IndiaMART InterMESH Limited (INDIAMART) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

October 17, 2025

NSEI IN Industrials Trading Companies and Distributors earnings 60 min

Earnings Call Speaker Segments

Avijit Vikram

executive
#1

Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. I am Avijit Vikram, Head of Investor Relations. On behalf of IndiaMART InterMESH Limited, I welcome you all to the company's quarter 2 FY '26 Earnings Webinar. [Operator Instructions] Joining us today from the management side, we have Mr. Dinesh Agarwal, Chief Executive Officer; Mr. Brijesh Agrawal, Board Director; Mr. Jitin Diwan, Chief Financial Officer; and Mr. Prateek Chandra, Chief Strategy Officer. Before we begin, I would like to remind you that some of the statements made in today's conference call may be forward-looking in nature and may involve risks and uncertainties. Kindly refer to Slide #3 of the earnings presentation for the detailed disclosure. Now I would like to hand over the call to Mr. Dinesh Agarwal for his opening remarks. Thank you, and over to you, sir.

Dinesh Agarwal

executive
#2

Thank you. Good evening, everyone, and welcome to IndiaMART's Second Quarter FY '26 earnings call. We have circulated our earnings presentation, which is available on our website as well as the stock exchanges website. We are sure you would have gone through the presentation and would be happy to take any questions afterwards. IndiaMART has delivered a consolidated revenue from operations at INR 391 crores in the quarter 2, representing year-on-year growth of 12% and collections from the customers have grown to INR 406 crores, representing year-on-year growth of 14%. Deferred revenue grew at INR 1,750 crores, representing Y-o-Y growth of 18%. In the second quarter, our unique business inquiries were 31 million, representing Y-o-Y growth of 12%. The total number of paying suppliers stood at 222,000, net additions for the quarter were around 2,800. This is excluding a onetime benefit of around 1,200 net additions during the quarter due to simplification of the onboarding process for new silver paying subscribers. The net paying supplier addition in the quarter 2 was actually 3,951 but the normalized would be considered at 2,800. Our Platinum and Gold customers, which constitutes approximately 50% of our customer base and more than 75% of their revenue continue to have very good upsell and retention rates. We continue to focus on improving the platform by creating a better user experience for both buyers and suppliers, improving how users engage and converge, delivering better customer servicing and building a trusted platform. We are implementing a growing range of AI use cases, which is strengthening our platform and product offering. Our focus remains on raising the bar on quality and servicing our customers better, which will create a long-term value for our stockholders. Now I will hand over the call to Brijesh to update about Busy Infotech. Thank you, and over to you, Brijesh.

Brijesh Agrawal

executive
#3

Good evening. Busy has done a billing of about INR 38 crores in Q2. The normalized year-on-year growth rate, which excludes the impact of change in the payout structure for partners is at 57%. The revenue from operations for Q2 is around INR 29 crores, and the deferred revenue stands at about INR 111 crores. Now this represents a year-on-year growth of 46% and 63%, respectively, on a normalized basis. The cash flow from operations for Q2 was INR 11 crores. During this quarter, we sold 12,000 new licenses, taking the total count of licenses sold to 421,000. Moving forward, we are committed to enhance the overall product experience and continue to build the growth momentum in the business. With this, I would hand over the call to Jitin to take it further from here.

Jitin Diwan

executive
#4

Thank you, Brijesh sir. Good evening, everyone. I'll take you through the financial performance for the quarter ending September 2025. Consolidated collection from customer was INR 406 crores in the quarter, representing year-on-year growth of 14%. IndiaMART's stand-alone collection from customers for the quarter was INR 365 crores, registering year-on-year growth of 8%. Consolidated deferred revenue stood at INR 1,750 crores, increase of 18% Y-o-Y basis. Consolidated revenue from operations was INR 391 crores, registering a year-on-year growth of 12% and consolidated EBITDA was INR 130 crores, representing margin of 33%. In Q2, we recorded a decline in other income from INR 92 crores in previous quarter to INR 10 crores in this quarter, primarily due to the mark-to-market losses on our treasury portfolio owing to significant increase in bond yields during the quarter. Consolidated net profit for the quarter was INR 83 crores and consolidated cash generated from operations was INR 114 crores. Cash and treasury balance stood at INR 2,874 crores as on September 30, 2025. Thank you very much, and now we are ready to take questions.

Avijit Vikram

executive
#5

[Operator Instructions]

Operator

operator
#6

First question is from the line of Anmol Garg from DAM Capital.

Anmol Garg

analyst
#7

Firstly, just wanted to understand when you say that 1,200 addition is because of simplification of onboarding process, what does this mean exactly?

Dinesh Agarwal

executive
#8

Se, what we used to happen earlier that our sales team will go and acquire the customer means collect the advanced payment or the NACH registration done. And then we would ask them to wait for 2 reasons: one, wait for their payment clearance. The second, wait for their GST verification that they are a legitimate GST verified supplier or not. And also, we took that opportunity to build -- to improve their catalog or the mini website, micro site on the Internet, which we call MDC, mini dynamic catalog. Now given the technology, we are able to verify the GST of any supplier on the go. In fact, many of the suppliers are pre-verified on GST. And we said that most of our payments are also online, 80% of the payments are now online. So I think we have -- we initially did a pilot in Delhi NCR for a couple of months. And after no problems, we now immediately activate the customer to be live. So earlier, what was taking 3 to 5, 7 days process has now become 0. With that change, earlier, we used to have a work in progress or the orders in progress, order book of 1,200-odd customers, which will get rolled over. Now with this immediate activation that order book was immediately filled. So there is no rolled over order book that is going to the next quarter. And that is the additional gain that we have gained. Yes, that is the additional onetime gain that we have found. So that is what is looking like a 4,000 customer addition. However, as you know that many of those orders actually bounced in the payment and failed in the GST or failed to complete there. So I think that will result into an immediate first month or second month churn. So earlier, those customers were not counted as -- and they were refunded automatically or they were not -- their money was not received. Now they will be counted as a customer but they will be also counted in the churn. So that's why there's a one-time benefit of about 1,200 customers but that -- the overall gross addition and net churn -- net churn will remain the same. I hope that answers.

Anmol Garg

analyst
#9

Very clear, sir. Also, sir, I wanted to understand going ahead, how should we think about the paid supplier addition. From an overall perspective, are we seeing any reduction in the churn process in the last 3 months? Any steps that we have taken with respect to the same?

Dinesh Agarwal

executive
#10

Yes. So steps I have already told and I will tell you again, the one we have done is reduce the competition or reduce the number of sellers being introduced per buyer so that it is good for the buyer and supplier both. As I told, over the last 5, 7 years, the supplier responsiveness has become far more better. And so earlier when we were introducing 6, 7 suppliers to 1 buyer, they were likely to get 3 responses. Now the supplier responsiveness has gone as high as 70%, 80%. So it may be enough to introduce only 4, 5 suppliers. So also it increases the competition for the suppliers because the suppliers were complaining largely that earlier I used to get maturity. Now I'm getting difficulty in getting maturity. The second thing that we did was the quality of inquiry. Earlier when we were asking buyers, we were not asking buyers to fulfill a lot of details. With category-based management, our ability to know what to ask and our confidence has gone up that we can ask 2, 3 questions to the buyer. That helps in 2 things. One, the intent of buyer is very, very clear because he has filled at least 2, 3 things apart from his phone number and OTP, he has also filled quantity and he has also filled some specification. Secondly, it also helps the supplier very much that when they see the RFQ, they see the RFQ earlier if they were seeing 50%, 60% of the RFQs having quantity or having specification. Now they are seeing 80%, 90% of the RFQs having quantity and having a specification. And that helps the suppliers choose the correct kind of RFQs and correct kind of inquiry. The third one was localization. Earlier, we were giving mostly all India-based searches. Now we are giving more city preferred localized searches. As you would have seen on Google and every place else, the results are localized for you. So same process we have started to do for IndiaMART also. And all this has resulted in a better NPS from the supplier side on the leading indicators. Leading indicators means now they are happier with the quality of inquiries. They are happier with the locational relevancy, and we have seen an improved query relevancy feedback. However, it has not yet resulted into any significant movement in the churn and Silver customers continue to have elevated churn at monthly customers having about 7%, annual customers, Silver customers about 4% and Gold and Platinum continues to be healthy at about 1%. So I'm not able to give you any guidance on the paid customer addition even going forward.

Anmol Garg

analyst
#11

Understood. Understood. And one last thing. Just wanted to understand how has our performance marketing spends moved during the quarter?

Dinesh Agarwal

executive
#12

That's done well. If you really see the unique business inquiry count, the unique business inquiries have grown from immediate past quarter, 29 million to 31 million. And if I see the year-on-year, that has grown by 12%, 13%. Now half of that is actually coming from the organic and half of this is coming from the performance marketing. So performance marketing currently being done in the top 10,000-odd categories. We are still trying to optimize because in certain categories, we are not able to get any share. In certain categories, we are getting too many -- too much. So we are trying to optimize, but I think the initial results are very good. And now I think the framework has been set up. We will continue to -- as I said, our initial budget is about INR 8 crores, INR 10 crores per quarter, and we'll continue to work to spend on that side.

Anmol Garg

analyst
#13

Sure. So should we assume that INR 8 crores to INR 10 crores is something which is continuing in this quarter as well?

Dinesh Agarwal

executive
#14

Yes. So current quarter was about INR 6 crores and last quarter was also about INR 6 crores. But this quarter, slightly the results are better because our optimizations have gone better.

Operator

operator
#15

Next question is from the line of Kunal from Banyan Tree Advisors.

Kunal Thanvi

analyst
#16

Yes. So I had 2 questions. One was on the collection growth and the deferred revenue growth. If you look at the collection growth, it is closer to 7%, 8% and deferred revenue growth is closer to 15%, 18%. How does one read into these numbers? How do we interpret the difference between collection growth and the deferred revenue growth?

Dinesh Agarwal

executive
#17

So there is a financial -- there's a table in the stand-alone financials, if go in detail. No here, in the detailed financial. There's proper reconciliation table in the stand-alone financial. There's a proper reconciliation table in the stand-alone financials, not in the investor presentation. You can see there what was the opening deferred revenue, what is the collection and how much the revenue recognized and how much is the closing deferred revenue and what is the current and noncurrent of that. So that is there in the stand-alone financials. I don't remember the note number.

Kunal Thanvi

analyst
#18

Sure. One other question was when we look at the traffic growth on the platform, right, it was 3% this quarter. Last quarter, it was closer to 7%. How do one read into this number? And what are the steps that we have taken to improve this traffic growth? Because ultimately, if you were to think about it, traffic growth would be the lead indicator in terms of our growth coming, right?

Dinesh Agarwal

executive
#19

So I was about to touch this next quarter. I'm going to drop this KPI altogether because this KPI has become very unreliable in the days of web crawling and scraping and agentic and all of this. So the traffic, it has become really hard even for Google Analytics to differentiate between the user traffic and differentiate between a bot traffic or scraping traffic or crawling traffic. So earlier, it was quite almost a near monopoly of Google. And -- so it was very easy to identify which are the crawlers, Google crawlers and which are the Yahoo crawlers or which are the Bing crawlers. And we would typically ban the Russian and Chinese crawlers, Yandex and others. But now everybody, including Meta, including ChatGPT, including Grok, including many Alibaba Qin and DeepSeek, they're all crawling the entire Internet very, very heavily. The second part is now every little time -- every time you say think harder on the -- or the think mode on the ChatGPT, goes and brings 100 pages and gives you some 20 lines answer. Those 100 pages are again very hard to differentiate because there is no established system of identifying, which particular place that query is coming from, whether it is coming from [indiscernible] through ChatGPT or -- I mean, which model, which front end. And now with the agentic -- browser agentic, the Gaia browser and the Comet browser and all of this, actually, the crawling will happen directly from the customer's end. customers' IP will come. So it is very hard to now say that this traffic is user traffic and this traffic is machine traffic. So we will probably have to drop this KPI from the top and look at only the business inquiries received or converted or calls. And we'll find some alternate better KPI where I can differentiate between the human traffic and machine traffic.

Kunal Thanvi

analyst
#20

Sure. Very helpful. One last question, if I can ask, is on -- see, we have improved a lot of things in last 4, 5 quarters. And when we look at the conversion numbers in terms of unique inquiries versus delivered, there's reasonable improvement there. But when we look at the supplier churn on the silver level, it continues to be elevated. Like how do you as a management team think about this? Is it also linked to the overall economy going through a tough period? What are the attributes apart from IndiaMART, if you like what are the things that we should think when you've been trying so hard on these improving the user experience, making it more relevant to them, still the problematic silver supply continues to be under stress.

Dinesh Agarwal

executive
#21

So I mean, I would say we are too small to be even affected by economical downturn. We may get some positive tailwinds when the economy is doing very, very well. But we are too small to be even affected by economy until something like a very bad happens like COVID or demonetization or something like that. But otherwise, these kind of typical economic slowdowns or 1%, 2% GDP slowdown or up, that should not be a matter of importance for at 2% penetration or 3% penetration. Now coming to the working hard, I think we keep working hard and one day, we find something smart. You never know when is that. That is what is we are trying to find all of us together. And we have to wait for that moment to come. There was a definite tailwind, which was the mobile Internet, which started around 2013, '14, got a very good shot in the arm at around 2016 and when came in. And also in 2020 when the lockdown happened. So effectively, there was a big tailwind. Now there are almost 900 million Internet users in India, and there's not much left on that side. So whatever was the natural tailwind of every Internet company, that is kind of tapering. Whatever new tailwind will come because of the agentic or because of the AI-based things because now we have got a distribution, which is far more wider. Earlier WhatsApp was a communication channel but now WhatsApp would be a discovery channel. Earlier ChatGPT was a chat channel or information, Wikipedia kind of information channel. Now it could be a discovery channel. So there may be more new channels that will come in. So I think the natural growth on the buyer side will come in either from there or there is something that we need to fix within our ecosystem. And we continue to work hard to find that one particular lever.

Avijit Vikram

executive
#22

So we have a question from the chat menu. The question is from Mr. Manjeet Buaria. So you have consistently explained why you believe this is a large addressable market from paying supplier standpoint and growth here will come back to healthy levels when the current issues are fixed. What factors or data points will make you change your mind on this hypothesis and say that the TAM is not large enough to grow net paying suppliers at least in high single digits. Any implications of that changed view on our marketing cost?

Dinesh Agarwal

executive
#23

So you are saying that if this INR 1.5 crore GST suppliers come down to INR 75 lakhs, I will reduce my final supplier that I should be targeting. But as long as there are 15 million, 20 million good SMEs and as long as they are growing at 10% nominal growth, I don't think that a 5%, 10% kind of a penetration should be an unrealistic number. I don't know what will change my mind that this will not increase.

Avijit Vikram

executive
#24

We can take the next question, Vikas.

Operator

operator
#25

Next question is from the line of Nikhil Choudhary from Nuvama.

Nikhil Choudhary

analyst
#26

Sir, first question on subscriber addition. The 2.8K addition, while being close to our range was still highest in last 2 years. So I just want to understand deposit normal change we see quarterly? Or did we saw some change in, let's say, gross addition or some decline in churn?

Dinesh Agarwal

executive
#27

Not much. I think it is that 2,500 plus/minus a couple of hundred here and there, certain working days, certain working not days in the quarter. That's about it, nothing else.

Nikhil Choudhary

analyst
#28

Got it, sir. Second one on the churn side, especially on monthly churn, sir. Any reason we are not seeing any reduction in churn? And second, along with this question, I think we have noticed you have increased the price of Silver subscriber plan. So any logic behind why to increase Silver pricing at a time when the churn is so high?

Dinesh Agarwal

executive
#29

So the same question was asked to us in 2022 or '23. In 2019, the Silver pricing was INR 3,000 per month and INR 30,000 per year. Today, we are in 2025, that's like 6 years ago. And in 6 years, even at whatever price rise that you factor in, this has to be factored in because as I said, these are the -- while these are the building blocks for our -- while these are the bottom of the pyramid customers, which end up becoming Gold and Platinum tomorrow but trying to acquire them at a more cheaper rate and a more cheaper rate would be raised to the bottom because a lot of these customers also have which kind of customer you want to acquire, what size of customer you want to acquire. So it's not value at this price or value at that price. It's either there is value or there is no value. So our thought is that simple 10% kind of a price rise every second year is -- should be applicable, whether or not -- I mean that's part of the inflation, I guess.

Nikhil Choudhary

analyst
#30

Got it, sir. Got it, sir. Just one clarity on the investment part. So last quarter, we highlighted we want to increase the investment from INR 6 crores to INR 10 crores but we've maintained it to INR 6 crores. So any logic here? And also, was there some ESOP announcement? And can you quantify it?

Dinesh Agarwal

executive
#31

What was the first question? What was that? Marketing. So marketing was, I always told that it is about INR 10 crores per quarter. I don't know -- it was actually done at INR 6 crores last quarter. But I said that my budget is about up to [ INR 6 crore ] to INR 10 crores per quarter. On the ESOP front, Jitin can give you the details. Our last ESOP was expiring sometime January, I guess.

Jitin Diwan

executive
#32

Yes, January.

Dinesh Agarwal

executive
#33

So we came up with a new ESOP policy of the ESOP grant.

Jitin Diwan

executive
#34

So in the beginning of the year, as Dinesh, that we have -- because the last policy was expiring, we have renewed our ESOP policy, and we have given the grants for about INR 90 crores and the expense for that, that's how has started coming in Q1 and Q2.

Operator

operator
#35

[Operator Instructions] Next question is from the line of [indiscernible].

Unknown Analyst

analyst
#36

Yes, there was some issue like it asked me to rejoin. I'm audible, right?

Avijit Vikram

executive
#37

Yes, you're audible. Please go ahead.

Unknown Analyst

analyst
#38

My first question was our ARPU of top 1% has now increased from INR 6 lakhs in FY '21 to nearly INR 11 lakhs now, right? So I wanted to understand this growth is fairly very nice over the years. How much of it is due to volume increase of RFQs and what percentage would be due to the price hikes that we have taken over the years?

Dinesh Agarwal

executive
#39

So top 1% is mostly price hike because there is no -- nothing to do with volume, yes. In FY '21, we had 147,000 customers. The top 1% would account for about 1,500 customers. Now that we have 222,000 customers. So now top 1% is about 2,200 customers. So one is the 50% growth has come in from that. But the ARPU growth, as you said, mostly from the price hike or from the differential pricing that we give to the -- and from the product that is you can target multiple cities and you can target multiple keywords. So people have taken multiple keywords and multiple cities. And some of it came from the medium enterprises and large enterprises also.

Unknown Analyst

analyst
#40

Got it, sir. And sir, what is your sense on our ability to further increase this because over the years, it has increased quite decently.

Dinesh Agarwal

executive
#41

Yes. I guess on the enterprise side, it can increase quite a bit because their ability to target and their ability to serve larger markets, especially in the high-value segments, if you go to our enterprise section, you will find different -- if you go to different quarterly presentation, you will find different, different industries being focused here. And these kind of customers have the marketing budgets running into crores as well as the ability to serve a larger customer base because of their dealer distribution network or because of their distribution ability. So I guess there is a lot more possible. Probably we are yet to learn how to do that better from the product market fit side also and from the sales and servicing point of view. So you can see different -- if you go to this section on IndiaMART and about us, you will find multiple such industries where there are large customers exist. And then comes the medium size of the customers because now MSME definition -- as per MSME definition, the medium size of the customer is INR 100 crores to INR 500 crores.

Unknown Analyst

analyst
#42

Got it, sir. And my second question was our marketing and selling cost is odd INR 60 crores this quarter. How do we see that going forward? Like what percentage are we expecting it to increase?

Jitin Diwan

executive
#43

So it should remain same as a percentage of revenue. It should not like as we said that we have done the performance marketing of INR 6 crores, and this is a budget of INR 10 crores. So we'll see that how we optimize it. And that may increase. So that may have a change of another 1%. Otherwise, it should remain the same.

Unknown Analyst

analyst
#44

So basically, around 16% to 18% of revenues is what our selling and marketing cost would be right?

Jitin Diwan

executive
#45

Yes. Correct.

Dinesh Agarwal

executive
#46

If you see before COVID, it was 19%. During COVID, let's forget about it. And then when we started building up again, it was as high as 20%. That was FY '23 because we suddenly hired so many people. But then it has typically hovered at 19% pre-COVID, 19%, 18% [indiscernible]. Last year, we did not because we were trying to see how to work on the churn numbers before adding the gross. But as per the salary and as per the normal increase, I think 17%, 18% is fair to assume.

Avijit Vikram

executive
#47

So we have a question from the chat menu. The question is from Mr. Aman Thadani. Net adds have remained in the 1,000 to 2,000 range for several quarters as we intentionally slowed gross additions to fixed churn. Understood and aligned here. Question is, given that the Silver funnel is weak and there is 1% natural churn per month in Platinum and Gold, at what point will the customer count in Platinum and Gold start shrinking?

Dinesh Agarwal

executive
#48

At 1% churn because typically, there is a natural flow coming from Silver and Gold to the Platinum side. So I don't see that shrinking. But yes, if the Silver customer remains muted growth -- when the Silver customer growth remains muted, Platinum would be the last to start shrinking.

Avijit Vikram

executive
#49

Okay. So we can continue with, Vikas.

Operator

operator
#50

Next question is from the line of Rahul Jain from Dolat Capital. Your voice is breaking out.

Rahul Jain

analyst
#51

Sorry for that. So basically...

Avijit Vikram

executive
#52

Yes, Rahul, just restart the question you're audible now.

Dinesh Agarwal

executive
#53

It looks like he was on the mute.

Rahul Jain

analyst
#54

Yes. My question was related to...

Avijit Vikram

executive
#55

Yes, please.

Rahul Jain

analyst
#56

Yes. Sorry for the trouble. What I was trying to understand is that with all this long enduring process that we have gone through in terms of optimizing various aspects of the business to ensure the subscriber addition aspect of it and meanwhile, scaling up on the ARPU on the existing base. So with this learning, your thought process in terms of what is the right scalability in terms of the subscriber and your thought process is what is the ideal ARPU in this business? Has that changed in the last 3 years, the thought process that this is a far less volume game but more an ARPU game? Or you think the opportunity remains the same?

Dinesh Agarwal

executive
#57

No. So both sides that is why if you go to the pyramid, customer pyramid side -- customer pyramid slide, you will see there are both the aspects to the business. While the Silver base, whether it is monthly or annual, they bring bulk of the customer and they bring the pipeline to the to the Gold and Platinum. But while if you see the Gold, Platinum customer base, which is just the top 10%, 15%, that accounts for 50%, 60%. And I am giving you Gold plus Platinum card data that Gold plus Platinum put together is 50% of the customer base accounting for 75% of the revenue. So effectively, the rest 75% of the customer base is actually accounting for the low ARPU base. So it is not either our game. You have to work on both sides, one for the leadership, the other for the monetization and profitability.

Rahul Jain

analyst
#58

Right. And with this thing, what looks like a best case 3-year scenario for us from a going-forward perspective from -- I know you don't go for a guidance at this point but maybe a longer period goal, which you could set because you would assume a lot of this thing would get rectified over the next few quarters?

Dinesh Agarwal

executive
#59

Yes. I mean we'll continue to work as soon as we have a better grip on the situation, we'll start giving guidance. But currently, we best effort basis to continue to deliver what is delivered.

Rahul Jain

analyst
#60

And what should be the sustainable ARPU potential on the current base? Of course, if there is faster.

Dinesh Agarwal

executive
#61

I can talk about the historical ARPU. So historically, ARPU has grown from INR 32,000 in FY '17 to pre-COVID about INR 42,000 immediately post-COVID as early as FY '24 was INR 53,000 and now running at INR 60,000, INR 65,000. So I guess ARPU has grown at 7%, 8% CAGR over the last many, many, many years. And we think that, that kind of an ARPU growth should be typically possible, 6% to 8% of the ARPU growth should be typically possible.

Rahul Jain

analyst
#62

Right. Right. So 6% to 8% when you talk about the long average, it is period when you have good net addition also, which is actually dilutive to your ARPU. And this is I think...

Dinesh Agarwal

executive
#63

There has been periods, for example, FY '21 and FY '22, the entire 2 years, we didn't have any net addition. And similarly, FY '24, '25, we didn't have much of net addition. So this is a very, very long term, which includes all kinds of cycles.

Operator

operator
#64

Next question is from the line of [ Saurabh Savla. ]

Unknown Analyst

analyst
#65

Yes. So I had a bookkeeping question with respect to our general and admin expense in the functional P&L that has sequentially increased by around INR 20-odd crores from INR 25 crores to INR 44 crores. So is there any one-off in that? And what kind of sustainable number would be for this expense?

Jitin Diwan

executive
#66

Yes. So thank you for your question. So you're right, there is a one-off of fair valuation loss, which we have taken on one of our investments this time for about INR 16 crores. That is why that is looking swelled. Other than that, there is no reason to believe that, that should increase from the normal number which we have been reporting.

Unknown Analyst

analyst
#67

Okay. So in the reported financials, it would be part of your other income, right?

Jitin Diwan

executive
#68

Not other income. It will be under expenses only above EBITDA.

Unknown Analyst

analyst
#69

Okay. And also our other income has declined sequentially Q-o-Q in the reported results. So what is the reason for that?

Jitin Diwan

executive
#70

So just before that, while that G&A number includes one-off in the stand-alone, in the consolidated numbers, if you see, there will not be any impact of that because we -- on a monthly and quarterly basis, we take the share in loss for all our -- share in loss and profit for all our investments. Coming to your point of other income, as I explained in the beginning, so in this quarter, there is a mark-to-market losses on our treasury portfolio because the bond yields had increased. That is why you're seeing dip in the other income. But the way to look at this is usually on a little longer basis. If you see on a yearly basis or on a half yearly basis, that should stay in the range of the yield of like 6.5% to 7.5% of actually income what we do.

Avijit Vikram

executive
#71

So we have a question from the chat menu. The question is from Mr. [indiscernible]. Busy has added 12,000 licenses in each of the last 2 quarters versus 8,000 per quarter previously. How should we think about the longer-term growth in licenses as our investments begin to pay off?

Brijesh Agrawal

executive
#72

So in terms of the licenses being sold, as I have mentioned earlier, the improvement on the new activations has been consistently happening. We expect that this momentum should continue. However, we should factor in that in the accounting software business, Q4 and Q1 generally are -- we would see a higher demand for accounting software because at that time, people find it convenient to change their accounting software, whereas Q2, Q3 generally tend to be a little subdued. So therefore, even going forward, we think that we would be in line with the kind of growth we've been seeing over the last couple of years in terms of new activations. That is how I would try to put it here.

Avijit Vikram

executive
#73

We may continue, Vikas.

Operator

operator
#74

Next question is from the line of Nikhil Choudhary.

Nikhil Choudhary

analyst
#75

Just one clarity, a couple of questions. First on the price increase of INR 3,000, especially for Silver monthly, did we saw some slowdown in silver subscriber addition after the price increase? Or was it at normalized level?

Dinesh Agarwal

executive
#76

Yes. Of course, yes, because once we announced the price, we announced ahead of the time. So we got some of the sales, which were -- where the proposals were already sent, we got some of the sales pre the price and probably this particular price would have some impact on the gross additions in the next 1 or 2 quarters. But I don't see that to be a major change beyond 1 or 2 quarters. So there would be slight dip but I would say that once we increase the price.

Nikhil Choudhary

analyst
#77

Got it, sir. Second, just want some clarity on your comment that we saw some improvement on ROI of the marketing spend compared to last quarter. Can you quantify what were the improvement we saw in this quarter versus last quarter?

Dinesh Agarwal

executive
#78

So if you see the unique business inquiries, on the similar spend in the last quarter, we got 29 million inquiries. On the similar spend, we got 31 million unique business inquiries.

Nikhil Choudhary

analyst
#79

Okay. But it could be organic as well, right?

Dinesh Agarwal

executive
#80

Yes. So I'm saying -- that's why I'm saying you can assume 50% organic and 50% driven by the advertising effort.

Operator

operator
#81

Next question is from the line of [ Shivam Gupta. ]

Avijit Vikram

executive
#82

Shivam, please, go ahead.

Unknown Analyst

analyst
#83

Am I audible?

Avijit Vikram

executive
#84

Yes, you are. Please go ahead.

Unknown Analyst

analyst
#85

I just had a couple of questions. So first one was that we are attacking all -- when we're attacking a churn problem. And in a way, if I zone out, it's more like we are trying different interventions and experiments to see what works. Isn't -- from your perspective, isn't AI a big -- and with the way AI is coming through, isn't that a big lever for you to actually accelerate the number of experiments and the velocity of them to actually shrink the time from henceforth to solve this problem? Just your view on this.

Dinesh Agarwal

executive
#86

Very good. I think, so 2, 3 things that comes immediately. I mean as early as last month, we had a complete AI meet full day with the Board. So there are 3 things that we have found apart from what I have been talking and what you can see in my annual reports that other AI initiatives that I have been talking. One clearly emerging is the call automation or AI-based voice bots. They have become as good as humans in terms of sounding natural and understanding the other parties' voice. With the AI, with the tooling, with the context engineering, I think they can surpass humans in less than 1 year in terms of their ability to handle complex queries and their ability to answer complex query and also fix the problems. So I think we are working very quickly to -- we have already -- as we speak, our AI bots could be handling as high as 1 lakh calls per day by the beginning of the 1st of January. They are already doing almost 10,000, 20,000 calls per day. The second part is, this whole voice part has 2 things. One is the voice bot where they can talk. The second is the call analytics. There is a huge amount of calling between the customer and between us that happens and between the buyer and supplier that happens and between the buyer and us that happens. So all the entire triangle, almost like 3 crore calls per month happens. And that's a black box because you can always say that we can do audit, you can listen to the calls but it's almost impossible to listen to millions of the calls and make the sense out of it. So I think we are working on that direction to improve that. So that's on the call side. Now coming to the cataloging improvement, categorization improvement and categorization expertise, a lot of these call analytics will come handy and the PDF analysis will come handy to improve these items where it can dramatically improve the cataloging and discovery and those kind of things, the things that we have built harder over many, many years. So I think that has become easier. That also lowers the entry barrier for others. But at the same time, it gives a lot more advantage to a player like us. So you are right, these 3 things should help. And many more will emerge in times to come. I hope that answers your question.

Unknown Analyst

analyst
#87

Yes. That was helpful. And the second question was that you did mention about the pollution from the bots in the incoming traffic. Related to that is that does that also pose a worry from a perspective of data being scraped and poached and in a way, kind of dilute the -- that as a mode that the platform has?

Dinesh Agarwal

executive
#88

Yes. So there are 2, 3, 4 kinds of data. Half the data is just the name address. Some of the data is the phone number and e-mail and some of the data is the catalog, that's one part of this, which is the data. So phone and e-mail, we don't provide anywhere on the web. So hard to scrape. But yes, from other sources, one can always get something. The second part of the network effect or the barriers to entry is the insight that we have on which supplier likes what despite the fact that he has displayed a lot more products but what he likes to deal in, which categories he deals most and which categories which cities he deals most, what kind of quantities and what kind of price points he deals most. That information is nowhere scrapable or available to the any bot or any AI agent. The third part is the paying customer service that we have built, which has brought the buyer and supplier both creating a network effect where there are 30 million unique business inquiries every quarter. That's about 10 million business inquiries every month. And also similarly, there are about 200,000 paying customers. So these are the 3 modes. Out of that, the only first one, I mean, that was always scrapable anyway. The scrapping has become easier, but it was always scrapable.

Unknown Analyst

analyst
#89

Got it. Got it. And my last question, sir, would be that, from my understanding, there is a lot of value in the platform when it comes to somebody searching for a long tail of goods or products that they use in their own supply chain. But over the years, have you seen the platform becoming a larger part of the user supply chains? And maybe this answer you can give from a gold guy to a platinum guy that if you have any queues that IndiaMART sourced leads are becoming a larger part of their purchase or their supply chain operations.

Dinesh Agarwal

executive
#90

I didn't understand. Shivam, I didn't understand.

Unknown Analyst

analyst
#91

So what I was trying to say is, let's say, there is a supplier, let's say, a platinum supplier who's consuming certain RFQs and he's, let's say, sourcing 10% of his -- of his incoming supply from IndiaMART. And over the years, as his ARPUs continue to -- he continues to pay you more, and there will be a natural growth in his business, which is allowing him to pay this. But also, is there a natural increase of wallet share in the fact that he's sourcing more of his supply chains from the IndiaMART's platform? Maybe I know you don't have exact data on this but any heuristics if you have or any color you could share? It's a relevant question that effectively I'm trying to ask for the gold and platinum tiers.

Dinesh Agarwal

executive
#92

Yes. So typically, we found that the people who are responsible for doing the sourcing versus the people who are responsible for doing the marketing or lead gen for the customers, even in very, very small businesses are very, very different set of people. The people who work like a telesales or even a field salesperson or there's a sales manager and then there's a factory manager or there's a procurement manager. And there are almost like 2 very different personalities and 2 very different. However, the owner does deal with both of the guys but it is the 2 different ones. So it is hard for me to even decipher that the same company purchase person is also. It is far easier for me to identify a purchase manager from Indian Oil or from Reliance Industries or from Tata Motors because their e-mail ID clearly reveals that he's from Tata Motors. But from a small company, it is difficult but I've taken your suggestion and we'll work on it.

Unknown Analyst

analyst
#93

All the best and wish you all a very happy Diwali.

Dinesh Agarwal

executive
#94

Very, very happy Diwali to you and let me...

Avijit Vikram

executive
#95

Vikas, please continue.

Operator

operator
#96

Thank you, everyone. This was the last question for today. I would now like to hand over the call to Mr. Dinesh Agarwal for his concluding remarks. Over to you, sir.

Dinesh Agarwal

executive
#97

Thank you very much, ladies and gentlemen, for your quarter 2 FY '26 conference call. We have tried to address your queries in the time available. But if you still have any questions, please feel free to contact with our Investor Relations team, and they'll be happy to arrange for any answers. Thank you very much. Good evening, and have a very, very happy Diwali and safe Diwali.

Operator

operator
#98

On behalf of IndiaMART, we thank everyone for joining us on this webinar. You may now disconnect your lines. Thank you.

This call discussed

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