, Founder & Executive Vice Chairman]

No, there'll be a separate management for the AIF, but it's a similar thing as running our current investment strategy.

[Operator]

The next question is from Siddharth Vora, Reliance Nippon Life Insurance.

[Vivek Aggarwal, Executive Vice President of Finance]

It seems he got logged off.

[Operator]

So Dheeresh, go ahead and ask your question.

[Dheeresh Pathak, Executive Director]

Hitesh, you mentioned the job market is $2 billion, and our revenue is INR 800 crores. What is the $2 billion number that you mentioned?

[Hitesh Oberoi, Co]

No, no, I -- this is not borne from any research. I took a number. Maybe it's $1.5 billion. Maybe it's $2.5 billion. I don't know what the exact number is. But this is basically if you look at how much companies spend on recruitment. So there are, for example, 8,000 recruitment -- at least, there were before COVID -- which were all sort of profitable and making money. And then there is spend on us, and then there is spend on referral hiring programs. And then there is spend on recruitment automation. And then there are in-house recruitment things companies spend. So the total spend on recruitment for a lot of companies is often a percentage of their revenue, and it's substantial. Now what I meant to say was that we are sort of -- we just get INR 800 crores, INR 900 crores a year out of them. And this market will only grow over the next few years as more and more people enter -- get employed in the private sector. And therefore, there is room for both us and some of our competitors also to grow for a long time. And of course, we are attempting to, like I said, get into adjacent areas as well to enhance and grow our share of wallet.

[Dheeresh Pathak, Executive Director]

Okay. But a lot of this also would represent the money that the consultants keep while using your website as a tool -- a hiring tool, right? So you cannot capture all of that, right, because their using you as a tool is still capturing bulk of that value-add.

[Hitesh Oberoi, Co]

Yes. This -- look, this includes spend on recruitment firms. This includes spend on advertising. This includes spend on recruitment automation, all this stuff put together.

[Dheeresh Pathak, Executive Director]

Okay. And you also -- earlier, you said that substantially reduced the advertisement and marketing spend. So in, let's say, a scenario where COVID sort of continues to affect the core businesses, can you like -- can you quantify what you mean by substantial reduction? Because that can help us reduce the impact on the profitability quite a lot.

[Hitesh Oberoi, Co]

Yes. So like, a lot will depend on how the situation develops, right? What I said was that we've cut down our spend substantially in Q1 because there was a lockdown in the market for a start, and there was no point in spending money. It was sort of -- there were no customers out there. On the other hand, if the market bounces back quickly, if we get back to even 70%, 80% of normal in a hurry, then we'll start spending on marketing once again. Right now, because of the lockdown and because things are slowly getting back to normal, we have cut down our spend in both real estate and jobs by a substantial amount. I don't remember the number for last year, but I know it's substantially lower than what we normally spend. In matrimony, on the other hand, we continue to spend aggressively because, there, the business is growing for us, and we don't see a slowdown.

[Dheeresh Pathak, Executive Director]

Sir, billings are down 60%, 70%, so our spends would also be down in that magnitude.

[Hitesh Oberoi, Co]

[Audio Gap]ballpark. Maybe even more.

[Operator]

The next question is from Sudheer Guntupalli. He's from Motilal Oswal.

[Sudheer Guntupalli, Research Analyst]

If I were to benchmark Naukri with competing platforms like Monster or Shine or Times and if I were to look at on a per-resume basis what is the price of a resume, there's almost an 8x sort of a differential. So Naukri, it works out per -- around INR 8 per resume; while on other platforms, it works out to be more or less around INR 1 per resume. So in the current kind of context, are you facing explicit or implicit pushbacks from clients in terms of a price reduction demand or request for a price reduction? That's it from my side.

[Hitesh Oberoi, Co]

Yes. Of course, see, in every slowdown because client requirements go down, they tend to dip and they have -- they are not sort of in a hurry to hire, they negotiate harder. So that happens [indiscernible] and there's the slowdown. But that's got nothing to do with [ business ] for that matter because [indiscernible] available on our platform are not available on those platforms. So even if companies want to hire using those platforms, they are not able to hire. Certain small customers who have maybe one requirement or half a requirement, they may sort of try out other -- some of the smaller players. But normally, [ slowdown of this sort, the #200 ] company wants hire 100 [indiscernible] well, and like I said earlier [indiscernible] [ then we still leave the other people from ].On the other hand, the -- so you can do all your hirings on Naukri.

[Operator]

So the next question is from Prince.

[Prince Poddar, Analyst]

A couple of questions. First one on Naukri billings. So have been any...

[Sanjeev Bikhchandani, Founder & Executive Vice Chairman]

Prince, can you speak up a bit? Just closer to the mic.

[Prince Poddar, Analyst]

Yes. Can you hear me now, sir?

[Sanjeev Bikhchandani, Founder & Executive Vice Chairman]

It's the same. Doesn't matter. Carry on.

[Prince Poddar, Analyst]

My first question, sir, is that, have many clients come to you back saying that we need a smaller duration of the billing? And is that likely to be a new normal if that is the case?

[Hitesh Oberoi, Co]

Yes. So we have all kinds of products. So we have a usage-based model. You can buy for -- something for 3 months, 6 months, 1 month. You can also buy something for 7 days. We have all kinds of products. You can top up what you buy over time. So all -- yes, and what you're saying is, to some extent, right. In a good year, you're going to see, if clients know that business is going to be good for the next 12 months, they just buy for the year, right? But if they're uncertain, if they don't know how things are going to play out, then often, they sort of buy for 3 months and then say, okay, once things start looking up, then we buy again. So that tends to happen to some of the -- especially for the smaller customers. So it's likely to happen this time as well.

[Prince Poddar, Analyst]

Okay. And a couple of questions on Zomato, sir. First one being the last round which was announced. In that, if I understand correctly, the -- all the amount from Alibaba was not yet come. So about...

[Sanjeev Bikhchandani, Founder & Executive Vice Chairman]

Ant Financial.

[Prince Poddar, Analyst]

Sorry, Ant Financial was yet to come, $100 million has yet to come. Is that amount still yet to come? Or what is the view -- what is the status of that amount?

[Sanjeev Bikhchandani, Founder & Executive Vice Chairman]

No, the balance amount is yet to come.

[Prince Poddar, Analyst]

Okay. Okay. Any view on -- is there a -- I mean, because of that government, you have to seek approval for that amount to come. Is there some issue regarding that amount or nothing?

[Sanjeev Bikhchandani, Founder & Executive Vice Chairman]

We are still evaluating, but the company is not [ inviting ] industry interest from other investors also who [indiscernible].

[Prince Poddar, Analyst]

All right. Okay. And about that -- an earlier question from other participant about Amazon. If I understand correctly, Amazon was not directly trying to target the food delivery businesses, what we understand, because they are just targeting their -- to give extra service to their Prime customers. And in fact, if you -- if we open Amazon app, you can see Swiggy, Domino's, all kinds of services over there. So is that really something that Amazon is trying to...

[Sanjeev Bikhchandani, Founder & Executive Vice Chairman]

The problem is because of the patchy opening up of the lockdown and stop-start, people not having confidence, people not going to office, a lot of people not opening. It's hard to say what's -- we don't really know what will happen there, so we are waiting and watching.

[Vivek Aggarwal, Executive Vice President of Finance]

[Operator Instructions]

[Operator]

The next question is from [ Hitesh Vava ].

[Unknown Analyst]

So I have a couple of questions. I'm listing them together. Sir, can you please throw some light on reviving our initiative in the past Brijj networking site, like in a new [ orbital ], for example, multilingual feature. Second, are there any plans to enter the professional networking site like LinkedIn or blue-collar segment or any other nice segments? And third, what are our thoughts on matrimony, [ foreign ] and life services in marriage? And do we plan to enter something similar in [ jewel ] as well?

[Hitesh Oberoi, Co]

So Brijj is something we stopped working on a few years ago, and there is no plan to revive Brijj at the moment. Of course, we are working on a bunch of other things like I sort of keep mentioning. We have AmbitionBox. We are working on content. We are working on building data products. We are working on a bunch of other things on the Naukri sort of platform. But there is no plan to revive Brijj or enter into professional networking in any form or avatar, right? Blue collar, we have a small experiment going on inside the company. It's called [ jobhire.com ]. It's more yellow collar or gray collar or whatever. It's not exactly construction workers, and it's not -- but it's targeted at people who has [ Nissan ] -- but you don't need a profile -- you don't need a resume to get onto the platform. A profile is enough. And early days, we are sort of test marketing within the NCR. So you can check it out. But this is something which we think will pay out over an 8-, 10-year period. It's not as if it's going to start generating revenue for tomorrow. Of course, it will require investments. What was your last question? I missed that. There was something on Jeevansathi.

[Chintan Arvind Thakkar, CFO & Whole Time Director]

Yes, allied services on matrimony.

[Hitesh Oberoi, Co]

Oh. So allied services, matrimony. See, weddings are a big market. But right now, our focus is on gaining market share in the matrimony space, in the matchmaking space. Once we get to a certain size and scale, then, of course, we will look at adjacent sort of areas and categories like wedding services. But right now, we are focused more on gaining -- acquiring profile and gaining market share in this category because, like we discussed earlier, we are #3, and we need to get to a certain size and scale before we start looking at adjacent stuff.

[Vivek Aggarwal, Executive Vice President of Finance]

[Operator Instructions] Now I hand over the conference to Mr. Hitesh Oberoi for his closing comments.

[Hitesh Oberoi, Co]

Yes. Thank you, Vivek, and thank you, Anand, for moderating this. And thank you, everyone, for taking time out to be on this call with all of us. And this is a tough time for everybody. So please stay safe, and have a great evening. We look forward to meeting you again in 1.5 months from now.

[Vivek Aggarwal, Executive Vice President of Finance]

Ladies and gentlemen, on behalf of Info Edge (India) Limited, we conclude this conference. Thank you for joining us, and you may disconnect your lines now.

[Hitesh Oberoi, Co]

Thank you so much.

[Sanjeev Bikhchandani, Founder & Executive Vice Chairman]

Thank you. Thanks. Thank you, everyone.

[Operator]

Thank you so much. Thanks, everyone.