Aurum PropTech Limited ($AURUM)

Ladies and gentlemen, good day, and welcome to the Q4 FY '26 Earnings Conference Call of Aurum PropTech Limited. [Operator Instructions] Please note that this conference is being recorded. I now hand the conference over to Mr. Shivang Bagla from Emkay Global. Thank you, and over to you, Shivang.

Hi [indiscernible], I'll take up Shivang's part. Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to the Q4 FY '26 Earnings Conference Call of Aurum PropTech. We are joined today by Mr. Ashish Deora, Executive Chairman for Aurum PropTech; Mr. Onkar Shetye, Executive Director of Aurum PropTech; Mr. Kunal Karan, CFO of Aurum PropTech; Mr. Rihen Shah, Lead Strategy and Investor Relations; and Mr. Shrikant Jagtap,, Deputy CFO of Aurum PropTech. Before we begin, I would like you to -- I'd like to remind you that certain statements made during this call, any forward-looking in nature, and are subject to risks and uncertainties as detailed in the annual report and other investment disclosures available on the website. With that, I would like to now hand over the call to Mr. Ashish Deora for his opening remarks.

Thank you, Rihen. Thank you, Shivang, and good evening, everyone. It is my pleasure and privilege to welcome you to the 20th earnings call of Aurum PropTech. I'm excited to share with you the progress we have made this quarter and this being Q4 across the entire financial year. Since our inception in 2021, we have pursued a clear and focused vision to build the largest integrated proptech ecosystem in India and to build it with disciplined and sustainable long-term value. I believe this quarter and this financial year is a reflection of 5 years of consistent effort, execution and discipline. We are constantly delivering on what we set out to do. Before I share our key achievements, I want to take a moment to acknowledge our 1,000-plus team members across our ecosystem. Their unwavering belief, their daily execution, their hard work and their commitment to our vision is what has brought us to this moment. This achievement definitely belongs to them. I also want to acknowledge our entrepreneurs and business managers who believes in profitable growth and unit economics across each and every quarter of this journey. Their conviction and their energy have made this possible. Moving on, I would like to share with you 3 key achievements from this quarter and this financial year. These achievements also set the momentum and outlook for the upcoming quarters and the new financial year. We carry into FY 2027 the same discipline. We have always held ourselves accountable to, and we do so with even greater confidence. First, we are now a profitable company. And we believe this is not cyclical. We are structurally profitable. Q3 FY 2026 was our first at [indiscernible] quarter. Q4 is now confirming the second consecutive profitable quarter. The operating leverage across our businesses is kicking and that is not a quarterly event. The platform we have built over 5 years is designed to ensure that we are profitable in FY 2027 and beyond. Second. We are a debt-free company. The sale of building Q5 and Q6 will ensure that we retire all lease rental discounting debt in full by June 30, 2026. The surplus cash will be utilized to accelerate our AI initiatives and to pivot the ecosystem more decisively towards AI. Third, we are going AI first. Every product of ours is being rebuilt around AI. Every journey that our products go through, whether it's a consumer journey, a developer journey or a broker journey, all of these are being reimagined on AI. We are working on AI-led business value optimization across our ecosystem to drive operational efficiency. You will see revenue per team member start improving quarter-on-quarter as this business value optimization takes effect. For the medium term, we are working on what we call the unified brain, a single agentic intelligence layer that activates monetization opportunities across the entire ecosystem. The opportunity and the responsibility in front of us is significant. We were the first public top tech company. We are the first profitable product company. We have built the first integrated proptech ecosystem. And therefore, it is our responsibility to be the first proptech company to deploy AI at scale. As we step into FY 2027, our strategic priorities remain clear. We'll continue to strengthen our collaboration across the ecosystem. We will go deeper with AI to a point where we become a truly AI-first proptech company and will ensure that our profitability metrics improve quarter-on-quarter and year-on-year. To conclude, as we crossed INR 1,000 crores of annualized revenue in the coming quarters with improved profitability and a stronger ecosystem, we recognize that we are reshaping the future of Indian real estate. We are helping define what the proptech sector in India can and should look like. This responsibility drives us. Thank you very much. Over to you, Onkar.

Thank you, Mr. Deora. The quarter marks a clear inflection point for Aurum PropTech. We have crossed INR 500 crores ARR in revenue, delivered our second consecutive quarter of profitability and are now seeing operating leverage play out across the platform. More importantly, this is not one-off outcomes. It reflects a structurally strong business built on disciplined execution, improving unit economics and increasing integration across our ecosystem. At the segment level, our rental business continues to provide a stable and resilient base with INR 55 crores in quarterly revenue. The focus here has shifted from your scale to quality improving occupancy, yields and customer experience. Both HelloWorld and Nestaway are now moving towards a more optimized premiumized portfolio. HelloWorld continues to scale its managed co-living portfolio during the quarter. The focus has remained on deepening operational quality, tenant satisfaction, turnaround efficiency and occupancy optimization rather than purely adding beds. HelloWorld closed the quarter with 259 active co-living properties, up 13% year-on-year and 19,286 beds under management, a 9% increase over the same period last year. Nestaway sustained its trajectory of stabilization and unit level improvement. At Nestaway, our focus through FY '26 has been to sharpen the portfolio, strengthen unit economics and replatform the business for sustainable profitability. We closed the quarter with approximately 9,600 rentable units across [ 5,214 ] houses across countries. During Q4, we launched Nestaway Select, a premium cluster-based rental model aimed at delivering a superior tenant experience in high-demand micro markets. Our distribution business is emerging as high-growth, high leverage engine delivering INR 67 crores in Q4. Aurum Analytica saw strong demand with 93% year-on-year growth in leads sold. Analytica sold over 148,000 leads in Q4 FY '26, a 93% year-on-year growth to 145 active clients across 275 signed projects. Active accounts grew 23%, and the number of projects grew 20% year-on-year, reflecting both deeper penetration within existing developer relationships and continued acquisition of new clients. [indiscernible] continues to scale its SaaS platform with increasing adoption of AI-led products. Enterprise deal closure were robust and AI products stack covering call transcription, translation, lead scoring and AI calling board service gained further adoption among our client base. [indiscernible] ended Q4 with 916 active accounts, up 38% year-on-year and 10,378 active licenses, a 32% increase. During the quarter, it onloaded 40-plus new developers and added over 600 new licenses. And PropTiger, it delivered its highest ever quarterly gross commission since inception, INR 42.8 crores in Q4 FY '26, reflecting strong execution and improving transaction velocity. PropTiger now operates with 175 active developer clients and 11 active mandates and its verticalization strategy has accelerated transaction velocity across key residential markets. The business contribution to the group's distribution segment has grown meaningfully, and we expect that scale to compound through FY '27 as the mandate pipeline matures. The distribution vertical is now evolving into a powerful data, SaaS and transaction fly deal. We are also moving ahead in our platform using AI as a layer on top of the business to embedding it into core of how we operate it across customer acquisition, sales and servicing. Early pilots are already improving productivity. And as we scale this, we expect meaningful gains in revenue per employee and overall efficiency. This aligns with our broader vision of building a unified intelligence layer across the ecosystem. Overall, what is becoming visible is a compounding platform flywheel with rental driving supply, distribution, driving monetization and data and AI driving efficiency and utilities. To close, Q4 has been most consequential quarter with strong growth, expanding margins and sustained profitability. As we enter FY '27, our focus remains clear, to scale profitability, go deeper on year and continue strengthening our position as India's leading integrated project platform. I will now hand over to Shrikant Jagtap to take you through the financials.

Thank you, Una. Thank you, everyone, for joining today's call. The results for the quarter and year ended March 31, 2026 are in 2 parts. One is a continuing operation and second is a discontinued operation. The company is in the process of selling the buildings it owns. The performance and assets liabilities related to the building have been shown separately under the discontinued operations for all the years presented in the financial statements. The figures for the continuing operations are from the business operations that will continue in the future. I will now quickly take you through the numbers. First, the results for the quarter. The revenue from the continuing operation, INR 123.85 crores compared to INR 112.36 crores in the previous quarter, an increase of 10.2%. Other income from continuing operations, INR 8.18 crores compared to INR 9.64 crore in the previous quarter. The total income from continuing operations, INR 132.03 crores compared to INR 122 crores in the previous quarter, an increase of 8.2%. The profit before tax from continuing operation, INR 1.85 crores compared to profit of INR 2.93 crores in the previous quarter. The total income from both the continuing and discontinued operations, INR 134.59 crores compared to INR 14.55 crore in the previous quarter, an increase of 8.1%. This total income for the quarter excludes other income of INR 17.72 crores recognized from the partial sale of buildings. Now the results for the full year ended March 31, 2026. Revenue from continuing operations, INR 381.09 crores compared to INR 252.72 crore in the previous year, an increase of 50.8%. Other income from continuing operation, INR 31.34 crores compared to INR 20.89 crores in the previous year. The total income from continuing operations stood at INR 412.43 crores compared to INR 273.66 crore in the previous year, an increase of 50.7%. Loss before tax from the continuing operation, INR 14.96 crores compared to INR 43.40 crore in the previous year, a significant improvement of INR 28.44 crores in profitability. Total income from both continuing and discontinued operations INR 423.75 crores compared to INR 285 crores in the previous year, an increase of 48.7%. This total income for the year excludes other income of INR 17.72 crores recognized from the partial sale of the building. Now the segment results for the quarter. The buildings derived rental income and financial performance from the operations is shown under the rental segment. Revenue from the rental segment continuing operations, INR 52.70 crore compared to INR 52.09 crore in previous quarter. Revenue from both the continuing and discontinued operations, INR 55.20 crores. Distribution segment, INR 66.87 crores compared to INR 59.60 crore in previous quarter, increase of 12.2%. Capital segment revenue, INR 4.28 crores compared to INR 0.67 crores in previous quarter. The rental segment from continuing operations and capital segment reported a loss of INR 3.61 crores and INR 0.53 crores, respectively, while the distribution segment made a profit of INR 13.63 crores during the quarter. The rental segment from the continuing operations and discontinued operations together reported a loss of INR 2.74 crores. For the full year ended March 31, 2026, Rental segment revenue from continuing operations, INR 200.71 crores compared to INR 157.54 crore in previous year, an increase of 27.4%. Distribution segment revenue from continuing operation, INR 172.55 crores compared to INR 79.28 crores in previous year, an increase of 170.7%. The capital segment revenue from continuing operations, INR 7.84 crores compared to INR 15.94 crores in previous year. The Rental segment from continuing operations and capital segment reported a loss of INR 18.54 crores and INR 5.27 crores, respectively, while the Distribution segment made a profit of INR 32.30 crores for the full year. The Rental segment from continuing operations and discontinued operations together reported a loss of INR 14.9 crores. I will now hand over the call to Dorvin to take it forward. Thank you.

[Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from Rahul Jain from Dolat Capital.

Congratulations on the completion of this transaction as well as achieving the milestone revenue mark. My question is pertaining to 2 aspects which you highlighted. Firstly, on the aspect which Ashish mentioned about the AI aspect of it, wherein we would like to bring in the AI capabilities into the business. So any broad color on what is our plans, how we plan to implement it, how it is going to change some of the way we are doing other things? That could be of great help. And secondly, with this further infusion that we have got from the sale of the buildings, is there any capital allocation priorities that we have in our mind? Any view on that help.

Thank you so much for your question. On the first question with respect to we're thinking of AI as a core architecture for the business rather than just a value add or a feature, which is why what we have done is divided our AI initiatives into 2 parts. One, which is the business value optimization, which we detailed out. Here, we have mapped our entire portfolio, all the operations, which were conducted all the processes across rental, distribution and capital and mapped out where AI can come in and improve operational efficiency, reduce manual workflows and help in improving the overall efficiency. This initiative will be taken up in the coming quarters, and we'll see the outcome of it eventually coming into the revenue per team member, which is going to be a guiding metric for basically implementation. Along with that, we wanted to think through for the future for how AI can completely change the business model, which is where our unified brain or the unified brain processes comes in. In Europe, we see completely autonomous transactions between rental and distribution taking place through AI agents. Here, we are trying to build a agentic-neural architecture on top of the core LMS that are existing available in the market and create our proprietary data set for the same. This is going to be something that we'll be working towards in the next couple of years and seeing the long-term benefits of the same. We feel as Aurum PropTech, we are the only company who has this entire portfolio already integrated and can have a first mover advantage on. For the second question, with respect to the building sale we want the building had a lease rental discounting, which was a loan, which was there in the building. With this building sale, which was a nonstrategic asset for us, we'll basically make Aurum PropTech a completely debt-company, and the remaining proceeds will be used for this AI transformation, which is going to be for the next couple of years.

Just to add around, this is Ashish. Just to add to what Rihen said that -- so AI, I think, is a game changer and it is an opportunity. It is a threat. It has to be embraced. That's our view. For last 2 years, every meeting, we have started with unit economics, we have ended with unit economics. Now we are starting every meeting with unit economics and AI and then ending of the meeting with unit economics and AI. That is the kind of focus that we have on AI. We believe that AI will push collaboration across sector. We believe that AI agent players will over years take over the processes of the industry. And as I tried to articulate earlier, we believe that we want to lead this revolution.

Right. So I think just 1 point to what you just alluded to I think we have now 2 businesses at least, which have scaled up in terms of size and they are across the different life cycles of a consumer, which your PPT have highlighted in the past as well. So do you think with this involvement, our ability to increase the lifetime value of a customer can start playing out over the next couple of years?

Yes. So we feel that, that is going to be a byproduct for the AI transformation that we're doing. You see that what we've done actually across the entire Aurum PropTech portfolio as we've mapped out the entire life cycle of someone who interacts with real estate. From the first time that they step up of the house, which is when the student living comes in to co-living to family rentals to even purchase, which is where the distribution portfolio comes in. So yes, we see AI implementation as a strong way to increase our customer lifetime value as well as decreasing our CAC as well.

[Operator Instructions] Our next question comes from the line of Rahul Singh, an individual investor. Ladies and gentlemen, the current participant seems to have dropped from the queue. [Operator Instructions] Our next question comes from Faisal Hawa from H.G. Hawa And Co.

Are we looking at more acquisitions and what the kind of synergy venture cap and private equity-backed competitors. Do you see some more residual investments coming out [Technical Difficulty].

Sorry, Faisal, but your line seems to be breaking up in between. Please ask your question again.

People are not able to raise further funds or people who are dependent on equity capital are not able to. So any more acquisitions coming our way now from people who are previously backed by private equity or venture cap?

[indiscernible]. Good afternoon. Thank you for your continued interest. By the nature of the scale we have achieved in the last 4 years, we do get organic inbound requests or for joining our proptech ecosystem. And those requests come across a variety of opportunity areas or focus areas right from rental to distribution to capital. Strategically, we have taken a call to only explore those opportunities, which are very compelling in nature where they fit in a very specific strategy bracket between 2 different operating businesses or 2 different operating units for us. And as of now, we have not actually found anything compelling that we can look at to acquire further. However, we do keep on growing our existing business lines organically and taking them to scale individually without any inorganic forms of opportunities or acquisitions in the pipeline.

This is Ashish, just to add to what Onkar just said. If you recall, post our Nestaway acquisition, we have said, look, we are not going to acquire any more companies unless it sits between 2 of our products. And then PropTiger gave us that opportunity because then with PropTiger, the entire distribution segment got accelerated, got reenergized. Even the loan origination from [indiscernible] is doing extremely well, and you will see those numbers in the upcoming quarters. So as Onkar said, we are not actively evaluating to buy anything currently. We believe that with AI and with the scale that we have reached our hands of full. We also have the SM REIT in pipeline, which we will -- which we will look at in the upcoming quarters. So I think we have placed ourselves in a in a decent position to accelerate from here even without any inorganic growth.

Our next question comes from the line of Amit Chandra from HDFC Securities.

First question -- so firstly, congratulations on executing it so well and the strong growth. So the 49% Y-o-Y growth that we have shown in FY '26. So is it all organic? Or is there a overincomponent in this growth? And also in terms of the 3 pieces of the business that we have, the rental space, which has been growing pretty well. So how do you see the growth for this segment, particularly what is happening to the IT sector, where the hiring has been now let me -- hiring has been muted, and there has been no threshold hiring. And the cities like Bangalore, Pune is not seeing that kind of inflow in terms of the future. So how do you see the impact of this on the rental business? And on the distribution piece, we have shown good growth. What is the outlook for this business and how scalable is it because the impact of slowdown IT is also on the real estate business?

Thanks, Amit, for your renewed interest and we look forward to deliver further robust growth as quarters and years come past. I will start with your second question first. Structurally, we see that rental segment is a very resilient and countercyclical segment. While there are present headwinds in the rental segment are owing to large scale, I would say, dip in employment, large-scale depend fresh offers to new hires, et cetera. But if you slice and dice this, there are still buckets of employment, specifically in the IT sector that you mentioned and that have shown not just green shoots, but have shown robust growth. Specifically, the cities like Bangalore, high-quality tech jobs are still in demand and are still being augmented where there is more demand for AI capabilities, AI skill sets, whereas if you see cities like Pune, which is largely dependent on business process outsourcing or non-product-led initiatives. These are the areas where we see -- we do see a dip in demand. So while the fact is that there is a dip in demand, it has been countered by more. [indiscernible] that show robust momentum despite the AI-led headwinds that we see in various tech cities in the country and we have focused on supply quality across student leaving, co-living and family rentals in these specific pin codes going for a concentration mix where Idea is to provide better quality supply to this now to this very specific set of consumers. As a overall sector, if you see the rental sector as such, on the demand side, there is demand for INR 2 crore rental housing units across top cities in the country. And the sector itself has not even scratched the surface. So despite these headwinds that we do witness across the ID cities, we don't see that as a sector overall, we should be really concerned about student driving co-living and [indiscernible] rentals. Because of the pure nature of real estate consumption is changing quite drastically, especially backed by the generation as demand for rental housing. And we see this continuing more and more so. Coming to the distribution segment. The distribution segment got augmented by PropTiger, and that also answers part of your question on, which is organic growth. We concluded the PropTiger transaction in Q2. And PropTiger now is completely engaged and enabled in our -- at the Aurum PropTech ecosystem. We've been able to scale PropTiger business from where it was to now delivering its strongest quarter performance across the last 15 years since its inception where we've been able to clock INR 42.8 crores of quarter growth at -- in terms of quarterly revenue for PropTiger. So that gives us solid confidence. We've been -- with this, we've been able to also surpass the dependency on the rental segment, which we had in the previous quarters. Now in fact, the distribution segment with PropTiger and Analytica and sell.do combined contribute to more than -- to around 60-odd percent of our total income, which is a solid pillar to our Proptech business. As a sector overall, if you look at the industry spend, real estate developers across top 8 cities in the country spend INR 38,000 crores towards lead gen towards aggregator platforms towards transaction management. And this is a large headroom that we intend to capture upon. Typically, whenever a real estate sales cycle goes low. That is when our business actually starts getting more in demand because developers spend more on lead gen developers spend more on transaction management to ensure their sales are bolstered up. And as we see more institutional play in the real estate sector overall, demand for our tech-enabled services in the enterprise segment, the distribution segment will be more prominent. I hope I've been able to answer your question, Amit.

Our next question comes from Aditya Shah from Transient Capital.

Congratulations to the management team, the performance has been really consistent and big props on scaling the 500 annual revenue run rate. So firstly, I had a question regarding the PropTiger integration. So from the headline numbers, the integration seems to be going very well, and it shows off in the sales momentum also -- and I suppose that was the rationale with the acquisition that it sits very well in the distribution segment where you kind of now have an omnichannel approach right from feet on the street to analytics to CRM, you have an integrated approach. But could you give us a specific example of how things have changed post PropTiger acquisition where you're able to capture more value and the ecosystem as a whole is working very well together.

Sure, sure. Thank you so much for your question, and thanks so much for such a detailed out into the entire business. Let me give you an example on what -- how and what we have done at the PropTiger level to make this integration work. One, what we've done is that across PropTiger, we have changed the focus -- for earlier the focus was on transactions. It still alive, but we are shifting it to a mandate model more from a transactions model, which was there earlier. What happens in mandate is because the amount of gross commission that a developer is charged on mandate as well as on EVs, there are a lot higher than the standard brokerage model. Also, with respect to the entire distribution spread that we have, which is 1,100-plus developer connections across the entire Aurum PropTech portfolio. We could scale PropTiger to more developers taking it to approximately 180 plus developer relationships currently existing [indiscernible] level. We feel that there is still a lot of scope left to increase this and take it to even [indiscernible] cities. Similarly how you think with what we're doing right now, we're doing an omnichannel approach of GTM, where we are taking all the distribution products as a unified product to Port cities. This is specifically being headed by trough tier, where we see the next leg of growth coming in as well.

And just a small clarification, is a mandate like an exclusive model. So if you have a mandate for a particular project, so the entire sales will flow through you? Or how does it work?

Sure. So mandate is an exclusive model. You're correct. So what happens in that case is that the developer enables PropTiger to do all sales and marketing for a specific project. PropTiger [indiscernible] dedicated team, which takes care of the entire marketing as well as sales for that specific project. In mandate model, given the gross commission being charged as well as the margins are a lot better compared to the transaction one.

Okay. Okay. And my second question was regarding Nestaway. So we see in terms of houses under contract or the number of signed units, it's been declining year-on-year and the idea was, Nestaway is more of an asset-light model. It's a commission-based model. So where ideally, the growth must have been higher growth should have been higher, sorry. And -- but that hasn't transpired. So could you give us a sense what is happening? Is there a gap in the product market fit? Or what gaps do you see? What is happening actually on the ground with -- regarding Nestaway?

[indiscernible]. With respect to Nestaway, what we have done is a systematic change. As Onkar mentioned earlier, we are going by a strategy of [indiscernible]. Due to this, what we have done is consolidated the number of houses and conducted a rationalization exercise across the entire Nestaway portfolio due to which you see a dip in terms of number of houses. However, if you see what we have done at Nestaway is that we have increased the value-added services and the revenue potential for them. So by the number of houses have reduced for this specific quarter, you'll see that the revenue has gone up because of the value-added services that we are being able to enable, add up encoding. This is helping us scale the revenue as well as improve the margins of Nestaway an entire business. Going ahead, Nestaway will be getting to a stage where it is increasing the number of houses with these value-added services where we feel that rental can be pushed towards profitability in the next coming financial year.

So by coming financial year, do you mean the FY '27 or [indiscernible]?

FY '27.

The running financial year, you mean?

The running financial year.

Okay. And -- could you also please comment on the growth in the rental segment. It's been very subdued for a while? I understand there has been a recalibration of the strategy as you just mentioned, but could you give us a color on how is it supposed to pan out or coming -- like just a qualitative color, maybe not even numbers, but qualitative color, how confident you feel on the product market rate and everything in growth in the coming quarters, how it's supposed to shape up? Like we see -- and we spoke about a slowdown also. I'm just factoring in all those things, how do you expect it to trend?

We feel while at an industry well [indiscernible] mentioned, that we'll have IT hiring slowing down, but the organization of the disorganized supply is still a huge potential because of which we will be growing the rental portfolio. Similarly, how we have grown it over the years until now. The growth will be coming in from both HelloWorld and Nestaway. Together, we are currently at around 30,000 beds under management. We'll be growing these beds under management while also increasing the other rental revenue opportunities across the entire ecosystem. We are working on that, but we have been seeing growth across the entire portfolio across both HelloWorld and Nestaway.

Our next question comes from Reuben M with Equity Intelligence.

First off, congratulations on an excellent quarter. I just had a few questions. See, we have been hearing about AI impacting these SaaS companies. So I'm just trying to understand, what is it that gives you the edge? Is it your proprietary real estate data? Or is it your customer relationships? Just trying to understand what is it that you offer that others can't replicate?

Sure, Rob. Thank you so much for waiting. You are correct, what happens with AI has actually changed the entire system in which mods were created or tech was created. Currently, with AI, we feel data is the biggest mode that any company can have in the current market. With the amount of real estate transaction data managed through PropTiger, real estate lead data managed to our analytical and real estate developer and channel partner data managed to sell on to. We feel we have the entire ecosystem through which we can develop and be the first mover in terms of AI. Where this is impacting is in terms of building our core SLM layers on top of the existing LLM layers, which will help in terms of lead enrichment, which will help in conducting most precise amount of AI calling, most precise way to ensure that the lead management as well as the transaction closure happens through the AI agents and have a [indiscernible] architecture on top of the existing LLMs well. What this will do is there is no ecosystem right now, which exists, which has all of these pieces together combined, which will have -- which will enable us to make this move early on. Yes, we are working on this thing, and we'll come out with more updates on the AI initiative in the coming quarters as well.

Okay. So you've also been speaking about the cross-selling across multiple platforms, [indiscernible] products. Can you maybe give me an estimate of what percentage of customers use more than one product? And is that number steadily increasing over the last few quarters?

So Reuben, we have a common set of customers across multiple products, which is in the distribution as well as in the rental segment. With the PropTigers addition, the number has been growing. And currently, it would be around 22% of our entire distribution network, working out through multiple products, not a single product but to multiple products, having a multiproduct suit from [indiscernible]. We feel with our current database, the Tier 2 cities is going to be where we'll be focused more towards a joint GTM distribution strategy, where we'll have prop titer going in and providing the joint game across all the other products.

And then just to add to what Rihen said, this is Ashish here, we have not been able to do justice to the ecosystem revenue that we call uses to say that how much can be the cross-sell and the opportunities. Those numbers are still in single digit. And that is one focus that we have this year to start evaluating internally that how much of the revenue is coming as a cross-sell revenue. And we have tried to do this last year as well. But last year was really focused on ensuring that we go deeper with our customers, go deeper with each product and each company whereas this year will be focused on cross-selling collaboration and what we call an ecosystem revenue in our language. We have started to track it. We will definitely do better in this year.

Okay. And just one last question. On the SM REIT, do you expect it to be more on the commercial side? Or would it be on the with the residential focus? And when do you expect the first launch of it? Can you give us some guidance on that?

Reuben, we feel that with the current set of regulations for the SM Reit by city, commercial real estate, which is Grade A leased out to a market and it makes the most perfect fit for the product because of which the focus has currently been on commercial preleased real estate. We've already started creating a pipeline of properties. A detailed RFP has been rolled out with all the channel partners that we work with. And we are evaluating assets across Mumbai, Pune, Delhi, and CR, Bangalore, [indiscernible], a couple of these geographies. Once we'll do a detailed due diligence and then we'll try that will definitely come up with a SM REIT in this financial year.

Our next question comes from the line of [ Jim Gandi ] with MK.

Yes. I just want to double-click on a few aspects. The first one being, say, if I strip out the proprietary sort of data and run the CM AI models on generic market data, then in that case, how much of the conversion or the CAC advantage that we have as a business or disappears or rather to what extent this helps us in bringing more conversions or efficiencies that we have laid out in one of the slides in the presentation. So if you can just share some thoughts on this, that would be helpful.

I answer your question in 2 parts. One, with respect to AI implementation, we can to our customers, which is developers, channel partners, we have been consistent with one thing. The early more advantage helps in the AI data set training, which improves each interaction every day. What this means is that every time an AI agent talks to the customer understands it learns and it relearns and it relearns on top of that data as well. Every interaction recorded went into the AI model helps in terms of learning the AI on how to interact and makes it better. In our early pilot days, we have seen the conversion rates going from lower single digits to upwards of double digits as well. This is pure because they were able to train the AI model on 25,000, 30,000 transactions, call recordings, WhatsApp chats, e-mail functions and then help it on was better. We see the same thing working out because of which Aurum PropTech is better enabled to do AI implementation in the entire proptech space. The second point on to the slide on the presentation, that is purely on the business value optimization that we see internally by adopting AI tools. In this case, we're using these 4, which is AI-powered sales agent, AI campaign and content engine, lead intelligence and CMS and AI-first customer support as 4 key initiatives to ensure efficiency at Aurum PropTech level. This will help us automate a lot of manual workflows internally and health in streamlining processes where any feel we can increase the efficiency and the profitability metrics.

Okay. Just a follow-up to this is, say, how do we understand the benefits or how do we measure these sort of benefits say, coming from AI-led initiatives versus the operating leverage that in the initial remarks we spoke about. So how are we trying to -- how can I understand or evaluate when I'm looking at the numbers are when I'm looking at the presentation in terms of how do we have that differentiation?

Sure. Thank you, [indiscernible]. So for specifically to business value optimization, we feel that there are 2 ways of looking at the metrics. One is performance metrics, which includes an increase in conversion ratios includes increasing connection rates, the time to go live, which are more operational, which we'll be tracking for a couple of quarters as these are in pilot stages right now and then coming out with detailed numbers and metrics on how we have improved them through our AI agent. However, at a net level, we feel that our revenue per employee, which is a key metric for business value optimization has to keep on increasing, which is what we have been communicating since last 6 to 7 financial years and we'll continue reporting, which will show the improvement that we are having due to the business value optimization as an entire initiative.

So [indiscernible], just to add to this. I think this -- if you look at some of the leaders in our Proptech ecosystem, which have already been using Gen AI and our -- we advance in it is a classic case of Aurum Analytica. Aurum Analytica has sold a record number of 120,000 leads in the last quarter. And this has come despite having to increase the number of people working at Aurum Analytica on the tech side, on the fulfillment side. So that's one key indicator that you can look at. Second is that we look at AI more as an enabler where all the workflows are then embedded into our real workflows or more on the fulfillment side. So PropTech has that -- Aurum PropTech has a unique advantage of being a tech company with a fulfillment layer onto it where there's both upstream and downstream enablement with AI that effectively leads on to some of these key metrics of measurements.

And just one last bit, if I may. So the revenue per employee that we are measuring and that we are putting out in the employee count here. Is the total employee count like it includes subcon as well? Or as and how does that get factored in the denominator, if you can just shed some light on that?

So [indiscernible], this includes all the employees of Aurum PropTech. It does not include any outsourced employees for any interns that we have across the group, but it includes all the employees, and we keep tracking across that. I think that query actually does not apply to us as much because from a subcon point of view, we don't have a large workforce for fulfillment, direct fulfillment that is supported. Where we do subcontract is do -- is specific activities in businesses like HelloWorld, which anyway sit as a part of the cost of property management for that specific asset or for that building.

Our next question comes from the line of [ Nishita Sankesh ] from Crown Capital.

Yes. So I just wanted to understand the growth trajectory that we'll have in the next 2, 3 years. So in FY '26, we had a growth of around 47%. So do we expect this growth to continue?

So [indiscernible], we are not allowed to give forward-looking statements, but if you look at the last 4 years, right from inception of Aurum PropTech and our Proptech business model, we have consistently delivered a growth of 40% year-on-year from a revenue standpoint. And what is to be underlined here is that our growth has come at improved parameters on unit economics and profitability where, unlike a lot of growing companies where there's no sight on profitability, we have been able to balance it out consistently and consistently. And we do see following the similar trajectory as we go in the next -- into the next 3 years. We are sure that we would not want to disappoint you and ourselves by delivering a subpar growth than what we have delivered until now.

Understood. And on the margins front, so like how do we see our flat margins? Will we see the profitability continuing on?

So it's not a very straightforward answer. Our distribution business has consistently been profitable. Inherently, both all the 3 business lines in the distribution segment have a potential of delivering a consistent 25% gross margin. depending on the seasonality, depending on the geography. But yes, on an average, we do see that consistently happening in the distribution business. In the rental business, it's a consumer fronted business, and that is where we do -- we are taking some time to reach a substantial level of profitability, especially in the Nestaway business, where we are required to spend more on the platform. We are required to spend more on tech. We're required to spend more on go-to-market to make sure that the Nestaway has a C2C rental platform remains consistently the top of the mind recall for rental consumers. HelloWorld, we've been able to ensure that there's more quality supply, there's more concentration of teams. And we've been able to, I would say, scale the teams to [indiscernible].

[Operator Instructions] Due to paucity of time, we will take one last question from [indiscernible] of Emkay Global. [indiscernible] give us a text question. The first is, can you provide a broad thought on potential savings expected from AI-led efficiencies? How do we leverage AI to expand revenue growth opportunities? And the second question is he wants to know the growth profitability outlook across segments.

Sure. Thank you, [ Daesh ], for the question. I'll take the first question first. With respect to we feel that the potential savings are through the business value optimization that we're doing across the entire ecosystem. With respect to this, we feel that we'll be significantly improve our revenue per team member by decoupling the revenue growth with the increase in the employee count as well as the cost. We feel that we'll be able to deliver higher adjusted EBITDA and PBT margins in the coming quarters because of this AI-driven automation that we'll be doing across the entire portfolio. With respect to revenue opportunities with AI, we feel the unified brain architecture that we are building through the Aurum PropTech ecosystem is going to deliver revenue monetization opportunities, cross-company leveraging and ensuring that we have autonomous agents who are carrying out entire customer journeys from rental to distribution as well as the reverse from distribution to cap rentals as well. We feel that is going to be the revenue trigger or with respect to AI. However, there are companies which is sell.do and [indiscernible] spaces, which are using AI to drive additional value from existing customers as well. This is true our self-developed AI calling agent, AI lead scoring mechanism as well as AI omnichannel marketing as an entire tool being developed. For your second question with respect to the profitability trends for the -- from each segment, our distribution segment has been profitable since beginning. We have delivered 20% to 25% margins across different companies in the distribution segment. With respect to rents, as a C2C business, the focus has now shifted towards profitability with streamlined growth where we'll be seeing profitability trends emerging in the rental segment in the current financial year FY '27. HelloWorld has reached adjusted EBITDA breakeven in the current month and will be delivering profitable growth going ahead as well.

Thank you. I would now like to hand the conference over to Ms. [ Manali Deisley ] for closing comments. Over to you, ma'am.

Thank you, [indiscernible], and thank you, everyone, for joining us today. Quarter 4 has been a defining milestone for Aurum PropTech, marking the capstone of a year in which we have meaningfully strengthened our operating performance, deepened profitability and executed with greater discipline across our platforms. We appreciate your continued trust and engagement, and we look forward to staying connected as we build on this momentum into the new financial year. Should you have any further questions, please feel free to reach out to our Investor Relations team and we will be happy to address them offline. Thank you once again for your time and continued support, wishing you all a very successful year ahead. Thank you.

Thank you. On behalf of Aurum PropTech Limited, that concludes this conference. Thank you all for joining us. You may now disconnect your lines.