Aditya Birla Fashion and Retail Limited (ABFRL) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good afternoon, dear members. Welcome to the 13th Annual General Meeting of Aditya Birla Fashion and Retail Limited. I am Geetika Anand, the Compliance Officer and Company Secretary of your company. In view of the ongoing COVID pandemic and the social distancing norms, this meeting is being conducted through video conferencing. Accordingly, the physical attendance and the facility to appoint proxy has been dispensed with. The deemed venue for this meeting is the registered office of the company. The meeting is convened in due compliance with the directions and the COVID relaxations issued by the MCA and SEBI from time to time. We appreciate you joining us virtually today in spite of the challenging times. While meeting you all in person is always delightful, we hope that this virtual AGM is as worthwhile as the physical AGM for all of you. We now confirm that we have the requisite quorum and this meeting is being called to order. It is my pleasure to introduce the directors of your company present on the panel. I will go in alphabetical order. Starting with Mr. Ashish Dikshit, the Managing Director of your Company; Mr. Himanshu Kapania, the non-Executive Director and Vice Chairperson of the Board. He is also a chairperson of 2 committees that is Stakeholders Relationship Committee and Corporate Central Responsibility Committee; Mr. Nish Bhutani, Independent Director; Ms. Sukanya Kripalu, an Independent Director and Chairperson of the Nomination and Remuneration Committee. Mr. Sunirmal Talukdar, Independent Director and Chairperson of 2 committees, that is the Audit Committee and Risk Management Committee; Mr. Sushil Agarwal, non-Executive Director. Thank you. We also welcome Mr. Jagadish Bajaj, the Chief Financial Officer of the company. And the representatives of the statutory and secretarial auditors of the company, that is Mr. Aditya Bhauwala and Mr. Dilip Bharadiya. The notice and the stand-alone and consolidated financial statements for the financial year 2019 and '20, along with the Board's report and the auditor's report thereon was served electronically to all of you, who have registered your e-mail addresses with the company or the RTA or the depositories. Accordingly, the notice convening this meeting, along with the director's report, thereon will be considered as read. Further, since the statutory auditors report and the secretarial auditors report, either contain any qualifications, comments or observations, nor highlights any matter having adverse effect on the functioning of the company. The same are not being read at the meeting. Further, please note that all the inspection documents can be accessed through the inspection tab on the InstaMeet portal. I would now like to take you quickly through the flow of the events for this meeting. Firstly, we will proceed with the appointment of a chairperson for this meeting. As to the provisions of the applicable laws and the articles of association of the company, all the directors present at the meeting shall elect one amongst them to be the chairperson of the meeting. Thereafter, the chairperson will conduct the meeting and address all of us. This will be followed by a question-and-answer session. The members who have already registered as speakers and have an assigned serial number will be called out in that order. Other members can submit their queries through the chat box or send us an email on our registered e-mail ID. All your query shall be responded by the company officials in due course via email. Post the question-and-answer session, we will move for the remaining proceedings of the meeting, and we'll conduct the e-voting [Audio Gap], who have not already voted through the remote e-voting facility. Now may I request the directors to elect one among themselves as the chairperson of this meeting.

Hi Geetika ma'am. Good afternoon. I'm Sushil Agarwal. I propose Mr. Himanshu Kapania currently the Vice Chairman of the company as a chairperson for this AGM of your company.

Geetika, I propose Mr. Kapania. I second Mr. Agarwal's recommendation and propose Mr. Kapania to chair the meeting today.

Thank you. May I please request Mr. Kapania to kindly occupy the chair and commence the proceedings of this meeting.

Thank you, directors on the panel for electing me as the Chairman of the meeting. Good afternoon, dear shareholders. Let me start my speech, a very warm welcome to respective shareholders of our company. It gives me immense pleasure to address you all on the 13th Annual General Meeting of your Company. I've structured my address to you in sections where I will cover the overall economic scenario and overview of the industry, a quick recap of events in March 2020, falling outbreak of COVID and how we responded to the challenge, along with an update on performance of your company. Towards the end, I would also like to give a quick update on our resumption activities, while covering our broader strategy and how we are setting your company how to emerge as a really strong player trying to merge as a leader in the post-COVID world. Let me first set the context of the business environment, which prevail through most parts of the financial year 2020. The global economic outlook for 2019 as projected by IMF was comparatively more pessimistic than the previous years under the shadow of trade tensions, the prolonged disputes and policy uncertainties caused significant disruptions to international supply chain throughout the year. While the economic outlook for India remains favorable, the country saw a slowdown as the GDP growth rate was pulled down due to the stress on our financial sector and weak rural demand. The government announced various initiatives through the course of the year to create the economic revival, like cutting the corporate tax rate, the situation worsened towards the end of February 2020 as the COVID pandemic shut us. To further help revive the economy post-COVID, the government announced the INR 20 lakh crores Self-Reliant India Package. The package equivalent to 10% of the country's GDP was structured around embarking on a path to become self-sufficient. These sought to address issues around liquidity in the market with focus on the cottage industries and the MSME sector, amongst others. Now let me turn my attention to the apparel sector. The global apparel market has historically been dominated by United States, Europe and other developed regions. However, economic shifts from the West to the developing nations are causing a dramatic movement in the demand patterns of this industry. The developed markets are now showing mature characteristics, which is reflected in their saturated growth rates. These markets of U.S. and others have been -- have already seen deep penetration of organized retail and branded apparel with online channel too having significantly deepened the penetration. In contrast the low penetration level of organized retail and online channels and favorable factors such as the young demography with a large population in the working age, placed the markets in developing countries like India at a favorable position. Closer home, the Indian apparel sector is one of the key employment generators. The industry employs about 9% of total Indian workforce directly while contributing to the livelihood of a further 12% of the workforce through allied sectors. While the global market deal with saturation, India has become a focal point for the fashion industry as rising consumption due to favorable demographics and higher disposable income, boost its demand dynamics. While efficient manufacturing, global sourcing capabilities and improve retail and e-commerce penetration, drives access and experience, making it an extremely attractive market. The market is expected to grow at a CAGR of over 10% in the coming years, with the branded apparel sector expected to grow much faster. Let me now take you through the performance of your company for the financial year 2020. It is only fitting that I talk about the performance in 2 parts. Firstly, the first 3 quarters of our near-perfect journey. And secondly, the final quarter of last year, the month of March 2020, in particular, which saw us witness an unprecedented disruption. Talking about the first 3 quarters and analysis of the trend of 9 months results over the last 3 years, exhibits our strong growth trajectory. In this 9-month period for the last 3 years, from financial year '17, '18 to financial year '19/'20, your company achieved sales CAGR of 13% and EBITDA CAGR of double-digit of 31%. The company's margin expanded from 6% for 9 months in financial year '17/'18 to 8.1% for 9 months in the last financial year. The performance trends for January 2020 and February 2020 too continued along a similar trajectory with double-digit like-to-like growth posted by both Lifestyle Brands and Pantaloons. However, by the beginning of March 2020, as the pandemic spread and panic grew, retail was one of the most impacted sector as nationwide lockdown induced movement restrictions and shutdown of stores. We too noticed a dramatic slowdown in sales and footfall during this period. The nature of our business is such that it works on a largely fixed cost model. At normal time, it allows the company to leverage the fixed cost and deliver improved profitability. However, a sudden and steep shortfall in sales as was the case during the pandemic, didn't allow us to leverage our fixed cost and hence, deeply affected our profitability. The company took cognizance of the situation and quickly embarked upon measures to improve liquidity by arranging adequate banking lines. We also triggered multiple initiatives around cost rationalization aiming at making the cost structure optimal for a disruptive sales scenario. Most of this was made possible through the support of our employees, real estate and vendor and partners. Important to note that while these initiatives will help us in the short run as -- in the long run, it is our long-standing relationship with our partners and their belief in the strength of our business and robust operating model that will hold us in good stead when we get back to normalcy. The full year revenue reported a growth of 8%, rising from INR 8,118 crores to INR 8,743 crores. But despite the impressive performance through most of the year, EBITDA saw negative growth from INR 619 crores in the last year, that is year FY '18/'19 to INR 518 crores in the financial year 2019/'20, primarily due to impact of COVID-19, along with onetime write-down in the Fast Fashion segment due to transition of People brand. Due to the above, the overall EBITDA margin of the company shrunk by 117 basis -- 170 basis point from 7.6% in FY '18/'19 to 5.9% in financial year '19/'20. Your company adopted the new lower corporate tax regime, which will help company to save cash flow for next 2 years. In this regard, your company had to remeasure its deferred tax assets, which has onetime PAT of INR 130 crores in last financial year. But for this change, the reported PAT would have been negative INR 15 crores for FY '20. In the previous year, your company made strategic investments of INR 170 crores to venture into the highly lucrative ethnic wear segment through Jaypore and Shantanu & Nikhil. While Jaypore is an ethnic apparel and lifestyle retailer selling its products, both in domestic and international markets through its e-commerce channel, Shantanu & Nikhil are renowned coutures in the Indian ethnic space. I think it's important to also talk about what your company did in the later part of the last fiscal when the COVID pandemic hit our country. Exhibiting highest level of agility and collaboration, your company worked with government agencies and initiated production of critical personal protective equipment for our COVID warriors in their fight against the virus. Our facilities team undertook great initiative to reengineer our factories and machinery. While duly following stringent sanitation and distancing norms for our staff, we managed to produce over 8 lakh overall, 10 lakh 3-ply masks and 50 lakh cloth mask in possibly the quickest turnaround time. Along with this, your company's response towards its own business was necessarily focused around employee and customer safety, cost control and cash conservation. The safety of our entire workforce was our first priority and hence, your company became one of the first few corporates in the retail space to shut its offices and factories as a precaution. During the disruption, your company undertook various initiatives to ensure the physical and mental well-being of all its employees, including their family members. Your company was also one of the first players in the sector who launched a comprehensive COVID assistance and emergency response program, better known as [ CARE ] to provide medical health and consulting facilities to its employees and their families. On the cash front, your company took cognizance of the situation and took and drastic measures on cost cuts and cash conservation. Your company has initiated a deep and comprehensive cost reduction exercise to cut fixed cost, majorly rentals and land, power cost, along with other discretionary spends like advertising, travel, et cetera. Your company also took various steps around working capital optimization through repurposing, existing inventory and scaling down new buying Leveraging its strong parentage, your company was able to utilize existing and new banking lines to ensure that the business had ample liquidity. Also to improve strength into the balance sheet during these unpredictable times, your company successfully completed its rights issue of INR 1,000 crore. The issue evinced strong interest from promoters, large shareholders and retail investors. Your company could mobilize INR 496 crores in the first tranche during the quarter and added -- adding much needed strength to its balance sheet. Let me give you -- give an update of the current situation on ground. Post lockdown was lifted in a gradual manner on -- as on August 31, 2020, close to 90% of our stores network is operational. Our resumption has been planned meticulously. As in early April 2020 itself, your company had set into motion stringent protocols around safety and hygiene benchmark on global best practices and standards to ensure that our stores are absolutely safe places to shop at. Stores have also been reengineered to allow a contactless shopping experience with adequate provisions for digital payments, quarantining of returns, garments and revised procedure for garment trials. And you could make out our teams have left no stone unturned to ensure that our customers can continue to visit our stores with no concern, so that their shopping never stops. I would urge all the shareholders to experience yourself the work that our employees have done on the stores. Displaying tremendous agility, our brands have not only created products like fashion mask, which have -- which are more contractual in current times, but have also been working closely with a digital enablement teams to roll out other innovative ways of reaching out to the customers. Our store staff is assisting their regular customers through WhatsApp, commerce, while [ kiosks and proper ] shops are being piloted to reach more and more of our customers. The hyperlocal model 2 has been implemented to leverage our wide distribution network, utilizing our store inventory and staff to service and deliver customers' orders placed online. Let me move on to detailed discussion on the performance of your company has been captured in the management discussion and analysis section of the annual report for the last financial year. Allow me to however take you through broad strategic direction followed by your company in its endeavor to strengthen its leadership position. Number one, building strong brands. Over the years, your company has built some of India's most iconic brands, and we are proud of it. The characteristic feature of these brands have been their ability to evolve with changing customer needs. Our portfolio of lifestyle brands, well-known brands, Louis Philippe, Van Heusen, Allen Solly and Peter England are market leaders in their own sphere. Each of these brands continue to add increasingly relevant products and categories through the basket of offerings. Our innerwear and athleisure business builds on the brand equity of our existing lifestyle brands. Collaboration with super premium, global brands allows your company to operate in the premium end of the market. Our large apparel retail format brand Pantaloon is taking significant strides in this journey of establishing itself as a leading brand in the value fashion segment. The brand has managed to successfully expand its customer base by appealing to new customers through targeted marketing campaigns and reinnovated identity while venturing into newer categories like [ home ] and sarees. For a highly successful brand, the innovation work that the team has executed over the last 2 years, Pantaloon has received multiple awards and accolades. Pantaloon recently was recognized as the most trusted fashion retailer by brand equity. In the times ahead, as consumers are likely to opt for trusted brands, your company endeavors to continuously offer the most desired brands for its customers, each brand continuously evolving to meet the changing needs of our customers. The second strategy is portfolio approach. While our existing brands always like to continuously evolve themselves to keep pace with the changing customer needs, your company is always on the lookout for other lucrative areas in the apparel sector, or from an entry perspective. Your company's foray into women's and kids wear has seen a very favorable response in the market. Our innerwear and athleisure business continues to offer products that delight our customers. Also, our company's recent foray into the ethnic space through Jaypore and Shantanu & Nikhil are receiving strong consumer attraction, supporting our strategy to build a large move, the largest and one of the fastest-growing apparel segment. Our endeavor has always been to be the first choice for all fashion needs of our customer across segments and leading occasions, and your company will continue to expand its portfolio keeping pace with the changing consumer needs and preference. Third strategy, reaching a wider customer base. Organized retail in India still has a huge potential, which is yet to be explored. Tapping this opportunity, your company added over 1,000 store over the past 3 years. Untapped rural markets present another exciting opportunity for branded players to service newer customer bases. Taking cognizance of these opportunities, the company launched newer format tailor-made for these offerings. Offering consumers what could be their first branded apparel experience, Peter England, for instance, through their [ red ] format successfully added over 200 stores in the first year of its operation. We also ventured into mass brand space through a pilot under a brand Style Up, which we have gradually been testing across multiple markets for the last 3 years. After successfully experimentation to accelerate it to the next phase in this large space, we have integrated style of operations with Pantaloons to leverage strength of Pantaloon to gain rapid scale in Tier 4 and Tier 5 markets under brand Style Up. Apart from expanding to deeply and widely geographical through physical means, our brands are also aggressively driving reach and access amongst digital channels quite significantly accelerating investment in our brand, website and forging deeper and more meaningful partnerships with e-commerce players. That brings me to the fourth strategy, digital transformation. The digital capabilities of your company have been a key area of focus for the management. Your company has tried to adopt technology into various processes, primarily aimed at enhancing consumer shopping experience. While the company continues to build its omnichannel capabilities, it is also creating an engaged digital presence across all media channels, which has become a primary source of brand discovery for the customers. In the past 90 days, your company has viewed ramping up its e-commerce play as a key priority with branch launching at -- for all its branch apart from improving the experience of brand website. On the backend too, your company is continuously working towards finding new ways to improve the efficiency of its processes and build an agile organization. Your company has made significant advancements in adopting newer technology to shorten supply chain lead times, driving freshness and greater variety in stores. Most notable of these changes was your company's adoption of the 12-month format, which was a first for the industry. Rapid digitization has also led to emergence of newer business models designed around service like personalization and subscription offering data flexibility and variety to consumers. Due to the disruption, it was these additional adoptions that allowed your company to continue servicing its customers. Our recent initiative around the alternate ways of reaching customers during the period of lockdown were also fueled family through better adoption of technology. While there were more immediate interventions like video selling, WhatsApp, commerce or hyper local delivery models, where stores were leveraged as our core assets and merchandise was brought to homes of consumers virtually. More longer-term moves, such as launch of the reinvigorated brand apps, artificial intelligence enabled styling services, personalization services, et cetera, were successfully rolled out. Finally, our people. Your company takes pride in its immense talent pool and believes in constantly nurturing and building this talent, which gives it a formidable competitive edge. Building on the principles of professional, meritocracy and progressive organization, the company focuses on people development at the core of its business strategy with a vision to drive a high-performance and customer-centric culture with happy and value-oriented employees. The biggest brands and the best people with the philosophy that drives ABFRL. Your company has well-known brands in its repository. And it is the people behind the branch who have made the branch, what they are, the unique employee value proposition of your company, a world of opportunities makes it a preferred employer for professionals in the industry. ABFRL is committed to strengthen its employees' value proposition in every aspect, career growth, learning and development, reward and recognition, enrichment of live through healthy work environment and well-being program with the aim of benefiting each and every member of our 25,000 strong workforce. I would now take a few minutes to talk about sustainable business practices, one of the important parameters of our business. As a part of the Aditya Birla Group, sustainability is fundamental to all our endeavors. And your company echoes AB's responsibility towards society, environment and every stakeholder in constructing a stable and responsible foundation for the enterprise. Your company is committed to integrate sustainability in business decisions across our value chain with an aim to redesign the future of business. Over the past decade, we, at ABFRL, have been pioneers in driving sustainability to the forefront of the Fashion & Retail industry. This year is stated to be an important milestone in our journey, with the commencement of sustainability 2.0. Through this initiative, your company plans to widen the scope of the sustainability initiatives from operational efficiencies and product life cycle to developing product-centric approach. We, as a responsible organization, aim to provide thought leadership and establish disseminate and accelerate the sustainability drive in the industry to achieve this. We continue to strengthen our collaboration with like-minded entities like Sustainable Apparel Coalition, Ellen McArthur Foundation and Cotton 2040. In the reporting year, we have progressed in our intent towards building a circular economy. Our strategic collaboration with Circular Apparel Innovation Factory. In short, known as CAIF, C-A-I-F, a significant move that will drive secular business practices across India's textile and apparel industries. We continue our unflinching efforts towards community development with our unique village development program built on the Sansad Adarsh Gram Yojna, SAGY, guidelines. This program is run across Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and Odisha, to bring about holistic development of villages on multiple fronts, such as education, health, livelihood, digitization and water. We are very proud to inform you that your company was ranked 8th globally in the Dow Jones Sustainability Index, DJSI, Corporate Sustainability Assessment in the textile, apparel and luxury goods sector. Your company was also awarded Sustainable Corporate of the Year 2019 by Frost & Sullivan and TERI and CII-IGBC Green Champion of the Year 2019. Your company continuously reviews the progress of its sustainability mission and related projects and initiatives, while ensuring all environmental, community and social risks are well covered to provide strategic inputs in driving a sustainable and great community development goals. I would like to thank you all for being partners in our journey. I'm very -- I can very confidently say that your company has built a very robust business resting on key strategic pillars, such as number one, a portfolio with boost of some of the countries' most iconic brands; number two, one of the widest distribution network; number three, digitally-advanced organizational setup; and number four, credible management and capable team continuously going towards delivering excellent products and offering enhanced shopping experience to its customers. On behalf of the whole management team and my colleague board members, I take this opportunity to assure each one of you that our belief and conviction on Indian consumption stories and the large opportunity that Indian apparel sector has stayed unfringed and so does our aim and aspiration to build. I would like to convey my gratitude towards the team ABFRL whose relentless hard work and unwavering focus and dedication has seen us through these tough times and has always enabled us as a formidable organization. Kudos to Ashish Dikshit and his team. I would also like to take this opportunity to express our gratitude on behalf of the Board and shareholders to our retiring directors. Firstly, to Mr. Pranab Barua; second to Mr. Arun Tyagarajan; and thirdly, to Mr. Sanjeeb. Chaudhuri, who ceased to be director of the company in the past year. A wise council and technical expertise has played a significant role in enriching the mold we are fully grateful for the same. We are also pleased to have with us Mr. Sunirmal Talukdar and Mr. Nish Bhutani. Their addition will go a long way and conduct complementing the skills and expertise of the board. We are confident that their effective guidance and perspective will help enhance value for all our stakeholders. Finally, I would like to take the opportunity to thank all our franchisees and vendor partners, bankers, shareholders and other stakeholders for their constant support and faith in our ability, especially during this trying times. It has been an honor to address all of you here today. I wish you all the very best and stay safe.

We'll now move on to the question-and-answer session. I'll just give some general instructions for the speakers. [Operator Instructions] I'll now request the moderator to call upon the speakers in the serial number assigned to them.

The first speaker for the event is Ms. [ Jayashree Sham Patel ]. Ma'am, Ms. [ Jayashree ] is not available right now. So we can move on to the next speaker Mr. [ Piyush Ranjan ]. Mr. [ Piyush Ranjan ] is also not available. The next speaker for the event is Mr. [ Yusuf Rangwala ].

Hello. Respected Chairman, can you hear my voice, sir?

We can hear you.

Yes. Mr. [ Yusuf ] we can hear your voice. Please go ahead.

Yes. Respected Chairman, my fellow shareholder, very good evening to all of the Board of Director. I'm very thankful to Mrs. Geeta madam and his (sic [ her ] team for giving me a chance in COVID-19. Sir, this is a very -- glad to have to have a Pantaloon -- parts of the Pantaloon, sir. You have purchased Pantaloon, sir. Pantaloon does not require rating sir. [Foreign Language] half an hour speech, that was very excellent, sir. [ Foreign Language] sir, what we are facing. Sir, only one my humble one question, sir [ Foreign Language] COVID-19 in 4 month, what is your store -- well, whole store were closed? Is some was working, sir? And sir, this store -- after closing 4 month, sir what the -- sale down in this 4 month, sir. Now in this month even say in August, and what in this 2 month, and you can say in July and August, sir, whether it is 2 months our store is working properly, sir? And how many people are working with these stores sir? Any people you remove from the store, sir? And sir one more thing I would like to ask. Sir, Lifestyle. Sir, discount coupon, if you give it a product purchase, 20% or 30%. So it will be -- help our business, sir. It is a part of the business sir, if you give us a discount. So on purchase you give -- if you purchase a INR 1,000 -- if you purchase a INR 2,000 product, sir, we will get a 10%, or 20%, sir, that will help us also, and we will be very happy, sir. Sir, any -- sir, what competition we are facing with the Big Bazaar and Reliance Retail, what competition, sir? These 2 are huge, sir. Any thing to merge with Reliance, sir, in your mind, sir, nothing in mind because the Reliance are taking -- at present they are taking Big Bazaar also sir. Big Bazaar have gone to Reliance all the store. Now that belong to -- Big Bazaar to Reliance Store. Big Bazaar belong to Reliance, sir. Nothing in your mind to -- it will be sir different and nothing more to add. And I end my speech in the time limit. And sir, I would like to say, sir, where we have factory sir. If you have a factory -- so I would like to after COVID-19. Sir, any people affected with COVID-19, sir? [Foreign Language] In our staff, many people affected with COVID-19, sir. And sir, nothing more to add. I'm -- this Aditya Birla Group, Hindalco Group all the companies, sir, I'm chair -- I'm the group. I'm holding all that -- and are excellent companies, sir, nothing more to add. I end my speech praying to God coming in festival is Dussehra. My good wishes for Dussehra, Diwali, and all festivals, sir. Thank you. [Foreign Language] Thank you very much, sir.

Thank you Mr. [ Yusuf ], sir. Thank you so much. Do you want to say something else? Rajiv, over to you.

Rajiv the next speaker, please.

The next speaker is Mr. [ Dinesh Kukreja ]. Mr. Dinesh, you're live now, sir.

Mr. Dinesh, we can see you are in mute. Can you unmute yourself and ask question, please. Mr. Dinesh, please go ahead, ask a question. We can see you on the screen. Request you to ask your question. Any trouble with audio?

I'll speak, sir. I'll speak. No problem, sir, I'll speak.

Yes, sir, please go ahead. We can hear you. Please go ahead. [Foreign Language] You're on mute. Please unmute yourself. Yes, please go ahead.

No, sir, I'm unmute myself. Sir, your commentary on the company is working and the speech given by you was excellent. I would like to have a copy of it by e-mail sir. Sir, first of all, I would like to congratulate for keeping the meeting at 4:00 p.m. Because also the market hours are over, and we are also free in the evening so that we can talk with you in a better position, sir. sir, my questions were, we have raised INR 1,000 crores by way of rights in the last August, August 18, 24, 25, 30, and 31st of August, we have repaid commercial papers. So I'd like to know what the debt-equity ratio now as on 31st of August, if you can give me because I'm not able to reconsult the things. Sir, 80% to 90% of our stores are reopened. But what is the pickup of the stores, I mean, what is the footfalls in the stores, I would like to know? Because the stores are open 90%, but the footfall has been weak, as per pre-COVID period. I would like to know that, sir. Sir, again, you have even in your presentation that we have saved INR 445 crores by way of rent expenses, other expenses, employee expenses. That comes to nearly INR 4.94 crores per day. But as against that, our revenue is only INR 319 crores [ for ] INR 96 crores. How many days revenue is it totally? Because if I do some calculation, it counts only 15 to 16 days revenue in the first quarter. Again, our loss is INR 4.43 crores per day. Now that's a huge loss because we have been having -- nearly INR 24 crores per day on an average. So we have all these stress that we have been facing or we have faced, how are we going to overcome it? Sir, my next question remains that distribution on the market luxury, super luxury, premium, super premium, value and mass. Now, which is one particular segment that we are going to see a first sale now in this Diwali, our festival season or third quarter of this particular year and fourth quarter. And when are we targeting now our sales growth? We have got 4 subsidiaries. I would like to know what is the rationale for keeping the subsidiary, sir? Sir, e-commerce response to your sales platform, you have mentioned something, like, that it has gone up tremendously by what, X, it has gone up for sales response to e-platform sales. Sir, I would like to know the percentage of dead stock, slow-moving stock, non-moving stock in stocks as on 31st March and 30th June both, what is the percentage. And what are we doing about it? Sir, COVID-19 masks you manufactured on the Madura brands, was it a social service or have you made any contribution to cover some fixed costs? Sir again, any critical commitments, which have been deferred. Now, number of stores closed or restart or started -- new started, and how my staff has been affected due to COVID? Other than that sir -- I mean, I would like to know going forward, you have raised INR 1,000 crores, and you must have repaid -- you have repaid the commercial papers. Now what can we see? Because we are in the 13th year, sir, 13, 14, and 15 -- 14, 15, 16, 17, 18 and 19. So 4 years are there for it, say 6 years are there for us to remain. So do think that in the next 6 years, we're going to see a big huge jump in the turnover and the turnaround and the profits and all that. I mean how do you see yourself place at the 6 years that I would like to know. Once our teams are over, 19 is over. I'm giving you 6 years' time. I mean what will be the flight that we will be taking or any ideas on that, sir. I'd be very happy to write a e-mail also later on to Geetika so that you can reply to my other questions also. Thank you very much and wish you all the best.

Thank you, Dinesh. That was a mouthful of questions, but it's so nice of you to have spoken. Please move to the next person. Rajiv, can you please call out the next in?

The next speaker is Mr. [ B.S Krishnan ].

Thank you very much. I just want to confirm that you're able to hear me loud and clear?

Yes. I can hear you absolutely loud and clear, Mr. Krishnan. Please go ahead.

Excellent. Thank you very much. Thank you, and good evening to the ABFRL board and the management team. I've got a bunch of questions, actually, I've got 9 questions, and I'll finish it off in 3 minutes. This is basically for me to get a good perspective and get a better understanding of our company. My first query is, I want to get an understanding if our return on capital employed is lower than the average cost of capital. So I'd just like to get some clarity around it. And if is -- if the returns are lesser than the cost of capital, are there any strategies or plans to increase the return on capital employed? My second query is around the debt. I'm aware that we have reduced debt significantly in financial year '18 and '19. But if I take a 5-year data, our 5-year CAGR revenue growth is about -- is less than 10%, whereas our debt has grown by 12.5% CAGR in the same period. Just to get an understanding is our top line growth fueled by debts over the last 3 to 5 years? My third query is, our debt has doubled in the last one year. If you -- can you provide us an overview in terms of where the debt has been utilized? And what is the weighted average cost of debt? And what are the debt reduction plans going forward? My fourth query is, I'm aware that this particular industry is a very fixed cost-intensive business model. And this is a norm in the retail industry. I'd like to know if there are other retailers, both in India or overseas that are operating on a very, very lean model or a in very alternative model, which are much more EBITDA efficiency. My next query is around discount sales and e-commerce. With discount sales and e-commerce becoming a norm now. And I think this will be definitely permanent in my view. I'd like to know what are ABFRL's plans to play this discount and e-commerce game and still be profitable. The current query is, you have identified innerwear and ethnic wear as to priority growth areas. So I'd like to get an understanding in terms of what our top line and margin or EBITDA aspirations for these 2 categories over the next 3 years, COVID, notwithstanding at this point in time. My eighth query is, I'd like to get an understanding of our capital allocation policy. And what kind of broader return objectives and time lines, we set out when we allocate capital for a particular division or a particular project? And my last query is, I'd like to get an understanding is, if there are any targets, performance metrics goals set for each of our divisions or categories for the next 3 years. This is more from a revenue, EBITDA margin, profitability and a free cash flow generation perspective. I'm aware that we have limits of COVID. So I think it's difficult to get a visibility at this particular point of time. But if there is any kind of thinking on those lines, I'd like to get an understanding. That's it for me. Thank you very much.

Thank you, Mr. Krishnan. They were very insightful questions, and we will answer all of them in a while. Can we move to the next person? Rajiv, will up call up next speaker, please.

Sir, the next speaker Is Mr. [ Santosh Kumar Shroff ]..

[Foreign Language]

Thank you, thank you. [Foreign Language] Thank you so much. [Foreign Language] Let us hopefully, get over the COVID situation quickly. Rajiv, can we move to the next speaker, please?

Sir, the next speaker is [ Chandrabati Gatani ].

Hello?

[Foreign Language] Yes. You can speak now, please.

[Foreign Language] CA Sarbananda Gattani. Nice meeting you, Chairman, sir. [Foreign Language] And also Mr. Ashish Dikshit ji, nice meeting you, sir. [Foreign Language] CFO, I'm going through your accounts, Mr. Jagadish Bajaj and it's a nice account, I will be coming to it, sir. And Geetika Anand ma'am, nice talking to you. You gave me a call a few hours back on my request. [Foreign Language] You are so hard working, and you did this thing very nicely. But I would like to add 2 more things, ma'am. Your voice is also very nice and you look very beautiful, ma'am. [Foreign Language] But you look very beautiful. And I'm a very old shareholder, my daughter was saying -- my daughter is taking CA final, I'm also a chartered accountant. My daughter was saying because I was in another meeting in Tata Metaliks right now. [Foreign Language] And I've gone to your remuneration et cetera also, I know. Now, coming to the accounts part, sir. Our some positives are revenue from operation was INR 8,742 crores as compared to INR 8,117 crores in the previous year, up by 7.7%, again very good thing, sir. Now whole credit goes to Chairman sir, though vice Chairman, I think you have become from 1st January '20, but Mr. Ashish Dikshit ji [Foreign Language] My second point is -- [Foreign Language] cash and cash equivalents of INR 264.91 crores compared to INR 57.19 crores in the previous year. It's a very great thing, sir. [Foreign Language] My third positive that I felt in the balance sheet. Our current company has INR 3,031-plus-crores across more than 750 cities in India. Retail space reaches to 8.1 million square feet. As of March 20, we are talking, sir, lockdown -- recent development, that is a very great thing. Sir, we do have a lot of potential and our total [ cash ] under the management of Aditya Birla.

[Foreign Language]

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